D&D General My Problem(s) With Halflings, and How To Create Engaging/Interesting Fantasy Races

[doctorbadwolf]

Perhaps Faolyn and Oofta, the two people who keep saying that I must need to reasses how I DM because I have this issue that they think is completely not an issue.... then they basically propose just letting the player's handle it themselves.

But that isn’t the same thing.

And that doesn't lead to the halfling feeling particularly brave.

Sure it does.

The Gnome rolls with advantage too, are they a race known for their Bravery?

Only if it’s magical fear, and they also roll against charm. This is a you thing, man. Not a system thing.

 

[Faolyn]

Sorry, which one? They have a good dozen replies between your post and mine.

The one that was like directly before mine and addressed the exact same thing.

So is a human or dwarf player who never rolls a 1. That doesn't make the halfling special. Heck, the player probably only noticed because they were expecting to reroll and never did, while the other players being that "lucky" is never even brought up.

First off, if you have any player, regardless of what race they're playing, never roll a 1, I'd check their dice. So this point is moot.

Would it be too much to ask for you to respond without insulting my GMing skills at least once? It really gets old to be constantly told that I must be a terrible GM because something that it seems no one has a good answer for gives me issues.

Then stop acting like you have no clue how to DM. And stop ignoring the answers people give you. We are giving you good answers. It's exceedingly clear that the only reason you don't like them is because then you wouldn't be able to complain about halflings.

You: But how do I show this?

Me: <gives description containing one or more ways to show that.>

You: But how do I show this?

Seriously. You are probably going to ignore this in favor of saying "but you are all claiming that I say this because I hate halflings and that's not true!" (like you've done every other time) but the reality is, your actions are showing the truth here. Simply put, I don't believe that you are willing to accept anything that might make halflings not-horrible in your eyes.

The following is a prime example of this:

To go through your reiterations

#1 -> Tell the player to be superstitious about their ability to succeed. By the way, failing is usually considered bad luck (instead of poor skill) and there for it would be that the halfling who is lucky, is portraying themselves being unlucky with equal frequency to every other player, unless they decide that instead of being skillful, they were lucky. This is not a great solution to making a race feel lucky at all.

Do you tell PCs who are playing dwarfs that they have to be gruff? Or PCs who are playing orcs that they have to be belligerent? If no, then don't tell a PCs who are playing halflings that they have to be superstitious. If yes, then you should stop telling your PCs how to roleplay their characters.

They're described as superstitious in MTF. If the player wants to follow that description, that's up to them.

#2 -> In this one instance, they were lucky. Congrats! I had acknowledged that this is something you can do, but it requires first a failed roll with a 1, which is only 5%, not counting the percentage of rolls, and even if we assume every single roll is 50/50 that means that this ability comes up for only 2.5% of die rolls. Or about two and half rolls for every two hundred rolls

At first, it looked like they failed. But they didn't, due to a stroke of good luck. I already explained this. It's up to you to describe how they didn't fail. That's what DMs do.

Is that enough for a race to be seen as unusually lucky? What do I do if the player doesn't feel like this ability makes them feel lucky enough?

Yes, that's enough. Halflings will almost never, ever suffer from a critical failure. And to head you off: I don't mean, and never meant, "you the DM will almost never, ever have to roll on a nonexistent crit failure table."

And if you wanted to, you could have their luck come up in situations where there's no PC roll involved. Halfling's walking down a street, looks down, and there's a shiny gold piece at his feet. Lucky! Halfling's walking through the forest, her passive Per isn't high enough to notice the hiding bandit, you rolled for the bandit's to-hit but they failed, so you can say that the halfling paused to adjust her backpack just as an arrow strikes the tree right where her head would have been if she hadn't paused. Lucky!

This sort of narration is entirely up to you. Or you could just ignore it until it comes up in play, the way probably most DMs do with racial traits.

#3 -> We don't use crit fail rules. So this is a complete non-issue. This is basically going back up to the otherside of point #1, they just fail. Whether that was bad luck or lack of skill, or something else, it is no different than their normal failures.

You can still describe the near-catastrophic failure anyway. I already gave the suggestion of falling in a pit and narrowing missing the giant spike that would have skewered the halfling.

#4 -> Again, we don't use crit fails as a rule. So, again, this is identical to #3 and #1

Then they suffer the same consequences as a normal failure, but you describe it in a way that makes it seem particularly unlucky. The halfling catastrophically failed a save against dragonfire. The flames burned off all his hair: head hair, eyebrows, foot hair, the works. He's going to look like a doof until it grows back. Unlucky!

You could do this exact same thing to someone who isn't a halfling and has advantage or disadvantage and both dice roll 1.

So, I guess by me needing to go back to GMing 101 you meant that I should incorporate a homebrew rule that my groups have universally agreed not to use because we dislike it, and then hope that the halfling player is satisified pretending to be unusually lucky, or rolls a lot of 1's that they then succeed on the second roll.

So I'm to take from this that you never describe how well or badly a PC did on a task, depending on their die roll. Do you just say "you succeed" or "you fail" and that's it? How... boring.

If you take margins of success into consideration when you narrate the results of a role--and I don't mean mechanics, I mean pure narration--then you can darn well narrate a halfling having a stroke of luck.

I would be happy if I had an ability that allowed me to reroll 1s. Are you saying you wouldn't be? Also, do you actually have players who say "I have this racial ability, but I don't like how the DM (fails to) describes it, so this race sucks"? Or are you just making stuff up to be contrary?

Man, no wonder I'm a terrible GM with no talent. I should just tell my players to do it themselves. That's how I make sure that a race who has a major feature of being lucky is actually portrayed as lucky.

Yes, you should tell your players to roleplay their own characters. That's what players are supposed to do. Why is this hard for you to understand?

No, but you are missing the point.

To be resistant to poison means that poison needs to be introduced. And yes, a common way to do that is through alcohol, and anyone with poison resistance having a much higher tolerance. I've actually got a few alcoholic drinks that I won't even have a person who has poison resistance roll to down, but I will for someone who doesn't.

But, introducing poison is a specific element. There is no question about when poison comes into play.

There's no question about when a halfling's Luck comes into play: when a 1 is rolled.

There's no question about when a halflings Brave comes into play: when another creature uses an ability on the halfling that causes the Frightened condition.

"Brave" is a against Fear. But fear and bravery are basic emotions and they are something that is up to interpretation. If I introduce poison to the game, the players don't get to tell me how their body reacts to poison. But if I introduce something frightening, they do get to tell me how they react to that fear.

No, they don't. All creatures that are frightened react exactly the same:

• A frightened creature has disadvantage on ability checks and attack rolls while the source of its fear is within line of sight.
• The creature can't willingly move closer to the source of its fear.

Halflings have advantage on saves against this.

Since you already said that you have homebrewed alcoholic drinks that you require some drinkers to save vs. poison, then you are in a prime position to homebrew some events--such as seeing an entire army of gnolls, to use a previous example of yours--that you require some people who see the army to save vs. being frightened because of it.

And you know what? You can treat this exactly like you would treat an elf's resistance to charm. You don't narrate them being able to resist attempts to befriend them through nonmagical means, right? So why would you need to claim that halflings are braver than others in the face of nonmagical sources of fright? If you don't roleplay elves as being inherently resistant to nonmagical attempts to befriend them, then you don't have to roleplay halflings any differently.

(Unless that's why elves are so snotty and haughty. Their resistance to magical charms make them resistant to nonmagical attempts at friendship as well.)

Which is why my initial point was that halflings are unusually resistant to magical fear... which can work, but it doesn't make them particularly brave, in the standard way of understanding it. Because fear is a basic emotion, it is much harder to figure out how to incorporate this trait in a way that makes sense for the setting and how things work.

So let me introduce you to the fun nature of emotions. They're biological in nature. They can become stronger or flatter depending on things like certain mental illnesses (for instance, depression, anxiety, or bipolar disorder) or if you are on medication or taking drugs or alcohol. This is why I and many others take medication to control anxiety (a fear response).

Halflings have a biology that flattens the fear response. If you like, you can claim that they naturally produce higher quantities of gamma aminobutyric acid than other races do. But you know what happens when you do things like that:

Especially when you consider that Gnomes are ALSO resistant to fear AND charm from magical effects, due to gnome cunning. But if I said gnomes are unusually brave, people would likely disagree with me.

That's because gnomes aren't unusually brave. They would as likely to run from a dragon as a human would be (unless the DM has decided dragonfear is magical. I miss the (Ex) and (Su) tags from 3x). What gnomes are is magic resistant. Magical attempts to frighten them don't work as well.

I DID try talking about them for future editions. Everyone decided that I was a terrible person and you've spent multiple pages attacking me as a GM and everything else because I can't see how I can homebrew them to be better for my table.

No. And nobody has said you're a terrible person. It's because you keep talking about how they suck now and are bad now. You aren't saying "I don't like this about halflings, so what are some cool ways to get around that problem."

I'm not saying you are a terrible DM. I'm saying that if you can't use your imagination to figure out how to describe a thing that won't actually come up because you claim nobody plays halflings at your table, then you need to work on your skills.

 

[Oofta]

If Game of Thrones had been a huge thing in fantasy in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it probably would have been integrated into the DNA of the game and not be viewed as particularly out of place now

Big difference between a book series that has been popular for generations and spawned blockbuster movies and a TV show that only a small percentage of people have seen and that will likely fade from memory in a few years.

If it had been big during the time of D&D infancy ... maybe some components would have been integrated, maybe not. As it is you can already bring in aspects if you want, not that I would recognize them because HBO isn't worth my time or money.

 

[Cadence]

Big difference between a book series that has been popular for generations and spawned blockbuster movies and a TV show that only a small percentage of people have seen and that will likely fade from memory in a few years.

If it had been big during the time of D&D infancy ... maybe some components would have been integrated, maybe not. As it is you can already bring in aspects if you want, not that I would recognize them because HBO isn't worth my time or money.

GoT started as a book series and was good enough to get noticed by the TV people. Tolkien hadn't had the movies when it was written into the DNA of 1e. And Moorcock and Poul Anderson's books were big enough to be baked into the game (because EGG liked them and put them in an appendix?).

 

[Vaalingrade]

Big difference between a book series that has been popular for generations and spawned blockbuster movies and a TV show that only a small percentage of people have seen and that will likely fade from memory in a few years.

GoT ruined Fantasy literature for like a decade and a half. Does that count for nothing?

 

[Oofta]

GoT started as a book series and was good enough to get noticed by the TV people. Tolkien hadn't had the movies when it was written into the DNA of 1e. And Moorcock and Poul Anderson's books were big enough to be baked into the game (because EGG liked them and put them in an appendix?).

I don't see GoT being the cultural phenomena that The Hobbit and LOTR were. Yes, it's a popular unfinished book series that had a TV show made out of it. I just don't see Martin rising to the level of Tolkien. True confession, I haven't read the books or watched the series but other than dragons and white walkers (?) the impression I get is that it's a version of War of the Roses with dragons. I've thought about picking them up when the book series is finished, if it ever is.

Tolkien consolidated a lot of myths and legends to create a unique world with multiple races, dragons, demons (or whatever the Balrog was), wizards, goblins and orcs along with a detailed world history and entire made up languages. It was also a popular book series for decades.

But more important, Tolkien was one of the first believable fantasy worlds that made a splash. If GoT had been out when D&D was being developed I have no doubt it would have had some influence. Of course it's kind of a moot point because it wasn't big in the 70s so it doesn't matter.

 

[Don Durito]

A Song of Ice and Fire did have a massive impact on fantasy. It might not be at quite the cultural level of Tolkien, but it transformed fantasy.

You can see the change in back cover blurbs. Before A Song of Ice nd Fire everyone was a new Tolkien, afterwards they're a new George R.R. Martin.

It changed fantasy so much that in some ways it has made itself seem old fashioned even while it's still unfinished.

Before Game of Thrones the principle approach to Fantasy was the coming of age story, after Martin it was anything goes, and a realist/cynical view of history predominated rather than an idealistic one.

Somewhere there is an alternate universe where fantasy took Guy Gavriel Kay's writing as a grown up model, rather than Martin's and sophisticated romanticism rather cynicism dominates. (Still no non-humans though).

 

[Bohandas]

Big difference between a book series that has been popular for generations and spawned blockbuster movies and a TV show that only a small percentage of people have seen and that will likely fade from memory in a few years.

Harry Potter then. Been around for a quarter of a century, still well known, and got more movies than Middle Earth did (nine including Fantastic Beasts vs. seven including the Ralph Bakshi version of Fellowship)

EDIT:
Or, better yet, how about Journey to the West, which is so old and has so much media based on it that it makes Tolkien look like a newcomer and a failure. Do you agree that it would seem out of place if we had a race of monkey spirits as a core race - keeping everything else the same - simply because Wu Cheng'en did it? (although actually that would still seem less out of place than halflings)

 

[Oofta]

Harry Potter then. Been around for a quarter of a century, still well known, and got more movies than Middle Earth did (nine including Fantastic Beasts vs. seven including the Ralph Bakshi version of Fellowship)

Other authors of course have influence on D&D, but Tolkien was the first to envision a truly fantastical world other than Conan. But even with Conan, it was still a human world and it' was always pulp fantasy sword and sorcery.

We can speculate all day what might have been, what might be. But Tolkien's impact is now part of the feel of D&D with multiple species both friendly and antagonistic, a world seeping with magic and mystery that sent normal folk on mythic journeys. Beyond that, I honestly don't care. It was just an observation that I don't think Martin is as influential overall as Tolkien was.

 

[Bohandas]

Other authors of course have influence on D&D, but Tolkien was the first to envision a truly fantastical world other than Conan.

What about Lord Dunsany?