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

[Don Durito]

Hmm, that does make sense, given their status as farmers. Halflings really shouldn’t be wielding anything except scythes, rakes and hoes. Anything else would be unrealistic!

We'ren't nunchuks devised from farming implements? The road to halfling ninjustu becomes clearer.

 

[Bardic Dave]

We'ren't nunchuks devised from farming implements? The road to halfling ninjustu becomes clearer.

Good point! Evidently, we should restrict Halflings to the monk class in the name of realism!

 

[Fenris-77]

'Nunchuks' or Nunchaku were developed from a kind of farming implement used to thresh rice or soybean.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

What if we made halflings incapable of stating anything in less than 500 words?

The verb 'to be' in halfling is a five page treatise on the nature of being and how the singular is actually a vast majority.

That reminds me of Tinker Gnomes in Dragonlance, with all of their surnames basically being their whole family story.

 

[Mind of tempest]

No well written bad guys are going to go after an race writ large because 0.000001% of them could be a possible threat.

Not only would that be dumb but that's the exact kind of behavior that generates those heroes to come beat you to death and shove you in a can for future heroes to beat on.

So by your logic, this great evil should kill itself.

they are small and have food, the raiders cultures of history would clearly disagree with you as resupplying is the basic of the game, armies march on their stomachs after all.

Hmm, that does make sense, given their status as farmers. Halflings really shouldn’t be wielding anything except scythes, rakes and hoes. Anything else would be unrealistic!

you jest but the warscythe was a real weapon for a reason.

'Nunchuks' or Nunchaku were developed from a kind of farming implement used to thresh rice or soybean.

rice flails

 

[Bardic Dave]

And, how is my point that halflings could stand to be improved any less personal that your point that halflings are perfectly fine as is because you like them?

It’s not. Now if you’d only acknowledged this 20 pages ago, and not couched your arguments in terms of what’s “correct” or “best” or “more realistic” we could have saved a heck of a lot of time!

 

[pemerton]

Yes and no.

IF we put forth a literary conceit that Gnomes are inventors, and then never show gnomes inventing anything, then our conceit is unfounded. It is telling us something that we are not shown. And one of the big things in any sort of writing is "show, don't tell". And part of this is because you can tell someone a "fact" about your story/world/character but if it doesn't come up, if it isn't shown, then it feels false.

<snip>

If the only reason for halflings being overlooked is because we say they are overlooked... then it is a weak literary element. IT creates dissonance because there is no reason for them to be overlooked, no real way to show it in the story, and they end up feeling less tied into the story and more just cartoon stickers pasted onto the world.

Your last paragraph is a non-sequitur. You move from showing that Halflings are overlooked to providing a reason for Halflings being overlooked.

The way, in a FPRG, that we show Halflings to be overlooked but plucky is that Halflings figure little if at all in the received backstory of our fantasy world, but here at the table our friend so-and-so is playing a Halfling who does deeds of derring-do.

The fact that the backstory is shallow and trite, and that the pluckiness of the Halfling is not really that different from the pluckiness of every other PC, doesn't mean that we're not showing Halflings to be overlooked but plucky!

 

[Crimson Longinus]

As for why I am discussing this particular issue? Because someone made a thread about it, and world-building is a passion of mine.

That's a passion for a lot of people. Usually such people engage in the age-old tradition of building their own settings to match their personal preferences instead of spending insane amount of time nit-picking trivial details of settings someone else made.

 

[Oofta]

We'ren't nunchuks devised from farming implements? The road to halfling ninjustu becomes clearer.

So that's why I enjoy my halfling monk that I finally got to play again and have a halfling monk in my current home game!

 

[Vaalingrade]

they are small and have food, the raiders cultures of history would clearly disagree with you as resupplying is the basic of the game, armies march on their stomachs after all.

That is not what was being asked.