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

[Gammadoodler]

That is not what was being asked.

It's also kind of irrelevant given that the standard D&D setting, as a fictional, fantasy, world(s) does not share our world's history and has magic, which:

• radically alters logistical considerations at all levels of society, including military supply lines
• significantly changes the tools settlements can use as protection against attack.

At the end of the day though, the relative safety of any settlement, halfling or otherwise is completely setting/DM dependent. Real world history has nothing to do with it.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

But those individual adventurers are part of that people right? Halfling wizards, clerics, druids, bards, and warlocks exist right?

So... humans built a kingdom and they have a church with clerics who worship a god, and they have a holy relic that is targeted by some group.... but halflings have a village, with a church, with clerics who worship a god... and they aren't worth considering or even caring about?

Driz'zt and his companions, many current leaders in the Sword Coast, multiple villains... all of these people are "individual adventurers" they are certainly worth noticing, but a halfling adventurer showing up to stop an evil ritual, or to fight against an army is totally unexpected because.... why? They clearly exist, they clearly do that thing, halflings clearly have magical classes and rogues and all these puzzle pieces that makes everyone else worthy of being paid attention, but they are ignored because they don't do anything and are nothing but simple folk who lead simple lives? You can't be both a race that provides a ton of badass adventurers and be a race of people who never do anything important or get involved in all these plots and issues that adventurers get involved in.

If you still don’t get it, it’s because you’ve decided not to.

I’m done.

 

[Chaosmancer]

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.

"Go after them" as in target them exclusively? No, of course not. that would be dumb. (Also, more than 1 in a million halflings are adventurers)

Could be they go after them because of that fertile farmland.
Could be they go after them because they have few defenses and no soldiers and represent a soft target
Could be they go after them because they hate short people.

But the point is, saying that "halflings are never a threat" when halfling adventurers are running around, being threats, is incredibly stupid. They are just as much of a threat as anyone else in the setting.

But I do wonder, if targeting the weaker and easier targets is a good way to get heroes to beat on you... what do you call targetting a strong target that can viciously fight back and ALSO gets heroes to come beat on you?

 

[Chaosmancer]

Nope. Let me help you out:

“In-fiction justifications for narrative conceits are of tertiary importance, and are a moving target that not everyone can agree on anyway, so we might as well not worry too much about how the Dwarves of the Iron Mountains irrigate their mushroom crop, because doing so would be a waste of time, page-count, and money at the expense of things that are actually fun and important.”

There you go.

Which is not to say that some thought shouldn’t be given to these considerations (within reason) but as this thread clearly indicates, you can’t please everyone.

You know, how the dwarves irrigate their mushrooms is of tertiary importance.

Why halflings are overlooked and underestimated, which is their defining characteristic, really falls more into the category of "why do dwarves live in mountains" which is something that we spent at least a sentence or two on.

Or like how we spent a paragraph at least explaining why drow hate surface elves.

You see, there is a scale importance. I'm not talking about irrigating mushroom crops, I'm talking about one of the fundamental building blocks of the race that people keep pointing to and saying "This is why I like this" but which seems to be built upon a foundation of their own preconceived notion and has no support in the game itself.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Yes. You have written tens of thousands of words on this issue over at least two threads. It beggars belief that this is not a major issue for you for some reason.

Edit:
One may write hundreds of letters to a politician about addressing poverty or climate change.
One may also write hundreds of letters about how one's driveway is unfairly small.
One doesn't write hundreds of letters about how someone else's driveway is unfairly small.

You have spent thousands of words trying to convince us that there is a real issue with halflings. If I squint I am sort of half convinced. Nevertheless even if real it seems incredibly trivial. Nothing that you have said seems to indicate that I, or really most people should view it as anything but trivial. Therefore, if it doesn't seem trivial to you, the obvious inference is because it is your driveway.

How many of those thousands of words were spent defending myself from strawmen, such as "you are trying to remove halflings from the game" or "you only like edgy, murderlord races" or something similar?

How many posts did I make in this thread alone defending myself against claims of arrogant elitism for stating that DnD has different goals and themes than Lord of the Rings? One of which promotes violent solutions and the accrual of power, and the other which is written with a sole purpose of showing the rejection of power to defeat evil?

Does this post count towards my thousands and thousands of words?

I beggar your belief. I enjoy discussion. I get easily wrapped up in responding to people even when intellectually I know it is a waste of time because it will only devolve into personal attacks and them telling me how my opinion is worthless and I shouldn't even waste my time considering any issue because they don't have that issue.

No, in my day to day time working on DnD, I don't even consider halflings. Now that I am in a discussion about them, I am discussing them. If I found a thread about Slaadi, I'd likely give my positions and how I back them up on that topic as well. Call me a liar with your ability to read my mind over the internet and declare that I must care deeply about this major schism based solely on the fact that I've spent time in this thread discussing it, but you would be wrong.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I’m glad your explanation for why dwarves might use axes instead of polearms makes so much sense to you. To me it’s hogwash; pure conjecture that might be plausible but which just as easily could be total nonsense. Certainly, none of these rationalizations appear in any official printed material and they have absolutely nothing to do with why dwarves favour axes. It’s purely an aesthetic choice the designers made, probably because of Tolkien, that doesn’t need any in-fiction justification.

In other words, your rationalizations are completely irrelevant and beside the point; nobody cares enough about the plausibility of Dwarven weaponry to give it more than a passing thought—I doubt you’d given it any thought until Don Durito sardonically brought it up—and none of us particularly care if it makes sense as long as we find it aesthetically appealing. That’s the point. This all boils down to personal preference, and you appear to be in the minority in believing Halflings to be broken.

Actually, I quite enjoy things like that, and I actually have an origin myth in my world about why Dwarves use axes instead of hammers, and that included a story about the forger of the Axe of Dwarvish lords competing against another smith who was making a sword, and the obsession with that sword and making the perfect sword created an evil artifact and some scary monsters that my players encountered towards the end of a campaign.

Osseja the Obsession, a fullblade crafted from the first born dwarf's own left arm, if memory serves me correctly.

So... you'd be wrong. I did consider it. I never cared enough to fix it in terms of physical mechanics (I'm actually watching a lot of Shadiversity, who covers these topics as well, which is why I've heard of Skallagrim) and funnily enough... both of those youtube channels have dozens of hours of videos devoted to things like dwarven weaponry and why or how it would work. So... your assertion that "no one cares enough" is dead wrong on its face. The very existence of the video in question proving that some people DO care enough.

 

[Chaosmancer]

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!

You mean if people didn't constantly make assumptions and accusations of me? Yeah, that would have saved quite a bit of time in this thread.

 

[Chaosmancer]

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.

And what makes you think I've not built a world?

However, much like an artist or writer can ALSO critique another artist or writer, I don't exactly feel that as a world-builder I'm forbidden from critique someone else's world-building. Especially when that "someone else" is a multi-million dollar corporation that has multiple worlds under their control

 

[Chaosmancer]

If you still don’t get it, it’s because you’ve decided not to.

I’m done.

Yeah, because all of these people saying "you are just wrong, you refuse to understand" have answered my question sooo thoroughly. Why I could write a book with all their answers...


You are wrong. You just refuse to understand.

Fastest book ever written.

 

[Bardic Dave]

You know, how the dwarves irrigate their mushrooms is of tertiary importance.

Why halflings are overlooked and underestimated, which is their defining characteristic, really falls more into the category of "why do dwarves live in mountains" which is something that we spent at least a sentence or two on.

Or like how we spent a paragraph at least explaining why drow hate surface elves.

You see, there is a scale importance. I'm not talking about irrigating mushroom crops, I'm talking about one of the fundamental building blocks of the race that people keep pointing to and saying "This is why I like this" but which seems to be built upon a foundation of their own preconceived notion and has no support in the game itself.

Important to you. Not important in any objective sense.

“No support in the game itself” that passes muster according to your particular criteria. Not “no support” in any objective sense.