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

[pemerton]

I ran about an hour of Moldvay Basic for my daughter the other day. She rolled up two PCs and then I GMed her through a few rooms of the Haunted Keep (the example dungeon in chapter 8). I made some suggestions, given her stat rolls, as to useful/appropriate class choices. One of those was Halfling (because the character had reasonable STR, DEX and CON).

She's also playing in a 5e game with some schoolfriends. One of them had a Halfling Rogue for a few sessions, but then that PC died and the player brought in a Genasai Paladin instead.

 

[pemerton]

Would you be equally comfortable with the DM telling you that the orc threatening your character fills your heart with primal fear? Note, being afraid is one thing. The Frightened condition, with it's game effects, is not simply being afraid. It is a mind controlling effect that forces the player to perform (or prevents him from taking) certain actions. This goes beyond simply, "You're really scared", which, again, is something a lot of players would have a serious issue with, and enters into the realm of the DM taking over player characters.

Magical effects are accepted as a means of doing this since it is literally mind control. Fair enough. No one bitches when their character does something because of a magical effect. But, an orc threatens your character and you are forced to move away at top speed and can take no other actions simply because the DM rolled a good Intimidate check (with a DC that was also set by the DM, since Intimidate is not an opposed check). Or, your character must be friendly to that same orc simply because I "succeeded" on a persuasion check?

Yeah, I'm thinking a lot of players are not going to pat the DM on the back for that ruling.

The issue here seems to me like bad mechanics - eg action denial - rather than the fiction of the PC being perturbed. Few people enjoy widespread action-denial in an action-economy-driven combat-oriented game.

But suppose, for instance, that you had an effect like a penalty to attack the scary NPC until something happens that overcomes the fear (this could be spelled out in various ways), so that (in effect) Intimidation becomes a type of conditional non-universal AC buff. I don't think that would have to be broken, and I don't think it would have to be that controversial either.

AD&D OA had rules for Psychic Duel which work a little bit like I've just described, and I never heard of anyone having any issues with them.

Classic Traveller (1977) has moral rules that are neutral as between PCs and NPCs and that do result in action denial. And again I've never heard of anyone having any issues with them. But at least in my experience combat is not such a big part of play in Classic Traveller as in D&D.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I thought halflings were pastoral farmers.

This is your problem. The iconic halfling is from a peaceful farm town. That isn’t the same thing as “all Halflings are pastoral farmers.”

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Would you be equally comfortable with the DM telling you that the orc threatening your character fills your heart with primal fear?

If they use mechanics to determine that outcome, of course.

But, an orc threatens your character and you are forced to move away at top speed and can take no other actions simply because the DM rolled a good Intimidate check (with a DC that was also set by the DM, since Intimidate is not an opposed check).

Of course it’s an opposed check. Searching DDB, the PHB writeup doesn’t specify, and the first mention of actual mechanics I could find was from the Infernal Calling spell, where you must intimidate, deceive, or persuade, the fiend who uses their insight to oppose it.

I can’t find anything that contradicts that method of running Intimidation checks, nor would just picking a DC even make sense.

 

[Minigiant]

Is the Dex race thing going to be a non-issue in this post Tasha world? I wonder what that will do to the popularity of some of the races (are some getting a lot of love in big part due to the ASI?).

People well still play races like show they look or with their synergistic racial features.

I'm using Tasha rules and the elves are all Dex based. Just +1 dex over +2.

 

[Chaosmancer]

So in the time between the Shire and Mordor, would you say they gained..."experience"? That term seems familiar. I wonder if there might be something in D&D like that.

And that expeirence didn't lead to them learning new magic, or new abilities. It led to them being more mentally toughened.

Which is done for a DnD character by level 1.

Honestly, serious question, when your level 1 players sit down at the tavern, and a mysterious stranger walks up to them and offers them 100 gold to explore the haunted ruins outside of town where they suspect orcs are setting up camp, do they say "Oh no, that sounds dangerous. And scary. We just came for a drink and to have our dinner and go home. I mean, if we found orcs they might kill us. We'd be better off just avoiding that tower and telling someone else about it."

Iirc, they all got something from Bombadil. They got the vial of light (which Sam used on Shelob) and a Mallorn tree seed (later planted in the Shire) in Lothlorien. The point is though they did "accumulate artifacts" and did so in a way remarkably similar to how you would in D&D. (edit: and Sting and the mithril armor weren't just chilling in the Shire the whole time. Bilbo, another halfling protagonist, acquired those artifacts along with the ring on his adventures.)

So... the light which was only useful because the creature in question couldn't stand any bright lights. A tree seed that never mattered until it was brought up again in the epilogue. And that's it.

Sure, Frodo was given Sting and the armor, which Bilbo found. But, I'm curious, did Bilbo end up in a good way by the start of the Fellowship? I remember him being quite distraught and "spread thin" by that point. Almost like the things he gathered on that adventure were bad for his health. Frodo ended up the same way. And we know it was the ring, but notably... Frodo was the one given the armor and sting as well. The other hobbits had basic swords.

Counterpoint, We just had to list out all the magical gear for one the games I'm playing in, because we've been doing Play-by-Post and we realized we'd been forgetting to update. I don't feel like we are getting too much, only a few for each character, but here is the combined list.

Handy Spice Pouch
Alchemical Jug
Bag of Holding
Belt of Transistance
Staff of the Star Field
Cloak of Displacement
Rod of the Pactkeeper +1
Slippers of Spiderclimbing
Magic Maul
Ring of Animal Influence
Pendant of Sophistication
Book of Quests (Plot item)
Escape Crystals (x4)(plot item)
Bag of Beans
Short Sword of Wounding
Chilled Rapier of the White Dragon
Cape of the Montebank
Slippers of Spiderclimb
Magic Cloak
+1 Rapier
Horn of Vallahalla
+2 Magic Great Flail

And at least two more items, people are still checking their lists. And, this isn't unusualy for DnD. Every party member ends up with around 5 or so items at least.

Again, Tolkien's world was very much different from how DnD is played.

Do I think Merry an Pippin serve as the main heroes in LoTR? No. But they are heroic, they are protagonists. Annnnddd..they are just as representative of Hobbit characteristics as Sam and Frodo (and Gollum). (They also noticeably "leveled up" over the course of the books in a way that would parallel D&D leveling up.)

And so you have been talking about halflings' "thematic fit" as a race based on probably the largest individual outliers for that race.

It's silly.

But here is the final bit. Merry, Pippin, Sam, Frodo and Bilbo? They are NOT representative of Hobbits. They are heroes. They are the wierdo's who left the shire. The farmer, the miller, Bilbo's neighbors, the baker. They are representative of Hobbits.

So again, halfling Characters can work fine. Having outliers for the PCs is the point. However, when you zoom out, and you look at the race of people... they are bizarrely out of place. They seemed to have sprung up fully formed into Shires out of the ground and completely seperate from anything else in the world. And for Hobbits, that worked. The idea of these people just minding their business in some quiet corner of the world made sense in LoTR, because the world wasn't that dangerous. There was one source of Evil, it was over there in the East, and it had never really reached the Shire until just now.

But in DnD... that doesn't work. There are too many sources of evil, too many places that evil comes from, and too many forces that have a history of taking and corrupting other races to just ignore halflings.

 

[Vaalingrade]

(regarding choosing a race based on abilities)
That's really another plus for halflings to me.

The ability to mitigate the tyranny of the dice and stop the DM from forcing me to pretend to be afraid of some chump who looks real ugly or got Daddy to name the game after them? Yes please.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I have to admit, someone upthread talked about folding gnomes and halflings into a single race. I thought that was a fairly decent solution. Gnomes and halflings share enough points that you could just have a few subraces and call it a day.

That would annoy the bejesus out of me. Sorry.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Is the Dex race thing going to be a non-issue in this post Tasha world? I wonder what that will do to the popularity of some of the races (are some getting a lot of love in big part due to the ASI?).

I sometimes wonder if we aren’t reading too much into Tasha’s. I believe that Tasha’s show the direction that WotC intends to take the franchise, but in doing so, it is constrained by the 5e ruleset. 6e will likely have a different ruleset, therefore different constraints.

For instance, 5e was designed around races getting a +2/+1 ability score bump. Imagine that 6e is instead designed around a +2/+2 ability score bump. Suddenly, every race can have 1 “fixed” bump and 1 free bump. So you could have orcs with a fixed +2 Str (to differentiate them from other races) while still being able to benefit from a +2 to Int, making orc wizards viable.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I might do either (charmed or frightened) for a brief moment, for the sake of storytelling and humor. But not for anything that would effect the storyline significantly, and only if the players involved are in on the joke.

For example: Maybe during a fact-finding trip to a farm in the area, a bull breaks through the fence and charges at the farmer's child. The half-orc fighter wants to help, but their instinct for self preservation kicks in instead and they dive out of the way... into a pile of manure. (or they pass the DC against being frightened and... I don't know... take a swing at it or whatever) The halfling, though, isn't phased. (or they are and they end up in the manure pile, too.) They leap at just the right moment, grab the bull by the horns, land squarely on it's neck and steer it away in the nick of time. (Or they fail their dex check and get head-butted into next week and take d10 damage)

Or maybe the party is in an inn and a particularly attractive dancer is on stage. The gruff and grumpy dwarf fails their roll against being charmed and instead of overhearing an interesting tidbit of gossip from an adjacent table, they are distracted, blush, feel kind of warm and tingly inside, and giggle a little bit.

But I wouldn't do anything like that to be overbearing or a jerk. I wouldn't single out one player repeatedly and it would only be with agreement from the table that light hearted play is all in good fun.

Right now I'm DM'ing a game for a couple ten-year-olds. They love the slapstick, but I acknowledge it's not what everyone wants.

See, here is where what you are saying is breaking from what I am saying.

"If the players are involved in the joke" then it doesn't matter. If the half-orc fighter is completely fine jumping into the manure and having that moment, then they are likely to do it themselves. But, what if they don't want to jump aside? I mean, a bull is really scary IRL, but that half-orc fighter stood tall and faced down a Wyvern (which to compare to the real world is the equivalent of a flying, venomous Tiger) without flinching. Now a Bull is scaring them to jump in manure?

And this is the problem. If the players are fine with it, then they are basically just rolling to determine what their character does. But if they AREN'T fine with it, then rules like this force you to create dissonance in your character. As I'm diving into a literal pile of naughty word, I'm wondering "where is that bravery I had when facing down literal death just an hour ago? My character would never act like this."

Also, same thing with the charm. While I'd be perfectly fine with rolling to see if I'm distracted by the performance, telling me that my character is attracted to the performer is not your call to make. And if I was fine with being attracted to them... I'd be willing to RP that a little bit. But, if I'm not, it isn't your place to make that call. Maybe my dwarf isn't attracted to men, and your performer isn't that appealing to him.

This is a player decision. And if you are using the rules to enforce things that goes against what the player wants, then you are overstepping in this instance.