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

[Faolyn]

They do? Didn't someone say earlier that pretty much all official adventures (except Curse of Strahd) are set in FR? And how would we even tell these apart? Aren't they both the same sort of generic bland fantasy settings like FR?

Even CoS assumes you start in the Realms before getting whisked away.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I personally disagree with the claim that they're rarely used in adventures, since they do show up as NPCs a great deal. Unless @Neonchameleon means that they're rarely used as antagonists or as the main victims of the antagonists.

No idea. The claim originally came from @Hussar - and he seemingly doesn't like it being used against him in discussion with him. @Hussar have you retracted the claim?

 

[Faolyn]

Seriously, who is on the other side of this issue? You keep on bringing up the “anyone who axes halflings should axe gnomes first” as if it is a cudgel despite no one really arguing against this.

Hussar thinks that because halflings aren't popular enough (by whatever criteria they're using), they should get tossed out of the PH. However, several other races, including gnomes, are less popular--but Hussar isn't, to the best of my knowledge, advocating for throwing gnomes out.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The point is new players and DMs will design based on what is pushed in the main books by WOTC.

And WOTC is pushing weak settings for halflings.

How would this new DM be aware of that if they decided to make their own setting instead of buying one of these WotC settings with weak lore?

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Deekin is STILL a popular kobold decades after he was introduced in a game.

My wife, who has never once played DnD nor a videogame for more than 5 minutes will still, to this day, occasionally bust out with her misheard "You want Chicken!?!" in Deekins voice. She heard it more than a coue times when I was playing and it stuck.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Heh. You are finally understanding elven military units!

They arent humans.

I understood what you were saying from the beginning.

I was saying that the level of imbalance that creates in warfare is too extreme. It leads to the elves just taking over the world, because if it comes to war, they just win.

 

[Chaosmancer]

There are some odd assumptions that NPCs carry the traits that the PHB races do. This isn't backed up by the lore, the writers, nor the books as written.

Not all elves can cast magic.
Not all halflings are more dexterous.

These and similar claims show a fundamental misunderstanding of 5e that I'm starting to understand why these same people are claiming that halflings have no lore.

Not all halfings are more Dexterous?

Huh @Faolyn I guess this fundamental musunderstanding is why you are claiming halflings have no lore. The exact opposite of your position.

 

[Chaosmancer]

At this point you just seem like you're being willfully obtuse, but I'll try one more time. Second paragraph first. I was describing the personal qualities best exemplified by most halflings and that the halfling culture values most highly. It describes what you would expect to see or how you would expect to be treated in a typical halfling village. And I don't think my description strayed too far from what's in the PHB.

The PHB also describes (and it seems weird to have to explain this) the personal qualities that the dragonborn culture values most, and their values as a culture are much different than those of the halfling culture, and as such, a typical dragonborn village would have a much different character than a typical halfling village. Do you agree?

You can call me fantasy racist if you want, but yes, I think that any character that had any knowledge of dragonborn culture, that met a hippy dippy dragonborn character would think it was strange and might wonder why this guy is so easy going when most of the other dragonborn they have met are very stern and serious and very into swords and familial honor.

BUT, apart from reactions from NPCs, I would expect a player to role play an easygoing dragonborn differently than one would play an easy going halfling. BECAUSE a hippy dragonborn commune is subversive. A laid back halfling shire is typical.

I'm going to have to use an analogy here to explain why I'm getting confused.

Singing Amazing Grace in a Devasthana is a bit subversive and odd. Singing Amazing Grace in a Church isn't. In both cases, you are singing the same Song in the same way.

What I am confused about is that if you play the dragonborn and their village the exact same way as you would play a halfling and their village, you are saying I'm doing something different. Or that somehow I should roleplay them differently, because a Dragonborn Commune must be different than a halfling Commune. But you won't say why other than the fact that Dragonborn aren't supposed to be roleplayed this way.

Now, NPCs might see them differently, I could grant that, but that falls into the hands of the DM. From the player side I can do the exact same story, the exact same way, and you keep saying there is a difference, but I don't know what that difference would be. It isn't like the Dragonborn would be raised being told that their people are more warlike and violent than this village, they would be raised in the exact same manner as the halfling is, really only told about and caring about their village.

I'm not being obtuse, I'm legitimately stumped here. I take a halfling village and a halfling PC, keep all of the personality traits, stories, ect, and just replace the bodies with dragonborn (and obviously make the houses a bit bigger) then... why aren't they going to be RP'd the same way?

 

[Chaosmancer]

And my point is that when there are no players around, it's all just story telling. Or if you need me to put it in game mechanics terms so you can wrap your head around it, "No one knows just how well Aunt Hattie rolled on the day that big bugbear tried to steal one of her pies, but his backside tells him it must have been a crit."

I get what you are saying.

However, I have noticed a trend in this sort of situation. The more the players understand the world of DnD, the harder it is for them to accept things like this. Bugbears are violent creatures who enjoy murdering and breaking things smaller than themselves. A halfling commoner dies to a single attack. Driving a Bugbear off with a rolling pin is something that doesn't make sense.

If it happens in a "family legend" then it works. Because the slightly unreal element of it adds to that sort of story. If it happened off-screen the day before an attack, and the Bugbears come rolling in to attack the village, them needing to be hit repeatedly with axes and swords before they break makes it bizzare and strange that one of them was driven off by a rolling pin.

The players realize that... I just told them a story that realistically wouldn't happen. And knowing it was a story for effect, lessens the effect.

 

[Faolyn]

Heh, other than, y'know, near immortality, never needing to sleep, and, note, drow cast from charisma.

Did you not see where I specified high elves?

Also, there are several real-world living creatures that are nearly immortal and/or don't need to sleep, need almost no sleep, or that "trance" instead of sleep. So those traits are not inherently magical. They probably are, in the case of elves, but they don't have to be.