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

[Dannyalcatraz]

Yeah.

The slings would be more the Halfling (Rogue Thief!) shepherds.

The Halflings that are riding dogs as cavalry, might be Fighter Champions using Shortbows.

Properly a "shortbow" is the same as a "composite bow", which really is about as effective as a longbow, but more suitable for horseback.

The D&D 5e shortbow seems to be different from a composite bow, and really just a mini-bow. But it would still be suitable for shooting while riding steeds, including shooting at pursuers while fleeing.

OTOH, one of the most famous sling users in history was a shepherd- a.k.a. King David.*



* who may have actually used a staff sling, based on the texts, not the art.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Hey. Bungo. You need to take the sheep out again today.
But Dad it's so boring all they do is sit around and eat grass.
Well practice your slinging then. It will come in handy if any wolves come stalking, plus if you hit a pheasant we can cook it for dinner.
Ok Dad

“Stupid Dad!”
* plunk *

“Stupid sheep!”
* plunk *

“Stupid wolves!”
* plunk *

”Stupi…”
* plunk *

“WINNER, WINNER, PHEASANT DINNER!”

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'm not sure. Not that I necessarily disagree, of course.

But I could keep the momentum of a sling going while moving but you don't maintain the draw on a bow for long. Well, you can with a modern composite bow, but not a traditional bow with a decent draw weight.

In any case it just goes back to training and practice.

It’s not the keeping of the momentum that’s the trick. It’s keeping the momentum going in the right plane to have a reasonably effective release point.

Without accidentally whacking something in the process.

 

[Faolyn]

Which is why Neon turned around and demanded if I was going to try and force him to use a normal village in an area that didn't get monster attacks which would leave the human village (that we were never talking about) just as undefended instead of a well-protected and prepared one.

<sigh> No, they didn't.

You are using the following scenario: gnoll raiders attacking a halfling village. Fine. Accepted scenario.

We are saying that if halflings had a village in an area where gnoll attacks were a possibility, they would build defenses against the possibility and train themselves to fight. (If it wasn't gnolls but other monsters, halflings would build defenses against the possibility of those monsters attacking instead.)

You are then saying that no, this has to be a halfling village in an area that never gets gnoll attacks, but all of a sudden gets a gnoll attack. Therefore, the halfling village would be destroyed.

OK, whatever. Sure. A completely undefended village will be destroyed by gnoll raiders. It doesn't matter if its a halfling village, a human village, an elf village, a village of humpty-backed camels, whatever. If you have a village with no defenses whatsoever and nobody capable of fighting invaders, then it will be destroyed by invaders.

However, in D&Dland, there aren't many completely undefended villages, or at least their shouldn't be, simply monsters are a threat. In addition, canonically speaking, halfling villages are well-hidden, which means they automatically have at least one layer of defense to them. Therefore, there is no such thing as a completely undefended halfling village.

If that is the case, why did everyone object to me saying they would have a few crossbows, and maybe a few shortbows?

Nobody objected to that.

If that was perfectly fine, why didn't they ever say "yes that is reasonable" and instead just keep doubling down on reinforced doors and slings being deadly?

Because you are failing to realize what defenses a halfling village automatically has. They are hidden, or at least hard to spot. Their underground houses would be reinforced in only to prevent the roof from caving in when cows walk overhead. The reinforced underground houses would be a second layer of defense.

And because no village in D&Dland is going to be completely undefended, they will have additional defenses, such as reinforced doors, walls, and places to hide--in addition to watchtowers or other means to spot invaders early, and training halflings in a militia. The Welsh longbowmen started from the age of 7, according to the internets. I see no reason why people of any race, including halflings, couldn't be similar.

Gnoll Packlord has decent intelligence. Every pack or warband has an alpha that is a Packlord. I never brought them into the discussion because I didn't want to seem like I was changing the scenario. For creatures with "very limited tactics" they certainly seem to understand how to use ranged weapons to soften targets and setting fire to settlements to draw out more people. I also imagine "not running into a death box" is something they can understand, since they set up such situations themselves.

Int 8 is still lower than the halfling's average of 10.

OK, they have bows and understand shooting from a distance. But first they have to find the halflings. Who, as I said previously, are hidden, know the land very well, and who have very likely prepared for possible assault by roving monsters.

Think of it this way: you're a gnoll. All you know is hunger, madness, and the need to DESTROY!!! It's so intense that it completely overwhelms you in all ways: you have no culture, no friendships, no concept of leisure, no personality of your own. You're a demon in all ways but creature type. You effectively have overwhelming, uncontrollable OCD, where your obsessive-compulsion is to murder things.

Do you... spend your time searching for hidden halfling holes which you couldn't enter even if you wanted to because you're too big, or do you go to the much easier human targets down the road, who live in nice, big, obvious houses made of flammable wood?

But again, your objection seems to be completely that "we should just add more things to halfligns until they can't lose" whether or not that was the initial position or not. Yes, obviously halflings are going to win if we can just give them whatever tool they could possibly need to win. But that seems a bit like special pleading.

No. People who are well-prepared are less likely to lose. And there's nothing that says that halflings can't have allies or defenses. Monsters can. There's been many an article and supplement written combining different types of monsters that work effectively together., after all.

You seem to want halflings to have nothing but their shortbows when fighting against gnolls. That is special pleading.

The original premise was that they did have defenses. The slings!

Slings are weapons, not defenses. Walls are defenses. Places to hide are defenses. Living underground is a defense. Allied monsters are defenses. Watchtowers are defenses.

My point was that the slings weren't enough. Then they got more and more things added to them. I wasn't adding to the scenario, so I wasn't rejecting the original premise.

Yeah, I know a lot of non-warlike commoners who live peaceful lives making sure to make death mazes that they hide in the dirt in case they are attacked.

And I bet they live in D&Dland, where even the grass can be deadly.

I'm not saying it isn't reasonable, I'm saying that these beings you seem to now be discussing seem a far cry from the "every one overlooks them because they are just simple common folk with no ambitions" peasants that you guys were holding up before.

That's not a contradiction at all.

Halflings don't have much ambition, at least not in the way humans view it. A halfling's ambition might be to win the ribbon for Best Pie or to be the go-to guy in town for good mead. They generally don't desire to make large-scale changes, such as by becoming a mover and shaker in politics or by achieving major fame in some way. A few do, yes, but for the most part, halflings aren't interested. They like the status quo, and they like peace and quiet.

That doesn't mean that they just roll over whenever an invading force comes in! They do fight to protect themselves and their loved ones, and if they possible, their land and belongings. And because they live in D&Dland, they are aware that there are many dangerous foes out there, so they take proactive measures to protect themselves--remember, one of their canonical gods is Arvoreen, god of defense and watchfulness.

And because they defend themselves in this kind of quiet way, they are less likely to make preemptive attacks. If a human, dwarf, elf, orc, whatever civilization had a major gnoll problem, or suspected they had a gnoll problem, they'd likely try to destroy the gnolls at the source, by sending out the army--or seeking out adventurers for hire. If a halfling civilization had a gnoll problem, they'd far more likely try to deal with the gnolls only if and when the gnolls attacked them. If some adventurers happened to wander through the halfling town, the halflings might ask them for help. But they're unlikely to go find the source of the gnoll or seek out adventurers to do it for them.

Also, if we were talking about a standard halfling village, then you are saying this is reasonable for the standard halfling village to have. Which is much broader than "those being constantly raided"

It should be the standard for D&Dland villages. D&D has a bad habit of not taking their own monster books into consideration. For instance, most D&D castles are still very vulnerable to aerial attack. Not a problem in the real world when castles were built; a major problem in a land where you can ride hippogriffs.

"Wait to shoot til I can see the thing" isn't exactly the work of Sun Tsu. Heck, snakes and spiders can wait to strike until they can see their target and it is in range, and they have an intelligence of 2 or 3.

I wasn't aware that snakes and spiders were insane creatures of demonic evil. I always thought they were just cute li'l animals.

No. That was not the original premise. The fact that you think that shows the problem.

Funny, when I've made reference to "living in DnDland" I'm making a deathworld that no society could ever survive. When you do it, it is to show how utterly reasonable any particular defense is.

Your deathworld is literally that: unprotected, undefended halflings living out in the open on a plain where everyone can see them, while only barely armed, apparently to prove the point that... what, halflings are worthless? That they can't defend themselves when they have nothing to defend themselves with?

That is entirely different from halflings taking reasonable precautions to avoid monster attack.

Seriously. What do you imagine that a halfling village would be like in your world?

 

[lingual]

I don't see what a common halflings village has to do with their viability as a PC race. Elf, human, dwarf commoners living in an undefended commune would also get stomped by gnolls. That's why gnolls are in the monster manual and commonly used as , well, "monsters". Because they are a threat. They supposed to be extremely dangerous to villages and hamlet's and stuff.

 

[pemerton]

I don't see what a common halflings village has to do with their viability as a PC race. Elf, human, dwarf commoners living in an undefended commune would also get stomped by gnolls. That's why gnolls are in the monster manual and commonly used as , well, "monsters". Because they are a threat. They supposed to be extremely dangerous to villages and hamlet's and stuff.

I agree vis-a-vis Halflings. And humans. Less so with respect to Elves and Dwarves.

In AD&D, only Halfling and Humans can be 0-level (and hence Gnoll-fodder). Elves and Dwarves always have at least 1 HD. Now I'm not suggesting that modern editions have necessarily maintained that mechanical distinction, but my sense of the generic D&D world is that even "commoner" Elves and Dwarves have a degree of power and capacity to fight back that typical Halfling and human villagers do not.

 

[Don Durito]

I don't see what a common halflings village has to do with their viability as a PC race. Elf, human, dwarf commoners living in an undefended commune would also get stomped by gnolls. That's why gnolls are in the monster manual and commonly used as , well, "monsters". Because they are a threat. They supposed to be extremely dangerous to villages and hamlet's and stuff.

It has nothing to do with anything. It's throwing things at the wall in the hope that something will stick.

 

[Shadowdweller00]

One item of historical hilarity here - that I would guess someone has probably brought up at some point in these 216 pages - is the case of the Balearic isles. Home to a peaceful, herding culture in Roman and Carthaginian times that essentially never waged war on any other nations (though the isles were of strategic importance in the Mediterranean and thus ended up being invaded a fair bit; and subsequently strongarmed into conflict either in defense or by foreign powers). But were such feared and skillful slingers that they were in great demand as mercenaries.

The name Balearic supposedly means "master of the sling" or some such.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Yes. Gnolls exist. They come from somewhere, they get their equipment from somewhere.

As far as I am aware, they do not spring from the ground fully formed and equipped. They and their stuff have to be somewhere around this "typical halfling village" to be a threat. It seems you propose that this halfling village should be constructed and governed as though it is blithely unaware of such a threat.

You keep objecting to @Neonchameleon s arguments as if they are being unreasonable in suggesting that a village aware of that potential threat might in some way be prepared for it.

Or alternatively, that the village isn't in normal territory for gnoll attacks, and the gnolls by some incredible luck have managed to avoid every other possible target between wherever they came from, and this particular hidden halfling village and the halflings have no inkling of their presence.

You also continue to dismiss the difficulty of even finding the village, which is specifically called out in the lore. I get that you don't like it and you don't think it's realistic, but it's there. You are willfilly ignoring it. That is 100% on you.

But at the end of the day, the point is, at every possible opportunity to interpret the premise, where there has been a choice between favorable and unfavorable assumptions for the halflings, you have chosen the most unfavorable, and where it has been possible to choose between favorable and unfavorable assumptions for the gnolls, you have chosen the favorable ones. It's almost like you had an opinion on the outcome and formed assumptions based on that outcome.

And it's all so pointless. The best possible outcome here is that we come to an agreement on the results of a scenario based on assumptions so specific that the whole thing is worthless beyond the internet points you may win or lose.

Here we can do this...

In your world, halflings have armed militias and use crossbows, or whatever the hell else will allow you to satisfy yourself regarding how they can safely weather a quantum gnoll attack, because your halflings clearly need all that stuff.

Done. Easy peasey.

When two people agree on a premise, then a discussion can go forth from that premise.

There was never any objection to the gnoll raid being considered part of the premise. It was never specified if these gnolls came from upwind or downwind either. If they had rusty equipment, or new equipment. If I wanted every possible advantage then I would have included a pack lord, or a flind. Perfectly reasonable beings to be in a gnoll pack. I would have made it 100 gnolls instead of 10.

However, once the premise is established, then changing the scenario to benefit one side is poor argumentation. When I pointed out the range difference between slings and bows, they suddenly had tons of cover that the halflings could run between. When I pointed out the problems with them running between cover, then they were indoors. When I pointed out gnolls could kick down a door, suddenly they were heavily reinforced doors. And that is when the defense suddenly came that this village was long experienced with Gnoll raids.

So, yes, I objected to the scenario time and time and time again being shifted to make sure the halflings weren't in danger. Such as my objection to the gnoll who finally broke through the reinforced door, and made their way into the dwelling... who was "easy to stab in the back" I suppose by a teleporting halfling who is both out of range of the gnolls outside and caught the gnoll inside so completely off-guard that they were stabbed seven times in the back before the gnoll could respond.

You don't think the gnolls would ever find the village in the first place? Doesn't matter. The scenario we were working from they did. And I'm getting really sick of this constant beratement that I should have just rolled over and allowed whatever possible things people could think to add to the scenario be added just because they didn't like the results that came in initially. It wasn't a lack of imagination, it wasn't some fiendish plot, it was me sticking to the original premise.

 

[Krachek]

I agree vis-a-vis Halflings. And humans. Less so with respect to Elves and Dwarves.

In AD&D, only Halfling and Humans can be 0-level (and hence Gnoll-fodder). Elves and Dwarves always have at least 1 HD. Now I'm not suggesting that modern editions have necessarily maintained that mechanical distinction, but my sense of the generic D&D world is that even "commoner" Elves and Dwarves have a degree of power and capacity to fight back that typical Halfling and human villagers do not.

I think that a DM can handle different type of village.
Typical feudal village can be filled mostly with commoner, but more self sufficient culture can have villages filled mostly with characters much more tough than the actual commoner.
There is old gigaxian rules that still polluted world building assumption.