R&C: Halflings...

[breschau]

Wow. This is a great book, but one of the many things that jumped out at me was this bit explaining why halflings got taller...

I pointed out to my teammates on several occasions that I could not imagine how many preschoolers it would take to beat me (or any good-sized adult) in a tug-of-war. You can assume that adult halflings are two or three times stronger than human children of the same size, and it's still hard to believe that a halfling warrior would really stand a chance against a monstrous savage marauder like a gnoll or orc.

That's all kinds of awesome. The guys that can create or sustain the other fantasy tropes of real gods granting spells to clerics, fully fledged colleges of magic, dragons, death knights, vast empires, grand wars, and entire new worlds filled with magical creatures of all types and kinds... and these guys can't wrap their head around a halfling that's 3' and 35lbs.

I just find it funny that it's not an issue of racial overlap, competing mechanical niche, or anything related to the game itself or the fantasy genre as a whole, but these guys can't imagine or believe a halfling of that stature.

How ridiculous.

 

[The Ubbergeek]

Even fantasy must obey logic and versimilitude.

 

[Thaniel]

Even fantasy must obey logic and versimilitude.

qft

 

[Irda Ranger]

these guys can't wrap their head around a halfling that's 3' and 35lbs.

I just find it funny that it's not an issue of racial overlap, competing mechanical niche, or anything related to the game itself or the fantasy genre as a whole, but these guys can't imagine or believe a halfling of that stature.

How ridiculous.

FWIW (probably not much), I think your position is ridiculous, not the designer's. It's never been inferred that halflings are anything other than normal flesh and blood, which implies certain mass/power restrictions. It breaks the suspension of disbelief when those numbers are "just off" by a factor of 10+.

 

[Reaper Steve]

, but these guys can't imagine or believe a halfling of that stature.

How ridiculous.

Suspension of disbelief.
For fantasy to work, it has to be believable, or at least something that one would wish could be true.
IMO, 3', 35lb halflings were ridiculous.

4', 65lbs is better, but I would like to see them even bigger, like 4'6" and around 100lbs. Dwarves could be 5'-ish. To me it's the build, not the height. Halflings would have VERY slender frames and dwarves would have VERY broad frames.

 

[ferratus]

I wonder if that means that the mechanics for giants are going to be redone as well.

 

[Lackhand]

Well, it may be ridiculous, but suspension of disbelief is a tetchy thing.

It's what keeps some DMs from allowing guns in their game -- yes, even with a wizard of 26 Intelligence and full ranks in Alchemy and Knowledge:Engineering.

Nerds have very strange suspension of disbelief limits. I don't recall where I read this, but someone was explaining that they had a flotilla of sharks -- which could, for purposes of their adventure fly -- come at the party out of the sun, to gain surprise.
The habitual rules-lawyer piped up, explaining that that was impossible.
Why, you ask? Because the sharks which these flying killers were modeled after were solitary.

The point is that we can imagine (after all, I agree with a bit of a boost here, or I wouldn't be arguing it!) a 3 foot tall, 35 pound adventurer. I can imagine this little guy kicking ass and collecting names.
But unless he's described as incredibly burly, or consistently noted for being superhumanly strong, my interactions with the little guy are going to strain that disbelief.

We have no experience with dragons, or magic, or (often) working macro-scale economic theories, and so we're more forgiving of those. Given an initial assumption, we don't push it too hard.

But 3' children? Man, I beat them up every day. Easy peasy!

 

[Szatany]

so giants are now unbeatable to humans?

 

[Lurks-no-More]

so giants are now unbeatable to humans?

If you go wrestle with one, you deserve to be mashed.

 

[Szatany]

If you go wrestle with one, you deserve to be mashed.

did halflings wrestle gnolls?