[RANT] Small creatures, phatoooey

[mmu1]

Well, I think they would have a substantial negative level adjustment
compared to medium sized characters (-1 or -2 level adjustment), but it
would make it much better in my mind. I realize for character balance they
had to do it that way, so people who like to play halflings and gnomes would
be happy. However, if there were no small size standard PC's, wouldn't we
all think the game was more logical if we got AoO's on those 3' goblins as
they charged in on us?

A negative level adjustment would make them a powergamer's wet dream for playing casters - in particular, wizards and sorcerers. It's not a viable solution.

As for what's logical... The whole idea of a creature that weighs 1/8 - 1/6 as much as a human, is only around 20% weaker and just as tough, but runs a lot more slowly and is worse at climbing and jumping is completely idiotic if you want to go by what's "realistic". The smaller you get, the stronger you are in proportion to your body weight, so halflings should be capable of acrobatics, speed and jumps that'd make a monkey green with envy. In other words, if you want to complain about Small creatures, there's a lot more wrong with them than reach...

 

[Evilhalfling]

As for what's logical... The whole idea of a creature that weighs 1/8 - 1/6 as much as a human, is only around 20% weaker and just as tough, but runs a lot more slowly and is worse at climbing and jumping is completely idiotic if you want to go by what's "realistic". The smaller you get, the stronger you are in proportion to your body weight, so halflings should be capable of acrobatics, speed and jumps that'd make a monkey green with envy

Well halflings at least have +2 to climb and jump, so are actually +1 to a human with the same unmodified stats. My poor little blue goblin gets no such benifit - of course im playing him as a LA +0, so im not complaining too loud. As a child (small) I was much better at climbing than I am now, but a climber with a bunch of skillpoints is better yet.

 

[Old Gumphrey]

Actually halflings have a net -5 to Jump because of their 20' base speed in 3.5. Given their height they can jump about as well as a human, maybe slightly better, which would just not be the case. Small character logistics will give you a headache for sure.

 

[mmu1]

Well halflings at least have +2 to climb and jump, so are actually +1 to a human with the same unmodified stats. My poor little blue goblin gets no such benifit - of course im playing him as a LA +0, so im not complaining too loud. As a child (small) I was much better at climbing than I am now, but a climber with a bunch of skillpoints is better yet.

Like Gumphrey said, they have a -5 compared to a human because of their 20ft speed.

Anyway, the point you're missing is that a D&D halfling is, pound for pound, 4 or 5 times stronger than a human. That means they (in "reality") could climb and jump (and probably run, as well) much better than a human - they'd in fact be capable of acrobatics and gymnastics we couldn't even dream of because of this amazing strength / body weight ratio.

 

[Old Gumphrey]

And we're looking at a halfling, who is smaller than a gnome and has +2 Jump; but let's look at that gnome. If he takes 10 with a 20' running jump and he has the average (8 str) strength, he scores a three and jumps a whopping three feet in a long jump, less than his own height. To pull off the same feat and be a human you'd need a strength score of 3 or less, and that's only if you're WELL OVER six feet tall. Most humans would need str scores of 1 to jump so awfully.

 

[Old Gumphrey]

Anyway, the point you're missing is that a D&D halfling is, pound for pound, 4 or 5 times stronger than a human. That means they (in "reality") could climb and jump (and probably run, as well) much better than a human - they'd in fact be capable of acrobatics and gymnastics we couldn't even dream of because of this amazing strength / body weight ratio.

I sort of fixed this a while back in 3e, but I can't find the table I made. I redid the height/weight of gnomes and halflings, so that they actually made sense within the rules a bit better. Gnomes have a height variance of 7 inches, but have a weight variance of 7 lbs! That's roughly equivalent to humans having 14 inches of height variance (which is farily accurate) and only 28 lbs of weight variance (and that's being generous). They really did not do their math with the small characters and concentrated solely on game balance; but for the height/weight tables there is no excuse. I believe I changed the gnome table (for males) to 3'0" + 2d6 inches, and the weight to 60 + (x1d4) lbs. That means a very tall, very burly gnome (equivalent to a 6'6" 250 lb. man) is about 4' and weighs about 108 lbs, whereas the 5' 124 lb. man is about equivalent to a 3'2" 62 lb. gnome. Halflings just about doubled in weight and their size stayed the same.

 

[Darklone]

Like Gumphrey said, they have a -5 compared to a human because of their 20ft speed.

Anyway, the point you're missing is that a D&D halfling is, pound for pound, 4 or 5 times stronger than a human. That means they (in "reality") could climb and jump (and probably run, as well) much better than a human - they'd in fact be capable of acrobatics and gymnastics we couldn't even dream of because of this amazing strength / body weight ratio.

I like to think about monkey... chimpanzees anyone? Wanna know about their strength/body weight ratio?

I like the NWN gnomes with their elongated arms.

 

[Shin Okada]

Small is not the smallest size category in this game.

Medium sized creature has 5 ft. reach. If you really want to give shorter reach for smaller creatures determined by their hight, now we have to make the rules for,

2.5 ft. reach for Small (5 ft. with reach weapon)
1.25 ft. reach for Tiny (2.5 ft. with reach weapon)
0.625 ft. reach for Diminutive (1.25 ft. with reach weapon)
0.3125 ft. reach for Fine (0.625 ft. with reach weapon))

Now, we need to make the width of each square into 0.3125 ft. to simulate this. That is 1/16 inch on the battle grid. Do you really want to play that game?

 

[Plane Sailing]

[RANT]In 3.5 they even make the ridicluous rule that a small creatures reach weapon is just as effective as a medium creatures. So, a human wielding a 6ft long greatsword cannot fight an ogre without going through reach (he has to use a big old 12ft long spear to avoid reach), but a 3ft halfling with a small longspear (6ft long?) can - strange but the human with the halfling longspear can also do the same trick (still looks to be 6ft weapon) but will have a -2 to hit.[/RANT]

To my mind this is just an artefact of the hokey new rules for weapon sizing they introduced in 3.5.

IMC I basically use (my understanding of) the 3.0 rules. In other words a halfling 2H spear is basically the same as a human 1H spear (shortspear) for all mechanics. I'd allow small spears which would be 1 die size lower and 1H for small creatures.

In a system which uses the humungous abstraction of hit points, why they bother straining our gnats about weapon sizes is beyond me.