NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 8695231" data-attributes="member: 6801228">Right, but here's the thing. Those outside media help inform the narrative people want at the table. The stories of rogues and thieves in comics and books and such have helped us when we decide that the narrative at our table involves a rogue with a heart of gold. If I was playing Shadow Run, the official Shadowrun lore about how the world changed and what it meant for society would affect how I integrate a character into that society. Sure, you can always ignore it and just do what you want at your table, but there is a reason lore matters. And the lore for the halflings gives them supernatural luck. It is the reason when why asked "what makes a halfling unique" the answer was "they are lucky" not "They re-roll 1's when they roll a d20". Because it is the narrative, not the mechanics, that people tend to attach to. Sure, we all love mechanics, and the mechanics for halflings are solid enough to be fine. But when we translate what we are told the story is, what the story we want to see is, to the game table to have the narrative at our table... they don't mesh naturally. I could play a stalwart human knight, scion of his noble family, off on a quest to earn the favor of his Lady with no problem. There are few mechanics even involved in that, and all of those are options I can either grab, or work naturally into the story. But if you want to play a halfling warlock who constantly escapes unscathed due to his tremendous luck... you can't. The game can't support it. And the game shouldn't support it. That's why we have to keep having this caveat that halfling luck "isn't perfect" because the game cannot allow that narrative to actually happen... but that is the narrative that seems to happen in the stories, it is the narrative that we are told should work for a halfling. And frankly... it is a narrative I think would be better served by making it not a mechanic. Because 97% of the halfling's actual luck in the game isn't mechanical and must be narrated in, and if we remove that mechanical pressure to make them lucky, then the stories can be a choice, without feeling like you are cheating the player out of the story they want.</blockquote>

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