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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 8819805" data-attributes="member: 6801228">So, if you take a non-human trait, and declare it to be a human trait, then non-humans are just humans? That is your best argument? I guess in my next game I'll play a human who worships the human of humans and humans and appears like a human while fighting with a human and a human. Because if we can just alter the definitions of things to be human than why stop with just giving them all the traits of elves?Except that there is a difference between "anyone can study medicine" and "every single man, woman and child has an in-depth understanding of organ function and can diagnose illnesses with a glance". Innately magical people are different from humans in an important way. I do ignore the Dragonmarks, because 1) They are highly specific to Eberron and their exact context doesn't work outside of Eberron and 2) If trying to translate Dragonmarks from Eberron into something else, the best you would do is essentially an extended sorcererous family. I do want to discuss Ghostwise and Lotusden halflings a bit, because they are a bit fascinating. See, in every single discussion of halflings we have ever had they have only come up about twice. Once when I brought them up, and just now when you brought them up. Over three or four different threads, thousands of posts, only a very small number of times. And actually, many people like Oofta have declared that one of the defining things about halflings is that they are non-magical (which is why they can't be merged with the magical gnomes)So, this becomes a bit of a conundrum, doesn't it? If we accept halflings as being "pretty magical" then what makes them different than Gnomes? In fact, a Lotusden Halfling and a Forest Gnome would seem to be highly similiar, if not identical, would they not? They would both be short humanoids, with human features, that have a deep connection to nature and specifically to forests, which can manifest in magical abilities. Therefore, do you break with the consensus of your peers and declare halflings magical, and therefore must explain how they are different from the Gnomes, or do you declare halflings majority non-magical, and therefore the rarely mentioned and often forgotten Ghostwise and Lotusden end up being exceptions, not the norm?Never said she was a DnD character, and I acknowledged that the aspect was not 100% DnD. But she is a gnome, and therefore her traits fit gnomes. In fact, she is a pretty archetypical gnome in many ways.Could you homebrew "super-mega-awesometastic halflings" while keeping them non-magical, farming people who aren't very important and fade into the background? That has been the point of this discussion many times, and yet many people have declared that doing so would immediately make the race "not halflings" because halflings must fit within the very small sub-set of traits they have. If you have "super-mega-awesometastic halflings" that you have homebrewed, I'd love to hear them. In fact, that would greatly help my cause of rewriting halflings to improve them.Meanwhile, and very interestingly, the "homebrew" you speak of doesn't seem to conflict with the innate orcishness or goblin-ness of those two races. There may be many reasons for that, but I think it is at least in part because those changes still speak to the traits of the races in question.So the lack of war on the part of the Goliath or Firbolg isn't because of their natural, in-born tendencies, but because they lack the type of organizations that go to war? Is it not strange then to say that Halflings don't go to war, considering they are practically symbiotic with humans who go to war constantly? Because halflings do participate in human wars. In fact, halflings have their own wars, such as the Hin ghostwars, and they have had their own homelands. Which they would have to defend in times of war. After all their War Goddess is a goddess of defense and vigilance. What you have actually noticed is that halflings do not go and conquer, which... why would they? Again, they are ALWAYS found in human settlements. So humans do the conquering, and halflings just occupy the lands the humans cleared. They don't have their own governments, they follow human governments, so if the humans go to war, then the halfling government has gone to war. I don't think this really speak a lot about their character as a people (or if it does, everyone will say it doesn't), it seems to speak much more about their relationship with humans. Especially considering the number of halfling criminals that can easily arise in various settings.I'm sorry your life has been such that you think "is nice" is a non-human trait on par with reincarnation. It isn't a matter of how "cool" it is that they are good chefs and nice. It is a matter that those are not traits that can be expanded into a non-human race. Now, being good cooks can be the result of some non-human traits, but it cannot be the non-human trait itself. It is a skill set, you need to have the initial traits that improves that skill set, and frankly, halflings lack those.It is almost funny to me that you want to insist I limit discussing a fantasy race to ONLY being DnD's take on that fantasy race. Meanwhile, halflings get constantly related back to Tolkien and the works based on Middle Earth, which isn't DnD. It almost feels like a double standard to say that we can't discuss the ease at which we can improve orcs and goblins to make them more fantastical and interesting, without changing their essential natures, while then declaring that since traditional DnD orcs and goblins are poorly done it is fine that halflings are poorly done.I don't think an entire race's identity needs to rest on what they can do for you as an outsider. The fact that halflings can provide you with useful services shouldn't define their existence, while looking at the elvish relationship to concepts like sex and gender which are completely outside of the human expierence is met with a "meh, it doesn't help ME in anyway" Seems like a bizarrely selfish viewSomething fantastical. You seem to have missed that I'm not talking about learning magic, I know halflings can learn magic just like everyone else. That doesn't address what I am speaking about. You need something that is fantastic, something that can define them, not as "useful skills humans can benefit from" but as having an existence outside of the normal human experience.</blockquote>

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