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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Faolyn" data-source="post: 8819917" data-attributes="member: 6915329">And again, you are strawmanning here.I didn't say "take a non-human trait and declare it to be a human trait." Real humans in the real world claim to be reincarnations. It's a central tenet in some religions. It can be very true in a fantasy world....Unless you are claiming that D&D humans have to follow a particular religious model based on an Abrahamic-style reskinning of the Greco-Roman pantheon? Or that any D&D human religion that involves reincarnation is automatically false?"Divinity of Mankind" was a perfectly acceptable choice for a religion, as per the 2e Complete Priests Handbook. It even spawned a racist and sexist men's club in Lamordia. A party consisting only of humans is perfectly fine, and was considered the ideal in 1e. So I don't know what you're complaining about here.The ability of a high elf to cast a cantrip is the same as a studied wizard. Gotcha. 1. I don't care that Oofta said halflings are non-magical.2. Probably ghostwise and lotusden halflings don't come more for the same reason pallid elves and shadar-kai don't come up more often: they're not in the PHB, and weren't historically common types of elves. Maybe they should be, but that's a discussion for another edition.3. The difference between halflings and gnomes is both cultural and mechanical. If you care to get into fantastic DNA, there's probably a load of differences between them--probably more than the difference between humans and elves, since half-elves both exist and are fertile and "gnomelings" aren't really a thing. And sure, maybe an individual, home-brew setting doesn't need both races, but the game is not an individual, home-brew setting. The game is a toolset to allow people to take their own settings, or to use an official setting.But she is not a D&D gnome.The original mythical gnome was an earth elemental. That is not a D&D gnome. Neither are garden gnomes, Warhammer gnomes, Discworld gnomes, Oz nomes, or the gnome in the 2015 slasher movie "Gnome Alone." D&D gnomes are one type of gnome. Therefore, claiming that a character from a non-D&D source is some sort of exemplar of D&D-gnomeness is utterly ridiculous and completely pointless.Why do they need to be non-magical farming people who aren't very important and fade into the background in order to be halflings? The halflings of Eberron are magical, don't farm that much, are politically important, and don't fade into the background. Are they not halflings?Stop using the One True Halfling fallacy. Especially since you, in the past, have said that halflings that are too different from the norm don't count.To go to war, you need armies. Neither goliaths nor firbolgs have the types of communities that can fund armies (unless in your particular setting they do), so at most they can do skirmishes and raids.Halflings have the types of communities that can fund (small) armies, but they are peaceful enough that, as a race, they choose not to. At most, they have militias to protect themselves from invaders.Some individual halflings, and some individual halfling communities choose to aid other people (humans) in wartime. Always? Every single human settlement must feature halflings in it? No halfling village or town ever has a mayor or governor or council of elders?And there's no possibility that the halflings were there first and the humans just took the land the halflings didn't need?Uh-huh.(Also, Avoreen is a male god.)That's on you, then, if you don't think it speaks about their character.Hmm, if halflings criminals "easily arise" in human societies, then what's going on in those societies that force halflings into the role of criminal? And do those halflings who live in human societies have a choice about whether or not they go to war or not?So? It's cultural, not mechanical. If your halflings lack those cultural traits, that's on you.Why is that funny? We're talking about D&D, not other settings or systems. You can't say "This non-D&D take on a non-halfling is cool, therefore halflings aren't cool." That makes no sense.And yes, we do need to change the essential natures of goblins and orcs, because up until recently, their essential nature was "Always Evil, Kill On Sight." And there are players who want that to remain their essential nature, because they make for easy bad guys that way. When you take away the AEKoS nature of orcs and goblins, you basically have nothing left, culturally. Which means that in order to use them as people, they need to be changed a lot. And then a lot of people want to get rid of them as a PC race, accusing them as just being humans in rubber masks. Halflings, however, have never been AEKoS monsters--not even in Dark Sun, where they were perfectly playable and listed as Lawful Neutral in the Dark Sun MCAII, with the cannibals being listed as chaotic renagades. Which means that they (halflings in general) don't need to be revamped in order to be a playable people.So your paragraph here is, in fact, entirely wrong.First, it's bizarre that you would assume that halflings can only provide these useful services for humans. Why wouldn't you assume they provide these useful services for each other?But anyway, D&D is a humano-centric game. LIterally every single creature and object in the game is built to interact with humans in some way. Dragons hoard treasure just so humans can kill them and claim the treasure--they certainly don't use it for any other purpose. Mind flayers eat human brains. Mimics look like chests so that human adventurers will get lured in. Nearly every nonhuman race and monster speaks Common--the human language. Despite all logic to the contrary, nearly every setting as humans as the dominant species. For that matter, why are nearly all the PC races humanoid? If elves predate humanity, humans should be elfoid. Why all this? Because D&D is a game that is played by humans. Why do you need something fantastic to define them? I sure don't. This is use, using the No True Scotsman fallacy, because I've done this before with you. Halflings aren't fantastical enough, they're not good. Halflings are fantastical? They're not proper halflings. You have said this.</blockquote>

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