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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 8825564" data-attributes="member: 6801228">I think this is a big point for me. Tolkien's Hobbits are very specific to Middle Earth, and he wrote them consistently to be the stand-ins for pastoral englishmen. If you aren't running a campaign in Middle Earth, they just don't fit well. Like, [USER=6807152]@Scribe[/USER] just points out that part of the thing Tolkien wanted was that Bilbo and Frodo were scarred by their experiences and had a hard time integrating back into society. Which fits when you are alluding to the horrors of the World Wars, but it actually is rather awkward to try to do for DnD. Firstly, because DnD is a much more violent "setting". You can actually count very very few times that Bilbo or Frodo drew their weapons and fought. Most of the time they were in a dangerous situation they didn't fight, and they rarely killed. You might be able to find something like six times per each of them that they actually engaged in combat. For a DnD character that is a single day's worth of conflict. Secondly, most players don't want to engage with the idea of their characters having or developing PTSD or even dealing with their character's retirement very much. Which goes into the Third Point, which is if the player's DO want that sort of stuff... they probably don't want it to be only the Hobbits that deal with it, but everyone. And an addendum that waiting until the end of the campaign for something that defines your character isn't great. I'm not sure I agree with racial abilities being minimal though. I think they should have a significant impact. You should KNOW that you are dealing with someone with unique capabilities when you are dealing with a specific race.  I actually was just running a group of bandits who I made mixed races (all short) and just their racial abilities alone suddenly changed a lot about how I thought of them and how they were going to act. The Harengon was able to reposition quickly, the dwarves were super tough, the tiefling used magic instead of a ranged weapon, the Earth Genasi was able to deflect blows from the weapons of the players, the leader was a Deep Gnome and was able to stealth and retreat because of the gnome traits. It took a group of generic bandits and added an entire level of complexity to them that altered how they approached the fight.</blockquote>

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