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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hexmage-EN" data-source="post: 8152135" data-attributes="member: 79428">I personally feel like gnomes are conceptually very different from halflings. Gnomes are curious, passionate creatures with a knack for magic: rock gnomes are tinkerers and artificers, forest gnomes are effectively woodland fey, and deep gnomes are dour survivalists who find joy in gems (which, in Out of the Abyss, at least, they can turn into what are effectively reusable spell scrolls). The Fade Away feat reinforces the magical feel, as does the Svirfneblin Magic feat.Halflings don't have as much of a clear gimmick. Back in 4E the designers realized this and tried to give halflings a role as the primary traders, the people who feel most at home on the move, the ones who travel the road and ply the river waters. The default Points of Light setting had the goddess of luck, trade and travel as their patron. There was also a brief nod to Birthright's halflings with a bit of lore about a certain group of halflings who discovered secret paths through the Shadowfell.5E got rid of the niche 4E tried to make for halflings and replaced it in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes with a pastoral one. Whereas in 4E halflings were lucky partially because they pleased the goddess of luck and travel (who includes among her commandments "luck favors the bold"), in 5E halfling luck refers to an apparently supernatural protection that causes halfling settlements to be overlooked by monsters.I really liked 4E's fiendish duergar (save for the strange beard quills) and in my own current campaign have decided that the duergar god Laduguer is merely a false persona for the archdevil Mammon, who himself is only playing the role of a false god for Asmodeus until the god of the Nine Hells decides to increase his presence in the Underdark. Depending on how things go in the campaign, the party may be tricked into defeating the priest of Laduguer only for a half-fiend duergar with a half-fiend fire giant ally to seize control in the name of Asmodeus.</blockquote>

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