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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Faolyn" data-source="post: 8196365" data-attributes="member: 6915329">Using the old rules, an average goliath is stronger than an average human, and an average halfling is more agile than an average human. However, the point I've been making isn't about average people of any race. I haven't been talking about the halfling species or the goliath species at all. I've been talking about, as you say, the outliers, the unusual ones, the freaks of nature, the people who've been blessed or cursed by the gods: the PCs. Yes, I agree: halflings, as a people, are on average biologically more agile than humans, mysteriously as strong as humans, and not as strong as goliaths. But your halfling PC is not an average member of their species. By definition, PCs extraordinary people who are generally physically and mentally more capable of surviving the monster-filled world of D&Dland than anyone else and are among the few people in the world who can use magic or fight demons and survive.But there are people who in fact claiming that no halfling (or human, or elf, or aasimar, or triton) should be extraordinary statwise because... somehow it's wrong. It doesn't make sense to them, and they can't seem to understand or don't care, no matter how many times I've said it, that I'm talking about PCs and not entire races. And you should also know that I'm not just talking about Strength. I'm talking about all the stats: why can't a halfling be as wise as or wiser than a firbolg, or as healthy as or healthier than a dwarf, or as smart or smarter than a gnome?I fail to understand how anything I've said even comes close to that.My entire point with the artificer is that just because I don't like it doesn't mean it shouldn't be part of D&D.I disagree, in large part because I was never talking about optimizers. I was talking about making the characters you want and not being stuck with racial clichés. There are people who are claiming that, if I want to put my +2 in a stat that supports my class, that means I'm minmaxing. These same people are also indicating that it's not minmaxing to play a race that has a fixed stat that supports the class. In other words, if you want to play a Strength-based fighter, you should go for orc or goliath, not halfling, or else you should suck it up and play a weaker Strength-based halfling.In terms of minmaxing, there is no difference between playing a race with a fixed ASI that benefits your class and playing a race with a floating ASI that you can put in the stat that benefits your class. The only difference is, if you play a race with a fixed ASI solely to get that ASI, you're playing a clichéd character.My argument is: just because someone is short doesn't mean they can't be strong. Especially in magical D&Dland. I have not watched GoT--I tried to read the books and gave up--but from what I've read, Peter Dinklage is a good actor. This suggests that, if he were a D&D character, that he put his +2 bonus in Charisma. Which he couldn't do if he were a D&D character. Also, you're falling into the same trap that the others have: I am not talking about the Race of Halflings. I am talking about individuals. From what little I remember of the book and a third I read, I don't recall him being a Strength-based fighter. Which meant that, if he were an actual halfling and not a human with dwarfism, he put his bonus into something else. Which could be Dexterity, I don't know, and that's fine if it was his player's choice. Again: just because I think that halflings should be able to put their ASI in Strength doesn't mean I think that every halfling should or even will do so.(This is just like the mountain dwarf wizards. Everyone was afraid they'd take over and it never happened. Yes, maybe a few players decided on mountain dwarf wizards for the bonus they'd get, but most people haven't.)Yes, there are some people saying that it should be literally impossible for any halfling to be stronger than average, no matter what the circumstances or the weird magic in their background or anything else.</blockquote>

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