D&D General why do we have halflings and gnomes?

[Gammadoodler]

Well any gnome can take the feat so there's that.

But since this is a general topic, there is a history to it. People buy the idea that gnomes hide their village with illusions, camoflauge, amd mechanical devices because the idea that gnomes are great illusionists, tinkers, and foresters for decades.

Where for halflings, nothing really stuck to halfling villages and halfling homelife outside of them being hobbit shires.

Any 4th level adventurer can take the feat..that lets them be invisible for 6 seconds an hour.

If we're saying that these communities can start taking feats, a village of folks with bountiful luck where the individual members are already lucky..would be very lucky indeed (or at least significantly more resistant to catastrophe).

But to your general point, while I too would appreciate some more depth or at least variety in the halfling write-up, I see nothing inconsistent with a race that could survive and produce adventurers at a reasonable pace in D&D fantasyland.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Or the huge number of adventurers they canonically produce return with cuttings and bushel baskets for the halflings to grow and tinker with ala the Dutch.

That too.

Well onlyone subrace gets it. And only lets the halfling hide behind medium stuff, not hide their homes and villages.


You could make the point that WOTC (or TSR before it) should have put this in the base section of the race. Or stressed the stealthiness of halflings. That WOTC and TSR messed up.

But then you'd get to my point.

Lightfoots are one of the two most common types of halflings.

In fairness, a couple folks are saying they don't need to.

Sure.

 

[Minigiant]

I like how the gods granting gnomes magical powers to hide their villages is okay and no gods will give their followers magical powers to find said villages, but the gods masking Halfling villages is bupkis because other gods would negate it.

One is teaching their race a skill
The other is constant divine intervention

Any 4th level adventurer can take the feat..that lets them be invisible for 6 seconds an hour.

If we're saying that these communities can start taking feats, a village of folks with bountiful luck where the individual members are already lucky..would be very lucky indeed (or at least significantly more resistant to catastrophe).

But to your general point, while I too would appreciate some more depth or at least variety in the halfling write-up, I see nothing inconsistent with a race that could survive and produce adventurers at a reasonable pace in D&D fantasyland.

I'm not saying that halflings should die out or be unplayable.
I just want more info on why they aren't so I can understand the halfling mindset in the base rules.

 

[Mecheon]

I like how the gods granting gnomes magical powers to hide their villages is okay and no gods will give their followers magical powers to find said villages, but the gods masking Halfling villages is bupkis because other gods would negate it.

Gods aren't granting gnomes that power, that's just in-built gnome illusion stuff. Its natural

Gnomes live in hidden places, in the depths of forests and underground. They can cast illusions to disguise themselves and their homes. They can talk to animals, so if you try to attack a gnome forest village? The birds watch your army's every move. Pit-traps appear out of nowhere, your soldiers vanish one by one, replaced with illusions so you can't even tell when they fell behind. A wave of bears comes out of nowhere and sweeps away soldiers before you can even react.

And that's before you even get to the rock gnomes who don't have the tinker gnome incompetance hanging over them. Magic plus technology equals a lot of ways to deal with an army

 

[Gammadoodler]

One is teaching their race a skill
The other is constant divine intervention



I'm not saying that halflings should die out or be unplayable.
I just want more info on why they aren't so I can understand the halfling mindset in the base rules.

And you find "they're lucky, optimistic, unambitious, and good at being out of the way" unsatisfactory, even though those might be directly responsive to the halfling mindset.

I'm not going to say that your wrong to be dissatisfied, but I'm also not sure it's really a "problem" with the halfling.

 

[Maxperson]

Gods aren't granting gnomes that power, that's just in-built gnome illusion stuff. Its natural

"Forest gnomes and deep gnomes owe their innate magical abilities to Baravar, and all gnomes get their natural defense against magic from her shrewdness."

It's not natural. It was granted to them by a god. They then took that and developed it into stronger illusions to hide their villages.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Fantasy plants don't need magic (unless you say they do), they are imaginary after all. And this is not suggesting that there is no need for trade, just that halflings, specifically may not need it.

Why not everyone else? They are just plants. Anyone can grow them.

It wasn't like people in Europe couldn't grow potatoes after they were found.

 

[Chaosmancer]

There's no sand or fire where halflings live now?

The specific fine grain sand you need for glass?

Um.. no. Do you have a lot of sand where you live? I certainly don't.

 

[tetrasodium]

Gods aren't granting gnomes that power, that's just in-built gnome illusion stuff. Its natural

Gnomes live in hidden places, in the depths of forests and underground. They can cast illusions to disguise themselves and their homes. They can talk to animals, so if you try to attack a gnome forest village? The birds watch your army's every move. Pit-traps appear out of nowhere, your soldiers vanish one by one, replaced with illusions so you can't even tell when they fell behind. A wave of bears comes out of nowhere and sweeps away soldiers before you can even react.

And that's before you even get to the rock gnomes who don't have the tinker gnome incompetance hanging over them. Magic plus technology equals a lot of ways to deal with an army

even in 3.5 when specialist had banned schools an illusionist wizard could usually cast some combination of evocation conjuration abjuration & necromancy to help protect the gnome village. A huge difference is that gnomes embrace magic even if they mildly focus on or excel in illusion. Illusion isn't useless for offense/defense though. Halflings by comparison make a mockery of martial traditions with sticks & aren't know for magic either

 

[Chaosmancer]

Do you imagine that sand is terribly hard to get? You do have them living in a desert growing rice.

No, I said you can't live in a desert and grow rice, as an example that plants don't just grow in any environment you want.

You guys are the ones who decided to run with that.

Aaaaaaaand which nobody has said doesn't happen. They do trade. They don't trade a often or in large amounts.

So they do trade. Which is my point.

And if they do trade... what is a large amount? They aren't trading metric tons, but is a trip every two weeks really so shocking, when market days were held weekly?

And if they do trade, then there are paths. Paths which for some reason are harder to find than shore on a cloudy day in with no land in sight (yes, I didn't forget that you ignored those mechanics)

Trade for what you need and nothing more is not the same as selling for profit and money. Try this experiment to see if there's a difference. The next time you go to a grocery store, bring some pillows from your house to trade for food. See if they will accept them. Then offer them money. See if they will accept it. If the grocery store will accept your pillows the same as they accept your money, I will concede that there is little difference.

Seriously? "But barter hasn't happened in America for generations, therefore it is completely different in a medieval setting before most people had money"

Remember, taxes used to be taken in food. Do you think just because the IRS won't take a bucket of eggs as my tax payment that Taxes weren't taxes in the Middle Ages?

Money is middle man. It is used to make trade standardized and easier. It doesn't suddenly make a new thing that isn't trade.

Why would Halfings ever send mail when they can travel(they love to travel) home to get good food and see their parents(they love to socialize)? You're inventing problems that don't exist and then saying, "Look! Look! Problems!"

Really? So your halfling adventurer is always close enough to their hometown to just head over there for dinner?

I'm actually not making up new problems. I'm still addressing the same problem. For some reason halfling villages are impossible to find, except when they aren't. The mail example was just a new angle because I want you guys to mock me for something new, since you are getting repetitive