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

[Chaosmancer]

Anyway, here’s a thought/paradox.
Halflings are Lucky, so a whole settlement of them would, conceivably, be a huge nexus of Luck. Good weather, lack of marauders, bountiful harvests without pests, excellent health, etc.
Any society, large as a nation or small as a gang, would LOVE to have some of that sweet Halfling Luck miasma hanging over their settlement/endeavours. So perhaps there might be a ‘thing’ where Halflings are sought out to capture and enslave in order to provide protection. Multiple halflings, for choice.
But, Halflings’ Luck, especially when coupled with the multiplying effect of a settlement’s worth, would help protect them from these self-same seekers of stolen good fortune.
Only solitary Halflings would be vulnerable. Thus, Halflings get on with everybody because everybody goes to them for their food and drink (which Luck has ensured is always the finest), and this avoids the need for Halflings to travel to other markets - people come to them - luckily, of course, only in sufficient numbers that they can deal with.
So where do adventurer Halflings come from, and why are they ‘safe’ from slaver predation? Why, because they are the ‘bad luck’ Halflings. When a Halfling PC uses Luck to avoid failing a saving throw, or fumbling their weapon, it isn’t good luck on their part but a manifestation of bad luck on the part of their opponent. Any party fumbles might legitimately be blamed on the Halfling’s aura.
Thus, Halflings are highly sought after for both trade (on their own terms), and raid (but protected from it); adventurous Halflings are, er, encouraged to go travelling around away from the village, in case they cause a drop in the collective Luck field, and are also protected from raids by their reputation for being unlucky! On their own, they’re ‘dangerous’ and so perhaps drawn to shadowy, stealthy activities.
But the ‘fountain of youth’/‘holy grail’/‘questing beast’ idea of roping a bunch of Halflings into indentured servitude to provide good luck persists, even so.
Hmm. Random brain dump.

I had actually considered that this whole conversation leads to Adventuring halflings being the unluckiest people of their race.

A normal halfling might go 60 to 100 years (according to current arguments) without ever seeing a single threat to their life. An adventuring halfling will not be able to travel further than a single day without being assualted by monsters, every town will be under threat, and the world might be about to end due to some hundred year scheme they are caught up in.

It amuses me, but it also highlights how terrible of a writing device "they are so lucky, so they aren't under threat" is, when you end up with these kind of extreme swings.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I can't quote Oofta, because he has decided that I am not to be talked to anymore, but there is a fairly large difference between "luck magic" and "fantastical magic".

The issue is scale. I have read stories where people have the superpower of luck, one was a LitRPG novel that I think really highlighted the issue.

See, this character was transported to a fantasy world, where they were in multiple life-threatening situations. Monster attacks, an exploding airship that nearly led to their death, encounters with powerful demons, it was quite a list. Then, mid way through the third book, they get a boon from a God, basically a random power-up that was to help them on their quest. It was Super Luck.

This power-up, they realized as it was activating, was so powerful that it had actually reached back through time to save their life in every single one of those previous situations, making sure they survived to the point where they could get the luck power, which was guaranteed because of the luck power. It was a full on Paradox, and it starts to really get insane.

For a different example, anybody here remember that scene from Men in Black 3? They time travel and they are talking to that alien outside of time who is fascinated by the Mets that won the world series, and he says "That baseball for instance thrown for the last out of Game Five, manufactured in 1962 by the Spalding factory of Chicopee Massachusetts was aerodynamically flawed due to the horsehide being improperly tanned because Sheila the Tanners wife left him for a Puerto Rican Golf pro that Sunday Dinner... [skipping main plot]... when that ball is pitched to Davy Johnson who only became a Baseball Player because his father couldn't find a football to give him for his eighth birthday, it hits his bats two micrometers too high causing him to pop hard to Cleon Jones who would have been born Clara a statistical typist if his parents didn't have an extra glass of wine that night before going to bed" (Cleon catches the ball that seems to win the game)

That is "Luck Magic". Reaching through time to alter things so that outcomes become inevitably what they are. It is reshaping reality on a level we just don't really allow for DnD. And it seems to be accepted that Halflings have it to the extent that even though the world might nearly end mutliple times in a decade, due to the forces of darkness, madness, and chaos, every halfling village might go a century without any conflict at all. It is fundamentally hard to accept that level of reality warping.

 

[turnip_farmer]

2,000 posts! I knew you could you make it!

And still, no one willing to address the plain fact that gnomes were a mistake. You all know it's true, deep down.

 

[Oofta]

2,000 posts! I knew you could you make it!

And still, no one willing to address the plain fact that gnomes were a mistake. You all know it's true, deep down.

All I can say is that the world would not be quite as bright without the possibility of the paladin Sir McStabsalot, Order of the Owl, riding his owlbear mount.

 

[Maxperson]

Called what? My basic understanding of the maps of DnD settings? Because if you look at Cormyr, the country you used as an example, their "neighboring cities" are about a days travel apart. That is 24 miles. You want the halflings to be far out of the way so they won't be attacked or threatened, but claim that they are only 12 miles away, leading to this sort of nonsense.

Humans: "Oh no, [Blank] was attacked, that is only a day's travel away, the hordes might be here any moment. We need to [plan of action]"

Halflings: "Oh no, [Blank] was attacked. That's sad. They are less than a day's travel from us. Really liked the market there. Good thing that horde can't find us though since we are so far away."

Yep! Called you complete "misunderstanding" of what I said.

Undead don't have brains, which is why telling them to follow "the road" means you have just doomed yourself. Because they will never take a turn. They are just going to follow a single road, which means any towns or cities not on that road, are completely safe.

Sure. Which is why you have a subordinate who can control them go with them, or go yourself, since you know, commander of undead army. You run your necromancers as morons, though. I'll run mine as though they actually think their plans through.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Yeah, you caught me. I just blatantly lie about my opinion all the time.

I didn’t accuse you of lying. Maybe you hadn’t considered all the races. Maybe you had but came to a different conclusion (which seems to be the case). Maybe (as you recognize in the last sentence of your post), you are so familiar with the racial tropes that you have difficulty seeing them through the eyes of a new player (which, fair enough, might be my case as well).

The following is not intended to suggest what you personally might conclude when reading the write-ups. I am not in your head. However, I think their is evidence that generally speaking, for most races, the description gives you a pretty good idea of what their traits will be.

Except, wait. I don't. If I didn't know anything about dwarves? Maybe darkvision and proficiency at smith's tools. But the rest? Masonry? Well, I associate that with laying bricks, not mining tunnels. Everybody builds things, right? Brewing? Where does that come from? Armor proficiency? Resistance to poison? Carry a heavy load without having speed reduced?

The race is explicitly called out with a martial heritage and artisanal heritage. It gets proficiency in artisan’s tools and proficiency with weapons (and a subclass gets proficiency with armor). They also get a feature that allows them to recognize stonework.

I certainly would never have guessed any of the features of elves. I mean, they live in the forest why do they have darkvision?

A second race that is described by their mastery of weapons and magic and their love of nature, gets additional weapon proficiencies. Selected subclasses also gain innate access to magical spells. Wild Elves can hide in natural phenomena.

Gnomes? Well if I had read up on dwarves I guess I might realize the darkvision thing.

Illusions are mentioned several times in their write-ups so is tinkering. Forest gnomes get minor illusion. Rock Gnomes can build small automatons.

Half-orcs? If I didn't know anything about orcs nope, not a clue.

Their write-up has a strong barbarian subtext. Naturally, they have proficiency in Intimidation, they have the Savage Attacks Trait, and they don’t fall unconscious the first time they hit 0 hp.

And, as mentioned earlier, dragonborn. A race of dragon people who have the same resistance and breath weapon as their dragon type.

And I want to clarify, for every race there are a couple of traits that might be hard to guess. My point is that for halflings, the abilities that don’t get mentioned (Lucky and Brave) seem like they would have a pretty big impact on how the race is described.

 

[Maxperson]

Max has refused to elaborate on this, sweeping it under the rug as me being "King Strawman" or whatever it was his last insult towards me has been.

I've explained repeatedly and I've never called you out for a Strawman you didn't commit.

 

[Maxperson]

2,000 posts! I knew you could you make it!

And still, no one willing to address the plain fact that gnomes were a mistake. You all know it's true, deep down.

My wife loves garden gnomes. It would be a bad idea for me to criticize gnomes in any way.

 

[tetrasodium]

I live in a rural town of about a thousand and can attest that we barely have roads -now-.

Yea, it doesn't take much for something to be qualified as a "road" vrs a path. Travel it enough & you will wear it to something worth qualifying for " turn at the big rock & follow the road"

Also, I think a couple of ropes stretched across the road at ankle height would do for the undead marching bands. I mean, a fair portion have 1 hit point, right? One good fall and they're done for.

Spoiler: mm316

Spoiler: mm44

What undead are you thinking of with 1hp?

 

[Mecheon]

And still, no one willing to address the plain fact that gnomes were a mistake. You all know it's true, deep down.

Brave words. Wrong ones, but brave ones.

plus honestly I think the fact we've gone on this far about halflings specifically and the gnome mentions tend towards short shows that halflings were the mistake and gnomes fit into the world better somehow