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

[Minigiant]

Lucky is statistically better than Second Chance.

No it isn't.
Second Chance is more likely to trigger in a fight as you will usually use it before you are injured.
Lucky requires 20 attacks or attacks to trigger.

The biggest issue halflings have in D&D and most wargames is they have no anvil to hammer to. Small. Decent light infantry. No heavy infantry. No mages. Weak Cav. Good missile. Good skrimish. No siege. Halflings are worse elves.

4e halflings > 3e halflings > 1e 2e & 5e halflings.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

No it isn't.
Second Chance is more likely to trigger in a fight as you will usually use it before you are injured.
Lucky requires 20 attacks or attacks to trigger.

The biggest issue halflings have in D&D and most wargames is they have no anvil to hammer to. Small. Decent light infantry. No heavy infantry. No mages. Weak Cav. Good missile. Good skrimish. No siege. Halflings are worse elves.

4e halflings > 3e halflings > 1e 2e & 5e halflings.

Lucky will trigger pretty much every session, unless your players don’t make a lot of rolls, and it will never lead to a worse outcome than keeping the first roll, with will happen with second chance fairly often, unless you use it very cautiously.


And...you know that a thing that happens 1 in 20 times doesn’t magically wait for the 20th thing to happen, right? It’s just as likely to happen on the first roll as on the 20th.


lucky turns every nat 1 into another chance to crit, or at least roll high.

 

[Charlaquin]

No it isn't.
Second Chance is more likely to trigger in a fight as you will usually use it before you are injured.
Lucky requires 20 attacks or attacks to trigger.

The biggest issue halflings have in D&D and most wargames is they have no anvil to hammer to. Small. Decent light infantry. No heavy infantry. No mages. Weak Cav. Good missile. Good skrimish. No siege. Halflings are worse elves.

4e halflings > 3e halflings > 1e 2e & 5e halflings.

Right, so the more this conversation goes on, the more it looks like your issue is primarily with halfling mechanics.

Also, we still seem to be stuck on this bizarre notion that not having a warrior culture somehow makes them not good PCs.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I don't know where you get the 25% number from.

Halflings have an average of 12 dex and against an AC of 15, is hitting on 7 numbers or 35% of the time. So that's 140 hits without luck coming into play. At an average of 3.5 damage a hit, that's 490 damage. Your 3 demons had 50something hit points, it kills those 3 demons in 1 round three times over. And there wouldn't even be three wandering demons in the first place. Hell, at half damage they take out a pit fiend in 2 rounds

So, Commoners get 10's. If you want to increase that to 12's I can't stop you, but then I can do variant humans and get 12's there too.

Also, dex is fine if we are talking slings. Less fine if we are talking sticks and clubs, or even throwing rocks which Mordenkanens says is wha they are doing. Thrown weapons without finess (like a rock) would be strength based, not dex based.

Thirdly (dang lots of problems with your analysis) I said AC 16, not AC 15. I wasn't using those specific demons in this example, I was talking about your ridiculous assumptions about how much more accurate every single attack by a halfling was. I picked 16 randomly.


But, if you want to change the analysis like that, sure, we can go for it.

First off, your analysis of the halfling was wrong anyways, because you didn't account for that Lucky ability you keep saying is so game changing. 7 numbers at 5.25% is actually 36.75%. Which means 147 hits, for 514.5 damage. Which is an increase of only 5%. Outside of rounding errors finally, but not the absolute game changing ability you keep touting it as.

Humans?

Variant Human, +1 Dex from race, +1 Dex from Weapon Master, also gives them proficiency with longbows. That is a+3 to hit, against AC 15 that gives them 9 numbers, or a 45% chance to hit. 400 attacks at 45% is 180 attacks, with an average of 5.5 damage (and greater range making those 400 attacks more likely) then that's 990 damage, 500 points more than your numbers, 475.5 than mine.

Oh but wait, I'm going to be told I'm cheating for using the variant human. I should use the base human. So they only have a +0 to hit.

+0 to hit, 15 AC, 6 numbers, 30% chance to hit, 400 attacks means 120 hits, longbows still for 4.5 average damage is 540 damage, still 50 points higher than those halflings you did the math for, actually only 25.5 more damage than my halflings.


So, again. Lucky does not make Halflings these super effective fighters that are going to devastate anything. What is devastating everything is making 400 attack rolls against it. Because, as shocking as this may sound, 400 attacks against three targets is devastating.

Go down to a more reasonable 30 attacks and the numbers again shift, pretty dramatically.

Your Halflings -> 10 hits for 35 damage
My more accurate numbers -> 11 hits for 38.5 damage
Variant Humans -> 13 hits for 71.5 damage
Basic Humans -> 9 hits for 40.5 damage

Oh right... and didn't those demons have resistance? So cut all those numbers in half. And, again, those specific demons have damaging aura. That was why I picked three of them to destroy a town to show how deadly a demon attack can be, Radius 30 ft... what is the short range on a sling again? Oh right, 30 ft.

So, those brave halflings run within 30 ft of the three demons, throwing slings, then retreat. We are looking at about 19 damage to one of them, so it defintely survives. Demons run forward, dashing for 80 ft. Oh and then every halfling within 30 ft of them takes 1d6+3 damage, so easily about half of them die at the start of the round.

And, if you want to do the 400 attackers. I'd remind you that more than likely, 400 of them can't run in and out of that aura, so a lot of halflings firing at disadvantage, lowering their accuracy and adding more misses.



So, in conclusion. No. Halfling luck is not an ability that makes Halflings so much more incredibly dangerous than humans. At best they are slightly more accurate, but en mass they are still not able to compete with slings compared to arrows.

 

[Chaosmancer]

They tie a lot of it into their gods, so not so handwavy.

"The gods made me lucky" is still handwavy. Because luck is such an amporphous force that can do whatever you say it does.

I literally read a story once about a character who gained luck powers, whose powers went back and rewrote time so he would gain luck powers, preventing bad things that would have happened to him and that would have harmed him before he got luck powers. "Because I have the power of luck" doesn't mean anything that we can do anything with in a story.

 

[Chaosmancer]

First, what FR tries to call frontier...often just isn’t.

Second, Phandolin isn’t a halfling town, so try to keep the two threads of discussion straight, at least.

I am keeping them straight.

Halfling towns aren't well defended.
Umbran said neither was Phadolin, and that was because town defenses in DnD aren't walls, but are adventurers
I pointed out how poorly defended Phandolin was, how it was destroyed once already, and how being near so many highly dangerous locations filled with monsters makes it implausible that they wouldn't have some form of defenses.

Max and others tried to convince me that monsters aren't common in DnD worlds, they are incredibly rare, so no one gets attacked by monsters unless the PCs are their to intervene.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Yes, it is. Every nat 1 gives another chance at a nat 20. Halflings crit more often. This isn’t remotely arguable.

I did the math. They crit 0.25% more often. That is a rounding error. Does it exist? Sure, but it is such a small increase that it legitimately does not matter.

 

[Minigiant]

Right, so the more this conversation goes on, the more it looks like your issue is primarily with halfling mechanics.

Also, we still seem to be stuck on this bizarre notion that not having a warrior culture somehow makes them not good PCs.

No one is saying halflings don't make good PCs. Nor is it all about mechanics. (I'm getting a sense that many are getting offended that I am questioning how D&D sets up halflings.)

For example. I've played a dwarven fighter/cleric. He wore heavy armor and wielded a hammer as that's what the mechanics and lore says dwarves use. Because of the smith culture displayed in the lore andmechanics, I jotted down the names of the smith clans who rafted my starting gear. Oh and I created my clan and melded it into m reason for adventure: gold and revenge on some giants. And I choose some spells that match the lore ofhow dwarves use magic.

Now if I did this for halflings. Halflings don'teven have racial weapons anymore. Any they never had racial armor. Their PRCs were obscure soI'd have to do work to look up how halflings fight. Halfling magic? Well the game more or least said halflings didn't even use magic until 3e and barely then. Halfling kits were fighter and rogue only and the fighter ones were silly jokes. Halfling combat. Halfling combat. It's too late to call a buddy and see it he can dig up a book on halfling fighting. Little in 5e lore and combat so I guess my halfling fighter/cleric is an untrained deputy who never got into a fight and barely has quality equipment. Let's hope the DM even gave halflings a diety. Maybe I'll be some retired adventurer halfling's son who just enherits a decent rapier and light armor. Is the race's warrior adventurers just wearing hand-me-downs? Is that the halfling way?

Halflings are not treated the same as dwarves and elves but are supposed to be on the same tier as them.

 

[Maxperson]

The rules gives them luck.
Saying the luck makes them invisible to orcs is speculation that is not part of the base rules or lore.

100% wrong. Saying that luck makes them invisible to orcs is 100% a Strawman.

The lore says that you need to get lucky to find their villages and sometimes not even then. That's written in Mordenkainen's and there is no speculation involved.

Being different and being treated different are not the same thing.

It amounts to the same thing in D&D. Elves are treated different from Dwarves who are treated different from Gnomes who are treated different from Halflings. Their differences amount to different treatment. You are just singling out the Halfling difference from the other races and fixating on that.

Humans, dwarves, elves, gnomes, orcs, dragonborn, and even tieflings are given their own warrior cultures, magic cultures, armies, cities, empires,weapons, magic items, crafts, technology. Their prestige classes were staples. Their gods are put in the forefront of stories. There actions affect the world. Their rivalries are played up.

Halflings get almost none of that.

Um. Races don't need warrior cultures, magic cultures, cities, empires, etc. They just need A culture. One race gets a warrior culture. One race gets a magic culture. One race gets the Halfling culture(not sure what to call it). It's all just different ways to do culture.

Halflings being so lucky that no one attacks them is not in the PHB.

Really doesn't matter. It's still 5e Halfling lore. And the PHB lore does state that they survive by avoiding notice. Mordenkainen's just expands upon that.

The biggest issue halflings have in D&D and most wargames is they have no anvil to hammer to. Small. Decent light infantry. No heavy infantry. No mages. Weak Cav. Good missile. Good skrimish. No siege. Halflings are worse elves.

Incorrect. Halflings are Halflings. They don't need to be better Elves. They don't need to be equal Elves. They don't need to be Elves at all. Trying to compare racial cultures to one another is futile. They don't need those warlike abilities, because they are very rarely involved in war.

 

[Maxperson]

So, Commoners get 10's. If you want to increase that to 12's I can't stop you, but then I can do variant humans and get 12's there too.

Human commoners get 10's. Halflings have a racial +2. As for variant humans, they get 2 +1's, and 10+1=11, not 12. Second, humans get +s in all 6 stats with no one stat having dominance, that means that your commoners, even if you give them magical 12's, will still only have a 2 in 6 chance of having a 12 in an ability that gives a bonus to a weapon. 2/3 of the humans won't get that bonus to hit.

Thirdly (dang lots of problems with your analysis) I said AC 16, not AC 15. I wasn't using those specific demons in this example, I was talking about your ridiculous assumptions about how much more accurate every single attack by a halfling was. I picked 16 randomly.

First, were we're talking about goblins and they have a 15 AC. Second, a 16 is still a 30% chance to hit, not 25%. How am I supposed to know that you suddenly stopped talking about the Goblins that raid Halflings and just picked a random number out of your behind?

First off, your analysis of the halfling was wrong anyways, because you didn't account for that Lucky ability you keep saying is so game changing. 7 numbers at 5.25% is actually 36.75%. Which means 147 hits, for 514.5 damage. Which is an increase of only 5%. Outside of rounding errors finally, but not the absolute game changing ability you keep touting it as.

Humans?

Variant Human, +1 Dex from race, +1 Dex from Weapon Master, also gives them proficiency with longbows. That is a+3 to hit, against AC 15 that gives them 9 numbers, or a 45% chance to hit. 400 attacks at 45% is 180 attacks, with an average of 5.5 damage (and greater range making those 400 attacks more likely) then that's 990 damage, 500 points more than your numbers, 475.5 than mine.

Oh but wait, I'm going to be told I'm cheating for using the variant human. I should use the base human. So they only have a +0 to hit.

You aren't cheating by using variant humans. They just don't get any better to hit than normal humans when you are starting with 10's.