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

[Vaalingrade]

The other tiny folk lead terrible lives because the game wants you to kill them.

Like there's actually no good reasons kobolds can't be successful. They're innovative trap makers, use their small size to their advantage and have dragons on speeddial.

Except their god sucks, but the drow get empires despite their god being the actual worst.

 

[tetrasodium]

Mostly because you keep making crap up both about our stance and the status of halflings.

If you feel that you've been misinterpreted, engaging in discussion to correct misinterpretations is a more productive route than saying people are making things up & dismissing problems they raise with the positions laid out in your posts. phrases like "yes but" "what I meant" "I was unclear" & other such phrases are often good for that

 

[Gammadoodler]

They are half the size of humans, had strength penalties in most editions, and don't have magic/psionic/tech powers to make up for it. All the other small magicless folk in D&D live terrible lives.

Being bigger has pros and cons based on the environment you live in, and broadly is not a particularly predictive factor in successful living, else cows and pigs would have very different lifestyles.

 

[Vaalingrade]

If you feel that you've been misinterpreted, engaging in discussion to correct misinterpretations is a more productive route than saying people are making things up & dismissing problems they raise with the positions laid out in your posts. phrases like "yes but" "what I meant" "I was unclear" & other such phrases are often good for that

I have been trying to engage. The result is more misrepresentation and goalpost movement.

It's tiring to deal with this disingenuous back and forth where every time an argument is make, the original transmutes into a deeper and deeper morass with the express purpose of what? Making us all play halflings different? With an obnoxiously militant way of life like everyone else allegedly is?

 

[Chaosmancer]

Subtract the selling bit and you just described rural America in the not so distant past.

I have a great uncle who:

• raised hogs and chickens that he fed from his garden of corn, beans, tomatoes, potatoes and squash
• made moonshine with his corn
• his wife helped in all of this plus grew herbs on the back porch.
• extra labor came in the form of 'parties' where family like me were tricked into helping slaughter or butcher hogs and can vegetables.

He sold the moonshine as his primary means of profit. In another era, if he had say a neighbor who raised cows and goats, that'd take care of milk and textiles. As it was, most of his money went to creature comforts and making his house as kickass as possible.

As far as I know, he couldn't turn into random woodland creatures or singlehandedly unbalance a D&D game.

Was there a super market or a highway within ten miles of his house? The railways were likely finished right?

So, the salt gathered in Utah had a very easy time making it to a store where he could go and buy it. right? Also did his wife grow peppercorn? Did he use flour ground from wheat?

It is very hard to overstate just how interconnected the world was by the time of the 1920's, let alone in our lifetimes.

 

[Chaosmancer]

You get different answers because the goalposts change.

It went from 'why do halflings adventure' to 'halflings are like NPCs' to 'how do halflings get along in the world' to 'halflings aren't militant naughty words enough' to 'Vikings will hunt halflings down no matter where they are on this map of Faerun' to 'halflings can't be lucky or blessed by gods, damn the rules' to 'halflings can't grow pepper' for some reason.

And at some point you were saying the feudal system is core to D&D and there's this running idea that peaceful agrarian societies are some fever dream and the Amish and Appalachia are all a conspiracy contrived by Big Halfling.

Didn't know the Amish and Apalachia dealt with mythical monsters, goblins, orcs, gnolls, dragons, slaver races... dang there are a lot of things that the Amish don't need to deal with. I can't even remember the last time I heard about them getting attacked by bandits or demon cultists either.

Edit: missed an "r"

 

[Maxperson]

I just wanted to know how a race of little folk with no magic and minimal military survive so I could I could understand why one would leave. The answer to the fist part informs the second.

The PHB gives us the answer to the second and none of the common reasons needs answers to the first part. The PHB says, "Even adventurers among them usually venture into the world for reasons of community, friendship, wanderlust, or curiosity."

Reasons to leave.

1) You want to find another Halfling village to settle down in and cannot look locally as too many relatives are in local villages. - Community
2) An adventuring party came through and you became friends with one or more of them - Friendship
3) One of your best friends was kidnapped while trading at a human city and you need to rescue him - Friendship
4) You want to see what's on the other side of that mountain range in the distance. - Wanderlust
5) Hey, what's in Undermountain that might be interesting? - Curiosity

And on and on and on. It's really easy to come up with reasons for Halflings to leave the village and go adventure.

 

[Gammadoodler]

Didn't know the Amish and Apalachia dealt with mythical monsters, goblins, orcs, gnolls, dragons, slave races... dang there are a lot of things that the Amish don't need to deal with. I can't even remember the last time I heard about them getting attacked by bandits or demon cultists either.

There is probably an contra-argument to be made here that there is a lot of real world bs they don't have to deal with either by virtue of not having things that other people care about.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Ah, the overly-nitpicky contrarian argument continues.

Who said halflings sell moonshine? Anyone? Who says they must have pepper as a spice? How did people survive when pepper was not available?

This thread just gets dumber and dumber.

The example given in the post talked about moonshine. Maybe don't accuse people of arguments when they respond to an example given to them.

Also, let us not forget how this line of argument started.

1) How do halfling villages hide when they need to trade?

1a) They don't trade, they limit contact with the outside world

2) Then how do they get the spices and supplies for their famous meals?

2a) They grow them, they are farmers, they grow any spices they need.

3) How does that work, many of those spices can't be grown out of certain environments, that's why they were huge trade commodities.

3a) Its magic, fantasy doesn't need to abide by your rules!


Not exactly a scintillating display of brilliance to plant your flag on "Just because! No one cares why!"

 

[Maxperson]

I'm pretty sure halflings do make moonshine...

The Halfling Druids do, anway.

"MOONBEAM

A silvery beam of pale light shines down in a 5-footradius, 40-foot-high cylinder centered on a point within range. Until the spell ends, dim light fills the cylinder."