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

[Gammadoodler]

I'm more Team "Fill the missing official lore".

And I suppose I'm more, "it's adequate to function as is but could be better."

 

[Oofta]

And I suppose I'm more, "it's adequate to function as is but could be better."

But "better" is always going to be subjective and can (even should) vary from campaign to campaign. Same with all the races for that matter.

The devs can't possibly build a version of any race that will fit all campaigns. Which is not to say that things couldn't be improved. For example in MToF instead of "throwing rocks" why not just say they use slings? Slings can be quite deadly, they cost next to nothing to make, they're ranged so they use dex.

But that's such a nitpicky little thing that I can insert into my game along with the fact that they're famous for their "smallwork" and intricately detailed fine crafts for when they do need to trade.

If people want to share how they tweak halflings (or any other race), awesome! I enjoy hearing ideas. I just get tired of people picking one tiny thread and blow it all out of proportion and context to say that "they don't work" and end it at that.

 

[Gammadoodler]

But "better" is always going to be subjective and can (even should) vary from campaign to campaign. Same with all the races for that matter.

The devs can't possibly build a version of any race that will fit all campaigns. Which is not to say that things couldn't be improved. For example in MToF instead of "throwing rocks" why not just say they use slings? Slings can be quite deadly, they cost next to nothing to make, they're ranged so they use dex.

But that's such a nitpicky little thing that I can insert into my game along with the fact that they're famous for their "smallwork" and intricately detailed fine crafts for when they do need to trade.

If people want to share how they tweak halflings (or any other race), awesome! I enjoy hearing ideas. I just get tired of people picking one tiny thread and blow it all out of proportion and context to say that "they don't work" and end it at that.

My beef, such as it is, is that they could afford to have more variety. They don't even address the subraces for some reason.

 

[turnip_farmer]

But "better" is always going to be subjective and can (even should) vary from campaign to campaign. Same with all the races for that matter.

The devs can't possibly build a version of any race that will fit all campaigns. Which is not to say that things couldn't be improved. For example in MToF instead of "throwing rocks" why not just say they use slings? Slings can be quite deadly, they cost next to nothing to make.

Yes! Slings all the way. 22 gold coins for a verminkin with a sling! Who cares how crap the ballistic skill is? Just send them out in force, you can always hire more!

Wait, sorry, wrong game. I'll let myself out.

 

[Minigiant]

But "better" is always going to be subjective and can (even should) vary from campaign to campaign. Same with all the races for that matter.

The devs can't possibly build a version of any race that will fit all campaigns. Which is not to say that things couldn't be improved. For example in MToF instead of "throwing rocks" why not just say they use slings? Slings can be quite deadly, they cost next to nothing to make, they're ranged so they use dex.

But that's such a nitpicky little thing that I can insert into my game along with the fact that they're famous for their "smallwork" and intricately detailed fine crafts for when they do need to trade.

If people want to share how they tweak halflings (or any other race), awesome! I enjoy hearing ideas. I just get tired of people picking one tiny thread and blow it all out of proportion and context to say that "they don't work" and end it at that.

Worked for 3e and 4e halfling.
Or are we not supposed to talk about them anymore.

 

[David Howery]

we have halflings so the bullettes have something to eat.
we have gnomes so the kobolds have someone to hate.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Yes! Slings all the way. 22 gold coins for a verminkin with a sling! Who cares how crap the ballistic skill is? Just send them out in force, you can always hire more!

Wait, sorry, wrong game. I'll let myself out.

110 Imperial Guardsmen with flashlights versus a Khorne Greater Demon. I'll take my chances.

 

[tetrasodium]

I'm not sure what my Emeril BOOM has to do with mules and not a plant existing in the world, but OK.

It may not have been your intent but it came off as derisive & contemptuous of the idea that worldbuilding should be anything more than an endless series of gm handwaving obvious plot armor into existence to maintain an official setting. as you said ok lets circle all the way back to the very beginning

Lets circle all the way back to the very beginning and discard the previous 70 pages of old arguments....

Ok, that's been done before & the big hurdle is that the shire defenders aren't willing to admit that any excuse of dismissal is unreasonable or causes other problems. In order to go back we need to go back to before the first dismissal excuses and not reuse them or makeup slightly different ones.

The book supposition is that halflings live in small, secretive, out-of-the-way shires and live peacefully eating themselves to a fulfilled long life. What about that does not work in YOUR (being defined by the person replying) campaign world.

There is no disagreement so far over what the phb says, but what it says causes problems & that's how things got started with two different problems raised by two different posters. Since we are going back to the beginning here are the problems.

• A1:*@Chaosmancer raised the issue of monsters exist. because it's a fantasy world as you noted in another post. I don't think "it's a fantasy world is a matter of disagreement".
  • A2:*This was dismissed by luck and they are far away so a skilled bandit like an orc ranger would walk right past the path/road leading to the village they were actively looking for & there was ridicule based on the idea that it somehow turned the world into some kind of ultra death world out to get halflings even though we can look at our own history for reasonable analogs such as wolves, brown/black/grizzly bears, & in some regions things like the tiger. Those threats range from cr1/4 to cr2 with bandits ranging from cr1/8 to cr2 giving a good range of monsters that could reasonably exist near "small, secretive, out-of-the-way shires".
• B1:*I raised the issue of free will and how the shire halflings dependon cultural stasis to the point where the rest of the world stops having knowable motivations to better themselves & their loved ones through things like tax collecting military equipped kingdoms & empires by pointing to the growth of feudalism on multiple continents and how a more advanced military offering a better deal like how the romans & mongols spread their empires
  • B2:*This was dismissed by pointing at luck , the gods of a specific setting, the lack of anything of value, & doubling down on the distance.
• Each dismissal brought with it a set of problems that changed the original problem scope for the other problem & led to an endless escalation such as why that orc or a mercenary doesn't have gods or why a merchant looking to establish a trade route to such a far off city doesn't have the backing of someone like the god of trade while his cart/wagon over time forms a road the orc could follow

The only person I can answer for here is @Chaosmancer, who has at least one problem with the description because there is no way to be "out of the way" for halflings because:
A) They aren't using magic (like gnomes)
B) Their gods can't just "make it so" that they are never bothered
C) The only places on the map that are "safe" from monsters are those protected by some greater force or physically inaccessible

You're skipping ahead to things that came up after the dismissals & you wanted to go back to the start so we need to do that & either target the dismissals (A&B) where you admit Which parts of the dismissal of a reasonable problem was unreasonable or explain something that cleanly solves both problems without being setting specific or creating new/different problems. Since you didn't do that everything you wrote from that point on is well beyond"all the way back to the very beginning"

* You liked using ABCD, so I used it too

 

[tetrasodium]

Now, that’s just not true. I have specifically pointed out to Golarion and @Charlaquin ‘s halflings that have better lore. @tetrasodium included the write-ups of Eberron’s halflings (and I believe he also mentioned the DarkSun halflings). Just a few posts earlier, @Chaosmancer specified that his world has homebrew halflings, though I don’t believe that he has shared their details.

I did indeed mention & describe halflings from both darksun & eberron halflings in detail more than once before the more recent screenshots detailing them from actual sourcebooks. I also mentioned that elves from both settings face a similar problem

I will go even further. I suspect that @Chaosmancer or @tetrasodium would have no issue with the workarounds being proposed: halfling villages being secretive and hidden, halfling gods caring more and being more active in the defense of their people, if it were acknowledged that these were workarounds.

After all, to each their own.

Setting specific workarounds acknowledged as setting specific shifts the problem to one more of the phb being even more setting specific but even if they weren't setting specific those 73 pages of workarounds being painted as if anyone not onboard with them is being unreasonable neatly demonstrates the uphill battle faced by a gm wanting to run a game where the setting differs from FR enough to be closer to settings like darksun & eberron. I've also said that if some or all of the other types of halflings were represented alongside the exclusive shire style halflings in the phb that a GM could point at those other halflings in the phb while saying "closer to these but.."

 

[JiffyPopTart]

It may not have been your intent but it came off as derisive & contemptuous of the idea that worldbuilding should be anything more than an endless series of gm handwaving obvious plot armor into existence to maintain an official setting. as you said ok lets circle all the way back to the very beginning

Ok, that's been done before & the big hurdle is that the shire defenders aren't willing to admit that any excuse of dismissal is unreasonable or causes other problems. In order to go back we need to go back to before the first dismissal excuses and not reuse them or makeup slightly different ones.

There is no disagreement so far over what the phb says, but what it says causes problems & that's how things got started with two different problems raised by two different posters. Since we are going back to the beginning here are the problems.

• A1:*@Chaosmancer raised the issue of monsters exist. because it's a fantasy world as you noted in another post. I don't think "it's a fantasy world is a matter of disagreement".
  • A2:*This was dismissed by luck and they are far away so a skilled bandit like an orc ranger would walk right past the path/road leading to the village they were actively looking for & there was ridicule based on the idea that it somehow turned the world into some kind of ultra death world out to get halflings even though we can look at our own history for reasonable analogs such as wolves, brown/black/grizzly bears, & in some regions things like the tiger. Those threats range from cr1/4 to cr2 with bandits ranging from cr1/8 to cr2 giving a good range of monsters that could reasonably exist near "small, secretive, out-of-the-way shires".
• B1:*I raised the issue of free will and how the shire halflings dependon cultural stasis to the point where the rest of the world stops having knowable motivations to better themselves & their loved ones through things like tax collecting military equipped kingdoms & empires by pointing to the growth of feudalism on multiple continents and how a more advanced military offering a better deal like how the romans & mongols spread their empires
  • B2:*This was dismissed by pointing at luck , the gods of a specific setting, the lack of anything of value, & doubling down on the distance.
• Each dismissal brought with it a set of problems that changed the original problem scope for the other problem & led to an endless escalation such as why that orc or a mercenary doesn't have gods or why a merchant looking to establish a trade route to such a far off city doesn't have the backing of someone like the god of trade while his cart/wagon over time forms a road the orc could follow

You're skipping ahead to things that came up after the dismissals & you wanted to go back to the start so we need to do that & either target the dismissals (A&B) where you admit Which parts of the dismissal of a reasonable problem was unreasonable or explain something that cleanly solves both problems without being setting specific or creating new/different problems. Since you didn't do that everything you wrote from that point on is well beyond"all the way back to the very beginning"

* You liked using ABCD, so I used it too

A1: Yes, I 100% agree that monsters exist in 99.9% of every D&D game ever played. We can probably put that to bed as I doubt anyone disagrees.

A2: Here you are skipping ahead. We can't dismiss halflings using luck to avoid bandits and orcs as a poor explanation...when a world may not have halflings encounter bandits and orcs regularly. They do not in my world, as they live in places that are peaceful* that are mostly immune for "raiding smart bands of creatures".

This leaves us with the fauna of the area that they live in. I will grant you that the area most likely could contain wolves/bears/tigers and other beasts from the Monster Manual. As far as how the halflings deal with these beasts...I don't see why it has to be different than any other races village ability to deal with them. In general having a house makes you immune to most beast encounters. A grizzly shows up at your doorstep so you go inside, shut the door, and wait for it to go away. In general beasts are there to find food, and perhaps the halflings have to worry about their goats and chickens getting eaten, but that isn't anything that hasn't been being done since animals were first domesticated thousands and thousands of year ago. One family with some torches and a sling (or thrown rocks) is almost always more than enough to drive off beasts.

B1: I'm not exactly sure what you are saying the halflings as described are (or are not) doing that conflicts with free-will and interacts with cultural stasis. If I had to ascribe a single label for them in the lore it would be CONTENT. They don't feel the need to build monuments, dominate neighbors, establish legacies, or other such aspirations for power. If they get to live a long life on the farm eating rhubarb pies and swapping tales with passers by, that is their best life. I do think that assigning a single label to any fantasy race is much too basic, and leaves MUCH to be desire, however its a simple background on which to build any individual campaign. But I don't think this relates to what you were speaking to.

B2: As I didn't understand B1, I can't add much here.


At the end of the day, as eloquently summed up earlier, Side A believes halfling lore as presented in 5e is either too simplistic OR not feasable. Side B believes its either completely fine, or good enough to get by. I haven't seen one person on this thread arguing there isn't an opportunity for MORE halfling lore. All I have seen is back and forth arguments on what "makes sense in D&D" which is a very personal bar to set as each campaign has very different expectations, play styles, and GM styles. People get entrenched in their views, dig their heels in, and then get so caught up in "winning" they lose track of the fact this is just a discussion of styles in the first place...there is no right opinion.

So, to restate again my personal opinion from the top.

There is nothing about the halfling lore as presented that is troublesome for D&D. It is a simplistic description of a group of beings who are content with their lives as they have been, and find places to live that they are left alone to pursue that life. In my campaign there is a place that allows that lifestyle to work, and I don't have to resort to hiding villages, paths, rangers, magical plants, magical luck, or the powers of the gods to make it happen. There are peaceful areas. The halflings settled there. They are safe from monsters. They defend themselves against the local fauna. They entertain peaceful visitors. They trade with those visitors and occasionally with the nearest "big city", and when something rare truly threatens the entire village they seek help from those friendly towards them, who are most likely under threat from that same force.