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

[Minigiant]

1) I don't think the base assumption is that they don't fit but that they fill a particular niche that would be missed without them. No one else in D&D are agrarian goodfolk who are worthy just for being decent folk. Elves and gnomes are fey, dwarves are mythic, humans are ambitious and heroic. Halflings are... human. Like that kind of human. They have all the potential of everyone else, they just aren't 'the special' inherently. They work for it.

But humans exist! And they do commoner and agrarian stuff too.

How are halflings more human than humans?

Now I am all confused. Are you saying that halflings exist just to have humans who can pretend that their D&D world isn't a D&D world? Isn't that outright saying they don't match the setting?

Okay, so NONE of those edgelord halflings are realistic. Humanist halflings, the ones with their shires seeking good food and comfort and family. Those ARE realistic. Modern Fantasy is so bloated and mutated and mutilated into something ugly and overbearing thanks in part to Martin but also dangerous amounts of 90's that we overlook that.

naughty words and cannibals and warmongers around every corner is not 'real'. Its the real of the pessimist and those who gave up.

They are more realistic as the halflings are changed to math the tone and realities of the new setting.

This is why I like 3e and 4e halflings. They still have that sense of optimistic and friendship but they heardstories of orcs invading baronies and gnolls killing/eating/sacrificing all the members of a town and dragons with a cult of kobolds. So they have organizations of warriors and push at least some halflings into diplomatic, economic, and militaristic fields.

And again, I don't see halflings run as jokes as much as I do gnomes and half-orcs. How many non-big, dumb half orcs do you see?

I see joke halflings a lot. Mosting because many players, especially back in the day, have halflings be a lot more common than gnomes and half orcs as NPCs and many DMs/games were limited to the 4 core races.

Look at some of the old D&D clones. Look a some of the OSR games. Halflings art is often stupid looking. Halfling stats are often weakest. Halfling lore is often completely disconnected from the rest of the world.

Because to a lot of us... halflings aren't sucky. Or silly.

But to a lot of D&D fans, halflings are sucky and silly. And they push the idea of silly weak halflings.

You can see it in alot of the discussions on TCOE and the new UA. "No. No floating racial ASIs. None of this freedom. You powergamers want to kill the lore. Halflings are supposed to be agile country bumpkins why can't fight and die in traps! You hire 4 halfling hirelings to enter the dungeon and you leave with one!"

 

[Shadowdweller00]

Please, someone explain to me: Is this 90+ page thread STILL carrying on debate over 1-2 posters' intractable and INSANE presumption that a SINGLE vignette from a SINGLE splatbook is somehow now the one, true portrayal of Halflingness?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

You can layer symbolism on, but it isn't built into the game. That is my only contention on that front.

It's actually quite hard to avoid it. Tolkien hated allegory, yet it seeped through into his work. And a fair chunk of the Monster Manual is symbolism incarnate - vampires for example.

But if the DM's views largely align with the players they probably won't notice unless they are literature majors.

 

[Chaosmancer]

You can actually consult this bit in the MM and give halfling commoners whatever weapon upgrade/downgrade you wish... without homebrew.

MM p342 under Customizing NPCs:

Yes, I am aware that I can change whatever I like.

My problem isn't that I am chained down. It is that the lore says a specific thing that doesn't make sense. And yet everyone wants to tell me that it doesn't say that and that even if it did it makes sense.

 

[Chaosmancer]

According to the MM commoners use clubs. If they ever use anything else you're home brewing.

Not that it's a big deal I assume most DMs ignore a line or two here and there and make minor tweaks. On the other hand most people don't write hundreds of posts because of one line in an non core book they disagree with.

The default statblock has a club, but using that to claim that is all they can use would be like saying that all hobgoblins use Longswords and all orcs use Greataxes. Doesn't make sense


Also, note that you immediately jumped to the Monster Manual. Because the lore does not exist on humans only using sticks and rocks to defend their villages from monsters like trolls and ogres. Which is what I was asking about, and the lack of that lore is quite telling.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Show me where it says that they use sticks and stones for actual combat. It says they use the same tactics, but those tactics will work with spears and axes, too.

I quoted the entire thing.

It said "swatting the enemy with sticks on all sides." That is not how you would describe "attacking them from all sides" or even "hitting them from all sides with whatever weapons are available." They are specifically swatting (v) with sticks Or, how about this one, named for fighting trolls, "where the rest of the group can hurl stones at it" Note that it doesn't say "hurl stones, axes and spears at it" or "hurl weapons at it" or "hurl whatever is available at it"

And, what is really hilarious about this whole thing, is you are the guy who will say I'm strawmanning because I say "fine quality" or because I say "greedy" when you only said corrupts. And yet you want to argue that the book doesn't says that they are swatting with sticks and hurling stones because you can attack and throw other weapons. Well Max, it doesn't say that. They didn't use those words. So, stop straw manning.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Hmm. Think I hadn't actually read that text right before. Was actually leaning more your way there. On second look, it seems to read that they practice versions of Avoreen's favored tactics, and then provides a list of Avoreen's favored tactics. Now can kinda see it going either way.

It's certainly reasonable that versions of these tactics could replace stones with sling bullets, and sticks with clubs, staves, swords, etc...

Or it could mean different kinds of sticks and stones. Ymmv.

You know, I would be fine if people wanted to argue that they use different versions of the same tactics.

The problem is, that to say they use a different version we have to acknowledge the original version. And no one is willing to acknowledge that the original version even exists.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Yes, I am aware that I can change whatever I like.

My problem isn't that I am chained down. It is that the lore says a specific thing that doesn't make sense. And yet everyone wants to tell me that it doesn't say that and that even if it did it makes sense.

The there are a couple of issues here:

It is clear that you have certain a priori assumptions about how a D&D world should work. The author of that text is working from a different set of a priori assumptions about how a D&D world works. Therefore you are quite correct, from your point of view it does not make sense.

This also applies to other races. For example, you have already mentioned how you fixed dwarves to explain their food supply.

There is a specific issue with halflings though - Tolkien intellectual property. What WotC is allowed to say about halflings is incomplete, because they cannot include content from Tolkien. It is likely that those people who like halflings are using knowledge from Tolkien to "fill in the blanks".

 

[Chaosmancer]

Still is! He doesn't have on on hand when the Jawas roll up and there were no blasters on the burnt out skeletons. They never made a move to defend themselves!

Well, that was probably because it wasn't the Jawas, remember? They were killed by Storm Troopers. Let me ask you, if a squad of heavily armed and armored Imperial Soldiers showed up in front of the farm family, do you think they are reaching for their guns first?

No. They go and talk to the officials, and hope that the Empire doesn't bother them for too long.

1) Your solution to being attacked by raiders is to jump into an aircraft that requires a takeoff sequence.

No, my point was that if they own a flying ship with a cannon mounted on it, they likely have a few guns as well. They have something far more powerful and deadly after all.

2) Probe droids are basically weaker than people. They're scouting equipment made by the same people who made TIE fighters, which can be destroyed by stray sneezes and dust bunnies.

Dude, you realize I'm looking all of this up, right?

Probe Droids were made for "deep space reconnaissance" meaning they are supposed to be tough enough to survive in deep space. They would therefore have a hull that is quite tough, to avoid being destroyed by the first fleck of space dust.

Also, those were the original models, the Empire specifically, well I'll quote the paragraph "As time went on, probot manufacturers began developing droids specifically for Imperial military applications....The resulting probe droids were faster, more lethal and much more efficient at snuffing out Rebels"

Weaker than a person, yet able to "snuff out" Rebel forces.

Oh, also, the TIE Fighter? Their hulls are made of Titanium. Yes, they lack shielding units because they were designed for speed and maneuverability, but Titanium isn't a weak metal. It can't stand up plasma which is what most of the other ships were firing, but shockingly I'd say that Titantium is stronger than flesh, and that weapons designed to destroy ships might be strong enough to destroy a ship.

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You. You are the one that keeps saying they only have sticks and rocks!

No one else has or ever would because we believe Halflings are at least sapient omnivorous primates. They use tools. They make tools. They eat meat. They therefore need ways to convert animals to meat. Therefore they have weapons. No one but you has ever insinuated they don't have or use weapons because you misread one passage and won't let it go.

The argument in the post you think is shifting the goal posts is that Owen and Beru are peaceful farmers living on a genuine Death World who aren't constantly being murdered as the anti-halfing folks are trying to insinuate that halflings (and only halflings) will be.

No. The book says it. I THINK IT IS STUPID! I keep saying "this is what the book says, it is stupid. Here are the quotes." And yet people keep treating this like I'm making things up out of thin air. They keep telling me that my eyes are wrong and that the text isn't sitting directly in front of me, that I haven't posted it in its entirety multiple times.

And as your own argument showed, Owen and Beru live in a dangerous world, and we have ample reason to believe that they had weapons for personal defense. Because the Star Wars writers realized that people tend to think about protecting their own lives. Oh, and by the way, here is a fun little clip I found


Note that Luke runs to his car, and grabs a RIFLE. Showing that, again, the Moisture Farmers did have weapons. Because they lived in a dangerous world. A standard that I am applying, and that halflings specifically break.

 

[Chaosmancer]

The there are a couple of issues here:

It is clear that you have certain a priori assumptions about how a D&D world should work. The author of that text is working from a different set of a priori assumptions about how a D&D world works. Therefore you are quite correct, from your point of view it does not make sense.

This also applies to other races. For example, you have already mentioned how you fixed dwarves to explain their food supply.

There is a specific issue with halflings though - Tolkien intellectual property. What WotC is allowed to say about halflings is incomplete, because they cannot include content from Tolkien. It is likely that those people who like halflings are using knowledge from Tolkien to "fill in the blanks".

Which is a problem since DnD is not Middle Earth. It is far more dangerous in many respects. So using Middle Earth to "fill in the blanks" creates a dissonance.

Also, Tolkien estate has Hobbits. They don't have a trademark on "small folk" by this point unless they are going to rip directly out of tolkien's world (which they don't do for humans, elves or dwarves) then there is no reason to leave blanks that you have to read Tolkien to fill. They can just fill the blanks