Does DnD "really" need all three of these as separate races? Couldn't one just be a subrace of one of the other two?
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Does DnD "really" need all three of these as separate races?
Does DnD "really" need all three of these as separate races? Couldn't one just be a subrace of one of the other two?
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One is good at being sneaky guys, another one good at fighting guys and the last one as wizard guys.
No, a game doesn't "need" all of them, but they have their niches. Even beyond the mere mechanical archetypes, they have completely different thematic backgrounds.
What part of that implies they need to be separate entries instead of sub entries under an existing race?
If you make different Human subtypes based on what cultures they come from where one is more sneaky, one is more fighty, or whatever would that make sense to make them a separate thing from baseline Humans?
More so when you actually bring in Half-Orc/Elves that make no sense as a separate race from one or the other.
>If you make different Human subtypes based on what cultures they come from where one is more sneaky, one is more fighty, or whatever would that make sense to make them a separate thing from baseline Humans?
Doing that with humans would trigger a lot of people into calling you racist and canceling you. Ask the Mythras people about that.
Mythras got cancelled? Wow, I'm surprised it has enough players for anyone to notice.
Does DnD "really" need both of these as separate races? Couldn't one just be a subrace of the other one?
Marcille is mid by elf and human standards.
More like half by elf and human standards.
It is cool that the signs were there for a long time.
Yeah, the two fill specific roles of Humans (the blandest default option for the unimaginative) and Humans+.
You dont "need" anything.
Needs dwarves, halflings are only a thing due to the popularity of LotR at the time.
Just merge halflings and gnomes. Dwarves are distinct enough.
Halflings are basically just the domestic short people, while gnomes are the wild fairy ones.
Just merge humans and elves.
Humans are basically just the domestic average sized people, while elves are the wild fairy ones.
Sure
Elves are the domesticated average sized people and Humans are the wild, degenerated Elves.
Half-elves are giga popular
A lot of people already play as the merged race.
Better to merge dwarfs and gnomes, since gnomes are just earth people too.
Or maybe replace gnomes with earth elementals, merge dwarfs with elves like in the Norse myths and just leave halflings as the remaining short race?
I don't run DnD anymore but I have them all as different cultures of the same race.
Solution, just make new human ethnicities that don't look like real ones, I put naturally occuring goths (the edgy, black and white makeup kind) in my setting as a race (of humans)
gnome and halfling are the same thing.
elves and humans are the same thing.
Aren't all the conventional humanoid races under the umbrella of "human" in Dungeon Meshi? So as to differentiate them from demi-humans like kobolds and orcs.
Only in the west. The characters from the east say "human" mean tallman.
Dwarves can switch between small and medium sized creatures pretty easily
In some settings, the tallest dwarves can be around 5 feet/150cm tall
Dwarf = Small giant
Gnome = Small elf
Halfling = Small human
Honestly just fricking kill all Gnomes. The only one you technically need is Dwarf but I will accept the existence of Halflings as the New Zealand equivalent to the Australian Dwarf.
tbh I'd rather have all the elves replaced with gnomes. Kill all the elves.
While I'm all for Elf-hate. This is a manlet hate thread and so I'd ask you please stay on topic.
Dwarves can fill all three niches if you turn your head a bit
>Dwarves are Dwarves
For replacing Halflings
>Valley Dwarves living the quiet life on the Mountains, growing potatoes and herding Goats
>Dwarven Mobsters in the inner city lead by different crime families.
>Dwarven hunters pack heavy for extensive forays into the wilderness, crossbow, sixty bolts, bear traps, every type of whistle and ration you could think of.
For replacing Gnomes
>Dwarves are proud of their extensive libraries, where Dwarven Wizards in pointy hats and long white beards horde knowledge
>A "Gnome" is a religious affiliation, someone who left the Dwarven life behind for a simple life in nature. The pointy red gnomish cap is everyday religious wear.
Also, Pirate and Whaler Dwarves.
You need humans, elves, cat girls and Bois If you are gay, a playable small monster race and a large playable monster race.
Large cat people would explain the catgirls.
Dwarves and halfings are overdone.
>Does DnD "really" need all three of these as separate races?
>DnD
Yes.
>your game
No.
You are correct. It also doesn't need the other short squat humans, pointy ear humans, or any of the other human but not really races.
Dnd doesn't need races because it makes them all meaningless anyway.
Why can't cats just be a breed of dogs? Do they really need to be a separate species?
no we need more. goblins, gremlins, pygmy's, midgets, animated garden gnomes
Most playable races are just bad human look-alikes anyway who aren't even meaningfully different from humans, or could easily be covered by different humans instead. You don't need freak races or to check off the obligatory fantasy race checklist.
>Human
>Elf
>Dwarf
We already know what the perfect party comp is.
But Aragorn is technically a half-elf.
isn't he more like 1/64 of an elf?
I thought the elf part was like 66 generations ago. You might as well call him half-angel while you are at it since that was only a few more generations back from the elf.
Though his wife was still his 1st cousin.
that's legal in Wales
It is legal in lots of places.
Still funny in the context of those two though because despite the age disparity they are still 1st cousins (just 66 and 63 times removed, or something like that)
He was in his late 80s during the trilogy. You tell me.
It really doesn't. I don't include any short races in my games as playable races. They exist but I don't let people play them when I run D&D. Whenever I want to be an butthole to PCs I use a shortrace NPC as my mouthpiece. The Local Lord is a shortrace character - a gnome - who often underpays the PCs or tries to.
Yes. The last time D&D tried to be anything but the gray goo of fantasy gaming, it nearly killed the company.
D&D was specifically Sword & Sorcery in origins, and the High Fantasy aspects were added to bolster sales.
Why not just one race?
>humanoid
Why not just one class?
>adventurer
Enter
exit
If your 'fantasy race' are just humans with weird ears, that's a problem with your setting not a problem with the concept of various fantasy races.
They should at least have:
>different dietary requirements
>slightly or majorly different psychology
>possibly different internal anatomy (as in, something like avian air sacs or three chambered heart, do what you want with this)
>different diseases or poisons affect them differently (dog girl can't eat chocolate, for example)
>obviously drastically different culture and language
The only problem here is uncreative DM's, and of course D&D itself being homogenized commericalized garbage.
Do we really need all the medium sized creatures as separate races? Couldn't one just be a subrace of one of the other two?
Gnomes should be far creatures that inhabit forests and have mushroom houses, not an extremely flanderised wizard/tinkerer race when that should just be a human sub-culture
Forest gnomes are a thing
>halflings
lord of the rings
>dwarf
lord of the rings
>gnome
elves in the non lord of the rings meaning of little magic guys that maybe make cookies
there's honestly a better justifcation for D&D having three short races then having tiefeling and dragonborn in the CRB when they're both just "I don't know my dad but I know he gave me superpowers"
The Goode Professor's usage of the term elf for his take on the Aos Si or Ljosalfar is not an incorrect use. To say that gnomes are "nontolkien elves" is just advertising that you do not read broadly, and never looked past Tolkien's own writings on Faery Stories. Worst of all, it implies you let your opinions be dictated to you by historylets who actively hate northern European and English myth.
In dungeon meshi they're called tallmen instead of humans.
Yes, and halflings would be halfoot (since their tracks are one size smaller than any other race) but OP Is not talking about DM were everyone Is human.
What's actually weird is thinking how most japanese people don't know/care about DnD but the Japanese nerds who created games like LoZ in the 1980s would have had to be playing the japanese version of DnD in the 1970s when it was some hyper niche gaijin shit. It's had a massive impact on the creation of the isekai scourge and a whole slew of japanese fantasy and scifi works but japanese people don't really care that much for it for the most part.
They played B/X but it was hard to find polyhedral dice and they wanted to get out from under TSR so made Sword World
what I did for my setting is just have them all be "dwarves", with "gnome" and "halfling" being coloquial terms used by some other races depending on the context.
>a traditional dwarf will talk proudly of the great dwarven cities of old
>human villagers may speak of the "gnomes" who often come out of burrows in the forest, with bags full of gems that they trade at the village market
>a pompous elf might condescendingly refer to the lone dwarf thief as a "halfling" as a way to mock his size
they can range from small to chunky, be miners, brewers, smiths, inventors, warriors, merchants and priests, and have a natural connection with the natural, primordial magic of the earth.
>traditional dwarves cities represent the old, classic citatels of impressive stonework, build deep inside even older mountains
>less-traditional, the common dwarves are trying to make a living in a world that has outpaced them, living in forests and mountain ranges in small villages and towns, doing shallow diggings for minerals and communing with nature and stone
>modern, progressive dwarves represent industrialization, they've taken smithing to a whole new level by building impossible machines, automating their production and rising again as a main world power
To play the game? It doesn't need any races really.
To make a bunch of different soda water flavours players can mess around with endlessly so they feel like they're doing something? Needs more and it sells well while also reducing the amount of actual game played thus reducing complaints/need for testing so its an overall win for the company.
D&D needs them, but nobody else does.
>they’re short so they should all be the same
So sick of this braindead take.
Halflings, Dwarves, and Gnomes are too similar for typical "races" in a game, I agree. Typically race selection should either be really small and focused with big differences (4 to 5 max but very different physically), or big and sprawling with lots of snowflakery, in which case Dwarves, Gnomes, and Halflings could be all different races.
Personally, I don't mind the race selection of many demihumans as long as its curated. I personally run Gnomes as being the core "race" with Halflings being a type of gnome (more farmland as opposed to living in forests). I also like to imply all demihumans as well as regular humans are all one "race" and can interbreed freely and create weird hybrids and/or subsume each others populations, so finding some random weird hookah-smoking gnomes in the high mountains is totally believable in a setting.
Tolkien dodges the problem by having Halflings and Dwarves with no Gnomes, you could also dodge it by having just Dwarves and Gnomes instead of Halflings. Halflings fit better for middle earth anyway and are less interesting for high fantasy IMHO.
I also like to assign stats to all the demihuman races-
>Strength: Giants/Barbarian/Amazon type people
>Dexterity: Gnomes (they are "magic" but it's more stealth/disappearing magic)
>Con: Dwarves
>Int: Elves ofc
>Wis: Hulder/Huldra (troll/nature people- women have tails)
>Cha: Half Demon/Dragon/Wizard/Catch all weirdos that have glowing eyes and weird hair/birthmarks. Often Sorcerers or other Cha caster types.
Then generic HUMAN humans can be tied to any stat and are the penultimate "jack of all traits". But all of these are considered "human" in the world and are separate from orcs, trolls, animal people, etc.
Gnomes are 100% pointless.
No one plays as them ever, no one finds them cool. They're not fetish-bait either.
Roll Gnomes into Dwarves.
Gnomes most often make halflings look worse by comparison and that's very important.
Halflings are fetishbait, so they have to stay.
They can be to Dwarves what Humans are to Elves.
Gnomes are a third wheel that literally no one likes or cares about. There has never been a great gnome character that people are fans of.