Culture Spotlight: Halflings and Gnomes (OCS)

[Orion]

OCS= Orion Campaign Setting. First let's get some design principles for these writeups out of the way

--Each writeup should be novel. Recapitulating the presentation of a race from Greyhawk isn't interesting to anyone. If a GM would rather have standard halflings than OCS halflings, he already knows how to do it. The spotlights should present new options.

--Nevertheless, they should be recognizably grounded in existing D&D lore.

--Every spotlight should come with at least three distinct playable archetypes. There are enough classes available in Tome that no one should be pidgeonholed as a "barbarian race" or "wizard race."

--Every spotlight should have obvious campaign hooks, where you could base a whole game around working for or against that culture's interests.

Not that that's done, let's look at

Halflings: the patter of tiny jackboots

The 3.5 PHB tries desperately to convince that halflings are nomadic thieves and tricksters. This makes some sense. They had to make Halflings not be Hobbits, so they just kept the same favored class and designed a society around that. And don't get my wrong--nomadic thieves can be cool PCs. I'm going to take them as the "standard interpretation" against which I rebel.

Fortunately, there's a lot of halfling baggage still in the books that doesn't fit with the current version. Actually, the PHB writeup is extremely weird in that it appears there WAS another way of handling halflings at some point that got erased. They keep using phrases like "some" and "on the other hand" to indicate that there are two kinds of halflings, but onyl delivering one. Look at the section of halfling land. Some halflings pick up and move wherever opportunities are; others make travel a way of life. WTF? Anyway, Yondalla has a frickin cornucopia on her shield and is about defending the community. This is really obviously the goddess of a stationary, traditional, agrarian community. Can you smell the copyright infringement? So what we're going to do is ignore the gypsy thing and write up some agrarian halflings who aren't hobbits.

Too Late for the Pebbles to Vote

Halflings are tiny. Like, ridiculously tiny. Frankly asking us to accept a 30 pound PC is ridiculous. They should be more like 80 pounds and 4 feet tall to be vaguely credible adventurers. But the point is, they don't eat very much and they don't take up much space. They are also usually lawful good. They all work together for the good of the whole, and they don't fight amongst themselves.

All this adds to up ridiculous population densities. And that makes it easy for them to hold land. One halfling warrior might lose to a human in a fight. But the halflings can seriously outnumber any medium-size culture 5-to-1. And every one of them joins the militia. Nobody can win against those numbers. Furthermore, halflings are easy to equip. It doesn't take a lot of iron to field a huge number of half-plated halflings.

Halflings will tolerate ridiculous population densities, but eventually population pressure builds up all the same. Plus, they perceive their neighbors as lawless and therefore threatening; eventually someone from adjoining lands will raid or otherwise cross the halflings. If not, they remain the strongest army in the region. They may be the only power around that can repel a horde which ravages a nearby region. When any of these happens, the halflings expand.

They move into a contested area and restore order. They set up the native king with "advisors" from the halfling capitol. They take half the land for themselves and settle it, thus outnumbering the locals 3-to-1. Then they build some roads and dams and start collecting taxes. All this leads to one, inevitable conclusion:

Halflings speak Latin.

Halfling Territory

"Known Space" is bounded at the bottom by the surface of the earth, at the top by the Astral, and at the cardinal directions by dragons. The halflings own a substantial portion of the interior islands, having crowded everyone else out to the edges. Their "core" territories are a large number of small islands orbiting the Blessed Isle, a lush forest paradise where many of the celestials live. The Blessed isle drains water from the Elemental Plane through portals, heating them to produce a continual stream of clouds that keep the homelands warm and fertile. In ancient times, the angels helped the halflings tether their islands together with flexible bridges of enchanted mithril. This was the beginning of unified halfling culture and the halfling bureaucracy & astronomy. This deed is honored to this day by the title of the chief halfling cleric, the Pontifex.

Their aristocracy wear togas and live in villas and do patriciany things. Traditionally, first children become administrators, second children become officers, third children become knights, and fourth children become clergy. The core territories look exactly like Italy and are very boring. We won't describe them much because PCs should never go there. Outlying provinces conform their architecture to local materials. They also have substantial numbers of nonhalfling mercenaries, contractors, and so on and tend to feel ironically more cosmopolitan than the homeland.

Allies and Enemies

Halflings have non-aggression pacts and peaceful trade relations with the dwarves and drow, mostly because they don't want their land. They have less peaceful trade relations with the aasimar, hobgoblins, and humans, marred by border disputes. Everyone else is beneath them.


Halfling Air & Ground Forces

The Halfling Legions consist of huge numbers of tower-shielded, half-plated sword warriors. Actually they have way fewer full plate than soldiers, and would drop to chain shirts if they had to mobilize in force. A half-plated vanguard unit tends to inspire fear and break enemy lines though.

Their garrisons and militia, on the other hand, are scaleclad crossbowmen. It's assumed that the professionals will always be able to call up substantial reserves for ranged support. In both cases, massive AC due to equipment and racials gives them the advantage over warriors of any other race. Each legion has a small corps of warmages or gnome wizards charged with cracking hard targets. Whenever possible, every commander of more than 100 troops is assigned a Lantern Archon bodyguard, who uses Aid to soak stray arrows and uses teleport to deliver his orders.

The halflings have an enormous number of airships. When they must defend against aerial attackers, or when they are softening up a land-based target, they use their ships as launch platforms for strike teams of pegasus knights.

Halfling Adventurers

The Imperium makes great headway with strength of numbers, tight formations, and endless scale-wearing crossbowmen. But that's not really a viable role for a PC. A tiny guy in armor is not much of a melee threat, and PCs are supposed to fight as individuals. For a small character to credibly project presence he needs one of three things: spellcasting, bonus damage, or a way to get big or bring big friends.

So Halfling Rogues are still a big deal. Most of them are trained as scouts or spies by the Strategos. But this is a warrior culture, and those elite warriors tend to be Knights. It doesn't matter how big you are when your mount is Large, or how high your strength is when you're rolling Challenge damage. Most patricians send their second children to join the Pegasus knights, who red horsehair crests spell "relief" to every halfling flatfoot.

Halflings are not so big on spellcasting, relying on thier alliance with the gnomes for magical backup. They do have an order of griffin-riding paladins who guard and control the wizard school. Those halflings who study there tend to pursue a specialized and battle-ready path of study, becoming warmages and summoners. Finally, the imperial cult ordains a great many clerics.

Halfling Equipment and Enchantment

Halfling soldiers use reinforced, heavy stabbing swords alongside their shields. New Weapon: Halfling Estoc (use Elven Thinblade stats)

Easily obtained halfling magic items include Horsehair Helms of Harisma, Magic Magic Togas (sic), Bridles of Blurring (for their pegasi) and Terror Estocs. Feather-Fall Spurs are also issued to all cavalry above the very lowest rank.

Halfling Religion

(Note: in this setting, divine casting is not "granted" by anyone. It's a learnable skill that works for anyone with the Wisdom and the practice)

The Halflings venerate powerful celestials in much the way the Orthodox celebrate saints. Every halfling has a patron angel based on his birthday and another based on her occupation. Prayers and offerings are directed to various angels at chapels constructed by military chaplains. Since they don't believe in a God, they actually worship the angels themselves. Hound Archons and the like pop down on a regular basis to give instruction in divine magic. Conquered peoples are required to tithe but otherwise free to practice whatever they want.

Halfling Clerics should seriously pick an angel from real-world demonology. Michael has Fire, Strength, and Protection. Gabriel has Air, Travel, and War. Uriel has Death, Water, and Knowledge. Etc.

Halfling Campaign Hooks

For the Halflings: Pax Minimibus: The PCs homelands was recently conquered. The PCs are recognized as unusually talented and respected members of their communites. People of power and influence. Naturally, they were too dangerous to leave in place. But murdering them would piss off the locals. So they offered them a job. A diverse group of PCs from various client states is sent to a province of high unrest to stabilize the situation. Their mandate includes driving out spies and rivals armies, subduing local resistance by force or bribery, and investigating the local officials for corruption.

Sample Adventure: During the conquest the orc priests were killed and their temples were burned. Now the enslaved orcs want to rebuild, and they'll riot over it. Meanwhile, a few priests have turned up in the countryside preaching sedition. Either kill them and crack down on the orcs, dig up a priests who can be convinced to preach a pro-halfling sermon, or fight for orcish independence.

Against the Halflings: Brave Hearts The halflings have rolled into the neighborhood and started taking stuff over. Your people don't live in the rich farmland so you were spared the first wave. But you do have something the halflings want--mines or something. Keeping your independence means chasing out war parties, brokering trade agreements, killing monsters to keep the mines running, and forging a coalition with your neighbors.

----

BONUS: I'm not sure why this goes in this thread, because I don't picture halfling bards as a thing, but I've been wanting to post this class for a while.

Tome Bard: As 3.5 Bard, except replace spells known and spells per day with those of 3.5 Sorcerer. Add all wizard spells to the bard spell list.

[RiotGearEpsilon]

Alright, this shit be fabulous. Please continue

[Avoraciopoctules]

Agreed. I'd like to see more of this.

[Vebyast]

Halfling civilization reinterpreted as Pax-Romana-era Rome by dint of stupid population densities and Organized Good alignment? Win and Awesome.

[Josh_Kablack]

All this adds to up ridiculous population densities. And that makes it easy for them to hold land. One halfling warrior might lose to a human in a fight. But the halflings can seriously outnumber any medium-size culture 5-to-1. And every one of them joins the militia. Nobody can win against those numbers. Furthermore, halflings are easy to equip. It doesn't take a lot of iron to field a huge number of half-plated halflings.

I think you need to go even further here.

In terms of food and water sources (or wartime rations), five 30 lb halflings require only as much support as a single 150 lb human.

And while armor for small characters is cheap, the weapon that halflings get bonuses to (at least in 3.5) is actually FREE. Furthermore, halflings present a small target profile and have stealth bonuses that allow them to outright excel at ranged warfare in any environment where cover and concealment are available. Yeah elven archers get all the attention due to their superior ranges - but that range only matters on battlefields where there's a clear line of sight for hundreds of feet . Meanwhile halfling slingers are more accurate (+1 size, +1 racial, same + to dex), more stealthy (+4 size to hide, +2 racial to move silently) present harder targets (+1 to size to AC), are more resistant to camp diseases (+1 to all saves) have better morale (+2 to save vs fear) and a party of 5 halfling can be outfitted with armor and slings for less than the cost of a single elven composite longbow.



On a slight tangent: the favored class of Rogue, the proficiency with easily manufactured weapons, the stealth bonuses and the cultural affinity for colonization and scouts means that any conquered halfling territory will harbor partisan halfling units using guerrilla tactics to win back their land from the oppressors. Think Red Dawn meets Bilbo Baggins here.

[Orion]

Well, if favored classes *did* anything I would have changed it to Knight. Or Knight and Rogue, I guess, given that Tome races have two.

I was actually going to have them exploiting their "thrown" bonus with javelineers, but I could see units of slingers for rough terrain.

[Orion]

Gnomes: Who Are Those Guys, Anyway?
You don't need me to tell that that 3rd edition Gnomes always kinda got the short end of the stick. First they had a favored class: illusionist, which was stupid. Who gets 1/9th of a favored class? Then they got bard, which was even worse. Okay, trickster, kind of a rogue/caster, fine. But the music thing didn't fit, and mechanically it was useless. Favored Class is a mechanic for multiclass characters, and bards have even less reason to multiclass than wizards do.

But the real problem is that the design space was crowded. You could do a gnome rogue, but would anybody who wasn't metagming realize you weren't a halfling? No. At least until your DM ran "In the Lair of the Badger." You could play up the gnomes' magic roots, but then you just had a race of skinny, nature-loving mages. IE Elves. Then there's the tech thing, but there never really *rules* for that, and I don't like consigning a whole race to being comedy heroes.

So the new deal is that Gnomes are going to have favored class: Wizard, and elves will be re-written to deemphasize arcane magic. Gnomes will be the go-to race for wise old masters of arcane power. They even invented wizards.

Curiosity Killed the Cat...

The forest gnomes are a dwindling race, consisting of a few embattled and underpopulated clans of forest nomads. Since before anyone has records, they stalked the woods and hills on the edge of limbo, quietly gathering herbs and whatever valuable the chaos spewed forth. Dragons ruled the borderlands then as now, but in the old days gnomes were beneath the dragons notice. Then the gnomes made the choice that changed everything.

The history of the gnomes begins on the day they stole magic from the dragons. Employing utmost stealth, they studied the dragons long enough to transcribe several entire creatures into their newly formulated alphabet. Then they developed a grammar which allowed them to use their stored dragonwords for magic. Eventually they began a program of archeology and archiving, seeking out lost words and incorporate them into their spellbooks before they could grow into dragons. That was their mistake. Rendered unable to reproduce, the enraged dragons struck back. First they scoured the forests and captured most of the gnomes. They took them back to their caves and began to rename them, eventually creating the kobolds. These they unleashed to hunt and slay the remaining gnomes.

...So I Reanimated It

A few stubborn forest gnomes stalk the ancestral homeland to this day, having forsworn wizardry to better conceal themselves. The wizards, however, elected to flee. However, dispute over where to flee to divided the race. A popular necromancer proposed that they settle the lower islands and the ground. Even back then, ghosts and spectres were common sights in the lower levels, and it was known that among the few things dragons feared were incorporeal creatures with ability damage touch attacks. Under his guidance, they established the Midnight School, a hidden academy devoted to the advancement of necromancy and illusion.

Others refused to seek the dubious comfort of the haunted surface. They traveled inward until eventually encountering the halfling empire. Well, no empire gets far without its scholar and mages, and the expansionistic halflings saw an opportunity. They took in the gnomes, and over time the cultures grew close, though not identical. These days halflings have names like Marcus Secundus Aurelius and Gnomes have names like Markos.

Gnome Territory

The largest population of gnomes are the slave class of the halfling regime. They can be found everywhere in the Halfling territory, but the only territory they can be said to control is the Lykeion or White Tower. The world's premier school of wizardry occupies an island of its own, with visitors discouraged by the halfling paladins who both defend and monitor the resident wizards. The lower levels of the tower function as a monastery where massive numbers of monastic venerate the angels from behind vows of silence. Their restraint from language and pursuit of ecstatic experience is believed to prevent the wizards' magic from destabilizing the island. The wizards, monastics, and paladins collectively comprise the White Rose Order, an LG group dedicated to advancing the universal good, inside and outside of imperial territory or approval. The school's faculty are of sufficient power and influence to operate mostly autonomously, even enacting a number of policies which actively displease the emperor. (Foremost among them, offering temporary scholarly residencies to any knowledge seekers who are not Evil).

The surface gnomes, meanwhile, assert authority over relatively little land. Their demand for raw materials is very slight, and mostly fulfilled by contracting out services to the warlords of various marginal societies. What they do have is an enormous network of "waystations," small shelters and caches concealed by illusion, maintained and defended by animated undead. The White Order has recently attempted to imitate this network but with less success and fewer undead staff. The largest settlement of surface gnomes is a trade outpost near the mouth of Hell, where gnome representative engage in trade with both the devils and the vampire lords.

Gnome Adventurers

If you're a gnome adventurer, you're probably a graduate of the Lykeion. This usually means that you're a Wizard but it doesn't have to. They have another program of study. Long ago, a committee of gnome sages compiled a book called the Liber Mortifaciens, which contained, in coded and ciphered Greek, how to kill or neutralize every creature of the known world, along with condensed formulae of spells deemed useful for the task. The White Council that governs the school has Assassins running out their ears. They train some Beguilers too.

Other than that, career options are pretty limited. You can be a more specialized arcane caster, but then you won't get into a good gnome frat, and every will laugh at you behind their back. Unless you are a Dread Necromancer studying with the Dark Gnomes, of course.

[BearsAreBrown]

Is the Gnome theft of Draconic Magic linked to the Kobold rivalry or is that scrapped?

[Orion]

Yes, I mentioned in the wizard spotlight that kobolds were created by dragons to kill gnomes.

[Username17]

All this horse stuff seems improperly scaled down to Halflings. D&D posits a whole world of ridable canines that small people use. The barbarian goblins ride Worgs and the halfling outriders ride riding dogs. Rather than having the princelings stand on the backs of pegasi, they should bust out the good old blink dog. And to a lesser extent those winged dogs from SS.

There's a whole panoply of dog-related things for the elites to put on emblems and offer prayers to. From hound archons to senmurv to fu dogs. The blink dog angle also gives them an interesting fighting style (ride up, throw javelins, teleport away), and built-in opposition in the form of displacer beasts.

-Username17

[RiotGearEpsilon]

Blink dogs do seem more elegantly in tune with the Halfling Skirmish-knight than the mighty steed.

I do like the idea of a halfling knight standing astride a potent destrier... But how the hell would he hit anyone once he was up there? He doesn't have enough reach!

Breed war-dogs!

[Orion]

Hmm. Blink Dogs are a cool critter I tend to forget exists. Your proposal is tempting. On the other hand, I'm already going to have goblins as a sympathetic, canine-based PC race. Also I like Pegasuses and never get to use them for anything. Halflings on large mounts can attack with thrown weapons, even when their mounts are in melee.

I'm torn now between looking up the winged dogs you're talking about and statting up pegasus ponies.

[Quantumboost]

I'm torn now between looking up the winged dogs you're talking about and statting up pegasus ponies.

The Winged Dogs he's talking about are exactly that: dogs with wings and a couple stat mods. They're the example creature for the "Winged" template in Savage Species.

[Username17]

There are a lot of things to ride in D&D, and it is a fucking travesty that so many people end up getting stuck riding horses even at high level. Even if conceptually you want to ride something horselike, you've still got a lot of awesome options. But you also have a lot of non-horse options.

• Dog Like
• Riding Dog
• Climb Dog
• Winged Dog
• Celestial Dog
• Blink Dog
• Wolf
• Dire Wolf
• Worg
• Shadow Mastiff
• Fu Dog
  
  Horse Like
• Horse
• Zebra
• Celestial Charger
• Unicorn
• Pegasus
• Nightmare
• Rapidash
• Asperi
• Ecalypse
• Cauchemar
• Eohippus
  
  Lizard Like
• Wyvern
• Dragon
• Dinosaur (this is like fifty different mounts right here)
• Fire Drakes
• Giant Snakes
  
  Avians
• Axe Beaks
• Giant Eagles
• Giant Owls
• Griffins
• Hippogriffs
• Chokkobo
• Peryton
  
  Miscellaneous Vertebrates
• Manticore
• Gorgon
• Giant Bats
• Dire Bats
• Howler
• Giant Frog
• Ice Toad
• Colossal Toad
• Sea Lion
• Shark
• Dire Weasel
  
  Miscellaneous Invertebrates
• Siege Crab
• Giant Slug
• Giant Spider
• Phase Spider
• Megapede
• Giant Beetle
• Spider Eater
• Giant Scorpion

And many more. This isn't even counting crazy crap like tunneling svirfneblin giant mole chariots.

-Username17

[...You Lost Me]

RIDE A RAPIDASH!!!!!

[Orion]

Literally the only mention of horses in the writeup is the pegasus knights and thier horsehair crests. Horsehair crests look awesome. That's justification enough right there.

I honestly hadn't thought about how halflings transport people and goods across individual islands. Blink dog infantry might be part of that, along with dog sled shipping and mail service. But if Goblins can ride Worgs, which are the size of horses, then Halflings can ride pegasi that are the size of horses.

[Maxus]

http://www.dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Rapidash_% ... Monster%29

How's that?

[Orion]

For shame, Maxus, I haven't posted Item Spotlight: Energy Stones yet.

[Quantumboost]

For shame, Maxus, I haven't posted Item Spotlight: Energy Stones yet.

No, for THAT you'll want to mention http://www.dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Eevee_%283.5e_Monster%29

[Vebyast]

Has anybody actually gone through the monster manual to figure out the most economical monster-based freight system? I mean, we can all dream of colossal toad convoys pulling literal boatloads of grain or building-size blocks of unbroken stone across the plains, but in reality colossal toads are insanely dangerous, hard to train, and they take fifty years to raise. You want something that can be built up rapidly if required (wars) but is still big enough to be useful compared to magical transportation.

Personally, I'm betting that the analysis will say tedriculos. They're really big and really strong, so they can pull a lot of stuff. Regeneration and plant monster means you could grow them like crazy. Best of all, they're CR 6 and (if I recall correctly) not all that hard to domesticate.

[Username17]

There are no rules for domesticating the tendridiculous. Also the amount of time it takes to grow the things is unknown. It could be growing like kudzu, but it could also be growing like a bristlecone pine. Seriously, we have no information on the economics side.

We can kind of assume that anything that is listed as being used as a mount, guard dog, or other domesticated animal is at least capable of being domesticated, but beyond that we are totally making shit up. Kobolds domesticated the dire weasel, frost giants domesticated the winter wolf, and goblins have a straight up treaty with worgs (just as Gith have with red dragons). There are rules for riding manticores, so it is obviously possible, but no information is given on who does that or how difficult it is.

As for what the most "economical" is, I suspect it really would be something with a "-" for intelligence. Probably a giant beetle or a skeleton of some kind. Because those things just do their jobs and don't require any "training" time on a beast by beast basis. Constructs would totally win, except that the gp costs on them are insane. It would take a very long time to pay off the construction costs for a stone horse. Being untiring and immortal, they probably would pay themselves off eventually, but the turnaround time for skeletons is much lower.

-Username17

[angelfromanotherpin]

I'm thought the Blink Dog's dimension door ability specifically said it only affected the blink dog, and thus couldn't take a rider with it.

[Josh_Kablack]

Has anybody actually gone through the monster manual to figure out the most economical monster-based freight system?

Here're my first two candidates.

Necromancy: 100 gp gets you a centaur skeleton which can carry 300 lbs at a speed of 50' or 900 lbs at a slower speed and never needs to stop for meals, naps or old age. And anyone who can cast Animate Dead can control at least 5 of them. You can get more and/or spend less if you're willing to work with the slower and weaker human skeletons. While it's a rules exploit that allows the instantaneous transit down a bucket brigade the "skeletal railway" that tosses crates or palanquins overhand from one skeleton to the next is actually really cool in a creepy way.

Demonology: Summon Monster IV and a horde of tricks with the Planar ally / Planar binding spells gets you a courier who can Greater Teleport with 50lbs at will. It's like having a fax machine that doesn't make duplicates, but can handle any item smaller than your furniture.

[Username17]

I'm thought the Blink Dog's dimension door ability specifically said it only affected the blink dog, and thus couldn't take a rider with it.

That is correct. There is a special saddle that allows the rider and gear to go along for the ride, but short of that you would indeed fall right on your ass the first time the blink dog shifted. Of course, that special saddle does exist (A&EG), so presumably any blink dog cavalry would make heavy use of it. Phase spider riders need something similar.

-Username17

[angelfromanotherpin]

I've been through the A+EG pdf on word searches for 'blink dog' 'dimension door' and 'saddle,' and I can't find this item you mention.