Culture Spotlight: Halflings and Gnomes (OCS)
Posted: Thu Feb 24, 2011 11:44 pm
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.
--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.