I would much prefer if halfling's got their +2 intelligence back, and got the favored classes rogue and wizard.
The intelligence suits halflings, picking up skills and learning things more quickly, suits their slave positions in cheliax and wandering life on river barges. Also suits their tendency to work their way into existing cities and cultures. Int adds a language. Theirs a 'crunch' and a 'fluff' reason for the Int bonus, and it does make sense.
This explanation gels well with the idea of a halfling wizard, not a school trained arcane master, but a vagrant hedge wizard, trained by a mentor, who given the halfling propensity for family is often an elder member of the halflings family, father/mother, aunt/uncle, elder brother/sister or eccentric cousin.
Any other opinions?
OR
Anyone happen to agree with me? :)
[P.S. bards are skillful characters, so this wouldn't really take from bards, so neither Lem nor a continued bard favored class is harmed by this suggestion. Hell, it augments thier bardic knowledge, which is a very halfling ability anyway.]
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I strongly favor halflings getting +2 Int, for a reason you mentioned -- it makes them more skilled.
If you look at halflings, whether they know how to garden or trapfind, halflings are shown as skillful characters. To that end, Int is the way to go.
On favored classes, Wizard backs up Int, but it doesn't have to be that class. But I do feel strongly about the Int.
I would much prefer if halfling's got their +2 intelligence back, and got the favored classes rogue and wizard.
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Anyone happen to agree with me? :)
I agree with you. There's another thread in this forum on this very issue.
Basically, halflings getting a bonus to charisma makes them too similar to gnomes. And gnomes are the ones you think of when you think of bards, not halflings (well, at least not me). The halfling characters I see played in my group have been either wizards or rogues... and once, we had a wizard/rogue/arcane trickster. I've seen gnome bards... but never a halfling bard. But, that's just in my group.
Having already created a thread on this subject, I will go ahead and make a counter proposal - Wisdom. The Alpha 2's halfling was way too similar to the Elf in terms of ability adjustments, while the Alpha 3 makes both small races Charismatic, which is redundant and just sort of odd. Wisdom fits halflings by
1) bolstering perception rolls (halflings are known for perception)
2) bolstering Will saves (halflings are known for their strong will)
3) bolstering their survival skills (halflings are often nomads)
4) reinforcing their pragmatism and common sense (excluding Mr. Took, a very common trait of halflins)
With this change, I again suggest a favored class shift. Druid or Ranger seems like a good choice (though I personally prefer Paladin, I'll just house-rule it for my CS like I did in 3.5).
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I would much prefer if halfling's got their +2 intelligence back, and got the favored classes rogue and wizard.
The intelligence suits halflings, picking up skills and learning things more quickly, suits their slave positions in cheliax and wandering life on river barges. Also suits their tendency to work their way into existing cities and cultures. Int adds a language. Theirs a 'crunch' and a 'fluff' reason for the Int bonus, and it does make sense.
This explanation gels well with the idea of a halfling wizard, not a school trained arcane master, but a vagrant hedge wizard, trained by a mentor, who given the halfling propensity for family is often an elder member of the halflings family, father/mother, aunt/uncle, elder brother/sister or eccentric cousin.
Any other opinions?
OR
Anyone happen to agree with me? :)
[P.S. bards are skillful characters, so this wouldn't really take from bards, so neither Lem nor a continued bard favored class is harmed by this suggestion. Hell, it augments thier bardic knowledge, which is a very halfling ability anyway.]
Hahahaha oh man, so when alpha 2 rolled out I remember three distinct threads saying how halflings getting an int bonus was not right, now they don't get it and there's a thread saying make it int again. I think that it should stay cha based and the gnome should be given an int base instead, I agree it is weird that both short races are extra charismatic.
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I'd favor halflings staying with Cha, gnomes going to Int. Halflings are personable, gnomes are clever, in my view :)Agreed. And gnomes should favor wizards, not spontaneous casters.
Absolutely not. The 3.5 gnome is pretty clearly slanted toward a spontaneous caster anyway, having inherent SLAs; the bard as a favored class was only a bad idea because beguiler wasn't in the core books. Paizo's take on them has pushed them even further in that direction, and done so completely to the good - the Paizo gnome is actually something truly distinct, rather than "just a shorter dwarf." Cha as a stat bonus and bard as a favored class are precisely what the Paizo gnome should get.
I also oppose the shift to Charisma for halflings - the Int bonus was exactly what the rogue-favored race needed, and should not have been changed. (I think two races with bard as favored is a little distasteful, but it's not such a big deal.)
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Having already created a thread on this subject, I will go ahead and make a counter proposal - Wisdom. The Alpha 2's halfling was way too similar to the Elf in terms of ability adjustments, while the Alpha 3 makes both small races Charismatic, which is redundant and just sort of odd. Wisdom fits halflings by
1) bolstering perception rolls (halflings are known for perception)
2) bolstering Will saves (halflings are known for their strong will)
3) bolstering their survival skills (halflings are often nomads)
4) reinforcing their pragmatism and common sense (excluding Mr. Took, a very common trait of halflins)With this change, I again suggest a favored class shift. Druid or Ranger seems like a good choice (though I personally prefer Paladin, I'll just house-rule it for my CS like I did in 3.5).
I agree with a WIS bonus. It makes them unique, and it makes a lot of sense. I would like a rouge/druid combo it works well.
Wizard though? I can't see enough Hobbits sitting around studying magic out of dusty tomes for that to be justified.
I can see them learning nature magic to maintain the perfect hobbiton and revere a nature goddess, wasn't that what Ydalla's favorite class was anyways?
In Alpha 2, I was in favor of changing halflings to +2 wis/druid favored class (and I still am, by the way), because to me giving them +2 to Intelligence makes them a race more intelligent than humans... I can see that in the case of elves, but I don't see it in halflings.
Then came Alpha 3 and changed the +2 Int/wizard favored class to +2 Cha/bard favored class, and even if it's not my ideal solution, it was a change for better.
All of this made me think about... This boards prove the sheer impossibility of pleasing everyone. We all like the game, and speaking for myself, I admire the brave effort and the great job the Paizo folks are doing, but since every one of us have his own ideas about how certain things should be, and his pet peeves about the game, it's truly impossible to fully please everyone.
Oops, I just entered in rant mode...
If there was to be an adjustment which I'm not sure is needed, I would agree with wisdom.
After reading the flavor for the halfling, wisdom seems to fit better than int bonuses...though charisma works well too.
gnomes +2 CON +2 INT -2 STR favored class bard and wizard
halfling +2 DEX +2CHA -2 STR favored class rogue and bard
(GNOMES WERE ALWAYS ILLUSIONIST BEFORE 3RD ED F*&KED THEM INTO UNPLAYABILITY, play baldurs gate or baldurs gate 2 to see some real gnomes at work, 1st and 2nd ed gnomes rocked)
nuff said
The gnome's spell like abilities mean Charisma is important to them. My first D&D game included a player as a gnome bard... he was charismatic and silly and a bit of a trickster and it worked just fine as a gnome. I don't see halflings/hobbits in that way (most of the hobbits in LotR seemed a bit on the serious side).
But, gnome alchemists and inventors are also out there... which suggests Int.
So there's the problem with coming up with racial stats for any race... members of any given race will be all over the place with their ability scores. Some gnomes are smarter, some are more charismatic.
Where does that put the race generally? No idea. Up to me, I think I'd scratch the ability modifiers for everyone.
However, it's a game, with ability modifiers used to distinguish races... so what works best for the gnome? The charisma obviously ties in nicely with the racial spell like abilities. It also works well with going bard (something that feels appropriate from my own gaming experience). Nothing is stopping a gnome from bumping up his int. He's just not naturally going to be smarter than your average human.
What about halflings? Charisma doesn't play to any particular halfling strength I'm aware of. Halflings are small, often rogues, wanderers, and clever (skillful) types. That suggests an Int. bonus to me. Wisdom also works. But charisma? That's basically asking halflings to become gnomes w/o the spell like abilities.
I know, everyone has their own view on this... and the designers can't please everyone. So the question is, from the perspective of game design, what makes the most sense for distinguishing races from one another. What mechanically makes a halfling not an elf and not a gnome? Is there enough of a distinction to justify having both races in the book? If there isn't, then either the crunch behind the races needs to be changed or a race needs to be dropped. Dropping a race is out, so that leaves distinguishing them.
It could be that, even when Wisdom is perhaps better suited to halflings than charisma to some people (including me), perhaps it is too much of a bonus given that it would add to the +2 bonus to saves against fear, and the stacking +1 halfling luck save bonus...
I don't know if it is so, but perhaps Jason tried to find a suitable ability score appropiate for halflings that at the same time didn't bolster those racial features even more, and charisma was the chosen one.
Having already created a thread on this subject, I will go ahead and make a counter proposal - Wisdom. The Alpha 2's halfling was way too similar to the Elf in terms of ability adjustments, while the Alpha 3 makes both small races Charismatic, which is redundant and just sort of odd. Wisdom fits halflings by
1) bolstering perception rolls (halflings are known for perception)
2) bolstering Will saves (halflings are known for their strong will)
3) bolstering their survival skills (halflings are often nomads)
4) reinforcing their pragmatism and common sense (excluding Mr. Took, a very common trait of halflins)With this change, I again suggest a favored class shift. Druid or Ranger seems like a good choice (though I personally prefer Paladin, I'll just house-rule it for my CS like I did in 3.5).
I totally agree. Though Int gives "more skill points," halflings as rogues strike me as more cunning - and this helps boosts perception skills important to rogues.
And you can say "Int for rogues!" but Int is secondary for rogues and primary for wizards, and that leads to "loads of halfling wizards" which doesn't have a lot of precedent.
I really think that the obsessive "one physical one mental" stat boost for the demihumans is a problem and it's causing all of this. Some (halforc) really should have two physicals, and some just don't qualify well for a physical or a mental.
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I would much prefer if halfling's got their +2 intelligence back, and got the favored classes rogue and wizard.
The intelligence suits halflings, picking up skills and learning things more quickly, suits their slave positions in cheliax and wandering life on river barges. Also suits their tendency to work their way into existing cities and cultures. Int adds a language. Theirs a 'crunch' and a 'fluff' reason for the Int bonus, and it does make sense.
This explanation gels well with the idea of a halfling wizard, not a school trained arcane master, but a vagrant hedge wizard, trained by a mentor, who given the halfling propensity for family is often an elder member of the halflings family, father/mother, aunt/uncle, elder brother/sister or eccentric cousin.
Any other opinions?
OR
Anyone happen to agree with me? :)
[P.S. bards are skillful characters, so this wouldn't really take from bards, so neither Lem nor a continued bard favored class is harmed by this suggestion. Hell, it augments thier bardic knowledge, which is a very halfling ability anyway.]
Strongly agree - gnomes are the cute ones.
the cute ones??? thats 3.0 talking, thats the Gnome that was so uncared for that it got shuffled out of 4.0. Gnomes have had over a decade of being strong wizards before Wizards of the Coast gave them a pointy hat and told them to stand out in the yard. Jan Jansen is furious (if he wasnt so busy making bruiser-mates) in 1st and second ed HALFING COULD NOT EVEN BE WIZARDS!!! they were magically inept (except for clerical magics which makes me start to warm up to a wisdom bonus for them)and the Gnome WAS THE ONLY CORE RACE WITH A BONUS TO INTELLIGENCE and could multiclass as wizard with ease.
grahhhh! give the halfling WIS if CHA doesnt work ( and in the pathfinder system, it almost even better for rogues ) but dont give them INT, it would be a slapped on concept to a race that doesnt need help (the Gnome is still suffering from the "I dont know what this race does?" ailment
plus if the halfling got a bonus to INT, they would be better adventuring wizards than elves. plus they would be annoyingly similar