Littlefolk appreciation thread

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A lot of famous explorers are halflings - partly because they're a friendly, charismatic and yet adventurous society, and partly because they can go just as far by boat or steed but need a lot less food and supplies than a human expedition.

They get on well with cats, and especially with that race of upright intelligent housecats some mad wizard invented that sell heather and catnip liquor. They often partner up in trade caravans together, and playing a duel with fiddles or banjos is common.

Halflings like strangers and they've an unrelenting curiosity for everything novel. Once that curiosity is exhausted, though, they tend to get a stranger drunk and ditch them. They've got a surprising tolerance for booze. That goes for all the halflings except those dour, religious ones who fight from armored caravans and don't like drink and don't like strangers. They say when their leader died, all the clans were given a drum made from his own skin!

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The best fantasy midgets are Lalafell from FFXIV.

Powerful Mages who rule a city founded on free trade and capitalism,worship god of death and taxes , with little morals and tons of wealth to throw in everyone's faces and act smug about.

Prove me wrong.

FF crystal chronicles' Lilty were also pretty badass. They were the first to make iron and basically ruled the world until their mines ran dry.
Even then they're stronger than literally everyone else despite being half the size and can carry a fuckton of armor.

I forgot about them.

This is how I'm going to do small folk in my setting though.

A smaller race means a smaller body, which means smaller plates, houses, weapons, armor, and so on. In places where food/farmland is abundant their populations would explode. They would find strength in numbers and as a formation. Their fortifications would be as large as is feasible, something determined by materials available and necessity, but they would be swarming with guardians when compared to the larger races.

If the setting is the kind were proper full plate and mounted heavy cavalry exist, but firearms are taboo because you have autism, they're going to fair poorly on open fields unless magic has replaced firearms. But you still have to account for the enemy having magic as well. All of this means they're likely going to get pushed out of the richer flood plains and river valleys by the larger races. So they'd either be forced to maintain a hunter-gatherer society like some of the pre-contact pygmies, always moving to avoid the giants, or they reside in remote, well fortified, locations, which limits their population levels immensely. They would be able to sustain their population levels in the more hostile/remote locations simply because they need less food, but significant population growth, even with industrialization, is out of the question. Eventually, to continue growing economically and socially, they'd have to open their borders and import food.

Which will drastically change their society as they know it.

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They could always become fishermen. Imagine having twice the crew (or twice the cargo hold) because they do not take up a lot of space. Trade and fishing could sort them out if they pursue many agrarian methods.

What if they had Firearms almost exclusively? Likewise, what if they had a monopoly on magic or at least were the first race to discover and utilize magic for military and expansionist purposes?

They might have a hard time making powerful firearms, the kick of a musket would be harder to handle for a gnome or something.
So smaller guns, probably less punch but still if they exclusively had them it'd be pretty powerful considering whoever had guns ended up ruling the fucking world.

They could crew artillery easy though. If you give them both they're pretty dang strong. Use magic to create Golems or conjure monsters to fight for them, or even just make trenches and Earthworks that force you to cross a horrible no man's land while they shoot the fuck out of you with their midget guns.

How halflings fight in my setting:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_wagon

An after thought, in regards to heavy cavalry. Ff horses, camels, or any other large domestic beast of burden exist, it's well within reason that any halfling-like race that is near enough to a larger race, like men, who have domesticated these animals already, would have acquired their own either by theft, luck, or trade. So while heavily armored cavalry would not be likely, groups of two to four could easily be transported without any sort of wagon or chariot. So rather than having a single horseback archer, you'd have a small group working together from a single animal. This would lend itself well to maintaining security and a wide range of territory, especially in regions like the steppes, tundra, or deserts. Especially if these places are high above sea level and have, as a result, lower oxygen levels. If your setting has oxygen and not elemental air.

Basically, Tolkien's hobbits and thus the stereotypical comfy halfling, would only exist as long as they were left alone.

That would definitely be a viable lifestyle. They'd easily turn out much like the Pacific Polynesians, spreading across remote islands, where the relative safety from larger mainland threats and abundant food, would result in cycles of population explosions, and either a mass exodus back to the open ocean, or a collapse.

Then they would eventually come to dominate the world as a whole. Their firearms would likely kick harder (relatively) and be heavier (again relatively), but as long as they could maintain a total monopoly on the most advanced weapons, they'd have a significant advantage. But it's unlikely they could keep such an edge for long. No single society in history has done so for very long, and secrets eventually leak, while someone a couple of nations over discovers a break through that you missed or didn't have the means to explore.

(to be continued)

Tiny fighter jets.

Actually how would they do in a modern-advanced setting?
What about something like a cyberpunk one?

Fuck I want cyber-gnomes or cyber-halflings now, someone get some art of that!

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(con)

Magic is too much of a wild card, as it's significance and capabilities vary too greatly from setting to setting, and system to system. It's something we would need to define and quantify before discussing it any further. Otherwise it remains what it typically is: a plot device reserved for use by the author or a significant few participants.

On the topic of trenches, fixed and mobile artillery, and armored vehicles. These advances generally require significant numbers and partial or heavy industry. The volume and stretch of a trench, and thus it's effectiveness, is proportional to the size, strength, and number of people building it. Larger races would be able to move more dirt more quickly and efficiently, but would also require deeper/taller and wider positions. Artillery is great for securing no-man lands, well fortified positions, and choke points, but it's terrible when it comes to securing the primary organs of society: farmland and dispersed population centers. Armored vehicles would be the answer to both enemy cavalry and pike formations, and perhaps even artillery if they're incredibly armored, but one or two would quickly be captured and reverse engineered by the enemy. Also, as mobile weapon platforms, they would a massive drain on resources, as a significant amount of timber, steel (or X metal), labor, and munitions would have to be spent to maintain and equip them. Couple this with the risk of break down, pre-mature capture by the enemy (only one or two shots fired/enemies killed), and it would a potentially game ending investment that could go either way.

Numbers or chimp strength. Apes in general have lots of muscle, but humans are on the lower end relative to their cousins.

That is more a human adaptation to living on open plains and a consequence of modern industry than size.

If your halflings still live a life dependent on climbing, sure, give them fantastic relative upper body strength. They'll need it.

What if they had stronger lower bodies? Sort of like a kangaroo situation where their sprinting is more a jumping run, give them crazy beefy legs.
Give them a bit of a balancing factor since they could jump to be on eye level with a human, and probably kick them in the face.

>. Artillery is great for securing no-man lands, well fortified positions, and choke points, but it's terrible when it comes to securing the primary organs of society: farmland and dispersed population centers

What? Artillery is good anywhere all the time, it just requires an element to fix the enemy in place.

So rabbits, antelope, and kangaroo hobbits? Sounds amusing, if a bit silly.

If it requires an element to fix the enemy in place, it is, by definition, NOT good ANYWHERE or ALL the time.

If anything, total air superiority and CAS take that lofty position, but even those platforms have situations where they're less than useful.

Imagine the foot based weaponry.
Serrated cleats, spring loaded knives in boot heels, sledge hammer shoes, kicking spikes, kick based projectiles, and thigh strangling!

>thigh strangling!
Easy user. Let's not wander into realms of the arcane.

Nothing Magical realmy about a good old fashioned hurricanrana

Artillery is basically good for anything.
>enemy has large formations?
>artillery fucks it up

>enemy has a base camp?
>wheel in artillery and fuck it up

>enemy has a castle
>fuck it up

>enemy is big?
>fuck it up

artillery isn't that slow or inaccurate, its nothing you would snipe a man off a horse with, but you can easily wheel in old artillery and fire it off at infantry groups, especially with older formations.

It's only good for half of the conflict. 90-50% of war is maintaining control over occupied territories. Something artillery does not do well. It can help secure key locations, but not secure your vassals. Additionally It's usefulness plummets when introduced to irregular warfare, which is likely the style of war the physically disadvantaged halfling or gnome is going to engage it. So unless they're running around with mortar teams, popping and scooting as they go, or the halflings somehow have total technological advantage, artillery will be more of a threat to the little man than an advantage.

While men where able to take great advantage of heavy machinery in war, it would be a drastically different story for a race of people who average between 2' 6" and 3' tall. They would have tremendous difficulty domesticating large animals on their own. This would greatly limit their ability to mobilize and deploy artillery in the field. It's likely their weapons would, ultimately, be smaller and weaker as a result, reducing their range and impact.