Halfling professions
 

What roles other than Scout and Thief are Halfings good at:

Anyone do a good wizard build? Especially, say a ranged attack halfing "blaster" halfing.

Is it even possible to do a melee halfing build? Knight, barbarian, martial artist? Do you need to do a cross-over to make it work?

My favorite build for halflings is Scout/Thief. Maybe Wizard/Thief would also work well, though I haven't tried that yet.

Re: Halfling professions
 

Halflings are fine as wizards, because they're cheap, but they're not particularly synergistic either--they're comparable to humans. The -1 to Move and - 1 to HP is sort of cancelled out by +1 FP, +0.5 to speed, and +1 to Innate Attack and/or parry and +3 to sort-of-Stealth. You're more "hide" than "run away" but it's kind of a wash.

I don't think halflings are a powergamer's choice for anything, and it's kind of sad that they don't get bonuses to Throwing Art and that they still have inexplicably full-weight armor instead of 25% weight (to match their smaller surface area), but if I were playing a halfling I'd make it a spellcaster: druid, wizard, or cleric.

That being said, it is in fact possible to make a starting halfling Swashbuckler with two Rapier-21 attacks for 2d+3 (10) cut per turn, or two Rapid Strikes at 18 + one at 19.

It's not optimal but it's good enough to be quite a lot of fun. Not bad for a halfling.

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Don't forget Sir Pudding's excellent Wolf-Girl, a halfling barbarian. She's been a popular pickup character at my DFRPG camp.

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NO! This is one of the things I find wrong with quit a few of GURPS adventures and products. Goofy characters based on a silly concept grounded in nonsense. OK, so she's raised by wolves? Why?! Why didn't she end up as food? So she was also raised by Fairy's. So where's the influence of the fairy's? Did thye teach her to speak? What happened to her halfling parents? Where they eaten by wolves? If so why wasn't the infant also eaten. There isn't enough back story here. Also why is the Animal Handling (Cannines/Wolves) so low? If she was raised by wolves, I'd think this should be off the charts. Exactly how does she learn to use the club? How does she get so good with it.

The character makes no sense. It could work but there's inadequate backstory and just doesn't make sense based on the backstory listed.

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Well, instead of Wolf-Girl, the halfling barbarian, maybe you could play Book-Girl, the halfling librarian. That would be a much more realistic character.

Personally, I think anybody can realistically be raised by wolves .... Well, anybody except Cat-Folk.

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I trust you have no kids! How is said child fed? Taught. It's a fantasy game, so I don't have a problem with it not being realistic. But I do have a problem with not being internally consistent and logical based on the game background.

I'd be more likely to believe Cat-folk being raised by wolves over a halfing. Of course, the fairy folk would need to be involved. Maybe some sort of enchantment to keep wolves from attacking the Cat-folk.

The Wolf-girl halfling thing just has too many holes and isn't internally consistent.

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If real people believed a wolf raised a pair of children and they somehow ended founding one of the great empires of humanity I think a fantasy game can tolerate a halfling raised by a pack of wolfs and turning into a successful barbarian adventurer.

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Re: Halfling professions
 

Q: What roles other than Scout and Thief are Halfings good at?

Isn't this essentially a Thief still? Outside of the initial backstab she's pretty fragile, due to 13U parry and 9 Dodge with DR 1 and Move 5. One attack at 19 for 2d+8 damage isn't TERRIBLE but it's still going to take her quite a while to put down foes with even Dodge 9 if they have room to retreat. For the most part she's all about the initial backstab.

Definitely an amusing character backstory, maybe even an effective character (I have my doubts, although a dwarven Humongous Club would help her out a lot), but still basically a Thief role despite the Barbarian profession.

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It all depends on the table, as always. All I can say is that Wolf Girl has been popular with both adult players and kids. I've seen her chosen as often as any other character in my pile of 250-point pregens.

But, I do facilitate games for newcomers to the GURPS ecosystem and, often, newcomers to TTRPGs. Very few of these folks know how to optimize a character or have any sense of what their DPS should be. I've seen Wolf Girl do alright in melee, but she does need to invest some additional points wisely after the first few adventures.

As for whether her backstory is good enough, I guess it is a matter of taste. I just read it over, and it doesn't seem too wacky to me. Honestly, I also tend to dislike goofy characters, but I've seen this one played pretty straight. Sillier than Princess Mononoke, but still has that vibe. The great thing, IMO, about a backstory like this is the *character* doesn't need to know more than this. She was a kid. She doesn't remember the details. If the party wants to make a quest out of finding out how the wolves actually managed to raise her, there's plenty of time for the GM and player to work out the details.

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Sure works for a one-shot convention game. Not so much for a hard level campaign. Putting the character in "I Smell a Rat" without fudging die rolls and showing the character favoritism is pretty much criminal. GURPS adventures often are pretty hard. The character would probably be survivable in the campaign I'm look to run, but after a few games I don't see the character growth being good compared to most other crafted characters.

My main thing is for a campaign it's goofy and kills the vibe I want for my games. If playing for laughs is your goal, I wonder why pick a difficult somewhat killer rules system like GURPS DFRPG. I'd go with something more narrative like FATE. The halfling ST14 and HP21 seems very off. Is the construction RAW? Ok, ran this through with GURPS Character Sheet (GCS) and I came up with ST15/HP 22. Wow. Never thought halfing Barbarian was a thing.

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A halfling Knight isn't a particularly good Knight, but still crushes the halfling Barbarian at stealth and fighting. Compare the halfling barbarian's one club attack at 19 for 2d+8 cr and a 13U parry with a halfling knight's two greatsword attacks at 22 (one of which can be split into two Rapid Strikes at 19) for 2d+6 cut with a 15 parry.

Knight: halfling [0], Striking ST +2 [10], Weapon Master (Two-handed Sword) [20], Extra Attack [25], HP +1 (14) [2], Sacrificial Parry [1], Weapon Bond [1], Trademark Move (Rapid Strike with Deceptive 1 greatsword to the leg at 16, twice, then a greatsword to the skull at 16) [1].

The knight does three times as much damage and is safer, and still has Stealth-14 (+2 vs. hearing, +4 when unmoving), which you can increase to Stealth 16 (+2 or +4) with Quirk points if you want, plus Camouflage-11 with two more quirk points if you want.

A halfling Knight is objectively better than wolf-girl both at thiefy backstabbing and in straight-up combat. A human or especially half-ogre Swashbuckler is better, but just because a halfling is suboptimal in melee doesn't mean they can't still be very, very good. But Barbarian isn't the way to go.

(For combat, I mean. If the goal is amusing RP then wolf-girl is fine; Barbarian works for modeling "raised by wolved" because she can get Discriminatory Smell, for example, which feels very wolfy. But Wolf Girl isn't really a combat specialist.)

Re: Halfling professions
 

Considering that I allow Halfling Marksmanship to also apply to Innate Attack (Projectile) I've seen quite a few casters as Halflings, both Wizard and Cleric.

And once I slightly beefed up Silence*, I've seen a lot of Halfling Scouts and roguish Swashbucklers. Plenty of Thieves too, but my games aren't combat-centric, otherwise I'd never see one.


* It's 5 points when just raising Stealth is 4 points, it definitely needs a bit of a boost, and no, +2 when not moving and being, in the words of my Players, "immobile bait" is not a boost.

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Especially because it doesn't work if the monsters can potentially detect you with vision, since they normally get to use the better of hearing and vision. It's only applicable when the enemy has Acute Hearing or e.g. when you're out of line-of-sight, which means it's usually not applicable to backstabbing.

Light Walk and to some extent Hush/Mage Stealth have a similar issue but they aren't as expensive as Silence.

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Not meant to be personal, goes to experience. "Anyone can be raised by wolves?"

Re-phrasing the reply, "No one can be raised by wolves". It's one of those unrealistic things people say but really can't be done. In a fantasy setting, unreal stuff happens, but again, internal consistency and logical conclusions based on setting.

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Detect: Irony [5]

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How are you beefing up Silence? I'm missing what you're saying.


I think the Innate Attack (Projectile) is something worth considering. Got to consider how outside RAW this would be.

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My question too. Silence always seemed too expensive to me; the same 5 points could get you a Talent that boosts Stealth and four other skills.

Rather than cut the cost of Silence, I've tried to beef it up. A few months ago I tweeted this:

It's a small improvement, but I'm open to better ideas.

Maybe even this really simple idea: Each level of Silence adds +2 to Stealth, only vs Hearing. That's it; any actions, with or without movement, no other restrictions/complications. Still a little expensive, IMO, but a better buy than the current version.

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As to the Romans, I understand it to be a running joke that in Latin, "she-wolf" was used as a euphemism for prostitute. It certainly amuses me to think of all those wolf statues as a form of insistent terminology...

Re: Halfling professions
 

You could steal a page from the Hush spell: each level of Silence gives +1 to Stealth OR -2 to enemy hearing checks against your Stealth, your choice. Normally you'd take the Stealth bonus, but when sight isn't applicable you'd impose the hearing penalty instead--and there's no requirement to remain motionless to get it.

In fact I should run bugbears this way.

Re: Halfling professions
 

Mostly because I didnt' say it...

My upgrades are to have various types of "Silence" refluffed as "Stealthy", it applies to hearing as well as sight, in a specific style, it also allows them to always count as having "at least half the party as diversions" for Backstabbing, even if they're alone.

The Advantage also counts as a level requied buy in for various Power-Ups.


Scouts and Thieves have Stealth (Camouflage), so they get a bonus vs Sight if they're wearing something at least vaguely 'camouflaged', IE dark clothes in a dungeon, browns and greens in the woods, etc.

Halflings has Stealth (Small) and get the bonus versus sight if there is anything around they could easily hide behind or alongside.

My campaign also has Dark Elves who have often have a connection with elemental Darkness and get Stealth (Darkness), so get their bonus as long there are darkness penalties (but also they're limited to the local darkness penalties).

Racial abilities can trump Professional abilities, so a Halfling Thief could start with Stealthy (Small) 4 lvls, or 2 of Small and 2 of Camouflage, the PC's choice.

It doesn't break anything was my biggest concern.


Now, to me, that sounds like an excellent Advantage option for Cat-Folk...