Halfling professions

[restlessgriffin]

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.

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by restlessgriffin

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.

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.

[Dalin]

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

[restlessgriffin]

Originally Posted by Dalin

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

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.

[JulianLW]

Originally Posted by restlessgriffin

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.

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.

[restlessgriffin]

Originally Posted by JulianLW

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.

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.

[sjmdw45]

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

Originally Posted by Dalin

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

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.

[Dalin]

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.

[restlessgriffin]

Originally Posted by Dalin

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.

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.