Pleh
2017-11-03, 10:49 AM
I'm setting up a new campaign and I came across an idea: Halflings that possess Whisper Gnome Spell Like Abilities.
I will spoiler tag the deeper parts of my lore that I deem helpful, but not necessary to my question.
The original concept was a Fallout or Skyrim style grim society with no particular law set in a Frostburn themed landscape.
In the mountains to the Northwest are the Dwarven Vikings who occasionally roll out of their impregnable mountain fortresses of stone and ice to pillage the local Lowlands so as to ritually appease their angry and vengeful ancestors with stolen wealth that gets added to their tomb, sort of like ancient epyptians if the dead not only needed their own personal possessions to be happy, but also needed their descendants to regularly pay tribute over time. So we have Dwarves that celebrate Christmas by stealing presents from poor people to give them to their dead relatives (so their dead relatives do not literally wake up and start haunting them). These are Glacier Dwarves, by the way, so they keep their fortresses at subzero temperatures A) because there is no point wasting resources to warm the place and B) the cold is an effective, natural defense of the lair that keeps a TON of enemies disinterested in venturing inside while also making intruders more noticeable if they bring a heat source.
In the setting, the local region is covered in rivers, large and small, that are merging into a delta feeding into the ocean. These rivers roll off the Dwarven mountains and irrigate the Lowlands before draining of into the sea through the Delta.
Another important note, just off the coast where the Delta feeds into the ocean are the Misty Isles, where Fey type creatures (particularly the Elves) live in a Feudal Japanese-esque society (most of my experience in Feudal Japanese RPG comes from a few months of L5R sessions). Their extended lives, cultural/technological refinement (at least in their own eyes), and general xenophobia has built a superiority complex. Needless to say, these guys ALSO occasionally raid the Lowlands on their Crusader-esque mission to teach these miserable Lowlanders the key to civilized living. Sadly, they never seem to stick around long enough to actually transform the local culture, preferring to "conquer" the locals, impose restrictions on their living (including any taxes or fees incurred for their humanitarian services), then move back to their beautiful island homes where they can personally live better in comfort and wealth.
These Elves have been modified by houserule to be Aquatic Elves with the Amphibious quality, but sacrificing their special ability to detect secret doors (rarely comes up in my games anyway). I was thinking, "Racist Bushido Moana Elves." I call them, "Islander Elves."
I very purposefully constructed these cultures and societies to build an atmosphere that absolutely never clearly fit into any of the traditional concepts of "Good/Evil/Law/Chaos." Everyone is justified in their own eyes and everyone has been a jerk to someone. The entire point was to create a scenario where players could be free to be anti-heroes (more or less) and not feel guilty about it. If the Elves were bastions of goodness, any potential confrontation with them would be inherently wrong. If the Dwarves were only defending themselves, raiding their tombs and dungeons for loot would be distasteful. The point is that everyone they meet is just evil enough that killing them is no tragedy and it was probably quite well justified, but not SO evil that it feels wrong letting these people live. I wasn't trying to construct a "holy crusade" scenario where players felt that "The only good [Race X] is a dead [Race X]" and that they were morally obligated to destroy them wherever they found them.
Therefore, the local bandit forces are pirates using river boats to travel quickly. The races of these particular bandits are primarily human, but a few of the more intelligent Half-Orcs and a few of the more crafty and underhanded Halflings have been able to join as well (hence the proposed concept).
As I was creating a subset of Gypsy Gnomes for the setting, I drifted past the Whisper Gnomes and they just felt so right for the Pirate Halflings. I considered just using Whisper Gnomes stats and reflavoring them as "Halflings," but I remembered that Whisper Gnomes come up a lot on the forums as a prime Optimization Subrace choice.
I became somewhat concerned about balance. Not that I expect to run into problems with my players exploiting unique advantages in my game to break stuff (I've got a good stock of trust in these guys), rather I'm concerned that I'm reaching past my own familiarity with the mechanics. I just don't know what kinds of potential pitfalls to watch out for (I've never built a Whisper Gnome character or researched any of the OP builds for them).
What do you guys think? For example, would there be any glaringly obvious problems with a Whisper Gnome suddenly qualifying for "Halfling Only" options? If I'm "blending" the races together rather than just reflavoring the stats, what do you think would be the most balanced way to do that?
As a side question, I was thinking of giving them Weapon Familiarity with the Quickrazor, as it fits so thematically (and Familiarity only shifts Exotic to Martial, so the proposed Whisperlings still have to be proficient with Martial to be proficient with the Quickrazor and don't just get it for being born). Any potential problems there?
As a last note, has anyone done this (or something like it) before that I can look at their work?
I will spoiler tag the deeper parts of my lore that I deem helpful, but not necessary to my question.
The original concept was a Fallout or Skyrim style grim society with no particular law set in a Frostburn themed landscape.
In the mountains to the Northwest are the Dwarven Vikings who occasionally roll out of their impregnable mountain fortresses of stone and ice to pillage the local Lowlands so as to ritually appease their angry and vengeful ancestors with stolen wealth that gets added to their tomb, sort of like ancient epyptians if the dead not only needed their own personal possessions to be happy, but also needed their descendants to regularly pay tribute over time. So we have Dwarves that celebrate Christmas by stealing presents from poor people to give them to their dead relatives (so their dead relatives do not literally wake up and start haunting them). These are Glacier Dwarves, by the way, so they keep their fortresses at subzero temperatures A) because there is no point wasting resources to warm the place and B) the cold is an effective, natural defense of the lair that keeps a TON of enemies disinterested in venturing inside while also making intruders more noticeable if they bring a heat source.
In the setting, the local region is covered in rivers, large and small, that are merging into a delta feeding into the ocean. These rivers roll off the Dwarven mountains and irrigate the Lowlands before draining of into the sea through the Delta.
Another important note, just off the coast where the Delta feeds into the ocean are the Misty Isles, where Fey type creatures (particularly the Elves) live in a Feudal Japanese-esque society (most of my experience in Feudal Japanese RPG comes from a few months of L5R sessions). Their extended lives, cultural/technological refinement (at least in their own eyes), and general xenophobia has built a superiority complex. Needless to say, these guys ALSO occasionally raid the Lowlands on their Crusader-esque mission to teach these miserable Lowlanders the key to civilized living. Sadly, they never seem to stick around long enough to actually transform the local culture, preferring to "conquer" the locals, impose restrictions on their living (including any taxes or fees incurred for their humanitarian services), then move back to their beautiful island homes where they can personally live better in comfort and wealth.
These Elves have been modified by houserule to be Aquatic Elves with the Amphibious quality, but sacrificing their special ability to detect secret doors (rarely comes up in my games anyway). I was thinking, "Racist Bushido Moana Elves." I call them, "Islander Elves."
I very purposefully constructed these cultures and societies to build an atmosphere that absolutely never clearly fit into any of the traditional concepts of "Good/Evil/Law/Chaos." Everyone is justified in their own eyes and everyone has been a jerk to someone. The entire point was to create a scenario where players could be free to be anti-heroes (more or less) and not feel guilty about it. If the Elves were bastions of goodness, any potential confrontation with them would be inherently wrong. If the Dwarves were only defending themselves, raiding their tombs and dungeons for loot would be distasteful. The point is that everyone they meet is just evil enough that killing them is no tragedy and it was probably quite well justified, but not SO evil that it feels wrong letting these people live. I wasn't trying to construct a "holy crusade" scenario where players felt that "The only good [Race X] is a dead [Race X]" and that they were morally obligated to destroy them wherever they found them.
Therefore, the local bandit forces are pirates using river boats to travel quickly. The races of these particular bandits are primarily human, but a few of the more intelligent Half-Orcs and a few of the more crafty and underhanded Halflings have been able to join as well (hence the proposed concept).
As I was creating a subset of Gypsy Gnomes for the setting, I drifted past the Whisper Gnomes and they just felt so right for the Pirate Halflings. I considered just using Whisper Gnomes stats and reflavoring them as "Halflings," but I remembered that Whisper Gnomes come up a lot on the forums as a prime Optimization Subrace choice.
I became somewhat concerned about balance. Not that I expect to run into problems with my players exploiting unique advantages in my game to break stuff (I've got a good stock of trust in these guys), rather I'm concerned that I'm reaching past my own familiarity with the mechanics. I just don't know what kinds of potential pitfalls to watch out for (I've never built a Whisper Gnome character or researched any of the OP builds for them).
What do you guys think? For example, would there be any glaringly obvious problems with a Whisper Gnome suddenly qualifying for "Halfling Only" options? If I'm "blending" the races together rather than just reflavoring the stats, what do you think would be the most balanced way to do that?
As a side question, I was thinking of giving them Weapon Familiarity with the Quickrazor, as it fits so thematically (and Familiarity only shifts Exotic to Martial, so the proposed Whisperlings still have to be proficient with Martial to be proficient with the Quickrazor and don't just get it for being born). Any potential problems there?
As a last note, has anyone done this (or something like it) before that I can look at their work?