Because READ THE GODDAMN BOOK!, that's why!

[Ian Absentia]

2 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

...what you are complaining about is DnD and halflings!

And the ding-dongs who play them like ding-dongs.

1 minute ago, Bill the barbarian said:

and this is bad?

To each his own.  Some dine from a plate, others feed from a trough.

!i!

Edited July 9, 2021 by Ian Absentia

[svensson]

6 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Still love me my hobbits, sorry svensson. While you say you hate hobbits, what you are complaining about is DnD and halflings!

Absolutely true, Bill, but DnD is usually where they show up on a game table. Sure, they've got stats for BRP Fantasy, but I don't think I've ever heard of anyone playing one.

As for Tolkien's hobbits, they're not so bad. Yes, they are an overly-idealized cherubic version of the British rural village myth. But, as an American, I recognize that there aren't that many cowboys nowadays either. And Dodge City was deadlier in its heyday than the worst streets of Chicago [the US city with the highest per-capita gun violence -- and, oddly enough, the most draconian gun ownership laws]. And dying of typhoid, cholera, etc. tends to put a damper on the 'home on the range' nonsense.

And The Professor wrote hobbits with some backbone as well. Witness Bandobras Took bashing the head off an Orc chieftain during the Long Winter, and the various adventures of Merry and Pippin.

[Bill the barbarian]

12 minutes ago, svensson said:

And The Professor wrote hobbits with some backbone as well. Witness Bandobras Took bashing the head off an Orc chieftain during the Long Winter, and the various adventures of Merry and Pippin.

And while doing so, inventing golf (hold on, I hate golf)... Down with hobbits!

24 minutes ago, Ian Absentia said:

To each his own.  Some dine from a plate, others feed from a trough.

 

Garcon, more sprinkles for that man’s steak! He looks unhappy, oh and an extra order of Ding Dongs, as well...

Edited July 9, 2021 by Bill the barbarian

[svensson]

1 minute ago, Bill the barbarian said:

And while doing so, inventing golf (hold on, I hate golf)... Down with hobbits!

Churchill said, 'Golf is a long walk ruined'.

I have a singularly American view of it:

"Golf is the willful and malicious misuse of a perfectly good and desperately needed rifle range."

😁😆

[Joerg]

On 7/9/2021 at 11:44 AM, simonh said:

I wouldn't bat an eyelid at finding an unreasonable facsimile of Pooh selling Honey in Glamour.

The only problem I would have with that is the concept of Pooh giving hunny to others.

[Baron Wulfraed]

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

The only problem I would have with that is the concept of Pooh giving hunny to others.

True... He might fall more into the "my precious" behavior (and we have now merged Pooh with the Hobbit discussion)

 

[Ian Absentia]

"Pooh?" said Piglet.

"Yes, Piglet?" said Pooh.

"I'm frightened," said Piglet, taking Pooh's hand.

"Oh, bother," said Pooh, eyeing the approaching sheriff in the rear view mirror, brushing Piglet's hand aside as he took the loaded pistol from the glove compartment.  "No one lives forever."

!i!

Edited July 11, 2021 by Ian Absentia

[Bill the barbarian]

Ooh, I love me some A.A. Milne... Let’s see...

“...took the loaded pistol, from the glove compartment...” Now wait a gol’darn second <squints suspiciously>. Something very fishy is goin’ on ‘round here!

🤨

[svensson]

7 hours ago, Ian Absentia said:

"Pooh?" said Piglet.

"Yes, Piglet?" said Pooh.

"I'm frightened," said Piglet, taking Pooh's hand.

"Oh, bother," said Pooh, eyeing the approaching sheriff in the rear view mirror, brushing Piglet's hand aside as he took the loaded pistol from the glove compartment.  "No one lives forever."

!i!

Piglet sighed and looked a Pooh with hopeful eyes....

"Well, go big or go home...."

[insert musical interlude, 'Fuck Tha Police' by NWA]

[youtube link below]

 

[g33k]

On 7/9/2021 at 1:06 PM, svensson said:

...

And don't get me started on halfling 'knights' with lances mounted on dogs. That just makes the historian and SCA fighter in me cringe [even at full charge, the dog and ratling don't produce a whole lot of force at the point of impact -- it's the same physics that generate the '1d6 damage per 10 ft /3 m fallen' rules dammit!]

100lb armored-halfling + 200lb dog at maybe 35MPH-40MPH
That's nothing to sneeze at, with a very-pointed point of impact.

Of course, it's not a lot if you compare it to 200+ lb's of armored human/etc + 800+ lbs of "destrier," (even if they're maybe 5-10 mph slower).

I always considered the real "risk" from the "halfling knight" wasn't with a "fearsome" front charge, but the mobility.  It's very likely they could readily flank a "conventional" knight's-charge to devastating effect

Even if the charge *ISN'T* as fearsome, the physically-smaller forces (on soft pads) can move with MUCH less chance of detection.  A military force moving through human-knights' lands will usually have at least a minute or two before any massed horse-charge can strike them.  A dog-based charge may be only 10-20 seconds away, at almost any moment, erupting from a minor hillock or ditch (dogs accelerate a LOT faster than horses).

 

 

[g33k]

On 7/10/2021 at 1:26 PM, Baron Wulfraed said:

True... He might fall more into the "my precious" behavior (and we have now merged Pooh with the Hobbit discussion)

Pooh as hunny-gollum...
... works remarkably well, actually.

"Oh, bother!  It found our tree, precious, yes it did.  And so it found our hunny <*smack*>.  We shall wring its neck, precious, yes we will!  Then it won't have found our tree after all!  <gollum*smack*gollum>"

Christopher Robbin as Frodo, of course.

 

[svensson]

1 hour ago, g33k said:

100lb armored-halfling + 200lb dog at maybe 35MPH-40MPH
That's nothing to sneeze at, with a very-pointed point of impact.

Of course, it's not a lot if you compare it to 200+ lb's of armored human/etc + 800+ lbs of "destrier," (even if they're maybe 5-10 mph slower).

I always considered the real "risk" from the "halfling knight" wasn't with a "fearsome" front charge, but the mobility.  It's very likely they could readily flank a "conventional" knight's-charge to devastating effect

Even if the charge *ISN'T* as fearsome, the physically-smaller forces (on soft pads) can move with MUCH less chance of detection.  A military force moving through human-knights' lands will usually have at least a minute or two before any massed horse-charge can strike them.  A dog-based charge may be only 10-20 seconds away, at almost any moment, erupting from a minor hillock or ditch (dogs accelerate a LOT faster than horses).

 

 

DnD halflings only come in at 40 lbs. or so in weight. Add 20 for armor, another 10 for weapons. So that's 70 lbs. The dog is a mastiff, so I'll buy the roughly 100 lbs. figure. 170 lbs at point of impact.

So yeah, that'll hurt. Until Sir Ratling realizes he's underneath a highly pissed off warhorse who is not at all adverse to the idea of stomping him into tomato paste right then and there.

I understand your point about ratling skirmisher [missile] cavalry. That makes sense. But any race that gets a -2 to Strength at character generation that chooses to mix it up in melee is just asking for a curb stomping.

And more than that... remember how annoyed we all were in the LOTR movies when Radagast the Brown turned out to be some peyote-addled brain-dead hippie traveling on a bunny-sled? THAT is the kind of ratling I object to.

[Ali the Helering]

One must never forget the much maligned (& much maligning) Bored of the Rings, whose Prologue 'Concerning Boggies' informs us that "they are fully capable of overpowering creatures half their size when they get the drop on them" and that they stand "somewhere along the evolutionary line that leads from rats to wolverines and eventually to Italians."

We ignore the Harvard Lampoon as a Gloranthan canonical source at our peril....

[Nozbat]

On 7/9/2021 at 9:39 PM, Bill the barbarian said:

And while doing so, inventing golf 

I'm thinking the Scots might be surprised by that one... but since the English Professor said it it must be true...

[Cloud64]

13 hours ago, Nozbat said:

I'm thinking the Scots might be surprised by that one... but since the English Professor said it it must be true...

They'd be not in the least surprised, they'd just curse under their breath at the sassenachs claiming yet another Scottish invention as their own. 

Edited August 24, 2021 by Cloud64

[svensson]

I repeat:

Golf is the willful and malicious misuse of a perfectly good and desperately needed rifle range.

😎

[Ali the Helering]

41 minutes ago, svensson said:

I repeat:

Golf is the willful and malicious misuse of a perfectly good and desperately needed rifle range.

😎

Or simply the provision of moving targets therefore....

[svensson]

2 hours ago, Ali the Helering said:

Or simply the provision of moving targets therefore....

Well, see... even in the US we got laws about that. And nothing interferes with your Second Amendment right like prison, you know? 😆

[Ali the Helering]

3 minutes ago, svensson said:

Well, see... even in the US we got laws about that. And nothing interferes with your Second Amendment right like prison, you know? 😆

Have you spent any time in Georgia?

[g33k]

On 8/23/2021 at 1:09 PM, svensson said:

DnD halflings only come in at 40 lbs. or so in weight. Add 20 for armor, another 10 for weapons. So that's 70 lbs. The dog is a mastiff, so I'll buy the roughly 100 lbs. figure. 170 lbs at point of impact.

So yeah, that'll hurt. Until Sir Ratling realizes he's underneath a highly pissed off warhorse who is not at all adverse to the idea of stomping him into tomato paste right then and there.

Mastiff more like 200, and could be larger; 100lbs is *runty*.
Those suckers are *BIG*.
On the same "bigger is better" theory that led to huge warhorses, I'd presume 200-and-up.

Sir Ratling -- if he's fighting smart -- will swerve aside (because also more mobile) and hit the warhorse side-on (or at least 3/4 on, but offside of the horse'd knight's weapon).

Lance in the horse's guts, knight on the ground.  From there, it's more "sausage factory" than "tomato paste."

I put it more or less even odds whether the bigger stronger charge will beat the more-agile, in this case.

===

If you insist that tiny little halfling-knight types (whose "fighting charge" is about 1/8 ton) will REALLY try to go head-to-head at a charge against the half-ton or so of a warhorse + mounted rider...  well...
<shrugs>
Can't help ya, Sundance!  😉 

<looks around in confusion>
Wait... wasn't I just on a BRP forum???!?