Given that halflings are the ideal peasants, wouldn't they make up like 99% of the population of a human kingdom?
>>88988749Too ill-suited to direct combatThere's a reason the Shire was explicitly a peaceful location, halflings/hobbits can only thrive in places and times of peaceIts always worth remembering your peasantry is also your main recruiting pool for conscriptsAlso I don't think the hobbits ever paid taxes.
>>88988836>Too ill-suited to direct combatWhich is a good trait to have in your peasants. You don’t want your peasants going to war because they’re poorly suited for it, and every peasant that does is a decrease to your wealth and workforce. In fact, you want your peasants to be bad at warfare and averse to it, to decrease the likelihood of peasant uprisings.
>>88988836Peasant conscription is by and large an enlightenment era meme designed to discredit the Middle Ages, such things were incredibly rare given the value of peasants. What would really happen is the wealthiest of peasants would be expected to go into battle not as frontline combatant, but as archers. Halflings, with their slings, are perfectly suited to such a role if the need arises.
>>88988836If you've ever read the Scouring Of The Shire, you'd know that Hobbits don't fight fair. They love ranged weapons.
>>88988836most places in Europe which most fantasy is based on didn't have peasant armies or levies. you had proffesional troops and knights. so as long as the Nobility aren't halflings then it won't be a problem
The halfling women would lust for big human cock and become hypergamous. Eventually the halfling men would rise up in an incel revolt, but the humans would probably manage to put it down and slay them all. Then, as the halfling women become bed wenches for human chads, halfling genes would eventually be diluted to the point that thr race goes extinct, leaving only manlet humans as their legacy.
>>88988995You just summarized the early history of Iberia, congrats.
>>88988856>Which is a good trait to have in your peasants.NoYou want them to be loyal, humble, but otherwise capableA comparison would be like whether you would want a proper work dog or a chihuahua, and saying the chihuahua's better because if it snaps you won't get injured.But ultimately if we're assuming your dog is snapping no matter what you're fucked either way.Similarly, a population of hobbits revolting is hardly any better than a population of humans revolting. You're still fucked.>>88988898>>88988960>most places in Europe which most fantasy is based on didn't have peasant armies or levies>enlightenment era memeSure, the idea of sending dirt farmers with pitchforks to die in droves at the frontlines was a meme, but they absolutely would recruit from the peasantry(And yes, you can be a peasant and own land).Yaomen were originally land-owning commoners, and they would occasionally gather levies.France had a policy where the king and any noble could just say every man of able body was either conscripted or must pay a fee to evade conscription.Many countries fielded armies that weren't solely nobility, indeed I'm not sure how feasible doing so would have been.>>88988931True, best argument I've seen so far.Though a population were 99% is only capable of slinging seems unlikely to withstand invasion. Any country with such a population will at-best be in a perpetual state of being invaded, engaging in guerilla warfare, struggling to rebuild, then getting invaded again.Maybe if they manage to acquire a nanny state that doesn't want to overtly take them over but still defends them(Me and my friends joke about WHF halflings being israelis for this reason).
>>88989078>Yaomen were originally land-owning commoners, and they would occasionally gather levies.And they were levied to be archers, not frontline combatants.
>>88989086I meant to put britain in place of they.My point is that britain has a history of gathering non-ranged levies for military purposes whenever its security is threatened.
>>88989078>Though a population were 99% is only capable of slinging seems unlikely to withstand invasion. Any country with such a population will at-best be in a perpetual state of being invaded, engaging in guerilla warfare, struggling to rebuild, then getting invaded again.You’re acting like 99% of the population would be conscripted. In reality maybe 2% of the population would fight. A combination of nobles, gentry, knights, and mercenaries, all human and frontline combatants, and then a handful of yeomen slingers for support.
>>88989104Warfare was very much a rich man’s occupation in those times. A yeoman would be a wealthy peasant and even they would be used for archery. Mercenaries, knights, gentry man-at-arms, and nobles would do the rest.
>>88989120>You’re acting like 99% of the population would be conscripted.I'm acting like its going to be evenly proportioned, because there's no way 100% of the human population is going to war while the halflings do fuck all.
>>88988931There were also few hundreds of hobbits who participated in war against Angmar, and hobbits had their own small war against orcs of Misty Mountains when they tried to invade Eriador and one of their armies got past the elves and rangers and reached Shire.
>>88989156It won’t be evenly proportioned though. The wealthiest 1% will be doing vastly more fighting than the other 99%
>>88989176And you assume the wealthiest 1% will be disproportionately human, in a 99% halfling nation, and there won't be constant ethnic uprisings?
>>88989189Why would there be ethnic uprisings? Such things were quite rare before the rise of the nation-state. One need only look at the Normans occupation of England to see how tolerant peasants are of new rulers.
>>88988995No sane human man would want to fuck a halfling.
>>88989215> One need only look at the Normans occupation of EnglandBro atleast read the wikipedia pagehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Conquest>Although William's main rivals were gone, he still faced rebellions over the following years and was not secure on the English throne until after 1072.>In 1075, during William's absence, Ralph de Gael, the Earl of Norfolk, and Roger de Breteuil the Earl of Hereford, conspired to overthrow him in the Revolt of the Earls.And then they still had to ethnically replace as many people of power and control as they could.Also using that as an example basically suggests this kingdom only happens BECAUSE another kingdom takes over the halfling state which just proves my other points, including atleast partially the bit about having a nanny state.
>>88989304I fail to see how that proves anything. If humans take over a halfling nation and put humans in all the positions of power, the end result is still the same. 99% of the population will be halfling peasants, and the top 1% will be human knights and nobles protecting them.
>>88989346>I fail to see how that proves anything.It's not an independent kingdom then, because the human kingdom that took it over is still there.And presumably skews the population demographics to no longer be 99%, because otherwise the whole process would repeat again the moment a nation of sufficient humanity decides to rock their shit.
>>88989394“A nation of sufficient humanity” would be no more militarily capable than the halfling nation ruled by 1% humans. A medieval kingdom can only ever afford to arm a tiny sliver of its population, having the 99% of the population that can’t afford to be armed and trained be halflings is nothing but a boon.
>>88988749Lack of reproduction. Honestly, I don't know where your "ideal peasant" thing comes from, they're pretty lazy and physically unimpressive. The ideal peasant would be half-orcs or dwarves, who are very strong and willing to do a lot of labor.
>>889894211 percent is like a standing garrisonYou can end up fielding more like 6-10 percent if you need to go all out, even more if the fighting is on your lands and you need every able body
>>88989465To do so would basically be suicide for the kingdom, you’d be throwing poorly armed peasants into the meat grinder for little gains and the resulting famine from the lack of people working the land would destroy what’s left of the kingdom even if you win the war.
>>88989220Where do you think you are?
>>88989447You want your peasants to be lazy and unambitious, the hard-working and ambitious ones are dangerous
>>88989710No, you want them to be hard working and unambitious. If they're lazy they're less productive and make you less money. What's being lazy and ambitious called? Because that dichotomy describes me a lot.
>>88988749>human kingdom>99% of it are hobbitsYou didn't think this through, did you?
>>88989932Kingdoms and empires are almost always described by whose in charge rather than what the populations are.
>>88989710>>88989917Just reanimate the dead as undead workforce. Nothing will go wrong.
>>88989949True, but that ends prima nocta, which is one of the best perks of being a lord.
>>88989220
>>88989932It's like Apartheid South Africa or slave states before the Civil War
>>88988749Fuck off with your magical realm
I know its bait and im replying anywayHalflings are borderline useless because in the actual real world that animefags have never even seen the sun of real objects continue to have size and mass and friction. A halfling blacksmith is never going to get anything done because they're half the size and so and eighth the strength and their tiny hammer is simply not going to effectively deform metal. They arent 8 times slower, they're outright below the minimum threshold to effect change. Just like op's tiny cock they will literally never achieve a measureable effect. They cant even offset the disadvantage with beasts of burden because they'd still need to bale a human ammount of hay and fix oxen sized ploughs that they cant even forge in the first place.
>>88988749I like to imagine them being best friends with elves and dorfs and being the thing that holds a mutually shared kingdom together.Dorfs dig for metals and gems to craft and they love to craft. Sadly that's all they usually like to do. They can farm but it's seen as a second rate profession to crafting things.Halflings love to farm, they love growing things and green things. They can craft tools to help them in this but they much prefer using those tools to making them. So they share their food with the dorfs and the dofs give them things that they make.Elves like things like booze and cheese and bread and salted pork but don't like farming all that much. They do like shooting people who trespass on their lands, which is something halflings accept is needed sometimes but hate having to do. Halflings give them cider and bacon and such things for protection and act as middlemen in giving elves dorf made weapons and armor, because the less dorfs and elves have to deal with each other in person the less grummpy everyone is.The Tripartite Kingdom would be an absolute powerhouse that could take over if not the world then a big chunk of it were it not for one problem. Everyone recognizes that it's the halflings keeping everything together and it's the halflings that deal with outsiders because elves and dorfs tend to be a little xenophobic. The nation is ruled by a halfling royal family, halflings royal or not would take a lot of provocation before war is ever even contemplated.
>>88990721>hur dur muh square cube law
>>88988749Because there are more humans than halflings, an unfortunate situation.
>>88992260Why would there be more humans than halflings though?
>>88990330>Those fingers>That plastic look>Posts AI trash to prove his pointlollmaoget some fucking standards
>>88992282Because that's how everyone writes their fantasy worlds. Humans are the default and halflings are a gimick.
>>88992291Which one is the mom and which one is the daughter?
>>88992301
>>88989220What if big booba?
>>88990729Sounds comfy
>>88989086The bridport muster roll of 1457 shows that 39/118 that did attend were also equipped with pole arms (who were archers no less). The Westmoreland role call had 71 bowmen and 76 billmen without horses. Considering how much of the archer completely dwarfed Men at Arms in the multiple deployments of the hundred years war, they were expected to engage in melee.
>>88993699A halfling with big booba is just a dwarf.
>>88994772Which halflings are perfectly capable of doing to the same degree of competence an archer would.
>>88988898>Halflings, with their slings, are perfectly suited to such a role if the need arises.Slings are not bows. You can't fire slings in formation, and you can't fire them in volleys. This makes halflings not at all perfectly suited to such a role.
>>88993393That is indeed the halfling.
>>88989220Then call me crazy.Seriously, though, how can one man produce one retard, one gold-digging dwarf whore, and the perfection that is Mayjack?
>>88994865You need to stop thinking RPG stats reflect the real world. In reality, you don't min your hit points and strength to max your bow skill. Firing a bow requires strength, a lot of it, and picking up a different weapon when the enemy gets close is quite easy.
>>88994439At quiet times at work I like to either think of how broken settings could be fixed wnough to work or imagine comfy fantasy kingdoms.
>>88988749Because their legs and arms are half as small meaning they move half as fast and produce half as much which isn't a problem for them because they eat half less but we don't so it is a problem for us.
>>88992301we may never know..
>>88996631>they eat half lessYou know this is a halfling thread, right?
>>88996684Well, y'know, biologically speaking they SHOULD eat half less, but, yeah I guess you're right they really don't
>>88988836In feudalistic societies, the soldier and peasant classes were explicitly meant to be separate, and to be reduced to conscripting peasants would be the equivalent of a modern society conscripting its children.It's a feature, not a bug.
>>88996758Maybe halflings just have an unusually high metabolism but I'm not sure what that could be fueling. They're typically pretty strong for their size, even with a strength penalty. Could they just have a really dense muscle structure? As you can probably tell, I'm the farthest thing from an expert on biology.
>>88989946>>88990340Yes, we all remember how there was 99% of population other than the ruling class.I mean you could AT LEAST bring up Manchu conquest of China, which was the closest when this shit ever happened in real life, but that would require having two brain cells to rub together.
>>88997410I think various conquests of Baltic region count too, where the cultures, languages and ethnic makeups of locals was left mostly untouched by foreign invaders despite different foreign powers ruling over peoples of the are for ~600 years or so.
>>88997410Visigoth Spain?
>>88998523Or Umayyad Spain?You could count a good portion of the Muslim era
>>88989220Are you absolutely sure about that anon?
>>88988749Depends on the system and setting. If your tiny halflings have the strength of children (as their size suggests), they would make pretty crap peasants, unable to do the workload of a typical burly human worker. If you dont believe in strength and endurance mods depending on race (Dat's Racist!), then fuck yeah, anything would be as good as a human population and would mix freely with them in what they did.
>>88992291keep whining, artfag. You will be replaced. Learn2code, lol.
>>88992301based AI
>>88989220speak for yourself, fag
>>88988749No. Why would the humans allow this?
>>88999079Because humanity would benefit immensely from this.
>>88997410Dont forget the Norman conquest of England where that happened as well
>>88995122The formations would be a little looser and the volleys not as tight but you can still do both, with the added benefit of the slings doing better against armored opponents than arrows.
>>88999079>why would humanity allow themselves to be the top 1% lording over a servant raceUh…why not?
>>88999228>>88999347>only the ruling class is human, the "human" peasants don't matter and shouldn't be sympathized with
>>88999410Your words, not mine.
>>88999410Being a noble is better than being a peasant.
>>88999443How do the human peasants and tradesmen benefit from losing their land and businesses to halflings? Why would you think the whole human society would get to be bumped up into the elite?
>>88999544Given that humans would be doing most of the fighting in war and the halflings wouldn’t, over time the human population will gradually becoming thinned out as human warrior die in wars, allowing commoner humans to replace them, and halflings to replace those commoners. Everybody benefits.
>>88999579Sounds like Sparta. Didn't really work out for them in the long run.
>>88999609They lasted 1,000 years, that’s better than most states do.
>>88999544>How do the human peasants and tradesmen benefit from losing their land and businesses to halflings?They don't. This scenario makes more sense if the humans are conquering the halflings and establishing themselves as the overlords, or if they're moving to a sparsely populated territory and importing the halflings to work the land.
>>88999638Or the human nobles could just be importing halflings to replace their human laborers, like in Rome and the American South.
>>88994865Archer skeletons were found with larger right arms from all the stress of constantly firing bows with hundreds of pounds of pull weight.A bow is not a weapon for a waif wearing plastic ears, no matter what the TV says.
>>88988856You cannot field an army exclusively of KnightsYou need peasants to serve as cannon fodder
>>88999579That's retarded tbqh. Do you think these people wouldn't be having kids?>>88999638Conquest is better, but even in the settlement scenario it's more likely humans would be brought in. I could buy a few halflings coming in under certain circumstances, like Catherine the Great bringing in the Volga Germans, but I don't know if it would be worth it if they're just meant to be farmers.
>>88999664No but a sling is better for armored knights anyways
>>88999665>You need peasants to serve as cannon fodderThis has never been true until the industrial era.>>88999681>Do you think these people wouldn't be having kids?They will, but a population that’s having kids and fighting and dying in war, will have a slower growth rate than a population that is only having kids.
>>88988749In what setting, are they the ideal peasants?
>>88999708LOTR
>>88999079Kingdoms are made for the benefit of the nobility and royalty, not the peasants.
>>88999653Rome was importing South Americans?
>>89000290Rome imported slaves of all kinds.
>>89000297Aztlan-Roman Empire would either have been the best thing in human history or the biggest fucking cluster fuck our species could capable of.
>>89000382What
>>88996631That doesn't make any sense, bugs are incredibly fast even though they're tiny.
>>88996666thanks satan
>>88998969You don’t need high STR for farm work.
>>88989163didn't they drive every single invader into a lake to drown them?
>>89000922Try reaping wheat by hand all day or guiding an oxen pulled plow, you noodle armed unrbanite.
>>88999725All the important hobbits in LOTR except Sam were land owning aristocrats.
>>89001039That’s nothing compared to what a Knight would have to do.
>>89001075And most hobbits were not important and thus peasants.
>>88988749Maybe they protect their borders
>>89001281Why would a noble protect his borders against the ideal peasant from coming in to work for him?
>>88988749Halflings are far weaker than humans. So your kingdom would be far poorer than its neighbors and would get taken over. Though, applying this kind of logic, halflings are basically just deformed humans, so they wouldn't exist for very long anyway.
>>89001377Why would they be poorer? You don’t need your peasants to have a lot of strength.
>>89001100you are retarded
>>88995155what in the piccadilly are you talking aboutwhat in the onions addled balls of justin trudeau is a Mayjack
>>89001416You know nothing about farmwork. Physical strength is indispensable and that's why stronger slaves warranted a higher price.
>people arguing that halflings would be too weak to farm when the very origins of the damn race is as a farming community What has rotted your brains?
>>89001516Peasants are not slaves, they only work 1/3rd of the year so there’s no risk of collapsing if they’re not strong enough.
>>88988749Depends on their relative productivity. Having nice, docile peasants isn't worth much if they're giving you significantly less income. And even if they're as or more productive than humans, you still shouldn't have exclusively halflings unless you're going to basically do a Sparta with human citizen-soldiers and halfling helots.
>>88997158cum and babies.halflings outnumber every other species of humanoid. they arent fat theyr just pregnant. yes all the halflings you see are women. even the ones in relationships with eachother are both women. not exactly lesbians mind you. its just male halflings are so rare but halflings dont have the whole domination or creepy social power imbalance fetishes of the big races so its just a bunch of gals in healthy emotional relationships and a couple dudes who also impregnate all the gals on the side. kissing anyone but their wife romantically is grounds for banishment or even execution and another male will easily pick up the slack by eating the no longer present ones share of food
>>89001572>you still shouldn't have exclusively halflings unless you're going to basically do a Sparta with human citizen-soldiers and halfling helots.I mean that’s basically what the Middle Ages already was. Plus productivity wasn’t much of a concern, feudal lords were infamously lax with peasants who weren’t expected to get much done.
>>89000641That's ultra satan to you
>>89001540There's a difference between being able to farm well enough to sustain your community and being able to farm well enough to be a profitable tax base. The Shire is a secluded pastoral idyll with an almost non-existent government, which doesn't tell us much about the relative agricultural productivity of hobbits compared to humans.
>>89001309He's not a retarded merchant whose only concern is line go up next quarter. He also probably doesn't have access to the modern transportation infrastructure you need to make something like that happen to begin with, or the ideological and communications tools needed to get the locals to not violently resist it. Even if he does tick all those boxes, he's not so distant from his tenants that a rebellion can't touch him.
>>89001674>There's a difference between being able to farm well enough to sustain your community and being able to farm well enough to be a profitable tax baseYes, and the Middle Ages was very much a case of the former being emphasized over the latter. Peasants were subsistence farmers, they farmed enough to sustain themselves, with only a minimal surplus left over.
>>89001416Stronger people make better manual workers. If your entire workforce are essentially midgets, half the strength of a normal person, then everything will take longer to do. Not only that, but it begs the question as to how halflings evolved alongside humans at all, since they're basically just really shitty versions of humans.
>>89001550they only farm 1/3rdthe rest is fixing buildings, tools, prepping soil for next year, pruning, animal husbandry, processing food into storeable form, making clothes, buyinng selling ect. and with no transportation. thats all physical exercise one way or another.
>>89001688Peasant rebellions pretty much always failed, and in fact a peasant rebellion would probably benefit him in this case since the dead humans could then be replaced with more docile halflings.
>>89001705Halflings don’t have half the strength of humans, they have 80% of the strength of humans, which is more than enough for most work. The only thing they can’t do is be knights, which is fine since you don’t want your peasants trying to become knights anyways.
>>89001596The dedicated martial class of knights were a vital part of medieval warfare, but peasant conscripts were a big part of a medieval army. You can't really win a war with nothing but heavy cavalry.
>>89001688The nobleman is the genetic, intellectual, cultural, and moral superior of the peasants, you overestimate the amount of kinship he’d feel with them.
>>89001732How the fuck is a 3ft human 80% the strength of a normal sized person? They weigh less than a 10 year old girl. Not only would they be worse workers than humans, but they would be easy pickings for any humans who wanted to raid or fuck with them. This disadvantage would have existed during their entire evolution, so the idea they got into the scenario where they can form a kingdom is silly. They'd either have been wiped out or exist as a second class citizen within human society. Like a clever farm animal that you could trust to do complex maintenance tasks.
>>89001778Peasant conscripts were incredibly rare in the Middle Ages. Instead, gentry, mercenaries, and burgher militias would form the ranks of the line infantry, while yoemen would take up the ranks of archers. In other words, the only time you really saw peasants fighting was if they were wealthy peasants, and even then only as archers.
>>89001788>or exist as a second class citizen within human societySo in other words exactly the scenario OP described.
>>89001816No. They could do some jobs, but in most cases they'd be massively outperformed by peasants. Stuff like weaving vs more physical jobs, as an example.Though, again, this situation coming about is already stupid fiat. They'd have been wiped out by humans most likely. And any population of halflings would be prime target for human bandits, who would be demi-god like in comparison.
>thread full of pseudoscience to not have cute halfling girls around
>>89001837Being a peasant was not a particularly taxing job, they only worked 1/3rd of the year and even then they were infamously lazy.
>>89001860They would massively outperform halflings. Its like saying children could steal adult jobs; just stupid. Everything would take longer, and they couldn't really defend themselves from humans. The situation where halflings would make up the bulk of a kingdom would never arise, because (all classes of) humans would just have historically bullied the fuck out of them.
>>89001704>Peasants were subsistence farmers, they farmed enough to sustain themselves, with only a minimal surplus left over.You're underestimating the productivity of a medieval farmer. Ignoring crop failures and such, they grew enough to feed themselves, pay their taxes, and then the surplus was what they could sell for their own profit. And that's assuming we're talking about free peasants and not outright serfs.
>>89001876Okay, we’ll peasants have 80% of the strength of humans according to the stats, so if things take 20% longer that’s fine since they have the other 2/3rds of the year to work.>and they couldn't really defend themselves from humansWhich is what you want from a class of peasants.
>>89001860"infamously lazy"do you think they were the ones writing historyno it was "my peasants are so fucking lazy" Reginald
>>89001888And peasants were infamously poor while their taxes were very low so your overestimating the productivity of a peasant.
>>89001897If the peasants cared to disagree they could’ve risen up in revolt, but they didn’t, so their lives must’ve been pretty good.
>>89001893>Okay, we’ll peasants have 80% of the strength of humans according to the statsWhat stats lol. Seems odd that a tiny creature weighing the same as a medium sized dog is 80% the strength of a human. >Which is what you want from a class of peasants.You're not understanding. That would never come about, because at no point in their history could they defend themselves from humans. In the hunter-gatherer stage, or the dark ages, human populations could do whatever they want to halfling populations.
>>89001919>What statsPathfinder. In D&D they have equal STR to a human. In LOTR they’re slaying Orcs left and right too so they’re clearly pretty strong there.>That would never come about, because at no point in their history could they defend themselves from humansWhich is why they would get conquered, relegated to an underclass, and thus become peasants.
>>88992301More importantly, who that bitch creepin right behind them?!
>>89001914>"They should have destroyed society because someone made fun of them"
>>89001955Their base weight is 30lbs. Also the minus 2 strength isn't just a linear -20%. A peasant isn't half a strong as a grizzly bear, despite it being 12 strength vs 21 under the same system.For example, an orphan child is of comparable strength to your average halfling in pathfinder. >In LOTR they’re slaying OrcsOrcs are subhuman manlets in lotr. >Which is why they would get conquered, relegated to an underclass, and thus become peasants.Sure, but as slaves where they're not just wiped out. Certainly not as 99% of the population of a human kingdom. Thats retarded. They'd fill supporting roles because they're not physically able to replace the workforce of the peasantry.
>>89002042>Certainly not as 99% of the population of a human kingdomWhy not? We see that they’re clearly capable of subsistence farming which is the role of peasants anyways.
>>89001900Amount of taxes (and tithes for the church for that matter) depended on the time and place, but they definitely weren't negligible. And again, it's a different game entirely if we're talking about serfs instead of peasants.
>>89002103I pay more taxes today than a peasant ever payed in their lifetime.
>>89002062Because they're not as good at it, can't defend themselves from humans, and outnumbering humans to such a massive degree when they're so vulnerable to them doesn't make sense. This reminds me of the autist a few months back who really wanted /k/obolds, despite them not being strong enough to lift most modern weapons.
>>89002155>Because they're not as good at itThe goal of subsistence farming is to subsist off of it, so long as they’re not starving they’re as good at it>can't defend themselves from humansWhich is what you want from your civilian underclass. You’re literally saying that the slaves of society wouldn’t be slaves…because they’re too weak to fight back against the people enslaving them. Do you have any idea how retarded that sounds?
>>89002118Depends on how you evaluate the value of your labor relative to a peasant's
>>89002237No, objectively speaking in every possible way I am taxed more.
>>89001914you have got to be messing with me nowthere were entire centuries characterized as "that one where the peasants had a stable enough platform to launch a bunch of revolts
>>89002250There were definitely some sorts of peasants who were effectively taxed more than you.
>>89002250percentage of disposable income peasant disposable income less than the amount they are taxedergo > 100% of disposable income shot in the dark here but ima guess your taxes are lower than your disposable income
>>89002283Yes, but this was at the end of feudalism during the dawn of the industrial era.
>>89001722It depends what the goal is, and how you define success. Pogroms succeed all the time, and even if they don't manage to bring in a new regime peasants could and sometimes did kill the local baron, even if they were executed for it afterward.>>89001782The current situation where the ruling class has so little regard for their own people they're willing to do what they're doing is extremely unusual. Projecting it onto other contexts will almost never work.
>>88988749How are they the ideal peasants? They're far too weak to perform menial labour efficiently. Their talents would be more towards tailoring or burglary.
>>89001876>Its like saying children could steal adult jobs; just stupidIt's only stupid because you can't steal something that isn't given to you by the employer. If employing children is efficient enough and cheaper than using an adult it will be done, oh wait it's already being done. Work is work, nothing to do with adulthood.
>>88988898>Halflings, with their slings, are perfectly suited to such a role if the need arisesMuscle powered weapons in the hands of little men with one quarter the strength of normal men? They'd be nearly useless
>>89002345>The current situation where the ruling class has so little regard for their own people they're willing to do what they're doing is extremely unusualNot really. Just look at Ancient Rome. They enslaved so many people that the free laborers were pushed out of their jobs entirely.
>>89002364We already employ children in farm work.
>>88988749>Ideal peasantsThey are the ideal service worker. The only way you can make halflings powerful as a race is making them ubiquitous service workers and skilled in spycraft and thievery. Inns serve pretty well for that, and it's already been done. They are basically Innjas.
>>89002423That's not the same thing at all. I'm pretty sure you're trolling now so you only get a lazy answer, but aside from the fact many of those slaves were themselves Romans, they were also (mostly) not a permanent population. Especially in sectors like mining they were basically disposable fodder taken from conquered peoples, criminals, or the urban poor, not a new people brought in to replace the old ones because the landowners got it in their heads that they were better farmers something. The only cases I know of where the Romans did anything that could be called population replacement were either settling places with Romans or near the very end of the empire's lifespan, and basically amounted to surrender of territory it could no longer defend in exchange for the nominal loyalty of the invaders.
>>89002441Halflings are about the size of 4 year old children. And if your halflings are realistic, and not subject to DND balance, they'd have half the reach, one quarter the strength, they'd have to eat twice as often and they'd sleep longer. I imagine they'd sleep as long as dogs or chimpanzees do, which is about 10 hours. Which gives them 14 hours to work with 6 meal times. Humans would be far superior. Halflings would be good for cleaning chimneys. I doubt they'd enjoy that.
>>89002684The free farming population of Rome was replaced as well, with slave-farmed latifundium coming to dominate the agricultural economy.
>tfw HFY literally has most humans being enslaved because HFY-tards will argue that humans make for better slaves than other races
>>89002408Slings are so easy to use that young boys can and have used them to kill.
>>88999693>This has never been true until the industrial era.That's blatantly wrong. You think all the medieval lords had the money to maintain a big enough professional force? All wars had a huge bulk of infantrymen to fight their battles, with some exceptions. From the ancient greek hoplites, to the anglo-saxon fyrd, and all the feodal levy system etc, they were all part-time soldiers or military conscripts.
>>89003454>You think all the medieval lords had the money to maintain a big enough professional force?No, that's what the levy was for. You would have a bunch of gentry and knights, and they were maintained by having their own estates, with peasants and serfs under them, which allowed them to maintain a degree of wealth that let them go to war as their lord's soldiers, both as cavalry and footmen.
>>88995122They would have to be deployed as skirmishers and harrassers, ambushing from cover and rough terrain, pelting formations from a distance and scattering if attacked. Hey, it worked with the americans against the redcoats and were popular with the Greeks.
>>88988749The halfling women cannot resist human men, and when humans have children with halflings, the offspring is a human with some halfling characteristics.More importantly though, nobles choose the population over which they govern by conquering that population. Even if the noble wanted to invite halflings to start farms on unused land in his realm, why would they accept? So they can pay him taxes?>>89001674>which doesn't tell us much about the relative agricultural productivity of hobbits compared to humans.The shire has a tremendous variety of foodstuffs including more artisanal items like cheeses, alcohols, and fine meats. Bilbo was also noted to have had a particularly well stocked larder. All this coupled with the implied frequency of eating both throughout the day and for spurious celebrations means that those hobbits probably ate better than the typical contemporary human. >>89002338Its worth noting that there no large bureaucratic apparatus with all the attendant record keeping for those peasants. The contemporary state's ability to monitor bank accounts should not be underestimated in its ability to enforce taxation. The peasant had a house and a field which might have gotten inspected by a tax collector once a year.
>>89002175First off peasants didn't subsistence farm for the most part. But even in this halflings would be inferior. Given their strength comparable to small children I doubt they'd even be able to clear fields and harvest enough food for a population of humans.Its also worth noting that farmers only worked a fraction of the year because seasonally that was technically the only time they could. They still did other work, fencing, material gathering, animal husbandry, when their crops were growing and they technically weren't doing anything 'on paper'. All those jobs halflings are too small to do even half as well as humans. >Which is what you want from your civilian underclass.No, because that means bandits can do whatever they want to any halfling, and as such would be far more prevalent. Nobody would want a vastly inferior work force anyway. Its not worth the trade off when your "slave" isn't strong enough to carry a bucket of water because it weights the same as him.The economies where halflings formed 99% of the workers would get massively outproduced by human ones, then totally destroyed in conquest. >Bilbo was also noted to have had a particularly well stocked larder.Bilbo was hobbit gentry. Its noted in the opening chapters that its hard to feed a family of hobbits for normal folk. And also the shire is tiny, and dwarfed in importance and output by every human-only nation. The hobbits essentially hid in a nation the size of Andorra at the corner of the map, then faded away as human civilisation covered middle earth.
In my setting, hobbits are effectivelly peasants who serve a ruling class. PC hobbits are usually servant of a Knight PC, though they can choose not to. Hobbits make settlements in the mountains or in the willderness that are self-sufficient, but if they find a sufficiently civilized point of light they form symbiotic peasantry bonds with them in exchange of protection
>>88988749They're better off as slaves. They're not human so fuck them. They're also not doing anything interesting or useful for humans like dwarves (the only non-humans worthy of some respect), so mega-fuck them. Use them as free labor, keep them alive as long as they're useful and throw them to the dogs when they're past their expiration date.
kill halflings, behead halflings, roundhouse kick halflings into the concrete, slam dunk a halfling baby into the trash can, crucify filthy halflings, defecate into halflings food, launch halflings into the sun, stir fry halflings in a wok, toss halflings into active volcanoes, urinate into halfling's gas tank, Judo throw halflings into a wood chipper, twist halflings heads off, report halflings to the IRS, karate chop halflings in half, curb stomp pregnant halflings , trap halflings in quicksand, Crush halflings in the trash compactor, liquify halflings in a vat of acid, eat halflings, dissect halflings, exterminate halflings in the gas chamber, stomp halfling skulls with steel-toed boots, cremate halflings in the oven, lobotomized halflings, mandatory abortions for halflings, grind halflings fetuses in the garbage disposal, drown halflings in fried chicken grease, vaporize halflings with a raygun, kick old halflings down the stairs, feed halflings to alligators, slice halflings with a katana.
>>89007063>They're also not doing anything interesting or useful for humans>he doesn’t think farming is useful Okay urbanite
>>89006812>Its noted in the opening chapters that its hard to feed a family of hobbits for normal folk.Which only proves that halflings are superior farmers. The hobbits obviously weren’t fucking starving to death, so if a normal human has trouble feeding them, they must be much better at feeding themselves, IE farming.>No, because that means bandits can do whatever they want to any halfling, and as such would be far more prevalent.Historically that was already the case. Hence why knights and nobles and castles were a thing.
>>88988749They would make up 99% of the population because halfling girls are built for breeding.
>>88989220halfstacks deserve love too anon
>>88990330>>88992301These look so bad. Like AI art is usually still flawed in some ways if you look at it closely and know what to look for, but this looks like you're still using dalle2.
>>88989513>Where do you think you are?>>>/aco/>>>/trash/
>>88988898Peasants would commonly be levied for support roles.Obviously the exact function depends on the polity and era, no doubt that there was a dumbfuck lord who decided to use the mob with pitchforks meme and then wondered why his local economy was fucked for the next generation, but by and large peasants were too valuable to waste and too uneducated to risk for anything important.Yeomen (the managers within the peasant class) were trained from childhood to be archers, and they would draw an affordable quantity of peasants from their hundred (subdivision of a parish which is in turn a subdivision of a shire) for logistics including foraging to support the army. They'd have basic weapons for personal protection (usually self supplied), but the yeomen were the lowest class of professional soldiers.Equally there were the men-at-arms, who were in a similar social class to the yeomen but directly and permanently employed by the local lord. Mediaeval armies tended to be quite small and professional forces, with knights as the bulk of the forces and men-at-arms and yeomen having their distinctive roles. As the period progressed and castles became tougher to crack, professional seige engineers evolved and the peasantry took on a more established role.It was typically the constable's duty to levy peasants via the ealdormen (civil peasant leaders) who would calculate how many yeomen they could provide, and in turn the yeomenry would draft their allotment of peasants. These were complicated economic calculations that anticipated the impact of the levy decades into the future, as the economy was muscle-powered they couldn't afford to waste peasants nor overdraft and have an army larger than they could support.Lords were directly managed by the king, and a lord that needlessly wasted peasants wouldn't last long. If he wasn't directly punished, he would be financially ruined by the loss of his labour force.
>>88988836>There's a reason the Shire was explicitly a peaceful locationWasn't the shire part of a massive kingdom that collapsed only a few decades before the Hobbit, but the only effects that the hobbits noticed was the loss of trade because they were so self sufficient and autonomous within the kingdom.IIRC from one of Tolkien's notes that Christopher published, the hobbits fondly remember hordes of refugees passing through the shire because they would host constant parties, and inadvertently drove the refugees out because they couldn't cope with the constant drinking and rich foods.I think it was even referenced in LoTR when someone (maybe merry or pippin) are talking about the black riders and someone says something along the lines of "we haven't had big men in the shire for many years and I doubt they're here for the same pleasures"Or maybe that was revealed to me in a dream, idk
>>88988836>conscripts
>>89002345>>89002423Genocide via conscription is a known stratagy.https://lieber.westpoint.edu/forced-conscription-self-declared-republics/
>>89002779>he acts like this is shocking news99% of the nations HFY-tards coom over are explicitly godawful for the majority of human
>>89016890The fall of Arnor was about a thousand years before the LOTR.
>>88988749Ideal? IDEAL!?These fuckers have half working capacity and consume at least 5 times the calories of men. Any kingdom that has them in such numbers will surely fall to ruin.
>>89013509that's an elf, anon.
>>89025236>These fuckers have half working capacityThey're actually able to produce like ten times as much as your typical peasant farmer.
>>88989220Ah, I see where the disconnect is. You are a gay homosexual faggot.
>>89021984Such as?
>>88999410The peasantry and common folk are not the primary beneficiaries of a feudal system.
>>89025840The Imperium of Man
>>88999693The infantry revolution happened in the 14th century...
>>89027183And who made up the infantry? Wealthy yeomen, gentry, mercenaries, and city militia. Not the common peasantry.
>>88988749By that point it is a halfling kingdom with a human rulership
>>89027474Which makes it a human kingdom. Kingdoms are defined by their rulers, not their peasantry.
>>88988836>Too ill-suited to direct combatOne of the most decorated soldier of the Vietnam war as a 5 foot 1 manlet who, on record, died twice and once jumped of an flying helicopter with a machete when he spotted his friends getting attacked.
>>89027621> This is the ideal fighting body. You may not like it, but it is the truth.
>>88988749I imagine halflings as sort of hyper-peasants - they're really good at farming, sure, but they're also incredibly stuck in their ways and prone to revolt when pressed. They're too used to the idyllic life of their fathers in their insular communities to be wrangled by a lord the way human peasants are. (They also have their own land - so like, enforcing human demands requires military force very quickly). For this reason, the usual set-up in my games are small halfling republics which form very close relationships with whatever community of big folk they neighbor, but retains a decent degree of autonomy.
>>89027694> steps on a landmine, get paraplyzed for life.> somehow train yourself to beat life paralysis> gets back in the shit. > huge 6 hour battle, get shot multiple times, when he's finally evac'd, spots a friend still on the ground from the helicopter. > Grab knife> Jump off helicopter to save friend> get shot 37 times, get declared dead. > spit on the medic's face as he says it, it's the only sign he's alive. > once again cheat death. Holy fuck.
>>89027798>When he was two years old, his father died of tuberculosis and his mother remarried. Five years later, his mother died from tuberculosis as well.These old-timey biographies are always a hoot. I mean not for that guy, his mom died, but like, conceptually.
>>88988749> ideal peasantsnot really, they aren't exactly suited for any real physical labour, they're too small and weak.
>>89028534>Farming isn't physical laborI'll be sure to tell all the hobbits that grew all this food that it wasn't real physical labor
>>88988749In my Gaslamp Fantasy setting, when the dragons took over not!Britain, they literally began breeding halflings (which are what you get when humans sleep with dwarves) en masse as a slave race to the point of creating distinct subraces suited for agrarian and personal servant roles.
>Hurr durr halflings can't farmWhere the fuck are people getting this shit from?
>>89028543Thats a table for, what, 16 people? That's a reasonable amount of food for that many. Problem being that they can support themselves because they are also small, but if they're also needing to support larger races then their level of labour won't be enough.
>>89028574Hobbits are fucking legendary for their appetites anon. They have SEVEN MEALS A DAY. They'd have no trouble supporting larger races.
>>89028592on TOP of supporting themselves? no fucking chance.
>>89028601Based on what? Have you seen the reserves of food Bilbo has? This is the surplus food storage of ONE HOBBIT.
>>89028618I'd really like to know where they get their meat products from as I don't recall a single hobbit ever having any livestock, just farming
>>89028751Maybe they trade plant product for it.
>>89028751True, seems like even smaller livestock like pigs and sheep would fucking body hobbits.
>>89028782>seems like even smaller livestock like pigs and sheep would fucking body hobbits.People need to stop thinking hobbits are these dainty little things, you don't eat 7 meals a day, cut through swarms of orcs, and grow a fuckton of food on a farm by being weak.
>>89028754Hobbits did seem to have a lot of trade mentioned in the books, however outside of the local area most people had never seen nor heard of a hobbit so I'm not too sure on that. >>89028782It just seems unlikely to me that they'd have them as livestock require a huge amount of resources and the shire isn't described as being particularly big
>>89001732>they have 80% of the strength of humansOnly as a dumb d&d 3.5 game balance preserving mechanic. In universe they would have not one half of human strength, but one quarter, as per square cube law.
>>89028793Wouldn't that mean they just have high metabolisms? eating more =/= being stronger, hobbits are the size of kids and don't really seem to have much muscle definition to make up for that size difference. Unlike say, dwarves, who are visibly much stockier and more muscled.
>>89028880Actually they'd probably have more than human strength given that they seem immensely more capable at farming.
>>89028905> they seem immensely more capable at farmingmore like they just have nothing else to do other than potter around in their farms all day. the only thing they stop for are meals and gossiping.
>>89028910>more like they just have nothing else to do other than potter around in their farms all daySo does your average human farmer
>>89028915basically every hobbit farms in some capacity though, even if its just a personal garden.
>>89028925So did 90% of the medieval population. Hence the OP. If 90% of the population of any society are farmers, and halflings are the best at farming, then even if halflings are the dominant race (that would be reserved for the more warrior-like races like humans) they'd still probably constitute the majority of the underclass.
>>89003256How young are we talking? Halflings are 3 feet tall. Most "young boys" tower over them. This guy with his 6.5 ft brothers is what a halfling would look like.
>>88988749if they're meshi halflings then no, they canonically suck ass and are total weaklings compared to every other race.
>>89025236Following the rules of real life animals, they'd have one quarter the strength, would cover less ground, would get hungry in half the time, and would likely need to sleep for longer. They'd be awful as anything that doesn't take specific advantage of their small size.
>>89028592Their meals would be tiny compared to human sized meals though. Being one eighth the mass of a human would mean their meals would be one eighth the size too, but since they're so small they'd need a faster metabolism just to keep warm, so they'd eat twice as many meals. There's a reason tiny mammals seem to spend most of the time eating.
>>89029024I dunno, eating a wholeass fish alongside it's accompaniments for one of the seven meals seems like a good amount of food to me.
>>89029082not if the fish are only like, this big by human standards.
>>89029110Irregardless, the stores of surplus food speak for themselves.
>>89029119Not really, if they've gotta eat so much all the time then those stores of food would presumably be used up just as fast, if not faster, than a regular pantry IRL.
>>89029265But like you said, they eat very little at a time, their meals are very tiny, so those stores will last a long time since they only nibble in very tiny portions.
>>89029269not if they're having 7+ meals a day.
>>89027003Who says 40k is a HFY setting?
>>89029434Very tiny meals, as you said. Their meals are only 1/8th of the size, so on a given day they'd actually end up eating less than a human.
>>88988749Hobbits arnt real, so would make shit peasants.
>>88988749Of course not, stop being retarded.
>>89029707Elaborate
>>89029621This anon is right. Compared to the average American's tub of lard, hobbits eat comparatively little.
>>88989078>Though a population were 99% is only capable of slinging seems unlikely to withstand invasion.... why, exactly? Slings are just as effective in warfare as a bow. Better, in some regards. I'm assuming your knowledge of a sling basically stretches as far as D&D (which makes them comically weak because D&D's designers are ignorant) and you have it in your head that getting hit by a sling stone is like getting punched really hard or something. It's not. A sling stone will shatter bones, cave your head in. They have been just as widespread and ubiquitous as the bow and arrow throughout history, but for whatever reason, possibly aesthetics, they aren't featured as prominently in public perception. Nonetheless, they are one of the best ranged pre-gunpowder weapons you can have.Bear in mind of course that the sling, much like the longbow, is something that, for an ideal soldier, you want them to train their whole life. If you have a pastoral society where they tend to use slings for killing predators that threaten livestock, you have an ideal situation for peasants who can be conscripted as high quality slingers. If your hobbits are pastoralist, or just culturally train with the sling all the time, then you have a perfect source of soldiers.
>>89029119>IrregardlessI hope you step on a lego.
>>89028847They traded with the Bree townships. The Bree lands had a significant hobbit population.
>>88994439Halflings are by nature comfy. Any nation that has many of them becomes comfy.Of course any society where they are the driving force also becomes stagnant.
Halflings are sketchy
Then it wouldn't be a human kingdom anymore ....
>>89030149This has already been mentioned up thread you stupid nigger.
>>89030032Why's he doing the shocker?
>>89030022If you have a feudal kingdom in place stagnancy is not much of a concern, in fact it’s desirable.
>>88989917How much production do you need? Are you planning on starting a war or something? Trying to expand your borders or something? As long as there's enough surplus for the occasional drought or strong winter, you don't need THAT much production at all.
>>89029768>... why, exactly?Because a country capable almost only of ranged combat is more well-suited to guerilla warfare than conventional.Your rant about slings being powerful is pointless to me, I already shill them whenever I have an excuse and seethe at DnDogshit's 1d4 retardation.WHFRP does them more justice, since they do comparable damage to firearms.
>>89002007That's the manor ghost. Don't worr about her.
>>89016317Looking at the filename, I'm 90% sure it's NovelAI with poor usage of quality assurance tags. Probably without many if any exclusion tags for quality either.
>>89029612We're talking about factions that HFYfags coom over, not about overall HFY settings.
>>89030223>a country capable almost only of ranged combat is more well-suited to guerilla warfare than conventionalretard alert
>>89031454Mounted archers aren't comparable to foot archers
>>89031454Not only this >>89031478, but their horse archers were notable because they were an exception to the conventions of warfare at the time.Honestly its more a testament to the advantage of mobility than ranged combat. Which goes against halflings because(as many tabletops will represent) halflings would likely be slower than proper human troops, mounted or otherwise. Their shorter stride limits how much ground they can cover, and they're limited to ponies for steeds since being big enough to ride a horse was literally considered a legendary feat.Ironically hobbits, should they ever want to cover ground with any speed in combat, would probably be better suited to chariots. Fits them using ponies too, since its my understanding that chariots were pulled by smaller horses.
>>89031690>Their shorter stride limits how much ground they can cover, and they're limited to ponies for steedsTo be fair, the horses used by the mongols were basically ponies.
>>88988749They would be court jesters
>>89028618Bilbo was like the lord of the area though, landed gentry, very rich.
>>89034833Rich to begin with and came back even richer.
>>88989977I suppose you'll just have to get used to rubbing your dick on a skeleton's pelvic bone.
>>88988749In my setting they are! A lot of comments say it wouldn't work because they aren't good in a fight, well why is that a bad thing, wouldn't that mean every human will then be a career soldier? If all kingdoms have the same demography of human nobles and halfling lower-class they would cancel each other out.>but what if a group of mostly humans/orcs/elfs/etc. They would take overWell yeah, they would take over as the ruling class and then the hobbits would outbreed them and in a few hundred years every nation in that continent follows the same original formula, which might I add, makes a hell of a lot of sense.
