A shorter barrel length means portable guns would be less affective as well. They could use piercing melee weapons like swords but they’d have to be more strategic where they strike. Of course with sufficient tech or magic these limitations could be overcome.
That, swarms, and larger helpers.
Stealth
100%. Also traps.
I could see a tree-village of pixies having trained bears nesting at the base of the village.
You should look into Pathfinder 2e! They have all sorts of small ancestries in the core books like Tripkee (froglike), Ratfolk, Kobold, Goblin, Leshy (nature spirit), and more. The best part is that even the most silly character builds will be interesting and fun to play because of how leveling works.
TTRPGs are too social for me XD
Smaller enemies are harder to hit, so i think smaller races are going to invest heavily in speed and agility. As such, the tooling should be paired with their strengths. Think about how much damage a mouse with a razor line from a fighting kite could do if it had a mind to understand the potential.
What about magic or hypnosis or social engineering? I would actually love to see a slytalkin social engineer in a small race. Would be so cool
Only tangentially related, but how about magical social engineering? Years ago I thought of a (superhero?) concept called The Social Engineer. Every time you hold a clipboard and put on a safety vest, you can enter into otherwise restricted areas and nobody will question it. You’re not invisible though, and directly interacting with people inside bears a risk they’ll see through the illusion, but as long as you look like you belong there people will assume you’re fixing the HVAC system or something.
That sounds awesome! That is the superhero movie I want to see!
Edit. Selling
You ever read Super Supportive by Sleyca? He has a whole classification of supers called “rabbits” that are basically this. I think you’d very much enjoy how those powers are explored in a very well built fictional universe.
