(Hinuary 2013) Sunday Bonus Post: Hin-specific level titles

This post is going to be short, that's why I'm releasing it as a bonus companion piece to today's earlier article: the Compiled Halfling Class XP chart, instead of waiting till tomorrow and calling it its own piece.

The demihumans of the Classic D&D game kind of get cheated in regard to their level titles. Generally, the game just takes the fighter class titles and adds a "dwarf/halfling" modifier, or with the elves, just compounds the fighter and magic user titles. Using the same logic as we did in our Hin Sized Weapons article, I decided that the Hin of Mystara are common enough, and established enough in their own homeland that their culture should assign its own titles to its heroes. Here's what I came up with:

Level	Standard D&D Title	Five Shires Hin Title
1	Halfling Veteran	Gaffer (m) / Gammer (f)
2	Halfling Warrior	Slinger
3	Halfling Swordmaster	Protector (of the Five Shires)
4	Halfling Hero	Hero (m) / Heroine (f) (of the Five Shires)
5	Halfling Swashbuckler	Buccaneer
6	Halfling Myrmidon	Cohort (of the Five Shires)
7	Hafling Champion	Advocate (of the Five Shires)
8	Sheriff	Marshall

Inside the borders of the Five Shires, the "of the Five Shires" formality of some of the titles is rarely used, other Hin know what you are a protector, hero, cohort or advocate of with you telling them. Most Hin characters only use the full, formal titles when travelling abroad and introducing themselves to folk who might not know of their homeland.

Direrodent's notes, in the previous article, about the use of the term sheriff still applies, it is a word often used informally to show respect to accomplished militia or military servicemen, retired or otherwise. I just wanted to remove the official confusion between actual Five Shires sheriffs and other high level Hin characters.

Similar to the generic use of Sheriff to show respect to an accomplished warrior, some Hin use a generic form of the term Gaffer/Gammer to honor non-combatant neighbors (Hin consider everyone living in their city or town to be a neighbor, and all the natives of the Shires to be almost-neighbors, be they fellow Hin or otherwise) of fame and accomplishment in their profession.

Example: Miija Copperkettle, a renowned Hin baker, owns and runs a small shop in the city of Portown on the isle of A'val in Seashire. It is the custom of most Hin in Portown to refer to her (directly) as Gammer, and indirectly as Gammer Copperkettle.