Do you realize how small a halfling/gnome is?

If you want to see how something Halfling-sized can be an efficient combattant through nimbleness, you must look at this video.

The video itself is worksafe (aside from being a video, that is), but the site isn't that much -- it prizes itself on being "tasteless humor for the unemployed" so it could be blocked by most firewalls.

People have pointed out that an adult halfling will have better developed musculature than a human child of the same height. With that said, have you ever been hit by a 2 year old child? My son can really pack a wallop if he wants to - and if he decides to hit me with the hammer from his whack-a-ball thingy - it can hurt a LOT. I have no problem beleiving a halfling could do some serious damage with a real weapon (but it does make me much more supportive of the weapon size rules of 3.5).

Plane Sailing said:

People wonder why 3e halflings and gnomes never exist in my worlds... I just can't suspend my disbelief enough for them! Cheers

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Great minds...

In my homebrew world, Gnomes and Halflings have been exterminated by evil kingdoms and empires (there's an in-game historical reason for this), and only a dozen representatives of those races still exist.

To fill up the void, I created a new race, Baatans, a sub-breed of devils.

Hmm, look at that ant carrying that huge wasp corpse...

If you find your imagination failing you, do the easy thing and look for an anthill. It's not that unusual to find creatures getting stronger and stronger (relatively speaking) as they get smaller and smaller.

That's the square/cube law. Your body mass increase with your total volume (cube), but your muscle strength depends on their width (square). The bigger you get, the more disfavorable the ratio is.

That's why you don't have 10 km-long flies flying around.

To go a step further than the current Halfing size vs. actual child discussion, my son (age 14, about 5' 1" and weighs about 100 pounds) is currently playing an elf who, coincidentally is about the same size. It is nice to have an actual elf sitting at the table.
My other son is dwarf height, but the typical dwarf outweighs him by about 130 pounds.
It is interesting to "see" the sizes in real life!

Henry said:

A halfling may not be realistic, but it's certainly not implausible.

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Halflings aren't just plausible, they really exist. Really. Check out this pick of two Irish Guards (a regiment of the British army).

Oh please.

An ant can lift something like 7 times its own body weight. Yay. We are all impressed. Excepts that's still a pebble.

Halflings (or as I like to call them - Halfwits) in tolkien pretty much fill the role one would expect, other races look down on them, they pretty much hide from any sort of physical confrontation, and the exceptions don't disprove the rule.

None of which is relevant to DND where the abstractions and unrealities are what make it a fantasy game where humans CAN fight giants instead of being rightly smacked into oblivion.

-Hylo

Henry said:

A halfling may not be realistic, but it's certainly not implausible.

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I've actually thought a lot about this with my 3-year-old son; he's very small (height-wise) for his age, but he's almost all muscle - no fat (he's CONSTANTLY in motion and eats like a bird). Here are some random observations:

1 - It took 5 fully grown adults to hold him down for his booster shots. FIVE!
2 - When he throws things, they can hurt.
3 - My daughter, who's one and a half, has no problems lifting stuffed animals that are bigger than she is and walking around with them.
4 - He's really halfling-size (he's just over 3-feet and 30 pounds). And he's FAST when he runs (it helps that I have blown out an ankle and a knee, but still...)

I don't know that I can conceive an 18-STR halfling, but trust me, I can believe a 12-STR halfling!

Henry said:

In order for a child to have an 8 strength, it would need to be able to bench-press twice its own weight; this points to MUCH stronger musculature than a human being. Think instead this way: if an average halfling were 6 feet tall, it would possess the equivalent of 16 strength or higher. If a 16 STR halfling (darned strong!) were 6 feet tall, it would be almost as strong as a fire giant!

(Actually, the square-cubed rule would technically apply, but then there goes that "thinking about it too hard," again.)

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I'm a bit big for a human; six-foot-two and 260 lbs. But let's just consider square-cubed laws for a second. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that I'm a little weakling and can only lift 120 lbs (pathetic compared to my body weight, and I know I can do more, but this is for illustrative purposes).

If I were "shrunk" down to half size, I'd be the size of an average halfling - three-foot-one. My weight would drop to 1/8th of what it was (weight is contingent on volume) to just over 30 pounds (we'll round it off). My lifting ability would drop to 1/4th of what it was (muscle power is contingent upon cross-sectional area, so it drops of as the square of my height change). I could lift 30 pounds. In other words, if I was simply "shrunk" in half I would go from being able to lift half my body weight to lifting my ENTIRE body weight!

Reversing it, it means that a halfling who can bench twice his own body weight, with no changes in musculature other than being "Scaled up" to human size, would be able to bench his own body weight, and no more, at human size. And if he (or a human) is scaled up to fire giant size, he's only able to lift half his own body weight (it's why eventually, without a change in musculature, your weight eventually gets so big you can't support yourself and collapse).

Basically, your weight falls off faster than your strength and your strength falls off faster than your height as you're shrunk.

--The Sigil

By the way, this pic is wonderful for giving a good visual clue when you don't have a 3YO nearby: