Got Hobbits?

[Hairfoot]

When I asked the question a year or so back, I was surprised to find that hairyfoots had largely survived the 3E Kenderkrieg and still featured in a majority of campaigns.

So how about now? Has the resizing and recasting of halflings led you to drop the Tolkienoids from your game?

 

[Steely Dan]

In my 21 years of DMing, Halflings/Hobbits have never been in any of my campaigns.

I would only use them in a Middle-Earth campaign, or in Dark Sun, because they are so important to both of those settings.

 

[exile]

In the 3.X games I played in, hobbit style halflings existed side by side with halflings as written (they all used the same rules set). In the 4E home games that I have played, hobbit style halflings are the only halflings. I'm actually playing one now.

As an aside, I really like the background that Paizo has cooked up for halflings. For purposes of my own world-building, I'm considering taking it a step further, and saying that halflings were not created by teh gods as were other races, but are actually members of the other three races that have been transformed into their new size and hairy-footed, leathery-soled form for punishment for some crime...or perhaps teh descendants of such criminals. This would explain why there are such larcenous tendencies amongst the race.

Chad

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

When I asked the question a year or so back, I was surprised to find that hairyfoots had largely survived the 3E Kenderkrieg and still featured in a majority of campaigns.

So how about now? Has the resizing and recasting of halflings led you to drop the Tolkienoids from your game?

There never was a kenderkrieg, and they were never recast.

Most hobbits (halfling is the Common term) are still like the rural British, but in Tolkien's own works a minority were "strange" and liked to do things like adventure. The Tooks were famous for this, along with Merry. (Bilbo, more like a regular halfling, definitely did not like adventuring.)

It wasn't until 4e that halflings were made explicitly different (water-borne traders) and I expect people will simply ignore that.

The 4e halfling also doesn't "seem" smaller. (It's not about height, but about rules.) You get a smaller weapon, and in return you get ... nothing.

 

[Jhaelen]

With the exception of Darksun I've never had any halflings in my game. In my 24+ years of playing rpgs I think, I've encountered a total of three people who enjoyed playing halflings of the tolkienesque variety.

 

[Dykstrav]

I have a player in my current campaign who has a halfling warlock. It's the first halfling I've seen in actual play in about twelve years.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

For me as a DM it's a simple case of Halflings in PHB = Halflings available in game.

 

[Desdichado]

At best, halflings are an option to play just because they're in the PHB. I've never played in a game where halfling society was defined enough to differentiate from Tolkienian hobbits vs. kenderesque gypsies. None of us care very much about halflings, honestly, near as I can tell. I certainly don't. If it were up to me, they wouldn't even feature in the game at all.

 

[thundershot]

I'll have Hobbits after the Advanced Player's Guide puts them back in. I'll make them a separate race from Halfling.

 

[TerraDave]

There never was a kenderkrieg, and they were never recast.

Very Orwellian. Well done.