Let's see. Halflings are no good because
- Orcs can invade their villages by tearing through the path in the bramble that they don't notice to get to the small hidden village they don't see.
Halflings love warm fires
Fires create smoke
Smoke rises above the treeline, indicating civilization
"Walk toward smoke, find village" is not rocket science
Additionally, Orcs tend to live in mountains
Mountains are tall
Standing in their mountain home, orcs could look down on a halfling village
"Walk towards that village we can see from the mountains" is not rocket science
- Since they are listed as getting along with neighbors and enjoying a simple life, they have no defenses
Or the fact that their defenses are listed. They are
We are too lucky to be attacked
We drive off our attackers with sticks and rocks
Which is... not exactly what I would call adequate defenses.
- Wizards are required to defend every village, halflings don't excel at being wizards and there's not a lot of association with wizards and halflings. Therefore they would be extinct.
You know, I remember a lot of arguments about wizards being super rare, because no one is going to take the time to be educated to be a wizard. How many people growing up in farming communities with no contact with the outside world have the time or access to study magic.
Not saying that a wizard is needed to defend every town, but it is not a far stretch to say the vast majority of halflings would have little access to arcane magic.
- They can't defend themselves because they are never depicted with weapons in the art (except when they are)
Or the lore tells us they use rocks and sticks and barrel lids, instead of arrows, swords and shields.
- They don't build walled cities and aren't interested in military conquest therefor they can't defend themselves
This is a general problem with so much of DnD.
- Halfling luck (and brave) is doesn't mean anything or is actually a negative attribute. Somehow.
People want to make Halfling luck Bravery into something it isn't.
Yes, Halflings are hard to scare, that doesn't make every single one of them a Marine, capable of pulling off complex and deadly maneuvers with no chance of messing up. It doesn't make them unable to be hurt and killed by more skilled opponents. They are just hard to spook, sometimes that is good, sometimes that is bad. Because sometimes fear is bad, and sometimes fear is good and healthy.
Yes, halflings are lucky. Why that means they are immune to bad things, and are super combatants when Lucky is actually a relatively minor boost to accuracy. If Lucky said "you are immune to crits, you crit on a 15 or higher, and whenever the DM rolls for random encounters, traps, or monsters attacks, they must roll a d100 and you are safe regardless of the circumstances if they roll above a 70." Then I would agree that Lucky does all the things people want to claim it does.
But that isn't what it does. Halfling luck is not that powerful.
- They're dominated by an agrarian society when they do have communities of their own. Which will be different from other races because, umm, reasons.
No other race is called out as being nearly exclusively agrarian. Yes, people like to picture DnD as the early medieval ages where massive percentages of the population were farmers and everyone struggled to survive.
But DnD also has a lot pulled from the Rennasaince, when that wasn't the case. Things like having big urban centers, trade guilds, readily available glass and complex tools, galleys and warships.
Plus, DnD has magic and monsters, which changes a lot of the assumptions of an early medieval society.
P.S. Yes, I'm being a little sarcastic in my list of why halflings are no good but only by a small amount. I don't want to short people on their arguments, I just don't think they rise to the height of "no reason to exist".
I don't think they rise to the level of "no reason to exist" either.
I do think they rise to the level of "not well explained" or "lacking".
