D&D General My Problem(s) With Halflings, and How To Create Engaging/Interesting Fantasy Races

[Mind of tempest]

The big controversy of the 3e PHB was the halflings were too tall.

gods that is just sad.

 

[Mercurius]

They were jokes, son.

Oh, duh me.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Because this is apparently the Bad Place, where we're condemned to have the same discussions over and over again forever, here's my 2007 Unified Theory of Gnomes post.

That's pretty much what they went with in 4e other than dropping the default "Speak with animals".

People do like them and people do know what to do with them. That's not true of all tables and certainly not true of all designers. But just like with halflings, if you don't like them, the answer is don't use them in your game.

Oh, I don't think they should be removed. I do however think that if one small race should go I don't see many good reasons for starting with the thematically relatively consistent one rather than the one you actually need a Unified Theory for - especially not when the OP suggested you could do halfling stuff with the less popular gnomes.

And I fully support keeping Tieflings and Dragonborn in the PHB, adding Warforged, and adding Tabaxi. And replacing the Half Orc with either the Orc or the Goliath.

 

[Mercurius]

Yeah the fact that they had Level Adjustment allowed them to get away with a ton more stuff as playable races too. I mean it was totally unbalanced bollocks because some races were +1 LA and only arguably better than PHB races, and other ones were like +1 LA and broken OP (and this discontinuity got worse as the LA increased), but the concept allowed them to include tons and tons of races you just couldn't have in any other edition (or where things got severely wacky to allow it).

I forgot about LA. It is a solid idea, though, and I think would be necessary to really capture something like Irda. I also think more "monstrous" races like Minotaurs would work well with it, and if you really wanted Tolkien-style elves, they would need LA. Probably Dunedain too.

 

[Vaalingrade]

LA and pretty much Savage Species in general was a grim-faced attempt to discourage fun species play by making them basically unplayable in the actual game due to racial HD paradoxically both sucking and blowing at the same time. They were barely better than fighter levels.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Honestly you're tilting at the wrong windmill here but you have put your finger on part of the problem. There are two races of relatively PC-aligned little people that make for visually overpowered people, relatively friendly, and unlikely adventurers and there's definitely room for one of them (dwarves certainly aren't small, just short).

The thing is that gnomes have never had a consistent identity. If you ask me what a halfling is I could more or less tell you. But gnomes? Wtf are they? They've literally had a different identity in almost every edition:

• In 1e/2e they were small dwarves. Yes, you read that right. Like dwarfs gnomes were expert miners, magically resistant, lived in hills and mountains, had infravision, and gained bonuses to hit and to avoid being hit by a strongly overlapping list of enemies. They were basically small dwarfs with slightly different stat caps and their biggest difference was that they could be illusionists.
• In 3.0/3.5 they lost the underground stuff and their version of stonecunning. (The 3.5 gnome had a few positive changes, moving to bard as a favoured class, moving their casting from spells off Int and subject to Arcane Spell Failure to Spell-Like Abilities working off Cha). Their biggest standout feature was that all gnomes could play Dr. Doolittle, talking to badgers and moles - and about half could cast dancing lights, ghost sound, and prestidigitation 1/day - and their high stat was Con. Almost no one liked them.
• In 4e they weren't in the PHB. By the PHB2 they'd worked out what to do with them and moved them to the Feywild, letting them turn invisible as a reaction. They also kept some Ghost Sound and their good stats became Int and Cha or Dex
• In 5e their stand out feature is that (unlike dwarves) they are magic-resistant against anything mind affecting, a minor throwback to 1e/2e. They kept the Int bonus from 4e as their primary with sub-races for Dex, Cha, and Con.

I mean seriously WTF is this? It's like the 1e writers didn't know what to do with them, the 3.0 writers didn't know what to do with them and went back to the drawing board, the 4e writers didn't know what to do with them and went back to the drawing board, and the 5e writers created something that was one part 4e gnome, and one part something the dwarves had discarded turned up to 11.

It's not surprising that gnomes are the least popular race in the PHB, significantly behind the halflings. And not only would little of value be lost if gnomes were simply folded into a couple of subgroups of halflings (especially now we're using mutable stats) we'd have something with a clear identity and clear inspiration for PCs. And have rid of the race no one actually knows what to do with.

I’m amazed that you can’t see the through line that is present right there in your own descriptions.

They’re small, magical, hidden folk.

Also, a nitpick, they knew what to do with gnomes before 4e PHB even came out, they just didn’t make the PHB1 cut. The MM gnome is a Fey that can turn invisible, IIRC.

And the 5e gnome could just stop at Forest Gnome and be perfect, tbh, but some folks needed the 3.5 hill gnome with light tinkering for whatever reason.

But they’ve stayed small magical hidden folk throughout.

 

[Mind of tempest]

That's pretty much what they went with in 4e other than dropping the default "Speak with animals".

Oh, I don't think they should be removed. I do however think that if one small race should go I don't see many good reasons for starting with the thematically relatively consistent one rather than the one you actually need a Unified Theory for - especially not when the OP suggested you could do halfling stuff with the less popular gnomes.

And I fully support keeping Tieflings and Dragonborn in the PHB, adding Warforged, and adding Tabaxi. And replacing the Half Orc with either the Orc or the Goliath.

I find the theme of the halfling so useless as to be not worth having, I would rather uplift a monster race or make a new one from scratch who better fits.

LA and pretty much Savage Species in general was a grim-faced attempt to discourage fun species play by making them basically unplayable in the actual game due to racial HD paradoxically both sucking and blowing at the same time. They were barely better than fighter levels.

gods it was so badwrongfun in design even I who sucks at design knows it is terrible.

 

[ph0rk]

And this takes me to halflings. What's their niche? Short-person.

You could say much the same about Rangers.

Some stuff is just because it was; the game has a history, and people want parts of that history honored.

Most of the other small race choices you list weren't original.

Gnomes weren't core playable until 1989; halflings were core playable from 1978 if not before. Goblins (1993) and Kobolds (1993) were much later.

 

[jayoungr]

I find the theme of the halfling so useless as to be not worth having, I would rather uplift a monster race or make a new one from scratch who better fits.

Goody for you. Why do you want to stop the rest of us who are enjoying our halflings?

 

[bedir than]

And the 5e gnome could just stop at Forest Gnome and be perfect, tbh, but some folks needed the 3.5 hill gnome with light tinkering for whatever reason.

That's the race I would adjust, but the adjustment would to be to put the forest gnome as a type of halfling and the rock gnome as a type of dwarf. I would do this because the gnomish subraces have almost nothing to do with each other.