What are dwarves, except short (though not even that short) humans who like beer, axes and mining?
A race created to be great at mining, though darkvision, their stoutness, resistance to poison, and ability to move while wearing heavy armor without a penalty for it.
What are elves except pretty and haughty humans?
A race created by the blood of gods/fey that have an otherworldly nature that makes it so they don't have to sleep, recall the memories of past lives/ages while in trances, and given a heightened awareness of their surroundings through Darkvision and proficiency in Perception.
What are goliaths except tall humans who live on mountains?
Spartan-style Giant-descended clans of resilient warriors naturally adapted to live on mountains, carry a ton of weight, and withstand unusually cold temperatures. Sure, if you just theme them as a "proud warrior race", they're fairly boring, but if you theme them more towards their giantish origins, it makes them more interesting.
What are orcs except ugly and savage humans?
A race of powerful, strong, and emotionally driven, primal warriors that follow the "old ways", whether that be the traditions of Gruumsh (FR and natural Exandria Orcs) or druidic customs taught to them by ancient dragons (Eberron Orcs).
I get it, humans can fulfill a lot of these niches, but these races were hand-crafted by the Gods of the worlds and the game designers to embody their niches. This is why lots of people like playing "My species doth protest to much" characters, because the race having a niche is what makes it interesting to subvert the typical race's tropes.
Halflings don't really have that. They're short people that are lucky, for some reason, and brave, for another unexplained reason (even though their race is the embodiment of "hide from our enemies, and we'll be okay". If they don't have much core identity in the base of the game other than "short people with a smattering of traits to make them worth taking and mechanically different from humans", that makes it even harder to subvert the race's tropes.
Like I get it, I want fantasy species to be more unique than that too, so I homebrew my own, but I feel that the standards here are not applied fairly!
I can understand how it would look unfair to say "this race is too much like humans" when a ton of races have lots of similarities to humans, but I disagree with that argument for a few key reasons:
- All of us players are humans, and it's hard to roleplay something that isn't human in some way. This is why races having core identities is so important, because then it gives some roleplay advice for playing them (to both DMs and PCs) to differentiate them from "just humans in silly hats".
- The core identity of halflings is "short people, like the ones from the Hobbit", while the core identity of other races are more in-depth and thought out (IMO, of course).
- If races can't be more unique unless you use homebrew, what the hell are Warforged, Changelings, Shifters, Kalashtar, Lizardfolk, Dragonborn, Tieflings, Aasimar, Genasi, and so on? There are tons of official races that are unique and interesting, so to say "just homebrew better races" is besides the point. I gave examples of races that I thought were cool and were official, and also examples of races that I created to be unique, to give examples of how to create compelling races and how halflings don't fit that. A lot of other races do pass my "is this race compelling" test, and that means that by my standards, Halflings are subpar to what they could be.