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

[Doug McCrae]

The write-up for D&D halflings is part Took-halfling (curious and willing to adventure) and part-non Took halfling (homey homebody who loves food and comfort)

The nomadic halflings aspect from 3e is in there too. 3.5 PHB: "Halfling clans are nomadic, wandering wherever circumstance and curiosity take them." 3e halflings are also kender-ish in a way that 5e halflings are not: "Halflings prefer trouble to boredom. They are notoriously curious. Relying on their ability to survive or escape danger, they demonstrate a daring that many larger people can’t match."

the two halves operate at cross-purposes.

The Hobbit presents Bilbo's Baggins half (from his father, Bungo) and Took half (from his mother, Belladonna Took) as being in internal conflict with one another:

The Took side had won. He suddenly felt he would go without bed and breakfast to be thought fierce.​

​

Many a time afterwards the Baggins part regretted what he did now, and he said to himself: "Bilbo, you were a fool; you walked right in and put your foot in it."​

​

The Tookishness was wearing off, and he was not now quite so sure that he was going on any journey in the morning.​

​

"Don’t be a fool, Bilbo Baggins!" he said to himself, "thinking of dragons and all that outlandish nonsense at your age!"​

​

Somehow the killing of the giant spider, all alone by himself in the dark without the help of the wizard or the dwarves or of anyone else, made a great difference to Mr. Baggins. He felt a different person, and much fiercer and bolder in spite of an empty stomach​

​

"Dear me, what a fool I was and am!" said the least Tookish part of him. "I have absolutely no use for dragon-guarded treasures, and the whole lot could stay here for ever, if only I could wake up and find this beastly tunnel was my own front-hall at home!"​

​

The Tookish part was getting very tired, and the Baggins was daily getting stronger. "I wish now only to be in my own armchair!" he said.​

Also, what does it say about Tolkien halflings that they seem to view adventure as something one weird family does?

Tolkien mostly admired his hobbits – The Shire was drawn from his childhood in rural Warwickshire – but he considered their insularity to be a negative characteristic. Letter #131: "They [hobbits] are made small… partly to exhibit the pettiness of man, plain unimaginative parochial man".

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The nomadic halflings aspect from 3e is in there too. 3.5 PHB: "Halfling clans are nomadic, wandering wherever circumstance and curiosity take them." 3e halflings are also kender-ish in a way that 5e halflings are not: "Halflings prefer trouble to boredom. They are notoriously curious. Relying on their ability to survive or escape danger, they demonstrate a daring that many larger people can’t match."

Yeah, 3e halflings were great! I can understand if people don't quite get the flavour of 5e halflings as it is kinda confused.

 

[Dark Arcarnist]

you are not wrong on the first part but they at least have more to mess with to generate different interpretations.

warforged really depends on setting and tieflings without some kind of fiend presents in the setting are just cooler looking humans but being tired to hell is at least a thing that has more than two interpretations.

I like limited focused settings and if I want to bring it a race I want to be able to say how it could work and be interpreted in a setting, halflings have near nothing in that department.

I myself want to know how to build better races that can be both widely interpreted but have a core that inspires things, halflings lack both can you even imagine what a society of evil halflings would be like?

I don't know about a society of evil halflings but I could see an evil society of halflings. I've always seen the halflings/hobbits as representing a very insular, self-satisfied, middle class lifestyle, and those types of people can/have done some awful things to protect their way of life. Most Germans in the '30's & '40's weren't evil people but they were passively complicit members of an evil society - I can see halflings going in a similar vein. You could have a bucolic utopia peopled by halflings who view any outside influence as an inherit threat to their lifestyle (and what is more threatening to ANY peaceful locale than a party of scruffy murder-hobos?), and decide to protect themselves by guarding the borders with flesh golems wrought from previous interlopers, or having law & order left in the hands of a cabal of civic-minded diabolists, or just straight up poisoning the water supply of every neighbouring settlement within 50 kilometres? I think a community of under-sized individuals looking to lead comfortable, "good" lives surrounded by humans, orcs etc. would probably be given to knee-jerk, hyper-violent over-reaction & be viewed as "evil" by outsiders even without zombie slaves, throat-cutters & devil worshipers (although they are all a lot more fun, obviously).

 

[Mind of tempest]

The nomadic halflings aspect from 3e is in there too. 3.5 PHB: "Halfling clans are nomadic, wandering wherever circumstance and curiosity take them." 3e halflings are also kender-ish in a way that 5e halflings are not: "Halflings prefer trouble to boredom. They are notoriously curious. Relying on their ability to survive or escape danger, they demonstrate a daring that many larger people can’t match."


The Hobbit presents Bilbo's Baggins half (from his father, Bungo) and Took half (from his mother, Belladonna Took) as being in internal conflict with one another:

The Took side had won. He suddenly felt he would go without bed and breakfast to be thought fierce.​

​

Many a time afterwards the Baggins part regretted what he did now, and he said to himself: "Bilbo, you were a fool; you walked right in and put your foot in it."​

​

The Tookishness was wearing off, and he was not now quite so sure that he was going on any journey in the morning.​

​

"Don’t be a fool, Bilbo Baggins!" he said to himself, "thinking of dragons and all that outlandish nonsense at your age!"​

​

Somehow the killing of the giant spider, all alone by himself in the dark without the help of the wizard or the dwarves or of anyone else, made a great difference to Mr. Baggins. He felt a different person, and much fiercer and bolder in spite of an empty stomach​

​

"Dear me, what a fool I was and am!" said the least Tookish part of him. "I have absolutely no use for dragon-guarded treasures, and the whole lot could stay here for ever, if only I could wake up and find this beastly tunnel was my own front-hall at home!"​

​

The Tookish part was getting very tired, and the Baggins was daily getting stronger. "I wish now only to be in my own armchair!" he said.​

Tolkien mostly admired his hobbits – The Shire was drawn from his childhood in rural Warwickshire – but he considered their insularity to be a negative characteristic. Letter #131: "They [hobbits] are made small… partly to exhibit the pettiness of man, plain unimaginative parochial man".

ah, bilbo has that problem, I am familiar with it, the stick in the mud who says you must be blandly receptacle and the better bits of you that know a thing worth doing when it hear's it, maybe it is in water.

this also explains so much about my mother and her family.

I don't know about a society of evil halflings but I could see an evil society of halflings. I've always seen the halflings/hobbits as representing a very insular, self-satisfied, middle class lifestyle, and those types of people can/have done some awful things to protect their way of life. Most Germans in the '30's & '40's weren't evil people but they were passively complicit members of an evil society - I can see halflings going in a similar vein. You could have a bucolic utopia peopled by halflings who view any outside influence as an inherit threat to their lifestyle (and what is more threatening to ANY peaceful locale than a party of scruffy murder-hobos?), and decide to protect themselves by guarding the borders with flesh golems wrought from previous interlopers, or having law & order left in the hands of a cabal of civic-minded diabolists, or just straight up poisoning the water supply of every neighbouring settlement within 50 kilometres? I think a community of under-sized individuals looking to lead comfortable, "good" lives surrounded by humans, orcs etc. would probably be given to knee-jerk, hyper-violent over-reaction & be viewed as "evil" by outsiders even without zombie slaves, throat-cutters & devil worshipers (although they are all a lot more fun, obviously).

evil halflings are hard to do I could do evil gnomes quite well.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

As for your statement the importance of tieflings to D&D's future, I cannot say; you could be right, although it also depends upon what you mean by "future." Near future (say, next 5-10 years), sure, absolutely. But today's tieflings might be tomorrow's zorgothians (or whatever). Things change.

You mean the tomorrow's halflings?

Sure, they could be, but given the perennial popularity of part-demons or good-demons or morally ambiguous demons in media, like back certainly well into the 20th century (Marvel brought in the good-guy superhero "Son of Satan" in 1973 for example, and Nightcrawler, who obviously isn't actually a demon but equally obviously is one of the key inspirations for Tieflings, is one of the very most popular mutants), I would be pretty surprised. I think their most likely fate is to get so overplayed in the present that they slightly decline with "the next generation". We see no sign of part-demons slowing down in popularity as a broad media concept.

Dragonborn I admit I am a little surprised by but I think they hit three notes D&D is otherwise lacking:

1) Scaly race (not necessarily in the Furry-variant sense). Some people just want to be the lizardman or whatever, and this guy is right here in the PHB.

2) Draconic fantasy as a PC (without having to pick a specific kind of sorcerer). Breath weapon is spot-on for this.

3) Strength race that isn't ugly, short or ignoble (there are loads of alternatives now, but again, not in the PHB).

Plus people have always liked dragon-people - I remember back in 1990 when I found the Advanced Fighting Fantasy RPG (not to be confused with the choose-your-own-adventure books the system derived from), and Out of the the Pit, and I really wanted to be able to play the dragon-man race in the latter. It was still a mistake not giving DBs tails though, I swear to god.

If we want to look at broader trends and the tradition of D&D outside of our personal experience, we can still see how it has unfolded in different waves and phases. The first wave did not include tieflings or dragonborn, while later waves did. It doesn't make anything more or less part of the D&D tradition, but it may influence how different people view them, depending upon when and what they imprinted to.

Definitely agree.

Anyhow, I think the sea change with races happened in the first half decade of 2E, the early 90s, perhaps especially with the relatively high concept Dark Sun, Planescape and Spelljammer settings, which opened up the flood-gates for "non-traditional" D&D.

I think it starts with the very first 2E setting is Taladas, in 1989, which includes, as default, not "ask your DM" or anything, playable lizardmen, goblins, ogres, and minotaurs, and has a setting which features dwarves who hate the underground, elven steppe-barbarians going full Mongol Horde, kender who are depressive and not thieves, elves who aren't clever, nor have a superhuman culture, and mostly run around a jungle dodging degenerate mind-flayers, tinker gnomes who aren't incompetent, and all sorts of other trend-breakers.

Then we have Spelljammer in 1989, Dark Sun in 1991, and Planescape in 1994, as you say. Indeed there are fairly few 2E settings which could be termed in any way traditional beyond the continuations of the Forgotten Realms and hilarious repeated failed attempts to "Make Greyhawk happen!".

 

[Aldarc]

This thread has me thinking about one of my other pet peeve tropes: i.e., that humanity's superpower is its versatility or adaptability. But I suspect that it's motivated from trying to avoid making too strong a statement about humanity and spinning something generic and inoffensive into something positive.

I would probably flat-out give humans a niche. I would say that other ancestries believe humans have a bizarre, fetishized obsession with trade, commerce, and wealth. But this obsession is the reason humans forge empires, start wars, establish global trade networks, form cosmopolitan communities, or even cooperate with other peoples, cultures, and ancestries.

 

[Mind of tempest]

This thread has me thinking about one of my other pet peeve tropes: i.e., that humanity's superpower is its versatility or adaptability. But I suspect that it's motivated from trying to avoid making too strong a statement about humanity and spinning something generic and inoffensive into something positive.

I would probably flat-out give humans a niche. I would say that other ancestries believe humans have a bizarre, fetishized obsession with trade, commerce, and wealth. But this obsession is the reason humans forge empires, start wars, establish global trade networks, form cosmopolitan communities, or even cooperate with other peoples, cultures, and ancestries.

I say 4e had it right in its description of us, adaptable mutable but really corruptible so it has a downside that other do not give our insane habit of having so many different motivation we normally talk past each other.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Adds Iall's name to The List ...

Isn't keeping lists of names like that a dwarf trait?

your looking from the dm view not the player since at the end of the day a race is what they play use in the process of making a character thus people who want looks or association look for things that get them that, hence they are big buy race know for battle and war.

As someone who DMs more than they play I don't give a sparrow's fart for "the DM view" in this case - and indeed consider what you are advocating as "the DM view" on halflings to be actively harmful.

For playable races two things that matter.
1: What is the player view - the players are the ones going to have to play their characters
2: Does it completely warp the setting around them, forcing the DM to respond.

Point 1 is fine. Some players like them because they do things no other race can (indeed they are the only race remaining with a disadvantage so far as I can tell). Point 2 is also fine when the problem with them appears to be that the answer is no, halflings are unlikely to pivot the setting unless something serious is done about them. So they shouldn't be a bother to most DMs even if it's the players not the DMs actually gaining by their being there.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Quotations about hobbits from Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring.

The Hobbit

There is little or no magic about them, except the ordinary everyday sort which helps them to disappear quietly and quickly when large stupid folk like you and me come blundering along, making a noise like elephants which they can hear a mile off.

"We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner! I can’t think what anybody sees in them," said our Mr. Baggins

The Fellowship of the Ring Prologue 1 Concerning Hobbits

Hobbits… love peace and quiet and good tilled earth: a well-ordered and well-farmed countryside was their favourite haunt. They do not and did not understand or like machines more complicated than a forge-bellows, a water-mill, or a hand-loom, though they were skilful with tools.

They are quick of hearing and sharp-eyed, and though they are inclined to be fat and do not hurry unnecessarily, they are nonetheless nimble and deft in their movements. They possessed from the first the art of disappearing swiftly and silently, when large folk whom they do not wish to meet come blundering by; and this art they have developed until to Men it may seem magical. But Hobbits have never, in fact, studied magic of any kind, and their elusiveness is due solely to a professional skill that heredity and practice, and a close friendship with the earth, have rendered inimitable by bigger and clumsier races.

It is plain indeed that in spite of later estrangement Hobbits are relatives of ours: far nearer to us than Elves, or even than Dwarves.

Before the crossing of the mountains the Hobbits had already become divided into three somewhat different breeds: Harfoots, Stoors, and Fallohides.

Being somewhat bolder and more adventurous, they [Fallohides] were often found as leaders or chieftains among clans of Harfoots or Stoors. Even in Bilbo's time the strong Fallohidish strain could still be noted among the greater families, such as the Tooks and the Masters of Buckland.

Nonetheless, ease and peace had left this people still curiously tough. They were, if it came to it, difficult to daunt or to kill; and they were, perhaps, so unwearyingly fond of good things not least because they could, when put to it, do without them, and could survive rough handling by grief, foe, or weather in a way that astonished those who did not know them well and looked no further than their bellies and their well-fed faces. Though slow to quarrel, and for sport killing nothing that lived, they were doughty at bay, and at need could still handle arms. They shot well with the bow, for they were keen-eyed and sure at the mark. Not only with bows and arrows. If any Hobbit stooped for a stone, it was well to get quickly under cover, as all trespassing beasts knew very well.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Quotations about hobbits from Tolkien's private letters.

Letter #17

I cannot think of anything more to say about hobbits. Mr Baggins seems to have exhibited so fully both the Took and the Baggins side of their nature.

Letter #131 footnote

The Hobbits are, of course, really meant to be a branch of the specifically human race (not Elves or Dwarves) – hence the two kinds can dwell together (as at Bree), and are called just the Big Folk and Little Folk. They are entirely without non-human powers, but are represented as being more in touch with 'nature' (the soil and other living things, plants and animals), and abnormally, for humans, free from ambition or greed of wealth. They are made small (little more than half human stature, but dwindling as the years pass) partly to exhibit the pettiness of man, plain unimaginative parochial man – though not with either the smallness or the savageness of Swift, and mostly to show up, in creatures of very small physical power, the amazing and unexpected heroism of ordinary men 'at a pinch'.

EDIT: By "the smallness or the savageness of Swift" I think Tolkien means the Lilliputians from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726).

Letter #178

[The Shire] is in fact more or less a Warwickshire village of about the period of the Diamond Jubilee [1897]

Letter #180

The hobbits had been welcomed. I loved them myself, since I love the vulgar and simple as dearly as the noble, and nothing moves my heart (beyond all the passions and heartbreaks of the world) so much as 'ennoblement' (from the Ugly Duckling to Frodo).

Letter #246

He [Sam Gamgee] is a more representative hobbit than any others that we have to see much of; and he has consequently a stronger ingredient of that quality which even some hobbits found at times hard to bear: a vulgarity – by which I do not mean a mere 'down-to-earthiness' – a mental myopia which is proud of itself, a smugness (in varying degrees) and cocksureness, and a readiness to measure and sum up all things from a limited experience, largely enshrined in sententious traditional 'wisdom'.

Letter #281

Hobbits were a breed of which the chief physical mark was their stature; and the chief characteristic of their temper was the almost total eradication of any dormant 'spark', only about one per mil had any trace of it. Bilbo was specially selected by the authority and insight of Gandalf as abnormal: he had a good share of hobbit virtues: shrewd sense, generosity, patience and fortitude, and also a strong 'spark' yet unkindled.