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

[Faolyn]

I think I wasn't clear.

Let's look at the Forgotten Realms for a second. If you removed all Elves from that setting, would people notice? Yes. Immediately the history of the world has massive holes in it. Things have to be fundamentally changed.

What if you remove halflings? Not really. I have yet to find anything major that halflings as a race participated in. Individuals sure, but the race? Not so much.

From the Realms, sure, and from Greyhawk. Those are rather generic, older worlds, made when halflings were just homebodies. But if you remove halflings from Eberron or Athas, you'd have the exact same problem as you'd have with elves in the Realms.

And it even comes in when doing world-building for a fresh world. Sure, you can cut dwarves and and kobolds, gnomes, or something else is going to take their place... but it is very different. If all elves are replaced with Firbolg, you have a very very different feel to the forests and the people who deal there. And you need to replace them. Something has to live in the forest, likely something fey related, and it leaves a noticeable gap to be filled.

No. Not unless your world is otherwise incredibly generic and you spend no time worldbuilding.

You don't have to have a race of foresty, fey-ish people in your world. You can very easily have a world were fey exist and live in their Fey Woods, and mortals fear to enter lest a fair folk follow them home, or they are captured and given as a present to the Faerie Queen and never leave again.

Likewise, you don't have to have dwarfs. The only thing you'd lose out on are those giant dwarf halls and forges. Instead, you'd replace them with winding warrens built by kobolds or goblins, or cluttered gnomish workshops.

Nothing playable "needs" to live in the ancient forests, mountains, or dark depths. We're just used to it.

And if there's a "gap" that needs to be filled then you can just stick another race there. Humans can live in the woods, mine the mountains, and plant the meadows. There's been "jungle dwarfs" since at least 2e, and drow and shadow elves (the weird nuclear-worshiping ones) have been around longer, which just shows that they can put any race in any "gap" you want.

What is the gap halflings leave? Pastoral Farming people are just humans. They don't leave a noticeable gap that needs to be filled up.

So I decided to look up halflings on the Forgotten Realms wiki. That has them as being:

(1) anarchists (they "don't recognize claims of kings and sovereign rulers")
(2) lorekeepers
(3) curiosity-driven adventurers
(4) bat-fishers(!)
(5) chefs and brewers
(6) mostly xenophiliac
(7) nomads

That's a lot of interesting stuff there! Heck, if you ignore 4 and 5 above and threw in some martial arts, you could have the basis for Pratchett's History Monks here.

If they haven't taken a bigger role in Forgotten Realms history, that's the fault of the writers for not using them, because they have a lot to offer them. After all, they have a lot of use in Eberron and Athas, because those writers saw their potential.

And please, don't No True Scotsman them by saying that those are so different as to not be "real" halflings. They're halflings.

This isn't to say that other races are irreplaceable. Sure, you can swap elves for gnomes or elves for firbolg, but it is a very noticeable difference, and leave a big impact on the world.

Again, it really doesn't. There won't be any impact unless you are taking them out of a pre-established world and deciding that it happened in the setting and wasn't a ret-con. You'd just be making a different world.

But who do you swap halflings for and why? Are you just replacing them as a small race? Why do you need a small race?

Some people like them. Three out of the five PCs in one of my games are playing halflings (well, two halflings and a halfling with a bit of tiefling mixed in). I knew a guy back in college who only played halflings, unless you let him play a kender, in which case he played a kender.

But... who needs to live in the farmlands in human territory?

Farmers do. Or specifically, people who need to eat and can't easily grow, hunt or gather food themselves. Which is everyone in a city--which is the preferred habitat of humans.

Spoiler: Spoilered For Size

Seems like halflings could be the main agriculturalists of these standard worlds. They may not be making history, but without them, everyone else would have starved to death before they could make history themselves.

Because that is what halflings are. They just... live with humans.

In the Realms. Not in other settings. In my above-mentioned world, it's the other way around--halflings have towns; humans only have little villages. And halflings are one of the only two races to mint coins or use standardized currency. Mind you, it's a complex, non-decimalized system, but it exists. Everyone else trades or uses hacksilver or weighs the coins before accepting them (background flavor only; players get to use standard coin values to buy stuff).

 

[Faolyn]

So, you are telling me that if a DM laid out the world for you and said "here to the north are the humans, here in the mountains are the giants, south we have the shifters, and on the coasts we have the dwarves" you would never think "huh, no elves."

I personally would say "no elves, gnomes, or halflings?" and then never think about it again. Because once it's been established that they're not part of the world, I don't have to worry about it.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

But if they can just be casually excluded and not impact anything... that is an issue I think.

Nothing is impacted in Islands World by me excluding humans. It doesn’t matter. The only effect it could ever have is if I gained a new player who only enjoys playing humans.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

So, you are telling me that if a DM laid out the world for you and said "here to the north are the humans, here in the mountains are the giants, south we have the shifters, and on the coasts we have the dwarves" you would never think "huh, no elves."

It would never even register to you that they didn't mention elves at all? I'm not saying you would have an issue with it, or ask about it, but are you trying to say you wouldn't even notice that one of the most common fantasy races of all time was absent?

I find that hard to believe. But, as a counter, that is EXACTLY what has happened to me with halflings. I literally just today realized that in a 4 year campaign they were not mentioned even once.

And I would notice there being no halflings.

 

[Don Durito]

In the group I used to play with, and still do occasionally, although we don't meet very often, no one ever played an elf. We just all really hated elves.

If we made up a campaign world with that group there would be no elves. It wouldn't occur to us to put in elves, I don't think it would even need to be spoken. After a certain point it doesn't require conscious thought. No one would really notice the elves missing, because no one would want to play one. It would seem the most natural thing in the world to leave out elves.

Of course that was mostly with 3e and 4e. In 5e with the group I mostly game with now we would notice the absence of elves, but mostly because Half-elves in 5e are awesome, and they have to come from somewhere.

 

[Chaosmancer]

This is just blatantly absurd. There's a forest outside of my window, and I am relatively confident that there are no elves or firbolg living there. There might be rabbits, but I doubt they replaced the elves.

Right. Well, when you get off earth and go to a fantasy world where magical beings and other races exist, you tend to find that other races live in places like forests, swamps and mountains.

Earth meanwhile in reality only has a single highly intelligent and sapient species, humans, and they don't tend to live in set sections of the globe. They tend to spread out.

I mean I'd probably notice it in in sense that I'd be aware that they're not included, just like the dragonborn and the halfling etc don't appear to be. But this seems to be the GM telling me that the playable races are humans, shifters and dwarfs. My first question would probably be whether the giants include goliaths or other such playable mini-giant equivalents. And now that you mention it, I realised that the setting I played in for about a decade did have dwarves but it didn't have elves. But before this I really didn't think 'oh this setting has no elves'. Also there were forests, which somehow managed to exist without elves, or indeed any particular fantasy species living in them.

And that was all I was saying before you said that this was a "me" problem. Most people would notice elves, dwarves or humans not being included. Might even ask the DM where they are, because it is a bit unusual to not include them.

But no halflings doesn't seem to have that same level of awareness within the setting. They didn't exist and I never even registered that fact. I never think to myself "where are the halflings in this setting" but I have done so for some of the other races.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

And that was all I was saying before you said that this was a "me" problem. Most people would notice elves, dwarves or humans not being included. Might even ask the DM where they are, because it is a bit unusual to not include them.

But no halflings doesn't seem to have that same level of awareness within the setting. They didn't exist and I never even registered that fact. I never think to myself "where are the halflings in this setting" but I have done so for some of the other races.

Yes, you don't think about them. Just like some other people don't think about elves or dwarfs. Same thing. That's what I meant about it being 'a you problem'. Your subjective feels and preferences are (completely unsurprisingly) not universal.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I've been reading this thread pretty closely and I don't think I've seen one person have the position that "you can't change the halfling lore". Almost everyone on the halfling side is saying "The lore is good enough. If you want more then add it yourself".

If I might hop back to dwarves for a moment, since you laid out your case that their lore is strong enough....let me ask you this tangent question.

There has been a bit of a staunch support for the status quo. Which seems to indicate that the posters don't want to see WoTC officially change anything. In fact, the discussion that ate up the majority of the last few pages seemed to be entirely that changing their lore was a bad idea.

Sure, they aren't against individual DMs doing what they want, but they do seem to be against the company making large changes going forward.

Where is the lore to support a difference between Hill and Mountain dwarves? Do Hill dwarves build vast underground cities? Do they build surface cities? If surface cities, how are they not pallette swap of a human mining town?

I've never been able to find a good lore difference between Mountain Dwarves and Hill Dwarves. They mostly seem to be a culture difference, which is easily explained away as different dwarf cities being different.

In my homebrew I ended up making them more of a martial training difference, with Hill Dwarves relying more on physical conditioning and Mountain dwarves relying more on training with their equipment, but the lore difference is basically non-existentant between the two, and I think open for a better and more interesting set-up between two or more different types of dwarves.

For a dwarven surface town being different than a human surface town, the first thing I would consider is the lack of windows. Also, I imagine that they would be working shifts all day, there would be a shift working at night, and sleeping during the day. But, it depends on how the dwarves are presented to the world

 

[Don Durito]

There has been a bit of a staunch support for the status quo. Which seems to indicate that the posters don't want to see WoTC officially change anything.

They can change whatever they like. It doesn't bother me as I'll only use it if I like it. My feeling about WotC lore is that it tends to be bland and dull across the board and is written more for product and brand identity purpose then with any real attempt at creativity.

I don't understand the desire to have WotC validate your feelings about this. Just fix the problem you have.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

There has been a bit of a staunch support for the status quo. Which seems to indicate that the posters don't want to see WoTC officially change anything. In fact, the discussion that ate up the majority of the last few pages seemed to be entirely that changing their lore was a bad idea.

Sure, they aren't against individual DMs doing what they want, but they do seem to be against the company making large changes going forward.



I've never been able to find a good lore difference between Mountain Dwarves and Hill Dwarves. They mostly seem to be a culture difference, which is easily explained away as different dwarf cities being different.

In my homebrew I ended up making them more of a martial training difference, with Hill Dwarves relying more on physical conditioning and Mountain dwarves relying more on training with their equipment, but the lore difference is basically non-existentant between the two, and I think open for a better and more interesting set-up between two or more different types of dwarves.

For a dwarven surface town being different than a human surface town, the first thing I would consider is the lack of windows. Also, I imagine that they would be working shifts all day, there would be a shift working at night, and sleeping during the day. But, it depends on how the dwarves are presented to the world

I have seen many here opposing the change to "remove halflings from the PHB" but none that have opposed a change (or a deepening and broadening) of galfling lore. I don't even see people with an issue that halflings can be so different from one campaign works to another (hobbits, gangsters, riverfolk, or minihuman).

The fact that you realize there really isn't much to offer to make Hill vs Mountain dwarves different in the lore but you can explain it away in your game, to your satisfaction, by adding in some lore about training differences tells me that you are able to look at the matter from a fairly regular person point of view.

Ultimately you are going to like what you are going to like, and no amount of discussion is going to make you have a Halfling Epiphany and suddenly embrace them. I'm just going to echo what many said in that if you like the underdog, the everyman, the gentle soul, or the innocent soul a wide-eyed farm lad halflling grabbing his pack and hitting the road works really well for that concept.