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

[doctorbadwolf]

I don't think saying "in this world, halflings control the rivers" or "in this world, halflings are the best farmers, to the point that many other races rely on them to grow their food" is changing them beyond recognition. And while there aren't any canonical settings that have halflings like that, those are easy ways to make halflings important in a world without changing their lore that much.

Yeah my buddy did that with halflings. They are the main River traders, with some gnomes trading in the far north. Halflings are also islander nomads in an island chain near the pseudo-Venice city state.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I don't think saying "in this world, halflings control the rivers" or "in this world, halflings are the best farmers, to the point that many other races rely on them to grow their food" is changing them beyond recognition. And while there aren't any canonical settings that have halflings like that, those are easy ways to make halflings important in a world without changing their lore that much.

Making them the farmers who supply the dwarves would both address perceived issues of halfling military fitness (the dwarves will take care of that) and also provides an early warning system for the dwarves (a runner from the halflings who live in the foothills of the dwarves' mountain comes and tells them that goblin raiders are burning their crops and heading toward the dwarves).

 

[Don Durito]

Yes, there really is, you just refuse to accept it.

None of the other main PHB races can be lifted out of the main settings - Forgotten Realms being the prime example, without massively rewriting the setting. Except, of course, for halflings. Yoinks halflings out of Dark Sun and what happens? Nothing. Why not? Because halflings in Dark Sun don't actually do anything. They don't matter. The only reason they are memorable is because they are cannibals, and that's obviously playing against type. Same with Eberron. Yoink out the dino riding halflings and replace them with anything, and it's the fact that they ride dinosaurs that makes them interesting. It has nothing to do with halflings at all. And, again, they have to basically 100% reject the core presentation - pastoral agrarian farmers who stay at home - in order to make them interesting.

If you have to completely rewrite the race every time you try to use it in a setting, to the point where, other than physical proportions, nothing remains of the core depiction of that race, then that race wasn't very interesting to begin with.

See my point earlier in the thread was:

Halflings aren't very interesting but are very malleable and easy to rework in interesting ways.

Elves and Dwarves aren't very interesting and aren't really all that easy to rework in interesting ways and still appeal to the players who want to play them.

Halflings, are easy to use, and to adapt to something that doesn't feel like it belongs in a twee 1980s fat fantasy epic.

Elves and Dwarves are best replaced with something else: Shifters, or Kenku or Firbolg or something.

To me that's a score for halflings.

My priority for D&D is that it be a toolkit, or a smorgasboard of options. So I'm opposed to making Halflings less malleable.

 

[Don Durito]

Yeah my buddy did that with halflings. They are the main River traders, with some gnomes trading in the far north. Halflings are also islander nomads in an island chain near the pseudo-Venice city state.

Where do river halflings come from? I've done that since the early 2000s and always thought I just invented it?

Is it Warhammer?

 

[Cadence]

Where do river halflings come from? I've done that since the early 2000s and always thought I just invented it?

Is it Warhammer?

Smeagol and Deagol?

 

[Chaosmancer]

So... you're upset that the PH didn't magically change in a way you like.

No, I'm only really getting upset that I'm getting dragged over the coals for not just bowing out and saying there is no reason to debate, while at the same time seeing people putting up strawmen of how I am refusing to consider other points of view and must hate halflings and every good thing that exists because I want complexity instead of a 2D hobbit clone.

The rest is trying to have a discussion that can get beyond the point that the status quo is unassaibly perfect, and if it isn't it is my fault for not changing it myself, because any problem you have with how the game is written is just you being two lazy to rewrite the game.

And the written lore is the only lore that's possible to use?

Do you demand that every aspect of every race be completely written out, or do you use the hooks and ideas that are presented and expand upon them? If it's the latter, why not do it for halflings?

No, the lore in the PHB is not the only lore. However, it is the lore that we are discussing. If you have no interest in discussions, why bother posting.

As for why I don't use the hooks and ideas presented and expand on them... might be because I find those hooks and ideas either non-existent or so weak they collapse under any attempt to try and expand on them. It might be why I keep saying that halflings lack adequate hooks and ideas. You know, the thing you keep saying I should just fix myself instead of pointing out.

Interesting, isn't it? They're perpetually underestimated. Which means they have complete freedom to act as powers behind the throne, to perform anarchic acts, or otherwise act however they want without suspicion.

So... I am supposed to take the idea that they don't listen to anyone and don't get involved in politics and say "that means that they are the power behind the throne and are terrorists, but no one ever catches or even suspects them"

I mean... I guess I can homebrew that. But I don't see any indication that they are that way in the lore. You know, the lore I keep talking about. The thing you keep ignoring to tell me that I should just homebrew halfings instead of looking to see if we can fix them for other players so they don't need to homebrew them at their tables for the next 50 years.

Sigh. You seem to believe that the FR lore is the "base" lore and that it's not interesting. I'm showing how--even when the writers were not going out of their way to make halflings into a cool people--FR lore has the seeds for something quite interesting.

Oh. So now it isn't that FR and Greyhawk are old, and therefore they aren't written well, now it is that there wasn't an effort to make them interesting, but they left accidental seeds.

Well, I'm glad about that. If they accidentally left things that I could possibly make interesting then they clearly must have done their jobs to hook people in without extra work needing to be done to fix it.... oh wait.

And I think I made a pretty good case of why FR lore is dominating 5e. If you want to dispute that, then maybe make arguments to dispute it, not just make backhanded comments about how I "seem to believe" that it is.

MTF suggests that "fancy feet" happens to most halflings, to the point that villages have their own ways of "coping with the phenomenon." This suggests to me that most halflings have wanderlust but are forced by societal pressure (or worse!) to remain at home instead of going exploring. Like it's the 50s or so, and they're all expected to settle down and get married an a job right out of high school, and none of those hifalutin ideas like starting a band or joining an improv theater. I'm now imagining that either halflings have a secret drinking and drug problem (cheeeese?) to deal with this, have spectacular mid-life crises, or when necessary, they use Stepford halfling replicas (I mostly run horror games; I will use this next time I'm able).

The very next section says that halflings that manage to go out and adventure do so in order to become legends. Which means that you have an entire race of people who want to go out and do cool stuff and take up EXTREME ADVENTURING!!! but most of them get guilted into staying home. And those who do manage to go EXTREME ADVENTURING!!! and become halfling superstars, with the rest of the halflings becoming their groupies.

My reading of the Fancy Feet section makes it sound like it might be one youth in the entire village. If it was "most" of the halflings of the village... A) they wouldn't be a village, because 51% of everyone would leave and B) They wouldn't try and stop them from leaving. Which is explicitly something some villages do. Actually, it even says there might be one elder who had fancy feet themselves. Which again... isn't most halflings.

But also, notice how in your second paragraph you suddenly shift to saying that most halflings get guilted into staying home? The original point I contested is that most halflings go on adventures. Now you are saying most of them don't go on adventures... which was my point. Most halflings don't go on adventures. I don't care whether or not they WANT to go on adventures. That wasn't what I was arguing about. I was challenging what they actually did. A point that you now seem to be conceding.

Well, I saw it. So can anyone who saw that site, or who read MTF.

I read the same wiki a few times. I missed it. Also, nothing about Bat Fishing in Mordenkainen's that I've ever seen. In fact, no one in this thread other than you ever mentioned it as a potential hook. So, I'm not really sure how it suddenly became so important to the identity of the race.

Dwarfs make dwarven ale. Elves make elven wine and, sometimes, off-brand lembas bread. That's the extent of their notable culinary achievements. I think the fact that halflings are actually written as being good chefs means that you can safely extrapolate them as being the best chefs.

I can also safely assume that since they don't say they are the best chefs, that they aren't the best chefs. After all, every race has their own tastes and food is incredibly subjective. There might not be a race of "best chefs". There is no race of "best cobblers" either.

Is there something wrong about not making assumptions that I should be adding more to a text than is written?

So they're just like humans, which is bad, except when they're not just like humans, which is also bad.

And again, why do a people need to have a point? There's no point to having elves or dwarves or tieflings either. You put them in a game because you like them. You take them out of a game because you don't like them.

Yes, there are points to having elves, dwarves and tieflings.

And yes, they have nothing to distinguish them from humans except having none of the traits that make humans interesting in a world-building context.

You're taking the lore at extreme face value and not actually thinking about what it means. The lore may be silent on the question of who is farming, but that's only because the writers didn't think that it was important because we're playing Dungeons & Dragons, not Papers & Paychecks. But it may very well be important, and especially if you're trying to figure out what role a race places in the setting.

If the importance of Halflings, one of the four core races, is tied up in a detail that was considered not important enough to even mention... again, I think that shows my point that halfling lore is not adequately written and requires another look to make sure it is written properly so that people don't have to play guessing games about why halflings matter to the setting.

Except that halflings and humans aren't "pretty much the same." They have different outlooks on society and family. They have different gods. Mechanically, they have different traits--unlike humans, all halflings are Brave, Lucky, and Nimble. And in most editions, they have different alignments (halflings are typically LG, while humans are always "any" or "any, but mostly neutral.") They have large number of differences that you're ignoring. Even if humans and halflings get along great, there's still going to be a lot that sets them apart.

Actually, if we are going off of FR lore, humans and halflings don't have different gods. Because humans have no human gods. All the gods worshipped by humans are worshipped by everyone. It is a detail that bothered me at the beginning of 5e.

And, can you tell me what the Forgotten Realms humans view is on society and family? I'm really interested in seeing what monolithic human society is in the Forgotten Realms, because when I looked for halflings I was specifically told they don't have a unique culture. Which implies that... they share a lot of the outlooks of society and family with the common humans of the various lands. But, since you are going to tell me what the human outlook is, we can compare.

Also, while they do have mechanical traits, I don't know what those mean in practice. What value does alignment even have in this discussion? Yeah, humans are any... but what does halflings being Lawful Good mean in their lore? They are all nice and pleasant people who ignore their lawful rulers in exchange for their own village elders? That's a rabbit hole and not worth pursuing.

So again, you're mad because the PH that's on your shelf didn't magically update itself with bullet points and 14-point type.

The ideas I presented above all came from the books. I didn't pull any ideas out of thin air, like cannibal halflings. I used the info in the books to flesh out how they were written. This isn't homebrewing. This is using the books as intended.

If the intent of the books is to provide inadequate information that the DM is supposed to go about fixing and filling in... I wonder why I bothered reading the lore at all. I could have just made it up whole cloth and saved myself a lot of reading.

 

[Faolyn]

Where do river halflings come from? I've done that since the early 2000s and always thought I just invented it?

Is it Warhammer?

Beats me. I know almost nothing about Warhammer, but the idea of halflings on boats just seems natural to me.

 

[Faolyn]

Don't forget that halflings in the Birthright setting are "a race that is native to the Shadow World, but fled to Cerilia when a force of evil corrupted their homeland. They still bear the taint of their origins in the Shadow World and are able to cross over into that plane of existence more easily than any other race of Cerilia."

I sadly don't know much about Birthright. I kind of hope it's one of the classic settings that get brought back, if only because it would introduce some interesting new rules.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Are people super fussed about the order in which the species are listed in PHB? Like as long as both halflings and dragonborn are in PHB does it matter which of them is part of some 'core four?' Why does there even need to be core races and rarer ones? I get that you can't fit everything in one book, but beyond that it doesn't matter one bit.

Pulling this out... yeah, it is really weird that the writers decided to state "Humans, Elves, Dwarves and Halflings are the most common races in the game". They didn't need to do that.

But they did. They put forth the idea that this matters. Why does it matter? Why did they feel that need?

 

[Chaosmancer]

I think you’re taking mordenkainens a bit too seriously. It’s a terrible source of lore.

We know from the PHB that they travel, live amongst other races as much as in thier own communities, many of thier communities are nomadic traders, and that they fight to defend their neighbors. Nothing in the PHB speaks to this childlike wide-eyed innocence you seem to think is definitive.

They’re part of the world. They just don’t impact history much.

We agree that halflings should have more lore, and I will never defend MToF, but “needs more details and specific stories” isn’t the same as “needs to be changed or pushed out of the phb.

I'm not getting that child like innocence from Mordenkainens. I'm getting it from the halfling defenders who are saying that we all hate races that are about joy and happiness and innocence because we don't like halflings.