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

[Mind of tempest]

And, if they were drawing from contemporary authors, I'd be perfectly happy. Good grief, it took until 4e just to get a non-tolkien race (other than gnomes I suppose) into the PHB in the first place. 5e has Dragonborn and Tieflings and then the standard Tolkien races, despite the fact that we've had rather a lot of genre fiction in the intervening time.

But, as I said, there is zero chance that the Tolkien fans will ever allow the removal of a single element from the PHB. It's just never happening. Heck, in 4e, they made halflings river dwelling traders, and people lost their collective minds. How DARE WotC change halflings. Hell, there was quite a lot of kvetching from various quarters about 3e's changes to halflings and those weren't even that extreme.

See, I have no problems with having halflings in the game. But, since so few people actually play them, why not stuff them into the Monster Manual (where people who want ot play halflings still have the option) and then free up the space for something that people will play?

Like I said though, this will never, ever happen. The shackles of Tolkien on the hobby will never go away.

things seem to be changing but that would likely happen in 7e.

 

[Don Durito]

The movement in genre fiction away from Tolkien's Dwarves and Elves has mostly been away from having non-human species altogether.

Trying to think of the major fantasy series of the last 20 years or so:

Wheel of Time: Ogier (And Trollocs and Myrdall - but definitely not pc options and in any case this series is pretty much the last of the old guard).
A Song of Ice and Fire: Humans Only (Seems to me to be the major turning point)
Malazan Book of Fallen: Lots of non-human species, but all of them clearly influenced by D&D to some degree if you read carefully. Something similar to Orcs, Ogre Magi, Elves and Goliaths seem to be the general mix.
Joe Abercombie: Humans only, there was some sort of lizard monster creature in the early books but he seemd to lose interest in them.
Brandon Sanderson: I think his books generally have about one non-human species that could inspire a PC species.

And lots of others, but the idea of non-humans seems to my observation to have fallen out of favour.

Now maybe I'm missing a whole lot of popular fantasy works that are different (in which case I would like to know!). And I'm not really referencing a second tier of fantasy that does tend to be in some sense a homage to D&D. There's the incredibly fun Kings of the Wyld books in which just about anything that appears in D&D could be a player race (except for the actual D&D player races, excluding elves) and there was a book about Half-Orcs riding hogs that someone recommended to me and I never finished, but these aren't introducing new fantasy races, they're deliberately just playing with what's established.

It's also possible that there is a completely different trend in anime and computer games, which is probably more of a gateway to D&D to a lot of players these days than fantasy novels.

The very idea of a variety of species to choose from for player characters is a Tolkien legacy.

 

[Hussar]

The very idea of a variety of species to choose from for player characters is a Tolkien legacy.

Fair enough. And, to be honest, I know that D&D owes a lot to Tolkien. I get that. But, does that mean that our choices have to be what appears in Lord of the Rings forever?

Like I said many times, Halflings and gnomes have had nearly 50 years in the core books to develop a decent identity. They have failed to do so. After fifty years, maybe it's time to give something else a try, considering that the two new races - tieflings and dragonborn, have both been far more popular choices than halflings or gnomes have ever been.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Fair enough. And, to be honest, I know that D&D owes a lot to Tolkien. I get that. But, does that mean that our choices have to be what appears in Lord of the Rings forever?

Like I said many times, Halflings and gnomes have had nearly 50 years in the core books to develop a decent identity. They have failed to do so. After fifty years, maybe it's time to give something else a try, considering that the two new races - tieflings and dragonborn, have both been far more popular choices than halflings or gnomes have ever been.

we would need a setting to really dig into what makes some of the less used races tick as right now they likely do not do well from lack of examples or inspiration for characters.

The movement in genre fiction away from Tolkien's Dwarves and Elves has mostly been away from having non-human species altogether.

Trying to think of the major fantasy series of the last 20 years or so:

Wheel of Time: Ogier (And Trollocs and Myrdall - but definitely not pc options and in any case this series is pretty much the last of the old guard).
A Song of Ice and Fire: Humans Only (Seems to me to be the major turning point)
Malazan Book of Fallen: Lots of non-human species, but all of them clearly influenced by D&D to some degree if you read carefully. Something similar to Orcs, Ogre Magi, Elves and Goliaths seem to be the general mix.
Joe Abercombie: Humans only, there was some sort of lizard monster creature in the early books but he seemd to lose interest in them.
Brandon Sanderson: I think his books generally have about one non-human species that could inspire a PC species.

And lots of others, but the idea of non-humans seems to my observation to have fallen out of favour.

Now maybe I'm missing a whole lot of popular fantasy works that are different (in which case I would like to know!). And I'm not really referencing a second tier of fantasy that does tend to be in some sense a homage to D&D. There's the incredibly fun Kings of the Wyld books in which just about anything that appears in D&D could be a player race (except for the actual D&D player races, excluding elves) and there was a book about Half-Orcs riding hogs that someone recommended to me and I never finished, but these aren't introducing new fantasy races, they're deliberately just playing with what's established.

It's also possible that there is a completely different trend in anime and computer games, which is probably more of a gateway to D&D to a lot of players these days than fantasy novels.

The very idea of a variety of species to choose from for player characters is a Tolkien legacy.

most of those are Tolkien derived, elves being the largest number but newer oddball ideas are moving along, lots of things have a small race but they tends to be differencet from both halflings and gnomes.

 

[FrozenNorth]

This thread is taking trollish proportion. Not surprising, troll don’t even agree on how to properly cook a dwarf, so cooking a halfling is even more debatable!

I disagree. Cooking dwarves is notably harder than cooking halflings, because dwarves are tough and sinewy. So it is understandable to disagree as to how to cook a dwarf.

Cooking a halfling is easy because they are so plump and juicy. The meat practically drips off the bone. Sure, foodie hipsters may disagree as to the best way to cook halfling, but for the rest of us, pretty much all approaches make an acceptable meal.

 

[Oofta]

I disagree. Cooking dwarves is notably harder than cooking halflings, because dwarves are tough and sinewy. So it is understandable to disagree as to how to cook a dwarf.

Cooking a halfling is easy because they are so plump and juicy. The meat practically drips off the bone. Sure, foodie hipsters may disagree as to the best way to cook halfling, but for the rest of us, pretty much all approaches make an acceptable meal.

When it comes to dwarves I have two simple words: pressure cooker.

You're welcome.

 

[FrozenNorth]

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.

Halflings have a tendency to be Lawful Good, which is why their most popular class is… Rogue. By a huge margin.

On D&D Beyond*, halfling Rogues outnumber the next popular class (halfling Bards) by a 2:1 margin (1,797 rogues to 801 bards). The other classes are much less popular (less than 500 each, except 551 monks).

*According to the figures provided by @Yaarel .

Worth noting from a statistic analysis perspective, the most popular classes (by a good margin) are fighters and rogues. From a mechanical perspective, halflings are particularly good rogues, so they definitely get a boost from rogues being popular.

Genasi, dragonborn and tieflings are more popular than halflings. The most popular class for dragonborn is paladin (7th overall), for tieflings it’s warlock (8th overall), and genasi don’t really have a peak.

Thus it seems for me that accounting for class, Genasi, Tieflings and Dragonborn are considerably more popular than Halflings.

I wonder, if the classes were weighted equally, whether halflings wouldn’t fall below gnomes in popularity…

 

[Faolyn]

Now maybe I'm missing a whole lot of popular fantasy works that are different (in which case I would like to know!).

Well, Pratchett's Discworld, of course, but that's an Older Work now. But those books have tons of nonhumans. Of course, nearly all the main characters are human.

 

[A. Joseph Campbell]

I know there have been discussions similar to this in the recent past on these forums, but I felt the need to explain things freshly from my point of view. Keep in mind, I'm not saying that halflings shouldn't be a part of D&D, or that people who play/like halflings are having badwrongfun, I'm merely explaining why I have always been turned off from halflings and tend to prefer other small races (gnomes, goblins, kobolds, even dwarves).

I should probably start out by giving some of my background in the hobby. As a few of you are probably aware, I am fairly new to the hobby, and younger than most of the active posters on this site (from my experience, anyway), being 19 years old (turning 20 in September). I have been playing D&D since just after my 15th birthday, so about 4.5 years now. D&D 5e was the first edition of D&D that I've ever played, and is still the only TTRPG that I have ever played/GMed for (although I know a bit about Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, Warhammer 40k, and Star Wars: Edge of the Empire). I have also researched a bit of how previous editions of D&D were different mechanically and lore-wise from 5e in order to understand its background, and consider myself fairly well versed in the lore of the Forgotten Realms, Eberron, Exandria, and decently knowledgeable on the lore of Dark Sun, Theros, Ravnica, Ravenloft Dragonlance, Greyhawk, and a few other settings. I also own every official D&D 5e book except Candlekeep Mysteries, and have read all of the books that I do own. I am a huge fan of the hobby (even though I am relatively new to the game), believe that D&D 5e is a great game, and cannot foresee myself ever stop playing D&D in any part of the near or distant future. I am heavily invested in the game and its future, and want to see the hobby that I love improve as much as it possibly can.

As I've shown above, I know quite a bit about D&D. I have dozens of playable races available in my homebrew world, and learn as much as I can about the lore of different worlds in order to improve my world by inspiration brought by that lore. I have created a ton of lore for tons of playable races for my world, and I find most of the lore that I've created for these to be fairly engaging and drawing concepts (and I do not mean to brag by this. I am a strong believer in "I just write the thing" mentality that some writers have, and find myself incredibly lucky and thoroughly surprised whenever my limited human brain comes up with something I find cool). I've created an intricate society of Vecna-worshipping death-touched, called the Vezyi. Their whole society revolves around the idea that life is a fleeting gift and that they must do whatever they can to preserve the lives of their people, having their culture being based off of worshipping the god of undeath in order to get "free" resurrections from clerics of Vecna (the price of these resurrections is having your body becoming a nameless member of Vecna's undead army, and quite possibly having your soul being devoured by Vecna's Mega-Phylactery). I've also created the Felshen, which are a psionic race of people descended from a flesh-golem race created by artificers and fleshmancers that had the goal of creating a fully-reproducing and sentient race of people, just to see if they could. They've had a centuries-long conflict with the magic-worshipping Yikkan Goblinoids, as the Yikkan Goblinoids view them as unnatural aberrations that's mere existence is actively hurting the universe, and the Felshen have an understandably negative opinion of a society of people that have systematically oppressed them for as long as their race has existed. Again, not to toot my own horn, but I think that both of these examples that I have given are good, compelling, and interesting races. They have a clear niche and purpose (the Felshen for being a psionic race, the Vezyi for being death-touched), are given in-depth and sensical lore-based reasons to exist, and are strongly rooted in the identity of the world. I feel the same way about Kalashtar and Warforged for Eberron, Thri-Kreen for Dark Sun, the Kryn Dynasty's races for Exandria/Wildemount, and so on. There are tons of examples, but these are the ones that come to mind at the moment.

And this takes me to halflings. What's their niche? Short-person. Are they the only race in that niche? Only if you don't count gnomes, dwarves, kobolds, and goblins (and Fairies if you count UA, and I'm not even counting the Lineages/Races that can be small or medium, including Verdan). Are they strongly rooted in the identity of most worlds that they're included in? Not really. If you take Halflings out of the Forgotten Realms or Exandria, it doesn't really change anything important/major about the settings. If you remove them from Dark Sun you don't have cannibal halflings, which are a cool tidbit about the setting, but certainly not essential to its identity, IMO. Eberron probably changes the most noticeably of any of these listed settings, as it has Talenta Plains, Dragonmarked, and House Boromar Halflings, but even then, you could just as easily replace all halflings with Gnomes (or possibly even Goblins) and get practically the same outcome. What is their lore-based reason to exist in most D&D world's? There's rarely actually ever one of these, and even if there is, the explanation is lacking (cause this god I just came up with to create halflings created halflings), and/or could just be summed up by "Halflings are in this world because they exist in D&D". And why do Halflings exist in D&D as a whole? Because Tolkien's works (a huge part of the inspiration of D&D) included Hobbits.

And that's where the issue (for me) comes down to. Their existence is circular. They exist for no real narrative or plot-driving purposes, but because Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit had small-folk as a race for some of its most prominent characters. And that's not a "bad" reason to warrant their existence in a fantasy game where quite literally anything can exist, but it's just not a "good" one, either (and by "a good reason to warrant existing", I meant it as in a reason that empowers creative thought, drives/inspires plot points, and motivates players to think a bit more about the identity of their characters). Warforged exist for a good reason (to provoke discussion and tropes of "what measure is a non-human") and give a lot of inspiration for both character backstory and plot points. Felshen exist in my D&D world to create plot points about the Felyik Conflict (shorthand for Felshen-Yikkan Conflict/Wars), to give players ideas on how their character(s) feel about major parts of the world (the magical goblinoid and psionic humanoid societies), and to drive discussion on who the "good" and the "bad" in the conflict are (it's neither, all shades of gray, but some individuals and mindsets are more wrong or right than others). The Kryn Dynasty exists in Exandria to drive discussion on essentially the same issue as Paarthurnax's famous question of "What is better - to be born good, or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?" The Warforged, the Felshen, the Kryn Dynasty, (and endless further examples), all exist for what I define as "good" reasons. They exist for story-driving reasons, while Halflings just exist to be "short people that are humans . . . but short".

I guess this is one of the rare cases where I find "Humans in silly hats" to be a valid complaint about a player race. Warforged can't be replaced with humans, as their story is unique and specific to their physical nature and history. The Kryn Dynasty's story would be far less compelling if they weren't gnolls, orcs, and goblinoids and were just cursed humans. My world's stories for Felshen and Vezyi are highly dependent on how they came into existence and their inherent genetic and magical nature, even if they are roleplayed very similar to humans (because, you know, we humans are the ones that will be roleplaying these races). However, if Halfling villages were just replaced with bog-standard human peasant villages, the story wouldn't change at all. If the dinosaur riders of the Talenta Planes were just primitive gnomes, goblins, or even humans that ride just slightly larger dinos, would anyone really notice or care? If the Halfling cannibals of Dark Sun were just human or elven cannibals, would that really change anything important about the world? If the Kender were just Thanos-snapped out of existence, would the cries in response to this be more made in protest against removing the endlessly-annoying kleptomaniacs, or would they be in celebration of their ultimate demise?

tl;dr - Halflings don't fill any important narrative purposes in the game (and even the ones that they do fill heavily overlap with more story-driving races). They exist just to exist, mostly because people like Bilbo/Frodo Baggins, and just aren't an inspiring character race. They're just "short people", and even the settings that try to make them matter fail to do so in a way that couldn't be at least as easy to emulate with one of the other similar races in the game that actually have story connected to their existence (gnomes connected to fey, humans being humans, etc).

Thoughts? Who agrees with me? Who disagrees with me? If you agree with me, are your reasons for agreeing the same as mine, or are they different. If you disagree with me, why?

I've quoted the entire message because I'd like the OP to read my reply. Fair warning, I've not read others' replies so take this for what it is, not what it could have been.

The purpose of Halflings or Hobbits is to quantify the reluctant adventurer and to amplify the social structures that are in other cultures in a uniquely Hobbit way..

Many folks have taken bits and pieces of the Hobbit narrative, amplified them and made them part of other races because there's a good deal of overlap. However, if you want a race where family is paramount and stories where common things can be center stage while striking a generally warm tone; you're hard pressed to find better if you're of the mind to give Hobbits a thought.

Note: I dislike calling them Halflings.
2c

AJC

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Halflings have a tendency to be Lawful Good, which is why their most popular class is… Rogue. By a huge margin.

On D&D Beyond*, halfling Rogues outnumber the next popular class (halfling Bards) by a 2:1 margin (1,797 rogues to 801 bards). The other classes are much less popular (less than 500 each, except 551 monks).

*According to the figures provided by @Yaarel .

Worth noting from a statistic analysis perspective, the most popular classes (by a good margin) are fighters and rogues. From a mechanical perspective, halflings are particularly good rogues, so they definitely get a boost from rogues being popular.

Genasi, dragonborn and tieflings are more popular than halflings. The most popular class for dragonborn is paladin (7th overall), for tieflings it’s warlock (8th overall), and genasi don’t really have a peak.

Thus it seems for me that accounting for class, Genasi, Tieflings and Dragonborn are considerably more popular than Halflings.

I wonder, if the classes were weighted equally, whether halflings wouldn’t fall below gnomes in popularity…

This is where you can look into sampling as a science. I believe your data source is a snapshot of characters created on DnD Beyond? If that is true then your assumptions are drawn from a subset of players who both use DnDB and also use the character builder to make their characters.

One could make the hypothesis that halflings are more popular with legacy players, and that legacy players are less likely to collect digitally, and therefore this data set isnt representative of 5e in general close enough to draw assumptions from.

As it is, my personal opinion is that the small amount of halfling representation in your data is largely due to the mechanics presented for halflings and less due to their lore.

I suspect that when you enter the era of detached stat bonuses from race choice this isn't going to help the halflings much as they pretty much just get one main benefit (lucky) as opposed to the truckload of swag that elves and a few other classes get.

The only true comparison of who likes what would be of you could have a fictional version of DnD where every class/race combo was equally effective on the table and choices were truly made for lore/story reasons.