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

[Mecheon]

And yes, whenever I've asked someone to tell me about their genasi character, I get a lot of vague shrugs.

I mean, I'd love to go on my humble orphaned genasi turned farm-boy turned smith, turned forge cleric fire genasi and how he's a bit of a ditz but, just wants to help folks. Just wants to practice making weapons and unconciously fulfil the desire of fire in his heart. Just wants to ignore those horid nightmares he has every few nights where it is just a world of raging fires and ash and the equally worried part that it may be a place he remembers.

(mind exactly what was my genasi's father is a good question and look the dude's blood basically looks like lava, but I tend to roll genasi as 'elemental beings in general were your parent don't worry about it' to leave the ambiguity as dude looks less like 'part efreet' and more 'part lava')

were the Winged Folk, who were literally just winged elves. (Which makes them dramatically more distinct than nearly every other elven subrace.)

Weren't one of their alt names just, flat out used for the Avarial? The ee'ar or the like? Reminds me that wasn't the only flying elf subrace Dragon had, it had a more barbarian one that fought like, tiefling drow as well if I remember right

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

If that's the sort of lore people think is needed then I feel that D&D really needs a punk phase.

Mork Borg says hello and death to Margaret Thatcher.

 

[Gammadoodler]

Just to add to @Chaosmancer's point, all you have to do is look in the DMG for race specific magic items. That right there gives more lore to dwarves and elves. Do halflings even have a race specific magic item in the DMG?

Or, think of it this way. Dwarf = Axe. Elf = Bow. Halfling = ? It took Dragonlance to give them a hoopak and that hasn't even managed to make it's way into mainstream D&D.

Again, it all comes down to archetypes. Halflings just don't have the traction that other races have.

In fairness, it's roughly the same number of mahic items that monks get.

Which is really to say that WoTC does a piss-poor job of allocating energy in any roughly equivalent manner across races or classes.

With limited exceptions, magic items are not lore; they are mechanical support.

 

[Yora]

Slings are a Halfling thing all the way from Tolkien to 3.5, with even 4e having some sling feats for halflings.

I don’t see elves and bows as nearly as iconic, and dwarves mostly use hammers IME.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

You are willing to accept insufficient or boring lore for races you are OK with, such as dwarfs. You are willing to homebrew your own lore about them. You are willing to read between the lines for them. But you're completely unwilling to do that for halflings.

/snip

That's not a fair reading of the argument. Dwarves hardly have "insufficient" lore. They have a creation myth, they have mythological ties to other races, both as enemies and as allies, they have nation states, multiple racial magic items and artifacts, Axe of the Dwarvish Lords anyone? Y'know, that dwarven artifact that has an entire, quite well regarded, module devoted to it?

From the Cliff notes on DM's Guild:

Origins (II): The History of the Axe. The Axe of the Dwarvish Lords is one of D&D's legendary artifacts, first appearing in Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry (1976) by Gary Gygax and Brian Blume. There's no record of the artifact's author or his intention. At the time it was simply described as an "axe … forged from the heart of a volcano by a dwarvish king long forgotten."


As with most of D&D's classic artifacts, the Axe reappeared first in the Dungeon Masters Guide (1979), then in the Book of Artifacts (1993). However, the descriptions in these references wasn't particularly consistent. The first said the Axe was lost in the "Invoked Devastation", an early event in the World of Greyhawk. The second instead said it was lost in the civil war that followed when "Brassbeard slew his uncle, King Irontooth of Moradinson". Axe of the Dwarvish Lords uses the latter history (and expands upon it), removing the Axe from the world of Greyhawk … but unlike some of D&D's other primordial artifacts, its links were never that strong.


Both Book of Artifacts and Axe of the Dwarvish Lords claim that the Axe is one of five artifacts. The others are "the Brutal Pick, the Earthheart Forge, the Anvil of Songs, and the Shaping Hammer", while the Axe is actually known as "the Fierce Axe".​

I mean, seriously, show me a single halfling bit of background or history in the game that comes even close to that kind of pedigree.

Dwarves are absolutely swimming in lore. Note, the 5e description of The Axe of the Dwarvish Lords follows the earlier edition material pretty closely. Heck, even elves don't get an artifact description in the DMG.

 

[Don Durito]

Dwarves are deep and multi-dimensional. They have axes, beer, beards and gold

But I think I get it now. This argument is not really about D&D the game, it's about D&D the fandom and canon. No wonder I wasn't getting it.

 

[Yora]

Halflings are thieves.
In Forgotten Realms, they have a small country on the very far side of the continent.
In 3rd edition, they tried making them caravan nomads.

That's literally everything I know about halflings in D&D.

 

[Hussar]

Except that they didn’t change any of the magic settings to include any races not normally found there.

I'm sorry, I'm not understanding what you are saying. They specifically DID add races not normally found in Greyhawk because those races are core in 5e. Now, I'll be 100% honest here and say I welcome the changes. I'm all for it. But, it did cause a LOT of consternation in some circles.

My point is, they have to include all the PHB races in a setting. Although, again, to be fair, it seems that the Magic The Gathering D&D settings get to break that mold. We'll see if that holds true in later supplements.

 

[Hussar]

Dwarves are deep and multi-dimensional. They have axes, beer, beards and gold

But I think I get it now. This argument is not really about D&D the game, it's about D&D the fandom and canon. No wonder I wasn't getting it.

No, it really isn't. That's the way the argument is getting framed by those who think we hate halflings.

I want halflings out of the PHB because they failed to gain enough traction. Same with gnomes. Given the virtual complete lack of any lore references in the PHB or the DMG to halflings, bumping them to the monster manual wouldn't actually change them at all. And, now, you free up space for new concepts. Maybe the new concepts will fail to gain any traction too. That's entirely possible. But, as it stands, because we wind up being forced to keep these races in the PHB, there's just no space to add more. "Add more pages to the PHB" is a deep dark rabbit hole that I have no interest in diving into. Where does that stop?

Again, after 50 years of being in every core book in D&D, they still don't even come close to the popularity of elves or dwarves. At some point, is it really that unreasonable to say, "Sorry guys, yes, you'll get your stuff, but, would you mind squeezing up a bit and reading it in the Monster Manual instead of the PHB? Thanks." From a world building standpoint, it would make zero difference and it opens up space for new ideas.

It'll be interesting to see what happens when the future 6e rolls in. Do they keep catering to aging grognards or do they listen to the massively more numerous new crowd?

 

[Yora]

But there's a big difference between Player Characters and worldbuilding.

In my experience, plenty of players like playing halflings. The failure lies entirely on setting writers never even attempting to include them meaningfully in the worldbuilding.