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

[Bohandas]

Yeah, there's really only two settings, SJ/Planescape and Eberron. Saying that Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms are different settings is like saying that Doctor Strange and Guardians of the Galaxy are different settings

 

[Gammadoodler]

It didn't seem like they didn't care about the world, it seemed like they weren't even part of it. In any other author's work the people inhabiting a place like the Shire would have turned out to be ghosts.



Maybe they came from the same place as Ungoliant.

EDIT:
OK, here's what needs to be done to fix the halflings. We start elsewhere by getting rid of the drow elves, who also suck, and then we hive the Drow's lore and backstory to the halflings.

Enhh. Are they less a part of the world than the elves of Lothlorien?

 

[PsyzhranV2]

I'm pretty sure that in Tolkien's work, Hobbits are an offshoot of Men.

I checked Tolkien Gateway; it says this:

Hobbits were considered Men. Nearly all scholars agree that Men were closely related to Hobbits, far more closely than Men were to either Elves or Dwarves. It was thus commonly assumed that Hobbits were among the Younger Children of Ilúvatar and were the result of the same act of creation as Men. This would imply that Hobbits had the Gift of Men to pass entirely beyond Arda.

It is supposed that Hobbits branched out from Men as a race in the Elder Days, but they don't appear at all in the chronicles of the Elves.[10] Their exact origin is unknown but in their early days they could have been primitive and "savage".[2] Apparently they survived in Middle-earth for millennia far from importance and the knowledge of stronger races; they come into the records not earlier than the early Third Age where they were living in the Vales of Anduin in Wilderland, between Mirkwood and the Misty Mountains. They have lost the genealogical details of how they are related to the rest of mankind. While they stayed there, the Northmen knew them. Their descendants, the Rohirrim, had that memory of the holbytlan and they remained an object of lore until they contacted them during the War of the Ring. Many old words and names in "Hobbitish" are cognates of words in Rohirric, so much so that even someone without linguistic training could make out the relation (Meriadoc Brandybuck would later write an entire book devoted to the relationship, Old Words and Names in the Shire).

 

[Bohandas]

Enhh. Are they less a part of the world than the elves of Lothlorien?

Yes. The elves came from somewhere and they're going somewhere, both figuratively and literally. And despite being further off the beaten path physically they nonetheless come off as less isolated.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

What's sad is D&D's middle ground waffling around in the No Man's Land between generic system and built-in setting. Most games these days either have default lore intertwined with the rules, or go of their way to emphasize their lack of it. D&D's refusal to commit in either direction hurts it thematically.

Nope. That is exactly the strength of D&D. The last thing the game should do is try to chase trends.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Same basic attitude, different lifestyle.

I don't get this repeated assertion that "city halflings are just humans," coming from multiple posters in the thread. If halflings live in an elf city, do they become elves?

No, because there are physiological differences.

But... other than being short halflings are pretty much depicted and talked about exactly like humans. They don't have any really different physiology... except if they have dwarf blood and are stout halflings, and thing never really brought up anywhere.

But, also part of it is the repeated assertion, from things like the FR wiki, that Halflings don't have a unique culture. They just adopt the culture of the city they are in. Which means since they have the same basic appearance and abilities as humans, and the same culture as humans, they basically just blend into a human city as humans who are particularly short. From everything being said in this thread, the only difference between the halflings and the humans would be that the halflings... are good neighbors who are kind and happy? Like, there isn't anything to make it abudantly clear that a city has a big halfling population they just blend in.

 

[Mind of tempest]

"Default" lore!?!? Oh, my. What a sad notion.

what you have never need a baseline to sell you on something? not all of us can be given a name and a stat block and create wonder having something to work with helps even if it is only so you have something to bounce off.

I simply disagree. Having fey origin doesn't really give me anything as a player or DM to latch on to. How does it affect their behavior or how they interact? I mean many of my ancestors are from Norway, but other than some interest in my heritage it doesn't really have any affect on who I am.

Halflings on the other hand? Lucky, brave and nimble help me build an image in my head along with the rest of their lore. I find halflings more evocative than elves.

But it's just like, an opinion, man.

fey have what mythology to work with, elves likely care for the fey courts to at least some degree as well ay you can rip from.
halflings have not a whole lot to work with other than stuff I would use to describe an individual, not a culture, that would only work if they were all clones or something.

I think a got a solution.
You take a sharp blade and remove the two pages for the halfling in the PHB.
Nice job, clean, halfling doesn’t exist no more!
Be sure to put the two pages in a correct recycle bin.

what you want the designer to get away with half-assing a whole race? I do not want designers who are not excited about their product it never goes well.

I just read this now.

Designers must be careful, because dividing up humans can become too much like reallife racism. But with caution, it can be done, but only if they feel significantly different from reallife humans.

like being half-demon.

I take the opposite point of view. The general description in the PHB is a chassis on which to build my campaign setting and I'm glad they don't waste time and energy on it. That leaves rooms for different settings with different assumptions like FR, Eberron or my own home brew. The malleability of D&D is one of it's greatest assets, not a weakness.

remember @Oofta that the books are not just for people who played the same editions my father did it is also for people who have never heard of a halfling in their life and it has to be able to sell them on it without prior background knowledge otherwise you tend to end up with these no goal just jam it in homebrew worlds.
mutability in every direction is good but without some guideline, you might as well be giving people a bunch of random mechanics, few become good at a task all at once and tossing people in the deep end is a bad idea.

 

[Chaosmancer]

You tell us. Every time we have pointed out parts of their lore, you've dismissed it as being boring or not really existing (despite us showing you actual passages of text which support the lore's existence).

Because you were doing things like saying halflings are explicitly farmers, and no one else is explicitly stated to be a farmer, therefore halflings control the world's food supply. That's a fun idea, but it isn't what the books say. IT would be a way to rewrite them (I don't think it would be a good way, but it is a way) but you were presenting it as how they were already written.

I think making them lorekeepers is an interesting direction. I don't think they are already lorekeepers just because they like stories and accidentally have some ancient lore in those stories that they are unaware of. That's the difference between what you were saying and what I am saying. You are trying to paint these ideas as already existing.

Or you claim that because you personally don't know how to describe something, it must be bad lore, even after you've been shown how to describe it repeatedly. Seriously, how hard is it to describe what happens when a halfling PC rolls a 1, then rerolls it to something else? Even if both rolls are a failure, you should be able to describe how it looks like it would be a catastrophic failure but is actually a less-bad failure. You failed your roll and fell into the pit, taking damage but narrowly avoiding the huge spike that would have impaled you. Or Brave! Halflings are more likely to not be affected by magical fear. You don't need to make the rest of the party more scared. This isn't rocket science!

And so if the halfling never rolls a 1, how am I supposed to show that the halfling racial story is one of being unusually lucky compared to the other races? Sure, I can describe a lucky break if they roll a 1, then reroll to succeed, but when trying to make sure a player feels like their race matters, I need to be able to do it more reliably than that.

Same thing with the Brave. Sure, it comes up if they are fighting dragons, but if they are hunting a gnoll pack? How do I make them feel like halflings are braver than the other races without making the other players play their characters ins specific ways?

You have refused to say what you think would make halflings more interesting for you, claiming you didn't want to spend "5,000 words" to do so, even though you've probably written nearly as much talking about how much you don't like them because they're boring.

This is patently false, as I have done so repeatedly. Heck, I did so just a few posts ago.

The 5e books on your shelf are not going to magically change with new text. WotC is not going to put out the Littleman's Guide to Halflings tomorrow. 5.5 or 6e is going to be at least a couple of years in the future. So you want new halfling lore right now? You want them to connect to the world in a way they don't already? Either write it yourself, using your ability as a gamer to make stuff up, or actually take some of the many, many examples that have been posted to this very thread or on the web in general. If you can't think of a way to make halflings interesting, then that's your problem.

I don't want new halfling lore right this very second. I want new halfling lore at the next available point for them to have a major update. Maybe when they release a guide to halflings, or when they do something for the anniversary edition.

Does that meet your approval? Am I allowed to continue talking about changing the game now that I've acknowledge the most obvious fact that it won't be changed the very instant I demand it, but might be something that doesn't change for years down the line? Or does it still offend you that I may be looking long-term to change something about the game instead of seeking instant gratification?

 

[Cadence]

Because you were doing things like saying halflings are explicitly farmers, and no one else is explicitly stated to be a farmer, therefore halflings control the world's food supply. That's a fun idea, but it isn't what the books say. IT would be a way to rewrite them (I don't think it would be a good way, but it is a way) but you were presenting it as how they were already written.

I wish people had the same restraint about Dwarves and mining and Elves and woodsy stuff.

 

[Chaosmancer]

If you agree that you can change the lore for, have some good ideas on what you would do, and would be happy with the result in your own game, why then do you feel the need for the book to be changed? You have everything you need. Changing the book means altering something that many people are happy with as it is. You must really be confident that the changes you want to make are in everyone else's best interests.

Yes, I do think that the majority of people would benefit from better halfling lore. And I think I have a good idea.

Are you offended that someone like their own idea and thinks that it is good? Are you offended that I want to improve the game long-term? Should I just shut up, sit down, and let things continue exactly as they were made 50 years ago when someone else had an idea they liked and thought the majority of people would find better than what already existed and many people were happy with. I'm sure plenty of people told Gygax and Arneson that they shouldn't bother making anything new, because many people were happy with the war games as they existed.


Seriously, why is it so offensive to people that I want to try and make things better? I'm not even advocating for huge sweeping changes that would invalidate halflings as they stand. I'm advocating for some rather small scale changes and expansions.