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

[Paul Farquhar]

You know what I've noticed? This thread has a two-part title, but a lot more emphasis in the posts has gone to the "My Problems with Halflings" side and not nearly enough on the "How to Create Engaging Interesting Fantasy Races" side. Anyone have any ideas on that score? Because I think feelings vis a vis halflings have been thoroughly covered.

The two questions cannot be separated. It's clear that the people who don't like halflings are looking for something different from "races" than those who do. Ergo there is no-one-size-fits-all answer.

 

[Mind of tempest]

The two questions cannot be separated. It's clear that the people who don't like halflings are looking for something different from "races" than those who do. Ergo there is no-one-size-fits-all answer.

can you elaborate please as I do not see your point?

 

[Mind of tempest]

I would personally prefer Goliaths, but I suspect that a well designed and not overly pigeon-holed Orc (not half-orc) design could hold that spot, especially if it came along with good and much improved Orc lore.

Nothing else is going to have the recognition and cultural cache.

both lack decent lore other than is big and fights lots.

 

[Yaarel]

A trope with traction for the Halfling is, the criminal with a heart of gold. A good-natured mafia family.

But then, I worry about their nomadic culture, coming too close to the "gypsy" thief stereotypes against the reallife Romani.

Elsewhere, the Kender were insane and as player characters highly disruptive to fellow players. But it does touch on the happy criminal trope of the Halfling.

The Halfling needs traits that make it less Human-like, but the flavor for these new traits can perhaps move cautiously in the direction above.

 

[Don Durito]

both lack decent lore other than is big and fights lots.

Eh. I don't want to say that Orcs have good lore, especially in D&D, but they're recognisable. Goliaths are just D&D and while other properties have giant like races they don't really intersect with Goliaths.

Orcs, beside their Tolkien roots have been present in Earthdawn and Shadowrun, have had novels written about them, are part of World of Warcraft, have spawned social media memes and a dreadful Will Smith movie. So they're a part of popular culture in a way nothing else that could fill there spot would be. I'm not sure that makes them a fantasy archetype exactly, but possibly something sort of adjacent to one.

On the other hand, they are of course, filled with lots of baggage, and I would be perfectly happy if Orcs disappeared for good.

But then I like Goliaths for the same reason I prefer Halflings to Dwarves and Elves, they're simply more malleable for world building purposes and are freer of baggage. But then my priority is worldbuilding and I see D&D as mechanics and game structure rather than fandom. I seem to be in the minority, especially these days.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

can you elaborate please as I do not see your point?

For example, some people think every race needs to exist for a reason. Everything in the world fits together like the wheels in a pocket-watch. Other people think some things just are because they are, and if there is an explanation then the DM doesn't need to know what it is.

Then there is the matter as just what are adventurers? Are they professionals, who chose to be adventurers and trained accordingly? Or are they random folk who had adventure thrust upon them? Or where they chosen by Destiny?

Then there is Luck. Are good and bad luck real things that can be manipulated, or are the just the extremities of a random bell curve?

Is D&D a tactical wargame, where only mechanics matter?

Is the lore presented in the PHB on a par with rules, or is it just exemplar material for players to change as they see fit?

As pointed out D&D is a toolkit, and what different groups choose to do with those tools differs widely - far more widely than a lot of people realise.

 

[Hussar]

The two questions cannot be separated. It's clear that the people who don't like halflings are looking for something different from "races" than those who do. Ergo there is no-one-size-fits-all answer.

Why is this being framed in terms of preference though. No one here, AFAIK, actually dislikes halflings.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

No one here, AFAIK, actually dislikes halflings.

Really? Putting people's comments aside, I find that implausible on a purely statistical basis. I absolutely loathe elves for example. People naturally have likes and dislikes, and they don't have to have any reason for them.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I'm sorry, I thought this was a thread about halflings. All this "Well Whaddabout" stuff is just smoke and mirrors.

On the contrary. Unless you establish a baseline arguments are meaningless. I could suggest taking fighters out of the core because I've never had a fighter at my table - but this would be an utterly ridiculous suggestion once you put things into context. Your suggestion here is nothing but special pleading. And even if it was about halflings, threads drift. Trying to be some sort of martinet saying "You will only talk about what I want to talk about and are not even allowed to put my arguments in a wider context" just makes you look as if you are aware that you do not have an argument.

You guys are the ones trying to paint this as, "Well, you just don't like halflings, that why you want them gone". It's getting rather tiresome being accused of a bunch of stuff that really isn't germane to the point.

Except that cutting an entire third of the races in the PHB in one fell swoop is unlikely and halflings aren't even the first small race likely to be on the chopping block.

I recognize that some people (a TINY minority - 95% of people DON'T) play them,

I have already asked you where your stats came from - especially as IIRC you made the claim for 2017. If 6% of PCs being created in 2017 then unless there is some secret cabal somewhere of people who play halflings and only halflings (if there is I'd be delighted to see evidence) it is likely to be a minimum of 6% and probably higher because shock people can play more than one character if they play more than one campaign and they don't always play the same race.

So your statistics are exceptionally dubious and your logic doesn't follow.

Then, we'll add some races that actually gain traction. All I know is, keeping the same races in the PHB has meant that the PHB becomes less and less relevant as the edition continues.

And with the exception of the half-orc/goliath and in 2017 (but not 2019) the genasi nothing has really challenged for the PHB in popularity.

Your argument here is "because there are more races being used we should cut the seventh most popular race, putting fewer into the PHB because then we could add more races that aren't clearly as popular as the PHB races.

To me this logic is just weird. The reason that I get the impression you hate halflings is that your logic in a number of places is sufficiently off-base that it feels like motivated reasoning; you are looking for reasons to defend cutting halflings.

My current group is playing exactly one (Tiefling) PHB race character out of 5 PC's. No, I'm sorry, I tell a lie. We just added a Dragonborn character after losing the half-orc character's player to real life stuff.

The half-orc being another PHB race of course.

It would be really, really interesting to see how these numbers track over time.

We've data from 2017 and 2019. Which isn't as much as I'd like. In both of them there are precisely two non-PHB races to challenge the PHB races - the Genasi and the Goliath. In both of them halflings are more popular than gnomes. The genasi star faded fairly hard between 2017 and 2019.

I wish we could see that. Hey, maybe I'm totally off base here and some races are far more popular than they seem to be.

If your "seem to be" refers to just your table then yes they are. And dwarves are more popular than they seem in my experience - but I know that my tables are outliers at some things. Which is why we try to go by anecdote rather than data.

That could easily possibly be. OTOH, it could just as easily be that various races have been buried under the veritable tsunami of new players out there that have joined the hobby in the past five years.

Or it could be that they haven't been and that the statistics that we've seen are right. That halflings are one of the less popular PHB races but more popular than almost anything outside the PHB. They also have a niche or two that the only other thing that comes close to scratching is gnomes - and they don't do it as well.

Based on internet buzz I'd have expected tortles to do better than they are according to the statistics tbh.

And as I've been saying throughout it would be ridiculous to cut halflings without cutting the less popular and less thematically identifiable gnomes. And it would be ridiculous to cut both the small races at the same time. The reason half-orcs can be cut fairly easily is that they are not only unpopular but there are other candidates that can rival them for their niche - and indeed are doing so without being in the PHB.

 

[Don Durito]

What we should really do is cut out the subraces. If we're cutting out the ability score bonuses they're somewhat redundant anyway as they mostly exist to spread around that extra point or two. Furthermore, if lots of people are playing non PHB races anyway, then the distinction between Mountain Dwarf and Hill Dwarf or Prairie Elfs and Transitional-Taiga-Tundra-zone Elf becomes even less important.

So we cut down the page count of each race and have 25 races in the PHB. Perhaps even suggest some themes for world building.

Classic: Greyhawk AD&D races
Fallen World: Nentir Vale
Gothic: Ravenloft
Magepunk: Eberron.