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

[Chaosmancer]

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.

Not Hussar obviously, but there is a significant deviation between Fighters and halflings.

Firstly, as was mentioned previously, most of the classes fall on a very small array of percentages. With 13 classes, if they were all exactly equally popular you would expect each class to rate 7.7% or so. I think the lowest class is 6%? The highest is 11%? That is all within a single standard deviation if I remember my math correctly, and so it can't really be stated that any class is particularly unpopular.

Additionally, we need to address narrative role. If we take halflings out of a setting, most of the time, you would never notice. Eberron you would notice and that's about it (while dark sun has unique halfling lore that ties to the beginnings of the world... it is such hidden and secret lore that taking them out doesn't actually alter the setting significantly). However, if you take a class like the fighter out of the game... you no longer have non-magical soldiers. A massive part of the fiction just vanishes.

So, I think recognizing differing realities between races and classes is rather important. I wouldn't cite raw percentages though as the biggest factor behind halflings needing reworked though, I would cite the ease at which they can be made irrelevant in every official setting barring one.

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.

I still will never understand how people think that gnomes are not "thematically identifiable" they have two very powerful and deeply rooted themes, and most of their personality traits are identical to the halflings. And I think their lack of popularity comes from three major sources in the 2017 and 2019 data.

1) Intelligence is their primary score and it is one of the weakest if not the weakest scores in the game.

2) Intelligence was only useful for Wizards, and elf, human and Tielfing wizards are insanely popular. And unlike the Lightfoot halfling which has some rather nice abilities to make them better rogues than average, the Gnomes lack anything to make them better wizards than humans, high elves and tieflings.

3) The majorly thematic class for gnomes is Artificers. And they are relatively new. In fact, if you don't count the Eberron setting book, it is perfectly fair to say that it just got released with Tasha's. Meaning a lot of tables haven't had a "gnome class" like they have for most of the other PHB races.


I truly think it is not the lore and themes of Gnomes that have docked their statistical popularity, but their mechanics. Because Gnomes appear in far more fantasy literature than halflings ever have.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Lot's of things aren't "key" to anything, but still exist. I'M not key to anything, but I exist.

You also aren't a work of fiction.

Rules of fiction are different than the rules of reality. In reality you have to live through every second of your waking life. In fcition, most authors don't keep full track of time, because it would be incredibly boring to have a lot of things that don't really matter to the greater narrative to slog through.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I've played a number of halflings and run an all-halfling campaign. They're not more likely to be rogues, IME, than any other race. (There are other races that have historically also been good for rogues.)

Even though it doesn't seem like several people on this thread can wrap their heads around it, but there's a certain chunk of people who just like halflings independent of any issues with their stats or description. Look at how many people like kobolds despite their terrible abilities from Volo's. I think you could also cut away most of elves' special abilities and they'd remain popular. Same with the tiefling fans. At a certain level, for many gamers, it's about playing what they like, stats be damned.

I was referring almost entirely to the statistical data. In that it shows that halflings are almost exclusively rogues.

Let me see if I can copy the table

So, as you can see, Halflings have basically 1800 (more than I thought, thought it was 1500) entries under Rogue. Their next class is bard at 800

Actually, just crunching some numbers. With 6,000 total (minor round for approximate numbers) Rogues would represent 30% of all halflings. If it was distributed evenly it would be 8.3%, so rogues are about four times more likely than the average. Bards are another 13%. So approaching 50% of halflings are represented by Rogues and Bards... which I think is really telling considering the Lightfoot Halfling gets a bonus to Charisma and bards and rogues are highly related classes.

And, looking at gnomes you see their top two are Wizards and Rogues... likely for Arcane Tricksters.

And the popularity difference between Gnomes and Halflings is about 1,300 people... while the popularity difference between wizard and rogue is 1,500, and while Halflings and Gnomes both take 3rd in their respective big classes, there are a lot more elven wizards than there are human rogues and human wizards compared to elven rogues.

Which is basically a way of saying, the class popularity could easily account for the disparity in racial popularity.


Edit: Got wrapped up in my own stuff there. Yeah, some people like halflings just because they are halflings. But we don't know how common those people are. You can't tell that from the chart. Looking at the raw data though, it is muddied whether or not it is halflings popular or halfling rogues being very good and rogues being popular.

 

[Faolyn]

where did you get that from? also is that not the evil dwarves?

Duergars also have the enlargement ability.

However, spriggans are a mythological creature that have been made into D&D monsters in the past.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I was referring almost entirely to the statistical data. In that it shows that halflings are almost exclusively rogues.

I'm familiar with that chart. (I was one of the people who thought they were helpful by relinking it in the thread after it originally was added, having missed others doing it.) I think the data is fundamentally flawed, since it doesn't make any effort to remove characters that are just someone making a hypothetical character they'll never play, which increases number of optimized characters built as thought experiments.

I would love it if D&D Beyond opened up their API to the extent that we could just look at level 2+ characters or characters that have had XP added to them after the character was created, so we could see what characters are played versus what characters are merely rolled up.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

Duergars also have the enlargement ability.

However, spriggans are a mythological creature that have been made into D&D monsters in the past.

4E folded in aspects of the redcap to spriggans. They couldn't enlarge, but there was one variety that could that could temporarily make their arms larger to increase their reach.

 

[Oofta]

I'm familiar with that chart. (I was one of the people who thought they were helpful by relinking it in the thread after it originally was added, having missed others doing it.) I think the data is fundamentally flawed, since it doesn't make any effort to remove characters that are just someone making a hypothetical character they'll never play, which increases number of optimized characters built as thought experiments.

I would love it if D&D Beyond opened up their API to the extent that we could just look at level 2+ characters or characters that have had XP added to them after the character was created, so we could see what characters are played versus what characters are merely rolled up.

It was also just one snapshot of a particular point in time. In theory they "can tell" if a PC is active but I don't know how. I have AL characters that I was playing but haven't for about 2 years now. Do they count? Do the NPCs I write up matter? The "how would this work at different levels"?

 

[Mind of tempest]

Duergars also have the enlargement ability.

However, spriggans are a mythological creature that have been made into D&D monsters in the past.

it would be too similar to duergars, I would prefer something that takes parts of the gnome and show how far they could go wrong.

 

[Faolyn]

it would be too similar to duergars, I would prefer something that takes parts of the gnome and show how far they could go wrong.

Then make playable redcaps.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Then make playable redcaps.

they have almost nothing in common with gnomes, other than being short, might as well make the redcaps as evil halflings.