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

[FrozenNorth]

And I acknowledge, Eberron, a setting known for rewriting basically everything and some very good worldbuilding, did something interesting with some of their halflings. You also mention Golarion... which is a Pathfinder setting? I'm not really sure what Pathfinder has done with halflings, never played, never really considered it. I know Golarion has some interesting art and lore, but I also don't see what they really have to do with DnD, except to show that a literal DnD clone kept DnD races like halflings.

Provided simply for general interest in world-building:

Golarion did do some interesting things with halflings. Halflings in Golarion have been enslaved many times in their history, and a large proportion of them remain enslaved in the more evil nations. At least two of the halfling iconic characters have this past dealing with slavery as a major part of their backstory.

Free halflings in Golarion are very involved in trying to liberate their brethren, and there is a fair amount of lore on the Bellflower network, an underground network run by halflings spiriting slaves out of Cheliax and Katapesh.

This take on halflings supports why many halflings would be rogues (as this is a very congruent skill set for Bellflower agents to have) or bards, and provides multiple hooks for halfling adventurers.

Of course, this is a major change from the way halflings are portrayed in the PHB, and I suspect that the people who like halflings as is probably would not like this very different take on them (and I can understand that).

 

[Gammadoodler]

It is just so ridiculous.

40 something pages ago I got skewered for telling people that they couldn't claim personality traits as being defining for a race. Now I'm getting skewered for dismissing differences between racial personalities. Which no one was ever claiming was a thing... except now, when it is a thing.

I actually started my first post in this thread with a direct quote from the Forgotten Realms wiki that stated unequivocally, "Halflings have no distinct culture in Faerun". Out of the 5 officially supported settings other than Faerun... Two of them are Magic the Gathering crossovers, and don't even have halflings as far as I know. One is Ravenloft which does not give a unique halfling culture to Ravenloft, because it is based on the Domain you are in. And the last is Eberron, where half of the halflings have no distinct culture. So, in the entirety of 5th edition dungeons and dragons, there is one unique halfling culture, making up half of a setting. Greyhawk doesn't have one, if we start looking beyond officially supported settings for this edition. And then there is Darksun, which isn't supported either.

And, Talenta and Darksun represent a massive shift away from the PHB halfling. Which lends credence to the claim that PHB halflings are the ones in Greyhawk and FR.

So, you can claim I'm just "just dismissing them" but I'm backing this up with explicit text. I'm providing evidence. I don't want this to be the case, but the only way for me to say this isn't the case is to ignore the evidence I am seeing. And I'm not going to ignore evidence just to agree with you.

It is ridiculous.

Didn't this all start with a complaint about the MToF lore description.. which you've apparently now abandoned in favor of various wikis?

MToF has its issues, but it seems to describe halfling lifesyles, values, behaviors, etc. In a way that differs from other races' descriptions.

That you don't like those descriptions is well-documented at this point.

I don't need you to agree with me. I'm not going to play the "that difference isn't enough to satisfy Chaosmancer" game with you.

 

[Bardic Dave]

But, all in all, whether it is Golarion or something from the 1970's or some third-party company like Ghostfire Gaming... how does that excuse the PHB?

I think the point you’re missing is that just because you have a problem with the PHB Halfling doesn’t mean they need to be “excused”. Your personal preferences and opinions don’t have that kind of weight. There’s no objective problem here, no matter how much you insist there is—just different people’s competing preferences. It’s too bad you can’t fathom how people might be justified in liking things you don’t. And it’s too bad (for you) that you got the short end of the stick on PHB Halflings. Hopefully, other areas of the game cater to your preferences more.

 

[Mind of tempest]

It is setting specific - it belongs in setting books. Notice lineages have much shorter fluff text. That's the way forwards.

Because the will be no races, they are being replaced with lineages, and there are no sub-lineages.

Also, bad rules where bad. No one needs 20+ different flavours of elf.

No, you have it completely backwards, and they could easily have included twice as many races by cutting down on the waffle. But they didn't think any more where needed at that time.

lineages are for one-offs not a race of people, the phb has to assume you know nothing and give you sufficient to work with to build something, so it must be able to inspire.

 

[Oofta]

I could see half orcs and half elves using lineages, but I don't see it replacing race completely. At least not as presented in the Ravenloft book.

But it's just a label, I don't see how it makes much difference even if I think species would be better.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Well, I still do respond. As they say: that's just like your opinion, man. That is what this argument is about. It is about your arrogance of thinking that your personal preference is an objective fact. I don't need proof to dispute your personal preference as there are no facts to be disputed.

And yet, I am using facts, textual evidence and much more to defend my position.

A waste of time I suppose since no amount of evidence will ever be enough to get people to stop dismissing me as being arrogant and trying to force my vision upon others.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Will you ever admit that this is just your opinion, and one not universally shared though? Because that's what this all comes back to. A lot of people are perfectly fine with halfling lore and abilities. Heck, most people I know pretty much ignore all the lore and fluff. I don't find any of the lore for any of the races in the PHB particularly interesting. I find the animal based ones even worse. A tabaxi is ... wait for it ... an anthropomorphic cat!

On the other hand I think any interesting lore and culture has to be at a campaign setting level. Which of course you will say is not relevant because heaven forefend anyone discuss how the races are actually used in play instead of that whitespace in your head.

Of course campaign settings are important. I never said they weren't. What I have said is that there are two major campaign settings and a whole lot of "generica land" that use the PHB lore.

Because, despite your opinion on the matter, the fact is that there is lore in the PHB. You can be of the opinion that the lore is bad, but it does exist over the course of a few different races. In fact, the very existence of Drow is a major setting decision, and yet they are presented whole cloth in the PHB.

And, honestly, the only thing I asked Crimson was "do you have any evidence to suggest that the PHB races like elves and dwarves and gnomes" also are equally generic. And now you are telling me that "a lot of people" like halfling lore and abilities

I wasn't talking about abilities in my question. So, why even bring it up?

I just don't get why everyone who is telling me to be more open minded can't actually do anything except beat the drum that I should be less arrogant, less tyrannical and more open minded. Because clearly if you aren't having a problem because you made a homebrew setting with homebrew lore, then how could anyone have a problem with the halflings in the PHB.

Heck, everyone who plays DnD buys a setting book from second edition to run Birthright or Darksun, or immediately decides to play in Eberron, right? So, how could any look to the Player's Handbook, one of only three "required" books and think "this is what a halfling is supposed to be" and not like it. Oh, or maybe they play in the Forgotten Realms, which everyone hates and has terrible lore, but that isn't something we can actually offer alternatives to in the PHB.

I can't even ask for people to do more than state their opinions about how wrong I am without me being called arrogant.

 

[Don Durito]

Goliaths are already giant-kin, so that works. Hey, maybe to satisfy everybody we can include halflings as a subrace of giants (the really, really, small ones…)!

I think Goliaths could definitely fill the halfling's slot.

They haven't even replaced halflings yet and we already have threads about how no one plays them and they don't really have a niche.

So they should fit right in.

 

[Chaosmancer]

It is ridiculous.

Didn't this all start with a complaint about the MToF lore description.. which you've apparently now abandoned in favor of various wikis?

MToF has its issues, but it seems to describe halfling lifesyles, values, behaviors, etc. In a way that differs from other races' descriptions.

That you don't like those descriptions is well-documented at this point.

I don't need you to agree with me. I'm not going to play the "that difference isn't enough to satisfy Chaosmancer" game with you.

With "didn't this start" are you referring to nearly a year ago in a different thread? I can't tell you. I remember very heated discussions about aspects of that book. Much of which I still standby, but there is no point in rehashing those arguments here.

In this thread, as I said in my first post, I had a thought and realized I didn't know the mythos origin of Halflings. I figured Yondalla had created them, and I didn't remember how. So I looked it up in the Wiki... and that led to the completley accidental finding of the information I shared in my first post. But, I guess I'm not allowed to have more than one issue. Have to be hyper focused and never talk about anything else, right? I can't have discovered something else to talk about, if I ever deviate from things I said a year ago it must be because I abandoned those positions to be terrible in new ways.


You know, I really shouldn't bother posting. Everyone knows me better than I know myself. My reasons, my beliefs, how I run my game, the quality of my games. I'm a completely known factor. No matter how often you all are dead wrong about me and state I believe or said things that I have literally stated the opposite of. In literally this thread

 

[Gammadoodler]

I will play the "elves are generic" game though.

Let's see racial features:

• Medium size - sounds pretty human to me
• Long Life - The number of campaigns that span a time frame greater than a human life has got to be incredibly small. As such, Elven characters don't really ever get a chance to feel old. Time passes for them the same as every other character. In fact, they likely get to feel old less often than halflings get to feel lucky or brave.
• Perception proficiency - Humans can have this
• Trance - Roleplaying how the party sleeps is boring. How often are we acting out long rests?
• Some weapon proficiencies - humans can get these.
• A cantrip - humans can get these
• Slightly faster move speed - humans can get this
• Dark vision - you got me

Still.. what do we have? Elves are basically just humans with darkvision.

Generic.