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

[Chaosmancer]

I edited my post, there are actually 3, or 4 if you count Nimsy's named child Scoop - more with her other kids. Are they "significant" - depends what you mean - she is the Mayor of a small town. She gives out a quest and bakes halfling shaped cookies. There are certainly a lot more halflings than there are elves. If there are any elves in the Ten Towns they keep a very low profile. Rinaldo is also involved with a quest, and Perilou indicates the presence of halflings amongst the adventuring population.

How do you know they are halfling shaped cookies?

 

[Oofta]

I know you did, that was part of the premise of my post. I am asking if you'd be willing to turn this into a productive discussion, and talk about specifics. I mean, I have favorite halfling gods and strong opinions on the MToF halfling lore (some positive, more negative. I really dislike that book), so I'm pretty sure we can have a productive discussion. It just isn't going to happen as part of the current argument loop in this thread.

So how would you change them? Or maybe we should start a whole other thread on how people have made various races interesting in their campaigns? Because I don't have much of an issue with halflings and I don't have a problem integrating them into my campaign world. I just fill in a few details here and there to make them feel a little more integrated. Of course chaosmancer will dismiss that as not relevant.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

How do you know they are halfling shaped cookies?

Easy! They're half the size of normal cookies!

 

[Chaosmancer]

No one has a giantish background. Giants aren't playable, for very obvious reasons. Giants are present in the world. They are in the monster manual. But THEY DO NOT MAKE GOOD PCs.

Halflings deliberately avoid being a significant presence in the world. They like to keep to themselves. But they make good PCs.

The role of a people in the world and the role of a lineage for player characters are completely different.

Consider the Reborn from VGR. There is no lore or kingdom of the reborn. Indeed they don't even all have the same origin. Some are stuffed with straw. Some are stitched together from mismatched body parts, others are reanimating spirits or cyborgs with clockwork hearts. But they make perfectly fine PCs, even outside Ravenloft, because all PCs are unique individuals, not X% of the population.

1) Goliaths and Firbolgs are tied into Giant lore traditionally. They are after all giantkin and part of Giant Lore.

2) The Rune Knight PC class and the idea of Runic magic is tied into Giants, which can be combined with point #1 to make giant lore and backgrounds very important for a PC


3) Reborn are specifically written to be a unique member of another race. The implied thing is to make a human reborn, an elven Reborn, a Tiefling Reborn. And in that case, you would pull upon lore for humans, elves and tieflings. They didn't just give us random stats for making random constructs with no underlying rhyme or reason.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Burt didn't you say you tried to make halflings work for you in your campaign and couldn't? So how could there be a rewrite that would satisfy you if you couldn't do it yourself?

I said I tried to make them for my world and they didn't fit. They overlapped too much for my world with Gnomes.

Just because I won't use them in my world doesn't mean that there can't be a better write up for them. I don't use Tritons or Sea Elves either. In fact, I had a rather big problem a few years ago when I realized I had never placed an ocean in my first draft of my setting.

 

[Chaosmancer]

You mean humans don't do it in Forgotten Realms.

Is there any official DnD setting where all Humans reincarnate?

 

[Chaosmancer]

I know you did, that was part of the premise of my post. I am asking if you'd be willing to turn this into a productive discussion, and talk about specifics. I mean, I have favorite halfling gods and strong opinions on the MToF halfling lore (some positive, more negative. I really dislike that book), so I'm pretty sure we can have a productive discussion. It just isn't going to happen as part of the current argument loop in this thread.

I am not against trying to have a discussion. I don't know if the thread would allow for it to be a fruitful discussion.

Edit: Especially since even before I had a chance to respond to you, Oofta started taking shots at me.

 

[Gammadoodler]

If you can dream about your reincarnated past lives, which you know for a fact exist because your people reincarnate. Which humans do not do in DnD.

I do agree that should have been in the PHB, it is a cool idea. But it was put in MToF

Ennh. PHB says "mental exercises that have become reflexive". Perhaps there is an argument that one of those exercises is recalling a past life, but to me it reads as a rewrite of the ability rather than an expansion of it.

It's certainly more flavorful than the base ability, but it suffers from the same issues the long life span does in that whatever has occurred during pre-life adventuring or past lives is almost 100% in the hands of the DM, and if it never comes up, the player would never know the difference.

 

[Faolyn]

If something is in the PHB, it should be serving a purpose other than, "Well, I like it."

Why?

Specifically, when it comes to races, why?

This is my point of contention. The basic counter argument that I keep getting is that halflings are this popular, commonly played race. The only problem is, there is zero evidence to support that.

But is there any evidence that, in the D&D community as a whole (not just D&DBeyond, which contains only a fraction of gamers) that halflings are not commonly played?

Edit: And I mean played, not "depicted in commercial modules."

 

[Faolyn]

1. That isn't in the description for trance in the PHB.

It's from MTF.