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

[doctorbadwolf]

gnomes have higher voices, are more eccentric, are antisocial),

No? They’re not?

what on earth!?

 

[Faolyn]

Or, you could take me at my word and say that nobody is interested in them so, I don't bother using them.

Nobody in my group is playing an elf or expressed any interest in them. I still had them encounter elves. Have you never had your PCs encounter halflings?

Currently? The habit of a couple of posters who insist on ascribing motives without any actual evidence. How's your day going?

Not bad. Attacked by sahuagin. You know how it goes.

Why do I want to put them anywhere? No one is playing a halfling.

Why do I want them to be anyone? No one is playing a halfling.

So then it’s 100% your fault if there are no notable halfling cities or NPCs.

Nobody has expressed any interest in humans in my game, but I still named a bunch of human towns and have had them meet human NPCs.

Ok. Now, do you never have players come to you asking to play races that you haven't done write-ups for? What race restrictions do you have in your campaign?

Whatever fits the world. if someone has a really good idea for something that I didn’t list as available, I think about it. The game I talked about above was partially used to introduce a new person, so I limited everyone to PH races, minus dragonborn plus full orcs. My Ravenloft game is humans, feytouched (half-elves), homebrew caliban, and more recently, the three lineages from VGR plus changelings and shifters. Another world I’m working on, should it ever get run, will have humans, goblinoids, dwarfs, kobolds, minotaurs, gnolls, a homebrew-ish race called the evri, and some sort of ratfolk. Elves exist but are strictly NPCs.

See, I have none. Pretty much anything goes so long as the player is excited about it. So, because I don't have race restrictions and I let the players choose what they want with pretty much zero input from me, they never choose halflings. Funnily enough, when I did Ghosts of Saltmarsh, I tried being more restrictive in order to make it a more Greyhawk game. All I got was HUGE pushback and no one wanted to play anything I suggested. In fact, thinking back, any time I have tried to promote a race or concept, that's been the fastest way to see an idea go down in flames.

And other groups, like mine, enjoy or at least aren’t upset by such restrictions, as they allow for deeper delves into each race.

You'd probably be right. I haven't written that much for many, many things in D&D that no one ever asks to play.

Which is sad, because you would have an opportunity to flesh out your world with things other than what’s in the party.

Last time. Please stop ascribing motives. Ranting? Seriously? I've been pretty calm, been pretty polite and respectful of people's ideas. The only reason I mention that I don't dislike them is because every single page has a post or two telling me how much I hate them. I'm a little tired of people ascribing motives to me when I've specifically said that they aren't true.

Actions speak louder than words.

Look, if halflings were popular, I wouldn't be in this conversation at all.

It appears there are 20/21 races on D&D Beyond that are available without paying any money. If there were no favorites, but instead races were picked randomly, then any one race would be picked roughly 5% of the time.

Last data available, nearly 6% of users picked halflings.

Even if we used 5%, which you insisted on rounding 5.9% to, that would mean that halflings are picked a typical amount, that they’re as popular as any other race. It means that they are definitely not unpopular—and when you add in paid content and homebrew races, it means that halflings are actually quite popular, relatively speaking.

6% seems low until you realize that’s out of hundreds of options.

None of which is true for halflings.

We’ve spent over a 150 pages showing you that’s not true. If you still won’t believe us, why are even still posting here?

LOL. You did read where my current campaign is an owl folk, a living aboleth dream, a war forged, a tiefling and a dragonborn right? How much newer can I get?

But you just said you allow anything and don’t plan unless the PCs choose the race. So nothing that’s interesting in their choices is due to your effort or input.

To me, it sounds like your players are picking “cool” races because you aren’t providing in-depth information about the races of your world before hand.

See, to me, it's the players don't care because, in 40 years of play, both as a DM and a player, the players have NEVER CARED. The fact that halflings are one of the least popular races in the PHB, despite having every possible advantage including being included in the FREE RULES, points to the fact that players really, really don't care about halflings.

And in the nearly 35 years of experience as both player and DM, I’ve seen tons of halflings, including someone who would only ever play them. This points to the fact that players really, really care about halflings.

Come to my table with a halfling concept, I'll bend over backwards to make a halfling shaped hole in the campaign to tie your character in fifteen different ways to the campaign. I'm a HUGE believer that the race of a character is at least as important as character's class. You're not a fighter. You're a HALFLING fighter. Race choices should matter. And, if you play an elf, or a dwarf, or a tiefling or a dragonborn, it will matter. Play a halfling?

So you’d go forth and make an entire halfling culture, including how it works with other cultures, introduce random halfling NPCs that have nothing to do with my PC except that they share a race, create entire halfling cities, develop a whole history of them?

I’m finding that very hard to believe.

You might, if you're lucky, meet maybe other halfling in the entire campaign unless the DM starts rewriting things. You will never find a halfling city (they don't exist in published material AFAIK - no wait, isn't their a kender city in Dragonlance?), you will never meet a halfling archmage or high priest unless the DM decides to start rewriting.

But you will find tons of halfling villages and towns and tons of high-level halflings who don’t advertise that fact. Because that’s what halflings are like.

You seem to think that since they aren’t flashy, they aren’t effective. That is very much untrue. Halflings work best in anonymity.

 

[Faolyn]

No All the D&D settings have halflings.

MTG settings were not created for D&D except Strixhaven. So they aren't D&D settings. They are MTG setting with D&D rules.

If you’re looking at 2e, halflings aren’t a native planar race in Planescape, and they’re barely in Ravenloft.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

No? They’re not?

what on earth!?

They very much are with other races (like Deep Gnomes and Forest Gnomes hiding their homes with illusion magic to keep them protected), and often are within their own settlements. To quote Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes:

Tunnel Vision
When they are at work, rock gnomes hole up in their workshops with “Do Not Disturb” signs hung on the door. It isn’t uncommon for gnomes who are working on their projects to spend most of their time in seclusion, and even when they emerge (for meals or other reasons), they are often deep in thought and oblivious of their surroundings. In the safety of the burrow, they seldom come to harm because of this vulnerability. But even city-dwelling gnomes can fall prey to this sort of obsession as they pursue their projects, and in such cases it’s much safer for them to stay in their homes, since a gnome wandering the streets deep in thought is liable to walk into a moat or be run over by a wagon.

Yes, that's not "antisocial" in the sense that they dislike social interaction, it's that they're antisocial so that they can concentrate on their ongoing projects. Antisocial doesn't just mean that you dislike interacting with others, and gnomes often fit the category of "antisocial as a consequence of safety" or "antisocial due to active fixation on topics that require their attention".

 

[Mind of tempest]

It isn't sad. It's life.

They are new. 5e brought in a bunch of new fans. New fans of anything don't break the mold often. Those who do rarely get to DM their creations as they lack the trust and experience to get others to accept their ideas.

The road of a radical is rarely smooth.

on this, I know all too well.

Wait, are you now claiming that halflings literally can't be tied to any setting lore? Seriously?

I am just saying if you need to add them to your setting but have no ideas for them you can only copy past the book, Dragonborn have so little but they have something else to lean on, halfling have no such luck they are tied to one setting exactly and we do not have that as an official setting.

Nobody in my group is playing an elf or expressed any interest in them. I still had them encounter elves. Have you never had your PCs encounter halflings?


Not bad. Attacked by sahuagin. You know how it goes.


So then it’s 100% your fault if there are no notable halfling cities or NPCs.

Nobody has expressed any interest in humans in my game, but I still named a bunch of human towns and have had them meet human NPCs.


Whatever fits the world. if someone has a really good idea for something that I didn’t list as available, I think about it. The game I talked about above was partially used to introduce a new person, so I limited everyone to PH races, minus dragonborn plus full orcs. My Ravenloft game is humans, feytouched (half-elves), homebrew caliban, and more recently, the three lineages from VGR plus changelings and shifters. Another world I’m working on, should it ever get run, will have humans, goblinoids, dwarfs, kobolds, minotaurs, gnolls, a homebrew-ish race called the evri, and some sort of ratfolk. Elves exist but are strictly NPCs.


And other groups, like mine, enjoy or at least aren’t upset by such restrictions, as they allow for deeper delves into each race.


Which is sad, because you would have an opportunity to flesh out your world with things other than what’s in the party.


Actions speak louder than words.


It appears there are 20/21 races on D&D Beyond that are available without paying any money. If there were no favorites, but instead races were picked randomly, then any one race would be picked roughly 5% of the time.

Last data available, nearly 6% of users picked halflings.

Even if we used 5%, which you insisted on rounding 5.9% to, that would mean that halflings are picked a typical amount, that they’re as popular as any other race. It means that they are definitely not unpopular—and when you add in paid content and homebrew races, it means that halflings are actually quite popular, relatively speaking.

6% seems low until you realize that’s out of hundreds of options.


We’ve spent over a 150 pages showing you that’s not true. If you still won’t believe us, why are even still posting here?


But you just said you allow anything and don’t plan unless the PCs choose the race. So nothing that’s interesting in their choices is due to your effort or input.

To me, it sounds like your players are picking “cool” races because you aren’t providing in-depth information about the races of your world before hand.


And in the nearly 35 years of experience as both player and DM, I’ve seen tons of halflings, including someone who would only ever play them. This points to the fact that players really, really care about halflings.


So you’d go forth and make an entire halfling culture, including how it works with other cultures, introduce random halfling NPCs that have nothing to do with my PC except that they share a race, create entire halfling cities, develop a whole history of them?

I’m finding that very hard to believe.


But you will find tons of halfling villages and towns and tons of high-level halflings who don’t advertise that fact. Because that’s what halflings are like.

You seem to think that since they aren’t flashy, they aren’t effective. That is very much untrue. Halflings work best in anonymity.

if your payers do not care for a thing and you yourself do not love it why have it? just cut it and put in more of what you lot do care for.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Sorry, I don't mean to make fun, but this is one of the most hilarious typos that I've ever seen. It also sounds absolutely disgusting and horrifying.

dear diary enworld might be on to me and my carnomancy.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

They very much are with other races (like Deep Gnomes and Forest Gnomes hiding their homes with illusion magic to keep them protected), and often are within their own settlements. To quote Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes:

Yes, that's not "antisocial" in the sense that they dislike social interaction, it's that they're antisocial so that they can concentrate on their ongoing projects. Antisocial doesn't just mean that you dislike interacting with others, and gnomes often fit the category of "antisocial as a consequence of safety" or "antisocial due to active fixation on topics that require their attention".

That is more akin to ADHD hyperfixation than to antisocial behavior.

They also do enjoy the company of others, they just prefer it on their own terms. That’s just introversion.

They’re affable introverts with ADHD. To be antisocial, they either need to dislike the company of others, or behave disruptively in a way that is directly and/or strongly counter to the structures and norms of their society.

Also MToF is mostly bad. Gnomes made out better than most, with good deity lore and good tinker gnomes stuff, but it’s still not like…awesome, and it’s just Mordenkeinens flawed view on the multiverse. This isn’t 4e. Not everything is core.

Also hiding their homes to keep them safe is…not antisocial…at all. Forest gnomes behave socially within the circle of “forest folk”. There is also no indication that they do so any less when amongst non forest folk.

 

[Hussar]

I'm not saying your viewpoint is wrong, I just have a different one. I want every race that I include in my world to be drawing to my players. I get that players want to play races they like, but I also like making races likeable and giving them good lore. I did it for all the races I included in my world. The world inspires the characters that the players want to play in my games, not the other way around. It's perfectly fine both ways, I just prefer my version (as do my players, as they are typically indecisive about what character they want to play).

I've tried it that way. I honestly have. I ran the Savage Tides AP way, way back (damn, is that nearly 15 years ago now O.O) and I wanted to really lean into the whole Mystara angle. So, I had Rakasta, Lupins, Diabolie and one other race that I'm currently blanking on. Had big writeups for all of them. Found some really fantastic art. The works. The players, en masse, turned up their noses and came back with whatever the heck they wanted to play (which, to be fair, did include a grippli, and surprisingly enough for 3e, a tiefling). Same goes for pretty much every setting or campaign I've ever run. Heck, I've found that my players are far more conservative in their choices than I am actually. For a number of years there, I had players that basically alternated between human and elf.

So, yeah, I kinda gave up years ago trying to do it that way. I just found that I did all this work, and it all just got left on the table. So, now, I put it all on the players. I expect the players to not only tell me what their race is, but, I'm pretty adamant that they have to tell me what their race's place is in the world. Screw it, if the players aren't going to bite on what I do, I might as well get them to do the work. They're happy, I'm happy and I get to get them to do all the work for me. Win win.

 

[Hussar]

So what is the issue? That new GMs might feel they need to use Halflings? Why aren't we similarly bothered about them feeling compelled to use Dwarves?

Because people actually play dwarves. Dwarves being pushed into a setting makes sense since significant numbers of people play them. Same as elves.

 

[Don Durito]

Because people actually play dwarves. Dwarves being pushed into a setting makes sense since significant numbers of people play them. Same as elves.

People play halfllings. I know that you think around 1 in 20 characters is an unacceptably small number, but I don't see any reason to agree. What exact number is the cut-off? As I said earlier, if all PHB races are played equally (and only PHB races played) they would each be 11%. So obviously the cut-off is between 5.9 and 11%. So what exactly is it? And why should we accept it?

In any case I think settings would be better if the choices were based on thematic appropriateness and not some kind of popularity contest.