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

[Zubatcarteira]

According to the Wiki, it's a temple to Chauntea filled with clerics. But, I'll be the first to admit my FR knowledge is limited.

Storm King's Thunder mentions that the Emerald Enclave works there, and it makes mentions of a lot of druids around the place, even helping with the sick plants.

There's even a halfling druid there.

 

[Zubatcarteira]

Just skimming, SKT seems to have a lot of halflings, commoners, druids, rangers, quest givers, tavern owners, etc. Quite a few mentions. Only two dragonborn that I can tell, and three Tieflings.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Most of the settings WOTC have pushed in 5e.

Really only in Eberron, Dark Sun, and Points of Light are halflings in the mix of whole event and not a background race.

So basically we again come to Forgotten Realms role being disappointing. Duh.

I mean there is cloud of vagueness over halfling's position in many settings because it is copypasted from LOTR without the parts of the LOTR to make it logical.

There's no Sauron or One Ring in D&D. So Halflings being corruption resistant, lucky, plucky brave, souls who do jack squat and are had to tempt doesn't really fit in D&D.

It's like porting Anakin Skywalker into D&D without the Force.

Anakin: I should have known the Jedi were plotting to take over!
Drizzt: What the heck is the Jedi?!

I don't think they're LotR copypaste anymore, and haven't been for a long time. At least not more than elves, dwarves and orcs are. Though I actually agree that the PHB description of halflings is a tad vague, but I think that is because it tries to be generic and applicable to many different settings. They try to be both hobbits and kender at the same time. And yeah, it could be thematically tighter if it committed to one direction, but then people who would have preferred the opposite direction would get upset. I feel gnomes have the same problem; competing influences that disturb their thematic coherence. Dwarves don't have this issue, as they're so super flanderised and boring that they don't have any competing thematic branches. All dwarves are the one same short Scottish Viking who likes axes, beer and mines. Elves have solved the competing themes by branching into seven thousand different subgroups; I don't think that's great either. This is why I don't much fret about the PHB lore, as any setting needs to have its own thematic take on things anyway.

 

[Minigiant]

I don't think they're LotR copypaste anymore, and haven't been for a long time. At least not more than elves, dwarves and orcs are. Though I actually agree that the PHB description of halflings is a tad vague, but I think that is because it tries to be generic and applicable to many different settings. They try to be both hobbits and kender at the same time. And yeah, it could be thematically tighter if it committed to one direction, but then people who would have preferred the opposite direction would get upset.

I think this could have been handled with subraces. Halflings could have been promoted in several directions and let subraces display it. Like elves but not six nonillion options.

Have Lightfoots be the ninja merchants, Stouts be hobbits, and Kender be the curious kleptos.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I think this could have been handled with subraces. Halflings could have been promoted in several directions and let subraces display it. Like elves but not six nonillion options.

Have Lightfoots be the ninja merchants, Stouts be hobbits, and Kender be the curious kleptos.

Yeah, that certainly could have worked.

 

[Hussar]

Just skimming, SKT seems to have a lot of halflings, commoners, druids, rangers, quest givers, tavern owners, etc. Quite a few mentions. Only two dragonborn that I can tell, and three Tieflings.

I'll admit to not owning the module. So, I'm just going by the "Dramatis Personae" page in the front. There is exactly one named halfling in the list. Three dwarves. But, I haven't actually gone through the module. Just did a word search and halfling appears 14 times. There is a brief paragraph talking about how there are halfling villages hidden here and there. Pretty much same as what you see in the PHB.

I'm not finding these lots of halflings though. It's certainly not coming up on search.

Again, if you think that 14 mentions of halfling (one of which is a toy chariot that is big enough for a halfling to ride) is a lot, well, we're just going to have to agree to disagree. I only played this module, I didn't run it. I don't recall any halflings in the module, but, that could just be my own blind spots and bad memory. I do recall meeting elves. Lots of humans. But, I'm drawing a blank on halflings.

 

[Zubatcarteira]

Going through it with CTRL F:

• There are 5 named halflings at the start in Nightstone, one who died, his wife, and their four children.
• There's a named halfling druid I mentioned in the other post.
• A named Halfling singer and lute player who spots the giant attack on the Goldenfields and sounds the alarm.
• There's a tavern in Daggerford run by Halflings, two named.
• A magic ring with a named halfling apparition inside that appears and sends you in a quest if you say his name to the ring.
• Some humans breed ponies to be halfling mounts in Triboar.
• It says that Lightfoot Halflings can be found in human cities in the north, and strongheart ones have homesteads scattered around, away from roads and well hidden to minimize contact with bandits, barbarians and monsters.
• Random encounter with Orcs where you can save a Halfling family, one named. If you bring them home they give you a magic item.
• Another random encounter where you can find a named Halfling Scout with a psionic ability.
• A named Halfing that works with the Zhentarim on Daggerford.
• It's mentioned that human and halfling cottages and farmsteads were built between Waterdeep and the Goldenfields.
• A named Halfling commoner who runs an inn in Westbridge.
• A named halfling you can save from being eaten by goblins in Grudd Haug.
• A named halfling as the servant of an insane ship's captain.
• You can find the stuff from a named halfling pirate on a dragon's hoard.
• Four Halfling slaves in a Yakfolk village.
• An adult bronze dragon likes to use his shape change ability to turn into a halfling.
• A named halfling and her family that you can escort to Triboar from her homestead that was attacked by ogres.

I think that's all, there are some other mentions of halflings in loot, especially some bottles with the face of a grinning halfling that pop up a few times. They don't seem to take center stage at any point, but they do come up a fair amount.

I have no idea how this is relevant at all for anything, but feel free to use this info as you wish.

 

[Zubatcarteira]

For how many times a PHB race is mentioned:

• Elf + Elves + Elven: 351
• Human: 307
• Dwarf + Dwarves + Dwarven: 224
• Halfling: 48
• Gnome + Gnomish: 30
• Half-Elf: 15
• Tiefling: 5
• Dragonborn: 2
• Half-Orc: 0

Edit: Forgot the plurals and not adding the "half-elf" to "elf", and removing "humanoid" from "human"

 

[Chaosmancer]

Well yes. But it also has to have gnomes and dwarves and elves.

As I said earlier, I find halflings more malleable than dwarves and elves. If I had a player who really wanted to play a halfling I could fit them into anything with little trouble.

I find them far less malleable. Because every time in this thread I've put forth an idea to change halflings I've gotten pushback of "those aren't halflings, stop trying to change them, they are perfect as is" type variety.

Elves can get twsited into bizzare concepts, and no one bats an eye, but make a halfling something other than a farmer, innkeeper or shopkeeper, and you've committed some error.

 

[Chaosmancer]

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.

Actions speak louder than words.

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

Yeah, in my most recent game that fell apart (DM had been running for a long time and got burnt out) we went to Neverwinter, a place I'm totally sure he made up all on his own. We then traveled to various locations, like Longsaddle where we met the Harpells. They were human by the way. We actually stopped somewhere between Xantharl's keep and Mirabar, I remember the barkeep in Xantharl's, Arzastra, but I don't think we ended up apologizing for her bar getting damaged. We were after a dwarven criminal. DM liked to run old modules and adapt them, and I remember this criminal and the way things were going got a bit weird, because the attack on the keep didn't make a lot of sense.

Edit: Oh look, the criminal Weevil was there too

So, I can totally agree with you that it is 100% the fault of the DM for not including halfling cities. I mean, if the DM doesn't take the time and effort to put in halflings into a world, and make sure they show up constantly as quaint farmers who are anonymous and never the center of attention, then how would we ever have halflings appearing anywhere?