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

[Chaosmancer]

Or they might not. There is positive evidence that they don't value money.

There isn't positive evidence that they do, except for your personal certainty of course.

Except that accepting pay for work is the base state. A lack of positive evidence that they take money as payment for work or goods means you default to the base state. And the evidence you have provided is that they don't value expensive items.

And, actually, in the game itself, there is evidence that they value money.

1) Halflings prefer the rogue class, which is classically a thief, and values money.
2) Halfling NPCs (when they rarely appear) are running businesses, such as inns and shops, where people pay money.

Something as warping as "they don't money" would have been directly mentioned, in a game where "I will pay you money to do this dangerous thing" is the default game state, and halflings are expected to be a part of that exchange.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Maybe spellcasting and performing magic rituals is tiring. But the Elves are definitely not doing anything "backbreaking" while wildfarming. Nor anything dirty.

The only kind of physical exercise I can imagine Elves doing, is Eldritch Knight combat training. This would be physically strenuous. I envision their fighting style as gymnastic and elegant.

Heh, but even then, never dirty! They would be using the Prestidigitation cantrip and other magics to keep looking good and bright, even during the most exertive stunts in the muckiest places. It might even be embarassing to an Elf if anyone sees them sweat.

Using Prestidigitation to get clean means they had to have gotten dirty in the first place.

And, as I said in another post. Elves do blacksmithing. Elves build buildings. Elves hunt. Elves go to war. Elves weave. Elves domesticate animals.

Elves do work. They do hard work. I don't see the point in trying to dismiss this

 

[Hussar]

As I answered in my previous post I posrepped it because it was (I'm pretty sure intentionally) funny and I hit the thumbs up rather than going in to click the laugh button.

Also I find tradition largely irrelevant - but that doesn't mean that other people aren't allowed to consider it a serious positive.

Oh, why are halflings such a burden on the PHB to you? Halflings take three pages for about 5% of characters and could easily be cut to two pages. Druids take six plus however much for their unique spells for about 6%

I've already answered the class thing once. Classes from top to bottom are pretty uniform. If the average is 9%, and the top is 12% and the bottom is 6%, then, well, that's pretty much even. Yeah, fighters are twice as common as druids, but, that's it. It's not like comparing humans to halflings where the top 5 races are used several times more often than the bottom 5. There's a pretty stark drop off after the number 5 spot. In the 2019 stats, dragonborn, at 5th spot, are played about twice as often as halflings.

Again, FFS, stop painting this as "burden" or hating. It's not that at all. I just would like to see a PHB that actually reflects what is being played at tables. I don't think halflings do anymore. That there are other races in that list I'd bump to the DMG too is not really relevant to this conversation. I mean, we're insisting on combining both halfling stats to bump them to 4.7%, so, that still puts dwarves ahead at 6.6% and elves at 11%. In the 2019 stats, if you start combining subraces, then dwarves and elves are both ahead of Tieflings and Dragonborn. It could easily believe that. The Nerdist list I linked above pegs halflings above Goliath's but the 2019 list only does that if you combine both subraces.

But, as time goes on, what people play is shifting.

So, let me ask then, at is your cut off point? Mine is below 5%. Anything that is only being used at 1 in 4 tables, at best, does not adequately reflect what is being played and shouldn't be in the PHB. Not excised from the game. There's TONS of stuff that is below 5% in the game. But, specfically in the PHB. So, where is your line? Or do we need to keep halflings in the PHB no matter what?

Note, I totally misspoke when I said drop half-orc, my bad.

 

[Hussar]

Oh, and just to go back to the point about not being able to play halflings according to the halfling writeup in the PHB.

People are telling me that they are playing their halfling to type. That Event X happens and the character hears the call to adventure and off he goes. I wonder how many halfling players retire their characters after Event X is resolved. After all, according to the PHB, that's what you should do. They aren't out for money. They aren't out for power. They're out to defend their homes. So, once the threat to the Shire is over, it's time to go home and retire. After all, it's not like Bilbo kept on adventuring is it?

So, how many halflign PC's have you seen retired after the first adventure (or whatever) has resolved the threat to the halfling's home?

 

[Chaosmancer]

A dragonborn commoner can't not have scales and talons and can't not come from a culture for which:

So, you can't be a commoner if you don't look human. That's a pretty arbitrary bar.

"A continual drive for self-improvement reflects the self-sufficiency of the race as a whole. Dragonborn value skill and excellence in all endeavors. They hate to fail, and they push themselves to extreme efforts before they give up on something."

Hmm, so they don't like to fail and they push themselves to be excellent. And you say that is unhalfling like? No halfling would push themselves to be excellent in say.... winning state fair for growing the largest vegetable? That is a classic "country" trope. In fact, it is pretty often shown in older shows like The Andry Griffith show of people getting so competetive as to go to extreme measures and hate failing.

And one that values honor and adherence to one's role in a hierarchical clan.

And you can't be a commoner if you believe in honor or live in a hierarchical society.

Weird.

You know in medieval times and earlier, things like keeping your word, offering food and kindness to strangers, not cheating your neighbors, ect were all considered good traits. Very, you know, honorable. Lot of morality plays about stuff like that.

Additionally, medieval society was very hierarchical. Around the bottom you had the farmers and serfs (who further had hierarchies amongst themselves, typically with women being lower than men) and then the wealthier and more important people like millers, tanners, and blacksmiths. Then the soliders. Then the lords servant. Then the lords. And up and up. Strange how in a hierarchical system that gave us the classic idea of the commoner... you can't have commoners.

Seems like... maybe you are grasping at straws?

 

[carkl3000]

So, you can't be a commoner if you don't look human. That's a pretty arbitrary bar.



Hmm, so they don't like to fail and they push themselves to be excellent. And you say that is unhalfling like? No halfling would push themselves to be excellent in say.... winning state fair for growing the largest vegetable? That is a classic "country" trope. In fact, it is pretty often shown in older shows like The Andry Griffith show of people getting so competetive as to go to extreme measures and hate failing.



And you can't be a commoner if you believe in honor or live in a hierarchical society.

Weird.

You know in medieval times and earlier, things like keeping your word, offering food and kindness to strangers, not cheating your neighbors, ect were all considered good traits. Very, you know, honorable. Lot of morality plays about stuff like that.

Additionally, medieval society was very hierarchical. Around the bottom you had the farmers and serfs (who further had hierarchies amongst themselves, typically with women being lower than men) and then the wealthier and more important people like millers, tanners, and blacksmiths. Then the soliders. Then the lords servant. Then the lords. And up and up. Strange how in a hierarchical system that gave us the classic idea of the commoner... you can't have commoners.

Seems like... maybe you are grasping at straws?

Sorry. I was working from the premise (that I thought we had agreed upon) that halflings were the ideal commoner. I mean to say that when you asked what a dragonborn commoner can't do that an "ideal commoner" can, I immediately replaced "ideal commoner" with "halfling" in my mind. My bad.

Yes a dragonborn can be a commoner (and I've never said otherwise or that other races don't also have common folk), but it is a very different type of commoner than a halfling would be. If the character I wanted to play and the story I wanted to tell called for a halfling, I could not just stick a dragonborn in instead and tell the same story in the same way.

 

[Oofta]

You showed me what you did in your home game as an answer to what core halflings are like.

Your game, which is a Norse-inspired world where you have rewritten massive chunks of lore, if not the entire lore for every race and monster.

I wonder why I didn't accept that as an example of what halflings are like in the PHB? Guess I'm just unreasonable, after all, the elf entry clearly does reference their home in Yggdrasil... oh wait. It doesn't. Because the PHB doesn't present a Norse-Inspired world written by Oofta. So in a discussion where at the time we were talking about "what does the PHB say" your campaign notes weren't relevant.

I'll give you points for knowing that I have a loosely Norse mythology based mythology, but that's it.

I don't, by and large, rewrite races. Halflings are halflings. All I mentioned that was particularly specific to my campaign was the name that nomadic trader halflings are referenced by a specific term.

You can read my posts here and here. The only allusion to Norse mythology was a quick reference to Ginnungagap because that's the origin of, well, the creation of the mortal realms.

What I did explain was why I like playing halflings and how I integrate them into my campaign. But, I don't really change their core nature so I doubt it will mean anything to you.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I just would like to see a PHB that actually reflects what is being played at tables. I don't think halflings do anymore.

This is literally not true and an you know it. Why do you keep repeating the same debunked lie? Do you think it will convince anyone?

 

[Neonchameleon]

Again, FFS, stop painting this as "burden" or hating. It's not that at all. I just would like to see a PHB that actually reflects what is being played at tables.

We already have that. With halflings in the top 8.

I don't think halflings do anymore.

I'm sure that you know all about all tables. 5% still means they are being played. I've seen them being played. I've even had a new player in the last campaign I ran, who'd not read Tolkien pick one.

That there are other races in that list I'd bump to the DMG too is not really relevant to this conversation. I mean, we're insisting on combining both halfling stats to bump them to 4.7%, so, that still puts dwarves ahead at 6.6% and elves at 11%.

Treating them as a single race is the normal way of doing it. If we're insisting on splitting the subraces then both subraces of dwarves are behind lightfoot halflings.

If you are suggesting a 5% threshold and you want to treat subraces separately then by your logic you should want to remove dwarves from the PHB. Do you want to remove both subraces of dwarves as well, or is this special pleading?

In the 2019 stats, if you start combining subraces, then dwarves and elves are both ahead of Tieflings and Dragonborn. It could easily believe that. The Nerdist list I linked above pegs halflings above Goliath's but the 2019 list only does that if you combine both subraces.

And yes, we're talking about races not subraces - this is the normal way of doing things.

But, as time goes on, what people play is shifting.

But that's not the same as has shifted.

So, let me ask then, at is your cut off point? Mine is below 5%. Anything that is only being used at 1 in 4 tables, at best, does not adequately reflect what is being played and shouldn't be in the PHB.

I'm going to reply to this in that I think that having a fixed arbitrary cutoff point so the game only caters to what the cool kids are playing is fundamentally toxic to the game - and that diversity of play experiences provided by the PHB is important.

I would further say setting an arbitrary 5% limit when there are multiple ways of splitting something up is a ridiculously bad way of doing things. To explain why this is the case we can look at dwarves.

• Mountain Dwarves: 3.6% - below your 5% so we should remove them.
• Hill Dwarves - 3% - below your 3% so we should remove them.
• PHB Dwarves - 6.6% - we shouldn't remove them! Just all the subraces in the PHB.

So if we use your chosen metric we have just removed all the dwarves from the game because we've focused on subraces and an arbitrary 5% threshold.

Not excised from the game. There's TONS of stuff that is below 5% in the game. But, specfically in the PHB. So, where is your line? Or do we need to keep halflings in the PHB no matter what?

My line is that I entirely reject your framing that the PHB should only cater to what is currently cool. We're D&D players FFS - D&D may now be cooler than it's ever been but it doesn't make it cool.

If I had a threshold (which I don't) my first priority wouldn't be to remove things with all the subtlety of an arsonist. It would be to see what I could combine to keep as much as possible so we lose as little as possible. If, rather than tearing the pages out of the PHB at a 5% threshold and thus eliminating both subraces of dwarf we were to suggest that the two subraces of dwarf should be combined into one thing that pushed them over your arbitrary 5% threshold then that would be a better approach.

So just as you combine the dwarven subraces we can look at halflings. Pretty clearly by the stats, as for dwarves, we can combine the two halfling subraces pushing us back into the neighbourhood of 5%. I don't think that this is a fundamental problem or that the near loss of Stout Halflings would lose many halfling players or concepts.

But let's say that's not enough. I'd then, rather than tearing halflings out of the PHB, look to see if they could be combined with anything else. And there's an obvious candidate that is also in your arbitrary relegation zone - gnomes. The other little people, one of whose subraces is almost entirely eclipsed by halflings anyway and that are even less popular than halflings. Could gnomes and halflings be thematically combined? Yes. I'd estimate such a combination would be good for at least 90% of halfling players and 75% of gnome players especially if it was well known gnomes had been on the chopping block. You'd lose some of course (as with any change) but not the 100% losses for both your approach would give.

And do I think that if they claim D&D gnomes this would be comfortably enough to push halflings over your arbitrary 5% threshold? Yes, definitely.

If you're going to cut big things do so with the delicacy of a scalpel, not with a chainsaw. And save what you can by merging it rather than just binning it.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Oh, and just to go back to the point about not being able to play halflings according to the halfling writeup in the PHB.

People are telling me that they are playing their halfling to type. That Event X happens and the character hears the call to adventure and off he goes. I wonder how many halfling players retire their characters after Event X is resolved. After all, according to the PHB, that's what you should do.

Have you actually read the PHB entry on halflings? Because this does not appear to come from the PHB. What the PHB actually says is:

"They cherish the bonds of family and friendship as well as the comforts of hearth and home, harboring few dreams of gold or glory. Even adventurers among them usually venture into the world for reasons of community, friendship, wanderlust, or curiosity. They love discovering new things, even simple things, such as an exotic food or an unfamiliar style of clothing."​

Once the event is resolved then halflings still venture into the world for reasons including friendship, wanderlust, and curiosity. Those do not go away. And most of the time they make friends with the rest of the adventuring party. Plus they've grown and changed and their curiosity has been piqued.

You are literally saying that "Once event X has been resolved halflings should turn their back on their new friends they had the adventure with and stop travelling with them" - a stark contrast to what the PHB actually says.