RPG Evolution: The Trouble with Halflings

Over the decades I've developed my campaign world to match the archetypes my players wanted to play. In all those years, nobody's ever played a halfling.

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

So What's the Problem?​

Halflings, derived from hobbits, have been a curious nod to Tolkien's influence on fantasy. While dwarves and elves have deep mythological roots, hobbits are more modern inventions. And their inclusion was very much a response to the adventurous life that the agrarian homebodies considered an aberration. In short, most hobbits didn't want to be adventurers, and Bilbo, Frodo, and the others were forever changed by their experiences, such that it was difficult for them to reintegrate when they returned home. You don't hear much about elves and dwarves having difficulty returning home after being adventurers, and for good reason. Tolkien was making a point about the human condition and the nature of war by using hobbits as proxies.

As a literary construct, hobbits serve a specific purpose. In The Hobbit, they are proxies for children. In The Lord of the Rings, they are proxies for farmers and other folk who were thrust into the industrialized nightmare of mass warfare. In both cases, hobbits were a positioned in contrast to the violent lifestyle of adventurers who live and die by the sword.

Which is at least in part why they're challenging to integrate into a campaign world. And yet, we have strong hobbit archetypes in Dungeons & Dragons, thanks to Dragonlance.

Kender. Kender Are the Problem​

I did know one player who loved to play kender. We never played together in a campaign, at least in part because kender are an integral part of the Dragonlance setting and we weren't playing in Dragonlance. But he would play a kender in every game he played, including in massive multiplayers like Ultima Online. And he was eye-rollingly aggravating, as he loved "borrowing" things from everyone (a trait established by Tasselhoff Burrfoot).

Part of the issue with kender is that they aren't thieves, per se, but have a child-like curiosity that causes them to "borrow" things without understanding that borrowing said things without permission is tantamount to stealing in most cultures. In essence, it results in a character who steals but doesn't admit to stealing, which can be problematic for inter-party harmony. Worse, kender have a very broad idea of what to "borrow" (which is not limited to just valuables) and have always been positioned as being offended by accusations of thievery. It sets up a scenario where either the party is very tolerant of the kender or conflict ensues. This aspect of kender has been significantly minimized in the latest draft for Unearthed Arcana.

Big Heads, Little Bodies​

The latest incarnation of halflings brings them back to the fun-loving roots. Their appearance is decidedly not "little children" or "overweight short people." Rather, they appear more like political cartoons of eras past, where exaggerated features were used as caricatures, adding further to their comical qualities. But this doesn't solve the outstanding problem that, for a game that is often about conflict, the original prototypes for halflings avoided it. They were heroes precisely because they were thrust into difficult situations and had to rise to the challenge. That requires significant work in a campaign to encourage a player to play a halfling character who would rather just stay home.

There's also the simple matter of integrating halflings into societies where they aren't necessarily living apart. Presumably, most human campaigns have farmers; dwarves and elves occupy less civilized niches, where halflings are a working class who lives right alongside the rest of humanity in plain sight. Figuring out how to accommodate them matters a lot. Do humans just treat them like children? Would halflings want to be anywhere near a larger humanoids' dwellings as a result? Or are halflings given mythical status like fey? Or are they more like inveterate pranksters and tricksters, treating them more like gnomes? And if halflings are more like gnomes, then why have gnomes?

There are opportunities to integrate halflings into a world, but they aren't quite so easy to plop down into a setting as dwarves and elves. I still haven't quite figured out how to make them work in my campaign that doesn't feel like a one-off rather than a separate species. But I did finally find a space for gnomes, which I'll discuss in another article.

Your Turn: How have you integrated halflings into your campaign world?

 

[Maxperson]

No I get Halfling. They aren't little people. Halfling are little humans.


Tolkien created hobbits as a small version of rural humans. D&D shaved off the name and made them a bit more magical and a few fantastical racial traits.

Then 5e cut out half those traits, dilluted the rest, and made Halfling back into "humans but smaller and all peasants"

They were magical in Middle Earth, too. They could walk silently though areas bigger folks couldn't, and disappear into hiding with an extraordinary ease. Further, they were resistant to the powers of darkness in a way that no human was. That was how Bilbo and Frodo could use the ring for so long before they finally started falling victim to it.

 

[Maxperson]

I've already got Maxperson saying that I must be a Bad Faith DM because I don't go out of my way to describe lucky events happening to the halfling over and above what happens to the rest of the party.

Nope! A bad faith DM is one that refuses to narrate the results of an action as RAW and the social contract dictate. I said nothing about going above and beyond that.

If a wood elf hides in light obscurement, the DM is obligated to describe the result of that action in a way that shows him hiding in light obscurement. If a dragonborn breathes fire on someone, the DM is obligated to describe the result of that action in a way that shows him breathing fire on the enemy. If a half-orc crits an enemy, the DM is obligated to describe the result of that action in a way that shows the attack to be more savage than normal. If a halfling gets lucky on a skill check, the DM is obligated to describe the result of that action in a way that shows the halfling to be lucky.

I'm not saying that the halfling should get something extra, or be treated in a special way. I'm saying the DM is obligated to narrate the results of the halflings actions in accordance with RAW and if the DM refuses, ruining a significant aspect of who the halfling PC is in the process, that DM is acting in bad faith with his refusal to follow RAW.

 

[Azzy]

Right... but if I'm doing a cat race, and the leopard and the jaguar and the panther are incredibly closely related, to the point where most people mix them up ... why would I make three deep dive lore's instead of one that allows someone to look like a jaguar, a panther, or a leopard?

Nitpick. "Panther" isn't a specific species of big cat like leopard or jaguar. It refers big cats in general or often specifically to leopards and jaguars (especially in the sense of "black panthers"), and (sometimes) cougars. So seeing panther separate from leopards and jaguars is a bit confusing.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Yes, yes it is.


Yes, this all nonsense because it has nothing to do your premise: that the narration you provide for the halflings in your game doesn't include magical luck, so therefore, halflings are a terrible PC race.

Yep, I figured as much. You have no idea what I am actually arguing.

Please, find where I said halflings are a terrible PC race in this thread? I'd love to see it.

What I actually said is "saying halflings are lucky is a terrible unique mechanic, because at the table that doesn't manifest"

People then dogpiled on, insisting that re-rolling those one's is super impactful and definetly lucky. And they couldn't believe that it wouldn't change the game. So, I showed the math, acknowledged that the mechanics were fine, but the narrative was nothing like it was supposed to be...

And now I get accused of abandoning my own point, because I addressed the points of others. And this is why I didn't want to post my homebrew question back on these forums. I knew I'd get sucked into a discussion like this, and I'd be suffering through these ridiculous arguments again, because I just can't help myself.

Well, I just checked, and that comic seems to have come out in 2010-2012, so he had never heard of 5th edition. Oh and, 4e halflings didn't have Lucky as a trait. As far as I can tell, they only had a power called "second chance" which allowed them to reroll an attack roll once per encounter.

So your example had nothing to do with 5e halflings who have the Lucky trait.

Also, I just read the comic you posted that screenshot from (issue 0). That was pure writer's fiat there, not a thing to do with any sort of mechanics. As evidence by a black dragon's breath weapon getting blocked by a single shield and then the dragon getting killed by a single blow to the head. I don't think is how breath weapons worked in 4e, and one rock shouldn't be enough damage to take down a dragon, as I already said.

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Right, DnD comics can't show the narrative of DnD doesn't match the mechanics of DnD because the comics don't match the mechanics of DnD.

I mean, stopping a breath weapon with a shield is ridiculous right? It isn't like it is one of the most iconic things in fantasy art, to the point that there is a feat called "Shield Master" meant to emulate that narrative.

And, we all know halflings weren't created before 5th edition, so seeing their narratives from before then is pointless. I mean, re-rolling an attack roll once per fight is nothing at all like re-rolling when you roll a 1, right?

I already answered this question before: because comics, shows, and books don't actually use D&D mechanics, because D&D mechanics don't tell a good story. You want the Heroes to slay the BBEG at the end, not get killed because they rolled badly or because they forgot that it was immune to one damage type or weak against another. Or worse, because you want the Heroes to have an epic battle and instead they do something completely off the rails that turns the final battle into a farce. You want a sneaky thief to kill someone with a single blow from behind, not just do some extra damage and then have to engage in combat for a few more rounds. You want an archer to shoot an arrow into the monster's eyes because it looks cool, while in the game they can't do that because D&D doesn't have a called shot system. You want to have scenes where the cleric truly speaks with their god and perform miracles beyond mere spells and not have to wait until they reach a high enough level to cast commune or use the Divine Intervention trait. You want to have a scene where a young, fresh-faced druid wildshapes into a bird even though druids of that level can't. You want to have casters use spells in creative ways that the rules don't normally allow.

A D&D-based comic, novel, or show is based on the game's worlds, not on their mechanics.

And I also answered this a second way as well. Halflings believe in luck. They credit good things to good luck and bad things to bad luck. So if something good happens to or near a halfling, it must be because of halfling luck.

So, you might say, that the depiction of the narrative of halfling luck isn't represented by the mechanics. Weird, that sounds like what I was saying. Only you seem to think this supports halflings being lucky in the game, like they are said to be in the narratives. Whereas myself, I would say that sounds like this shows that halflings being lucky like they are said to be isn't present at the table, because the mechanics don't support the narrative.

You honestly can't tell the difference between narrating an elf PC being aloof and a halfling PC being lucky? OK then. Here goes: if you narrate an elf PC being aloof, you are taking over the character from the player and telling the player what their character is doing. That's not cool.

If you narrate a halfling as being lucky, then you are modifying the world around them The world that you, the DM, already are in complete control of.

So, you might say, that you as the DM have to twist the game world to make a hallfing appear lucky, like they are supposed to in the narrative. Something you don't have to do for any other race, because no other race requires you to alter and modify the game world as part of their narrative.

If only someone had made that point before, and then had people decry him as making no sense , because that isn't how it works. Maybe accused him of being Bad Faith because he didn't narrate the halflings luck by modifying the world around them.

Oh wait. That was me. I made those points.

Sure: an NPC halfling and an NPC human walk into a haunted house. The ghosts in the house say "Get out! GET OUT!" The DM decides that the human runs away screaming and the halfling doesn't.

Now why is it that you refuse to understand that Brave is a passive, mechanical trait and not a narrative trait? Am I not getting through to you, or are you just trolling?

Okay, counter scenario. The NPC Human and Halfling walk into the haunted house. The Ghosts scream "Get out! GET OUT!" and DM decides that neither of them run away screaming. You know, sort of like the vast multitude of human characters that have been notably not frightened by ghosts.

Now, see, you misunderstand, because you seem to refuse to accept the words I type out. I fully get that the trait halflings have is passive and is mechanical and has no narrative weight. That's why I keep pointing out that in the narrative, halflings aren't particularly braver than the other races. Especially when you put them in an adventuring party who are going to respond to ghosts by drawing their weapons and readying their spells, instead of running away screaming.

I'm not trying to say that this is a bad mechanical trait. I'm saying that the narrative is flawed. Deeply flawed since it seems to completely misunderstand what bravery even is, and presents lack of fear as bravery. Which is what I have been saying, over and over and over and over again.

And again, you've been talking about the wrong thing. Because it is not a narrative trait. It makes as much sense as complaining that dwarfs aren't good at determining the origin of woodwork.


The narrative matters.

Traits are not the narrative.

Traits don't control the narrative.

Traits don't determine the narrative.

All traits do is help to maybe nudge the narrative in certain directions. Instead of saying rolling a 1 when using Perform and then saying "I failed miserably when I tried to sing a song to woo the bartender," the halfling can roll a 1, reroll, get another number, and then base their narrative off of that number instead. Because they're Lucky in a way that lets them reroll 1s.

The narrative, however, is entirely up to the player and DM. The Lucky trait only ensured that the first roll isn't a natural 1.

You know, then maybe when I started talking about the narrative, everyone shouldn't have jumped up and said "BUT THE TRAITS!!! THE TRAITS PROVE IT!!!" Since the traits seem to have nothing to do with the narrative, which is what I am trying to talk about.

Sure. And that's something that's up to the DM to include. Or something that never actually happens in real life but people believe it does. Or it only happens to NPCs. It's not something that needs to be on the character sheet.

I've even given you suggestions on how to include the luck by doing minor things that favor the halfling but don't affect them mechanically or financially, and you've poo-poohed them.

No, I said those examples proved my point. And then you started talking about death saves.

But yeah, the lore and everything else says it is supernatural, so I'm wrong to think of it as supernatural, because it is up to the DM if it is supernatural. And around and around we go, because you can never admit that I might actually have a point and not just be insane.

the only person who's said that is you, so I don't know what your problem is.

Both a human child and a halfling child may quake in fear from the monster under a bed, but if that monster exists and produces an effect that inflicts the frightened condition, then the halfling is less likely to succumb to it. Because their trait doesn't affect fear, it affects the frightened condition.

Yes, it is abundantly clear that you don't understand my position. As I keep explaining it to you and you keep missing the point. You keep telling me the mechanical traits don't effect the narrative, then act like that addresses my points about the narrative.

So, once more. Yes, I understand how the mechanics of the game work. They aren't what I am directly trying to address. I'm trying to address the narrative that people claim is there, and that people refer to the mechanical traits to defend, even when those traits do not support the narrative. I'm not attacking the mechanical traits, heck, I'm not even attacking halflings.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Compared to other adventurers, the halfling is objectively braver, because brave adventurer + bravery mechanic > brave adventurer all by itself. There's nothing a human adventurer can roleplay as being brave that a halfling cannot, but the halfling will fail fewer fear saves and spend less time cowering and running from the enemy.

Every single ability that gives the frightened condition, and there are a lot, will cause the adventurers who fail the save to cower in fear. You are literally quaking in your boots so badly you have disadvantage on all ability checks and attack rolls. So your "brave" adventurer can't get a grip on his fear. He cannot be brave enough to stand against it and move forward. That little halfling, though, will be able to a lot more often.

Right, so a misunderstanding of what cowering is. Cowering is "crouching down in fear." Covering yourself with your hands, hiding, that sort of thing. Quaking and not being able to step forward isn't cowering.

I also just love the insult of putting brave in quotation marks. Doesn't matter that he is still fighting despite his fear, doesn't matter that he isn't running, because they aren't running away because of the fear, since they can't move forward, they are "not brave enough".

And this is exactly the problem. By defining bravery as beating the frightened condition, you have warped what it means to be brave. And personally, I reject that model of bravery that says a person who is temporarily overcome by fear cannot be brave.

If you don't go out of your way to narrate the results of the halflings actions as RAW says?


Quite literally every race gets to have their actions narrated according to what they have done. Halflings get nothing special in that regard.

No, because once again, I'm talking about the narrative when the halfling isn't taking actions. So, unless RAW has something to say about narrating non-actions, you are missing the point again.

Actions =/= Non-Actions

Amazing! You've picked numbers where the halflings luck doesn't kick in and then said, "See, the halfling isn't lucky!!!" How about you go back to the halfling rolling a 1 and then re-rolling into a success, which is by RAW an action with a narration that the DM is required to narrate as lucky?

And you are missing the point. Because, as I've said, UNLESS THEY ROLL A ONE there is nothing lucky to narrate. And if they roll a one and fail anyways? There is nothing lucky to narrate.

So, if the halfling is supposed to feel lucky ALL THE TIME then the DM will have to narrate luck EVEN WHEN THE HALFLING DOESN'T ACT.

Your campaigns must be pretty short. An entire campaign where the halfling never rolled a 1 on anything seems pretty unlikely unless it ended at level 2 or 3. With all pf those attacks, saves and ability checks the halfling PC makes, never rolling a 1 extremely unlikely for any campaign of any significant amount of time.

Level 12. But yeah, see, the funny thing about statistics is that even things you think are unlikely, happen. Because some people are lucky. Which tends to affect things at the table.

No. This is wrong. For any other character it would be a failure because they rolled a 1 and didn't get a re-roll.

Still not understanding my actual position.

Right. The key word there is.........................................races. Not classes. Races. Comparing halflings to a class is an exercise in failure, because it's a completely worthless comparison. Once you bring classes into the mix, you have to compare halflings of that class to other races of that class.

Why? Do halfling PC's not have classes? No wonder people say that they unremarkable.

Nope! A bad faith DM is one that refuses to narrate the results of an action as RAW and the social contract dictate. I said nothing about going above and beyond that.

If a wood elf hides in light obscurement, the DM is obligated to describe the result of that action in a way that shows him hiding in light obscurement. If a dragonborn breathes fire on someone, the DM is obligated to describe the result of that action in a way that shows him breathing fire on the enemy. If a half-orc crits an enemy, the DM is obligated to describe the result of that action in a way that shows the attack to be more savage than normal. If a halfling gets lucky on a skill check, the DM is obligated to describe the result of that action in a way that shows the halfling to be lucky.

I'm not saying that the halfling should get something extra, or be treated in a special way. I'm saying the DM is obligated to narrate the results of the halflings actions in accordance with RAW and if the DM refuses, ruining a significant aspect of who the halfling PC is in the process, that DM is acting in bad faith with his refusal to follow RAW.

In other words, you never understood my position and what I was talking about. Which is why I pushed you on it, yet you still seem to not have gotten what I was talking about

 

[R_Chance]

Right. The key word there is.........................................races. Not classes. Races. Comparing halflings to a class is an exercise in failure, because it's a completely worthless comparison. Once you bring classes into the mix, you have to compare halflings of that class to other races of that class.

Ack! Now you've done it... you dissed race as class. The Basic D&D crowd will descend on this thread with pitchforks and torches!

 

[lingual]

Halflings are that apex where narrative and mechanics mesh perfectly.

 

[James Gasik]

So should we not look to a race's traits to tell us more about who they are as a people? This seems to fly in the face of race design.

Way back in AD&D, Elves were given a +1 to use longswords, short swords, and bows. These are traditional elven weapons. We were told that all Elves receive training with these weapons at some point. Thus, this was indicative of Elven culture, where every child was given some combat training, even if they chose a life path that made such training irrelevant, such as being a Cleric or Wizard.

We were told that Elves were almost immune to sleep and charm effects- in 2nd edition, we were told that these were side effects of the dreamlike trance an Elf could enter in lieu of sleep, the Reverie.

Over time, these traits morphed and changed, to fit the mechanics of the edition- in one edition, Elves became totally immune to sleep, but only got a +2 bonus on saves versus charm. In another, they gain advantage on saves vs. sleep and charm due to their "Fey Ancestry".

So we see the existence of some traits remains constant, even if their expression and explanation can change.

Now let's look to Halflings. The original Halflings weren't lucky, but instead were plucky. They seemed rather ordinary, but the race produced the occasional scamp and rogue. They were naturally very good at thieving pursuits, despite the fact their race didn't really have thieves in their own culture.

They were resistant to magic and had fairly fantastic thieving bonuses overall.

It was 3rd edition that gave us the concept of Halflings who were resistant to fear and slightly luckier than other races- the fear resistance surely doesn't come from Tolkien. Hobbits could be frightful or brave, just like anyone else. For every Samwise Gamgee, there was some country bumpkin who was terrified of fireworks.

Lucky was similarly up to debate from the source material- if you read The Hobbit, Bilbo sure seems lucky, finding a magic ring and escaping misadventure after misadventure. But once you find out what The One Ring is, well, not so lucky now?

3e Halflings, and their descendants, the 4e Halflings, were a redesign of the race. And yes, they were a little fear resistance (perhaps having acquired this trait from the Kender), and they were a wee bit luckier than other folk, having a small bonus to all saving throws (which later turned into the 4e Halfling's ability to force rerolls).

And they were stealthier, partly due to their size, but also in that they were more agile than Gnomes, and had a +2 on Climb, Jump, and Move Silently checks.

5e attempts to bring some sort of parity here, by creating a "greatest hits" Halfling that is also definitely not-Tolkienish. The art shows them as being very different, and they retain some of the abilities of their 3e kin (if being far less handsome than the balloon-headed monstrosities in the PHB).

So they retain some resistance to magical fear (the primary source of the frightened condition, though there are exceptions, like Battlemasters)- perhaps we could better say they are resistant to extraordinary fear.

They lost a big chunk of their ability to hide since the 5e team decided that Small size didn't need to grant a bonus (outside of theoretically giving you more options for things to hide behind), but to point at their stealthiness, there was at least one subrace that got a minor stealth benefit.

They kept their ability to reroll dice, but it was much more limited now, only protecting them from the worst of failures. 5% of the time you trigger some kind of pseudo-advantage. Not great, but it's still something no other race can do, a unique little ribbon ability all their own.

We can look at these traits and suppose that they point to something about the nature of Halflings in the narrative, despite the fact that their impact is low on many games.

But again, most of the PHB race design is ultra conservative. Dwarves can wear armor they are not strong enough to wear without penalty- but how often is someone going to put heavier armor on a weak Dwarf? They maintain some sort of preference for certain weapons, and some resistance to poison, but some things are lost as well- we have no traits that point at their greed, their undying hatred of foes, or their ability to hold grudges (all things that no doubt the design team felt were negatives).

So if you want to argue that Halflings no longer have a place because their traits are weak, and non-indicative of personality or heritage, I could point to several other races guilty of the same problem.

The answer isn't to cut them from the PHB, because people expect them to be there, the answer is to rewrite these traits to have relevance to what it means to be a Halfling. Or any other race that is similarly lacking.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Also, I just read the comic you posted that screenshot from (issue 0). That was pure writer's fiat there, not a thing to do with any sort of mechanics. As evidence by a black dragon's breath weapon getting blocked by a single shield and then the dragon getting killed by a single blow to the head. I don't think is how breath weapons worked in 4e, and one rock shouldn't be enough damage to take down a dragon, as I already said.

On a point of information here in 4e shields gave you a +2 to your reflex defence as well as AC - and the black dragon's breath weapon was an attack vs reflex. So yes you could block its attack on you by putting your shield in the way (which I find entirely appropriate). But one shotting a dragon didn't happen.

A D&D-based comic, novel, or show is based on the game's worlds, not on their mechanics.

And Fell's Five very much was. It was an excellent D&D series that ended too soon.

 

[Lanefan]

Is 45% nonsense? Every number on a d20 is a 5% chance. You succeed on a death saving throw when you roll a 10 or higher. Therefore to fail a death saving throw, you need to roll a 9 or lower. 9 x 5 = 45%

Correct.

But, it gets more nonsensical. See, Halflings ALSO fail on a 9 or lower, now I may have reversed my math the last time, but calculating luck is pretty easy. See, it only activates when you roll a 1. That's 5% of the time. Then, you multiply that by the chance of success. I reversed it last time and multiplied by the chance of failure, so 47.25% isn't accurate. Instead, it is 5*55%= 2.75% you then subtract this from the original chance of failure so, it is actually 42.25%! . So, a human succeeds 55% if the time, and the Halfling succeeds 57.75% of the time.

This is why a flat bonus works better, in that the odds of Luck turning a fail into a success would be the same regardless of what the DC is.

When rerolling only natural '1's, if the Hobbit fails on a roll of 2 or less the odds of success increase by nearly half as half the failures are rerolled; while if the Hobbit fails on a roll of 17 or less only a very small minority of the failures are rerolled and even then with a poor chance of success.

Turn Luck into a flat +4 or +5 bonus on the roll and this wonky math goes away. Luck would then mean a Hobbit could never crit-fail a death save, for example.

Why does no one seem to understand that feeling fear and being shaken by fear doesn't make you a coward?

In reality this might be true, but for game mechanics purposes mechanical 'Fear' effects IMO should make you a coward; either barely able to fight on (translates as big minuses on to-hit rolls and commensurately higher chance of fumbling), frozen in fear and unable to fight on, or (my favourite) fleeing screaming in terror heedless of all other hazards.

How is this a hard concept? I've literally taught it to 7 year olds in picture books about monsters under the bed. But somehow, this idea that halflings are brave because they can succeed on a save just refuses to bend to the actual definition of bravery.

Like many other terms, "brave" in gamespeak doesn't necessarily directly map to "brave" in common usage.