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?

 

[Chaosmancer]

The ongoing grudge some have to bear against halflings?

You know, I'm aware that Hussar's proposal is very extreme, and out of line with what most people want. I get that.

But this constant drum beating that everyone who isn't worshiping halflings as some perfect race means they hold a grudge makes it hard to have an actual conversation of the issues people have with them. Some of us don't have a grudge, some of us aren't trying to remove them from the game, some of us are just trying to talk about the problems we've run into with this race.

So, can you stop? This is already hair-tearingly frustrating enough without you lending to the narrative that all of us with concerns and discussion points are somehow holding a grudge against halflings.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Still around 2500 posts more of this to come. But yeah. Basically about an errata to cut out some pages from the Players Handbook. And then take those pages and glue them to the Monster Manual. Something like that.

Literally one person. One person in this thread is making that proposal. Maybe two, I don't remember if Minigiant is making it this time or not. So maybe you have two people.

Me? I'm not making that claim. That is not my goal. So, can you not paint with such a broad brush? It makes it hard to actually get any meaningful conversation done.

 

[lingual]

I will agree that the way the term is used in the mechanics doesn't translate to the common usage, that is a big part of the problem.

I disagree that mechanical fear effects should make you a coward, and I will go as far as to say that mechanical fear effects cannot make the character a coward. There are far far too many instances of people in real life, who face horrors, who find themselves barely able to function, frozen, or forced to retreat by that horror... who turn around and face it again.

I have never once seen a Player character who was not forced to fall back due to fear, doing so. They always choose to keep fighting. I have never seen a player character, whose character was forced to flee because of a fear effect, not turn around and re-enter the fight after that effect was over.

If we translate those actions from the mechanics to the narrative... we would call those people Brave. Just as we call many, many people in real-life brave for the same thing. And the halflings supposed narrative in this respect constantly forces people to make a decision. To maintain the halfling story of being "especially brave" everyone else needs to stop being brave, which I disagree with.

I wouldn't get too much into the philosophical meaning of fear, bravery, etc.

The game has a condition that makes people scared. Halflings get some resistance against that. They don't get all jittery when scared. If some game calls that "bravery" - I'm not gonna quibble about it. DMs, players, etc. are free to call it something else. No one's gonna enforce the name of the mechanic.

 

[Cadence]

You know, I'm aware that Hussar's proposal is very extreme, and out of line with what most people want. I get that.

But this constant drum beating that everyone who isn't worshiping halflings as some perfect race means they hold a grudge makes it hard to have an actual conversation of the issues people have with them. Some of us don't have a grudge, some of us aren't trying to remove them from the game, some of us are just trying to talk about the problems we've run into with this race.

What posts show them being worshipped as a perfect race... or is that hyperbole?

It feels like some of the objections arise when the standards cited list criteria that seem only to be applied in some places and not others. :::shrugs:::

 

[FrozenNorth]

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.

The WotC legal department requires me to remind you that those were hobbits, which are different and legally distinct from halflings.

 

[bedir than]

There's a rather simple reason Halfling won't be replaced

The most popular fantasy stories of all time feature them as heroes.
For all the love people here give CR it is two orders of magnitude less significant than Tolkien. There's a new series coming out this fall and next year. It is expected to be more popular than Wheel of Time, currently the most watched fantasy show of the modern era

Eliminating the ability to tell similar stories from the most popular fantasy game would be an immense marketing failure

 

[Umbran]

The ongoing grudge some have to bear against halflings?

Mod Note:
It is unclear what constructive result you wanted to get from this comment. If you wanted a destructive result... well, that's when you get red text, now isn't it?

If you think the discussion doesn't come from a valid basis, by all means, recuse yourself from it. Don't worry, the rest of these folks can get along without your input.

 

[Maxperson]

The WotC legal department requires me to remind you that those were hobbits, which are different and legally distinct from halflings.

The Tolkien family would like me to remind you that Tolkien sometimes referred to hobbits as halflings in the books.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Read it again. I didn’t just ask what the issue is, that part is rhetorical. I primarily asked whether it’s a general issue that actually needs wotc to do anything at all, or just a thing you personally dislike.

Far as I can tell, it does not matter on any level whether halflings and gnomes fill the same niche.

Maybe you need to go and read again, because you clearly have no idea what the conversation was about.

Charlaquin was asking "why is this a thing, why do people act like this" and I tried to explain it. In the course of that, I used an example of a race concept I am trying to work on, and that partially has the issue I was talking about.

So... no, I don't expect WotC to do anything about my homebrew race I'm trying to make. Then it wouldn't be homebrew.

If you are asking "is overdesigning multiple races into the same niche a concern WotC should have" ummm.... yes? It seems like a design problem is something the design team should be aware of and consider. Whether they consider they haven't run into an issue yet or not is up to them. But, personally, I would note that there are quite a few races that have effectively died on the vine, because they are either too specific to a setting, or redundant with other options. For Example, Feral Tieflings and Hellfire Tieflings. No one uses them, no one thinks about them, because the Archedevil variants have completely overtaken them and given people what they wanted with the Tieflings.

Are gnomes and halflings filling the same niche to a level it is a problem? Probably not.

Are gnomes, halflings, goblins, Kobolds, fairies, Aasimar, Changelings, Dhampir, Genasi, Harengon, Hexblood, Kenku, Owling, Reborn, Tabaxi, Tortle and Yuan-Ti are starting to crowd into a single niche starting to become a problem? That's more likely, isn't it.

Seriously? They’re all felines. They’re like the thunder cats. They are already basically the same as the many kinds of elves.

As for the rest…they’re all beast folk. mechanically, either way that you’ve mentioned would work fine.

Right, because obviously my concerns are purely mechanical, and can therefore be dismissed.

I mean this with respect, but it seems like you are choosing difficulty, or just having difficulty choosing. You’ve mentioned at least 2 solid approaches. The first (umbrella, no shared mechanics) is obviously easier, but you could give them all a ribbon related to communicated with beasts related to thier beast type, and a version of keen senses, to give them all some unifying mechanic.

Yeah, almost like deciding which way to go is difficult. Kind of like it is easy to look at someone else saying "I'm struggling with this" and saying "I don't see why, this is easy" without anyone asking for their opinion.

Yes, I did.

No one is claiming any of that. The trait doesn’t claim any of that. It isn’t implied about the world by anything in any D&D book. It’s entirely an idea that you have invented for the purpose of an argument.

Halflings are especially brave because they are described as such. Narrative description is the primary means by which races are clarified and distinguished.
They then have a trait that makes them mechanically have an easier time not being made so afraid that they can’t function properly. It is completely absurd to claim that that doesn’t make them brave.

Yes it is, though! Lol come on!

Halflings have an easier time fighting through fear. Because they’re braver than other races. Bravery isn’t binary, some people are more brave than other people who are also brave.

So, do you have Maxperson blocked? He responded that my non-halfling (to use his formating) "Brave" adventurer would spend more time (to quote) Cowering and running away in fear than the halflings, so the halfling is braver, because they will make those saves.

So, yes, it seems someone is making those claims.

Now, was he making those claims before I pointed out the problem? No, I wasn't talking to him when I laid out the problem. Because it is a problem I've seen and talked to people about before trying to bring it up in this forum. And instead of discussing the narrative, everyone just keeps pointing to the trait and trying to explain to me how mechanics work.

And the thing is, you keep making the same assumption time and time again. You keep assuming that succeeding the check is because of bravery. You keep making bravery a binary state. Are you frightened or not? But, as we all know, being frightened does not prevent you from being brave. I keep repeating this, but everyone keeps just saying " but the trait is called bravery and it allows brave halflings to fight through and not be affected by fear because they are brave" But not suffering from fear IS NOT BRAVERY.

You know who else isn't afraid? Frenzy Barbarian while they are raging. They charge, screaming blood and froth and are so blinded by fury they cannot be afraid. Are they brave? Is being enraged to the point of seeing red a sign of bravery?

Real life, you know who else isn't affected by fear? People drunk or high. They get enough drugs in them, and they aren't affected by fear either. Is that bravery?

No. Because "not affected by fear" =/= Bravery. That isn't what the term means, that isn't why we use it, that isn't the concept. But because they keep using that narrative and tying it to this mechanic... that's the message people are getting. The bravery = "not being affected by fear" and that is a problem in my opinion, because it ignores what bravery actually is.

 

[Maxperson]

So, do you have Maxperson blocked? He responded that my non-halfling (to use his formating) "Brave" adventurer would spend more time (to quote) Cowering and running away in fear than the halflings, so the halfling is braver, because they will make those saves.

I didn't say running away. I said not advancing on the danger. Your "brave" PC is literally too scared to go up to the danger and confront his fear. He's staying back shaking too hard to even attack straight(disadvantage).

I've also said that bravery is often confronting your fear and advancing to do what needs to be done anyway. PCs can be afraid and show bravery. That's represented through roleplay when the PC and/or player is afraid of a given monster, but stays to fight anyway. It's not represented by failing a save, being frightened, and then attacking mostly ineffectually from far away. You're describing the guy in the movie who is so terrified that he throws something at the slasher or monster without looking and misses badly, or occasionally gets lucky and hits. That's not brave.