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?

 

[Lanefan]

<shrug> I've met plenty of people who used them.

Gygax famously had a balrog PC in one of his games.

There is, note, rather a big difference between something showing up once as a once-in-a-lifetime oddity (the balrog) and something being core and thus chooseable by anyone.

I mean, even in my game there's the potential for strange creatures and oddities to become PCs; but that potential is gated behind some pretty long-odds die rolls so as to - specifically - keep such occurrences rare and unusual.

Over the years I've DMed Leprechaun, Centaur, Dryad, Drow, Gnoll, and other oddball-species PCs; and right now one of the characters in my game is 2/3 Hobbit, 1/3 Ent - go figure. But such things are rare. Intentionally so. And they can be hard to play (e.g. every time the Centaur went into any town they had to make him invisible so he wouldn't freak out the locals) and this is also intentional.

 

[Faolyn]

Yes, I can do that extra work if I want to. If I want to. Sometimes, I can't be bothered.

Wow. So you'd rather just say "they're orcs, you can kill them," rather than "they're bandits who are orcs, you can kill them." Like, three extra words is too much effort?

There is, note, rather a big difference between something showing up once as a once-in-a-lifetime oddity (the balrog) and something being core and thus chooseable by anyone.

Again, why is this a bad thing?

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Halflings are typecasted into rogue or other "stealth" classes, and WotC wanted to fix this changing the ASIs as part of the racial traits.

My suggestion these to become more popular is a funny and family-friendly cartoon. If "my little pony" remake has could become more popular than Generation1, then... why not? Other idea is halflings as main characters in a D&D farm-simulation videogame, something like the D&D medieval fantasy version of Hanna-Barbera's Flintstones.

Gnome can be very fun in the hands of the right writter. A female spellcaster gnome could be a parody of the maho-shojo/magical girls from manganime.

 

[James Gasik]

Which would be fine if those PCs, NPCs and enemies were all truly representative of said race and created using the same basic framework; but no, people want PCs to use different "build" mechanics and so forth. Which usually means the PCs will be overpowered in comparison to what should be their peers.

That, and people get upset when a Human (for example) culture - even if not based on anything real-world or historical - is painted in a poor light. With monster species which are clearly not real, however, this isn't (nearly as much of) an issue.

Sometimes it's the reverse, like how Monsters of the Multiverse took Pack Tactics away from Kobold PC's...

 

[James Gasik]

And that's just it - if you want to play a Halfling, why would you make it a Fighter; and if you want to play a Fighter, why would you make it a Halfling?

The choice of species and class should, IMO, be combined; with some combinations viable (all combinations, for Humans) and some either not viable or not allowed.

A design mistake, IMO. Dex already has too much going for it.

Well, the original Halfling class was basically a Fighter. And the idea that Halflings shouldn't be Fighters is just weird to me; every race should have warriors, with each race having a unique take on it. I would prefer if a game that allows you to play a Fighter of one race alongside one of a different race would each be equally viable, but in different ways.

 

[Chaosmancer]

But such things are rare. Intentionally so. And they can be hard to play (e.g. every time the Centaur went into any town they had to make him invisible so he wouldn't freak out the locals) and this is also intentional.

Rare for the world doesn't mean it needs to be rare for this game.

Remember, many of us don't have decades long campaigns set in a single world. If I played a Dragon in every single DnD game I am currently in, I'd be a dragon in 3 different worlds that are nothing alike and not connected in the slightest. And very likely if I made a Alseid for my next character, it would ALSO be in a completely unique and different world.

And for many of us, the idea of die rolls gating us out of certain race choices is completely against the entire point of DnD.


Also, on the Centaur... just why? I mean, I would get it in a game set in Ancient Greece, where Centaurs were notorious raiders and pillagers of the community. He would cause a panic because he is an known threat, just like an enemy soldier entering a border town.

But, these are Fantasy worlds. To me, if Centaurs have lived close enough to humans for a thousand years, they are no longer some crazy thing that will cause people to fly into a panic. They are just a weird foreigner. I honestly feel too many "old school" style games try and make it like the entire world was created and inhabitated for thousands of years, and none of the races have met each other and they have rarely heard of each other. They try and act like all of these forces are completely hidden from the world.

And I get it, you want something like Beowulf, where the big twist is that there are TWO monsters in the swamp, and the kingdom has no way of dealing with one monster, let alone two. But DnD doesn't work that way. There aren't just TWO trolls in the swamps. There is a clan of trolls in the swamps, multiple tribes of reptilian/amphibious people, likely a hag and a Dragon in the swamp. And that is just the intelligent threats, not to mention the living plants and the strange beasts, or the potential to find a connection to the Fey where dozens of creatures live, or undead lurking in the swamp.

I actually tried to run a game once where the players were in an Empire, and the only monsters were limited to distant borders, and there weren't very many of them. Just like these old style myths, right? They tore through that world so fast, I had to cancel the game and tell them I was out of ideas, because there was nothing left for them to encounter, unless they just went completely off map into things that I hadn't even considered... and I couldn't think of anything to place beyond the edges of the empire, they were already the edges! Now, this was early in my DMing career, and I might do a better job now, but part of me doing a better job is making sure that monsters are kind of sprinkled everywhere, and the same with allies.

Because it is a world, full of different races of beings, so they shouldn't only exist in that one valley deep in the mountains where no one has ever been before.

 

[Lanefan]

Well, the original Halfling class was basically a Fighter. And the idea that Halflings shouldn't be Fighters is just weird to me; every race should have warriors,

Sure, every species can have warriors.

However, the warriors of some species are simply going to, on average, be flat-out better than the warriors of some other species, simply due to the physical advantages provided by larger size and more muscle. Put a Goliath warrior up against a Goblin warrior and, all other things being equal, in theory that Goblin better make sure his will is up to date.

It works this way if one uses the monster write-ups. To me it only follows that it should thus also work this way if the two are PCs.

with each race having a unique take on it. I would prefer if a game that allows you to play a Fighter of one race alongside one of a different race would each be equally viable, but in different ways.

Hobbits used to be able to compensate for their physical weakness by being hella good with missile weapons, which seems to play right into what you're saying here. But that's gone now.

 

[Lanefan]

Rare for the world doesn't mean it needs to be rare for this game.

If it's rare in the world it should perforce be rare in the game, otherwise it isn't rare at all.

Remember, many of us don't have decades long campaigns set in a single world. If I played a Dragon in every single DnD game I am currently in, I'd be a dragon in 3 different worlds that are nothing alike and not connected in the slightest. And very likely if I made a Alseid for my next character, it would ALSO be in a completely unique and different world.

And for many of us, the idea of die rolls gating us out of certain race choices is completely against the entire point of DnD.

Die rolls should gate many things. It's the only way of consistently enforcing a gradient of commonality between outright chooseable and banned.

Also, on the Centaur... just why? I mean, I would get it in a game set in Ancient Greece, where Centaurs were notorious raiders and pillagers of the community. He would cause a panic because he is an known threat, just like an enemy soldier entering a border town.

But, these are Fantasy worlds. To me, if Centaurs have lived close enough to humans for a thousand years, they are no longer some crazy thing that will cause people to fly into a panic. They are just a weird foreigner. I honestly feel too many "old school" style games try and make it like the entire world was created and inhabitated for thousands of years, and none of the races have met each other and they have rarely heard of each other. They try and act like all of these forces are completely hidden from the world.

To some extent, yes. I look at Middle Earth as an example here, where anyone more than a few hundred miles from The Shire only knows of Hobbits as legends if that; and the oldest species on the planet hasn't heard of them at all! Further, species tend to live in their own mono-cultural enclaves, with minimal interaction other than trade. That's what makes the town of Bree so unusual: two species share the town.

And yes, in some places Centaurs might live side-along with Humans and other species; but that doesn't mean anyone half a continent away would know a Centaur from a Catoblepas. The core region of my current setting is in fact a faux-ancient-Greece but even there many don't know what a Centaur is as Centaurs only live on the islands and rarely if ever come to the mainland.

And I get it, you want something like Beowulf, where the big twist is that there are TWO monsters in the swamp, and the kingdom has no way of dealing with one monster, let alone two. But DnD doesn't work that way. There aren't just TWO trolls in the swamps. There is a clan of trolls in the swamps, multiple tribes of reptilian/amphibious people, likely a hag and a Dragon in the swamp. And that is just the intelligent threats, not to mention the living plants and the strange beasts, or the potential to find a connection to the Fey where dozens of creatures live, or undead lurking in the swamp.

I actually tried to run a game once where the players were in an Empire, and the only monsters were limited to distant borders, and there weren't very many of them. Just like these old style myths, right? They tore through that world so fast, I had to cancel the game and tell them I was out of ideas, because there was nothing left for them to encounter, unless they just went completely off map into things that I hadn't even considered... and I couldn't think of anything to place beyond the edges of the empire, they were already the edges! Now, this was early in my DMing career, and I might do a better job now, but part of me doing a better job is making sure that monsters are kind of sprinkled everywhere, and the same with allies.

Because it is a world, full of different races of beings, so they shouldn't only exist in that one valley deep in the mountains where no one has ever been before.

It's a world full of different species, some of which are very rare and might only exist in one valley somewhere and many of which have little if anything to do with cultures/species not their own. Again, look at Middle Earth as an example.

In my setting, Gibbering Mouthers are a good example of this: they live in one small area just west of the core region (and just north of the Centaurs' islands) and have never been seen anywhere else. Describe one to a Viking just arrived from the far north and she'd think you were nuts.

 

[Hussar]

In my setting, Gibbering Mouthers are a good example of this: they live in one small area just west of the core region (and just north of the Centaurs' islands) and have never been seen anywhere else. Describe one to a Viking just arrived from the far north and she'd think you were nuts.

But the danger here is that you are conflating your version of D&D with actual D&D. Gibbering Mouthers, for example, don't "live" anywhere. They are Far Realms aberrations. They don't have a habitat. They don't have a biology. They're Lovecraftian horrors from Beyond.

So, it's equally likely that that Viking from the far north has encountered one as anyone else.

At least, in standard D&D that is.

Middle Earth is an absolutely horrible example of world buildilng. Tolkien was many things but he wasn't any sort of biologist nor geologist. Middle Earth makes zero sense. But, because that was the default for fantasy for decades, no one questions it.

 

[James Gasik]

Sure, every species can have warriors.

However, the warriors of some species are simply going to, on average, be flat-out better than the warriors of some other species, simply due to the physical advantages provided by larger size and more muscle. Put a Goliath warrior up against a Goblin warrior and, all other things being equal, in theory that Goblin better make sure his will is up to date.

It works this way if one uses the monster write-ups. To me it only follows that it should thus also work this way if the two are PCs.

Hobbits used to be able to compensate for their physical weakness by being hella good with missile weapons, which seems to play right into what you're saying here. But that's gone now.

This kind of goes against one of D&D's premises though, where being smaller and weaker has nothing to do with your ability to defeat foes; otherwise, no one would ever be able to defeat an ogre or dragon. If a human Fighter can defeat a Frost giant in combat and that doesn't suspend any disbelief, I think a Gnome taking out a Human shouldn't cause anyone to bat an eye.