D&D 5E Halflings are the 7th most popular 5e race

[MichaelSomething]

I bet Halfings are super popular on the DM Guild! I bet there are dozens of Halfing themed high selling supplements there! I'm sure there's a strong desire there and plenty of people working to fulfill it.

 

[John Lloyd1]

I bet Halfings are super popular on the DM Guild! I bet there are dozens of Halfing themed high selling supplements there! I'm sure there's a strong desire there and plenty of people working to fulfill it.

I searched DM's Guild content for 'halfling' and 'elf'. There are 371 items compared to 699 for elf. That seems to be a fair amount.

 

[Scribe]

I have never been happy with the chokehold that Tolkien races have on the game. I wouldn’t mind seeing elves and dwarves get the boot too. Have a race section that isn’t shackled to dead authors is my goal.

I'd have to look up when I polled this, but I'm quite sure those races you don't want, are hands down the favorite of the majority.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

It seems to me that Halflings are archetypes of the common folk (usually pastoral). That is probably why Tolkien made them up. I don't see any other race/species can be used in that niche.

Certainly, I can't imagine Merry the Morris Dancer (Monk) with his in your face attitute being anything other than a Halfling.

Yeah my halfling postman (monk/ranger) has to be a halfling. His story is that he was the most skilled martial arts student of his gen. He noticed first that they were being trained to protect the town, get people hidden who could t fight, etc, and started helping teach by the time he was 13.

Eventually, he met someone, they decided to get married, and agreed to wander for a year first, and come back home for good afterward.

I’m not gonna make a gnome or a human with that story. That’s a halfling.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I searched DM's Guild content for 'halfling' and 'elf'. There are 371 items compared to 699 for elf. That seems to be a fair amount.

Yeah I’d say that’s pretty popular.

 

[Lanefan]

1. Pushing out halflings specifically was never a goal. It was always about pushing out dead weight.

2. Halflings have never gained any traction in the game. Not really. Every new setting completely rewrites them in a vain attempt to try and they still are not played as often as other races.

3. The two new races added to DnD have both proven fantastically popular even considering that Dragonborn are covered in 4e cooties.

I thought Dragonborn were a 3e thing. (though might be thinking of Half-Dragon, which to me is pretty much the same anyway)

But again I repeat that it’s more to do with the stranglehold of Tolkien.

There's our difference, then: I'd rather that hold be tightened rather than loosened or removed.

Half orcs are getting the boot and there’s barely a hint of pushback. Half elves get the same treatment and it’s hundreds of pages of argument.

Even the idea of pushing out gnomes doesn’t really get much of a reaction.

Half-Orcs and Gnomes, though each having their strong supporters, have never been all that broadly popular over the years. Half-Elves, on the other hand, are consistently hella popular regardless of edition. No surprise that removing them is generating widespread squawks.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Half-Elves, on the other hand, are consistently hella popular regardless of edition.

Even in 3.5 where IIRC they were just “elf but less good”.

 

[Mecheon]

I thought Dragonborn were a 3e thing. (though might be thinking of Half-Dragon, which to me is pretty much the same anyway)

Original Dragonborn were a 3.5E thing, but original Dragonborn were.... Weird. As in "You're some other race who's turned into as a platnium dragon-person due to Bahamut devotion and will lose the form if you ever comit an evil act".

 

[Hussar]

This is why you get such vociferous pushback.

The game isn’t “shackled to dead authors”, people like elves and dwarves.

People like a lot of things. People like Tieflings and Dragonborn and Genasi as well. Which is the point I keep trying to make. Races that don't appear in Tolkien have become quite popular, despite the Tolkien races getting top billing in every single book and supplement. The amount of material about elves in Forgotten Realms is massive. Same as Dwarves. Never minding other settings as well. Which hedges out any development of anything that doesn't appear in Tolkien. And any suggestion of changing that is immediately shouted down.

If Tieflings and Dragonborn had been added in 5e and failed, I'd be arguing that they should be dropped. I feel that the PHB should reflect what people are actually playing, not some fifty year old decision that was made before a lot of the newer ideas even existed.

You can create your own races, and/or provide your players with a shorter list of races that are available in your particular campaign. Wouldn't that allow you to accomplish your goal?

Heh, it's actually really funny. I don't have to. The players do it for me. Last halfling I saw in a game was about ten years ago at the beginning of 5e. Haven't seen a gnome that I recall. My current Candlekeep campaign which just finished today (2 full years - I'm REALLY happy!) featured a warforged, a dragonborn, a tiefling, an owlfolk and a Lucidling. We're about as far from Tolkien as you can possibly get. Next campaign is a Spelljammer one, so, all the limits are off, but, so far it's a Dragonborn and an Autognome.

It's really not about limiting my game. It's not like the players are asking for any of the Tolkien races. They seem to have no interest. And I certainly don't care if they take any race. Anything is always on the table. THEY are the ones who show zero interest, not me. And it's been that way since the 3e days. Different players, different groups, some I've DM'd, some I haven't.

Sure, it's very obviously confirmation bias going on. I get that. But, like I said, for those I've gamed with over the years, if halfling and gnome disappeared from the PHB, no one would notice. Heck, back in 3e, when I ran Scarred Lands, we were three years in before anyone realized that Scarred Lands didn't have gnomes. No one even noticed.

 

[Hussar]

I searched DM's Guild content for 'halfling' and 'elf'. There are 371 items compared to 699 for elf. That seems to be a fair amount.

Weird. I just did the same search:

Elf came up with 807 entries
Halfling 435.

I'm absolutely not questioning you. I just wonder why we get different results.

Note, if I enter "elven" I get 960 entries (although a LOT of those are maps since Elven Tower is a publisher)

Dragonborn with 397
Tiefling 390

Genasi: 132

I think that nicely illustrates my point. Despite Genasi being a more popularly played race, we have about three times more books about halflings. Being in the PHB means that they take up a disproportionate amount of space. Shouldn't a more popularly played race not have more supplementary information about it?