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

carkl3000 said:

Has no one even pointed out the fact that a gnome can grow a beard?

Gnome has beard ∆ halfling≠gnome.

QED

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If a halfling wears a Belt of Dwarvenkind is he now a gnome?

Don Durito said:

If a halfling wears a Belt of Dwarvenkind is he now a gnome?

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Feels.like if he had a cloak or.boots of Elvenkind too...

pemerton said:

In AD&D, clerics and paladins are at their core the same archetype - heavily armed and armoured warriors powered (and driven) by their faith and able to perform miracles. Their are also strong implications that (by default, at least) they are part of the "establishment": paladins (we are told) like to form connections to noble fighters and clerics; clerics build temples and castles and attract followers including men-at-arms.

Druids, on the other hand, are true neutral (in AD&D as originally published clerics can't be true neutral) which is described (in Gygax's PHB and DMG) as a "naturalistic" ethos which holds (similarly to some real-world belief systems eg Stoicism, Daoism) that the world is in balance, with "nature" an ideal of that balance, and the main threat to balance being volitional/motivated action by PCs.

There's an unstated but unmistakable implication that druids are "outsiders" or on the wane - this is consistent with typical understandings of the Roman conquest of Britain, and with the Christianisation of Europe.

Given this, it would make sense for farmers to be connected to druids, insofar as farmers - like druids - are outsiders and largely neglected by the establishment. But it doesn't make sense to have druids at the heart of the establishment.

Having nature clerics together with druids, 5e-style, in my view creates a high risk of redundancy or even incoherence unless a distinction is drawn pretty clearly. If bucolic halflings are served by druids rather than clerics, that suggests not just that they're farmers but that they're farmers who have a different relationship to farming and the earth from their feudal, establishment neighbours.

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…and periodically, halflings will invite a Paladin to the shire for a cookout and a new blessing for their crops…




(see all the fun things you can do with halflings?)

Zubatcarteira said:

Isn't Goldenfields in FR a big farming place full of druids?

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According to the Wiki, it's a temple to Chauntea filled with clerics. But, I'll be the first to admit my FR knowledge is limited.

Faolyn said:

But do you actively go out of your way to include them?

Do you think of their niche or what roles they play? Do you come up with halfling villages and towns and cities and place them around? Do you have important NPC halflings doing important things? And then, do you make sure the PCs know about these things?

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Now you're getting my point.

Why would I bother? No one has come to me and said, "Hey, I really want to play a halfling". Or, rather, it's so rare that it's pretty much a rounding error for the characters that I see. So, why would I bother making halfling villages and town and cities (wait, what? Cities? Where are the halfling cities?). What important halfling NPC's? The ones that don't appear in any published module? Those important halflings? Note, you are the one who said "important". Who would those be? You listed the named NPC's in a number of WotC modules. Which ones would you characterize as "important"?

It's a pretty self reinforcing system. Players don't come to me asking to play halflings so, I don't bother using halflings in the game. The sentient skeleton in my Dragon Heist game? Oh yeah, he became a major center in the game in his search to gain citizenship and stop random clerics from turning him all the time. The Kobold rogue in my Chaos Scar campaign that I just ran? Major player - kobolds featured in several adventures and there were all sorts of connections to the group. Owlfolk in my current Candlekeep adventure? Several references to the Feywild, plus one of the Avowed Adjutants is now an owl folk as I replaced all the ones in the adventure to connect the campaign more directly to the characters.

Again, I DO NOT DISLIKE HLALFINGS!!!

I just largely ignore them the same way I ignore anything else that my players don't seem to be interested in. Why would I spend time and effort trying to make halflings important when the players very obviously don't care?

If you do something to make Halflings cool and interesting in your games then you'd likely see more of them.

But then of course, if no one is missing them, there's no real reason to do that either.

Oh and for those that say "Well the MTG settings don't use Haalflings so they aren't forced."

Well that because Halflings are redundant in MTG. Theyserve the same person as humans and rarely make the cut.

MTG has their own halflings. They exist in 2 settings Domaria (AKA Kitchensink) and Lorwyn (a plane without humans).
Kithkin

It's the same thing for dwarves. In MTG dwarves take up the same role as goblins and often don't make the cut.
Otherwise every official D&D setting has Halflings for better or worse.

Hussar said:

Now you're getting my point.

Why would I bother? No one has come to me and said, "Hey, I really want to play a halfling". Or, rather, it's so rare that it's pretty much a rounding error for the characters that I see.

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So basically, you provide nothing that makes halflings interesting, and therefore, nobody is interested in them.

Gosh, I wonder what your problem is.

So, serious question #1: do you only build your worlds as the PCs explore them, or do you at map them out, at the very least with vague notions of where things are, ahead of time? If you use established worlds, like the Realms, do you not make any changes or add or remove things?

Hussar said:

So, why would I bother making halfling villages and town and cities (wait, what? Cities? Where are the halfling cities?).

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Where do you want to put them? You're the DM.

Hussar said:

What important halfling NPC's?

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Who do want them to be? You're the DM.

Serious question #2: do you only run adventures other people have written, as the are written in the book? Do you never write your own adventures or rewrite aspects of adventures you buy?

Hussar said:

It's a pretty self reinforcing system. Players don't come to me asking to play halflings so, I don't bother using halflings in the game.

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Again, you don't bother to actually include them, because you don't bother to think about what to do with them.

This is literally the entirety of the description I wrote for halflings in my current homebrew setting:



And two people chose to play halflings. And then, when a player decided he didn't like his orc druid, he had the druid head off into the wilderness and built a new character, who was also a halfling.

At this point, I seriously doubt that you've even written that much for halflings.

Hussar said:

The sentient skeleton in my Dragon Heist game? Oh yeah, he became a major center in the game in his search to gain citizenship and stop random clerics from turning him all the time. The Kobold rogue in my Chaos Scar campaign that I just ran? Major player - kobolds featured in several adventures and there were all sorts of connections to the group. Owlfolk in my current Candlekeep adventure? Several references to the Feywild, plus one of the Avowed Adjutants is now an owl folk as I replaced all the ones in the adventure to connect the campaign more directly to the characters.

Again, I DO NOT DISLIKE HLALFINGS!!!

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And yet you refuse to create for them, use them in any meaningful way, and you've spend dozens of pages ranting at long length about how much you do not dislike them.

Hussar said:

I just largely ignore them the same way I ignore anything else that my players don't seem to be interested in. Why would I spend time and effort trying to make halflings important when the players very obviously don't care?

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So you don't try to include new things or spice up old things in new ways. Maybe the players don't care because it's obvious that you don't care.

Oofta said:

From the PHB "Seeing the World" under gnomes: " As lovers of gems and other fine items, some gnomes take to adventuring as a quick, if dangerous, path to wealth."

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I know. That's why I said in my post "I didn't think there was any mention of gems in the PHB until I saw that they might go on adventures to get wealth" I was referring to exactly that single line of text.

I then followed it up with "which so does everyone else. Well, except halflings. But, additionally, their love of gems could be tied back to being born from gems. It isn't about greed, but about appreciating beauty and where you came from."

So, maybe read my entire post before feeling the need to quote me the line I mentioned, and telling me where it is like I somehow didn't know? And then you can respond to that text, instead of just reporting that the text I admitted to reading is there to be read.

Oofta said:

While gnomes form tight-knit communities (some variation of this shows up in most race entries) there's nothing that says they're particularly tied to family or homebodies. Gnomes that settle in other communities are " gemcutters, engineers, sages, or tinkers" or tutors. Halflings blend into the background.

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Are you familiar with the Gnome legend of the Lost Sisters? I based an entire character on the concept "There was a tradition among gnomish youth to claim divine inspiration to go in search of the Ladies of the Golden Hills, rather than admit that adventure was calling them to leave their close-knit gnomish families."

Now, this was pre-5e lore, because 5e in Mordenkainen's went in and gender-swapped some of the dieties. Which I would like more if me and a friend hadn't homebrewed the lost goddesses long before that.

But, I think "lying about going on a religious quest instead of admitting you just want to leave for adventure" is a pretty big neon sign that says they might be particularly close-knit.

Also, man, you just don't like gemcutters, engineers, sages, tinkers and tutors do you? I mean, you list those jobs and then say "Halflings blend into the background" like that somehow a sage isn't a member of the community, or a tinker whose job is literally to fix anything and everything in the community for little to no work or recognition doesn't "belnd into the background" I mean, what are you even trying to say here? That gnomes are too self-important to be part of a community because they are teachers?

Oofta said:

I could go on, but honestly I'm not going to argue about this any more. They are no more alike than any other race in the book from my reading. Yes, both are just small humans, just like elves are humans with pointy ears and dragonborn are humans with scales. All of the races represent some aspect of humanity. For gnomes? They're the hyperactive but fun kid. Halflings are the quiet ones you practically forget about.

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One of the halfling subraces are Kender. Kender are not the quiet kid in the classroom. You also seem to have a severe bias against gnomes for some unknown reason.

Hussar said:

We've already seen it repeatedly. Every new setting - Darksun, Eberron, whatever - has to have halflings and yet another swing at the bat to try to gain traction among players.

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And to be fair, I think Keith Baker did the best out of any setting writer to date. But that is more a testament to his skill as a world-builder than anything about the materials he was working with.