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I think the answer is probably to contrive some way to give halflings eye lasers. Then they would be distinctive.

I'll let you have your gish gallop and I'll just say that I feel that the halfling race is presented as the distillation of the ideal of the commoner. In general, they want for nothing more than comfort, friends, family, and food.

I'm sorry, there's clearly a cultural difference between a race that founded Waterdeep and a race whose largest settlement ever was a port city of 27,000 souls.

Sure there is. Their folksiness and non aggression is heightened.

What differentiates them is what they don't have. They don't build cities, or empires, or complex political structures, or big trading companies, or armies, or mercenary companies. They're probably a lot less prone to guile and jealousy, but a lot more prone to complacency and laziness.

I say they're more human than human.

If there's no latitude to take a character type and play with it a little bit, that doesn't make for very interesting storytelling, does it? That's not changing halflings. You seem to have a really hard time differentiating between the role of a society or a group of people and the role of an...

I've tried Critical Role, but it is too much! I don't have time for 3 hour episodes, ever. I do like The Adventure Zone. Those guys are funny. I think D20 Dames is pretty good, too.

I don't think they need politics or a formal role in the broader society or a creation story. (But I do count their "discovery" by Yondalla as a kind of a creation story. The story is that their creation is a mystery even to the Gods.) In other words, they don't have to be an entire race of...

Well, then we can add that a lot of people think that adding layers of background information would make halfling lore worse. I think it's good that they don't have kingdoms, or a formal role in the broader society, or whatever else. They just do what they need to do to survive in the...

The difference is that you seem to be insisting that halflings must assume a more complex role in the official game in order to be acceptable. The counter argument is that it's fine to leave them the way they are in the published material because anyone is free to add as much complicated lore...

Yup. D&D just needs midichlorians. Then when the NPC tells the paladin "these are not the goblins you're looking for" we don't have to blame the paladin's poor wisdom for his being duped. It's the fault of the "magic"al mitochondria. EDIT: Dangit. @Faolyn beat me to it.

I didn't forget. I'm playing a stout halfling arcana cleric/spores druid/guild artisan/brewmaster. He's awesome.

Has no one even pointed out the fact that a gnome can grow a beard? Gnome has beard ∆ halfling≠gnome. QED

Next time it comes up I'll be sure to follow with "Abracadabra!"

The answer is "No, halflings should be different because choices."

I might do either (charmed or frightened) for a brief moment, for the sake of storytelling and humor. But not for anything that would effect the storyline significantly, and only if the players involved are in on the joke. For example: Maybe during a fact-finding trip to a farm in the area, a...

I don't even agree that your crux is the crux. I think the discussion should be whether or not halflings need a baroque and convoluted history. I'm in the less is more camp. I think it's good that there's a common character race that's not fraught with extraneous crap.

I can't even imagine... It must have been horrible! And just think. All they had to do was tell you it was magic that made your character feel bad and everything would have been ok... What an absolute tragedy...

Ok. My argument was with your contention that one can't use the Brave racial feature to represent halflings as being brave, because (almost) all frightened conditions are magical so they are really just resistant to magical fear which is not being brave and what's more, gnomes should be...