Halflings -- what version (if any)?

[Ahnehnois]

I like halflings. I find them to fill a niche, be well balanced, and to be different from Kender of LOTR halflings.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Get rid of them and the gnomes while you're at it.

 

[The_Gneech]

Weird ... my complaint with the current halflings is that they don't have a real niche. They're pint-sized gypsies, why bother? Just have gypsies.

(If your reaction to that is "hobbits are just pint-sized English country gentry, why bother?" I'd have to say, "It's a fair cop. I don't see a real need for them either, except for people who want to do Tolkien.")

-The Gneech

 

[MrFilthyIke]

Get rid of them and the gnomes while you're at it.

Gnomes are cool, the short-folk get no respect!

 

[Deadguy]

Put me down as another person that is perfectly happy with the 3.X halfling if I use them in a specific campaign! I don't feel a need to use every race in every campaign any more than I must use all the monsters in the MM.

And for the record, I don't find these halflings kender-esque. Gnerally I use them as a 'tinker-folk', come settling, some shifting around, who manage to make themselves a niche by being smart (and often not seen!).

 

[Christopher Lambert]

I like them. The halflings were are usually exposed to are ones who live among humans, many of whom see the world differently, some of whom become rogues and many who give up the huge number of meals on the ground that they grew up poor and don't necessarily know what they're missing.

This doesn't take into account halflings living in their own homelands, who would look and act a lot more like LotR hobbits. Some parts of the Greyhawk setting did this well. However, the halfling lands in other settings are often quite different (I know next to nothing about FR halfling homelands and the ones from Eberron are ... different).

 

[Liolel]

I like 3.x halflings and I don't think they are anywhere near what a kender is like.

 

[UniversalMonster]

I like the current version and don't think of them as Kender. I don't like Kender (or Dragonlance) much at all actually. But I likes that Lidda.

 

[Mercule]

Weird ... my complaint with the current halflings is that they don't have a real niche. They're pint-sized gypsies, why bother? Just have gypsies.

(If your reaction to that is "hobbits are just pint-sized English country gentry, why bother?" I'd have to say, "It's a fair cop. I don't see a real need for them either, except for people who want to do Tolkien.")

Yup and yup. The wee gypsies are a bit silly. Fur-footed hobbits are too derivitive of Tolkien (much of D&D is derivitive, but hobbits are over the line, IMHO).

I also hate the name "halfling". That's completely non-sensical, except as a racial slur.

I realized after putting together much of my world that I had several races that were larger than humans and none smaller. I went ahead and added gnomes back in, but made them a bit more rustic. I've also added in the whisper gnomes from Races of Stone, although I wish I had a different name for them.

 

[CRGreathouse]

I like the current halflings. (And I despise kenders, so the poll didn't give me any cool options.)

Ditto.