By John Grigsby, Staff Reviewer d20 Magazine Rack
Initiative Round
Heroes of High Favor: Halflings is a Dungeons & Dragons supplement from Bad Axe Games. This is a 78-page pocket-sized softcover by Jeremy Baldridge and Benjamin Durbin. The cover design by Andrew Hale and Brad Kelley depicts the door to a halfling burrow. Andrew Hale handles to the interior art.
Heroes of High Favor: Halflings retails for $9.95.
In the old days of D&D, when there were such things as what race could be what class, the word halfling was synonymous with the word thief. This was so prevalent that even the kender of
Dragonlance fame were made into an entire race of natural thieves. I had hoped that with the advent of 3E and the lifting of racial restrictions on classes, those days were behind us. Sad to say, they aren’t, apparently. The fault is not entirely on Bad Axe Games. This sourcebook is, as they state on the reverse, an exploration of the race’s favored class (something that holds true for all of their sourcebooks), but in so doing, I think they’ve missed the entire point that they were trying to make. Halflings make good rogues, but a rogue is not just a thief, and this book misses that fact.
Still, the book is not without hope. It does provide a few good points, some of which we’ll cover here. The artwork is nicely done (if a bit out of relevance in most places), and for those halflings that do intend to follow their favored class, there’s a good bit of material here that they will find useful.
We’ll start by looking at the feats. Given the nature of the remainder of the book, I was a bit surprised to find that none of the feats had “sneak attack” as a prerequisite (since it isn’t considered “official” to make a class a requirement for a feat or prestige class, most companies (including Wizards) get around this by requiring access to a particular class ability). In all fairness, there are some pretty good feats here that will be of use to any halfling, not just those with a penchant for thievery, as well as individuals of other races.
Take as an example, Flying Blackjack, which allows the character to make a ranged attack intended to cause unconsciousness, as opposed to lethality. In fact, surprisingly few of the feats (for a book about =ahem=
halflings) require that the user be of size Small. The few feats that do bear this requirement are specified as Halfling feats. Of the 19 new feats that are described in
Heroes of High Favor: Halflings, about half are specifically aimed at such beings.
There are several new uses for existing skills, many of which, as with feats, could be used by any individual, halfling or otherwise. Some are useful, others are amusing, and still others, such as “A Friendly Kick in the Junk” (in which the character seems to be surrendering, only to gain a bonus to their next sneak attack) could probably just as easily be simulated through good role-playing. There are plenty of uses for the new subskills of Craft (ropemaking and lashwork), and these will be of great value to any adventuring company, regardless of whether their membership includes any of the short folk. A dozen new traps are presented (for use with the Craft (trapmaking) skill, with such inventively amusing names as Fat Baby Swing, Flouring the Biscuits, and Rooster with a Cold. Unfortunately, their simplicity also lends them to be easily defeated, even by non-rogues.
Heroes of High Favor: Halflings also suggests a couple of new skill synergies.
A new mechanic called “knacks” rewards characters who excel in Sleight of Hand by granting them special abilities called Pick Pocket Knacks. I have two problems with this. First, it reduces the value of the feat system by rewarding players simply for increasing ability in a skill. Secondly, some of the knacks themselves are questionable. Longarm is an excellent example. This knack permits the rogue to make a pick pocket attempt while using a pole between five and ten feet long to lift or dislodge items off a target. It seems to me that a character doing so would be easily noticed by any passerby, several of whom might alert the victim, even if they had no concern for the act itself, to say nothing of doing this in a crowded marketplace.
Halfling graffiti is, on the surface, a good idea. These pictograms, which are incomprehensible to other races, serve as trail markers, warnings, and travelers’ advice. Where the system breaks down is by giving the graffiti a magical power. Each symbol can be activated by any halfling willing to spend a minimal amount of experience to activate the effect. While most of the effects are no stronger than a 1st-level spell (a +4 luck bonus to a particular skill, for example) and last no more than an hour, it is the fact that halflings can make these magical markings without any sort of arcane knowledge. It just doesn’t fit with the concept of the race. At the very least, the creation of magical graffiti should cost a feat, though I’m not sure I’d permit it at all. The reasoning behind the incomprehensibility to other races is also very weak, at best (“…due to the fact that no two [symbols] look alike.”). A Decipher Script should allow even non-halflings to pick up the meaning, whereas halflings shouldn’t require a check at all (which they do, under the system as written).
There is no reason to limit the dirty fighting techniques described in
Heroes of High Favor: Halflings to the small folk; any rogue could benefit from them. These are non-lethal alternates to the standard sneak attack, such as a blinding or deafening strike or knocking the opponent’s weapon aside to take a second, follow-up attack. Still, though not quite as powerful as the rogue’s crippling strike ability (optional at 9th level), these abilities do provide a fair benefit for relatively little cost (the rogue may opt to set aside “one or more of his sneak attack dice”). Better that these abilities should be feats and they should consume
all of a rogue’s sneak attack, not just a part of it. It’s hard to imagine any rogue that would sacrifice more than 1d6 when they can reap both the benefits of one of these options
in addition to the remainder of their sneak attack damage.
Heroes of High Favor: Halflings presents ten prestige classes. In effect, each combines the talents of one of the other ten classes with that of the rogue. The razorback, for example, is effectively a barbarian/rogue. The pantheist is a cleric/rogue. The blood grifter is a fighter/rogue. Strangely, for a book about halflings, none of these classes have halfling as a requirement, which means that unless the DM wishes to put this restriction on them, they can be picked up by any race.
Surprisingly, despite the fact that all of them combine with rogue in some fashion, the prestige classes are the strongest advocate in the book of drawing attention away from the image of the race as a bunch of thieving rascals. In most cases, the role-playing opportunities of the prestige classes serve to develop a much broader and well-rounded character, one with a meaning. The prestige classes are actually the most interesting part of the book, and I welcome their addition to my campaign (though a few seem a tad unbalanced; the rogue/druid, for example, seems terribly underpowered, gaining only seven special abilities, and most of these are front-loaded (picked up in the first three levels), whereas the blood grifter picks up 20 special abilities, averaging two per level increase). On average, a prestige class should gain one special ability per level (unless an ability gained is particularly powerful).
The chapter on halfling roleplaying, for a book on halflings, is woefully short and almost seems like something thrown in just so the title can be upheld without claims of false advertisement. The whole chapter consists of two pages, offering six halfling proverbs and their “meaning.” This is a pitiful attempt at justifying this as a complete book on halflings. There could have been… nay,
should have been much more role-playing material.
Finally, the book finishes up with an adventure for a first-level halfling (what else?) rogue. In “Jellija For Sale,” the character (this is a solo jaunt) gets the opportunity to practice their rogue skills, establish a contact in the city’s criminal underworld, and join a Thieves’ Guild. This is, of course, something to which all halflings aspire because, as we all know by now, they are a race of low-down, good-for-nothing thieves. This could have been dropped, for my money, and the eight pages wasted on it could have been spent on detailing the lives and other role-playing background material on halflings. You know, the things they do when they aren’t out robbing other folks blind?
Critical Hit
The prestige classes are the highlight of this work, and the most useful part of the book. They show the forethought and possibility that I wish had been evident elsewhere within these pages. It was refreshing break to see rogues that weren’t busy devising new ways to trick, rob, or otherwise take advantage of other people.
Critical Fumble
If you’re going to make a book about halfling thieves, then you should call it such. This is not a book about halflings, it’s a book about halfling thieves. In fact, there is very little in this book about halflings in general, just about halfling rogues. The introduction even goes so far as to add to the stereotype by stating, “…a warrior of small stature lacks presence and command, a diminutive priest’s preaching is lost in a crowd, an arcane caster who uses his spell book for a booster seat in the pub looses his mystique...” With this wording, the book makes it clear (at least in the author’s minds) that halflings are left with few options except to take up the mantle of the rogue.
Where is the information about the lifestyles of halflings? Where is the mention of halfling sheriffs and such? The prestige classes are a great start, but they should have been limited to halflings (an easy fix, but it’s something that should not have been overlooked). While it’s true that a halfling’s favored class is rogue, that class does not define their lifestyle, and there are many rogues beyond the ubiquitous thief.
The stereotyping and the questionable game balance of several of the options are the two things that kill this supplement. I held out high hopes for this series. A set of books with solid information filling out the lifestyles and other details of these races would have been welcome. Material on the halfling language, what “commoner” halflings spend their time doing, and how they feel about the larger peoples of the world would have been fantastic. Instead, what has been produced is a series of books about how to exploit the stereotypical image of the race.
Coup de Grace
Given that the text is the same size as that used in the core books, the small size of
Heroes of High Favor: Halflings is a detriment. The book could have been full-sized and much more complete on the subject material, and it would have been a much better work. As it stands, $9.95 is probably too much to ask for this book. I’d take the bargain that
FRP Games is offering, myself. The prestige classes, with a little work for balance, might make it worth that much (and there is some decent material in here of rogues, regardless of race).
The artwork is fair, with the faces of the characters showing some good expression. They don’t quite have the image that I would have given halflings (if I could draw worth a damn), but I suppose that’s a matter of opinion. Still, no paladin of any race would ever wear an outfit like the one that the precursor prestige class (rogue/paladin) is shown wearing. They just have too much pride.
Open Game Content, consists of rule-related text, and is clearly marked by a small bar at the bottom of the page, bearing the words “Open Content.” There is no index, but a table of contents provides a decent, if brief, overview of the work.
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Heroes of Knee High Favor: Halflings. Hmm, no, perhaps not. The halfling preferred class is rogue. That’s not as boring as the fighter but it has received more attention than the barbarian class. There are some interesting combos to expect; the rogue-paladin, the rogue-cleric and the rogue-barbarian even. I didn’t even need to open the book to come to this conclusion. Talk about pre-judging a product. 
