Hobbits are Back!

[Aeolius]

Warforged prefer the word "tanky".

Boilerplate

 

[Mercurius]

I like the old halfling subraces. If you like the name hobbit, just apply them to the hairfoot subrace. These are your standard AD&D halflings. Lightfoots are the standard halfling for 3rd and 4th edition. I think of them as kender, though you can also use the 3e or 4e fluff just fine.

Right, although I don't think we'd need all of the subraces in core. Stouts and Hairfoots can be combined into whatever "hobbits" are called, and the other race would be the lightfoot/kender variant. Not sure tallfellows are need, and the polar halflings seem too exotic (and silly, imo) to be anywhere near core.

 

[ferratus]

I see a couple people here advocating a fat race and a skinny race of halflings, and I can't say I agree with that. Why not just one "race" of halflings, in which individuals can be either portly and sedentary, or lithe and active?

If there are going to be different subraces of halflings, I don't think body mass should be the distinguishing feature.

Why? To have different mechanics and archetypes explicitly spelled out in the halfling of course. Same reason you have drow, eladrin and wood elves.

That said, I wouldn't be adverse to keeping subraces out as a mechanic either. There is much to be said for keeping a race broad and flexible enough to contain a wide variation.

 

[avin]

"Hobbits are back!"

Not in my games! There's always some plague to erradicate them! Bwahaha!

 

[Glade Riven]

Screw subrace bloat. Pathfinder's optional alternative racial traits are a lot better than a full statting of 52 different elves.

 

[dregg]

I am just happy to hear that we might see the classic Halfling back in D&D. I love the small folk, and even though I find the "Kender" like Halflings of 3X neat in their own right, I still think of Halflings as I always have... pudgy, round, and always hungry.

With hairy feet of course

 

[Hussar]

I see a couple people here advocating a fat race and a skinny race of halflings, and I can't say I agree with that. Why not just one "race" of halflings, in which individuals can be either portly and sedentary, or lithe and active?

If there are going to be different subraces of halflings, I don't think body mass should be the distinguishing feature.

Well, for the same reason that, by and large, most alien races look surprisingly similar - it makes them distinct. There's a reason that you don't see portly Vulcans or short skinny Klingons or whatever. By typecasting a given alien race, you provide a hook for play. Short, stout, likes good food, is a decent enough hook to start from. It lets everyone at the table know that you're playing a halfling.

Look at elves. My main beef with elves is that they don't really ever have much of a hook other than poncy. They aren't distinguished enough and players, IME, tend to play elves as slightly longer lived humans with better vision.

It's one of the reasons I really like Eladrin. They have a nice, built in hook - they teleport, they are from the feywild. Those two things give me something to build on. Physical characteristics are something else that people can use.

 

[Jawsh]

Well, for the same reason that, by and large, most alien races look surprisingly similar - it makes them distinct. There's a reason that you don't see portly Vulcans or short skinny Klingons or whatever. By typecasting a given alien race, you provide a hook for play. Short, stout, likes good food, is a decent enough hook to start from. It lets everyone at the table know that you're playing a halfling.

That's a good point. Also, (because I'm a freak for "realism" (I know, shoot me (I know, too many brackets (sue me)))) it is true that if you exactly mirror the diversity of human shapes, then the race seems like humans*. If one were to want to do it right, one would pick a few characteristics that won't vary much within the halfling, and a few other characteristics that will vary more in halflings than they do in humans. So the fantasy race would still have its diversity, but in a distinct way from humans. But that's advanced fantasy art theory, and more than I can expect from D&D, I think.

*Speaking of the race seeming like humans though, I'm okay with this for halflings, because Tolkien explained that halflings are related to humans. I don't have a huge problem with halflings essentially being small people.

Giving halflings the "small humans" niche allows a conceptual space for gnomes to be more magical, whimsical, and distinct in their own right.

Look at elves. My main beef with elves is that they don't really ever have much of a hook other than poncy. They aren't distinguished enough and players, IME, tend to play elves as slightly longer lived humans with better vision.

That is true. I used to hate the extreme long-ears elves, but I'd rather have that than the humans-wearing-Spock-ears that appeared in 3E and 4E. At least the long ears is a distinction.

I would love to see artwork in the new edition that presents a wide variety of what elves could look like. Long ears, short ears, tall, short, feline features. I think that's what Jeremy meant when he said they took 4E too seriously. 4E had a very set way of expressing each race. The tieflings bothered me especially, how they all had the same horns. I had always depicted tieflings as being extremely varied in how their fiendish blood manifested itself (often not physically at all), but 4E sort of said "this is what tieflings look like now.

Same deal with orcs. There are so many ways to draw orcs floating around the world of fantasy, it would be a pity to pick only one and say that that's the D&D orc. Maybe some orcs have horns. Maybe some are green, some are grey, and some are black. Maybe some just look like humans.



There is this temptation also to create flavour and mechanics for all the different artistic looks, eg. making the "horned orc" a subrace. And I'd be happy if they did that, but I'd be just as happy if they didn't mention it at all, and just sometimes drew one kind of hobbit, and other times drew the other kind of hobbit. It might be nice to leave this kind of thing as an exercise for the budding Dungeon Master.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

I'd always thought BECMI elves were the most distinctly "elven". With their clans and trees of life.

Not even considering that elves were the only way to play a character that could fight and cast spells…

 

[Kobold Avenger]

I would love to see artwork in the new edition that presents a wide variety of what elves could look like. Long ears, short ears, tall, short, feline features. I think that's what Jeremy meant when he said they took 4E too seriously. 4E had a very set way of expressing each race. The tieflings bothered me especially, how they all had the same horns. I had always depicted tieflings as being extremely varied in how their fiendish blood manifested itself (often not physically at all), but 4E sort of said "this is what tieflings look like now.

That's the biggest thing I hated about 4e Tieflings, was them all having a set appearance with horns and tails and scaly skin. Especially when compared to 2e Tieflings introduced back in Planescape where there was quite a variety in appearance.