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

[Hussar]

Or, you know, more pages could just be added to the PHB rather than cutting the halfling.
That way you can rejoice that xyz was finally added, those of us who like halflings/Hobbits remain happy, and the vast majority who don't give a( naughty word) about either continue to not give a (naughty word).
We all win D&D this way.

As for your claim "nobody plays 1/2lings"?
Your wrong. And you know it.
And you also know that those D&D Beyond stats don't represent the majority of players.

Sorry, but, they're a rounding error. And, we're not just talking about D&D Beyond stats. No one EVER played halflings very much. Good grief, even in 2e, halflings couldn't even get their own races of book. That's how unpopular they were thirty years ago.

Yes, I have had halfling characters at my table. Sure. Last group had one. Fair enough. But, while @Faolyn talks about how his current group has three, I highly, highly suspect that that's an outlier. That if people were honest, and actually tracked back the last several years of gaming, polled the character made at your table, I suspect you might have 1 in 10 characters be halflings. At the outside. Probably less.

So, yes, if you want to be absolutely pedantic, which, in a thread like this, I should have realized that people would be, there are people who play halflings. However, the POINT that you were so deftly trying to ignore would be that so few people play them that replacing them with something that people would ACTUALLY play would be a fantastic idea.

Won't ever happen, but, one can dream.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

For the record, according to DnDBeyond

Percentage of Player Characters

Dwarf ≈ 6.6%
• 3.6% Mountain
• 3.0% Hill
• <0.9% other

Halfling ≈ 4.7%
• 3.4% Lightfoot
• 1.3% Stout
• <0.9% other

Gnome ≈ 3.1%
• 2.2% Rock
• 0.9% Deep
• <0.9% other

So, Halfling has some traction, but not much.

However note, if they become one lineage: Halfling+Gnome ( ≈ 7.8% !)

Then the Gnomeling surpasses Dwarf ( ≈ 6.6%)

Yeah, and I would be perfectly fine with combining them. But even as they stand, 5ish % is not insignificant, as anyone who plays a d20 system should know. And they're just a bit behind the dwarfs who no one seem to want to remove and who have no competing very similar race to split their popularity. The idea that halflings are somehow universally super unpopular is just part of this thread's trend of the halfling-haters failing to look things objectively.

 

[Don Durito]

Where does this idea the noone plays halflings from? The data I posted was from 2017, but if there's something more recent where is it?

In 2017 the only non Players Handbook race more popular than Halflings was Genasi. That's an argument for including them in the PHB, but it's Gnomes who need to be shown the door (if anyone does), as they're the most unpopular PHB race.

Hell even TSR didn't see the point including Gnomes in Dark Sun or Birthright (And White Wolf initially left them out of the Scarred Lands)

Halflings were the third most popular race for rogues in 2017 after humans and elves, which to me suggests they have a niche. (And remember the current pre-lineage version of the races is strongly centred around pushing races towards certain classes. If a race is popular in its 'iconic' niche then it's successful under that paradigm.)

 

[Cadence]

Sorry, but, they're a rounding error. And, we're not just talking about D&D Beyond stats. No one EVER played halflings very much. Good grief, even in 2e, halflings couldn't even get their own races of book. That's how unpopular they were thirty years ago.

Tangentially, I'm wondering what percentage of people on earth play D&D and if it's less than the percentage of D&D players playing halflings at any given time.

 

[Mind of tempest]

How do they not?

I can only guess you're saying the race isn't interesting for the 500th time with no deviation.

So for the fourth time, I'm going to explain that being a decent folk who want for comfort is interesting to me. In fact, since I'm a child of th e90's where edgelords ran wild an free, it's actually quite novel and endearing.

And biting off Lovecraft (ie the tentacles from before) is better? Everything else all the other races are modeled after like Dwarves and Scotland?

tentacles or chitin are not by nature disturbing, I did not suggest edge lords but I see your thing, you find them interesting because they deviate from what you think is normal.
to me, they are blandly nice not interestingly nice they lack a nuanced perceptive or goals outside of the insipidly bland but I do not want to have nothing but brooding losers either.

If you don’t want to be accused of not valuing those traits, why do you keep telling us we are wrong when we say that those traits justify the race? That it is good to have a race defined by some positive traits and not by any big conflicts or tragic flaws or world shaping history?

People keep replying to you in a certain way because of the things you keep saying.

because they simply do not justify the race, those traits would be fine if there was more to dig in to but halflings are just there not real lore no history no reason internally for their existence plus they do not shape anything that is the problem they just sit in their little villages being twee and happy not doing things or they are adventures so loot thirsty muders with an incomprehensible morality.

 

[Cadence]

What is "reasonable" to you? I mean, as was mentioned, they barely crack the top 10 despite having every possible advantage.

Again, after 50 years of failing to gain traction, isn't it time to push them into the Monster Manual where they belong to make room for something that might gain a bit more traction?

Halflings are on almost 5% of character sheets. I thought someone on another thread said that messing with folks' character sheets was simply the worst. As such, is expanding the PhB to keep them really the only good choice?

 

[Don Durito]

Is Your D&D Character Rare?

So what does this data say about players’ character preferences? At first blush it looks like characters are drawn from literature and everyday life, which seems surprisingly unimaginative considering that “Dungeons & Dragons” is the quintessential fantasy game. But some of the common character choices can be explained by the game’s structure of racial bonuses. Humans — the most popular race by far — get an extra point in all of their ability scores, which makes them a balanced pick for any class.

Other races dovetail nicely with particular classes. The wood elf5 gets a bonus to dexterity as well as proficiency in longbows, perfect for the ranger class. Halflings also have extra points in dexterity and may have access to the “naturally stealthy” trait, which makes them exceptional rogues. The appearance of both these archetypes in Lord of the Rings and other works of fantasy likely also plays a role in their popularity.

 

[ccs]

Sorry, but, they're a rounding error. And, we're not just talking about D&D Beyond stats. No one EVER played halflings very much. Good grief, even in 2e, halflings couldn't even get their own races of book. That's how unpopular they were thirty years ago.

1/2ling weren't an uncommon sight in BECMi/1e/2e games. At least not in any groups I played with/ran games for.
As for that 2e book? TSR was scaping the bottom f the barrel in those "Complete" books loong before they got to the halfling/gnome book. They got worse & worse and this one read like the authors/someone just said "F* it, let's be done with this whole project".

Yes, I have had halfling characters at my table. Sure. Last group had one. Fair enough. But, while @Faolyn talks about how his current group has three, I highly, highly suspect that that's an outlier. That if people were honest, and actually tracked back the last several years of gaming, polled the character made at your table, I suspect you might have 1 in 10 characters be halflings. At the outside. Probably less.

6 years,
11 campaigns,
80+/- characters (I'm not counting the kids who'd join for a week or three at the shop & I'm sure I've forgotten a few who were casualties)
14 PC Halflings (I account for 4 of them), played by 8 different people.
One campaign had 3 in it - 1 right in the initial weeks, then 2 at the same time later on.

In comparison? In the same campaigns there's only been:
3 Dragonborn
3 Tieflings
1 Genasai (earth)
3 gnomes
2 tabaxi
1 Shader-Kai
1 Warforged
2 Assimar
2 dwarfs
18 characters (5 of them mine) played by 10 different people.

The other 48 or so? Are alot of Humans, Elves, & 1/2Elves with 5 or 6 1/2orcs in the mix.

So, yes, if you want to be absolutely pedantic, which, in a thread like this, I should have realized that people would be, there are people who play halflings. However, the POINT that you were so deftly trying to ignore would be that so few people play them that replacing them with something that people would ACTUALLY play would be a fantastic idea.

Like I said, we could all be happy just by adding a few more pages to the PHB. But nooo - people like you want to pee on other peoples fun.... YOU actively want to make this game worse.

 

[Hussar]

I love how suggesting that halflings get bumped to the monster manual (which means they remain a playable race) to make room for something that has has a chance to become more popular somehow means I "hate" halflings and want to pee in other people's fun.

Again, 50 years of game history and halflings remain the "also ran" race. I mean, good grief, @ccs, you said that there were 14 halfling PC's, with you personally accounting for a 1/3 of them. Counter that with my own table where halflings might, might crack that 5% mark, maybe? In the 5e games I've played/DM'd? I recall two halflings out of a couple of dozen characters. We've had more kobolds than that.
But, hey, I'm just a hater over here apparently.

See, this is how the conversation went in 4e when they dared to change halfings into river people. Same song and dance. So, nothing in the game can ever change no matter what. It really is a shame that D&D has become so ossified that even really glaringly obvious issues can't be changed because TRADITION!!!

 

[Oofta]

According to this article which gives us the top 5 races in DndBeyond from 2020, neither dwarves nor elves are all that popular either. Guess we might as well get rid of them as well.

Top 5 races:

1. Human
2. Half-Elf
3. Dragonborn
4. Tiefling
5. Half-Orc