Don Durito
Hero
Yeah, say what you like about halflings but at least they're not elves!
D&D General My Problem(s) With Halflings, and How To Create Engaging/Interesting Fantasy Races
- Thread starter Levistus's_Leviathan
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For the sake of completeness: I agree with you second para; I'm outraged by your third!
Some of us like Elves.
My gripe is on the DM side.
A village of halflings offers no gameplay alterations over a village of humans. Halflings don't special in anything that affect gameplay. Halflings would not have craftmen and masters that differ in quantity or quality than humans. The only thing that changes is the heights of doors and ceilings.
The base lore do not seperate them from humans at all. A dwarven village would have better axes, hammers, and metal armors. A elven village would have bows, swords, instrutments, and healing potions for sale. Even if you made awhole village of tieflings, you'd think someone has a cursed or infernal weapon stashed someplace for sale as devils and cultists would constantly attempting to tempt evil tiefling villagers.
A village of halflings offers no gameplay alterations over a village of humans. Halflings don't special in anything that affect gameplay. Halflings would not have craftmen and masters that differ in quantity or quality than humans. The only thing that changes is the heights of doors and ceilings.
The base lore do not seperate them from humans at all. A dwarven village would have better axes, hammers, and metal armors. A elven village would have bows, swords, instrutments, and healing potions for sale. Even if you made awhole village of tieflings, you'd think someone has a cursed or infernal weapon stashed someplace for sale as devils and cultists would constantly attempting to tempt evil tiefling villagers.
Mind of tempest
(he/him)
halflings are like a void of culture.
No, they have a culture in the base game.
The issue is it is the same as a human commoner.
Swap a human villager for a halfling villager and all that changes is height and AC.
Hussar
Legend
Not that terribly unusual. Hunter gatherer cultures exist and have existed for pretty much forever. And, well, elves are "maaaagiiiiccc" so, pretty much anything goes. I know they don't really go into it, but, an elven metabolism would be weird when you think about it. In order to live so long, they'd need to be (more or less) immune to any natural diseases. Who knows what they actually need to eat? Think of the kind of farming you'd do when your farmers have centuries to work the land.But are they?
I mean, in Dark Sun the "flip" is that halflings are barbaric cannibals who everyone is terrified of, and stay away from their jungle hideaways.
Humans can do that, too... but it's WEIRD when halflings do it. Halflings share a lot of traits with humans, but not all of them- their savagery, ambition, lust for power and search for the divine are all de-emphasized in favor of something more... utilitarian?
As for Elves, well... a race that doesn't engage in agriculture or do hard work doesn't really make sense. Elves must farm and do hard work, or... well... I guess they are REALLY etherial, then, aren't they?
It's why it always bugs me so much when I see elves in the game that are basically just humans that can see in the dark. Elves are far, far more alien than pretty much any other player race, but, that never gets played up very much.
Bolares
Hero
I disagree. They are the simple, fulfilled, happy side of humanity. The rare side that doesn't need to conquer and lacks ambition... for the most part. They are the heightenned chill of not wanting to go to a party on sundays hahah
Neonchameleon
Legend
Given that races are human traits turned up to 11 let's try
"Hollywood Celebrities are a glamorous people of otherworldly grace, living in the world but not entirely part of it. They live in places of ethereal beauty, in the midst of ancient forests or in silvery spires glittering with artificial light, where soft music drifts through the air and gentle fragrances waft on the breeze. Humans love nature and magic, art and artistry, music and poetry, and the good things of the world."
Do all humans map to elves? No more than they do to halflings. Are elves some aspects of humans turned up to 11? Either nobles or celebrities? IMO yes, absolutely.
Hussar
Legend
But, then you slap into the issue I brought up before. Every PC halfling is a rejection of this. A PC rarely lacks ambition. And, "simple, fufilled and happy" doesn't generally describe a PC. So, basically, the halfling writeup is everything a halfling character won't be.
Bolares
Hero
Why is this a Issue? I find it completely ok for NPCs to be the type and PCs to be played against type. To me it seems the halfling was created to support well the story of the hero that abandons their roots to pursue destiny... That's what Bilbo did anyway.
Hussar
Legend
Well, if Hollywood celebrities existed in our D&D games, I might see your point. But, there's also the difference of scale. Hollywood celebrities are what, a tiny, tiny sliver of humanity. As in certainly not representative of people by and large.
OTOH, the halfling description directly maps onto the vast majority of humanity through most of human history. That you could find a tiny, tiny slice of humanity that might fit into the description of elves is not really the issue.
To put it in RPG terms. You took a very narrow race from a really, really obscure setting and then tried to extrapolate it onto the base game. I'm looking at the base game only.
All that aside, I gotta admit it does fit to a bloody T. That is actually quite impressive. As an additional thought though, it does highlight just how alien elves really are. If the closest thing to an elf is a Hollywood Celebrity, then elves really are pretty darn alien.
Hussar
Legend
It's an issue because none of the other races are set up this way? You don't look at the dwarf description, then reject everything that it says, just so you can make your character. Note, you HAVE to reject pretty much everything it says about halflings just to make a viable PC. If the description of the race is only there to tell players what not to do, that's not very well done.
To put it another way, there's nothing wrong with playing against type. That's fine. It is, however, kinda wonky if EVERY PC must be played against type in order to work in a group.
Bolares
Hero
Hmm, I think I get you now. But I don't know how WotC could fix it without changing the expectation we have with halflings. Halflings are just hobbits that don't get you sued by the Tolkien estate, so the base race kind of has to have that description...
Neonchameleon
Legend
You assume nothing happens in a character's life. "Simple, fulfilled, and happy until..." would be a better description - for example the last halfling character I ran for was "simple, fulfilled, and happy until they got lost and fell through a portal - and now they've ended up here surrounded by these maniacs". The one before that was "Simple, fulfilled, and happy until the orcs burned down their home."
FrozenNorth
Hero
You know, this may be part of the issue here. It is tough to define something by what it isn’t than what it is.
Just like saying something is more human than human is itself a paradox.
Bolares
Hero
This is a great description of Veth, the halfling in the last campaign of Critical Role. She was all that, until something terrible happened to her. Then she adventured to fix that problem, and in the middle of it discovered that she was not only great at it, but also loved the adventuring life...
Neonchameleon
Legend
The thing is that the elves aren't just Hollywood celebrities; Hollywood celebrities are just the most obvious manifestation in the 21st Century. I could have done something similar with e.g. ninteteenth century members of Society. The glitterati. The people followed by gossip columns.
Most cultures have their own groups that map pretty decently to elves - and whereas far more people map to halflings than elves when you look at actual societies the elves there are get lots of stories written about them. They're the people who can afford and seldom repeat their tailored clothes and other symbols of beauty us halflings can't afford - and have learned to wear them to best effect. They're the people who live among lights (or even in a city of lights) because they can afford it. They live longer than humans because they have the best doctors and they've the time for art and music and the money to hire teachers.
Elves, like halflings, are pretty much a universal archetype for a segment of society.
FrozenNorth
Hero
Someone posted that people who disagree with them about halflings want to “destroy” them! Everyone take a drink!
Oofta
Legend
Rewriting them from the ground up to be more like other races and completely changing their identity does effectively destroy them. Others want to remove them from the PHB because they don't like them.
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