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

[Oofta]

There are no uniquely non-human races in D&D. Even if there were, we would still describe them in human terms because that's what we do with everything. We think of cats and dogs in human terms because we don't really have any other way of framing the description.

Even truly alien outsiders just get "they're wacky" then they're attributed more-or-less human motivations and emotions in play. All races in the PHB are just an extreme take on some aspect of humanity because we can't really understand how a species thinks.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Has anyone ever encountered a plucky half-ogre or half-giant?

I guess your ogre could have been considered plucky by other members of his family…

 

[FrozenNorth]

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

Can you heighten chill? The moment you heighten chill, are you not trying too hard and therefore no longer chill? It is these questions that bedevil the unchill, but not the chill, for asking them would itself be unchill.

 

[carkl3000]

There are no uniquely non-human races in D&D. Even if there were, we would still describe them in human terms because that's what we do with everything. We think of cats and dogs in human terms because we don't really have any other way of framing the description.

Even truly alien outsiders just get "they're wacky" then they're attributed more-or-less human motivations and emotions in play. All races in the PHB are just an extreme take on some aspect of humanity because we can't really understand how a species thinks.

I was thinking about writing something a lot like this. If there were any truly non-human races in the game, they would have to be inscrutable.

Aasimar, tiefling, elf, dwarf, dragonborn, animal people, whatever are all just some gimmicky, superficial mechanics and fluff tacked on to a basically human personality type. Not saying that they can't be fun to play, but when I'm making a character, I really do like to start with a basic story and a personality and then look at whether I'm going to pick a race that plays to that type or plays against that type.

The game mechanics associated with races, to me, are just things that the character can do, not so much who the character is. I think the designers do a decent job of attaching mechanics that work well with the character types, but I still think that part is kind of superficial. By the time the character gets to 5th level or so, the things they can do because of their race will be pretty much swamped by the things they can do because of their class levels.

I completely respect anyone who approaches their character creation differently.

 

[Bolares]

I completely respect anyone who approaches their character creation differently.

What is this absurd?! This kind of take has no place here!

 

[carkl3000]

Can you heighten chill? ...

 

[Mind of tempest]

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...

that is part of the point they do not work so something must be done to make them work or move something else into their place.

Can you heighten chill? The moment you heighten chill, are you not trying too hard and therefore no longer chill? It is these questions that bedevil the unchill, but not the chill, for asking them would itself be unchill.

they are pure refined chill as opposed to only sort of chill.

I was thinking about writing something a lot like this. If there were any truly non-human races in the game, they would have to be inscrutable.

Aasimar, tiefling, elf, dwarf, dragonborn, animal people, whatever are all just some gimmicky, superficial mechanics and fluff tacked on to a basically human personality type. Not saying that they can't be fun to play, but when I'm making a character, I really do like to start with a basic story and a personality and then look at whether I'm going to pick a race that plays to that type or plays against that type.

The game mechanics associated with races, to me, are just things that the character can do, not so much who the character is. I think the designers do a decent job of attaching mechanics that work well with the character types, but I still think that part is kind of superficial. By the time the character gets to 5th level or so, the things they can do because of their race will be pretty much swamped by the things they can do because of their class levels.

I completely respect anyone who approaches their character creation differently.

okay, so we should just get rid of all races?
look the list of things so far found in nature that are inscrutable are things like quantum physics or the point of reality nothing has been found that we can't comprehend how it works however we have found endless numbers of complete weirdos thus a dnd race is one of them as the base line instead of the anomaly.

 

[Bolares]

okay, so we should just get rid of all races?

What if we don't get rid of any races? Halflings work as is for a lot of people. All we are discussing here is a matter of taste and opinion. You like it? Great! You don't like it? Change it to fit your expectations.

 

[carkl3000]

Sorry, but, how did I not just do that? I took the word for word description of halflings in the PHB and simply substituted humans. It worked perfectly fine. Since the argument is that halflings are just short humans, well, that is pretty strong evidence no? The counter argument that all the races are just (Insert trait here) humans doesn't hold much water when you cannot actually substitute human for those other races.

I wonder how far you could take this.

In the reckonings of most worlds, halflings are the
youngest of the common races, late to arrive on the
world scene and short-lived in comparison to dwarves,
elves, and dragons.

Okay...

Perhaps it is because of their shorter
lives that they strive to achieve as much as they can in
the years they are given. Or maybe they feel they have
something to prove to the elder races, and that's why
they build their mighty empires on the foundation of
conquest and trade. Whatever drives them, halflings
are the innovators, the achievers, and the pioneers
of the worlds.

Oops! Nope!

 

[pemerton]

There are no uniquely non-human races in D&D.

I don't quite know what work "uniquely" is doing here, but setting that to one side I don't think this is true. Elves are non-human - we're told that they are a magical people of otherworldly grace and not entirely of the material world. (@Neonchameleon has shown that this can be treated as a metaphor for some humans; but literally it does not describe any humans. That's the difference from the Halfling description, as @Hussar and @Yaarel have pointed out.)

 

[FrozenNorth]

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.

Change is change. Saying that halflings probably aren’t popular enough to be one of the four core races (or should be relegated to the equivalent of Volo’s or MtoF) in a new edition is not “destroying” them or an indication that one “hates” halflings. Neither is saying that their lore would be more interesting if modified.

Saying that people who disagree with you are trying to “destroy” what you like or “hate” the things you like only serves to turn up the heat in a discussion and to give people who agree with you an excuse to dig in their heels and dismiss others. It is even worse when it is a caricature of others’ position.

No one is arguing for grabbing anyone’s PHB and tearing pages out of it. Even if 6e comes out and halflings are portrayed somewhat differently (or only appear in a splatbook), nothing prevents you from playing a halfling in exactly the same way you have to date.

Those who wish to change (or demphasize) halflings have the same goals you do: they believe the game as a whole would be better if changes were made. One theme that has returned repeatedly is that replacing some of the older races would allow newer races more chance to flourish, and would reflect the characters that newer players wish to play.

I like playing half-orcs, but if a compelling case can be made that the next edition is better served by replacing them with full-blood orcs or goliaths, well, I’ll probably still argue, but I won’t say that the change “hated” half-orcs and were trying to “destroy” them for no reason.

 

[Bolares]

"Perhaps it is because of their shorter
lives that they strive to achieve as much as they can in
the years they are given. Or maybe they feel they have
something to prove to the elder races, and that's why
they build their mighty empires on the foundation of
conquest and trade. Whatever drives them, halflings
are the innovators, the achievers, and the pioneers
of the worlds."

This is a really good point.

Halflings are really similar to "real world" humans, but are totally diferent from PHB humans. Humans can be put in place of halflings in their description, but PHB humans cannot

 

[ccs]

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.

So your dislike of halflings stems from the fact that your a crap/lazy DM who won't use your imagination to fill in the blanks.

Look, I get "not being inspired" by something as written. It's how I feel about Sorcerers....
But, unlike the anti-halfling crowd, I don't rant about them or wish them removed as an option.
And if I ever actually need to for whatever reason I can certainly spend some time coming up with something interesting for Sorcerers....

 

[Bolares]

So your dislike of halflings stems from the fact that your a crap/lazy DM who won't use your imagination to fill in the blanks.

woooow, that's agressive

 

[carkl3000]

okay, so we should just get rid of all races?
look the list of things so far found in nature that are inscrutable are things like quantum physics or the point of reality nothing has been found that we can't comprehend how it works however we have found endless numbers of complete weirdos thus a dnd race is one of them as the base line instead of the anomaly.

Not at all, there's interesting stuff to work with in all the race descriptions, but from the standpoint of character type and personality, you can't say that any of it isn't based off of very human emotions and motivations. They tried to make a non-human intellect in the lizardfolk description. It was a valiant attempt, but there is no way to write a personality or character-type that makes sense to human players without making it somewhat human.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Okay...

Oops! Nope!

you did the reverse not the task,

So your dislike of halflings stems from the fact that your a crap/lazy DM who won't use your imagination to fill in the blanks.

Look, I get "not being inspired" by something as written. It's how I feel about Sorcerers....
But, unlike the anti-halfling crowd, I don't rant about them or wish them removed as an option.
And if I ever actually need to for whatever reason I can certainly spend some time coming up with something interesting for Sorcerers....

why should wotc not fill in the blacks it is their product? tsr never managed it.

 

[Oofta]

Change is change. Saying that halflings probably aren’t popular enough to be one of the four core races (or should be relegated to the equivalent of Volo’s or MtoF) in a new edition is not “destroying” them or an indication that one “hates” halflings. Neither is saying that their lore would be more interesting if modified.

Saying that people who disagree with you are trying to “destroy” what you like or “hate” the things you like only serves to turn up the heat in a discussion and to give people who agree with you an excuse to dig in their heels and dismiss others. It is even worse when it is a caricature of others’ position.

No one is arguing for grabbing anyone’s PHB and tearing pages out of it. Even if 6e comes out and halflings are portrayed somewhat differently (or only appear in a splatbook), nothing prevents you from playing a halfling in exactly the same way you have to date.

Those who wish to change (or demphasize) halflings have the same goals you do: they believe the game as a whole would be better if changes were made. One theme that has returned repeatedly is that replacing some of the older races would allow newer races more chance to flourish, and would reflect the characters that newer players wish to play.

I like playing half-orcs, but if a compelling case can be made that the next edition is better served by replacing them with full-blood orcs or goliaths, well, I’ll probably still argue, but I won’t say that the change “hated” half-orcs and were trying to “destroy” them for no reason.

I personally wouldn't have used the term "destroyed" but I do think some people want to effectively remove the halfling as we know it from the game. As far as popularity, what threshold do we need? According to the best numbers we have they're between 5-6% of the PCs played. That's actually quite good considering how many races are available.

Going from personal experience, halflings are about as common as a lot of the non-human races. Should they be a common race? Who cares? Whether you like it or not, D&D has been and likely always will have a shared heritage with LOTR and halflings are part of that heritage right along with elves, dwarves and how dragons are depicted. While we aren't playing Adventures in Middle Earth by default (I'm sure some people do), there is still an expectation that some of the visuals will remain the same.

A compelling case to me is not "make them more aggressive like every other race". If you don't want to play halflings, there are a ton of other options. All I ask, all anyone is asking, is that you leave us our particular niche race alone even if you don't want to play them. Personally I don't think I'll ever play a tiefling, doesn't mean I'm telling everyone they should be removed from the PHB.

Change for the sake of change is not justification.

 

[Neonchameleon]

why should wotc not fill in the blacks it is their product? tsr never managed it.

I don't know why TSR and WotC don't fill in the blanks in the Forgotten Realms. Based on the 2e and 3.X publishing schedule I thought that filling in the blanks was the whole point of the Realms?

 

[Gammadoodler]

I don't quite know what work "uniquely" is doing here, but setting that to one side I don't think this is true. Elves are non-human - we're told that they are a magical people of otherworldly grace and not entirely of the material world. (@Neonchameleon has shown that this can be treated as a metaphor for some humans; but literally it does not describe any humans. That's the difference from the Halfling description, as @Hussar and @Yaarel have pointed out.)

If all you need is a description of being "magical" and "otherworldly", they can be added in basically anywhere in the halfling description without changing the substance of the description one iota.

"Magical" and "otherworldly" are meaningless descriptors beyond lazy writer code for "you should be impressed."

 

[Gammadoodler]

you did the reverse not the task,

why should wotc not fill in the blacks it is their product? tsr never managed it.

If your argument is A=A, the task should work in either direction. It doesn't.