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

[Hexmage-EN]

Maybe I'll finally play that swarmkeeper ranger I've been interested in...

My favorite gnome PC so far was a forest gnome conjuration wizard who could talk to small animals, but he didn't like them and found them annoying most of the time. He also worshipped Urdlen, the evil giant mole god, due to his grandfather's bizarre beliefs that the rest of the Gnomish pantheon was a bunch of bullies who did Urdlen dirty.

He also had a flying monkey familiar that could pick him up and fly him around by RAW.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I can buy them being less popular nowadays. I don't think I buy them being invisible on that chart.

If you add in Sunlight Sensitivity I can. More players have dropped their Drow concepts when I told them of what that ability does (and that no, there are no magic goggles in the base game to remove the penalty) than years of me arguing about them ever could.

 

[Chaosmancer]

My takeaway from your post: D&D is a “big tent” game, and not everything is for everybody—and that’s ok! I DM a lot, and I love the more “generic” player lineages, halflings included. The more “out there” lineages are not really my cup of tea. What you would characterize as interesting, I would characterize as having a homogenizing influence on the fantasy. I like the players’ characters to be “mundane“ people discovering a fantastical world. When a player character is nominally an anthropomorphic insectoid, but in actual play behaves more or less indistinguishably from a human (which I have found to be more or less inevitable over time, despite a player’s best intentions from the get-go), it cheapens the fantasy for me. My players enjoy my approach, but I’m certain others would find it intolerably boring. Different strokes and all that. Within the spectrum of “mundane” fantasy lineages, halflings enjoy a perfectly distinct niche in my game—stealthy, spirited, courageous, extraordinarily lucky, plucky underdogs.

I'm guessing you didn't read through the thread. Which is understandable.

But, you can still be a mundane character that is generic without being so empty. Halfling lore is severely lacking, with their most distinguishing feature seeming to be that they aren't important and everyone ignores them. Which is deeply unsatisfying for a lot of us.

 

[Chaosmancer]

What do you mean? Gnomes are hideous and irritating.

And historically, dwarves who can cast spells.

Funny that the bright, curious, mirthful and innocent gnome is "irritating" but the bright, curious, mirthful and innocent halfling is "endearing"

Could possibly be that the artwork for them previously and the conception of them was too close to dwarves.

 

[Faolyn]

And that's perfectly fine. Disagree with me. State your reasons and that's great. That's conversation.

Reasons:

People play them. Maybe not a lot, but enough.

The fill the everyman niche well, and people like them for that.

They're generic enough that it's very easy to stick them in any world with few or no modifications. Many other races--dragonborn, any planetouched, gith, minotaurs, kobolds, goblinoids--have enough differences or history that they don't fit in some settings well.

They're traditional.

They don't take up that much space in the book.

More races can be added to the PH without having to remove them.

 

[Bardic Dave]

I'm guessing you didn't read through the thread. Which is understandable.
Kijiji
But, you can still be a mundane character that is generic without being so empty. Halfling lore is severely lacking, with their most distinguishing feature seeming to be that they aren't important and everyone ignores them. Which is deeply unsatisfying for a lot of us.

You’re right I didn’t!

While I recognize your viewpoint as completely valid, I don’t share it. Halflings aren’t unsatisfying to me in the slightest. I’m glad they’re in the game in all their poorly defined mundanity. The blanker the slate, the better for my purposes (within reason). Halflings cater to my style of gaming in a way that Dragonborn, or Aaracokra, or even Elves and Gnomes don’t.

That being said, I don’t begrudge others their Lizardfolk and Genasi. To each their own. And if they do spice Halflings up in some future release, it won’t be the end of the world for me either. I can still keep playing them the way I prefer.

 

[Don Durito]

Has anyone played the Pathfinder Kingmaker computer game? Because that's bascially D&D and the very first and most likable companion they give your main character is a Halfling.

There's at least two gnomes that feature heavily in that game too.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

If you add in Sunlight Sensitivity I can. More players have dropped their Drow concepts when I told them of what that ability does (and that no, there are no magic goggles in the base game to remove the penalty) than years of me arguing about them ever could.

Sunlight sensitivity is a terrible rule, but why wouldn't you as a GM let them have the goggles or something like that?

 

[Neonchameleon]

So what is the anrrative role of halflings?

Whatever the DM or world creator wants. Players use them just fine. So does Eberron. So does Dark Sun. There are multiple factions of them in the Nentir Vale. I've stated what they do in Warhammer. That the Forgettable Realms don't use them is a reflection of why I've always found it a tedious setting. That said I prefer Realms halflings to Dragonlance ones.

But, I also think your vision of them as "bad comedy" really points to one of the greatest failures of DnD 5e.

Nah. It points to the way they were used in Dragonlance. Tinker Gnomes, Gully Dwarfs, and Kender are all bad comedy races.

IF I didn't know DnD, halfling would sound like they are literally half of a thing. That doesn't tell you squat except that they are small.

And if I didn't know D&D the picture below is a gnome. And "half of a thing" is half the size of a [human] thing. Which tells you more than "gnome" does.

And I will grant you, gnomes vary widely outside of DnD. Just like Fairies. Just like Goblins.

I mean, just look at Fairies. You have the disney tinker bell fairy. You have the Dresden Files super scary Faerie. You have the Harry Potter semi-feral monster sprite fairies. Are the Fey and faerie and Fairy thematically incoherent? No.

You've two different concepts tangled there that about half of modern urban fantasy mythology tries to disentangle. A Fairy is a small winged magical creature and the Harry Potter ones draw from the same well as Tinkerbell. The Faeries, the Fair Folk are a different kettle of fish.

The thing is simply that these ideas are OLD. Super Old. And so they have splintered. Just like you have Great Danes and Teacup Terriers, but "dog" is a pretty coherent concept.

And the 5e D&D version of gnomes is possibly the least interesting possible version (except possibly the dwarf wannabes from AD&D). It's a halfling putting on airs. At least the 4e ones had a connection to the feywild and were thus meaningfully part of the Fair Folk. There is plenty of room for something that't actually different and more mythical - but that's not the 5e one.

The original gnomes, as introduced by Paracellus were earth spirits (even rock gnomes fail at this), 18" tall and that could move through earth. And having halflings there should free gnomes up to be at least as magical as genasi. But instead we get gnomes that are halfling wannabes.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Talk to small woodland creatures!

Train you own sidekick party of small squirrels.

Not just woodland creatures in 5E.

Freebie speak with animals and minor illusion makes forest gnomes insanely good scout/sneak types. Rogues, rangers, illusionists, bards, etc.