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

[billd91]

I believe this point is that we have better options for all those reasons especially the shortness with goblins and kobolds have more wight and all around being better.

Whether or not you have better options for those reasons is nothing more than a matter of taste. If you prefer a goblin or kobold in that niche, then that's fine. But there will be other players/DMs who won't and will prefer a halfling. Personally, I'm halfling all the way. They're one of my favorite races - all mundane and pastoral, whose ambitions are more directed around food and beer than power or politics - but with a surprising grit under the surface.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Halflings are the most boring of the small races, in just about any setting except for Dark Sun.

I think the problem is being too strongly tied to Hobbits at the beginning of the game. When the D&D started to expand in a bunch of directions, Halflings mostly stayed the same. There's occasionally a subrace where they try something different, like the Ghostwise or controversially the Kender.

It's possible the introduction of Gnomes have kept Halflings roughly where they started, as Gnomes got into all sorts of interesting directions across editions. As they sort of have that fey and artificer niche.

Goblins have their own niches too that's certainly distinct from Gnomes.

But Halflings are basically "short humans". Too much about them is basically about how they relate to Humans.

 

[payn]

It might have been Golarion, but perhaps another setting, but Halflings were a big sailing ancestry. Since they are smaller they take less space and theoretically eat less. I've kinda liked that idea when I came across it.

Didnt Halflings ride dinosaurs and eat people in Dark Sun?

 

[Tonguez]

Neither goblins nor kobolds are pastoral

So human farmer? Gnome?
Pastoral is a social background not a race trait.

Yeah Halflings from their inception were set up as being just half-sized humans with nothing to define them beyond being simple pastoral folk. It works fine within Tolkiens story but as a race option in a broad menu of other races they are just a little too bland and fail to find a good niche of their own.
IMC I pushed them into the fey to become all those child-like fey trooping around behind Oberon and Titania

 

[Mind of tempest]

Whether or not you have better options for those reasons is nothing more than a matter of taste. If you prefer a goblin or kobold in that niche, then that's fine. But there will be other players/DMs who won't and will prefer a halfling. Personally, I'm halfling all the way. They're one of my favorite races - all mundane and pastoral, whose ambitions are more directed around food and beer than power or politics - but with a surprising grit under the surface.

look hobbits were made as an audience surrogate for children and merry england, the audience surrgate for most people is the human given how little they are idealised, halflings should at least not be in the major race category in phb given their lack of goals or real history.
they should have a rework to be a better suited for dnd.

It might have been Golarion, but perhaps another setting, but Halflings were a big sailing ancestry. Since they are smaller they take less space and theoretically eat less. I've kinda liked that idea when I came across it.

Didnt Halflings ride dinosaurs and eat people in Dark Sun?

You're mixing darksun and eberron together.

 

[bedir than]

Pastoral is a social background not a race trait.

Almost every racial trait in D&D could be a social background.

The fact of the matter is the hin/halfling/hobbit racial trait is pastoral. They are enjoyers of fine things, a pleasant life. Yes, other races can do that.

Anyone can be a miner and stoneworker too. No one suggests eliminating dwarves because of that.

 

[Weiley31]

It's at this point, I use various lore bits from the different versions of DND when it comes to races that need to be a bit more interesting in the game for lore reasons. So my Halflings follow in this regard.

IIRC in 4E, the Halflings actually had an expansive River Boating network so they were quite handy for getting around places when need be, aside from the usual Halfling stuff they were known for. And then in, Basic or another early edition, they actually had a whole expansive country/pocket nation called the Hin Dynasty, I believe and it was located within an expansive Halfling territory known as the Five Shires. And said members of the Hin Dynasty, certain ones, knew the application of a particularly nasty sort of thing known as Blackflame which meant that certain Halflings were actually Black Flame Zealots. Also, to add on to their River Boating nature, there were Halfling Pirates in the Five Shires as well.

And yeah, I used to feel the same way about Halflings or what exactly made them different from Gnomes, and vice versa. Thankfully, 4E helped out ALOT with that distinction.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

The lore or background is optional. We can remember the races from Dark Sun. In my opinion the problem is when their racial traits are designed in the way they become typecasted into certain classes: fighters, spellcasters or stealth. I guess the solution is the used in Pathfinder, offering options, the racial feats and to choose the bonus to abilities scores. Like this the typecasting is avoided.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Almost every racial trait in D&D could be a social background.

The fact of the matter is the hin/halfling/hobbit racial trait is pastoral. They are enjoyers of fine things, a pleasant life. Yes, other races can do that.

Anyone can be a miner and stoneworker too. No one suggests eliminating dwarves because of that.

dwarves have the decency to build grand mountain halls, and a utterly inhuman need to craft things and they have goals the average escapist player identify with which is gaining glory.

The lore or background is optional. We can remember the races from Dark Sun. In my opinion the problem is when their racial traits are designed in the way they become typecasted into certain classes: fighters, spellcasters or stealth. I guess the solution is the used in Pathfinder, offering options, the racial feats and to choose the bonus to abilities scores. Like this the typecasting is avoided.

you have a solid point on race design but that is not the problem with halflings.

 

[Cadence]

No Halflings means no Kender, right? ... so there's that.

But seriously, I'm with @Rabulias on Gnomes being part of what makes Halflings seem redundant. Part of that is probably just be my personal experience. Most of my class read Lord of the Rings in 5th grade, and then Moldvay came out while I was in 6th grade, and of course it had Elves, Dwarves, and Halflings as the three non-human options, and so my first two characters were a Dwarf and a Halfling.

The core Appendix N books seems to guide a lot of what made up the early D&D (Rangers, Barbarians, Law vs. Chaos, Paladins, Dwarfs, Elves, Halflings, etc....), and now it's baked in. And then fantasy exploded. For someone coming to D&D from WoW or MtG or Harry Potter or Percy Jackson, I can see them being completely befuddled about why this is the default setting. Whereas for someone coming from the beginning the question is why are WoW and MtG so far afield