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

[Mercurius]

And in earlier drafts, Strider was going to be a hobbit.

Named Trotter!

Thank the gods that Tolkien came up with Strider.

 

[Tonguez]

As a frequent halfling/hobbit/pech player, I've looked at them primarily as filling the niche of being over their head (literally), but surviving due to preserverance and luck. They're the underdog ancestry.

I find the niche difference between goblins and kobolds to be just as miniscule as gnomes and halflings. I'd feel no strong loss if gnomes and kobolds disappeared entirely.

Halflings and kobolds should fo definitely

 

[Urriak Uruk]

I don't have a problem with haflings, but I do have a problem with elves... D&D seems to be treating them more and more as just elitist long-lived humans with pointed ears, and it's getting boring to me.

I definitely prefer the elves as presented in the Witcher... specifically, the Wild Hunt elves. Literally from another world, and view humans as literally animal chattle to enslave.

Or, as I'm reading Berserk now, I love this concept of elves. They're more like the original Nordic concept.

Mod Edit: Sorry, but we had to remove the image as NSFW. ~Umbran

Speaking of the Wild Hunt, Marvel actually hit on a fun idea for Dark Elves.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The redundant feeling some have of Halfling is that their race feels just like a culture and one that a human or gnome can easily replicate.

So you're saying that halflings need better innate abilities? That's doable, although I'd say their innate luck is a pretty big deal already.

 

[jayoungr]

I will say I have noticed a division in previous conversations (not just here) between those who want high-concept races and those who are satisfied with the differences being basically cosmetic. I feel a little mismatch between myself and one of the GMs I play under because when he designs custom races, he goes for the high-concept, and I sometimes find them more stifling than liberating to play.

It's just a matter of taste.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Named Trotter!

Thank the gods that Tolkien came up with Strider.

brb, rolling up a halfling ranger named Trotter on D&D Beyond.

 

[Quartz]

Something I suggested in another thread was that in campaigns set in far antiquity halflings might be masters of the plains and cavalry as horses were too small for other races to ride, being limited to chariots.

Maybe in your world horses never got larger and halflings still fill that niche?

 

[see]

If your best argument against some part of D&D is "This is in D&D for no better reason than it's a traditional part of D&D", you have successfully made an absolute, ironclad, and unassailable argument for keeping it.

We know what happens to D&D when you approach it with the view of making every element positively justify its inclusion, and changing it until it did so. It was called Fourth Edition.

 

[RangerWickett]

4e wasn't what you say. 4e was designed to play online, because Hasbro wanted more revenue from D&D, and the WotC heads figured they could pursue a subscription model, sorta like World of Warcraft. Things were designed to be fun in a video-gamey way.

Then the lead designer of the virtual tabletop system committed suicide, and the whole project fell apart, but they still had to publish the edition, even if the digital tools were dramatically pared down from the original idea.

 

[RangerWickett]

As for the topic of 'why have halflings,' I dunno, why have dogs? Why have anything? There's no guarantee that the planet earth would have ostriches, but we do.

Why have the town of Vaughan, Mississippi? It doesn't even have a gas station. It's not important to the world. It's just a thing that exists, that probably won't matter. Except one time I really had to use the bathroom on a road trip, and I pulled off there, and got really annoyed that there was no public restroom anywhere, so I had to get back on the interstate and drive a half hour to the next rest stop. It was unimportant other than as a tiny vignette.

You don't have to justify anything. Stuff just sometimes exists.