Chaosmancer
Legend
I agree with Eberron and Athas, but I will also note those are two settings that went out of their way to alter races and make them different than normal. And in "general" DnD lore, the halflings are still just homebodies. So our "generic" lore is the same as Greyhawk and the Realms as well.
And yet each time you take a race out of the area, you put a similar race in. You took out dwarves and put in another underground race, like kobolds, goblins, or gnomes. When someone mentioned taking out the elves, they offered gnomes or firbolgs.
I'm not making up these gaps. Sure, you can not fill them, but almost every world DOES fill them. Sure, maybe it is dwarves living in the jungles. But SOMEONE lives in the jungles and forests. Maybe it is fey monsters, maybe it is elves, maybe it is dwarves, but there is someone there. But Halflings are...living in the human cities and the human farmlands. They don't fill a natural gap, they are just attached to humans.
I didn't see some of this the first time, so let me look again.
1) Anarchists is a really bold claim. They don't do anything, they just ignore claims of kings and sovereigns. And, weirdly, the kings and sovereigns... don't do anything about it. No body seems to care that the halflings are ignoring them, so what is the point of having them ignore them?
2) I'm guessing you are pulling lorekeepers from the part about halflings having stories and this point that they sometimes inadvertently have lore about ancient things. But that isn't their role in the setting. There are actually organizations that are lorekeepers, like Candlekeep and the like. Sure, more than one group can do the same thing, but the Halflings keeping lore almost seems accidental to a degree.
3) And so is everyone else. Seriously, this is a non-point. Every PC race is an adventurer.
4) You are going from a single line of text. It literally only states "Halfling children were known to fish for bats using a light, durable twine string, and bait of live moths." and seems to be from the novel Azure Bonds. Are being bat fishers an interesting detail? Sure. Is it something that is ever utilized or mentioned anywhere else? Nope.
5) Being chefs and brewers are... again not much of a thing for their entire race. Dwarves and Elves are known brewers too. Humans are brewers and chefs. The article doesn't even say anything more than that they cook food and make alcohol. They aren't even well known for it in the world, or making delicacies that other races like.
6) Maybe this is pulled from the fact that it says they are dominated by other races and don't live in their own communities. Otherwise... they are extra friendly. That is fine, but "we like outsiders" isn't something I can build off of. They don't have anything of their own to actually make them different.
So, we are seeing a lot of very reaching things. I mean, you want to include a single line about bats and the fact that they go on adventures as part of defining the race. And yes, it is perhaps the fault of the writers for not doing anythign with them. But... that is our point. Nobody seems to ever do anything with them. We are told again and again that they are subsumed by the other races.
No, you aren't understanding what I am saying.
Let us say that you make a world with elves in the forest. Then let us say that you make a world with Firbolgs in the forest. Those two worlds are markedly different. There is a big difference between using Elves and using Firbolgs. It makes a noticeable change to make that swap. Yes, you can make two different worlds, but they are obviously not interchangeable.
But Halflings... don't have a role like that. They are just "we are short humans that live with humans". And if you swap halflings and humans... there isn't a super noticeable difference.
That's great for him, but doesn't answer any of my questions. At all.
I'm familiar with that comic. I get the joke. Because it is a comic that doesn't take these things terribly seriously.
Because, let me ask you this. Your first answer was that farmers need to live in the human farmlands. Doesn't that mean... humans?
So the race that lives in human lands is... humans. And for some reason halflings. Who else would you have live in the human lands and be basically humans with human culture, other than halflings? That seems to be their role.... but why does it exist? Why do we need two human races in the same lands sharing the same cultures?
It is wonderful that you homebrewed them like that. Truly.
But that does nothing for official materials. Nowhere in any official material does it say that humans only live in villages and halflings live in towns. Or that halflings are the only ones who mint coins or that I'm assuming dwarves.
And yes, that matters because we are talking about the official halflings of the official game. I could make a world where all halflings can walk into the land of the dead and are the spirit guides for all souls. But that doesn't make that what halflings are in the larger game, because that is just my own made up lore. Which is fine for my own personal game. But I'm not the type of person to get on a soapbox and start demanding that people change everything to match my personal homebrew ideas, and since my ideas don't like this thing then no one can do anything with them.
So, I'm glad you have an interesting homebrew. I'm sure that having your halflings be one of the most advanced races is an interesting take, but it doesn't really help with anything we are given by the game.
But, again, you would notice it. You would have that thought.
I literally did not have that thought with the missing halflings in the game I mentioned. I literally noticed today that a 4 year campaign didn't include any halflings. That is what I am talking about. Not some sort of worrying about them every session or whatever people are responding with. The very concept of "there are no halflings?" didn't even cross my mind.
