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

[jayoungr]

It's just weird one of the TOP 4 ICONIC AND COMMON RACES that WOTC pushes has weak lore and no worldbuilding impact.

I think their lore is fine, and I don't think worldbuilding impact is necessary.

 

[Minigiant]

I think their lore is fine, and I don't think worldbuilding impact is necessary.

I agree. It's fine for creating a character.

However WOTC pushes halflings as a major piece of D&D worldbuilding. And halfling lore is weak on that extent.

 

[jayoungr]

WOTC pushes halflings as a major piece of D&D worldbuilding.

Again, I don't see it that way. To the extent that they "push" halflings, they push them as common members of adventuring parties. That's not the same thing.

 

[Gammadoodler]

What part is arrogant? Saying the Lord of the Rings was written with different themes than Dungeons and Dragons? I'd call that more self-evident than anything else.

Lord of the Rings has its tropes and themes. They are decent tropes and themes, but the hobbits and their portrayal was meant only for those themes. They weren't meant or designed to be taken into DnD. Call me elitist, arrogant and silly as much as you want, none of those things dispute my argument.

They are, yet again, ad hominem attacks meant to discredit me, and that is poor argumentation.

For example, the only thing you say in response to my point is that "for simple folks to be appropriate avenues for make-believe" and that immediately proves you weren't paying attention. I wasn't talking about simple folk. I was talking about hobbits. Fairly rich and well off, in their shire disconnected from the rest of the world, with their elevensie's breakfast and pipeweed. What was it they said, the seven meals a day? Most "simple folk" only eat three meals a day, sometimes less. And, what exactly was Bilbo's "blue collar" job before he was hired as a burglar? Wasn't he just... independently wealthy and had no job? I certainly don't remember any mention of work he did, or a boss he walked out on. And before people start getting on me, we do know they had a farmer and a miller, so jobs were a thing for hobbits.

But right, I'm against simple folk in make-believe stories because I recognize that Dungeons and Dragons doesn't take place in Middle-Earth. How arrogant and conceited of me.

No. The part that is arrogant is the conceit that you are the arbiter of appropriate make believe, that you are an authoritative source for all D&D setting thematics and what ingredients should and should not mix.

It is an ad hominem attack in this case because the problem here is the person making the argument.

Because here's the thing..the only response necessary to address your entire argument is to note that it is composed of 100% opinion.

I don't think so highly of myself to suppose that I have the exclusive inside track to "appropriate D&D thematics". I am not so presumptuous as to believe that I have the one right answer. Instead I have opinions and recognize that other's opinions may differ and that neither opinion needs to be right or wrong. We can all play differently in the same sandbox.

 

[Faolyn]

Seems you might want to look and see if there is more lore for them. Such as following this link and scrolling for their government, society, religion, the code, I mean... seems like they do have a culture and identity, though it is shifting in 5e DnD. As I have acknowledged

Firbolg

Firbolgs (pronounced: /ˈfɪərboʊlg/ FEER-bolg[12] listen) were a reclusive race of giant-kin who preferred to avoid contact with other sentient races.[6][3][13] They were both the most intelligent[14][13] and the most powerful of the giant-kin.[6][4][9] Firbolgs resembled humans,[6][4][9][3] and...

forgottenrealms.fandom.com

You do realize most of that is from an earlier edition when firbolgs were very different than they are now, right?

 

[Faolyn]

Remember how 3.5e had all sorts of races at narrower and narrower niches? Like, let's look at the Expanded Psionics Handbook as this had one of the worst. You've got Dromite (Interesting bug-folk), Half Giants (This is where they became "Goliaths but with psionics" that they'd keep into 4E incidentally) and then, the bad one. The Xeph. What are the Xeph? They're off-brand Gith who exist to be soulknives and/or make Protoss jokes from Starcraft. That's their whole thing. They delve too hard into that. And 3.5E had -tons- of these races. Halflings have that whole "This is a niche that needs filling and, we are filling this niche no matter what" and don't have much room to move out of that niche

Well, they have moved out of that niche in certain settings. And while I, personally, disagree that a race needs to fill a niche and every niche needs filling (or there wouldn't be so many Big Strong races, like orcs/goliaths/bugbears/minotaurs/etc.), it's not like there's a lot of other races that are trying to usurp the halflings' place.

Mind my whole thing in this argument is "I want dragonborn and tieflings promoted more and halflings less as reflective of their popularity among the fanbase and also to make people who want Dragonborn and Tieflings removed to have to face that knowledge" soooo my position on this is not the best out there

Dragonborn and tieflings can be promoted. Or rather, I think that WotC doesn't need to continue with the common/uncommon races, since it should be up to the DM as to how common each race is in their world. Dragonborn and tieflings--and in my mind, full orcs and at least goblins--should all be in the PH, with their place determined solely by alphabetical order and nothing else.

 

[Minigiant]

Again, I don't see it that way. To the extent that they "push" halflings, they push them as common members of adventuring parties. That's not the same thing.

No. They puh halflings as a common race for the world. The uncommon races are uncommon in the base assumption of the world. It's right on 33. Commoners outside of cosmopolitan cities are not used to seeing uncommon races.

Dragonborn and tieflings can be promoted. Or rather, I think that WotC doesn't need to continue with the common/uncommon races, since it should be up to the DM as to how common each race is in their world. Dragonborn and tieflings--and in my mind, full orcs and at least goblins--should all be in the PH, with their place determined solely by alphabetical order and nothing else.

I agree.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Bad lore isn't going to possibly break the game, like bad mechanics can.

Bad lore absolutely can break a game. Maybe not as easily, but it certainly can happen.

You didn't demonstrate anything. You said "how do I portray it?" and "why can't a 20th-level, 20 Dex human do the same thing." Neither of those is a demonstration--especially since a human of any level can do it if they can make an Acrobatics check.

Do you think maybe the example I restated might have something to do with it? And, again, that acrobatics check, as we both acknowedged is an optional rule. So, sure, any human of any level can do it... if you are playing by an optional rule that lets them do it. Let us say that we are playing the base game. Now they can't. So, using the baseline rules they can't do what you are claiming.

Except they're not disconnected from the world. They have their roles to play. You just refuse to admit that they have those roles because you find them boring. And those halflings that live in other people's cities have a connection to those people and that city.

Again, you seem like you are just skimming my posts looking for things to disagree with. I acknowledged that they have connections to people when they live in human cities. They are most fully disconnected when it is a halfling only area.

And, maybe instead of just saying I'm wrong... tell me what role does a halfling shire play in the wider region? They don't pay taxes we know that much. They have no indication of engaging in any signifcant trade. The absolute most they do is engage in a marketday with human cities... exactly like a human village. So halfling village or human village... there is no difference to the nearby area if it is one or the other.

So, prove it. What is this role? Just being exactly like the good, salt of the earth human farmer boys who are bright eyed and innocent and dreaming of chasing butterflies while they fish in the crick? Because that's what they are so far.

All that came from an Ecology article, which I don't think is definitively canon, and I can't find any hint that it's included in 5e lore. It's actually fairly interesting--it's a fall from grace due to the gaining of knowledge. Very biblical.

And I don't like it. At all. I find it is pretty terrible lore. Because it demonizes thinking.

When the book literally says halflings gather lore--even if they don't do so actively--that's lorekeeping.

No, they gather stories. Stories =/= lore.

And, if they happen to accidentally gather some lore along the way, that doesn't make them lorekeepers. If it did, everyone would be lorekeepers.

So, halflings who travel nomadically, looking for excitement, are adventurers then.

What do you mean by "looking for excitement"? If they are just traveling around to see the temples in the major cities, they aren't adventurers, they are pilgrims. If they are looking for excitement by just going to various places to try new foods, then they are tourists, not adventurers.

There is an element of facing danger involved in being an adventurer. And no, "facing danger" =/= "ending in violence" you can peacefully settle such encounters, but there being a conflict that needs settled is pretty key to being an adventurer. Otherwise, every person who travels on the road is an adventurer.

It doesn't make one a hero, though. Especially if one is also murdering people for bad reasons.

And I never said having a single heroic trait makes you a hero. You keep adding that to my argument. I said "these are heroic traits" and you seem to have taken that to mean that I was saying every single person who has those traits is a hero.

Loving your mother is a positive and good trait. Mass Murderers still love their mothers. They are not heroes. But they posses a positive and good trait. How many times do I have to repeat this?

Both require courage, though.

No, I don't think having so much bloodlust that you don't care if you die as long as you kill more people requires what we would refer to as courage.

Then you should have no problem with the fact that halfling lore paints them as nice. Instead, you just mocked them for being so wonderful and pure (even though nobody claims they are).

It is because they take it too far. You understand what a Mary Sue or Gary Stu character is right? And getting to the point where everyone good likes you and only bad people don't because you are so pure and good and wholesome puts you pretty firmly on that path. And that is the type of discourse people give halflings in these threads.

I've never known anyone who wasn't at least aware of the trope, even if they didn't subscribe to it.

I never said I wasn't aware of it, just that I don't see it. About the only "whimsical" elves I see are the pure-hearted maidens skipping through the fields to make flower crowns. Heck, I've seen more debauched and hedonistic elves than whimsical elves.

So? It's a myth. Not every group of people have to actually have an origin myth. And again, that's the Realms, so it has no bearing anywhere else.

Why should the Player's Handbook be filled with lore about only one setting when it's supposed to be a generic guide?

They didn't put the origin myths for all the races in the PLayer's Handbook, did they? They put them in other books. What's wrong with the elves having their lore written out in Mordenkainen's? How is that bad?

And, again... yeah, pretty much everyone in DnD has an origin myth to one degree or another. And only the races that seem to be after thoughts for the creators (or are the odd exception of human) don't.

The exception, along with halflings, goblins, and the planetouched, who, originally, just had various fiends/celestials/elementals in their history and weren't actually a unified people. A lot of exceptions.

Planetouched aren't an exception. Their origin myths are just baked into their existence. Like Half-Orcs and Half-Elves. I don't need an origin myth for Half-Orcs, because their origin is the mixing of two different forces.

And goblins are an exception, and a weird one. I can kind of see it because Magbuliyet killed all of their gods, so he could logically be suppressing their origins. After all, the goblins don't even know the names of their deceased gods.

It means that having elves provides nothing unique that can't be done with any other race. One of your complaints about halflings is exactly that.

And you are trying to replace every single elf trope with ancient dragonswho were forcibly polymorphed? Colour me unimpressed by the comparison.

But if you're fine with homebrewing things for other races--like firbolgs--then there's no reason why you're not fine with homebrewing anything for halflings. If anything, their supposed lack of lore gives you more leeway with them. Which is a good thing, because it would be boring if all halflings at all tables were the same.

I homebrew them because I feel like altering their direction. That doesn't mean that I don't have problems with some of them, ie the Lizardfolk. This may surprise you, but I don't think me homebrewing the lizardfolk is sufficient to fix them. Because I would argue that they should be rewritten and changed by the company. Just like I'm arguing for halflings.

I just don't see the title of this thread as "Fixing every single race in the game" it is a thread about halflings. You seem to think just because I'm arguing about halflings in a thread about halflings that I have no issues with any other race in the game. I do. This is a thread about halflings though.

You: Dwarfs can make amazing stone constructions that humans could never do.

Me: <shows picture of Coral Castle, made by a single person who managed to tow, arrange, and carve over a thousand tons of stone, all by himself.>

You: OK, that's cool, but dwarfs made the face of Lord Mror! No human could do that. You'll never find a picture of humans carving an entire mountain into a face!

Me: <shows a picture of the Crazy Horse monument under construction, done mostly by a single person, and which is currently almost 90 feet tall, as well as a picture of Kailash Temple, which was carved, top down, out of a mountain, is over 100 feet tall, and is one one of over 1,500 similar structures in India.>

You: OK, that's cool, but the face of Lord Mror is so much bigger! No human could do that.

That's the definition of moving goalposts.

(Also, that's Eberron, a world that according to you, is designed to change the standard races and therefore doesn't count. What dwarfs is other settings have done anything similar? Closest I can think of are those asteroids that got carved into Spelljamming ships.

8,200 ft is what defines the minimum height of a mountain according to Google. The Mror face (which I chose simple because it was the most impressive visual I could point to that I knew you had seen) Looks like it is larger than the mountain beside it. That means, at a bare minimum, it would have to be at least 9,000 ft tall, and I'd really argue it is closer toward the 20,000 ft scale.

Yeah, a 100 ft tall city is impressive. As is that 90 ft momunement. Humans in the real world are incredible. I keep saying it. But you are trying to prove that real world humans are more fantastical than a fantasy race operating under fantasy physics. That Crazy Horse Monument (which is again, really cool) is a monument on top of a mountain. It is not actually a complete, multiple thousand of feet tall, mountain being carved. I never moved my goalpost, You just didn't listen to what I was saying.

Only because of lore that started when there were only four PC races and that was never updated when other, equally crafty races started being made.

Maybe. Or maybe dwarves still deserve the top spot.

Which means that not finding lore you like is your own fault because you are deliberately refusing to use it.

It's like if you were hungry, and I hand a bunch of food you liked and offered it to you, and you refused to accept it because it wasn't already at your table and anyway, it's different than what you're used to.

Or maybe it is like saying "hey, Taco bell burritos sucks" and someone coming up to me and saying "But Chipotle doesn't suck, why are you complaining about burritoes sucking, Chipotle makes great burritos" And then not excepting that I was talking about Taco Bell Burritos, so why do you want to derail me by talking about Chipotle?

Because, again, for the two settings that went out of their way to break the mold for every race, they broke the mold for halflings. BUT I still have problems with the mold. The generic lore. The thing they broke. Yes, they broke it, and yes, it is potentially better than the mold, but the mold still exists. It is still the standard, and I'm talking about that,

They're more than just thieves.

Or maybe you could have more than one elf culture in your world, and one of those cultures are thieves.

So that disproves my point how? Is them somehow being more than thieves mean that Dark Sun didn't radically change elven lore to break the mold of normal elven lore? I mean, you accused me of not being able to even conceive of the lore being different... by showing me an example I gave you of how dark sun uses different lore. So again... why did you accuse me of something so blatantly false?

Maybe I didn't write that well, so here goes: You are unwilling to accept such differences in any world outside of Dark Sun. You can't seem to imagine a more typical D&D world where elves were labeled as thieves. Because such a thing would "break D&D lore."

It would break the traditional lore for elves, yes. And no other setting outside of Dark Sun does that. So... what's your point? You somehow think I can't conceive of settings breaking the base lore, even though I have constantly agreed that two settings break the base lore?

Yes. It's been broken. That means you are not required to use it, especially if it wasn't a mold you liked in the first place.

Great. How does someone who buys the player's handbook tomorrow know that? Heck, lets say they get Players handbook and Mordenkainen's. How do they know what the Eberron lore for halflings is? I mean, the modl has been broken, so clearly they aren't going to just see that standard depiction of halflings that I'm talking about right? They are going to see the Dark Sun and Eberron versions as well, because those are printed right?

Actually, there is a single paragraph in an easily missed box for Dark Sun in Mordenkainens. Zero mention of Eberron though. So, is that it? Have we fixed all the issues presented in multiple pages of halfling write ups with a single paragraph about a setting most people have never heard of? That same box by the way has a much larger paragraph on Greyhawk halflings and a paragraph on Forgotten Realms halflings... which I guess are different than the ones in the book as well.

Why not! You seem to think there are no human gods!

Because she is an elf god, and specifically a drow god.

And again, they are less likely to fail, because when they roll a 1, they get a chance to reroll. Their luckiness prevents catastrophic failure. It's basically situational advantage. Describe it exactly like you would for anyone else. Only instead of getting the advantage because they were really talented or the circumstances were very good, it's because they were very lucky.

They roll a 1, they get a 3 and still fail. Showing that they were very lucky in... still failing. Again, you acted like "they are the lucky race" was so defining of a trait, but when it comes to it actually applying, first they have to maybe fail, then they have to turn that fail into a success, which they may not do, and that is the only time this highly important trait to their race is brought up at all?

It's not a question of "positions." It's not even a question of disagreeing with a house rule they made. People who claimed that halflings never fail or can never be afraid are simply wrong by both RAW and RAI.

Surprised you didn't call them out on it when they did so. Guess you were so busy tirading against me that you missed them doing it repeatedly, for pages and pages.

Have brave halfling NPCs?

Most humans, elves, dwarfs, whatever, are not that brave. Or at least, they're not the kind of brave that gets them to go into a dark, monster-filled dungeon in order to kill things and take their stuff. Adventurers, the ones in your party, are that kind of brave; they're exceptions to the rule. Most halflings are that kind of brave, however.

So if your entire party is filled with brave people, that's OK. They're supposed to be that sort of brave.

So, the only way to make the halfling PC special in their braveness is to have them not be special and send halfling NPCs into the dungeon with the players.

Are you still not seeing why I had a problem with how to portray this? Or are you going to stick with the idea that I simply don't understand the word brave?

And this is why I feel you're either being deliberately obtuse or you're being a troll, because these are things you should know. You should know that adventurers are supposed to be unusual in comparison to regular folk. You should know that you, the DM, do not dictate how your players act or react unless they're under some sort of magical compulsion or rules exception that specifically calls for it. You should know it's up to the players to decide if their characters have fears and how they react to those fears. You should know to encourage your players to role play their traits, whether racial or not. You should know how to show traits in NPCs. I have a hard time believing that you don't know these things, unless you're a really bad DM. But I've read enough of your posts in other threads that you've always seemed to be a good one. So what the hell is going on here, that you only have this problem with this one race, to the point that you can't seem to understand their basic functions and declare them an inherently bad race?

Because by doing all the things you list, halflings aren't special in the thing that supposedly makes them special. Every halfling has the grit and determination of a veteran soldier who stares death in the eye, so what makes your PC special for being brave? Especially when all of the PCs are unusually brave, unless someone is specifically playing a cowardly character.

I mean, I'm currently playing a tiefling in a group with a minotaur and a messed up Firbolg in a game with a new DM. My character is being referred to as "mouse" because he just wants to live an ordinary life and he is getting dragged into this situation with these two highly motivated, brave warriors. Let's say I was playing a halfling... then I'd be just as brave as those two. Being brave isn't special, it doesn't define anything about my character, because I'm just like the rest of the party.

And, according to what you wrote, the best solution is to either have a fear just like them... meaning I still stay the same as them. Or my own bravery is shown to be shared by every single other halfling, meaning I'm not special, and now we have halfling NPCs being braver than us, because they are weaker than us.

I'm not saying it is an impossible challenge that no DM could ever solve. But it is a very difficult thing to try and figure out, and all of your "solutions" don't actually solve the problem.

 

[Chaosmancer]

No. The part that is arrogant is the conceit that you are the arbiter of appropriate make believe, that you are an authoritative source for all D&D setting thematics and what ingredients should and should not mix.

It is an ad hominem attack in this case because the problem here is the person making the argument.

Because here's the thing..the only response necessary to address your entire argument is to note that it is composed of 100% opinion.

I don't think so highly of myself to suppose that I have the exclusive inside track to "appropriate D&D thematics". I am not so presumptuous as to believe that I have the one right answer. Instead I have opinions and recognize that other's opinions may differ and that neither opinion needs to be right or wrong. We can all play differently in the same sandbox.

So, I'm wrong because it might be possible to play DnD in Middle Earth... even though to my knowledge there is not a single officially supported setting for Middle Earth in DnD?

Tell me, how many of the most LoTR products for gaming have focused on hobbits as main characters? The last big thing I remember hearing on the video game front was... Shadows of Mordor? And, I never played it, but the main character and every single scene I ever saw on every advertisment never featured a single hobbit. It might be, and I know I must be incredibly arrogant for even considering this, that maybe Hobbits didn't fit the game they were making.

So, yeah, the books written had a specific role for hobbits. That role does not translate well into DnD. It simply doesn't, and instead of trying to prove that it somehow does, you resort to calling me names.

 

[Chaosmancer]

You do realize most of that is from an earlier edition when firbolgs were very different than they are now, right?

If you read my post, or any of a number of other posts I made in this thread about Firbolgs, you would know that yes, I am aware.

However, that doesn't mean the lore doesn't apply in some capacity.