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

[bedir than]

The thing is, though, it's very hard to play a member of another species without (a) resorting to stereotypes or (b) looking like you're engaging in some sort of weird fetish (even if you're not), especially if you're playing an anthro race and talk about your tail a lot or try to sniff people. Or (c) annoying players who don't care about those details and just want to get on with it.

Yep, everyone that objects to the halfling leanings per the PHB as being "just humans" ignores that is essentially an argument against Dwarves, Elves, Orcs, Dragonborn, Tieflings, Gnomes, Goliaths, etc

 

[Chaosmancer]

People are disagreeing with you. They also disagree with the way certain opinions are treated as objective facts. Most people are fine with halflings. Since you are not, the game is structured to allow enough creative freedom to do what you want at your table.

They don't care what page the halflings is on in the PHB and are content with the way it is.

I see this in other threads too. Someone is unhappy with a certain aspect of the game and proposes that official changes be made. They are not satisfied that they themselves can already make changes as they see fit that don't affect the majority of the players.

You are correct, this is something that I feel deserves an official change to the game. 50 years of halflings being one of the four most prominent races in the game and they lack any sort of exploration. Even the smallest hint of anything is lept upon as "proof" that the halflings are more complex, because there isn't anything else for people to point towards.

And, it is fine if you don't care about that. It is fine that you like halflings to be a blank slate to write upon. It is fine that you want them to be "faded into the background" to the point where we can have them vanish without anyone noticing. But just because you want to keep running them that way, doesn't mean that the rest of us would like the company to actually validate halflings being given the position of prominence they have been given.

 

[Faolyn]

@Hussar's argument, as I understand it, is that Halflings take up valuable page count in the PHB that could be better spent. It's no rebuttal to this argument to show that most people don't object to Halflings, or can just ignore them. That's true of lots of stuff, but isn't a reason to include that possible stuff in the PHB!

But it's also not a reason to not include them in the PH. Removing them doesn't make the game better; it just removes an option.

Let's talk about a hypothetical 6e. Part of the argument that Hussar and others have used is page count, since nobody wants to carry about a textbook-sized PH. But since we don't know how they're going to do races--or lineages/cultures--in 6e, we can't say that the two or three pages gained by removing halflings is going to be a major savings.

They might go strictly for a Tasha's style thing, where you pick a package of racial abilities, then a package of cultural abilities and can mix-and-match them to your heart's content. In this case, "halfling" would be just a couple of paragraphs to a page.

They might include relatively little lore for the same reasons that they included relatively little lore in VGR (which, presumably, was to allow DMs to make up their own lore and/or because you can already find all that info online, so there's no point in repeating it). In this case, halflings would have just as much lore as the other races in the PH, and outside of setting books, it would be entirely up to the DM.

They might include a bunch of other well-liked "nonstandard" races in the 6e PH, like full orcs, aasimar, genasi, gith, or tabaxi (anyone else think it odd that there have been no major canine races in D&D? Yeah, a few have been made, mostly for Mystara, but they haven't really taken off). In this case, having something as normal as a halfling provides a nice counterbalance of normalcy to the alienness of the other races.

They may include a brand new base setting for 6e, like how 4e did Nentir Vale, and include a lot of lore on halflings in there. Especially if they do a playtest and people complain about the lack of halfling info.

They may actually decide to produce more digital content, believing that people will buy the dead tree PH, put it on a shelf, and mostly rely on the digital version when not at home. In this case, they could include as much info on halflings as they want since electrons don't weigh anything.

 

[Minigiant]

Yep, everyone that objects to the halfling leanings per the PHB as being "just humans" ignores that is essentially an argument against Dwarves, Elves, Orcs, Dragonborn, Tieflings, Gnomes, Goliaths, etc

For some of us that's a huge problem.

Especially as D&D starts to deemphasize racial ability score adjustments. Everyone is just a human with a built in feat.

That's why I say races show have more fantasy elements.

Elves should be allergic to cold iron!

 

[Chaosmancer]

Then demonstrate how. Because I've seen nothing at all in this thread trying to do so other than with gnomes - which don't fit and are already less popular than halflings within D&D.

And all the times I made the attempt and was shut down with "those aren't my halflings"

 

[Faolyn]

the niche is not the problem but the thing filling it could be much better.

But again, that could be said about almost any race.

 

[Chaosmancer]

As a halfling fan, the Stout is all flavor and tiny mechanics. Frankly the slightest boost to a couple rare saves isn't doing them a favor.

Stout - boost to poison defenses
Lightfoot - easiest stealth in game
Ghostwise - telepathy to anyone within 30'
Lotusden - awesome nature spells making them more forests gnomes than forest gnomes

The "Stout Resilience" needs a boost to be on par with the other halflings, even ignoring the much more powerful Lotusden.

Huh, that's interesting. I hadn't bothered to go look at Ghostwise and Lotusden, because they are in supplements and never talked about. And, funnily enough one of the big rallying cries about halflings has been "they have no innate magic"

Kind of amusing to see that 50% of their subraces have explicitly magical abilities.

Also, again, Forest Gnomes outperform even the Lotusden halflings in the forest. Druidcraft and the disadvantage on tracking are nice, but don't really compare to minor illusion speaking with the animals of the forest.

 

[Faolyn]

Elves should be allergic to cold iron!

I wouldn't mind that. If they make an official ruling on cold iron (or whatever they want to call it), make cold iron weapons on par with silvered weapons (in terms of cost and availability) and say an elf that's struck with such a weapon must make a save or be poisoned (or similar issue) for a brief time, like a round, that'd be cool.

They'd likely have to give elves another benefit to balance it out, though, or make a protection from iron trinket or something (on par with the sunglasses people keep making for drow and other races with sublight sensitivity). But it'd be a good way to make elves more fae in nature.

 

[bedir than]

Druidcraft and the disadvantage on tracking are nice, but don't really compare to minor illusion speaking with the animals of the forest.

Entangle and Spike Growth

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Making elves and/or gnomes into true Fey is something I’ve toyed with but never implemented in an ongoing campaign.

If I did that, I’d probably play up the innate nature/illusion magic element of gnomes (so druid & illusion classes would be their strong suit), and the environmentalist/enchantment magic side of elves (more rangers & sorcerers).

Which would leave halflings Vs gnomes as even more analogous to humans Vs elves. Which would mean I’d want to give the Halflings a little bit more to work with, mechanically. Porting over a bit of resistance to harmful magic from Dwarves, perhaps? Strengthening their luckiness might work. Hell..maybe even make them into shapechanging prairie dog type critters. Or just have aspects similar to burrowing mammals, like enormous cheek pouches.