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

[doctorbadwolf]

I got @'d a few times about my list and so am replying to the general idea here.

For clarification, I didn't say Moldvay was the best, I said it was pretty boss (as in really good or very well done or classic or near the top - as opposed to, say, describing it as GOAT).

I like turkey at Thanksgiving, standing rib roast and grasshopper pie at Christmas, fireworks on the 4th of July, hand cranked homemade ice cream, going with my son to the state fair every year to get funnel cakes, taking our annual family vacation to the same spot, read my son Narnia, LotR, and Earthsea, taught him to play D&D, and I like Hobbits in my D&D.

I'm also great with trying out new side dishes at Thanksgiving, with the addition of duck at cheesecake to the Christmas menu, will eat store bought for regular consumption, sorry elephant ears is the wrong answer - you've got me on this one, visiting new places when up there, got him to give Percy Jackson a try and he devoured them, he discovered Minecraft all on his own and is a fanatic, and I wonder if there is a connection between liking one's comfort food and stability and liking the race that likes those things.

Yeah no wonder the guy who equates liking a thing that is old to “appeal to tradition” and “being weighed down the the rotting corpse of an actual human being whose family is still alive and who is beloved by millions” doesn’t like the comfortable country folk.

I wonder what age he thinks all us halfling likers are, and what he’d think of my friend and her 14 year old kid who’ve never read LoTR or sat through the movies who love playing Halflings.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Isn’t @Hussar the only poster who is arguing that they shouldn’t be in the PHB?

Statistics Time:

As many people have said "remove halflings from the game" as have said "don't change or add a single thing about halflings".

Zero.

Which is odd as often as it has been leveled as an accusation in this thread

 

[FrozenNorth]

It's contentious for several reasons. First, as many people have pointed out putting them in the DMG (you used to say MM) means they basically are no longer a playable race in the vast majority of campaigns. All because you refuse to accept that 1 in 4 games has a halfling. They "lack traction" despite being in the top 10 of dozens of playable races.

You seem to be contradicting yourself. You both recognize that being a race in the PHB is a huge platform for races (since it is the only book many players ise) while at the same tome downplaying the fact that a lot of halflings popularity (at least compared to the many races that aren’t in the PHB) is precisely due to that platform.

 

[Oofta]

You seem to be contradicting yourself. You both recognize that being a race in the PHB is a huge platform for races (since it is the only book many players ise) while at the same tome downplaying the fact that a lot of halflings popularity (at least compared to the many races that aren’t in the PHB) is precisely due to that platform.

They still fill a specific niche that I happen to enjoy once in a while. Who knows what ranking they'd have if all races were freely available, I certainly don't.

Part of it is tradition. If I were to describe D&D to someone I'd probably describe something like "LOTR with a bit more magic and monsters, with ideas from several different fantasy tropes thrown in."

That description probably works for most people because of the books and a certain set of blockbuster movies. Then I'd go on to explain that, yes, you can play a cat person or maybe a fantasy version of a robot depending on the setting.

I don't see anything wrong with that, because it's only one of the reasons to keep halflings around. If we were slavishly devoted to Tolkien wizards would overall be far less powerful and extremely rare, elves would be effectively immortal and only "move on" to another place (as they were in the first editions of D&D).

There has to be some grounding, some common framework for a fantasy game. But even with that, I feel that halflings offer something unique and different than other races.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Once again your claims do not match your words. Halflings were at 6% in the 2017 data. Comfortably above your 5% threshold. They are at 4.7% in the 2019 data or slightly below your arbitrary 5% threshold. We don't know how much of this is skew or how much is natural variance - but you are jumping up and down screaming about 5% based on one single datapoint.

Well, the more recent data point suggests halflings are less than 5%.

I don’t necessarily endorse @Hussar ‘s methodology, but I can see where he’s coming from.

Presumably WotC has more accurate (and more complete) numbers than we do.

Suppose, for the sake of argument that halflings dipped below 5% in 2018. If halflings have remained below 5% for the past 4 years, would it be fair to reconsider whether they should be in the PHB (with the proviso that as @Hussar has indicated, the same metric is also applied to races that miss the 5% threshold)? If it was 6 years, instead of 4, and therefore less likely a blip, would this change your answer?

 

[FrozenNorth]

Statistics Time:

As many people have said "remove halflings from the game" as have said "don't change or add a single thing about halflings".

Zero.

Which is odd as often as it has been leveled as an accusation in this thread

So the best approach to avoid the thread being shut down is to tone down baseless accusations on both sides.

 

[bedir than]

Isn’t @Hussar the only poster who is arguing that they shouldn’t be in the PHB?

Not really, as every poster that has argued that their lore should change dramatically is effectively removing halflings from the PHB.

Making them all 100% magical makes them not halflings. Creating lore that takes away they're norm-core tales, removes halflings.

This is why there is pushback. We are being told our stories are invalid and should no longer exist.

 

[FrozenNorth]

They still fill a specific niche that I happen to enjoy once in a while. Who knows what ranking they'd have if all races were freely available, I certainly don't.

Part of it is tradition. If I were to describe D&D to someone I'd probably describe something like "LOTR with a bit more magic and monsters, with ideas from several different fantasy tropes thrown in."

That description probably works for most people because of the books and a certain set of blockbuster movies. Then I'd go on to explain that, yes, you can play a cat person or maybe a fantasy version of a robot depending on the setting.

I don't see anything wrong with that, because it's only one of the reasons to keep halflings around. If we were slavishly devoted to Tolkien wizards would overall be far less powerful and extremely rare, elves would be effectively immortal and only "move on" to another place (as they were in the first editions of D&D).

There has to be some grounding, some common framework for a fantasy game. But even with that, I feel that halflings offer something unique and different than other races.

I disagree, but I appreciate your thought-out response.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Sorry. I was working from the premise (that I thought we had agreed upon) that halflings were the ideal commoner. I mean to say that when you asked what a dragonborn commoner can't do that an "ideal commoner" can, I immediately replaced "ideal commoner" with "halfling" in my mind. My bad.

Yes a dragonborn can be a commoner (and I've never said otherwise or that other races don't also have common folk), but it is a very different type of commoner than a halfling would be. If the character I wanted to play and the story I wanted to tell called for a halfling, I could not just stick a dragonborn in instead and tell the same story in the same way.

I get that we are threading a needle a bit, to be expected when one race is trying to be an ideal. I was trying to get at why we are saying the halflings are the "ideal", what makes them "the perfect commoner" that simply isn't possible to do with the other races. But, let's not just abandon the line of thought we have here. What story calls for a halfling? That could not be done by a specific character of another race. That seems to be our sticking point.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I'll give you points for knowing that I have a loosely Norse mythology based mythology, but that's it.

I don't, by and large, rewrite races. Halflings are halflings. All I mentioned that was particularly specific to my campaign was the name that nomadic trader halflings are referenced by a specific term.

You can read my posts here and here. The only allusion to Norse mythology was a quick reference to Ginnungagap because that's the origin of, well, the creation of the mortal realms.

What I did explain was why I like playing halflings and how I integrate them into my campaign. But, I don't really change their core nature so I doubt it will mean anything to you.

I was fairly certain you have talked about some extensive homebrews for other races, I suppose I figured you had done more with the halflings.

Still, I've never really heard of the base halfling living in someone elses attic, or in backalleys. And I've never really heard of them taking the poorest and least paid jobs (typical level that chimney sweeps and ratcatchers were). Generally halflings are presented as shop owners or tavernowners. So, that is a bit of a difference.

The halflings delivering the mail is a bit different, nothing really mentioned for that anywhere. But I'm sure you just have them do that occasionally, and in no way in an organized enough fashion to be known as a reliable source for delivering the mail... because that would make them important. There is a reason the existence of the postal office is in the Constitution of the USA after all.

But, I think your phrasing of "core nature" is important. Because it seems that is what you think I'm out to change. And it isn't. Halflings being cheerful, genial, enjoying the comforts of life, and not being obsessed with wealth are all traits I'd like to keep. I'd like to add things like, say, halflings nomads delivering the mail, because it integrates them into the world. But, you keep telling me that doing things like that make them too important and therefore we can't do it.

I'll also note, that in the second post, you did exactly what I said in talking about your hombrew (though only very very briefly) in response to me asking about the PHB, and the second time was you deciding you needed to tell me about your homebrew, and I'm certain if I look around that area, once more, we'll find the discussion centered on "how are they presented in the PHB" to which, again, homebrew isn't how the game is presented in the PHB.