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

[Oofta]

My campaign has very dangerous areas, but also relatively settled ones. Even with magic provided by helpful druids and nature clerics, there has to be a lot of farmland per person to sustain a society. If settlements are being constantly raided, civilization will collapse.

Halfling farm settlements are in the more settled areas. Occasionally they are overrun, just like every other race. On the other hand if you have a choice of raiding a village that has more food per individual, more wealth, are just as easy or easier to raid or a halfling village where the inhabitants need half the food per person, don't have much in the way of material wealth and are just as dangerous or even more dangerous which one are you going to raid? You can't even loot weapons or goods from a halfling village - they're all sized for small individuals.

EDIT: Halflings are also quite willing to simply melt away before enemies and become nomads like their cousins.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I cant enjoy Spelljammer because it is too ridiculous. It is fine to have a farcical parody of D&D. But when the ridiculous setting literally invades the serious settings, it can become problematic.

I get the sentiment, my suspension of disbelief is more fragile than that of an average D&D player, so I like if people desillify things a bit when building their own settings. But halflings! Really? On the scale of ludicrous D&D things they don't register even as a twitch of the needle.

 

[carkl3000]

That's kinda the point.

With how on the edge and ridiculous the norms is, halflings not engaging whatsoever with little countermeasures highlights how alien and plot holey they are.



Just because they don't value money doesn't mean they have no valuables.

A farm is a farm. A bunch of wheat is a bunch of wheat.

With how unsustainable the orcs are in their lore, orcs would be raiding every halflings village on a regular basis just to survive.

And halflings only get a +2 to Dex. That's only a 5% increase. They don't even get a size bonus to stealth, AC, and attack rolls in 5e.

Halflings kinda suck mechanically. Some minor luck and bravery would not keep a tween sized humaniod from being punted around by full sized medium creatures who are trained for battle.

I don't think they have much to worry about. It seems as though the ratios of helpless halfling villages to gnoll raiding parties to bands of brave adventurers in Faerun is almost invariably 1 to 1 to 1. Go figure...

 

[Gammadoodler]

We are at this point starting to enter into a 1 for 1 re-hash of the last halfling thread

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

That's kinda the point.

With how on the edge and ridiculous the norms is, halflings not engaging whatsoever with little countermeasures highlights how alien and plot holey they are.

Then so what?

If all of the civilizations as described in standard D&D ecosystem are highly improbable (if not outright impossible), what difference does the flavor of improbability make?

 

[Minigiant]

My campaign has very dangerous areas, but also relatively settled ones. Even with magic provided by helpful druids and nature clerics, there has to be a lot of farmland per person to sustain a society. If settlements are being constantly raided, civilization will collapse.

Halfling farm settlements are in the more settled areas. Occasionally they are overrun, just like every other race. On the other hand if you have a choice of raiding a village that has more food per individual, more wealth, are just as easy or easier to raid or a halfling village where the inhabitants need half the food per person, don't have much in the way of material wealth and are just as dangerous or even more dangerous which one are you going to raid? You can't even loot weapons or goods from a halfling village - they're all sized for small individuals.

EDIT: Halflings are also quite willing to simply melt away before enemies and become nomads like their cousins.

Small creatures eat as much as medium ones. And halflings are not more dangerous than humans.

I like halflings.
My complaint is that 5e rules and lore for halflings is dumb and no DM can run halflings seriously without houseruling the mechanics and/or changing the lore.

 

[Minigiant]

Then so what?

If all of the civilizations as described in standard D&D ecosystem are highly improbable (if not outright impossible), what difference does the flavor of improbability make?

It's ultimately just a matter of degrees.
Frankly it doesn't matter. However I prefer some fans understanding where other fans are coming from.

And I prefer halfling being as inclusive to all the community if it is being propped up as important.

 

[Chaosmancer]

You, yourself, quite literally told me all of my halfling stories were just human stories.

That is not telling you that the story is invalid and shouldn't exist. It is telling you that halfling stories are treading the same ground as human stories. That is a massive gulf in difference.

A continual refusal to understand the differences between individuals and societies.

So, I asked "what makes them (the halflings) a perfect commoner that the other races can't do."

Your answer was that the society of halflings are all perfect commoners. Here are your exact words, "because the other races aren't a whole society of perfect commoners"

A whole society means "the vast majority of them".

You then continued saying "For them [the other races] the perfect commoner is an outlier".

So, what can't the other races provide to the archetype of the perfect commoner? The vast majority of them being the perfect commoner... but the individuals can be perfect commoners. So, they can individually do everything, but not on a societal level.

I understand the difference between a society and an individual. But, my point still remains. You are saying that the best the halfling can do in this regard is having a society built of the same type of people. But the other races can also cover this niche (according to your response) and they have other stories they are covering. But it is incredibly difficult to get halflings to spread out beyond this trope.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Halflings don't live underground. They maybe live underhills with surface accessible doors. They don't have darkvision.

Underground, underhill. Big deal - other than that there aren't a ridiculous number of entrances or any real ways in other than extremely solid reinforced doors. They might as well live in forts. And no Move Earth won't help - it only works on loose packed earth and it's easy to tramp specific areas of earth down, like all around the house as part of the housewarming party.

Just because it looks comfortable doesn't mean that it's not also practical. Which is the halfling aesthetic.

And they aren't that much more accurate. They only have +2 Dex.D&Dcan play it up but it's just a +1 modifier. 5e even took away their racial and size attack and AC bonuses.

On one hand "it's just a +1 modifier". On the other hand you're complaining that the halflings lost their +1 racial size attack and AC bonus. Which is it - +1 isn't that much or +1 is a lot; their attack has actually gone up (despite the default SRD halfling warrior having the Longsword Focus feat) assuming halflings follow the normal patterns of Dex 14. What is a big deal is the massive swing in damage rolls.

Gnolls get +2STR, have 5HD in 5e, and get a free attack when they kill a commoner..

Kill a commoner in melee. +2 STR < +2 Dex. Yes, they are tanks with 22hp. Yes, halflings therefore need to start at range and either kite (good job they have solid homes) or use range - but 3:1 odds go a long way.

Being small is almost purely a disadvantage in 5e. It;s only advantage is in squeezing and finding hiding spots.

But it's a minor disadvantage.

Dexterity is the best stat in 5e but that is under the assumpton of a PC. Low amounts of Dex, the amount a NPC would have, would not greatly increase their survivalibility.

On the contrary dexterity is more important for NPCs than PCs; it's their main combat stat much of the time and e.g. heavy armour or magic is rare. And if we extrapolate from the halfling PC stats to default NPC the way the MM normally does we'd expect a MM statblock to be Dex 14. Which is a level that matters. Significant finesse weapon damage increase and +2 AC.

Add in a lower penchant for magic and martial pursuits and PHB halflings are a worldbuilding nightmare if you look at them too hard.

Until you look at bounded accuracy and a penchant for communities and being expert farmers.

Bounded accuracy means that default NPC statblocks are a lot more threatening against much bigger threats than they are in games where AC goes up to 25 relatively fast.

Large communities means that there are generally more of them in a given space than of bigger races. So the bounded accuracy matters. And expert farmers support large communities as does being small.

Lower penchant for magic and martial pursuits is offset by community size. If there are a quarter of the proportion of fighters and casters but three times as many halflings in the same land area as an equivalent human village you're only at 3/4 the amount of magic. And you're at four times the number of arrows/sling stones.

Now,fixing it is really easy.

All you need to do is stop looking for the flash and look at what's actually there.

 

[Gammadoodler]

Being small is almost purely a disadvantage in 5e. It;s only advantage is in squeezing and finding hiding spots.

Spoken like someone who hasn't had to try and get a child out of a McDonald's play place.