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

[Faolyn]

Umm, if my raiding party is outnumber 4:1, why in the hell am I attacking?

You say that is if there weren't plenty of real-world examples of armies attacking forces that grossly outnumbered them. Sometimes they won. Sometimes they lost.

The answer usually boils down to either extreme need or stupid pride.

 

[Faolyn]

I didn't say they remove halflings and gnomes.

I meant if goblins and kobolds are added to the 6e PHB, halflings and gnomes popularity will drop like a rock on Jupiter.

Well, I guess we'll have to wait until 6e to see.

 

[Minigiant]

How would this new DM be aware of that if they decided to make their own setting instead of buying one of these WotC settings with weak lore?

Have you talked to new DMs that came into D&D with 5e?

They just copy ideas suggested from the PHB for things they aren't very excited about.

 

[Neonchameleon]

However, I have noticed a trend in this sort of situation. The more the players understand the world of DnD, the harder it is for them to accept things like this. Bugbears are violent creatures who enjoy murdering and breaking things smaller than themselves. A halfling commoner dies to a single attack. Driving a Bugbear off with a rolling pin is something that doesn't make sense.

If it happens in a "family legend" then it works. Because the slightly unreal element of it adds to that sort of story. If it happened off-screen the day before an attack, and the Bugbears come rolling in to attack the village, them needing to be hit repeatedly with axes and swords before they break makes it bizzare and strange that one of them was driven off by a rolling pin.

The thing is this is a consequence of just how unrealistic D&D damage is. If it's in the real world retreating from a rolling pin in dim light is an extremely sensible thing to do. You don't know what's there, that thing might break bones, and if you kill what do you actually achieve? The only thing that makes it a problem is the unrealistic consequence-free nature of hit points and the information the players are used to having.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Which by my reckoning will start in 2061 at the earliest. We've had 40 years of using them a decent amount at tables.

This is a false dichotomy based on not looking at what is actually being said.

Halflings have 100% of the lore they need for a race in the PHB. They are completely fine there. And there is so far as I can see no good argument for removing them from the PHB other than that they are not one of the cool kids and you want to take a hatchet to the PHB, removing at least a quarter and possibly a full third of the races depending on how half-orcs are doing this year.

They are also, so far as I can tell, seriously short-changed in both the lore of the Forgotten Realms and the lore of Greyhawk so far as I can tell. And they aren't even in Dragonlance at all that I recall (no, Kender aren't Halflings). If you are right about 5e adventures they are short-changed there (the only official 5e adventure I own is Curse of Strahd) - and even if you aren't right, assuming you were reading in good faith they are easy to overlook.

I've never been inspired by anything I've seen out of the Forgotten Realms and think I only own one Realms sourcebook (4e Neverwinter) - but this doesn't somehow change the fact that the Realms was the default setting for 2e, 3.X, and 5e and there is a ludicrous number of sourcebooks for the Realms. It also doesn't change the fact that Greyhawk was the dominant setting in the 3.0 PHB and the default setting back in 1e. And it doesn't change the fact that Dragonlance through at least the 80s and 90s and probably right up until 2004 with Eberron was at least the third and probably for most of the time the second biggest setting in D&D.

To give other examples of how they were short-changed, 2e had a complete book each of humans, elves, and dwarves - and a complete book of gnomes and halflings. The 3.5 racial guides also had the human fronted races of destiny, the elf fronted races of the wild, and the dwarf fronted races of stone - and the dragonborn fronted races of the dragon. Halflings were second in Races of the Wild, Gnomes in Races of Stone.

I do actually wonder whether there's a difference here and those of us who homebrew and work from the PHB outwards think halflings are fine - because they are there. But people who regularly use the big published settings see the lack of care paid to them.

It also casts light on your attempt to remove halflings from the PHB (where they are fine) to the DMG being your attempt to remove the parts that are actually working.

What you can do is start looking at nuances and stop with the motivated reasoning. We aren't a hivemind.

But you have done nothing to respond to points about the knock-on effect of removing the lowest performing race and the impact that will have on halflings. You've done nothing to respond to the point that if you break things down by subrace and apply your crude filter we kick out dwarves.

And you can start responding to the point that neither Tieflings nor Dragonborn came out of nowhere. It seems that you ignore all the points that go against you unless you can find something to nitpick in an attempt to say other people aren't a hivemind.

Now I wouldn't mind this so much if it were a tacit admission that your "points" simply didn't hold water. But you then repeat those debunked points.

I think this is a great breakdown, but I want to take this a bit further and take a bit of a different angle.

Humans, Elves and Dwarves are in the Basic Rules as one of the Cour Four races. They are in the PHB as one of the common races because of this. They have good lore in Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Eberron and somewhat in Darksun (Dwarves were genocided, but the rest are there). In 2e there was the complete book of humans, complete book of elves, and complete book of Dwarves. 3.5 humans were the key race in Races of Destiny, Elves in Races of the Wild, Dwarves in Races of Stone.

All of this leads to them having a massive prescence in the game.

Halflings do not have good lore in Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms. You propose they don't exist in Dragonlance, and they are radically altered for Darksun and Eberron. So, 2/5 of the settings. In 2e they had to share a Complete book. In 3.5 they were second string in the Races of the Wilds. They are still in the Basic rules as one of the Cour Four races, and in the PHB as a common race to reflect this.

And this is the problem we are pointing out. You seem to have taken the stance that "the PHB is fine, because the PHB lore is supposed to be the weakest part" which... is true? I can agree with that much at least, but in my opinion you can't just change the lore outside of the PHB to address this, you need to hook those changes in the PHB, so that the other sources can expand on them.

Basically, if the PHB is the starting point for all of the other lore, then changing that helps change the further lore that follows. It has to flow from the PHB to have the right level of impact. And it doesn't have to be a massive change. Some pretty small changes give us what we need to hook further lore into for later books.

 

[Chaosmancer]

If goblins and kobolds make the 6e PHB, rest in pepperonis halflings and gnomes.

I want goblins to a degree (particularly, I'd want to take the Dar from Eberron), but I will also fight to death over gnomes. I will fully admit a Gnome bias. I find their lore amazing, and it inspired one of the best bits of lore I think I have ever written. In my homebrew, Gnomish heaven is the Prime Material Plane.

Which, I can justify to a degree with their lore, but it does take some twisting I will admit.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Humans, Elves and Dwarves are in the Basic Rules as one of the Cour Four races. They are in the PHB as one of the common races because of this. They have good lore in Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Eberron and somewhat in Darksun (Dwarves were genocided, but the rest are there). In 2e there was the complete book of humans, complete book of elves, and complete book of Dwarves. 3.5 humans were the key race in Races of Destiny, Elves in Races of the Wild, Dwarves in Races of Stone.

By what metric is this lore good? Like for example I'd be hard pressed to remember any FR lore that rises above meh. And some of it is actively stupid and offensive.

 

[Neonchameleon]

You say that is if there weren't plenty of real-world examples of armies attacking forces that grossly outnumbered them. Sometimes they won. Sometimes they lost.

The answer usually boils down to either extreme need or stupid pride.

And in the case of the unfortunate gnolls attacking a halfling thorp:

1. They didn't realise there was a halfling village there at all. They thought that it was just a collection of hills, not realising that the hills were artificial and halflings lived in them.
2. They knew that there was a halfling farmer there but not that the farmer was near the village
3. They realised that there were a number of buildings, but made the mistake of expecting human sized populations from the houses rather than halflings living more densely and in tighter communities. So they thought the thorp was ten to fifteen people rather than thirty
4. They realised there were thirty or so halflings but were expecting half a dozen militia members with weapons and armour rather than two dozen halflings who were all carrying slings.
5. They'd been warned that halflings all carried slings and how many there were but didn't take the warnings seriously; there are almost no famous halfling warriors. So "Halflings. Without serious armour. How dangerous could they be?" Gnoll raiders attacking a village are normally outnumbered and still slaughter bigger people than halflings.
6. They had all the warnings they needed ... and got ambushed anyway.

Any or all of those could apply.

 

[FrozenNorth]

My wife, who has never once played DnD nor a videogame for more than 5 minutes will still, to this day, occasionally bust out with her misheard "You want Chicken!?!" in Deekins voice. She heard it more than a coue times when I was playing and it stuck.

I never played the game and I still know about Deekin. Ironically, portrayals such as Deekin have gone a long way to make kobolds and goblins seem a lot more like an underdog race than halflings.

 

[Gammadoodler]

You say that is if there weren't plenty of real-world examples of armies attacking forces that grossly outnumbered them. Sometimes they won. Sometimes they lost.

The answer usually boils down to either extreme need or stupid pride.

It's the same reason a criminal gang might try to "take over" a neighborhood despite being a relatively small portion of the population of that neighborhood. They assume that the people in that neighborhood are more interested in self-preservation than in the health of the community.

Assuming halflings' communities are not like that, word would get around and future raids would either be less likely or would require more committed manpower to be attempted.