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

[Neonchameleon]

It's a bit of a weird thing right, because, I certainly don't believe that they need money or would be likely to have much use for it because I don't believe they value it the way other races do.

I don't recall if I've explicitly tried to make the case that they definitely don't use it. I believe the farthest I've gone is that they might not.

Which may just be splitting hairs.

It may be - but I can't imagine halflings don't use money outside their own communities. I know at least Warhammer halflings are known for having views on personal property that border on thievery because they're raised as a village and regard each other's possessions the same way you might your siblings complete with borrowing.

 

[Minigiant]

All the younger players I know in person are inclusionists who detest or have no time for the gatekeeping of old - and all the halfling-haters I know in person are over the age of 40. Also it's the younger settings from the 00s and 10s (like Eberron, the Nentir vale, and Exandria; all three seasons of Critical Role have had halfling PCs) that use halflings well and older settings from the 80s or even 70s (like Greyhawk, Dragonlance, and the Realms) that use them badly.

But superficially the move to push halflings out would seem to be rejecting tradition. It seems to me to be more circling the wagons and making an attempt to throw out the group that was unpopular back in the day. While also trying to restrict races under the guise of making space.

I knew a lot of halfling haters on the older side. And many OSR games make halfling super weak only niche playable if you roll very well.

And don't lookat wargamers and strategy gamers. They usually despise halflings.

 

[Oofta]

I think it is a case of D&D being being several decades old and the latest edition being very popular. So assumptions of settings, suspension of disbelief,and acceptance of narratives differ widely in the community now.

That and the Forgotten Realms being the default setting for many years, it sucking, and it just being a vehicle to sell splatbooks.

While I personally could take or leave FR, some people like the setting. It's really insulting to those people who do like it for you to continuously insult it because you personally don't like it.

 

[Mind of tempest]

There's currently a dragon thread that's four pages and dwarf thread that's at six. Yet this thread is over 200 pages! This is proof that halflings are easily the most interesting race in D&D by an overwhelming magnitude!

or are just super divisive hate being much easier to sustain than love and all.

 

[Gammadoodler]

It may be - but I can't imagine halflings don't use money outside their own communities. I know at least Warhammer halflings are known for having views on personal property that border on thievery because they're raised as a village and regard each other's possessions the same way you might your siblings complete with borrowing.

It's one of those things that seems pretty darn impractical if you assume the setting relies on money for trade, but if that's just how halflings operate and they've always been that way, it's not crazy to assume that the setting affords some other avenue for trade.

What that might be, I haven't really worked out.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Plus there's no reason to assume that 6e would include subraces. They could make those into cultures, or just give each race options (say, one fighter-y option, one magic-y option, one sneaky or "other" option).

Eh, i'm not worried about 6e at all, but yeah, I'm not sure I think they will have subraces as such, or at least only maybe elves might, while other races have features where you can choose from a new options.

Because it's hard to be a trickster if everyone knows you're a trickster because you wrote "race of small magical tricksters" on your character sheet. If you make gnomes a subrace of halflings then you aren't advertising that aspect of gnomery

This seems pretty thin, to me.

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.

Yeah most raiders don't outnumber their targets, they just come in by surprise and bank on the defenders not being ready to fight.

First the Eberron halflings you are most likely to meet in most campaigns are from the Dragonmarked houses; Gallanda and Jorasco - with the mark of healing and the mark of hospitality respectively. Halflings living in larger communities and known for their hospitality? That's about as close to vanilla PHB halflings as you can get. Further away are the Tallenta Plains with its dinosaur riding halfling nomads because no race is a monoculture and different people in different environments. But the default adventurer zone is Sharn, population measured in hundreds of thousands, with humans as the most common race with a third of the city's population - and halflings as third most common with a tenth and being approximately PHB-standard halflings. The Talenta Plains are on literally the far side of the continent, multiple hostile countries away and you literally have to cross the post-apocalyptic wasteland that is The Mournland to get there. So no, Eberron halflings aren't "radically altered" other than that there are multiple halfling cultures.

Also, the other major group of Halflings in Sharn are halflings with ties to the Plains via the Boromar Clan, which is the most friendly and hospitable of Sharn's criminal organizations, notable for not being especially violent or brutal.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

I'm going to have to use an analogy here to explain why I'm getting confused.

Singing Amazing Grace in a Devasthana is a bit subversive and odd. Singing Amazing Grace in a Church isn't. In both cases, you are singing the same Song in the same way.

What I am confused about is that if you play the dragonborn and their village the exact same way as you would play a halfling and their village, you are saying I'm doing something different. Or that somehow I should roleplay them differently, because a Dragonborn Commune must be different than a halfling Commune. But you won't say why other than the fact that Dragonborn aren't supposed to be roleplayed this way.

Now, NPCs might see them differently, I could grant that, but that falls into the hands of the DM. From the player side I can do the exact same story, the exact same way, and you keep saying there is a difference, but I don't know what that difference would be. It isn't like the Dragonborn would be raised being told that their people are more warlike and violent than this village, they would be raised in the exact same manner as the halfling is, really only told about and caring about their village.

I'm not being obtuse, I'm legitimately stumped here. I take a halfling village and a halfling PC, keep all of the personality traits, stories, ect, and just replace the bodies with dragonborn (and obviously make the houses a bit bigger) then... why aren't they going to be RP'd the same way?

Im going to give you the thing that,to me, would be the biggest difference. Baby making.

Presumably dragonborn lay eggs??? Think of all the ways human society would be different if we just changed that one single thing. Would everyone store their eggs in some sort of super defended armory instead of in their personal house? Are there egg-keepers as a job? Is there less of a traditional division between males and females when females are never pregnant?

There is so much to explore in this one difference that you could base an entire campaign just exploring the nuance of baby raising between all the different race choices.

But in closing I'd offer you a counter question. Is it possible for you to write a simple village visit encounter in which you NEVER explicitly state which race the village belongs to but in which the players could all guess what race they were visiting?

1. You enter your hosts home, surprised at how the tiny branches all entertwined to form a door as solid as yours.

2. You enter your hosts home, surprised at how dry and airy it feels...a far sight from the dampness and mildew you pictured.

3. You enter your hosts home careful to stop low to avoid the threshold. You mouth immediately waters as the scent of rhubarb pie fills your nostrils.

4. You enter your hosts home and immediately fel a strange sense of unease at the complete lack of kitchen, dining room, and even tables or chairs save a standing workbench in one corner and what might be a chair buried under years of debris in the opposite

 

[Oofta]

So, that part you quoted? That was my response the the halflings sneaking into the Orc camp and stealing back there stuff.

So, why would humans be different? They wouldn't attempt to sneak back and steal from the people that just raided them, because that would probably lead to the raiders coming back and killing more people, and taking the stuff back... again.

Have I said that halflings are completely helpless and have no ways to defend themselves? No. I in fact said the exact opposite. That with a trained miltia and crossbows, they could defend themselves just as well as anyone else. I have been arguing that slings and kiting aren't effective means of doing this. But that speaks more to the limits of slings as deadly weapons in DnD.


But, let us take this a step further, hmm? Let us assume that the humans are protecting all the halfling villages because halflings are just part of the landscape of the human areas. Wouldn't... humans ask for something in exchange? Like, if humans are fighting and dying to keep halflings safe, wouldn't the humans turn the halflings and say "since we are protecting you, you should give us something in compensation"? I mean, this is a pretty significant thing, that the halflings are relying on human protection, and yet there is not a single thought being put into what the humans get out of it, except that it is an unintended consequence because halflings are settling fertile land that could be used by human farmers...

Once again, why would halflings not pay taxes? Is there some super-secret official lore that says they're freeloaders? They're peaceful neighbors that never cause any trouble, why wouldn't they be a welcome part of any kingdom?

For that matter, halflings are small. Much like Tucker's kobolds, I can see them taking advantage of that in numerous ways when defending themselves against larger creatures. Have small bolt holes that medium creatures have to squeeze through with tiny choke points that medium have no hope of getting through for example. Pit traps that will hold their weight with no problem but collapse with another 100 pounds and so on. In addition, slings are actually quite effective as weapons, they've been used in armies for millennia. I seem to remember this story about a guy named Dave that used it quite effectively and they were used by armies as recently as the 12th century.

But obviously your world is monster world where the only thing a commoner can do is hope to get eaten quickly instead of slowly and painfully. If there are enough "raiders" that an entire race would not survive, civilization would collapse.

 

[Yaarel]

All the younger players I know in person are inclusionists who detest or have no time for the gatekeeping of old - and all the halfling-haters I know in person are over the age of 40. Also it's the younger settings from the 00s and 10s (like Eberron, the Nentir vale, and Exandria; all three seasons of Critical Role have had halfling PCs) that use halflings well and older settings from the 80s or even 70s (like Greyhawk, Dragonlance, and the Realms) that use them badly.

But superficially the move to push halflings out would seem to be rejecting tradition. It seems to me to be more circling the wagons and making an attempt to throw out the group that was unpopular back in the day. While also trying to restrict races under the guise of making space.

I am in the camp of inclusiveness. It is important to me, all players can find the parts of D&D that they truly love.

We are playing the same game, so conflicting desires can be an issue. But D&D is a big game and having something for everyone is mostly achievable.

At the same time, for me personally, I share the 4e ethic of consolidation and salient distinctions. In other words, if two parts of D&D are too similar, then either merge them, or make sure they are meaningfully different.

I have been complaining the Halfling is too Human, so either merge them into Human, or else make them more meaningfully different from Human.

It occurs to me, I have the same problem with the Aquatic Elf. The Aquatic Elf is way too similar to the Nixie, and similarly redundant with Mermaid, Triton, and similar. Solutions include, merge the Aquatic Elf into the Nixie, and disambiguate the Nixie from the other aquatic humanoids, thus refer to the non-elf Nixie by the nickname "aquatic elf". Or oppositely refer to the Aquatic Elf as a Nixie, similar to referring to a Dark Elf as a Drow. Make sure the Nixie Aquatic Elf differs meaningfully from Mermaid and Triton. Note, the 2e Eladrin version of the Aquatic Elf is the Noviere which is virtually a Nixie.

Anyway, it is a consistent need for the D&D game to be elegant. There needs to be a reasonable balance between lumping and splitting. As simple as possible, but not simpler.

All that said. I value inclusivity. I want D&D to meet the needs of as many players as possible.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I am in the camp of inclusiveness. It is important to me, all players can find the parts of D&D that they truly love.

We are playing the same game, so conflicting desires can be an issue. But D&D is a big game and having something for everyone is mostly achievable.

At the same time, for me personally, I share the 4e ethic of consolidation and salient distinctions. In other words, if two parts of D&D are too similar, then either merge them, or make sure they are meaningfully different.

I have been complaining the Halfling is too Human, so either merge them into Human, or else make them more meaningfully different from Human.

It occurs to me, I have the same problem with the Aquatic Elf. The Aquatic Elf is way too similar to the Nixie, and similarly redundant with Mermaid, Triton, and similar. Solutions include, merge the Aquatic Elf into the Nixie, and disambiguate the Nixie from the other aquatic humanoids, thus refer to the non-elf Nixie by the nickname "aquatic elf". Or oppositely refer to the Aquatic Elf as a Nixie, similar to referring to a Dark Elf as a Drow. Make sure the Nixie Aquatic Elf differs meaningfully from Mermaid and Triton. Note, the 2e Eladrin version of the Aquatic Elf is the Noviere which is virtually a Nixie.

Anyway, it is a consistent need for the D&D game to be elegant. There needs to be a reasonable balance between lumping and splitting. As simple as possible, but not simpler.

All that said. I value inclusivity. I want D&D to meet the needs of as many players as possible.

I actually agree with almost everything you say here, apart the halflings being too similar to humans. But I agree with your overall principle and I am not fundamentally opposed to changing halflings a bit, as long as it respects their general tone. Folding gnomes into halflings as has been often suggested would probably result the combined race somewhat shifting to more alien direction, so that might satisfy your desire to make them more district from humans.