RPG Evolution: The Trouble with Halflings

Over the decades I've developed my campaign world to match the archetypes my players wanted to play. In all those years, nobody's ever played a halfling.

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

So What's the Problem?​

Halflings, derived from hobbits, have been a curious nod to Tolkien's influence on fantasy. While dwarves and elves have deep mythological roots, hobbits are more modern inventions. And their inclusion was very much a response to the adventurous life that the agrarian homebodies considered an aberration. In short, most hobbits didn't want to be adventurers, and Bilbo, Frodo, and the others were forever changed by their experiences, such that it was difficult for them to reintegrate when they returned home. You don't hear much about elves and dwarves having difficulty returning home after being adventurers, and for good reason. Tolkien was making a point about the human condition and the nature of war by using hobbits as proxies.

As a literary construct, hobbits serve a specific purpose. In The Hobbit, they are proxies for children. In The Lord of the Rings, they are proxies for farmers and other folk who were thrust into the industrialized nightmare of mass warfare. In both cases, hobbits were a positioned in contrast to the violent lifestyle of adventurers who live and die by the sword.

Which is at least in part why they're challenging to integrate into a campaign world. And yet, we have strong hobbit archetypes in Dungeons & Dragons, thanks to Dragonlance.

Kender. Kender Are the Problem​

I did know one player who loved to play kender. We never played together in a campaign, at least in part because kender are an integral part of the Dragonlance setting and we weren't playing in Dragonlance. But he would play a kender in every game he played, including in massive multiplayers like Ultima Online. And he was eye-rollingly aggravating, as he loved "borrowing" things from everyone (a trait established by Tasselhoff Burrfoot).

Part of the issue with kender is that they aren't thieves, per se, but have a child-like curiosity that causes them to "borrow" things without understanding that borrowing said things without permission is tantamount to stealing in most cultures. In essence, it results in a character who steals but doesn't admit to stealing, which can be problematic for inter-party harmony. Worse, kender have a very broad idea of what to "borrow" (which is not limited to just valuables) and have always been positioned as being offended by accusations of thievery. It sets up a scenario where either the party is very tolerant of the kender or conflict ensues. This aspect of kender has been significantly minimized in the latest draft for Unearthed Arcana.

Big Heads, Little Bodies​

The latest incarnation of halflings brings them back to the fun-loving roots. Their appearance is decidedly not "little children" or "overweight short people." Rather, they appear more like political cartoons of eras past, where exaggerated features were used as caricatures, adding further to their comical qualities. But this doesn't solve the outstanding problem that, for a game that is often about conflict, the original prototypes for halflings avoided it. They were heroes precisely because they were thrust into difficult situations and had to rise to the challenge. That requires significant work in a campaign to encourage a player to play a halfling character who would rather just stay home.

There's also the simple matter of integrating halflings into societies where they aren't necessarily living apart. Presumably, most human campaigns have farmers; dwarves and elves occupy less civilized niches, where halflings are a working class who lives right alongside the rest of humanity in plain sight. Figuring out how to accommodate them matters a lot. Do humans just treat them like children? Would halflings want to be anywhere near a larger humanoids' dwellings as a result? Or are halflings given mythical status like fey? Or are they more like inveterate pranksters and tricksters, treating them more like gnomes? And if halflings are more like gnomes, then why have gnomes?

There are opportunities to integrate halflings into a world, but they aren't quite so easy to plop down into a setting as dwarves and elves. I still haven't quite figured out how to make them work in my campaign that doesn't feel like a one-off rather than a separate species. But I did finally find a space for gnomes, which I'll discuss in another article.

Your Turn: How have you integrated halflings into your campaign world?

 

[Oofta]

Minigiant didn't tell you any of their abilities beyond the thorns thing or any of their society or culture. So how do you know that they're not unique or special?

If he wants to give details on anything other than cosmetic, he can do so. What he posted wasn't that much different other than in tone from what we have.

 

[Oofta]

I think racial weapon proficiencies are really good for flavour and there should be more of them, I remember my dwarven ranger with his battleaxe and warhammer that none of the other standard rangers had, but class weapon proficiencies are more often than not given out in huge swathes there’s alot of all or nothing rather than a few flavourful choices.

Racial weapon bonuses would also be nice too, everyone can use knives but perhaps halflings are more suited to them due to their relative size and so therefore hit more often and deal more damage with them as standard as a result.

I still miss halflings having special abilities when it comes to slings and thrown stones. It reinforced that they weren't really big enough to use tall folk weapons like bows and because they're eminently practical.

 

[Oofta]

They reroll checks associate with vision and have a culture of being very honest or very sneaky liars as they see everything.


They can actually "throw" boulders. They are closer to a mix of the Psioinic Half-giant and Avatar's Earthbenders.


They are actually the size of housecats. Big housecats but not bigger that 3' tall.
It's based on the Capital One commercial where the evil overlord asked for kittens on his credit card and his minion said "WAR KITTENS!"

I HAD TO MAKE THAT INTO A RACE. I HAD TO.

I understand.

They don't eat food only needing 4 hours of sunlight and water, reproduce like flowering plants, and grow back limbs and thorns.
And technically the party can eat their flowers.

Imagine a culture of beings who can survive and reproduce just standing in one spot and being rained on. They just have philosophical conversation since their needs are easily meet and have no natural enemies. Natural druids.

I'm not saying your races are bad, you've clearly put some thought into them. Or seen a commercial anyway. If you've figured out a way to integrate them into your campaign world to give them a story and feel that's great. I just don't see any of those being much more evocative than halflings. Which is fine, you can't please everyone.

 

[Oofta]

look part of the problem is dealing with the larger context of fantasy media which has changed since dnd was first made and secondly given that all dwarves tended to be near copies or rebelling against those copies they are going to have to change if only because generic badly riped of gimily stopped being interesting in the 1990's and it has been thirty years since then.

At a certain point trying to be edgy and different by inverting a trope becomes a trope in and of itself.

On a related (and off topic) note I only have minor issues with PCs adjusting default abilities, I just kind of wish they would keep the default at the race level. Associating it to background isn't really any better either since you can put the +2/+1 anywhere you want. Just make it part of the ability score generation or get rid of it altogether.

 

[Faolyn]

No? They invest their good scores in CHA if they want to be good in CHA, or at least take the appropriate skill proficiencies,

Wanting to be charismatic dwarf doesn’t mean you’d suddenly of lost your original fundamental dwarven gruffness.

Why should you be penalized because people who aren't dwarfs think your species is gruff and surly? (And that's what it was, when they had a Charisma penalty when dealing with non-dwarfs--your race's stats was limited by in-game bigotry; it's like reverse-metagaming.) And why shouldn't a happy, friendly dwarf be as Charismatic as a happy, friendly human?

And more specifically, why should you being gruff and surly mean you're not as good at playing music or lying--or at casting spells from certain spell lists? Why can a dwarf king, mine supervisor, or general never be as good at their jobs as a human can be?

And hey, maybe everyone should get a Charisma penalty when dealing with creatures of a different race. Sorry elves, humans just think you're weird and yeah, you're pretty, but it's an Uncanny Valley kind of pretty, so no 18 Charisma for you!

 

[Bayushi_seikuro]

I'm pretty proud of my homebrew halflings in my Eternal Winter game. The players really thought they were cool when they encountered them.

The setting was a post-apocalypse, 'impact winter' caused by Ymir's corpse ripping through planes and impacting this world. Different cultures reacted in various ways: the goblinoids and orcs really rose up in waves of pillaging, while the eladrin took in what survivors they could before they domed their cities off. To fight back against the orcs, the wood elves turned to two otherworldly forces - some turned to strict carnivore and the eating of intelligent beings (and were worshippers of Yeegnoghu) and some turned to the Lady of Winter, still savage but trackless across snow. The gnomes made warforged to help fight off hordes and allied with humans in a full retreat.

The halflings? There are only about 200 halflings left because, largely, they held back the orc and elven hordes with the power of firearms. The halflings, culturally, were a lot like Old West Americans, and kept their lore and magic hidden in their family cookbooks (their magic was consumable-based)

The best was the mission where the PCs discovered this. They were tasked to recover any halfling lore they could find, as well as the pistols and badge of the last Sheriff of the halfling people. They found the enormous cookbook, full of lore and magic recipes (they liked the frost-resistance lemon cake) and then met the Sheriff... the Sheriff had become an intelligent wight and continued to serve his community, even though the citizens had turned into ghosts, repeating previous days over and over. The players bartered - the artificer put the effect on the Sheriff's long rifle where he no longer needed ammo, and in exchange, the Sheriff passed over his revolvers and his badge of office to keep his people going.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Why should you be penalized because people who aren't dwarfs think your species is gruff and surly? (And that's what it was, when they had a Charisma penalty when dealing with non-dwarfs--your race's stats was limited by in-game bigotry; it's like reverse-metagaming.) And why shouldn't a happy, friendly dwarf be as Charismatic as a happy, friendly human?

And more specifically, why should you being gruff and surly mean you're not as good at playing music or lying--or at casting spells from certain spell lists? Why can a dwarf king, mine supervisor, or general never be as good at their jobs as a human can be?

And hey, maybe everyone should get a Charisma penalty when dealing with creatures of a different race. Sorry elves, humans just think you're weird and yeah, you're pretty, but it's an Uncanny Valley kind of pretty, so no 18 Charisma for you!

But a dwarf can be just as good as a human as those things however the concept of DnD dwarves is that their culture is not that way inclined, they’re serious, they’re honest, they’re gruff, so they have a little further to go to match a human at those things on an even footing.

But the thing is, all that i really hear people saying when they complain ‘but why does my character have to have the negatives every member of this race does’ is that they care more about bonuses or their own character than the fidelity to the setting and lore they’re putting them into, sure adventurers are special, but you’re not so special that you should defy the inherent nature and culture of your species ‘just because I want them to’.

 

[Minigiant]

I'm not saying your races are bad, you've clearly put some thought into them. Or seen a commercial anyway. If you've figured out a way to integrate them into your campaign world to give them a story and feel that's great. I just don't see any of those being much more evocative than halflings. Which is fine, you can't please everyone.

It's less that halflings are more evocative and more that their most of their elements are no longer unique. Thus weakening their otherness in fantasy.

And when some fans push for more normalcy and spurn attempts to find halfling metods of being fantastic, then it make sense why other fans see them as not as fantastic.

 

[Faolyn]

But a dwarf can be just as good as a human as those things however the concept of DnD dwarves is that their culture is not that way inclined, they’re serious, they’re honest, they’re gruff, so they have a little further to go to match a human at those things on an even footing.

Plenty of humans are serious, honest, and gruff while still being charismatic.

And apparently, no dwarf could ever be as good a musician as a human, as intimidating as a human, or as persuasive as a human because all dwarfs are serious, honest, and gruff. It must be absolutely exhausting to be a friendly and cheerful dwarf, since they have to force themselves to act in that way. They must be like the opposite of a person with ASD, where instead of masking to appear normal they have to mask to appear abnormal.

But the thing is, all that i really hear people saying when they complain ‘but why does my character have to have the negatives every member of this race does’ is that they care more about bonuses or their own character than the fidelity to the setting and lore they’re putting them into, sure adventurers are special, but you’re not so special that you should defy the inherent nature and culture of your species ‘just because I want them to’.

OR! It could be that people don't want to pigeonhole entire races as being gruff and surly. It's lazy to write it so that every member of any one race will have the exact same type of personality. Not even every member of a breed of animals that's been specifically bred to have a single temperament will actually have that temperament. With a self-aware, fully-sapient race? Heck no. The idea is ridiculous, and it's even more ridiculous to say "since dwarfs are surly, they get a penalty to a stat that's only tangentally related to surliness and will penalize them in things that have nothing to do with surliness."

If all you can "really hear" is that people are complaining about their character, maybe you need to listen a bit more.

 

[James Gasik]

Plenty of humans are serious, honest, and gruff while still being charismatic.

And apparently, no dwarf could ever be as good a musician as a human, as intimidating as a human, or as persuasive as a human because all dwarfs are serious, honest, and gruff. It must be absolutely exhausting to be a friendly and cheerful dwarf, since they have to force themselves to act in that way. They must be like the opposite of a person with ASD, where instead of masking to appear normal they have to mask to appear abnormal.


OR! It could be that people don't want to pigeonhole entire races as being gruff and surly. It's lazy to write it so that every member of any one race will have the exact same type of personality. Not even every member of a breed of animals that's been specifically bred to have a single temperament will actually have that temperament. With a self-aware, fully-sapient race? Heck no. The idea is ridiculous, and it's even more ridiculous to say "since dwarfs are surly, they get a penalty to a stat that's only tangentally related to surliness and will penalize them in things that have nothing to do with surliness."

If all you can "really hear" is that people are complaining about their character, maybe you need to listen a bit more.

Indeed, Dwarves are fully capable of experiencing and displaying happiness and good cheer. While on average members of other races perceive Dwarves as being more gruff, stubborn, and taciturn, this doesn't apply to other Dwarves.

Dwarves have a highly regimented and ordered society that emphasizes working together and placing the goods of the community first. This is not something a race with lower than average communication skills would display, in fact, it's quite the opposite. It's believed that it was these abilities; superior communication and teamwork, that allowed early man to surpass the Neanderthals.

As far as ability score penalties in themselves, they really don't matter as much as some seem to think. Consider this, if an Orc has a -2 penalty to Intelligence, all that means is that most people aren't going to play an Orc Wizard. Any Intelligence check they make is 5% less likely to succeed if they put the same amount of points in Intelligence as other characters.

It's not like there's some amazing benefit to being an Orc Wizard in the first place, so all this penalty does is ensure niche protection. You could accomplish the same thing by going back to AD&D class limits and just saying Orcs can't be Wizards.

The same is true if Dwarves had a penalty to Charisma; people would be less inclined to be Bards, Sorcerers, and Warlocks. And unless the benefits of being a Dwarf are really good (like the access to Medium armor that D&D One seems to be removing), I think you lose more than you gain; players will be less likely to have unique characters.

Not because the penalty is incredibly punishing (it's not) but it does put you at a slight advantage for no other reason than you wanted to express yourself and do something interesting! Now sure, I get it, some people like the idea that certain races are more likely to be some classes instead of others, but again, I think that just saying "no arcane Dwarves in my game, please" is a much better way of doing things than "oh sure, you could be a Dwarven Bard, but here's this penalty. Are you absolutely sure you wouldn't rather be a Human?"

Steering this back to Halflings, I think D&D is kind of at a crossroads. Racial traits are moving away from being indicative of any particular culture, and becoming more generic, with these elements moving to backgrounds.

But unless we have racial backgrounds like "Dwarven Noble" or "Halfling Sage", the only thing that's going to guide preferences and roleplaying is pop culture and a few paragraphs in the PHB. Dwarves will start to use Swords and Bows instead of Axes, Hammers, and Crossbows.

Halflings won't even look twice at a sling, etc..

The races of D&D's future will have no real unique identity other than "this race is lucky, this race has innate magical powers, and this race can fly". This is going to continue to be a problem for Halflings, in particular, as they will remain popular for some players, and not very popular for others, but almost nothing about them will tell us who and what they are; it's going to come down to if their racial abilities are more unique and fun compared to others, and what their art is going to look like.

Even though I can see the advantages to this for players, I think we might need to step back off that ledge, before we just have a table of possible special abilities you can pick for your character ala carte and call that a race, taking away a vital component of the identity of races.

In summation, I believe a race's mechanics should evoke a sense of what they are all about, just as much as the flavor text does.