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?

 

[Faolyn]

And to add another question, what races do you use in your game?

To butt in, in one of my games, I have all the PHB races except dragonborn, and I have three halflings (well, one is half-halfling,-half-tiefling), one half-tiefling-half-elf, and a half-orc.

 

[billd91]

In my game everything reincarnates into Hobbits...or gets made into Hobbits by other means.

That's funny. Around our games, it's gnomes. Limited number of cases, but reincarnates have been coming up all gnomes.

 

[Lanefan]

To butt in, in one of my games, I have all the PHB races except dragonborn, and I have three halflings (well, one is half-halfling,-half-tiefling), one half-tiefling-half-elf, and a half-orc.

So, 2.5 Halflings out of 5 characters. Are those the only five characters the campaign has had? If not, what's the Halfling proportion overall?

(and is a half-halfling a quarterling?)

 

[Oofta]

do you know why your players pick halflings beyond just liking Tolkien?

This is such an odd question to me. Why does anyone pick any race? You have the mechanical bits, in 5E lucky is nice feature that can come up fairly often with characters like monk that get a lot of attacks and of course the lucky feat helps the entire party. Moving through larger creatures is also helpful. My last halfling was ghostwise because I thought the telepathy was cool and of course people like lightfoot for hiding in the crowd.

But primarily it's just a role playing thing, much like every other race. I've played halflings* because they happen to fit the image of a PC I want to play best. Might as well ask why anyone plays any of the possible races. But other than halflings being cheerful and the last person you'd expect to be a gung-ho adventurer it has little to do with Tolkien.

*Most of my options to play are AL where any race is allowed.

 

[Hussar]

"Because it's Krynn, and Krynn doesn't have halflings, only Kender which are gnomes. And since I saw there were no halflings allowed, and no good reason for not incuding them, I obviously needed to play one.... NOW!"

Heh. I see you’ve met my players.

 

[Fifth Element]

(and is a half-halfling a quarterling?)

Nope. It would be a three-quarterling. I called them treilings when I did a d20 thing that included them years ago.

 

[Faolyn]

So, 2.5 Halflings out of 5 characters. Are those the only five characters the campaign has had? If not, what's the Halfling proportion overall?

(and is a half-halfling a quarterling?)

One of the players chose to stop playing an orc (or half-orc, can't remember) and his next character was one of the halflings. We also had a player who was a gnome, but he dropped out for time-related reasons.

In my setting, "tiefling" is a thing that can happen to anyone when they reach maturity, kinda like Marvel mutants. They're also basically outcasts, thought of as being folklore-style changelings. Tieflings themselves can't breed. I gave people the option of playing as a regular tiefling or choosing to swap some racial abilities about to represent a tiefling with non-human parents. The halfling-tiefling was raised as a halfling and continues to be culturally a tiefling (although she hides her horns). The elf-tiefling was raised as an elf but left to join tiefling society (which is very nature/spirit-oriented) due to Evil Parent.

Edit: In case it matters, one of the halflings is a wizard (abjurer), one is a monk (sun soul), and the halfling-tiefling is a rogue (arcane trickster), although she nearly always plays either rogues or monks regardless of race.

 

[James Gasik]

That's funny. Around our games, it's gnomes. Limited number of cases, but reincarnates have been coming up all gnomes.

This happened to me, the only time I've ever been reincarnated. My human Fighter suddenly found himself unable to use his old weapons and armor. I was pretty annoyed at the time; I'd died to save the party, and the only way they could bring me back was the party's Druid. So for my efforts, I lost a level, -2 Strength (this was 3.0) and, of course, couldn't even wear my armor or shield (I had to use my Waraxe in two hands!).

I soldiered on though, and the DM apparently realized how woeful the situation was, as I was able to return to being a human and got to keep the Gnomish +2 Con out of the deal (I still had to make up the lost level though)! Personally, I would have been happy to have my gear resized.

I don't mind playing a Gnome or a Halfling, as I've played both in the past, such as Royle Gladdenstone, the "world's strongest gnome" (2e Ftr/SpPriest of Flandal Steelskin with 19 Strength using a bastard sword two-handed!), all the way to Cade Emberhill (5e Halfling Ftr 7/Rogue 5), whose long and arduous quest for a lousy +1 shortbow took nearly half of his career (got to love Adventure League; you can get an Elven Oathbow in Tier 1, but not a dang shortbow!).

I'm not sure precisely what draws me to the race, I've played just about everything else at one time or another, though since I'm usually a DM, most of those careers have been short, with hardly any characters above 8th level to point at. Being small and still able to kick monster tail does amuse me, however, though, which is probably why all but one of my shorties have been warriors. The only exception is Sidri, a Svirfneblin Druid, who couldn't fight her way out of a cheap burlap sack, but never far from her loyal companion/mount/bodyguard, Pookie, a black bear who had the highest kill count in the campaign.

Now does it make sense for child-sized characters to be able to fight toe-to-toe with larger enemies? As I pointed out earlier, this being D&D, where a human warrior can fight and win a melee battle with a small kaiju, I don't really see why not. Especially when you do the math of a Halfling's strength-to-weight ratio. Even in d20, where you had a -2 Strength, your carry capacity was 3/4 that of a human's, and almost all of your gear weighed half as much, meaning that Halflings were actually super strong for their size!

I know a lot of gamers like having Halflings and Gnomes around because it allows them to play "young" characters (at least in appearance) without the complications and unfortunate consequences of actually playing a underaged PC in a fun, fantastical, but also gritty and dangerous world. And certainly, child heroes is a fantasy trope that some enjoy.

So the game, I think, would be lessened if Halflings and Gnomes weren't around. Now the question of whether or not they belong in the PHB, well, with one exception, they always have been, so the game might not feel quite the same if they weren't. I'd be ok with it as long as the supplement allowing them to be played was released in short order. For a lot of DM's, Gnomes and Halflings are much more acceptable races than dragon-men, hobgoblins, or githyanki, yet all remain options for play.

Maybe Halflings have not been very iconic to D&D's official content in some time, but you still see them in other fantasy works with regularity, so I don't really see them going away.

Now something that I do, however, agree with, is that their lore and mechanics could use a reworking. Halflings in 5e suffer a bit for being small, locking them out of heavy weapons (like, as I mentioned, a decent-sized bow), and while you can build your character for that not to be an issue, it can feel like the upsides are also quite negligible. The current One D&D Halfling seems to be even weaker; no matter how much you like or dislike the ability to hide in a larger creature's shadow, replacing a flavorful ability with "stealth proficiency" seems to be kind of meh.

The case of the 4e Gnomes comes to mind here; they were excised from the PHB not because anyone had any real problem with them, but more because their identity as a race was just bizarre. They were small creatures who live in homes dug into the earth, like Dwarves or Halflings. They lived in the forest and were somewhat magical, like Elves. They liked pranks and illusion magic. Or sometimes strange inventions. A lore overhaul was needed to make them unique, rather than just taking the traits of other races.

Halflings do suffer from this as well. They are either small humans who live side by side among them, having adapted to city life...or nomads who move about in caravans or live near rivers...or pastoral bumpkins who prefer the easy life and avoid adventures like the plague! I really miss how 3e and 4e tried to give Halflings a new identity, but 5e has doubled down on their hobbit-ness (while changing their art in...sometimes questionable ways...to make them look less hobbit-like!). And they also tend to leech off of other races; stronghearts are too much like humans, tallfellows too much like elves, stouts too much like dwarves, ghostwise halflings too much like other elves, etc. etc..

TLDR, since I know this went long: I don't want Halflings or Gnomes to go anywhere, but if they have to leave the PHB, don't let them be gone for long, and let's have the reason for that be that the developers want to take another stab at making them more interesting than "It looks like a Hobbit, but due to international copyright laws- it's not."

 

[Bohandas]

do you know why your players pick halflings beyond just liking Tolkien?

They're probably either chubby chasers or into feet

Spoiler

Like seriously, whenever I see somehing like this:

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BODlhZmQwZWMtMDVhZi00MjlkLThhZDMtNTBjNDEyNDk0M2Q5XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMzkyOTg1MzE@._V1_.jpg

I immediately think of this:

http://gunshowcomic.com/comics/20111118-pissworld.png

 

[Chaosmancer]

I'll bite. The tiger in your dictionary art..based on the picture alone tell me..

How big is it?

You cannot tell that from this art alone, because there is nothing in there for scale.

Note: I never commented on how big or not a Roving Mauler was.

What does it eat?

Meat, you can see the fangs and the other carnivorous features quite clearly. Also, since it is clearly a feline it would have the same dietary habits as most wild felines.

How fast is it?

You cannot tell exact speed from a stationary image without perspective lines that would distort the image. However, as a quadrupedal mammal I can assume it is capable of reaching 10's of miles per hour. Even bears, which are far bulkier than the picture of the tiger, can reach 30 or more miles per hour. Additionally, with the triple "elbow" (I forget the term for this leg design) I can again draw parrallels to other creatures with that design, which are quite fast.

What kinds of enviroments does it prefer?

I could not tell you the exact environment, but I can say that with the thinner coat (note how sleek it looks) that the creature would not prefer cold climates. Most mammals that live in cold climates are depicted with much more fur. Additionally, it lacks any of the traditional markers of a creature that lives in desert environments. So, while I can not detail exactly the environment it lives in, I can narrow the band significantly.

When is it awake?

Impossible to tell from the picture alone. It is a feline, but felines can have multiple cycles.

Note: I have never made a comment on when the Roving Mauler is awake.

How flexible is it?

It is a feline, so as flexible as a feline. The shoulder joints on the front legs means they can't reach behind it, but they can sit and scratch their back with their hind legs. They have spinal column, so they have that flexibility, and you can see a great deal of their range of motion from the curl of the tail, the back legs being folded and the different positions of the front legs.

I don't exactly know what scale of "flexible" we are dealing with, but they are less flexible than a contortionist or a snake, but more flexible than an elephant or a beetle.

How high can it jump?

Considering the design of the back legs which allow for springs and it being a feline, quite high. At least a body length. However, with the low slung body it is better at distance jumping than high jumping.

How well does it climb, fly, swim, and/or burrow?

It cannot fly, it lacks any wings or other ways to fly.
It is bad at burrowing, the padded feet are not conducive to digging and the body shape is wrong for them to be able to burrow well.
Swimming it difficult to tell from the picture alone, however, felines can swim so it is capable of it, as it is a feline.
By the same logic, as a feline it is an excellent climber. Zooming in you can see the toes and as a feline you know the claws, so you know it would have a great grip. Also, the shape of the shoulders allows for "hugging" with the front limbs and "kicking" with the back limbs to climb.

Is it smart?
Is it aggressive?
Can it talk?
Does it live alone or in groups?

You cannot tell any of these from a picture.

Is it dangerous to people.

If you were able to figure out the size, then the answer is obvious. It is a feline, and even small cats can do serious harm. Also, as a carnivore, it is a meat-eater, making it dangerous.

What you know from that dictionary art is that it is a striped, cat-shaped creature...it's f-ing useless for drawing any conclusions beyond that.

There is no indication of scale, no context, no action...

Looks back up at the list

Well, sure it isn't good for the scale and it can't tell things that art cannot depict, like intelligence or whether it is diurnal or nocturnal, but I don't remember ever claiming that the art could tell me every possible detail of the creature. A picture is only worth a thousand words, not ten million.

But you seriously discount how much "cat-shaped" alone can tell a person. Because cat-shaped creatures all tend to have similar features, since the "cat-shape" is the reason for those features.

buuuuuutt..

What accompanies this dictionary art? The definition of "tiger", a "large, carnivorous feline"..we also get discussion of "tigerish", which discusses fierceness, cruelty, bloodthirstiness..

Perhaps...and I know I'm really reaching here..we might use the combination of art and other descriptive materials to reach some conclusions regarding the capabilities of a tiger.. and perhaps...the art, without being bad art, isn't really contributing that much to the assessment of those capabilities.

The only thing from "large carnivorous feline" I couldn't get from the art alone is "large"

Also, tigers are no fiercer, crueler or bloodthirsty than cats. Now, they can appear malicious, because felines play with their food, but again, I could have told you that was likely from it being a feline.


Now, if your point is "more information can tell you more things" well, congrats, you have made a completely obvious point. However, you seem to think the picture tells us nothing at all, and you are wrong. The picture tells a lot. All you have to do is... look at it, and understand what it is telling you.