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]

All of those things are game constructs. That said, in 5e, the drop-off in carrying capacity happens at Tiny, not Small, so at least there is less in the way of inconsistency.

It does mean that the small races are considerably stronger on a pound for pound basis than most of their medium-sized cousins. IIRC, the main mechanical differences for small sized chars relate to "heavy" weapons and grappling.

D'oh! Bad memory. Still, there's nothing stopping a 20 strength pixie.

 

[Gammadoodler]

D'oh! Bad memory. Still, there's nothing stopping a 20 strength pixie.

No worries. I had to look it up myself. Only time I've actually seen that section of the rules used in play was when I had a character die and no one in the party was strong enough to haul away my corpse

 

[Oofta]

No worries. I had to look it up myself. Only time I've actually seen that section of the rules used in play was when I had a character die and no one in the party was strong enough to haul away my corpse

Tell me about it. I'm currently playing a game where we're all in the jungle so no one made a strength based PC. Our strongest PC has a 10.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Like bravery stealthiness, and luck?

The problem with these are pretty obvious I think.

Bravery is a personality trait that everyone has. Saying halflings are brave is like saying humans are industrious.... so are a BUNCH of other races, so it isn't really unique, and you can't do much with it. Besides, most characters are brave, they are adventurers

Stealthiness is a class feature. All rogues are stealthy. All rangers are stealthy. ect ect ect. And halflings aren't particularly anymore stealthy than anyone else. Put a halfing, a rock gnome, a goblin and a kobold in a room full of boxes, and they all hide just as well. Make a halfling a paladin and a Triton a rogue, and the triton is stealthier than the halfling.

And luck is... so hard to define. It can't work as a character trait for an actual character, because you can't actually control the luck at the table. It just has to be enforced via plot armor, and that's bizarre and hard to pull off. If a DM doesn't particularly force explanations that make a halfling luckier than everyone else.... then they aren't luckier than everyone else.

 

[Gammadoodler]

All three are super rare and niche in implementation. Hence the problem.

It would be something if halflings are supernaturally brave, incredibly sneaky, or had incredible luck. But its just 3 minor features..

And again it's barely unique. Kobolds now get a bravery feature. And Gnomes can illusion their own cover.

It's a similar problems with dwarves and elfves but those races are strong mechanically as well and lack a racial penalty.

I'd agree that the abilities are undertuned compared to some other races now that racial ability mods are going away, especially considering the lack of darkvision.

I would however, disagree that they are not unique, and also that they any of the abilities even should be absolutely unique to one race. You are getting the package of abilities, not just one.

All that said, I prefer the pf2e ancestries by a wide margin.

 

[Irlo]

The problem with these are pretty obvious I think.

Bravery is a personality trait that everyone has.

But not everyone has advantage on saving throws vs. fear effects.

Stealthiness is a class feature. All rogues are stealthy. All rangers are stealthy. ect ect ect. And halflings aren't particularly anymore stealthy than anyone else.

Some of them at least can hide when obscured only by a medium or larger creature. That’s unique, I think.

And luck is... so hard to define. It can't work as a character trait for an actual character, because you can't actually control the luck at the table. It just has to be enforced via plot armor,

Or enforced by a feature like the ability to reroll ones on attacks, saves, and ability checks.

 

[Gammadoodler]

The problem with these are pretty obvious I think.

Bravery is a personality trait that everyone has. Saying halflings are brave is like saying humans are industrious.... so are a BUNCH of other races, so it isn't really unique, and you can't do much with it. Besides, most characters are brave, they are adventurers

Stealthiness is a class feature. All rogues are stealthy. All rangers are stealthy. ect ect ect. And halflings aren't particularly anymore stealthy than anyone else. Put a halfing, a rock gnome, a goblin and a kobold in a room full of boxes, and they all hide just as well. Make a halfling a paladin and a Triton a rogue, and the triton is stealthier than the halfling.

And luck is... so hard to define. It can't work as a character trait for an actual character, because you can't actually control the luck at the table. It just has to be enforced via plot armor, and that's bizarre and hard to pull off. If a DM doesn't particularly force explanations that make a halfling luckier than everyone else.... then they aren't luckier than everyone else.

So it probably helps to look at how the mechanics of their features actually work.

"Bravery", mechanically, means that halflings are less likely to become debilitated by fear. It's not just that they are willing to do dangerous things, it's they do they physiologically/psychologically experience fear differently than other creatures.

"Naturally Stealthy" (Lightfoot only), mechanically means they can hide around larger creatures. Put a stealthy lightfoot halfling and any other stealthy in a room full of boxes, and, sure, they are equivalent; put them in a crowded bar, and it's a difference of night and day. They just know how to avoid people's eyeballs.

"Halfling Luck", mechanically, means that they are less likely to encounter guaranteed or worst-case failures. They just have way fewer terrible no-good really bad days than other races. I'd agree that it's a weak characterization of being lucky since it's passive and only comes up maybe 5% of the time, but it is, at least, distinct in what it does. I wish it was a little stronger or had more of an active application, but it isn't bad.

Edit: @Irlo ninja'd with concision

 

[Minigiant]

I'd agree that the abilities are undertuned compared to some other races now that racial ability mods are going away, especially considering the lack of darkvision.

I would however, disagree that they are not unique, and also that they any of the abilities even should be absolutely unique to one race. You are getting the package of abilities, not just one.

The problem is like you said the package is undertuned.

Let's look at the goblin: It's traits are its favorability to darkness, anger to bigger folk, and nimbleness.

So it has Darkvision, Fury of the Small, and Nimble Escape. So whether you make a goblin fighter or goblin wizard, you can feel and play that angry little monster jumps out the darkness to backstab foes and runs away screaming if in a bad situation.

With the halfling, you can easily go a whole session without displaying your halflingness. Because the halfling package is reactive and passive but lacks the power to shine brightly.
The Dwarf's races are reactive and passive but big and constantly on display The Hill dwark has more HP. The Mountain Dwarf has a big STR boost and usually better AC. nd wih Tasha's you can even trade out redundantdwarf features for ones you want to use more.

Solution 1: Lucky gives you a luck point instead of a passive reroll.
Solution 2: Brave affect all allies within your walking speed.
Solution 3: Halfling Nimbleness lets you Disengage as a bonus action

All that said, I prefer the pf2e ancestries by a wide margin.

Naaaaah.
Pf2 Ancestries rely on optional feat for power and it makes members of a race share way too little in common.

 

[lingual]

There was a 3k post last year about errata-ing halflings out of the Players Handbook.

Basically - some insisted that halflings get errata'ed out of the Players Handbook - so you would basically have to buy a splat book to play them - I forget the details.

 

[Minigiant]

There was a 3k post last year about errata-ing halflings out of the Players Handbook.

Basically - some insisted that halflings get errata'ed out of the Players Handbook - so you would basically have to buy a splat book to play them - I forget the details.

The details were like the original article post.

Few DMs and World designers integrated Halflings into their worlds. Most either turned them into Hobbits and stuck them into a world where hobbits don't make sense. OR they turned them into Kender and made a race that encouraged players and DMs to be annoying. The settings that actually made halfling match the setting (Dark Sun, Nentir Vale) are not official supported.

Basically it was like putting Kryptonians (or Bizarro Kryptonians for Kender) in D&D with no adaption because people like Superman (Or Bizarro).