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?

 

[Charlaquin]

D&D always built races for specific builds. Read the DMG section on making a race. They gave the assimar bonuses to Wisdom and Charisma specifically so they'd make good clerics and paladins.

So blame whoever decided that because Bilbo was a burglar that meant all halflings had to be burglars.

No, I mean why can’t there be more than one race that’s built to be burglars?

 

[Chaosmancer]

The halfling is lucky as a function of access to an ability which gives them an advantage with respect to results that are adjudicated through the application of chance (the d20). They are 20 times less likely to critically fail a roll.

You guys keep repeating the same thing, and keep missing my point.

Sure X% of the time a halfling won't fail at the action they tried to take. It is a small percentage of the time, less than 5%. But outside of rolling the d20 the halfling is no luckier than anyone else. Because the true "luck" that the player expeirences is their own luck at the table, and the narrative the DM enforces. And if the DM doesn't come in and say "that arrow missed you because you are lucky" or "You find the journal because you are lucky" and instead describes these actions exactly like they describe EVERYONE ELSE then the halfling is no luckier than anyone else.

It is governed by:

1. your proficiency/expertise in the stealth skill + your dex mod + your d20 roll (and any other flat or dice-rolled bonuses), and

2. Your ability to convince the dm that your character is in a position that would allow them to hide.

Generally speaking, class and subclass selections offer access to more impactful bonuses or more situations a dm can assent to stealth applicability, but the mod is always relevant and a larger dex mod makes characters sneakier than a smaller mod 100% of the time.

Huh. See, I read this, and I see some interesting things. For example, where do half of your proficiencies come from? Your class. Halflings don't have proficiency in stealth. Most of the time, your proficiency in stealth will come from your class, I can only think of a single race that gives it. Tabaxi.

Halflings don't get expertise in stealth. Expertise in stealth is very rare. It is limited to.... class selection.

Your Dex mod DOES affect your stealth... but it also no longer is limited to specific races, and it was never limited to halflings. Again, 17 races who got a bonus to dexterity.

Now, stay with me here. Proficiency, Expertise, Dex Mod, and rolling the die. Even if we count rolling the die 50% of your ability to be stealthy comes from.... YOUR CLASS. The only thing the race does is give a bonus to your dex mod.... and it doesn't even do that anymore.

And so, again, if you want to argue that halflings are "The race that has stealth" then you have to argue that for every race that can get a dex modifier. And currently, that is all of them. But, even more than that, between 50% and 66% of the stealthiness of a character comes from.... THEIR CLASS.

 

[Charlaquin]

For me, it ends up being a bit of narrative bloat. I'm not saying you can't, but for example, I hate the idea that we have Tritons and Sea Elves. They are both good aligned, water people who rule the oceans. Narratively they fill the exact same niche. Visually and even mechanically, they start having the same niche.

So, when we get an expansion of racial feats, like we got in Xanathar's... what's likely to happen? Well, they may both get one... but the Sea elves are tied to elves, and they are more consolidated under a single lore. So, more than likely, they will get more support. Which has already happened, because Sea Elves are elves, so they get elf specific feats, classes, and items already. Which means that eventually, the Tritons are... just there. No one cares about them, because anything they get as support can just go to the Sea elf, who is already more supported and therefore more popular.

So, when you realize you want a small race, but there are a lot of them, you start wondering what you can cut, and what you can focus on. Because presenting all of them is too much, and dilutes the focus.


This isn't a problem that cannot be overcome. You can obviously and clearly have solutions to this, but it creates a pressure. There may be incredibly excellent monsters in the 3.5 MM #4, but they will never be as popular as the stuff which covered the same niche first, and got the support. To beat this pressure, they have to have a powerful hook that draws attention to them, that makes you go "AHA, that is perfect for my needs!"

To me, the only problem here is that Sea Elves are yet another elf subrace. If there were just two non-elf races with similar aquaman themes, I wouldn’t be bothered.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Wrong.

A natural 1 on an attack roll is always a failure, no matter what. Even if the roll would otherwise be high enough to hit the target because of other modifiers, a natural 1 is always a failure.

A natural 1 on a death saving throw counts as two failures.

A halfling will never have to worry about any of these things. Because they have the Lucky trait, which allows them to reroll 1s.

And while a natural 1 is not an auto-fail on a skill check or saving throw, I'm pretty sure that a large percentage of tables would say it is. Which means that halflings don't have to worry about that, either.

Sure, a nat 1 is worse on death saves. But you probably missed your attack roll on a 2 as well. Think the only time I saw a character who didn't miss on a two, they had advantage and the DM just asked them to stop rolling, because it didn't matter, they hit.

But yeah, halflings are hard to kill. Halflings don't miss when stabbing people as often. And people use homebrew rules.

But that isn't the same as what we consider to be "lucky". You don't need to convince me that re-rolling 1's is a useful ability, sure it is a useful ability, my objection is that that alone constitutes enough to claim that the entire race is lucky. Lucky characters don't just bleed out slower. That's never how supernatural luck is presented in basically any fiction.

Here, let's give an example, because people hate examples,

This is a comic depicting a halfling thief. The Halfling is stealing a gem while her party is fighting a dragon. She gets the gem free, but loses her balance and hits those stalactites. Those stalactites fall down and kill the dragon, preventing a TPK.

So, I bet someone is going to say that this was an example of a nat 1 turning into a nat 20. So, I'll ask this. How many times have you had a Nat 20 "steal object" roll, auto-kill a dragon that was above half its hp and about to kill the entire party? This is how halfling luck is depicted in narratives, this is an officially licensed DnD comic (for 4e) and what it depicts is something that would never once happen at a serious table.

But, this is exactly what we are told halfling luck IS. Despite it never actually happening at any table I've ever played or seen.

Nope. Because you don't require an elf roleplay Fey Ancestry and you don't require a dwarf to roleplay knowing how to use brewer's tools. So why would you require a halfling to roleplay an equally passive trait? Lucky is no different than any other trait. For some reason, you just think it has to be.

Halflings are Lucky. That is the name of a trait that gives them a specific ability. They don't have to also be lucky in the sense that they find lost coins everywhere or manage to prevent the king from being killed and their friends from being framed. Would you complain as much if the name of the trait was "Reroll 1s" instead?

But I'm not complaining about the trait. I'm complaining that when someone was asked "What makes a halfling different from other races" the answer was

1) They are stealthier than other races (Only even conceivable true with the Dex mod, though they originally meant the lightfoot ability)
2) They are braver than other races (see my discussion on why that doesn't work)
3) They are luckier than other races.

To defend point three, everyone is pointing to the Lucky feature. "There!" they say "There is why halflings have supernatural good luck that differentiates them from all other races" But, as I'm trying to point out... it doesn't actually do that. It allows a few re-rolls when you might roll a 1. That's it. It isn't causing fortuitous cave-ins, it isn't causing them to find the secret key to lost vault hidden in the sands, it isn't allowing them to stumble on the secret dryad's grove, it isn't causing NARRATIVE luck. Not unless the DM forces it to happen.

They are brave. But they do not have the Brave trait. Those are two separate things. The trait Brave gives the advantage on saving throws against being frightened. It has nothing to do with how courageous they are. It's just a name.

Exactly. Thank you. Therefore Halflings are not particularly braver than other races. They are not uniquely brave in any way. They just have a trait that grants advantage.

I'd never say elves have "Iron Wills" because they have fey ancestry that gives them advantage against charm. So why do we want to say that halflings must be uniquely and strangely brave when compared to other races just because they have advantage on the roll? Especially since, again, failing the roll doesn't mean you are not brave.

Is advantage on fear rolls a useful and powerful ability? Sure. Mechanically it is a good ability. But I'm not talking about the mechanics of the trait. I'm talking about the narrative.

 

[Gammadoodler]

You guys keep repeating the same thing, and keep missing my point.

Sure X% of the time a halfling won't fail at the action they tried to take. It is a small percentage of the time, less than 5%. But outside of rolling the d20 the halfling is no luckier than anyone else. Because the true "luck" that the player expeirences is their own luck at the table, and the narrative the DM enforces. And if the DM doesn't come in and say "that arrow missed you because you are lucky" or "You find the journal because you are lucky" and instead describes these actions exactly like they describe EVERYONE ELSE then the halfling is no luckier than anyone else.



Huh. See, I read this, and I see some interesting things. For example, where do half of your proficiencies come from? Your class. Halflings don't have proficiency in stealth. Most of the time, your proficiency in stealth will come from your class, I can only think of a single race that gives it. Tabaxi.

Halflings don't get expertise in stealth. Expertise in stealth is very rare. It is limited to.... class selection.

Your Dex mod DOES affect your stealth... but it also no longer is limited to specific races, and it was never limited to halflings. Again, 17 races who got a bonus to dexterity.

Now, stay with me here. Proficiency, Expertise, Dex Mod, and rolling the die. Even if we count rolling the die 50% of your ability to be stealthy comes from.... YOUR CLASS. The only thing the race does is give a bonus to your dex mod.... and it doesn't even do that anymore.

And so, again, if you want to argue that halflings are "The race that has stealth" then you have to argue that for every race that can get a dex modifier. And currently, that is all of them. But, even more than that, between 50% and 66% of the stealthiness of a character comes from.... THEIR CLASS.

I expect some of the repetition here may be a result of having the eminently reasonable position that the dm does not need to specifically tie all of your successes and failures to the feature that allowed it. Further, the failure to mention the feature does not negate that feature.

I'd conceded the change to racial stat mods at the very beginning of this exchange and have continued to take note of it. The point, such as it was, is the way in which the traditional racial ability bonuss were used to reflect those races' capabilities, including stealth, as of when those races were designed and released. Sure, Tasha's wipes the slate clean, but it doesn't change the original design process.

I've also noted that class plays a bigger part of a character's capabilities than their race selection (in point of fact it's right there in the message you've replied to).

But it's the same way with pretty much every racial feature. A mountain dwarf monk getting medium armor proficiency didn't make them a warrior, but it is a reflection of a mountain dwarf's martial tradition..even if the character never uses it.

Having your character lean away from the roles which their racial features would support does not negate the traditions/traits those features were intended to reflect.

 

[Charlaquin]

Also, like, how often do you make a check where you would succeed on a natural 1? In my games, literally never because I wouldn’t call for a check in the first place if that was the case. That means at bare minimum, halflings have a 5% chance of turning a failure into a reroll. That’s not much but it’s not nothing.

Actually now that I think about it, you can figure out exactly what this effect is “worth” just by replacing the 5% chance of a natural 1 with a 5% chance of a 10.5 (the mean average value of the reroll) and calculating the new average. That comes out to 10.975, so Lucky is worth about +0.475 to every roll. In other words, halflings are about 2.375% more likely to succeed at anything they attempt than anyone else due to their luck. I say “about” because advantage and disadvantage mess with the odds slightly, as do the special cases where a natural 1 is especially bad like attack rolls and death saves.

 

[Lanefan]

And the problem is that Halfling don't actually bring much to the table. Mostly because halfling fans didn't let it(well they might now)

Halfling The Race are from a tradition where races didn't give you much. But even in those time halflings gave you the less. Dwarves use to give you magic resist, poison resist,and darkvision. Halfling had both resists and a downgrade of infravision.

Hobbits (a.k.a. Halflings) also had bonuses with missiles that no other species had and which could at times be a big deal.

Now halfling lost both base resists, special vision, have fewer weapon choices, and have harder time knocking foes down. Dwarves kept everything but the magic resist AND got more.

The problem isn't all the fantastical races. The problem is all the fantasical parts of halflings suck because a bunch of halfling fans want to play challenge mode.

Halfling is a Hard Mode race. Don't blame Dragonborn or Genasi for that. Blame fans who purposely want halflings to be weak so "they can be underestimated".

Halflings probably shouldn't have lost what they lost. Dwarves (and some other species) getting more is just an example of power creep.

 

[Lanefan]

Sure, but why must there only be one race that makes good thieves and poor warriors?

Because there'll be (hopefully only!) one other species that makes good warriors and lousy wizards. And a third that makes great wizards but lousy clerics. And a fourth who shine as clerics but aren't much use as fighting. Etc. (there's obviously loads of room for fine-tuning these niches but I think this gets the idea across)

Same as classes: there's one class (well, group of classes now) that are good at sneaking and bad at melee; there's other classes that are good at arcane casting but not much use at sneaking, etc. Synergizing these two things such that one is playing both a species and a class that are good at roughly the same thing is where archetypal class-species combinations come from. I'm fine with this.

There's no need for 30 different playable species; much like there's no need for 50-odd playable classes. It's easy to determine when the limit's been reached, and that's when there's no niche left to put something new into without kicking something else out.

 

[Lanefan]

Like maybe tell people about it when you do it first?

And also not take up the slot of an iconic species that people who aren't hardcore might want to take too?

Which iconic species' place is the Halfling currently occupying, other than its own?

 

[Lanefan]

Wrong.

A natural 1 on an attack roll is always a failure, no matter what. Even if the roll would otherwise be high enough to hit the target because of other modifiers, a natural 1 is always a failure.

A natural 1 on a death saving throw counts as two failures.

A halfling will never have to worry about any of these things. Because they have the Lucky trait, which allows them to reroll 1s.

If they roll another '1' on the reroll are they forced to keep it, or can they keep re-rolling until no '1' appears?

If the first is true, then "never" becomes "hardly ever".