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]

then why are they one of the big common races if they are meant to be bit parts?

Presumably there are lots more halflings doing background things than there are tieflings or dragonborn or gith or tabaxi doing center-stage things.

 

[Minigiant]

Presumably there are lots more halflings doing background things than there are tieflings or dragonborn or gith or tabaxi doing center-stage things.

Not even really.5e'sPHB base lore says haflings live in small communities and hold no land.

That's the cristicism. Halflings are treated as a major race enough though their lore says they are minor players and do little and their mechanics are weak.

It's like treating Hawkeye as the 4 most important MCU character.

 

[Lanefan]

Dwarven armor is supposed to be better qaulity, but that doesn't mean I've ever seen dwarves depicted as "the race that wears armor" because... humans and elves wear armor too. And Elven armor is also special and cool. They also blacksmith weapons and tools, but they aren't the only weapon or tool using race.

I think with Dwarves it's more that they're the species that doesn't not wear armour.

Sure, some Humans, Elves, etc. wear armur some of the time. But Dwarves wear armour in the shower!

Just like Hobbits are the species that is never not stealthy, where only some members of other species are only stealthy some of the time.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Or treating Cap as the fourth most important MCU character despite his being waaay outside his weightclass when dealing with Thor, Tony, or anything Avengers level, and him only being the unquestioned lead in his first film.

 

[Vaalingrade]

It's like treating Hawkeye as the 4 most important MCU character.

Instead of 2nd where he belongs?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Not even really.5e'sPHB base lore says haflings live in small communities and hold no land.

That's the cristicism. Halflings are treated as a major race enough though their lore says they are minor players and do little and their mechanics are weak.

It's like treating Hawkeye as the 4 most important MCU character.

Dear Athe, don't say that this is again about the utterly inconsequential common/uncommon races division in the PHB? It doesn't matter. I literally didn't for years know that it was a thing, I merely wondered why the races were not in alphabetical order, until someone here complained about the horrible injustice of their favourite race being labelled as "uncommon."

But sure, they should just put the races in alphabetical order in the next printing. Happy?

 

[Chaosmancer]

Sure, you'd probably miss your attack on a 2. But you'd get a chance to reroll a 1, which gives you an extra chance to roll and maybe even get a crit.

You seem to be confusing the possibility of something happening with it being meaningful. As we've already established, re-rolling a 1 and getting a chance to hit is about a 3% increase in your chance to hit. Re-rolling into a crit is, as Max has helpfully pointed out, a 1/400 chance, or a 0.25% chance.

Now, I don't know about you, but in a game where the smallest bonus is a 5% increase, a 3% increase doesn't feel very meaningful. It feels like it doesn't really portray luck in any way. You could rename the ability any number of things and it would be the exact same.

No. This is an example of a plot contrivance in a comic, which clearly does not actually follow D&D rules any more than D&D novels did. Now, I haven't read this comic, but I'm willing to bet that they also have people killing evenly-matched monsters with single, well-placed blows rather than the multiple attacks that it usually takes a real character. Heck, even your example seems to indicate that a falling stalactite, which is weak enough to break under the weight of a falling halfling and which maybe would do 4d10 damage if the dragon failed a Dex save (or whatever amount of damage 4e would say), is enough to kill a dragon capable of causing a TPK. I should think that alone would be enough to tell you that this comic isn't following D&D rules. If the dragon is so badly injured that 4d10 damage is enough to kill it, then it's weak enough that it would be killed by the party before it could TPK them. Especially since that halfling up there doesn't look even slightly injured.

A D&D comic that actually followed D&D rules would be more like this:

View attachment 253801

Which is why "serious" D&D comics don't follow game rules and try to be realistic but occasionally pull stalactite ex machinas out.

You know, it would be hilarious if this didn't happen so often.

Me: The rules don't accurately portray the narrative of halfling luck. This is an example of what halfling luck is like, according to the narratives associated with DnD
You: That doesn't follow the rules of the games at all! That's just a plot contrivance! No serious DnD media follows the rules!

Yes, thank you for identifying the problem accurately. All supernatural luck is a plot contrivance. Now, since we are on the same page, you will probably soon make a sarcastic attack about how a "dues ex machina" ability would be incredibly broken and bad for the game. I agree! This is partially why I've never liked any game that tries to put in a supernaturally lucky group, because you really can't.

But, now we are in agreement that the rules don't accurately portray luck, so any halfling character sitting at a table that follows the rules isn't actually terribly lucky.

These are all traits. You are confusing traits with narration. They are different things.

Unlike other races, all halflings have advantage on saving throws to avoid being frightened.
Unlike other races, all halflings can reroll 1s, and can do so every time a 1 is rolled.
Unlike other races, all halflings can move through the space of Medium and larger creatures.

Only halflings can do these three things.

Also:

Unlike other races, some halflings are also capable of hiding behind other creatures.
Unlike other races, some halflings are also naturally resistant to poison.
Unlike other races, some halflings are also telepathic.
Unlike other races, some halflings are also attuned to nature's magic.
Unlike other races, some halflings are also dragonmarked and have have magic related to healing or hospitality.

These things make halflings different from all other races.

How you choose to narrate this is up to you, not the game.

I'm not confusing anything. I know what I've been talking about, it is everyone else who seems to think I'm talking about something else. I mean, why else would I keep insising that the narration is the part I'm talking about if I wanted to talk about the mechanics.

Also, really? You know how easy that list is to break apart? Like, for example, if you follow the RAW basic rules, no one can move through anyone else's space. But if you do the variant rule, then everyone can move through the space of a small or larger creature with a check. It then becomes that halflings just auto-succeed the check against medium or bigger creatures.

But, you know what? When asked, "moving through larger creature's spaces" wasn't held up as defining the halflings. What was held up was

Halflings are Stealthy
Halflings are Lucky
Halflings are Brave

You can go back and re-read the post I responded to if you don't believe me. It wasn't "halflings are one of the only races in the game that allow you to roll fear checks with advantage." Because they were talking narrative, not mechanics. But as soon as I confronted the narrative... we got dragged into talking about mechanics and how these mechanics are so impactful and shape the narrative. Except... they don't.

I can't think of a single race in D&D's history that has a trait that allows them to alter the narrative of the game. So why are you singling out halflings?

Because that's what supernatural luck means and they are the only race in DnD's history to claim they have supernatural luck?

So again, your problem is with the name of the trait, not with the trait. Rename all their traits, if they bother you so much.

Will that stop people from claiming that halflings are braver than all the other races in the narrative of DnD? All I have to do is change the names of the traits at my own table.

Man, if I knew it was so simple I... oh. Wait. Did that. Huh, if that fixes everything how did this conversation even happen?

They likely named it that because it's an interesting name, not because they expected that people would seriously think that it means that all halflings must be braver about everything than everyone else.

And yet, people seriously think and have argued with me for a dozen pages that halflings are braver than everyone else. So, whether they seriously thought it would happen or not, it did happen.

 

[Minigiant]

Dear Athe, don't say that this is again about the utterly inconsequential common/uncommon races division in the PHB? It doesn't matter. I literally didn't for years know that it was a thing, I merely wondered why the races were not in alphabetical order, until someone here complained about the horrible injustice of their favourite race being labelled as "uncommon."

But sure, they should just put the races in alphabetical order in the next printing. Happy?

Nope.

Because Orcs and Goblins should be in the PHB because they are more impactful in most D&D settings than Halflings and offer more mechanical variation than them as well.

ORCS AND GOBLINS FOR THE PLAYERS HANDBOOK 2024!

 

[Chaosmancer]

Why compare halflings to monks, druids, and clerics? Compare a halfling monk to a non-halfling monk.

Because the entire point is people keep claiming that "halflings are braver than the other races" Then they equate bravery with "passes a fear saving throw". Which is ridiculous. No one goes around saying that Clerics are an especially brave class compared to fighters. No one claims that druids are braver than warlocks.

So why are halflings braver than everyone else based on their ability to pass a single saving throw type?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Nope.

Because Orcs and Goblins should be in the PHB because they are more impactful in most D&D settings than Halflings and offer more mechanical variation than them as well.

ORCS AND GOBLINS FOR THE PLAYERS HANDBOOK 2024!

You don't need to remove halflings for that, unless you have vendetta against halflings. Now removing half-orcs for orcs might make certain sense, though we had a separate thread about that and some people disagreed.