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?

 

[Lanefan]

Yes, it really is. 4.7% five years ago, before Tasha's removed the primary reason to play halflings - the Dex bonus.

Does anyone think that in the past five years, halflings have become MORE commonly played?

Sorry, yes, I feel no shame in ignoring 1 in 20 players in favor of improving the game by actually including things that more people will want to play. In the same way that Tieflings and Dragonborn have both proven that new races are very popular - with Goliaths also in the running despite not even being included in the PHB. Hell, Genasi are being played as often.

I wonder how much of the popularity of things like Goliaths and Genasi is due to the newness factor, i.e. players taking out the Cool New Thing for a test drive?

 

[Azzy]

Yes, it really is. 4.7% five years ago, before Tasha's removed the primary reason to play halflings - the Dex bonus.

Pftt. Damn, like there's been nothing but Dex bonuses going for halflings all this time. Nothing on the roleplaying front at all that have attracted halfling players.

Does anyone think that in the past five years, halflings have become MORE commonly played?

Who knows? But even if the percentage stays the same, the total number of halfling players have grown as the player population has grown.

Sorry, yes, I feel no shame in ignoring 1 in 20 players in favor of improving the game by actually including things that more people will want to play.

Thankfully, WotC doesn't feel the same in ignoring such players.

In the same way that Tieflings and Dragonborn have both proven that new races are very popular -

Yes, and they didn't have to remove anything to add them. Win-win.

with Goliaths also in the running despite not even being included in the PHB. Hell, Genasi are being played as often.

Whoo, that means incentivized sales for sourcebooks, then.

 

[Maxperson]

I wonder how much of the popularity of things like Goliaths and Genasi is due to the newness factor, i.e. players taking out the Cool New Thing for a test drive?

Genasi have been around for 20 years. I'd think the newness factor was over.

 

[James Gasik]

Yeah ditching Halflings and Gnomes might lead some to suddenly say 5e "doesn't feel like D&D", and then they'd have to immediately kill the edition, take 2 years doing a crowdsourced playtest, only to announce a "greatest hits" edition that ignores a good chunk of the playtest data....wait, what year is this?

 

[Lanefan]

Ah, but their choice DOES affect me.

Because halflings and gnomes are in the PHB, that means that every single setting guide, adventure, and supplement MUST include both of them, regardless of whether or not they fit. You absolutely must include material for both races in every (or nearly every, I'm sure there are exceptions) book no matter what.

Setting guides I'll give you - core species should be covered there even if only to explain why they don't appear in that setting if such is the case.

Adventures? There's nothing anywhere says I even have to mention any specific species in any adventure if I don't want to, no matter what that species and-or adventure might be.

Supplements? Variable. If any species-based rules are changing due to a supplement then yes, every PC-playable species must be mentioned as to how and-or if the changes affect them. But a supplement book full of magic items or new spells or geographical maps can ignore species entirely if so desired.

 

[Lanefan]

Wow, I get absolutely dogpiled for suggesting that the two LEAST PLAYED races (whatever they are) get shunted to the MM, and that's heretical. But, dumping all but the most played race in the Monster Manual is the solution? Seriously?

It's A solution. Maybe not the best one, but I could live with it as I've always been somewhat Human-o-centric in my games anyway.

Note, for those keeping score. The ONLY reason I'm suggesting gnomes and halflings is because those two races HAPPEN to be at the bottom of the barrel of the PHB races. If it was elves and dwarves? Punt them. Whatever are the two LEAST PLAYED races gets cut every ten years as the new PHB comes out in favor of trying something that might get more traction with players. That's what I'm suggesting.

So, a football-like promotion/relegation system then.

Right, then: everyone play Hobbits this season so we can keep them in the First Division!

That way the PHB actually reflects what players want to play, rather than what some people want to force everyone else to play.

Which opens up the question, should the PH be leading or following in such respects?

 

[Lanefan]

I wonder if that is a common term used for all adventurers, along the lines of Brave Adventurers. Because, you know, all Adventurers are brave or intrepid or courageous. It is kind of the point. Which is why having one race that is "the brave race" doesn't work in the context of the party.

Sure it does. When Fear is a mechanical condition the game can impose, having a species less likely to be affected by that condition is an advantage to the party. Same goes for Poison or Sleep or Charm, all of which have in the past have had (and still have?) specific species that were less likely to be affected.

It also, I suppose, depends how badly the Fear condition affects characters when it hits. If they can mostly keep going as normal it's not a big deal. If it means they drop everything and flee in blind terror it's a very big deal indeed, as fleeing in blind terror can send you over a cliff or into other hazards and can also very easily get you lost - you eventually snap out of the fear but have no idea where you've run to or how you got there.

My style tends more toward the blind-terror side, which means any item that grants Fearless is highly sought after. (that said, nobody ever wants to play Cavaliers who come with Fearless as a built-in class ability right from 1st level)

 

[Faolyn]

Ah, but their choice DOES affect me.

Because halflings and gnomes are in the PHB, that means that every single setting guide, adventure, and supplement MUST include both of them, regardless of whether or not they fit. You absolutely must include material for both races in every (or nearly every, I'm sure there are exceptions) book no matter what.

Except that as you pointed out, they got a single sentence in an adventure. The end. And you treated it like it was an enormous waste of space.

How did that sentence affect you? How would even a paragraph or a whole page actually affect you? If you don't hate halflings, like you claim, then their mere presence shouldn't actually bother you.

So either you do hate them but for some reason want to pretend you don't, or you don't hate them and therefore shouldn't be upset that some villagers are halflings. Which is it?

I'm diminishing the interests of half a million people in the face of TWENTY TIMES more people. Ok, the math of that is off, but, you get the point.

But you haven't actually said how these interests are diminished. How many people are really pulling their hair out in frustration because there's a halfling in the book? Seriously.

Again, I'm not advocating at all to remove them from the game. I'm simply shunting them to another book so they don't clutter up the game with a bunch of material that is so rarely used. They are in the same category as polearm tables. They just aren't needed in the PHB. And, you keep pointing to Level Up. Why? Do you honestly think that the revised game is going to be more complex than currently? Hey, The World's Largest Dungeon is about a thousand pages, so, I guess every future module should be a thousand pages too. Why are you repeatedly pointing a book from another company? Do you really think they're going to double or triple the size of the PHB?

Give me a reason why they couldn't? Especially considering they are opening up more and more to digital sales where the size of the book doesn't matter. And who said anything about doubling or tripling? They could add all the current races in another forty or fifty pages.

I'm bringing up Level Up to show you that published, dead-tree D&D-derived books can in fact be more than 300 pages in length without problems.

Unlike twelve types of polearms, different races actually do fit different niches. I doubt that there's anyone who's mad for bec de corbins, but there are people who adore halflings, just like there are people who adore elves or orcs or tabaxi or whatever. The mere fact that you are not one of those people doesn't mean that those people don't exist. I play with not one but two people who will nearly always play tabaxi/anthro races. I knew a guy in college who would only ever play halflings, unless he was allowed to play a kender.

And 400k people is not rarely used. It's a sizable fraction, considering that it only counts people who made a character on D&DBeyond.

But, there aren't really forty species. There are like 5-8 species and then everyone else.

Aarakocra, aasimar (fallen, protector, scourge), bugbear, centaur, changeling, dhampir, dragonborn (base, chromatic, draconblood, gem, metallic, ravenite), dwarf (duergar, hill, mountain), elf (drow, eladrin, high, pallid, sea, shadar-kai, wood), fairy, firbolg, genasi (air, earth, fire, water), gith (githyanki, githzerai), gnome (deep, forest, rock), goblin (base, dankwood), goliath, grung, half-elf (base, elf subrace-descent), half-orc, halfling (ghostwise, lightfoot, lotusden, stout), harengon, hexblood, hobgoblin (base, fey), human (base, variant), kalashtar, kenku, kobold, leonin, locathah, minotaur, orc, owlin, reborn, satyr, shifter (beasthide, longtooth, swiftstride, wildhunt), tabaxi, tiefling (base, Asmodeus, Baalzebul, Dispater, Fierna, Glasya, Levistus, Mammon, Mephistopheles, varaint, Zariel), tortle, triton, veldaken, verdan, warforged, yuai-ti.

If my count is correct, that's 42 races and 55 sub-races.

In the games I'm playing in or running, we have: tiefling (2), tabaxi (2), half-elf (3), warforged (2), kenku, githzerai, firbolg, gnome, leonin, changeling, kalashtar, earth genasi, shifter, half-orc (2), reborn, dhampir, halfling (3), homebrew caliban (2).

Maybe your games don't have a wide variety of races in them. I don't know. But as you can see, mine, and probably a lot of other games as well, do.

 

[Charlaquin]

I wonder how much of the popularity of things like Goliaths and Genasi is due to the newness factor, i.e. players taking out the Cool New Thing for a test drive?

Neither Goliaths nor Genasi are new. They’ve been around for decades.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Except that as you pointed out, they got a single sentence in an adventure. The end. And you treated it like it was an enormous waste of space.

How did that sentence affect you? How would even a paragraph or a whole page actually affect you? If you don't hate halflings, like you claim, then their mere presence shouldn't actually bother you.

So either you do hate them but for some reason want to pretend you don't, or you don't hate them and therefore shouldn't be upset that some villagers are halflings. Which is it?


But you haven't actually said how these interests are diminished. How many people are really pulling their hair out in frustration because there's a halfling in the book? Seriously.


Give me a reason why they couldn't? Especially considering they are opening up more and more to digital sales where the size of the book doesn't matter. And who said anything about doubling or tripling? They could add all the current races in another forty or fifty pages.

I'm bringing up Level Up to show you that published, dead-tree D&D-derived books can in fact be more than 300 pages in length without problems.

Unlike twelve types of polearms, different races actually do fit different niches. I doubt that there's anyone who's mad for bec de corbins, but there are people who adore halflings, just like there are people who adore elves or orcs or tabaxi or whatever. The mere fact that you are not one of those people doesn't mean that those people don't exist. I play with not one but two people who will nearly always play tabaxi/anthro races. I knew a guy in college who would only ever play halflings, unless he was allowed to play a kender.

And 400k people is not rarely used. It's a sizable fraction, considering that it only counts people who made a character on D&DBeyond.

If we extrapolate you the greater community, but halve both the percentage from the ddb data and the number of players from the wotc numbers, we get 2.35% of 25 million players. That’s over half a million players. Use 4.7, and it tops a million.

And we don’t know wotc’s data for race usage, but we do know that they consider halflings quite popular.

Aarakocra, aasimar (fallen, protector, scourge), bugbear, centaur, changeling, dhampir, dragonborn (base, chromatic, draconblood, gem, metallic, ravenite), dwarf (duergar, hill, mountain), elf (drow, eladrin, high, pallid, sea, shadar-kai, wood), fairy, firbolg, genasi (air, earth, fire, water), gith (githyanki, githzerai), gnome (deep, forest, rock), goblin (base, dankwood), goliath, grung, half-elf (base, elf subrace-descent), half-orc, halfling (ghostwise, lightfoot, lotusden, stout), harengon, hexblood, hobgoblin (base, fey), human (base, variant), kalashtar, kenku, kobold, leonin, locathah, minotaur, orc, owlin, reborn, satyr, shifter (beasthide, longtooth, swiftstride, wildhunt), tabaxi, tiefling (base, Asmodeus, Baalzebul, Dispater, Fierna, Glasya, Levistus, Mammon, Mephistopheles, varaint, Zariel), tortle, triton, veldaken, verdan, warforged, yuai-ti.

If my count is correct, that's 42 races and 55 sub-races.

In the games I'm playing in or running, we have: tiefling (2), tabaxi (2), half-elf (3), warforged (2), kenku, githzerai, firbolg, gnome, leonin, changeling, kalashtar, earth genasi, shifter, half-orc (2), reborn, dhampir, halfling (3), homebrew caliban (2).

Maybe your games don't have a wide variety of races in them. I don't know. But as you can see, mine, and probably a lot of other games as well, do.

Halflings show up a lot at my table, as do gnomes.

IMO, the need to worry about “redundant niche representation” or whatever with the small races is precisely the same as the need to worry about humans, elves, and dwarves, filling the same niche.