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?

 

[Gammadoodler]

When it comes to troubles, I think my main difficulty with the halfling is, its size. To think that a small person is somehow no longer a human, concerns me. There are human ethnicities today who are on threshold between Medium and Small, and individual adults who are Small. All of these sizes are humanity.

If the halfling are truly nonhuman, such as being a magical being who is inherently lucky − then the problem is, this a gnome.

I enjoy the river-nomad culture of the halflings in my setting. This is their indigenous culture, tho many halflings naturalize among other cultures.

I treat these halflings as strictly a human ethnicity, where all the "race" options are cultural ones. Even the luck is a religious value (roughly comparable to a background feat choice), and is part of the indigenous spiritual heritage. I havent seen a player play a halfling. If one did, that would be fine. If one wanted human race features for their halfling character, that would be fine too.

Perhaps my Google-fu is weak. The closest human ethnicity I could find with dimensions even approaching those of a halfling had an average adult height of a little over 4ft, and average adult weight of 100-120 lbs.

So a little more than 33% taller than and 3 times as heavy as a PHB halfling.

This seems like a bad comparison and maybe even insulting to the peoples you are trying to include. And that's without even getting into things like the role diet plays in human growth.

 

[Azzy]

Heh, make halflings twee with large ears and give them extra-large boomerangs and you pretty much have Black Desert's (a Korean MMORPG) Shai. Actuall, aside from the aesthetics, Shai are pretty much halflings—integrated into human and other people's societies with a rare village to themselves here and there.

Seriously, though. Some people enjoy playing halflings—whether they're rustic little people, wandering travelers, or semi-nomadic dinosaur-riding pastoralists—that's more than enough reason for them to exist.

 

[Faolyn]

What I am saying is the 5e PHB lore says there aren't many halflings at all. It defaults them into them into living in a few small villages and small enclaves. There could be more human nobles than total halfings in a setting.

The lore goes out its way to make them invisible physically, socially, and economically. That's why this thread exists. It's hard to incorporate what the game purposely hides.

There could also be more human nobles than total elves as well, and elves also generally stay away from other people.

And, no it doesn't default them into living in a "few" small villages. It says, "Most halflings live in small, peaceful communities with large farms and well-kept groves. [...] Many halflings live among other races, where the halflings' hard work and loyal outlook offer them abundant rewards and creature comforts. Some halfling communities travel as a way of life, driving wagons or guiding boats from place to place and maintaining no permanent home."

Nothing in the PHB's writeup suggests that only live in a few places, and it straight-out says that they openly live among others.

 

[Yaarel]

Perhaps my Google-fu is weak. The closest human ethnicity I could find with dimensions even approaching those of a halfling had an average adult height of a little over 4ft, and average adult weight of 100-120 lbs.

So a little more than 33% taller than and 3 times as heavy as a PHB halfling.

This seems like a bad comparison and maybe even insulting to the peoples you are trying to include. And that's without even getting into things like the role diet plays in human growth.

The threshold between Small and Medium is something like 4 feet. The threshold between Medium and Large is something like 8 feet. The threshold between Large and Huge is something like 16 feet. The rules of 5e tend to handwaive the specific heights, and refer more vaguely to how much space one occupies. The ballparks for the heights of various size categories show up indirectly in the descriptions of various bipedal races and monsters.

Regarding reallife human ethnicities, for example, various ethnicities described as "pygmy" (from a Greek exonym) are significantly shorter than 5 feet, and because of height being a bellcurve, many individuals are less than 4 feet. In D&D terms, these adult humans are Small. Consider also, prehistoric humans such as Floresiensis, who are unambiguously in the Small category, in this case adapting to insular dwarfism.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Fair enough, but at least I think this helps highlight why the issue exists.

What issue, though? What is the actual issue, and is it a general issue or a “some players that overthink their hobbies as a secondary hobby don’t prefer the way this thing is” issue?

(To be clear, the above description is being applied to everyone here, not to people I disagree with or anything like that. We come here to overthink our hobbies as a hobby. That is what this place is. All hobbies have such places.)

This is why, for me, I've been adopting a position of consolidating the races, not mechanically at least, but narratively. So, Goliath and Firbolg are related and both "giant-kin".

The one that gives me the biggest headache is trying to do a "Beast Folk" race because it would include

Aaracrockra (Bird)
Kenku (different Bird)
Owlin (third different Bird)
Harengon
Leonin (Cat)
Tabaxi (different cat)
Lizardfolk?
Loxodon
Minotaurs
Shifters (Which include thick hided creatures like bulls and elephants, Cats, Wolves and dogs, and then a generic catch all)
Tortle?

And I think I missed at least two others. And trying to work them all under a single umbrella is hard.

Why? Seems easy enough to me. I don’t see the point in doing it, but I can’t fathom what is hard about.

Shifters are supposed to be diet lycanthropes, not beast men.

Eh, in meta origin sure, but they’re more “the people from which lycanthropes come, and are a corruption of”. Which is beastfolk, really.

And yeah of course, because even “playable theriomorph” is going to be a beastfolk. Like…they’re humanoids with the traits of a particular beast. That’s a beastfolk.

 

[Gammadoodler]

The threshold between Small and Medium is something like 4 feet. The threshold between Medium and Large is something like 8 feet. The threshold between Large and Huge is something like 16 feet. The rules of 5e tend to handwaive the specific heights, and refer more vaguely to how much space one occupies. The ballparks for the heights of various size categories show up indirectly in the descriptions of various bipedal races and monsters.

Regarding reallife human ethnicities, for example, various ethnicities described as "pygmy" (from a Greek exonym) are significantly shorter than 5 feet, and because of height being a bellcurve, many individuals are less than 4 feet. In D&D terms, these adult humans are Small. Consider also, prehistoric humans such as Floresiensis, who are unambiguously in the Small category, in this case adapting to insular dwarfism.

In 5e at least, halflings are around 3 feet tall and 40 lbs and size small.

In 5e a dwarf is between 4 and 5 feet tall, average about 150 lbs are sized medium.

In real life, pygmies, (in some of the shorter statured tribes) average a little over 4ft tall at adulthood and between 100 and 120 lbs. They reach 5e halfling size, on average, when they are about 8 years old before they hit puberty.

You are saying this group of people is the same size as their grade-school children. (And again this is ignoring nutrition impacts on human growth and development)

In 5e parlance, pygmies would be medium. This is a bad basis from which to make your argument.

 

[Irlo]

You know, maybe, the more I think about this. Maybe I picked an officially licensed DnD product to talk about DnD because I thought it might connect to DnD. Crazy thought, I know. It is almost like I expect the media surrounding the game to be somehow connected to the game.

Up to this point, I truly thought you were talking about the narrative aspects of the games we play — that is, how we as players and DMs present the adventures of our characters — rather than the narratives presented by authors in the media surrounding the game.

I can’t comment much, I guess, since I have almost no exposure to D&D novels and comics. But I will say that it’s no surprise to me that there’s a disconnect between comic book narratives and in-game mechanics and narratives.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

"They are brave because we say that they are brave" doesn't really help though, does it?

I mean, yes, it does. Especially if you accurately quote what I actually said, and include the rest of the position you’re trying to debunk, rather than “paraphrasing” half of my position in order to “refute” the weakest possible version thereof.

Orcs, gnolls, dwarves, and dragonborn are all described as some variation of "fearless" but they aren't trotted out as being particularly fearless. Especially because, to keep repeating myself, nearly all adventurers are brave. My elf ranger is brave, my half-orc samurai is brave, my gnome cleric is brave, my tielfing artificer... isn't brave but he is vicious, my human barbarian is brave, my half-elf paladin is brave.

How do I know they are brave? Do they have the Brave Trait? No. they are brave because they went out and fought monsters that would rip them limb from limb to protect the innocent who could not protect themselves. They delved deep into caves and ruins, seeking what was lost. They are brave because of what they choose to do.

The only way people seem to have to claim halflings are more brave than the other races... is that they have advantage on the save against fear. But, as established, FAILING that check does not mean your character is not brave. So... halflings are brave because we say they are, and that is not represented in any possible way at the table, because they are just as brave as everyone else sitting at the table.

None of that changes the fact that halflings are described as especially brave, and have a trait to support that which makes it easier for them to fight through fear. Which is what bravery is.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

That seems crazy to me. None of these animals are closely related, why would the anthropomorphic versions be?

I assume one would make something like the 4e hengeyokai, which are mechanically a race, but thematically a class of creatures that despite little genetic relation have very strong historical and cultural ties due to having a large degree of simultaneous evolution.

Why you would do that….idk.

 

[Yaarel]

In 5e at least, halflings are around 3 feet tall and 40 lbs and size small.

In 5e a dwarf is between 4 and 5 feet tall, average about 150 lbs are sized medium.

In real life, pygmies, (in some of the shorter statured tribes) average a little over 4ft tall at adulthood and average between 100 and 120 lbs at adulthood. They reach 5e halfling size, on average, when they are about 8 years old before they hit puberty.

Yup.

Notice. The AVERAGE can be a bit above 4 feet for these human ethnicities. The bellcurve includes adults who are less than 4 feet.

Some of the shorter humans are the same size as some of the taller halflings.

Moreover, there are prehistoric humans who are the same average size as halflings.

Small humans exist.

Note the insular dwarfism is a naturally occurring adaptation for many species. It is different from impaired growth. These smaller groups are healthy.