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?

 

[Minigiant]

That is an incredible leap.

It certainly doesn’t have any bearing on a broader discussion of the halfling in D&D .

"They rarely build kingdoms of their own or even hold much land beyond their quiet shires. They typically don’t recognize any sort of halfling nobility or royalty, instead looking to family elders to guide them."

to

"They rarely build underworld kingdoms of their own or even hold much underworld land beyond their quiet undershires. They typically don’t recognize any sort of halfling underworld nobility or underworld royalty, instead looking to underworld family elders to guide them in the underworld."

 

[Faolyn]

Where am I saying absolutes?

Note: My quote is literally the PHB description of haflings with the legal titles replaced with underworld titles.

If you don't like it. Congratulations! You agree with me that the 5e Halfling lore is trash.

I don't agree with you. Because you are taking this tendency as if it were 100% true all the time. You are refusing to accept that not every halfling acts in exactly this way.

And you still haven't given examples of evils that are unique to elves or dwarfs that are based on their racial proclivities.

Edit: "They rarely build kingdoms of their own or even hold much land beyond their quiet shires. They typically don’t recognize any sort of halfling nobility or royalty, instead looking to family elders to guide them."

Rare and typically aren't "always." A few halflings build kingdoms; some recognize nobility.

 

[Gammadoodler]

If you don't like it. Congratulations! You agree with me that the 5e Halfling lore is trash.

So here's an interesting bit. I actually would agree with you that the lore is bad.

But..it's bad because (imho) it's unimaginative..

..not because it causes any kind of weird pervasive "setting incompatibility" nonsense you and others have described.

It's a disappointment not a problem.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Incrementally here is meant to express that they invest some amount more in time and energy investing in people than other races do.

It does not mean that halflings are the only ones doing so. It's the same way dwarves being Incrementally better crafters reflects that they have invested more time and energy getting better at crafting than other races have while acknowledging that other races do craft stuff.

Time and energy are finite resources. Investments in one area mean sacrifices in another. Halflings are not the best crafters, or empire builders, or mages. Their time and energy is spent elsewhere.

From a worldbuilding perspective, which was where this all started, all that is required is to plot out the incrementally different results of their incremental time and energy expenditure, the same way you would with every other race.

But Dwarves don't invest "incrementally more" time and energy into crafting. They invest a lot more. It is a foundational pillar of being a dwarf. It is a religious duty to their creator God. This isn't incremental, this is fundamental. Your example makes me think about saying that Catholics who tithe give an "incremental" amount of money to the church. No, they give 10% of their livelihood to the church and see it as a divine duty to do so. That is vastly different from someone who puts a fiver in the collection plate because the church needs a slush fund to host a bake sale.

And this is I think why your examples just aren't resonating with me. Because you seem to think that only a minor difference is enough. And I know you are talking about building out a little here, fast forward in time with how those little bits go, but that's not how I've built any other race. For Dwarves I started with it is their divine duty to craft objects in the name of Moradin. And built their society around that. To do the same for halflings they would have to see being kind to others as a religious duty... but all followers of gods of good, healing, protection, ect see being kind to others as a religious duty. It is universal, it is literally written int various celestial beings. Which then makes you look towards halflings being celestial beings, which is ridiculous. Especially for a race that is also being talked about as running crime families and murder operations like the Mafia. It doesn't work.

 

[Irlo]

Like I keep saying.

Based on the lore, halflimgs would definitely be likely to create crime families.

But based on the lore, halflings would not run major crime organizations.

At best we might agree that, based on the lore, halflings would rarely run major crime organizations. I wouldn't want more than one halfling-run crime organization in a campaign anyway, so rarely is enough for me.

Those that they do run, would likely be run by family elders.

If I were to use this idea, I'd probably set it up in a city that was less welcoming of halflings than usual, with the criminal organization preying discretely on others while protecting the halfling neighborhoods from both crime and persecution.

 

[Minigiant]

I don't agree with you. Because you are taking this tendency as if it were 100% true all the time. You are refusing to accept that not every halfling acts in exactly this way.

And you still haven't given examples of evils that are unique to elves or dwarfs that are based on their racial proclivities.

I absolutely have not. I've frequently said that PC halflings often act different than their race in many ways. And the lore says "rarely". Meaning that there aresituations where halfling would rise out of the comfort of being background players and act on the world.

But those situations are rare.

I wasn't talking about other races but

Dwarves: Dwarves are traditionalist. Andwent they do break tradition, they get harsher and twisted do what has to happen for them to do so (see duergar). A Dwarven crime org would not adapt to the times and could be strangled by their clannishness, greed, and rules..

Elves. Elves physically are quick but mentally move slow. You could cross them and it might be your son that pays the price. Also it takes longer for elves to advance because of their opinion of children and how backstabby they get when they go evil (see Drow)

Dragonborn: "Chromatic dragons gone be selfless and turn on each other" but smaller.

 

[Chaosmancer]

It's helpful in that it allows me to look at these things from a broader perspective than just within 5e and bring that perspective to these discussions.

That, and to me the rules of any edition exist only as a foundation on which to kitbash the bespoke system best suited to a given DM's own table. Which means, if you don't like the way 5e mechanically does its Hobbits, kitbash them until you do like it. WotC ain't gonna fix 'em for you.

sigh

Firstly, I would think it is obvious from the fact that since I've been discussing changing them, and have done multiple homebrew things in this thread, that saying "just kitbash them" is kind of pointless. What do you think I'm having the discussions I'm having for? Why do you think I'm talking about changing halflings except to change halflings?

As for "WoTC won't fix it" well... what do you think happens when 6e is released and Halfling lore is unchanged? And then 7e, and then 8e. If I just fixed it myself and never interacted with the larger community about why it NEEDED to be fixed, then no one is going to put pressure on changing it, and then the next person in line is going to look at the game, and potentiall be dissatisfied. They might even involve themselves in discussions about how this isn't working, while people tell them that if they don't like it, they can just change it themselves. Which then gets repeated for the next person. And the next person.

It seems to me that instead of shutting up and sitting alone in my room rewriting the game lore, it might be useful to push on the gears a little and talk to other people about why the game lore needs rewritten, so that the conversation might be heard and down the line someone actually bothers to change it.

And...how is bonuses to throwing things any weirder than various other abilities some creatures get?

Because it should then apply to all ranged attacks. And no one gets bonuses to all of a single type of attack, because that doesn't really make sense. The only counter-example might be the upcoming Giff, if they get a boost to strength based melee attacks, but that will be a first.

Where I think a character's species should have a lot to say abut many of these things. Yes, any species can try almost any of these things (I still like the idea of some species being flat-out unable to be certain classes e.g. no Dwarf Wizards) but some species will be better suited for some types of activities and-or classes simply by what they are, and in some cases your species will fight you if you want to play it as a particular class. Otherwise you might as well get rid of all the PC-playable species except Humans, as there's no good reason to keep the rest.

My point is that not all of those combinations of things should be equal.

I disagree. Both in that I find plenty of value in fantasy races without limiting their capabilities and denying them access to sections of the game, and that those combinations should not be equal. There is no reason that a dwarven wizard cannot exist, and no reason that a dwarven wizard cannot be as good as an Elven or Tiefling Wizard.

Missing some restriction until it's too late in a heavy system like PF is perfectly understandable. That said, were it me; on hitting that speed bump I'd have asked myself whether the species or the class was more important to my concept (but see below), and on the fly changed the one that was not.

This is something I don't mind, within reason. I don't see making the non-standard decision as punishment, though; I see it as an intentional decision to play against type and see how it goes. Sometimes it works out hella well. Other times it doesn't; and the same can be said for characters who didn't go down a non-standard path.

Then again, and this is probably worth noting as it seems a different approach than yours, I rarely if ever start the roll-up process with anything more than a vague idea of what I want to end up with, as I know the odds of the dice giving me what I want are sometimes slim. Going in to the char-gen process with a character concept already fully-formed is IMO a recipe for disappointment.

I disagree. The few times I've gone into a game with "let's see what I randomly get" I've gotten character's I have no interest in. And with no interest in them, I can't role-play them or enjoy the game. I tried making a bard not too long ago, but all the bard options left me cold and therefore I didn't try and make a bard and went with a different class. Because I want to approach the game with excitement, not with "eh, I guess this is what I'm doing."

And the inevitable response always seems to be "that's a you problem" but.. yeah, that's the point. If I don't want to play a bard, any attempt to force me to play one is going to be resisted. But if there is an interesting race that is now restricted where their only good options involve playing a bard.... well, now I can't play that race. Because someone decided that arbitrary limitations are interesting.

 

[Gammadoodler]

But Dwarves don't invest "incrementally more" time and energy into crafting. They invest a lot more. It is a foundational pillar of being a dwarf. It is a religious duty to their creator God. This isn't incremental, this is fundamental. Your example makes me think about saying that Catholics who tithe give an "incremental" amount of money to the church. No, they give 10% of their livelihood to the church and see it as a divine duty to do so. That is vastly different from someone who puts a fiver in the collection plate because the church needs a slush fund to host a bake sale.

And this is I think why your examples just aren't resonating with me. Because you seem to think that only a minor difference is enough. And I know you are talking about building out a little here, fast forward in time with how those little bits go, but that's not how I've built any other race. For Dwarves I started with it is their divine duty to craft objects in the name of Moradin. And built their society around that. To do the same for halflings they would have to see being kind to others as a religious duty... but all followers of gods of good, healing, protection, ect see being kind to others as a religious duty. It is universal, it is literally written int various celestial beings. Which then makes you look towards halflings being celestial beings, which is ridiculous. Especially for a race that is also being talked about as running crime families and murder operations like the Mafia. It doesn't work.

More is more. We're comparing pie charts here.

What do your Dwarves do when there is a conflict between their divine duty to craft, and counseling a friend through relationship difficulties? What do they do when there is a choice between opening a new mithril mine shaft and building a theater? When they are choosing a profession, would they rather be a blacksmith or a social worker?

You can go through this same set of questions with each race substituting in say magic-type stuff for elves, and anything else-type stuff for humans.

At an individual level, sure some, maybe even most Elves, Dwarves, and Humans will make the "people-first" choice, but for halflings it will be a lot more.

It doesn't make them angels. You could make the argument that putting people first in this way is short-sighted and ignores the possible benefits of technology or magic or abstract economic growth. You can also make the argument that by focusing so completely in their own communities, they are failing the broader world around them.

It's just a different way of allocating resources.

 

[Azzy]

I want halfling hippie communes to be a thing now.

 

[Zubatcarteira]

It always amazes me how specific these discussions get.