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?

 

[Yora]

Speaking of Elves, as a race often in decline, what impact do they have on the setting? Sure you see Elven adventurers, but most of the time, they hang out in their secluded kingdoms and chill. Their era of expansion and innovation has ended. Oh sure, they have Elven lore and magic, but how long before all of that is obsolete?

A year ago I was reading through the whole original Forgotten Realms Grey Box and taking notes, and one of the most surprising things I found is that originally the setting wasn't just presented as human-dominant but almost human-exclusive.
Elves and dwarves are pretty much gone. Gnomes are only occasionally name checked in the Grey Box and other 1st edition sources in sections that go through the PHB races in alphabetical order but are otherwise nonexistent.
I think halflings might actually the most common nonhumans, though still more a footnote than having much of a presence.

 

[Faolyn]

So, if you take a non-human trait, and declare it to be a human trait, then non-humans are just humans? That is your best argument?

And again, you are strawmanning here.

I didn't say "take a non-human trait and declare it to be a human trait." Real humans in the real world claim to be reincarnations. It's a central tenet in some religions. It can be very true in a fantasy world.

...Unless you are claiming that D&D humans have to follow a particular religious model based on an Abrahamic-style reskinning of the Greco-Roman pantheon? Or that any D&D human religion that involves reincarnation is automatically false?

I guess in my next game I'll play a human who worships the human of humans and humans and appears like a human while fighting with a human and a human. Because if we can just alter the definitions of things to be human than why stop with just giving them all the traits of elves?

"Divinity of Mankind" was a perfectly acceptable choice for a religion, as per the 2e Complete Priests Handbook. It even spawned a racist and sexist men's club in Lamordia. A party consisting only of humans is perfectly fine, and was considered the ideal in 1e.

So I don't know what you're complaining about here.

Except that there is a difference between "anyone can study medicine" and "every single man, woman and child has an in-depth understanding of organ function and can diagnose illnesses with a glance". Innately magical people are different from humans in an important way.

The ability of a high elf to cast a cantrip is the same as a studied wizard. Gotcha.

I do ignore the Dragonmarks, because 1) They are highly specific to Eberron and their exact context doesn't work outside of Eberron and 2) If trying to translate Dragonmarks from Eberron into something else, the best you would do is essentially an extended sorcererous family.


I do want to discuss Ghostwise and Lotusden halflings a bit, because they are a bit fascinating. See, in every single discussion of halflings we have ever had they have only come up about twice. Once when I brought them up, and just now when you brought them up. Over three or four different threads, thousands of posts, only a very small number of times. And actually, many people like Oofta have declared that one of the defining things about halflings is that they are non-magical (which is why they can't be merged with the magical gnomes)

So, this becomes a bit of a conundrum, doesn't it? If we accept halflings as being "pretty magical" then what makes them different than Gnomes? In fact, a Lotusden Halfling and a Forest Gnome would seem to be highly similiar, if not identical, would they not? They would both be short humanoids, with human features, that have a deep connection to nature and specifically to forests, which can manifest in magical abilities.

Therefore, do you break with the consensus of your peers and declare halflings magical, and therefore must explain how they are different from the Gnomes, or do you declare halflings majority non-magical, and therefore the rarely mentioned and often forgotten Ghostwise and Lotusden end up being exceptions, not the norm?

1. I don't care that Oofta said halflings are non-magical.

2. Probably ghostwise and lotusden halflings don't come more for the same reason pallid elves and shadar-kai don't come up more often: they're not in the PHB, and weren't historically common types of elves. Maybe they should be, but that's a discussion for another edition.

3. The difference between halflings and gnomes is both cultural and mechanical. If you care to get into fantastic DNA, there's probably a load of differences between them--probably more than the difference between humans and elves, since half-elves both exist and are fertile and "gnomelings" aren't really a thing. And sure, maybe an individual, home-brew setting doesn't need both races, but the game is not an individual, home-brew setting. The game is a toolset to allow people to take their own settings, or to use an official setting.

Never said she was a DnD character, and I acknowledged that the aspect was not 100% DnD. But she is a gnome, and therefore her traits fit gnomes. In fact, she is a pretty archetypical gnome in many ways.

But she is not a D&D gnome.

The original mythical gnome was an earth elemental. That is not a D&D gnome. Neither are garden gnomes, Warhammer gnomes, Discworld gnomes, Oz nomes, or the gnome in the 2015 slasher movie "Gnome Alone."

D&D gnomes are one type of gnome.

Therefore, claiming that a character from a non-D&D source is some sort of exemplar of D&D-gnomeness is utterly ridiculous and completely pointless.

Could you homebrew "super-mega-awesometastic halflings" while keeping them non-magical, farming people who aren't very important and fade into the background? That has been the point of this discussion many times, and yet many people have declared that doing so would immediately make the race "not halflings" because halflings must fit within the very small sub-set of traits they have. If you have "super-mega-awesometastic halflings" that you have homebrewed, I'd love to hear them. In fact, that would greatly help my cause of rewriting halflings to improve them.

Why do they need to be non-magical farming people who aren't very important and fade into the background in order to be halflings? The halflings of Eberron are magical, don't farm that much, are politically important, and don't fade into the background. Are they not halflings?

Stop using the One True Halfling fallacy. Especially since you, in the past, have said that halflings that are too different from the norm don't count.

So the lack of war on the part of the Goliath or Firbolg isn't because of their natural, in-born tendencies, but because they lack the type of organizations that go to war? Is it not strange then to say that Halflings don't go to war, considering they are practically symbiotic with humans who go to war constantly? Because halflings do participate in human wars.

To go to war, you need armies. Neither goliaths nor firbolgs have the types of communities that can fund armies (unless in your particular setting they do), so at most they can do skirmishes and raids.

Halflings have the types of communities that can fund (small) armies, but they are peaceful enough that, as a race, they choose not to. At most, they have militias to protect themselves from invaders.

Some individual halflings, and some individual halfling communities choose to aid other people (humans) in wartime.

In fact, halflings have their own wars, such as the Hin ghostwars, and they have had their own homelands. Which they would have to defend in times of war. After all their War Goddess is a goddess of defense and vigilance. What you have actually noticed is that halflings do not go and conquer, which... why would they? Again, they are ALWAYS found in human settlements. So humans do the conquering, and halflings just occupy the lands the humans cleared. They don't have their own governments, they follow human governments, so if the humans go to war, then the halfling government has gone to war.

Always? Every single human settlement must feature halflings in it?

No halfling village or town ever has a mayor or governor or council of elders?

And there's no possibility that the halflings were there first and the humans just took the land the halflings didn't need?

Uh-huh.

(Also, Avoreen is a male god.)

I don't think this really speak a lot about their character as a people (or if it does, everyone will say it doesn't), it seems to speak much more about their relationship with humans. Especially considering the number of halfling criminals that can easily arise in various settings.

That's on you, then, if you don't think it speaks about their character.

Hmm, if halflings criminals "easily arise" in human societies, then what's going on in those societies that force halflings into the role of criminal? And do those halflings who live in human societies have a choice about whether or not they go to war or not?

I'm sorry your life has been such that you think "is nice" is a non-human trait on par with reincarnation. It isn't a matter of how "cool" it is that they are good chefs and nice. It is a matter that those are not traits that can be expanded into a non-human race.

Now, being good cooks can be the result of some non-human traits, but it cannot be the non-human trait itself. It is a skill set, you need to have the initial traits that improves that skill set, and frankly, halflings lack those.

So? It's cultural, not mechanical. If your halflings lack those cultural traits, that's on you.

It is almost funny to me that you want to insist I limit discussing a fantasy race to ONLY being DnD's take on that fantasy race. Meanwhile, halflings get constantly related back to Tolkien and the works based on Middle Earth, which isn't DnD. It almost feels like a double standard to say that we can't discuss the ease at which we can improve orcs and goblins to make them more fantastical and interesting, without changing their essential natures, while then declaring that since traditional DnD orcs and goblins are poorly done it is fine that halflings are poorly done.

Why is that funny? We're talking about D&D, not other settings or systems. You can't say "This non-D&D take on a non-halfling is cool, therefore halflings aren't cool." That makes no sense.

And yes, we do need to change the essential natures of goblins and orcs, because up until recently, their essential nature was "Always Evil, Kill On Sight." And there are players who want that to remain their essential nature, because they make for easy bad guys that way. When you take away the AEKoS nature of orcs and goblins, you basically have nothing left, culturally. Which means that in order to use them as people, they need to be changed a lot. And then a lot of people want to get rid of them as a PC race, accusing them as just being humans in rubber masks.

Halflings, however, have never been AEKoS monsters--not even in Dark Sun, where they were perfectly playable and listed as Lawful Neutral in the Dark Sun MCAII, with the cannibals being listed as chaotic renagades. Which means that they (halflings in general) don't need to be revamped in order to be a playable people.

So your paragraph here is, in fact, entirely wrong.

I don't think an entire race's identity needs to rest on what they can do for you as an outsider. The fact that halflings can provide you with useful services shouldn't define their existence, while looking at the elvish relationship to concepts like sex and gender which are completely outside of the human expierence is met with a "meh, it doesn't help ME in anyway"

Seems like a bizarrely selfish view

First, it's bizarre that you would assume that halflings can only provide these useful services for humans. Why wouldn't you assume they provide these useful services for each other?

But anyway, D&D is a humano-centric game. LIterally every single creature and object in the game is built to interact with humans in some way. Dragons hoard treasure just so humans can kill them and claim the treasure--they certainly don't use it for any other purpose. Mind flayers eat human brains. Mimics look like chests so that human adventurers will get lured in. Nearly every nonhuman race and monster speaks Common--the human language. Despite all logic to the contrary, nearly every setting as humans as the dominant species. For that matter, why are nearly all the PC races humanoid? If elves predate humanity, humans should be elfoid.

Why all this? Because D&D is a game that is played by humans.

Something fantastical. You seem to have missed that I'm not talking about learning magic, I know halflings can learn magic just like everyone else. That doesn't address what I am speaking about.

You need something that is fantastic, something that can define them, not as "useful skills humans can benefit from" but as having an existence outside of the normal human experience.

Why do you need something fantastic to define them? I sure don't.

This is use, using the No True Scotsman fallacy, because I've done this before with you. Halflings aren't fantastical enough, they're not good. Halflings are fantastical? They're not proper halflings. You have said this.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Either..this...

..or you are assuming that the language used in the PHB for racial characteristics is meant to describe the characteristics of the races included in the PHB...

I mean..who does that?

Well, considering I demonstrated fairly bluntly that real world humans have that drive and ambition, and that it isn't inhuman at all, something you would have had to have read to quote the very last sentence of my post....

Seems like trying to claim that humans aren't human because they have drive and ambition is... kind of trying to make up an extreme version. I mean it is possible that the language used in the PHB to describe humans, matching with real-world humans, is meant to be some extreme mythical version of inhuman humans, but that seems a bit silly to me comapred to them just... describing humans.

 

[Oofta]

...
1. I don't care that Oofta said halflings are non-magical.

I can't remember ever having said that. Then again I don't think a race needs to have magic to be "worthy". Tieflings are the only race in the PHB where all of the subraces have magic so I don't know why it would be relevant one way or another.

 

[Lanefan]

Wait, you just said in a previous post you've only had 13 hobbits ever. Out of 216 played characters.

And now we are finding out that nearly half of them came from the same party, just before Covid hit? That offers a VERY different take on your previous numbers, you realize that right?

Five of them did end up in the same party, yes; of which three are among the longest-serving characters in the game and the other two aren't all that far behind.

Call it a case, perhaps, of the cream rising to the top?

Contrast this with the current party that only has one half-Hobbit (long story!), which counts as "other" on my charts.

 

[Mecheon]

Why do you need something fantastic to define them? I sure don't.

Because at the moment, Halflings are defined as "Humans, but small". That's their entire thing at the moment.

This is in contrast to the other playable races of "Humans", "Fey-descended mortal spirits who can relive past lives rather than dream", "Underground adapted workers tied to the very earth and stone", "Another fey descended group, who are either heavily into the nature side or tinkering", "Draconic empire-building humanoids", "People with the blood of demons/devils/etc running through their veins, leading to a distinct appearance","Children of a scorned god, made for fightin' an' orcin'.".

I also can't help but remember a few other posters saying, up-thread, rather than work on making halflings more distinctive as their own niche, we should just remove all of the other small races from the game so halflings are the only small ones. Which, yeah, nah, not liking that.

You wouldn't even need to go hard to give Halflings a thing. "Halflings are stupid-resistant to mental corruption" is well in LotR vibes given how hobbits handled the Ring. "Halflings are incredibly stealthy to the point of absurdity" is another one. You gotta lean into those hats so there's more to them rather than just 'Small human'

 

[Faolyn]

Because at the moment, Halflings are defined as "Humans, but small". That's their entire thing at the moment.

This is in contrast to the other playable races of "Humans", "Fey-descended mortal spirits who can relive past lives rather than dream", "Underground adapted workers tied to the very earth and stone", "Another fey descended group, who are either heavily into the nature side or tinkering", "Draconic empire-building humanoids", "People with the blood of demons/devils/etc running through their veins, leading to a distinct appearance","Children of a scorned god, made for fightin' an' orcin'.".

I also can't help but remember a few other posters saying, up-thread, rather than work on making halflings more distinctive as their own niche, we should just remove all of the other small races from the game so halflings are the only small ones. Which, yeah, nah, not liking that.

You wouldn't even need to go hard to give Halflings a thing. "Halflings are stupid-resistant to mental corruption" is well in LotR vibes given how hobbits handled the Ring. "Halflings are incredibly stealthy to the point of absurdity" is another one. You gotta lean into those hats so there's more to them rather than just 'Small human'

But they're not defined as humans, but small. They're defined as being lucky, as communal, peaceful, friendly, working well with others, etc., often to a degree beyond what humans are like.

"Stupid-resistant to mental corruption" would be cool, sure, but how do you model that in game? Resistance to charm? Elves already have that, as do some other races; halflings would be accused to being copycats. Remove resistance to charm from elves and give it to halflings? Sure, OK. But. Mental corruption is pretty much a RP thing--the BBEG tempts the player, the player chooses whether or not to go along with it. It's not a thing where you magically charm the PC and turn them into NPCs under the DM's control. So if you want to say halflings are "stupid-resistant to mental corruption," then you simply have to say that (almost) no NPC halflings have ever been tempted by the BBEG, but lots of elves, dwarfs, and humans have been.

 

[Chaosmancer]

And again, you are strawmanning here.

I didn't say "take a non-human trait and declare it to be a human trait." Real humans in the real world claim to be reincarnations. It's a central tenet in some religions. It can be very true in a fantasy world.

...Unless you are claiming that D&D humans have to follow a particular religious model based on an Abrahamic-style reskinning of the Greco-Roman pantheon? Or that any D&D human religion that involves reincarnation is automatically false?

Okay, then name all the people you knew in your past lives. Where are they now? Would you be able to call them up and have them post on this forum confirming that they are indeed the people you knew in your past life?


You are trying to make my statement into something it isn't, and then claiming a strawman. An elf doesn't believe they are a reincarnation, they ARE a reincarnation. They don't need to claim it, they can go and speak to the people from their past lives memories and reminiscence about those times. They don't need special spiritual awareness, they just are.

This has NOTHING to do with religion and I'd appreciate you not trying to make this into some anti-hindu or anti-buddhist statement. Those belief systems have nothing to do with the biological and mental reality elves are dealing with. Because even in the context of those religious beliefs, elves are dealing with something ENTIRELY different.

"Divinity of Mankind" was a perfectly acceptable choice for a religion, as per the 2e Complete Priests Handbook. It even spawned a racist and sexist men's club in Lamordia. A party consisting only of humans is perfectly fine, and was considered the ideal in 1e.

So I don't know what you're complaining about here.

The fact that you are altering definitions of human to include whatever you feel like to descredit my points. Which you completely missed the sarcasm of me redefining shield and sword to be human. I thought at least that much would be obvious.

The ability of a high elf to cast a cantrip is the same as a studied wizard. Gotcha.

No it isn't. And that ignores my point.

1. I don't care that Oofta said halflings are non-magical.

You really should. He absolutely doesn't want halflings to be magical. If you want magical halflings you really should care that him and others would want to remove that as an option.

2. Probably ghostwise and lotusden halflings don't come more for the same reason pallid elves and shadar-kai don't come up more often: they're not in the PHB, and weren't historically common types of elves. Maybe they should be, but that's a discussion for another edition.

Shadar-Kai don't come up because their history of recently being human is very confusing, since many people still imagine they are humans it is strange for them to think they are elves.

Also, Pallid elves are not truly very different from other types of elves. They don't really need mentioning since they don't break the mold. However, in the assertion that all halflings are unremarkable and non-magical, magical halflings would break that mold and be quite notable.

3. The difference between halflings and gnomes is both cultural and mechanical. If you care to get into fantastic DNA, there's probably a load of differences between them--probably more than the difference between humans and elves, since half-elves both exist and are fertile and "gnomelings" aren't really a thing. And sure, maybe an individual, home-brew setting doesn't need both races, but the game is not an individual, home-brew setting. The game is a toolset to allow people to take their own settings, or to use an official setting.

Wow that is a whole lot of saying nothing. Everything after your first sentence is just pointing out that there isn't a distinct halfling/gnome mixed race option, which is true for 99% of all mixed race options, so not exactly breaking ground.

Then, instead of actually PRESENTING evidence, you simply say that their differences are cultural and mechanical. Which, hey, I can give you mechanical, halfling mechanics are pretty forgettable after all and don't really add much useful flavor compared to gnome mechanics, but can you actually... give some examples of what makes a forest gnome culture completely and utterly different from a lotusden halfling culture? And then explain why cultural differences aren't enough to make them simply sub-races like Mountain Dwarves and Hill Dwarves who only really had cultural and mechanical differences?

Or is this just a "I assert I'm right and don't provide any evidence" sort of discussion?

But she is not a D&D gnome.

Which, again, I acknowledged. Do I need to go ahead and pre-acknowledge it for the next post too?

The point is, nothing I said about what she can do would be seen as unusual for a DnD gnome. In fact, it fits perfectly into DnD gnomes and no one bats an eye at it. I should know, I put it into my DnD gnomes and not a single player ever went "wait, gnomes can't do that!". In fact, they just accepted it as a fact of gnomish life.

The original mythical gnome was an earth elemental. That is not a D&D gnome. Neither are garden gnomes, Warhammer gnomes, Discworld gnomes, Oz nomes, or the gnome in the 2015 slasher movie "Gnome Alone."

D&D gnomes are one type of gnome.

Therefore, claiming that a character from a non-D&D source is some sort of exemplar of D&D-gnomeness is utterly ridiculous and completely pointless.

Except that it isn't pointless. I'll agree with you that gnomes are no longer earth elementals, just like kobolds are no longer goblins. That isn't exactly a difficult point. Garden gnomes are a type of statuary, so also not relevant, just like garden dragon statues aren't dragons.

As for the rest, what are their characteristics? What makes them different from other gnomes? I'm not familiar with them. Well, I think the Nomes of Oz do stick closer to their earth elemental roots, which is fine, and I would also not that Nomes not being Gnomes is the same as Porcs not being Orcs. Different names are different it turns out.

Which leaves us with a slasher fic, probably based on garden gnome statuary, and then Discworld and Warhammer, both of which tend to have extreme deviations from normal fantasy. However, they are still called "gnomes" so there has to be a reason for that, right?

Why do they need to be non-magical farming people who aren't very important and fade into the background in order to be halflings? The halflings of Eberron are magical, don't farm that much, are politically important, and don't fade into the background. Are they not halflings?

Stop using the One True Halfling fallacy. Especially since you, in the past, have said that halflings that are too different from the norm don't count.

So, I'm confused.

See, for the last three threads I've been repeatedly berated about what the definition of a halfling is. It has been a major point of contention, because I want to change a few things about them, and I have been told that changing any of those factors would make them decidedly not halflings.

However, now, you are berating me for sticking to the definition that I have had thrown at me over and over and over again.


So, here, I'll just step back for a second. What is a halfling? Is a halfling just whatever you decide is a halfling, or is there some sort of definition for them? Because I'm not going to continue being yelled at for both using and not using the definition everyone else has. That way lies madness.

To go to war, you need armies. Neither goliaths nor firbolgs have the types of communities that can fund armies (unless in your particular setting they do), so at most they can do skirmishes and raids.

Halflings have the types of communities that can fund (small) armies, but they are peaceful enough that, as a race, they choose not to. At most, they have militias to protect themselves from invaders.

Some individual halflings, and some individual halfling communities choose to aid other people (humans) in wartime.

So, halflings go to war. Because any halfling community bigger than a small village is typically depicted as part of a human community. Much larger than that and they would need things like... kings, armies, you know all those things that you claim they can't have.

In fact, other than the Talentas barbarian halflings of Eberron, is there a halfling location you know of that is bigger than a couple of villages? I'll put forth that human villages also typically only have militias and not armies, though it isn't because humans as a race are peaceful, but because they can't support armies with a village's worth of supplies.

I really feel like I'm dealing with Schrodinger's halflings here, since suddenly we have halfling cities and maybe even small halfling countries, when previously they just had small villages. Where is all of this coming from?

Always? Every single human settlement must feature halflings in it?

Ah, you got me, egg on my face. I'm sure there are human settlements without halflings. In fact, humans seem to exist just fine without halflings.

How many halfling cities with zero humans can we name? Not countries, cities.

No halfling village or town ever has a mayor or governor or council of elders?

Can they overrule the king who commands the land their village sits on?

"Sorry, High King Etheril, the Halfling Mayor of Gallybrooke said you are not allowed to go to war, we must call it off"


So, if the human villages in the kingdom are considered to be going to war when the king declares war.... why aren't the halfling villages?

And there's no possibility that the halflings were there first and the humans just took the land the halflings didn't need?

Sure, maybe thousands of years ago halflings lived in this land and then the humans came in, waging war and conquering, and the halfling were like "sure, you can have all the land surrounding us, we weren't using it anyways"

Of course, that still doesn't change the fact that when the humans, in the future, wage war and conquer that the halflings tend to follow them, which was my point.

(Also, Avoreen is a male god.)

shrug

Mixed them up with Gaerdal Ironhand

That's on you, then, if you don't think it speaks about their character.

Hmm, if halflings criminals "easily arise" in human societies, then what's going on in those societies that force halflings into the role of criminal? And do those halflings who live in human societies have a choice about whether or not they go to war or not?

Shouldn't we know the answers to these questions instead of you having to answer me? Why is it that halflings turn to a life of crime so easily? Halflings live with humans constantly how do they interact with the humans and deal with their supposedly conflicting natures. Do human kingdoms make exceptions when they create peasant levies and ignore halflings? Why? How does this change the dynamic of the races?

I can make up things, but if halflings are supposedly defined by their peacefulness and unwillingness to go to war (but not to kill things during adventures) then shouldn't this be a major thing discussed in the books?

So? It's cultural, not mechanical. If your halflings lack those cultural traits, that's on you.

How is it on me? I didn't create halflings, you won't find my name listed in the PHB. Why is it my fault that halflings lack anything that can possibly define them besides just vague platitudes?

And, again, if it is just cultural, why can't halflings be a sub-race of Gnomes, just like hill dwarves and mountain dwarves? It is all only cultural after all.

Why is that funny? We're talking about D&D, not other settings or systems. You can't say "This non-D&D take on a non-halfling is cool, therefore halflings aren't cool." That makes no sense.

And yes, we do need to change the essential natures of goblins and orcs, because up until recently, their essential nature was "Always Evil, Kill On Sight." And there are players who want that to remain their essential nature, because they make for easy bad guys that way. When you take away the AEKoS nature of orcs and goblins, you basically have nothing left, culturally. Which means that in order to use them as people, they need to be changed a lot. And then a lot of people want to get rid of them as a PC race, accusing them as just being humans in rubber masks.

Halflings, however, have never been AEKoS monsters--not even in Dark Sun, where they were perfectly playable and listed as Lawful Neutral in the Dark Sun MCAII, with the cannibals being listed as chaotic renagades. Which means that they (halflings in general) don't need to be revamped in order to be a playable people.

So your paragraph here is, in fact, entirely wrong.

So, I can't point to a better designed version of something to say that the other version is poorly done? Meanwhile, others are allowed to constantly harp on Tolkien like he was somehow involved in the writing of Dungeons and Dragons?

And sure, halflings are "playable" but they aren't good. As we have been discussing, you don't even seem to have a consistent definition of what a halfling is, since they keep morphing every time you find another point of mine you don't like.

First, it's bizarre that you would assume that halflings can only provide these useful services for humans. Why wouldn't you assume they provide these useful services for each other?

But anyway, D&D is a humano-centric game. LIterally every single creature and object in the game is built to interact with humans in some way. Dragons hoard treasure just so humans can kill them and claim the treasure--they certainly don't use it for any other purpose. Mind flayers eat human brains. Mimics look like chests so that human adventurers will get lured in. Nearly every nonhuman race and monster speaks Common--the human language. Despite all logic to the contrary, nearly every setting as humans as the dominant species. For that matter, why are nearly all the PC races humanoid? If elves predate humanity, humans should be elfoid.

Why all this? Because D&D is a game that is played by humans.

To answer the first point, it is because halflings cooking for halflings isn't special. It would be like a human cooking for a human, kind of obvious. But, again, you decided to phrase it thusly, "So in that case, being the best, most cheerful hosts and chefs is equally as useful as whatever abilities elves and dwarfs are. Probably more useful, in fact, because you being able to change your gender over night doesn't affect me in anyway, but you being able to cook me a good breakfast does."

You were the one who decided that the elvish expierence of Gender doesn't matter, because it can't provide anything for humans (or other races, I guess). That wasn't me. That was your take away. You need to defend that, especially since...

• Dragon's hoards are tied directly into their magic and their afterlife.
• Mind Flayer's eat sentient brains, not just human brains.
• Mimics look like treasure chests to lure in adventurers, adventurers are not solely human. Additionally, mimics can take on a variety of forms and adapt to what is most useful for their environment.

So... you were wrong about every single one of these

Yep, common is the human language. Took them long enough to acknowledge that. Luckily, languages are not defining. Whether or not you speak common holds no bearing on whether you are an elf, dwarf, or dragon. As for the rest, yes, it is a game played by humans. So therefore the only way that halflings should be defined as a race is how useful they are to humans?

I'm going to say yikes to that, and recommend you take a different stance, because that is a very very poor way to define a race of people.

Why do you need something fantastic to define them? I sure don't.

Why not? They are a fantasy race, if they aren't fantastical then what's the point? At that point they may as well just be humans.

This is use, using the No True Scotsman fallacy, because I've done this before with you. Halflings aren't fantastical enough, they're not good. Halflings are fantastical? They're not proper halflings. You have said this.

No, other people have declared that halflings need to be non-fantastical. That is there definition. I want them to be more fantastical, and you seem to think my pointing out the cognitivie dissonance between people insisting they are non-fantastical and the existence of rarely discussed fantastical options is somehow me trying to gas light you.

Your understanding of the situation would be aided if you stop assuming I am a malicious agent.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Five of them did end up in the same party, yes; of which three are among the longest-serving characters in the game and the other two aren't all that far behind.

Call it a case, perhaps, of the cream rising to the top?

Contrast this with the current party that only has one half-Hobbit (long story!), which counts as "other" on my charts.

Or, if half of your halflings ever ended up in a single group, created recently, that means that the other 8 were spread over how many decades?

That is a major change to your data.

 

[Chaosmancer]

You wouldn't even need to go hard to give Halflings a thing. "Halflings are stupid-resistant to mental corruption" is well in LotR vibes given how hobbits handled the Ring.

Like, for example, advantage on all Wisdom, Charisma and Intelligence saving throws? Maybe call it something like [Halfling] Cunning

"Halflings are incredibly stealthy to the point of absurdity" is another one. You gotta lean into those hats so there's more to them rather than just 'Small human'

Which is a bit difficult considering Goblins can hide as a bonus action, Deep Gnome now gets advantage on stealth checks. Be pretty difficult to actually make "very stealthy" a unique thing for halflings.