So, about those halflings...

[Gloombunny]

If most humans aren't adventurers, why does what a non-adventuring hobbit is like matter when it comes to the adventuring ones?

This complaint has never made a lick of sense.

Most humans aren't adventurers, but many are, and they don't have a racial culture defined by not wanting to do things like that.

Giving a race an overarching blanket personality and then suggesting it as a PC race while requiring that every such PC be a total opposite to that racial culture is not good design. (This applies to drow as well as halflings, incidentally.)

 

[Lurks-no-More]

So, my question is: has it worked? Are the 3E halflings more popular among players and DMs than the old-style ones? With the end of gnomes, it seems halflings are being left to fly the flag for small races, so which ones would you like to see in 4E?

In my experience, yes, they are. A race of family-oriented and comfort-liking, but also curious and itinerant small folk who make good rogues and adventurers is, for the purposes of D&D, preferable to Tolkien's hobbits (who are excellent in Middle-Earth, and stick badly out everywhere else).

So, I voted for "the same as now" option.

 

[HeinorNY]

In my group's experience? Yes.

I would be extremely disappointed if 4e took such a massive step backward as re-introducing the tweed-wearing country squire as an adventuring race.

I hope they also drop those puny weakling humans. They are so unwise, weak and common. They are like a virus, multiplying everywhere with their farms and their forks and cattles. I wonder how they didn't get extincted yet among so many powerful and wiser and more brilliant species. They are really a pain in the back.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Take 'em out!

 

[Szatany]

I like them the way they currently are, but it would be cool if they were modelled after gypsies more.

 

[Jhaelen]

The 3E version of the halflings is the first one I'd actually consider to play. You want hobbits? Go play MERP or the LOTR rpg.

But, actually, I'd like it even more if there was a different small race in PHB1. Maybe kobolds or goblins or even something more exotic like pixies/sprites. Not gnomes, though. Unless the gnomes were completely re-imagined. I don't need smaller cousins of dwarves, I want a small race with a distinctive, unique background.

I'd also love to see a large race among the PHB1 batch. But I guess, they would be too difficult to balance with the rest.

 

[Belorin]

Most humans aren't adventurers, but many are, and they don't have a racial culture defined by not wanting to do things like that.

Giving a race an overarching blanket personality and then suggesting it as a PC race while requiring that every such PC be a total opposite to that racial culture is not good design. (This applies to drow as well as halflings, incidentally.)

So basically what they did for 3.x was go in the totally opposite direction, now the whole race adventures. I wonder what they do with the occasional stay at home, pack up in the middle of the night and leave him/her?
Remember the reason Tolkien hobbits were that way, Gandalf and the Rangers kept there borders safe for the most part, which kind of stagnated there culture.
Give me the FR halflings, a mid point between the 1st and 3rd verions.

Bel

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I couldn't vote.

My option - they're the same thing - wasn't there.

Halfling is just Common for hobbit.

 

[el-remmen]

If most humans aren't adventurers, why does what a non-adventuring hobbit is like matter when it comes to the adventuring ones?

This complaint has never made a lick of sense.

You took the words right out of my mouth. I've been saying this since 2000.

 

[Nahat Anoj]

I actually like 3e halflings. The basic feel I get from them is that they are a gentle, inquisitive, and brave race, great lovers of travel and blessed by fate. They're basically kender without the suck.