Mongoose Publishing's The Quintessential Halfling reached the shelves in October 2003, entry #20 in the Collector Series line that has seems to have tapped out at 23 (print) versions to date. Halflings haven't seen as much coverage as dwarves and elves in d20 products; 2e gamers may recall that while TSR gave dwarves and elves full book treatments in the Complete ___ series, halflings and gnomes had to double up and share a book (oh, the ignominy). Mongoose has seen fit to grant the small races a full 128-page book each, but halflings have a special challenge in a book of this length. More than any other core race, the popular image of the halfling is defined by the works of Tolkien. Even though D&D halflings have moved away from the strict 'hobbit' image with a new look and a 'travelling gypsy' culture, there still aren't a vast number of established archetypes to fall back on. How would Quintessential Halfling answer this challenge?
The book was written by Gareth Hanrahan, in his Mongoose debut. It's published under version 3.5 if you were wondering about that. Your next question after that will probably be how thoroughly, as a number of Mongoose's early 3.5 books were found to still have remnants from 3.0 in them. Well, this one looked pretty good. The Sleight of Hand skill even managed to get in there instead of the old name, Pick Pocket, a commonly missed change in Mongoose's early 3.5 products. Oops, well, there's one reference to a "Pick Pocket check", on p.89. And the Master Chef prestige class has Animal Empathy as a class skill. But those were the only 3.0 stragglers I caught.
Another ongoing issue with Mongoose's early 3.5 books has been with the general editing, concerning grammar and punctuation and so on. Well, I would say the proofreading wasn't terrible but I did notice some typos, mostly of the kind that automated spellcheckers don't catch. I came across things like "pursing" on p. 9 when "pursuing" was probably meant, the phrase "possible know" on p. 77 that should have said "possibly know", a use of "overhead" when "overhear" was meant on p.88, a "see page 96" on p. 98 that probably should have said "see p. 68", and the word "thats" on p. 96 when it should have said "that's". Much of the flavour text was gently humorous and effectively captured the resourcesfulness and cheerful disposition that halflings are known for.
And now regarding the art: the Mongoose artists have done their own thing again with regards to depicting non-human races in the Quintessential books. There are a few hobbit-like halflings with bare furry feet, and almost all have sharply pointy ears as opposed to the somewhat pointy ears in the PHB. Many of Alejandro Villen's halflings have big round heads in large proportion with their bodies, like fairy tale creatures. Only Marcio Fiorito's halfling on p.100 looks like it might have the distinctive 'golf-club shaped head' given to halflings in official 3e depictions. These are observations and not complaints, mind you; while I really don't like halflings to have sharply pointy ears, different artists will have different ideas. Anyhow, with general observations out of the way, let's look at the content.
There are 17 Character Concepts this time around, some tailored around halfling clans (Aristocrat, Clan Cleric, Halfling Avenger). This is the first indication that clans are going to get a lot of attention in this book. Other concepts include the Touched (the hyperactive, annoying kender type), the Rook (street urchin), and the Fated (characters of destiny who tend to be dramatic in both successes and failures).
There are 14 prestige classes, of which 6 run ten levels. There are prestige roles to be played in the clan (Clan Defender, Clan Matriarch, Master of Hounds) and some that cover halfling archetypes like Dungeon Scout, and Knight of the Road (a wanderer). There's a 10-level Headhunter for your savage pygmy type, and a 5-level Master Chef for those who want to play up the halfling's penchant for cookery and help his allies through magical meals among other things. When the Clan Matriarch attains 10th level, she dies and acts as a spell-granting minor deity to the clan. That struck me as a little weird for a class feature, but I guess as an NPC class it works okay.
The "tricks" chapter is next. Now, "Tricks of the Halflings" has such a natural ring to it that I was hoping for a lot from this chapter, and I wasn't let down. Among new uses for old skills are using Disable Device to deliberately spring a trap in a safe way, using Bluff to spread rumours that mess up Gather Information checks in the area, and using Sleight of Hand to plant an item on someone. Good ideas there. Following that are four new animal tricks that are okay, and then a nice section on cookery. The art of cooking seems like a subjective thing to me, but this is at minimum a really good baseline to work from. There are mechanics for cookery assisting in healing, sharing the effects of potions, poisons, and other effects. There's also a sidebar suggesting how cooking could play a part in roleplaying and even a trade exploration-based campaign.
Still in the Tricks chapter, a long section called Halfling Combat Tactics pretty much rounds it out. Much of the section is about climbing big monsters in order to hang on their backs, attack their heads, and so on. The climber gains improved critical threat ranges, though there's the risk of getting shaken off and taking falling damage. I haven't got Quintessential Fighter II so I can't say how this stacks up with the rules for climbing big creatures in there, or how similar the two rulesets are. But this looks like a lot of fun as the image of plucky halflings leaping from trees to grab onto enemy giants has a certain appeal. I'd be a bit worried about what higher-level characters with easy access to flying magic could do with these rules though. There's also a quick look at throwing (willing or restrained) characters.
Halfling Feats contains 21 feats likely to be useful to halflings. A number of them are about avoiding danger through running and using cover. Any small or stealthy characters could get use from some of these feats, including gnomes - and don't forget goblins and kobolds for DMs who want to vary encounters every now and then.
Tools of the Halflings includes some new projectiles, among other weapons. There's the halfling slingscone - nope, that's not a typo for stone, it's a biscuit that makes an effective bit of sling ammunition when dry. There are also a variety of grenades. Among common goods are the cookery kit, the bandolier and an assortment of smoking pipes (and pipeweed to go with them). There are some pricey items made of gossamer and six new options for riding dogs, tweaking the existing MM riding dog rather than doing whole new stat blocks. The riding greyhound, for example, has lower Constitution than a default riding dog, but gets a higher movement rate. Some halfling magic items, such as the Clan Sword, round out thr chapter.
Halfling Subraces give detailed write-ups on 8 halflings both familiar and new. They are:
Settled Halflings - same as 'default' PHB halflings but living in settled homes and somewhat chubby. Yes, these are basically Tolkien hobbits.
Travelling Halflings - standard PHB halflings.
Fey Halflings - similar in appearance to the tallfellow halflings mentioned in the MM.
Pygmy - cannibalistic jungle halflings.
Shadeling - moody halflings with a strange condition that makes it hard for people to remember they ever saw them. Very fairy tale-like.
Stoneborn - similar to the other MM subrace, the deep halfling.
Twistborn - evil, telepathic halflings that infiltrate other halfling communities.
Waterborn - halflings with an affinity for water, though they are not truly aquatic with gills or anything like that.
The next chapter, Halfling Magic, opens with a look at boons allowing a character to give up a 0-level spell slot in exchange for certain situational skill boosts. The sidebar explains that this is an option for giving halflings a fairy tale quality. I don't really care to see that sort of thing in halflings, which probably explains why I didn't really go for this section. The Halfling Pantheon is next and offers seven new deities - unlike earlier books in the Quintessentials line, this one goes into more detail giving the deities actual names, illustrated symbols and write-ups consisting of a few paragraphs each. There are two new cleric domains, Clan and Fate.
Secrets of the Halflings begins with something that returns to the gypsy aspect of halflings, a style of fortune telling called Six Stones Casting. Foretelling the future is always a tricky thing in RPGs, but this set of rules attempts to model payoffs in the form of bonuses and penalties (a separate set of each for the player and the DM to draw from) that are noted and then put into effect at an appropriate time, so the fortune telling rolls actually have a mechanical impact later on. Next a substance called nightflame is discussed; this is like a cold fire with strange properties that include the power to burn strong materials and create liquid shadow with its light. The book stresses that this nightflame is a very closely guarded commodity among the halflings. The chapter's last six pages look at halfling crime sydicates, with a condensed version of the Thieves' Guild rules that appeared in Quintessential Rogue. This previously published material looks awfully class-specific to be in a halfling book, I had to wonder if this was a bit of filler.
Halfling Clan and Family is a good chapter with a system to generate a clan and determine what pools of various fields of expertise are available in each clan. This is important if a halfling PC ever wants to ask a favour of his clan, such as borrowing money, getting an item crafted, aiding in a battle, and so on. The example in the text on p. 109 doesn't seem to match the table on p. 107 though; does a clan of 31 families get a +2 clan modifier bonus, or +4 as the text says? The amount of respect and "pull" a halfling has for such favours is measured by a Clan Loyalty score which rises and falls with various happenings. It cuts the other way though, because the most respected halflings are also the ones who are most frequently expected to make sacrifices for the clan. There are lots of possible adventure hooks here as PCs could occasionally be sent on quests involved in helping the clan, though the book wisely cautions the DM not to run mixed parties through such adventures too frequently. This reminds me of one other thing I should mention that I liked about the book: it's very good about calling attention to things that aren't going to work in every campaign, and offering suggestions on implementing them. The chapter continues by touching on ceremonies such as councils, marriages and banishment. Some brief notes for adapting the clan rules for use among humans, dwarves, elves and gnomes are also provided.
The final chapter is about Halfling Structures. This book is late in the series so there's not much left to say about structures that hasn't been said elsewhere. There's simply a small table listing rooms found in a halfling home with building cost, and some general notes in the text about what settled halfling homes are like. Then the race's 'wandering gypsy' image gets some more attention with caravans; some basic models are listed and there are a few upgrades such as armour and trapdoors. The book ends with the usual designer notes, character sheet, and index.
I rank Quintessential Halfling as a good installment in the Mongoose Collector Series, and one of the more underrated ones in the line. While I wasn't a fan of the fey/fairy tale aspects of the halfling, I did like the material about the clans. There were some other 'crunchy' mechanics such as cooking and climbing big monsters that could easily see use in a campaign that doesn't even have any halfling PCs. And beyond one character concept, there wasn't much support for the insufferable kender personality which I'm sure many don't care to ever see in D&D again. There might be a little bit of filler, but overall Quintessential Halfling succeeds at taking the few established conventions of the race and spinning them out over a book of fair-sized length. Looks like giving halflings 128 pages of their own wasn't such a bad idea after all.
