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?

 

[Lanefan]

Didn't say it was impossible, but would you find a race whose only difference s having six fingers and a base 12 math system engaging to play? I certainly wouldn't, it isn't a distinction that actually make a difference in the game in any way.

In the game I play in we're regularly dealing with just this, in that much of the world's history comes from ancient Hobgoblins and their doings; and those guys had six-fingered hands. Which means, every now and then we find ourselves having to decipher base-6 or base-12 numbers. It also means I've seen firsthand in play what differences using a non-base-10 number system can make to a fantasy society; and yes, it's quite interesting (if at times also bloody frustrating!).

You don't hear strident calls from me to remove halflings either. Please, find a single time of me saying we should remove them in this thread. You won't. Because I haven't said that. Have other people? Sure, but much of their frustration and desire to remove the race is because any attempt to change the race is met with vehement disapproval. So, they say, if they can't change it they want to get rid of it.

As for the rest, I know this has worked for you for decades, but "I stick them on random spare farms" is not world-building in my eyes. You'd do just as well to take a bag of d6's, upend them on the map, and have every six be a halfling settlement. It doesn't mean anything.

Thanks, but I put a bit more thought into my world-building than that.

In my current setting, among the kindred species Humans are pretty dominant while Dwarves, Elves*, and Hobbits have small often-isolated countries or city-states, and Gnomes don't even have that: the entire species are scattered wanderers as their one big homeland was wiped out several centuries back. That said, by overall area there's more wild land than there is settled so it can be argued nobody really has all that much.

* - Elves, however, are expanding rapidly and aggressively and pushing all before them. It's a long story, still being told.

And you mention that you use Hobbit lore, but as we who have trouble have said, we find hobbit lore utterly lacking in anything to build off of. Any attempts to expand hobbit lore are met with vehement denials and recriminations, so... how is "I use the lore you don't" help us find ways to use it that actually work for us?

I think some people in this thread have tried doing exactly this. Example: the idea of using them as underdogs, as the "little guys", as someone to cheer for when they make good - but this gets rejected on the claim underdogs are boring. No. They're only boring if-when they stay underdogs and can't rise above that; but adventuring Hobbits potentially can and do rise above that, against the odds, and that's what makes them fun: seeing if that potential can be made real.

A Dwarf or an Elf becoming a big-shot adventurer is kind of so-what Those guys live long enough they could each have ten adventuring careers in their lives - ho hum, I've made 10th-level for the fifth century in a row.

A Human becoming a big-shot adventurer is noteworthy, but Humans have various cultural advantages to get them started - they're good at almost everything, they fight each other a lot thus many of them become warriors, etc.

But a Hobbit becoming a big-shot adventurer? That's worth celebrating. Their culture fights aginst it, their stature fights against it, often their ethos and outlook fight against it - the odds are against them and yet some make it to the top anyway. Bravo! This is what I mean by their being underdogs.

And that's just one idea on how to use/view them.

 

[Maxperson]

as Hobbit arcanists are proving to be a balance headache even to me who doesn't much care about balance)

Why? What about them makes them better wizards than say an elf or human?

 

[Lanefan]

Why? What about them makes them better wizards than say an elf or human?

One of the main drawbacks of mages is supposed to be a lack of hit points, but Hobbits in my game usually end up with stupendous Con scores due to racial adjusts and thus negate this drawback with trivial ease. Sure they roll a smaller die than other classes but the Con bonus (which other species don't generally get except for lucky individuals) quickly makes up for it.

Taking this Con adjust away from Hobbits would gut them for most other classes, thus not a viable option.

 

[James Gasik]

So there is no innate "Halfling" reason to go adventuring. This concept boggles me, because there are lots of races that have no innate reason to go adventuring. I'll go to my current favorite target to pick on, the Lizardfolk.

Cracking open my Volo's Guide, I see we open with a warning: "If you're considering taking a scaled one on an adventure, remember this important fact. The strange, inhuman glint in it's eyes as it looks you over is the same look you might give a freshly grilled steak." -Tordek, dwarf fighter and adventurer (hey Tordek, glad to see you're still around, 2 editions later!).

Then it goes on to accentuate that they live in dismal swamps that may be hundreds of miles away from civilization, and that their way of thinking is alien to us warm blooded folks. It then goes on to say "some lizardfolk make an effort to understand and, in their own manner, befriend people of other races. Such lizardfolk make faithful and skilled allies." Hm, let's go back to that.

The next section really tries to drive home the alien minds thing, in case we somehow missed it. They have limited emotions, basically: fear, aggression, and pleasure. In fact, they don't experience fear at all (despite not being Brave, heh)!

We're next told that lizardfolk assess everyone and everything in terms of utility, and have little use for art and beauty. And this fun gem, "Lizardfolk see little need to plan more than a season or so into the future....Lizardfolk have no interest in developing writing, making long-term plans, or cultivating other methods to progress beyond their simple existence as hunters and gatherers". Starting to notice a trend here.

We're also told that lizardfolk see other races as weak, soft, and, at best deserving of pity. Oh and previously, they mention that lizardfolk only stop from turning dwarf into steak because he might be useful, and that tends to upset other non-lizardfolk.

So in summary, lizardfolk have no innate reason to adventure based on their race and culture, and many reasons not to. Even if you're one of the small segment of weirdos that does travel to civilized lands, and make an effort, why on earth anyone would give your lizardfolk the time of day is beyond me, when it's quite clear that you are a sociopathic Darwinist who thinks nothing about eating sentient humanoids.

But this does bring up the real answer to all of this: adventurers are not the norm in 5e. Few take up the mantle, and those who do are often considered dangerous troublemakers and radicals by society at large- there may be a need for mercenaries who will kill monsters out there, but you wouldn't let one marry your daughter!

Many no doubt think that adventurers cause more problems than they solve, by riling up monsters and plundering the dead in order to overburden the economy with the excess wealth they acquire (and rarely sit still long enough to be fairly taxed!). So the average Halfling isn't an adventurer. Neither is the average (just about any other race)!

I mean, look at Tieflings. In D&D, Evil is a real, defined force. Everyone knows evil gods exist, that there are demons and devils and Hells to go if you're wicked, and that the good gods are real, and they have Heavens for the righteous (that there are evil people at all in this reality makes zero sense to me, but eh, whatever).

So then there's this guy. Thanks to the Retcon of Asmodeus, almost every Tiefling is readily identifiable as such. They got horns, tails, hooves! They are literally part fiend!

The average person should be making the sign of Pelor (or Lathander, or Pholtus) upon seeing one, and avoiding them like the plague...but nope! In fact, despite some possible emo backstories, Tieflings are a popular race found in many adventuring groups, and since, by default, they're running around with +2 Charisma, you should like them better than Joe Human!

D&D races don't make a whole lot of sense. Their reasons for existing don't make sense. Their reasons for adventuring often make less sense.

That is not why races exist in D&D. Races exist in D&D so players and DM's can make their game worlds more vibrant, with more options than the same-old, same-old. And if you do decide to have Dragonborn or Tabaxi in your campaign, it is up to you and your players to figure out how that works- not the blurbs of lore the WotC staff wrote down.

If you're creative, it's trivial to make any race an all-star in the setting. But it's going to, ultimately, only matter if your players like playing that race. You could crow about how great Dwarves are, for example, and how advanced their culture is, but if all your players turn up their noses at grubby bearded drunkards with bad attitudes (...sounds more like Wolverine if you ask me) to go play Devil babes or totally hot Angel dudes, it doesn't really matter.

If a guy wants to play a Halfling, let him be. I don't care if 20% of players like them or 1%- they have just as much a right to exist as Firbolgs and, yes, even Hannibal Lecter lizardfolk.

 

[Minigiant]

The thing is, no race has any unique reason to adventure. What racial abilities that influence adventuring are, are just increase numbers with that particular story. So yes, Tom the Dwarf might go adventuring because he wants to find recipes, but he's going to be a rarity among dwarven adventurers. There are going to be many, MANY more halfling adventurers wandering the world looking for recipes.

Actually.

Half elves and halforcs has a racial reason to become adventurers as many of them have an outsider mentality within the 2 races of their heritage. Adventurer is a classic outside of normal society career.

Dwarves in their clannishness might need money to restore or regain a clan's property.

Though halflings do have unique reasons to adventure as well.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I totally get if people want to make non-human races more alien and unique. It just seems like obvious special pleading to complain that halflings are especially lacking in this area. Most D&D races are pretty much humans with some small distinguishing thing that can mostly be ignored and often is. "A miner with drinking problem," "has green skin" or "a big lad" aren't really anything super alien. Hell, even elves are generally just played as "better than thou pretty people," granted, there their crazy lifespan could be imagined to matter, but in practice it rarely does.

 

[Mind of tempest]

So there is no innate "Halfling" reason to go adventuring. This concept boggles me, because there are lots of races that have no innate reason to go adventuring. I'll go to my current favorite target to pick on, the Lizardfolk.

Cracking open my Volo's Guide, I see we open with a warning: "If you're considering taking a scaled one on an adventure, remember this important fact. The strange, inhuman glint in it's eyes as it looks you over is the same look you might give a freshly grilled steak." -Tordek, dwarf fighter and adventurer (hey Tordek, glad to see you're still around, 2 editions later!).

Then it goes on to accentuate that they live in dismal swamps that may be hundreds of miles away from civilization, and that their way of thinking is alien to us warm blooded folks. It then goes on to say "some lizardfolk make an effort to understand and, in their own manner, befriend people of other races. Such lizardfolk make faithful and skilled allies." Hm, let's go back to that.

The next section really tries to drive home the alien minds thing, in case we somehow missed it. They have limited emotions, basically: fear, aggression, and pleasure. In fact, they don't experience fear at all (despite not being Brave, heh)!

We're next told that lizardfolk assess everyone and everything in terms of utility, and have little use for art and beauty. And this fun gem, "Lizardfolk see little need to plan more than a season or so into the future....Lizardfolk have no interest in developing writing, making long-term plans, or cultivating other methods to progress beyond their simple existence as hunters and gatherers". Starting to notice a trend here.

We're also told that lizardfolk see other races as weak, soft, and, at best deserving of pity. Oh and previously, they mention that lizardfolk only stop from turning dwarf into steak because he might be useful, and that tends to upset other non-lizardfolk.

So in summary, lizardfolk have no innate reason to adventure based on their race and culture, and many reasons not to. Even if you're one of the small segment of weirdos that does travel to civilized lands, and make an effort, why on earth anyone would give your lizardfolk the time of day is beyond me, when it's quite clear that you are a sociopathic Darwinist who thinks nothing about eating sentient humanoids.

But this does bring up the real answer to all of this: adventurers are not the norm in 5e. Few take up the mantle, and those who do are often considered dangerous troublemakers and radicals by society at large- there may be a need for mercenaries who will kill monsters out there, but you wouldn't let one marry your daughter!

Many no doubt think that adventurers cause more problems than they solve, by riling up monsters and plundering the dead in order to overburden the economy with the excess wealth they acquire (and rarely sit still long enough to be fairly taxed!). So the average Halfling isn't an adventurer. Neither is the average (just about any other race)!

I mean, look at Tieflings. In D&D, Evil is a real, defined force. Everyone knows evil gods exist, that there are demons and devils and Hells to go if you're wicked, and that the good gods are real, and they have Heavens for the righteous (that there are evil people at all in this reality makes zero sense to me, but eh, whatever).

So then there's this guy. Thanks to the Retcon of Asmodeus, almost every Tiefling is readily identifiable as such. They got horns, tails, hooves! They are literally part fiend!

The average person should be making the sign of Pelor (or Lathander, or Pholtus) upon seeing one, and avoiding them like the plague...but nope! In fact, despite some possible emo backstories, Tieflings are a popular race found in many adventuring groups, and since, by default, they're running around with +2 Charisma, you should like them better than Joe Human!

D&D races don't make a whole lot of sense. Their reasons for existing don't make sense. Their reasons for adventuring often make less sense.

That is not why races exist in D&D. Races exist in D&D so players and DM's can make their game worlds more vibrant, with more options than the same-old, same-old. And if you do decide to have Dragonborn or Tabaxi in your campaign, it is up to you and your players to figure out how that works- not the blurbs of lore the WotC staff wrote down.

If you're creative, it's trivial to make any race an all-star in the setting. But it's going to, ultimately, only matter if your players like playing that race. You could crow about how great Dwarves are, for example, and how advanced their culture is, but if all your players turn up their noses at grubby bearded drunkards with bad attitudes (...sounds more like Wolverine if you ask me) to go play Devil babes or totally hot Angel dudes, it doesn't really matter.

If a guy wants to play a Halfling, let him be. I don't care if 20% of players like them or 1%- they have just as much a right to exist as Firbolgs and, yes, even Hannibal Lecter lizardfolk.

lizardfolk are not made as standard player characters and are opponents first thus this is not surprising, in contrast with the halfling who has been in the phb for literally every edition and are the fourth classic demihuman and yet they lack it as well, they are made to be on the player's side but they seem more like one note extras than anything else.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Cracking open my Volo's Guide, I see we open with a warning: "If you're considering taking a scaled one on an adventure, remember this important fact. The strange, inhuman glint in it's eyes as it looks you over is the same look you might give a freshly grilled steak." -Tordek, dwarf fighter and adventurer (hey Tordek, glad to see you're still around, 2 editions later!).

Yet U2 Danger at Dunwater (1982) is all about making a peaceful alliance with lizardfolk, with a Star Trek style message: lizard people are also people.

What you are quoting is probably one of the reasons Volo's has been discontinued, and replaced with:

Gifted by the gods with remarkable physical defenses and a mystical connection to the natural world, lizardfolk can survive with just their wits in situations that would be deadly for other folk.

 

[Minigiant]

I totally get if people want to make non-human races more alien and unique. It just seems like obvious special pleading to complain that halflings are especially lacking in this area. Most D&D races are pretty much humans with some small distinguishing thing that can mostly be ignored and often are. "A miner with drinking problem," "has green skin" or "a big lad" aren't really anything super alien. Hell, even elves are generally just played as "better than thou pretty people," granted, there their crazy lifespan could be imagined to matter, but in practice it rarely does.

I tend to roleplay races more alien and more attune to a shared genetic and cutural mentality created by their age, religions, and uniqueness of their minds. I only play humans and half-humans like humans.

A dwarf is mentally advers to new things and people and have massive trust issues.

That is possibly why why I see in the Halfling lore is different from what other see.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I tend to roleplay races more alien and more attune to a shared genetic and cutural mentality created by their age, religions, and uniqueness of their minds. I only play humans and half-humans like humans.

A dwarf is mentally advers to new things and people and have massive trust issues.

That sounds very... humanlike to me. I know plenty of people who are adverse to new things and have massive trust issues. Not all humans are dwarflike - but the traits you list as dwarflike are all appropriate for some but not all humans.

So too with halflings. Not all humans are halflinglike but the traits listed for halflings are appropriate for some humans. Yet somehow you, despite entirely humanlike dwarfs only pick on halflings.

That is possibly why why I see in the Halfling lore is different from what other see.

Because you make it up and flanderise halflings? Then you find that @Minigiant halflings, which can't even work out how to use their size and gregariousness to be good criminals, suck. The problem isn't with halflings as written. It's that you change the lore and the race to make them suck then declare that under your actively changed lore they suck.