Why all the hate on halflings?

[MonkeySage]

So, sometimes I like to see how other people play halfling characters, in 3.5 or pathfinder... And I'm seeing a lot of posts about people who for some reason hate halflings.

They've always been my favorite race; great for a charismatic trickster or a warrior who defies perceptions attributed to his stature.

I'm working on a character now who's a halfling; he's a merchant, a sorcerer, and a silver dragon disciple. I'm really excited to have the chance to play him.

So I don't get why there's so much hate on halflings...

[Gildedragon]

Child sized adult proportions; that can hit the uncanny valley quite easy

Also Kender

[Coidzor]

Possibly a side effect of Kender hate.

[Dravda]

Yup, one word: Kender.

[Vizzerdrix]

Im fine with halflings as presented in 3.5 d&d. I do tend to throth at the mouth when a hobbit enters the group. Up to and including making sure something very, very nasty happens to the character.

[Seto]

...All the Halflings characters I've seen in play over the years have been CE murder-happy sneaks. All of them. Plus Belkar.
Actually, I kinda have the impression that CE Halflings are the equivalent of CG Drows: they're supposed to be exceptional, but they see a lot of play.

That said, I don't hate Halflings, per se. I've never played one (well, as DM I played several Halfling NPCs of course), but I might.

[AnonymousPepper]

I feel like a lot of new players tend to gravitate towards halfling rogues and then are very, very bad at it, which aggros me to no end.

Also, kender. Just... kender.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Kender, hell yes. I hate those little [insert 4 letter word here]s.

I'd like to smack Laura Weiss and Tracy Hickman repeatedly for coming up with those little bastards for all the times they've shown up in games I've played under different DMs. Kender are bad and they should feel bad.

This is how the authors feel about kender, and how they think everyone else feels about kender: http://nameberry.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/angel5-600x412.jpg

This is how actual people feel about kender: http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/2901271/images/1225260438675.png

[OldTrees1]

Perhaps those people do not have good halfling role models like Regis, Bilbo, and Sam?

[Florian]

Regis, Bilbo, and Sam?

Oh, please!

With halflings, the monotony of the existing role models is the annoying part.

[OldTrees1]

Oh, please!

With halflings, the monotony of the existing role models is the annoying part.

Eh, if one discounts the difference between an ex guild thief turned council representative and a gardener turned protector then that is your problem. Although it would be nice to hear more about the halfling merchants, wizards, and clerics.

[Âmesang]

A pox on kender. On the other hand I once contemplated creating a halfling monk deity inspired by Street Fighter's Makoto. :smalltongue:


Kender, hell yes. I hate those little [insert 4 letter word here]s.
Folks?

[martixy]

I feel some the Kender hate is somewhat misappropriated(not all of it, but some of it).
Dickish players, IMO, should hold the majority of hate that's been leveled against these little guys.

Also this:
https://i.imgur.com/n4fRRPj.jpg

[Efrate]

I don't think its even dickish players. Kender as presented are the issue. Tasslehof is not a douche in any way, just innocent, clueless and irreverent. That is perfectly fine for a book, and he's an endearing character. It just doesn't work at the table. Having random items "borrowed" all the time is just a very bad inter-party dynamic.

At best its annoying and leads to "I check all my stuff each (insert unit of time) to make sure I have everything, if not I go hassle the kender". Which is just bad for the party and slows down gameplay drastically.

At worst its stealing that one bit of riff raff in the spell component pouch, or the entire pouch, right before the BBEG fight so your caster cannot do what they need to do.

[Âmesang]

Heck, I had a gnome player with a monkey animal companion that was just as bad; led my character to cast arcane mark on every one of her possessions. :smalltongue:

[Aleolus]

Can I just say, while I have never seen one in play, I actually like the Kender. Their racial ability to have just about anything in their pocket is a potential source of infinite amusement (assuming players and their characters are willing to understand that they will perpetually have the mindset of a child who hasn't yet learned that its not ok to put something you find belonging to someone else in your pocket), and the fact they are immune to fear makes them helpful to have around, especially in a dragons lair!

[Florian]

while I have never seen one in play

Lucky you.

Problem with the Kender and the accompanying archetype is, that it borders on sabotaging the game.
As has been pointed out, that works in a novel as a comic relieve character but doesn´t translate well to the actual game.

[AnonymousPepper]

Basically, childlike innocence and inability to grasp mature concepts sometimes can be cool in a story, because you can shove that aside and suspend your disbelief.

In an interactive game, it's theft and griefing, as you are playing the role of a character and thus feeling some of what they're feeling, and in-character you would not allow somebody like that in your store or your party.

I also personally find the concept as written to be utterly ridiculous. There's no way something like that could naturally arise and stay alive. Kender should, by all logic, be long since extinct, or at the very most optimistic estimate total pariahs. Like, their quality of life living with others would be somewhere between "surface drow in the Realms that don't have plot protection" and "level 1 arcane caster in Athas."

[Daddoo]

Halfings suck in 3.5 because their damage is so reduced its ugly, if your playing anything but mage, sorcerer, cleric or druid. They at first seem to be the perfect rogues and then the fight starts and you say "WTF was I thinking"

As for kender we had one in a party once....once. They put a ring of regeneration on her and tied her to the prow of their ship after surviving that "fun for a kender" trip the wizard placed a spell on all her pouches that would disentigrate anyone who put their hands in it that didn't utter the password. Kender didn't live the day.

[Malimar]

Much as I'd like to jump on the Kender-hate bandwagon, I have a hypothesis about the original question that doesn't have to do with Kender:

I think halflings just seem out of place amidst the other, more "grown-up" races. What was a deliberate innovation on Tolkien's part -- these quiet, unassuming, simple folk being the saviors of the world -- becomes stale after the first telling.

Also, they're redundant with the slightly more interesting gnomes.

[Honest Tiefling]

I'm just not fond of the idea of an idllyic village where everyone is good aligned and has second breakfast. I prefer worlds where the populace is more neutral across the races and there isn't little happy halfling town. I mean, not every village needs a demonic entity in it, but the concept of rural idealism doesn't quite gel with me.

Now, dinosaur riding nomads? Yeah, that's more of an idea I can get behind.

I will set any character sheet on fire if it dares to have the word 'Kender' on it.

[MonkeySage]

I guess different people have different ideas about halfling culture... I've always interpretted them as either city dwellers or nomads with no home. To me the physical similarities with hobbits are the only thing that halflings and hobbits have in common. But then, I play pathfinder and 3.5 primarily. The only halfling that I remember from 2e was Mazzy Fenten, a female fighter from Baldur's Gate 2.

But I'm curious as to how kender even entered the mix... Why would Kender hate have to do with an entirely different race?

[Honest Tiefling]

But I'm curious as to how kender even entered the mix... Why would Kender hate have to do with an entirely different race?

Kender are of a similar size and have some similar archetypes (Rogue halfling, thieving kender.) Basically, Kender are the dragonlance equivalent of such. When you start getting kender traits bleeding over to the halflings (thieving and refusing to understand or see the consequences of it, being overly child-like especially in a dark game, and insiting on being good-hearted when you aren't, refusing to be cowed, etc.) people get annoyed because the Kender are THAT BAD.

[MonkeySage]

When did those traits start bleeding over?
I know that halflings are often rogues, but I never interpretted them as childlike...

[Honest Tiefling]

When did those traits start bleeding over?
I know that halflings are often rogues, but I never interpretted them as childlike...

When you have people read Dragonlance and decide to mimic a mentally-disabled race because it'll be 'cute'. It bleeds over not in official material, but in how some players play them.

[Troacctid]

I haven't read any Dragonlance books. Is kender a halfling subrace? I just assumed they were unrelated.

[Honest Tiefling]

I haven't read any Dragonlance books. Is kender a halfling subrace? I just assumed they were unrelated.

There are no halflings in Dragonlance, I'm pretty sure they were made as an equivalent. (You have a few elf groups, gnomes, etc. so most of the races have a counterpart except half-orcs and even then you could argue minotaurs.)

They are very physically similar and they do share the bravery/be an idiot in the face of danger trait and are built to be rogues. So about the same as Eberron gnomes and normal gnomes, I'm guessing.

[Aleolus]

I'm just not fond of the idea of an idllyic village where everyone is good aligned and has second breakfast. I prefer worlds where the populace is more neutral across the races and there isn't little happy halfling town. I mean, not every village needs a demonic entity in it, but the concept of rural idealism doesn't quite gel with me.

Now, dinosaur riding nomads? Yeah, that's more of an idea I can get behind.

I will set any character sheet on fire if it dares to have the word 'Kender' on it.

Yeah...see...According to Races of the Wild, there are no halfling settlements, unless they are a small suburb tacked onto a larger (usually human) settlement. Other than that, halflings are all nomads, travelling around in caravans. They were pretty much built to be the D&D version of Gypsies, honestly

[DrMotives]

I haven't read any Dragonlance books. Is kender a halfling subrace? I just assumed they were unrelated.

Kender are the Dragonlance halfling race. DL has it's own unique subraces as the only races for halflings & gnomes, both of which are intentionally ridiculous. At least tinker gnomes don't cause the seething hatred kender do, they're basically steampunk comic relief guys, but "bumbling mechanic" isn't as bad as kender. Nothing is as bad as kender.

DL also has the gully dwarves, which are severely mentally disabled half-dwarf half gnome hybrids. Those guys are fluffed as being able to count only up to the numbers "One, two, many" and being totally illiterate. Basically, the creators of Dragonlance decided that any small race can't be played at all seriously.

[the_david]

For those who didn't know this the following may come as a shock.

3.5 Halflings are Kender. And I'm not just talking about the topknots. If you open up a 1st edition AD&D players handbook you'l find that Halflings are very short Dwarves with a single elven trait.
They have resistance to spells and poison, just like Dwarves and Gnomes. Some of them have infravision, and are able to detect slopes and direction while underground, just like Dwarves and Gnomes. They also have the stealthy abilities of an Elf.

In 3.5 Halflings get a luck bonus and a bonus on saves against fear. They are also good with slings and throwing weapons...

Now in defense of this change, they used to be very short Dwarves.

[Honest Tiefling]

For those who didn't know this the following may come as a shock.

3.5 Halflings are Kender. And I'm not just talking about the topknots. If you open up a 1st edition AD&D players handbook you'l find that Halflings are very short Dwarves with a single elven trait.
They have resistance to spells and poison, just like Dwarves and Gnomes. Some of them have infravision, and are able to detect slopes and direction while underground, just like Dwarves and Gnomes. They also have the stealthy abilities of an Elf.

In 3.5 Halflings get a luck bonus and a bonus on saves against fear. They are also good with slings and throwing weapons...

Now in defense of this change, they used to be very short Dwarves.

Quick! Bury this post so no poor players try to bring in a Kender to a game ever again!

But yeah, you have the Bravery on one side and the I-Cannot-Comprehend-Danger on the other. I like the bravery aspect of halflings, actually, but not what Kender get.

[MonkeySage]

I'd say that I know enough about kender by reputation... And I can see the similarities, but I don't see how that is justification for saying that the 3.5 halflings are kender... 3.5 halflings aren't childlike kleptomaniacs that are outright immune to fear. Neither are pathfinder halflings.

[the_david]

Well yeah, there are differences. Kender have a complete immunity to fear, and a penalty to wisdom. I can also see why WotC made the change. AD&D had basically 3 versions of Dwarf. Don't forget that the Tolkien estate had issues with the Hobbits that were included in original D&D. But this is probably the biggest problem the short races have had in D&D: Inconsistency.

Gnomes have undergone similar changes. Kobolds went from small scaled humanoids with 2 small horns, doglike faces and ratlike tails to descendants of dragons. The reason why Halflings aren't loved is because people are not sure what a Halfling is.

Another problem is that some races are portrayed as a stereotype. They have essentially a "mono-culture". It doesn't really matter where a dwarf comes from, they've all worked in a mine or a smithy. Humans can do everything though.
Throw in a couple of new races and halflings quickly get lost in a sea of fluff.

My solution would be to combine the short races into one race with multiple cultures. One race that can take the place of Dwarves, Gnomes, Goblins, Halflings and Kobolds.

[Hecuba]

I haven't read any Dragonlance books. Is kender a halfling subrace? I just assumed they were unrelated.

Kind-of. When Dragonlance was launched, race/class dynamics were very different and the halflings were very much a thief race: it was the only class they did not have a level cap for. Combined with the (perceived) wide practice of starting all characters at 1 and moving them from campaign to campaign, this meant that halflings were almost exclusively Thiefs or Thief/Clerics (since they could at least get 5/7 spell progression for Cleric). It's also worth noting that, at the time, thief was very much thief and not rogue. Halflings were also very much Hobbits.

Kender were an attempt to solve the contradictions inherent in hobbit-style halflings - a generally good and law abiding culture - producing adventurers who were almost exclusively backstabbing thieves. The attempted method was to make the theft a compulsion rather than a professional choice: thus, handling. If you've ever played a D&D halfling that wasn't a Bilbo rip-off, you should thank Dragonlance.

They even attempted to deal with the problem of intra-party theft in the form of the pouches tables, but that sadly never saw the play that it should have. There is an updated example in one of the 3.5 Dragonlance books, but it came out so late and so few people used the setting in 3.5 that it didn't move the needle much.

I would however, thoroughly, recommend that people use it the next time someone wants to play a Kender: instead of addressing handling (which is to say kleptomania) by actually having the character steal from other players, they simply roll on a table to see what they have acquired in their pouches. It might be worthless, or it might be a well of many worlds (seriously, they're both on the table).

[ShurikVch]

They at first seem to be the perfect rogues and then the fight starts and you say "WTF was I thinking":smallconfused:
What's the problem?
It's not like Sneak Attack care about the weapon size, and Small size give +1 to attack and AC

[MonkeySage]

:smallconfused:
What's the problem?
It's not like Sneak Attack care about the weapon size, and Small size give +1 to attack and AC

Not to mention, weapons that tend to be good for sneak attack don't even vary that much in terms of base damage. Using a dagger? You sacrifice 1 point of damage for a smaller dagger. Using a shortbow? 2 points of damage... Doesn't really make a difference once sneak attack damage starts to really add up. :)

[denthor]

Heck, I had a gnome player with a monkey animal companion that was just as bad; led my character to cast arcane mark on every one of her possessions. :smalltongue:

I like that idea very clever

[ATHATH]

I think I know why Kender haven't gone extinct. It's a question of morality.

If Kender have the mindset and "innocence" of children, what is there to distinguish them (morally) from kleptomaniacal children? Would you kill a child who tried to steal from you on the street? What about a mentally disabled man who has the mental capacity of a 6 year-old? What about a child-lycanthrope (without the alignment change, of course)? What if it (any of the three examples above) wad cowering in fear before you, unable to understand why you are attacking it (remember, Kender are unable to comprehend that their stealing is bad/wrong)? What if one of your friends was sympathetic to it?

Where do you draw the line?

As to why they are liked by everyone... How rare or obscure to the general population are Kender? The book doesn't say that the people that like Kender know that the Kender that they've encountered aren't just children. By the time someone realizes that that "lost child" was a master thief that stole everything that they owned, it could have already skipped town (Kender tend to be nomadic).

[Honest Tiefling]

Kender look like halflings with pointy ears and distinctive hair styles and a weapon they carry around. How drunk do you have to be to mistake THAT for a child?

[ATHATH]

Kender look like halflings with pointy ears and distinctive hair styles and a weapon they carry around. How drunk do you have to be to mistake THAT for a child?
... It could be a new fashion fad/trend? :smalltongue:

[OldTrees1]

Kender look like halflings with pointy ears and distinctive hair styles and a weapon they carry around. How drunk do you have to be to mistake THAT for a child?

Sober enough that one's ears still work.

Have you ever seen a Kender that acted like a civilized adult? I haven't and there are plenty of adult Halflings to compare them to. Kender are obviously too immature to be allowed to be adventurers(PCs) so Athath's theory of how they still exist might hold some water. Just notify your local truancy officer if you see a Kender walking around on a school day.

[KillingAScarab]

Now, dinosaur riding nomads? Yeah, that's more of an idea I can get behind.I'll second this.


Yeah...see...According to Races of the Wild, there are no halfling settlements, unless they are a small suburb tacked onto a larger (usually human) settlement. Other than that, halflings are all nomads, travelling around in caravans. They were pretty much built to be the D&D version of Gypsies, honestlyThat is also largely how I have seen them portrayed as NPCs in Forgotten Realms, though that setting also has Luiren (http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Luiren). Tomi "Grin" Undergallows (http://nwn.wikia.com/wiki/Tomi_Undergallows) is my definitive halfling adventurer: amusing stories but if you hadn't mastered the henchmen commands in NWN, he would very quickly get into trouble.


I haven't read any Dragonlance books. Is kender a halfling subrace? I just assumed they were unrelated.Kencyclopedia (http://www.kencyclopedia.com/) should have everything you want to know. Looks like there are multiple creation myths, but at the table (http://www.kencyclopedia.com/kender/general/kenderdl3e.cfm?page=realcreation) they were a replacement for halflings.


Now anyone who has ever played a kender, had the misfortune to bump into a kender, or ever heard of kender has swiftly discovered there is no more aggravating, though brave and clever, race of creature in the multiverse. Let's see somebody top that for annoying!

[Honest Tiefling]

Have you ever seen a Kender that acted like a civilized adult? I haven't and there are plenty of adult Halflings to compare them to. Kender are obviously too immature to be allowed to be adventurers(PCs) so Athath's theory of how they still exist might hold some water. Just notify your local truancy officer if you see a Kender walking around on a school day.

Their heads aren't even the right size. I think that's a bit of a tip-off.

[Ashtagon]

I haven't read any Dragonlance books. Is kender a halfling subrace? I just assumed they were unrelated.

I heard somewhere that back when Dragonlance was someone's homebrew campaign, the GM had declared "no halflings", but a player really really wanted to play one.

Kender were the misbegotten spawn of that debacle.

----------------------------------------------

How have halflinsg been portrayed?

OD&D: Early in the history of D&D, they were specifically called hobbits.

AD&D 1e, 2e/Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms: In core rules, these were halflings (aka hobbits with the serial numbers filed off). The Tolkein Estate didn't like having the word "hobbit" appropriated.

Mystara/BECMI: These halflings (rebranded as "hin" for the campaign setting) were distinct from AD&D halflings in that they were mostly fighters with a minor in the thief class. In core, they were basically hobbits. In Mystara, they acquired a national homeland, where they acquired the following tropes:

* Brave to a fault.
* Racial interest in piracy and shipping.
* Extreme levels of wanderlust in their tween years.
* Druidic magic for high-level homeland forest types.
* Highly magic-resistant.

Notably, Ed Greenwood wrote the halflings gazetteer for Mystara. I often wonder how much of this characterisation may have been at one pont intended for Forgotten Realms.

Dragonlance: Kender. Kleptomaniac imbeciles with no concept of ownership or personal possessions. Here is where the true hate for halflings lies.

Dark Sun: Cannibalistic jungle pygmies. While certainly original, this did raise unfortunate racist undertones.

Eberron: Dinosaur-riding nomads. Yee-haw!

D&D 3e: Except for the kleptomania, the rules presented these halflinsg to be optimised as Dragonlance-style kender (seriously, compare the crunch for 3e and 1e some time). Fluff-wise, they all got rebranded as gypsies (but without the prejudice against gypsies that is common in the real world).

[PersonMan]

I think I know why Kender haven't gone extinct. It's a question of morality.

So they only work in a setting where everyone is Good and the world is basically modern but with swords.

[Hecuba]

Have you ever seen a Kender that acted like a civilized adult?

Well, there are afflicted Kender now - which is to say Kender, but without the Kender. Because apparently when you encounter an effect powerful enough to ignore a racial immunity the result is losing the immunity altogether and becoming grumpy. I would hat to see what would happen if someone managed to put an elf to sleep.



As to why they are liked by everyone... How rare or obscure to the general population are Kender?

They very much are not liked by everyone. Good people and cultures tolerate them, but even mural cities have regular patrols that arrest then on sight and get them out of there city.

Until the fall of Kendermore, most Kender lived there. People outside of Kendermore would generally only be exposed to Kender in their 20s and 30s who are traveling under the influence of wanderlust.

The result is people encountering often enough of them that routine roundups of all Kender in a market is a thing but not so often that it would be entirely futile.

[Elder_Basilisk]

Another problem is that some races are portrayed as a stereotype. They have essentially a "mono-culture". It doesn't really matter where a dwarf comes from, they've all worked in a mine or a smithy. Humans can do everything though.
Throw in a couple of new races and halflings quickly get lost in a sea of fluff.

That's inevitable and it's not some non-human races, it's all of them. Even the non-human races like elves that get multiple cultures have to spawn a subrace in order to do so. Hippie elves: wood elves, angry hippie elves: grugach, evil elves: drow, city elves: grey elves/sun elves, woodsy wizardy elves; High elves.

But like I said, it's inevitable. If you want non-human races to have an identity other than "humans with different stat bonuses and a spoon glued to their forehead/pointy ears" you need to give them some kind of cultural identity and role in the world. As soon as you do that, you get a monoculture and it you take the non-human out of the monoculture, they revert back to being a human with different stat bonuses and spoon glued to their forehead/pointy ears.

[Zombimode]

But like I said, it's inevitable. If you want non-human races to have an identity other than "humans with different stat bonuses and a spoon glued to their forehead/pointy ears" you need to give them some kind of cultural identity and role in the world. As soon as you do that, you get a monoculture and it you take the non-human out of the monoculture, they revert back to being a human with different stat bonuses and spoon glued to their forehead/pointy ears.

Is that true?
Eberron has "city" elves (elves living in the predominantly human 5 nations), valenar elves and aerenal elves, which all are culturally distinct. Shadow Marches orcs are different from the orcs near the Mror Holds (name elapsed me). Sure, its not much, but it seem to work.

[Seto]

Is that true?
Eberron has "city" elves (elves living in the predominantly human 5 nations), valenar elves and aerenal elves, which all are culturally distinct. Shadow Marches orcs are different from the orcs near the Mror Holds (name elapsed me). Sure, its not much, but it seem to work.

Yeah, no problem. If you can make a nomadic culture of humans living in the desert and a medieval European one, you can do the same with Elves, Dwarves or Halflings. If you're worried about "pointy-eared humans" and "small stubby bearded humans" - in other words, if you don't want them to differ from humans only biologically but also psychologically, which I find unnecessary -, you can have cultural differences and cultural continuity between the nomadic dwarves and the settled dwarves. For example, you can have them craft and sell different materials based on the places they live, but worship the same gods and have the same myth. Or you can have one culture of Halflings that has an especially strong written tradition, and another culture otherwise similar to the first one, but with an oral tradition.
But honestly, the cultural impact of their biological differences should be enough to differentiate them from humans. Among Elves all over the world, no matter where they live, being stout and clumsy is probably a marker of social exception, given that they're usually nimble and frail. But that exception can be good or bad: slender elves living in the trees probably feel superior to the bigger member of their species, while slender elves in the Frostfell look up to those lucky few elves with a High CON and STR who are more resistant to the harsh environment.
Hell, simply living upwards of 300 years instead of 60 is enough to make you culturally and psychologically super different from humans. And then you take that race, already super different from humans, and divide it between different cultures by giving different groups whatever geographical/moral/culinary traditions you want.

[Âmesang]

This reminds me of once attempting to make a campaign setting where drow came from the "moon" — or, so to speak, they raised their land up into the Heavens with epic magic 'cause they were tired of everyone's $#&% and decided to keep to themselves; generations of physical, mental, spiritual, and magical training, plus the "alien" environment, led to the drow having their present-day appearance and abilities. (Because why do drow have spell resistance?)

I hadn't really thought of much for anything else, aside from orcs being created as a cross between dwarven toughness, human ambition, and boars' ferocity, starting off "pure" before falling into darkness.


I like that idea very clever
I'd go the Drawmij's instant summons route if it weren't so expensive and the character wasn't so limited on spells known. Maybe if epic level comes with Ignore Material Components and Spell Knowledge. :smalltongue:

[Elder_Basilisk]

Is that true?
Eberron has "city" elves (elves living in the predominantly human 5 nations), valenar elves and aerenal elves, which all are culturally distinct. Shadow Marches orcs are different from the orcs near the Mror Holds (name elapsed me). Sure, its not much, but it seem to work.

I've never been especially interested in Ebberon, but I'm not sure how the distinction between "City elves", "valenar elves", and "aerenal elves" for example can be different from that between "Wood elves", "Grugach", "Grey Elves," "High Elves," and "Drow" unless they all share the same mechanics. (Which would be a difference--they aren't split into different subraces--but I don't think it's a terribly meaningful one for the fluff analysis we're engaging in).

Either way, you run into the problem that your cultural markers for the particular group or subgroup define the character. It may not be that all valenar elves are tree-hugging nature boys with bows, but they are all nomadic raiders with a penchant for silly double scimitar weapons. Or if you want to create a Valenar who isn't, he's "not that kind of Valenar" and is defined by his defiance of the cultural/mechanical markers.

Humans can be individuals because we are all familiar with humans and have the full range of human experience to draw on in creating and understanding our characters. If we want to have non-human races be distinct from humans, then they necessarily draw from a limited subset of human experience and that creates "elfiness" or "Valenar Elfiness" (if that is sufficiently distinct from city elfiness). You can create a character who defies those tropes but he is either defined by opposition to them or he loses all connection with elfiness/valenar elfiness and for all character purposes, might as well be human.

The only obvious ways I would see to avoid the horns of the dilemma are paths no game designer is willing to touch with a ten foot pole--for example, keeping mechanical "humans" limited to a subset of the human experience and assigning the rest of the human experience to other races (orderly dwarves in Germany, savage orcs in Africa--yeah, it's pretty obvious why game designers don't want to go that route), or assigning other humanoid races more limited free will/moral agency (orcs get the Always Evil descriptor for example) which would give them a moral/agency based distinction from otherwise similar humans (and the common analysis of fantasy races as stand-ins for human races would make this kind of description just as problematic as straightforwardly assigning the most aggressive 15% of human experience to orcs and saying, "humans aren't like that, those are orcs). On the other hand, it's interesting to note that this is exactly the route that much of the source material literature takes. The "elves" and "trolls" of Poul Anderson's Broken Sword, the orcs and elves of Tolkein's houvre, and more recently the fae of the Dresden files all appear to have a more limited number of moral options than humans do. (Tolkein's elves are interesting in this regard since they are not really "good" in the way that his orcs are "evil." Especially in the Silmarillion and similar tales they appear to be vulnerable to what humans might think of as heroic vices while not being subject to more mundane ones. They suffer from hubris worthy of greek tragedies, and vengefulness that leads all the Noldor to ruin but if you look through all the characters, it's hard to find an elf with a small flaw. (Then again, it's hard to find a human or dwarf with a small flaw too, but it would be an interesting idea to see if a preponderance towards heroic sized virtues and flaws would be sufficient to make elves elfy and thereby enable them to have elfiness without limiting their endeavors and experiences to a small subset of what humans do and experience).

[raygun goth]

I've never been especially interested in Ebberon, but I'm not sure how the distinction between "City elves", "valenar elves", and "aerenal elves" for example can be different from that between "Wood elves", "Grugach", "Grey Elves," "High Elves," and "Drow" unless they all share the same mechanics. (Which would be a difference--they aren't split into different subraces--but I don't think it's a terribly meaningful one for the fluff analysis we're engaging in).

They aren't subraces.

"Urban elves" live and act like humans, because they've been living in human acculturated areas for so long.

"Valenar elves" are basically Klingons - they live in a harsh environment, have a cool game where they strip down to their skivvies and go out into it and see who dies first, and have a tendency to recite their family lines before killing you. They love them some epic poetry, constantly bellyache about honor, and have a unique bladed double weapon that is moon-shaped.

Aerenal elves also worship their ancestors. They worship them so hard that most of them, rather than dying, the ancestors turn into a special kind of undead powered by hope and love instead of guts and blood. Aerenal elves also keep baboons as bodyguards, paint skulls on their faces, and live in the jungle. Basically, what elves would be like if the "mystic elven isles" were Skull Island from King Kong.

The Eldeen elves are a split off the Aerenal elves - they quit because they didn't like how "icky" elf society was and they didn't want to live amongst humans. They moved up to the mystic beautiful green groves filled with arcane magic and ancient druid power - essentially, Player's Handbook Elves.

They all share the same stats. Keith Baker suggests using the various elf stats to represent either particular individuals or whole other elven subgroups separated during the Giant War.

Drow live in the jungles to the south and are evil in the sense of "hey what are all those pale round-ears doing touching that old dangerous stuff? Shoot them before something stupid happens."
___________________________________________

For me and halflings, I despise most small-sized races. Mostly because of what Small means.

It means it's 1/8 the mass and volume of a human-sized creature.

Now imagine all the horrible things that could happen to something half your height and 1/8 your mass. Zombification. Transformation into an illithid. Mohrg transformation. Bodaks! Skeletonization.

Zombies aren't so intimidating when the swarm is composed of the Lollipop Guild.

Xitharax the Unbidden One can pontificate and monologue all he likes, he's three feet tall and not particularly scary.

There is a time and a place for levity, but not typically when you're trying to make a situation seem dire. Small races make it that much more difficult. Kobolds I can deal, I describe them differently (http://oi39.tinypic.com/5467v7.jpg), and I don't typically allow them as PCs (I have a setting with much larger dromaeosaurs as PCs, but that's a whole other kettle of a completely different animal).

That's just my opinion, mind you.

[Barbarian Horde]

Lucky you.

Problem with the Kender and the accompanying archetype is, that it borders on sabotaging the game.
As has been pointed out, that works in a novel as a comic relieve character but doesn´t translate well to the actual game.

I DIDNT KNOW ABOUT KENDERS. I think next game I want to play one. This looks so god damn funny.

[Honest Tiefling]

I DIDNT KNOW ABOUT KENDARS. I think next game I want to play one. This looks so god damn funny.

Oh no, what has our hubris wrought!?

And no, you don't want to play a kender. Kender are defined by their mental impairment. They are a race of people who steal because they are mentally deficient. They cannot understand basic concepts that most of your pets can comprehend.

[Gildedragon]

They aren't subraces.

"Urban elves" live and act like humans, because they've been living in human acculturated areas for so long.

"Valenar elves" are basically Klingons - they live in a harsh environment, have a cool game where they strip down to their skivvies and go out into it and see who dies first, and have a tendency to recite their family lines before killing you. They love them some epic poetry, constantly bellyache about honor, and have a unique bladed double weapon that is moon-shaped.

Aerenal elves also worship their ancestors. They worship them so hard that most of them, rather than dying, the ancestors turn into a special kind of undead powered by hope and love instead of guts and blood. Aerenal elves also keep baboons as bodyguards, paint skulls on their faces, and live in the jungle. Basically, what elves would be like if the "mystic elven isles" were Skull Island from King Kong.

The Eldeen elves are a split off the Aerenal elves - they quit because they didn't like how "icky" elf society was and they didn't want to live amongst humans. They moved up to the mystic beautiful green groves filled with arcane magic and ancient druid power - essentially, Player's Handbook Elves.

They all share the same stats. Keith Baker suggests using the various elf stats to represent either particular individuals or whole other elven subgroups separated during the Giant War.

Drow live in the jungles to the south and are evil in the sense of "hey what are all those pale round-ears doing touching that old dangerous stuff? Shoot them before something stupid happens."
And even within the drow there are a lot of small cultures: scorpion worshipers that get white on black tattoos; the fire/magma themed drow; and a general sense of "Dunno there's lots of them and people don't really stick around long enough to find out much of their culture".


For me and halflings, I despise most small-sized races. Mostly because of what Small means.

It means it's 1/8 the mass and volume of a human-sized creature. to be fair, the mass thing depends on the race, kobolds are very very light, and warforged scouts might be more massive than some lighter medium races


Now imagine all the horrible things that could happen to something half your height and 1/8 your mass. Zombification. Transformation into an illithid. Mohrg transformation. Bodaks! Skeletonization.

Zombies aren't so intimidating when the swarm is composed of the Lollipop Guild.

Xitharax the Unbidden One can pontificate and monologue all he likes, he's three feet tall and not particularly scary.

There is a time and a place for levity, but not typically when you're trying to make a situation seem dire. Small races make it that much more difficult. Kobolds I can deal, I describe them differently (http://oi39.tinypic.com/5467v7.jpg), and I don't typically allow them as PCs (I have a setting with much larger dromaeosaurs as PCs, but that's a whole other kettle of a completely different animal).

That's just my opinion, mind you.
Small isn't necessarily not scary, but you need a swarm of them

[Florian]

I DIDNT KNOW ABOUT KENDERS. I think next game I want to play one. This looks so god damn funny.

Do that. Just remember: One can of Mountain Dew with a tea spoon of extra sugar every 30 minutes and you´ll do fine playing a Kender.

[Coidzor]

Do that. Just remember: One can of Mountain Dew with a tea spoon of extra sugar every 30 minutes and you´ll do fine playing a Kender.

I think they have Mtn Dew Black Label and Kickstarters as energy drinks to cut out adding the extra sugar to it, too.

Try not to have sessions that last much longer than 4 hours though, much more than 8 of em is generally a poor decision for one's innards.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

more than -8- 0 of em is generally a poor decision for one's innards.Fixed that for you.

And playing a kender at all is bad for one's outards, too.

[Barbarian Horde]

Do that. Just remember: One can of Mountain Dew with a tea spoon of extra sugar every 30 minutes and you´ll do fine playing a Kender.


I can see it now. This is just an audio recording I made.
http://picosong.com/Kvrb

On a sub note I do want to point out I think every d&d game I've ever played has had a can of Mt. Dew involved

And like 5$ from each player for a **** ton of pizza.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I can see it now. This is just an audio recording I made.
http://picosong.com/Kvrb

On a sub note I do want to point out I think every d&d game I've ever played has had a can of Mt. Dew involved

And like 5$ from each player for a **** ton of pizza.You need, like, 7 players for one medium pizza. How many players did you have?

[zergling.exe]

You need, like, 7 players for one medium pizza. How many players did you have?

Have you never heard of the people that eat 1-1/2 pizzas by themself? They exist. Also, 1 pizza for 7 people? Do you force everyone to have only one slice?! :smallconfused:

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Have you never heard of the people that eat 1-1/2 pizzas by themself? They exist. Also, 1 pizza for 7 people? Do you force everyone to have only one slice?! :smallconfused:At only $5 a person? That's a lot of people per pizza.

Assuming it's delivery, not DiGiorno.

[raygun goth]

to be fair, the mass thing depends on the race, kobolds are very very light, and warforged scouts might be more massive than some lighter medium races

It's just the nature of being small sized - when you half-height a person, you get a 7/8 reduction in mass and volume. In order to double the size of any given d6, you need eight of them to stack up. Warforged scouts are going to have 1/8 the mass of a medium warforged simply because that is how math works - since warforged are about 270 to 300 pounds, a warforged scout is about 33.75 to 37.5 pounds.

[Barbarian Horde]

You need, like, 7 players for one medium pizza. How many players did you have?

8 two which were the co dm and dm. But little ceasar's was our choice cause of their 5$ deal.

It was like 7 boxs

[Barbarian Horde]

post dbl posted cause of refresh--

[Coidzor]

You need, like, 7 players for one medium pizza. How many players did you have?

What size is a medium pizza in your neck of the woods?

What size and ages of players do you play with?

[Barbarian Horde]

https://thoughtcatalog.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/lcpiz.jpg?w=584&h=417You don't have little ceasar's in your area, they are like universal in usa. At least in the states I've lived in. 21-35 for our groups ages. Your lucky if 2 boxs didnt feed ralph alone his metabolism made him a beast.

Did some research, they are actually third largest in USA.

[ATHATH]

Apparently, we hate Kender so much that we derailed a thread about Halflings to talk about pizza to avoid having to talk (more) about Kender.

[AnimeTheCat]

And no, you don't want to play a kender. Kender are defined by their mental impairment. They are a race of people who steal because they are mentally deficient. They cannot understand basic concepts that most of your pets can comprehend.

I'm not sure what fluff you're reading, but that's not what I gathered about the fluff in the Dragonlance Campaign Setting at all... From what I read they just have goldfish style attention span and if they're looking at something in their hands while something else catches their eye, they keep holding on to it while they go look at the other thing. That doesn't sound like stealing due to mental deficiency it just sounds like a really excited child. On top of that, it doesn't sound like they HAVE to steal important or valuable stuff either. It could just be a certain fork that glistens in the light juuuuuust right to pique their interest, then on to the next thing. On top of that, it never says they only take. It explicitly says that they occasionally leave other things. This reinforces that they are just going from interesting thing to interesting thing. Say you've got a candlestick on the table and it looks really pretty to that Kender, but then they happen to notice how nice that spoon looks so they walk over with the candlestick in their hand. Now they put down the candlestick where the spoon was and move on to the next thing that grabs their attention. They left the candlestick where the spoon was and they now have the spoon.

This CAN happen to a wand, but the fluff says they give it back as soon as confronted because they genuinely had every intention of giving it back. It seems to me that people are just hankering on the whole "Ooh, shiney... Ooh, another shiney... its all mine... precious" a bit too much. The fluff doesn't give a menacing vibe at all...

as for comparing them to pets... that's low, even in D&D terms. They just don't know boundaries very well which MOST dogs don't know. Licking people in the face, barking at cars, chasing people. Far more dogs do that than dogs that don't. C'mon, RAW, are Kender really that bad? nothing in the racial traits says "impulsive thief" or "you must succeed on a DCxx will save not to steal everything from your party". If you're roleplaying a Kender, probably after a week of being with your party you'll have rifled through their stuff and found all the interesting things there are and that will all be resolved. It makes for one, maybe two sessions of people looking after their gear then the moment has passed. That's wonderlust, "This is really cool! Ok, that's passed now... Oh now that thing is really cool!"

I know I'm the minority here, and I understand what you're saying, but I don't think Kender are so criminal as everyone is making it out to be. They're not Kleptomaniacs because the book very clearly states that they abhor stealing. They just get distracted, similar to children. There shouldn't be hate unless the person playing the kender is using it as a means to party steal, which is not playing the race properly. I feel fairly certain that if a knight asked a Kender where he got something from he would be:

1) surprised to find the item in his possession.
2) make up a silly excuse like "oh... it must have fallen into my pocket" which, of course is a lie but its a blatantly obviously bad one.
3) ask the knight to help him return it and apologize.

That's how the racial fluff sounds to me.

TL;DR: I think people are misinterpreting the Kender racial fluff to suit their desires to hate on something.

[ZeroiaSD]

Much as I'd like to jump on the Kender-hate bandwagon, I have a hypothesis about the original question that doesn't have to do with Kender:

I think halflings just seem out of place amidst the other, more "grown-up" races. What was a deliberate innovation on Tolkien's part -- these quiet, unassuming, simple folk being the saviors of the world -- becomes stale after the first telling.

Also, they're redundant with the slightly more interesting gnomes.



Yes, very much this. In LotR, part of the point of the halfling characters was they *weren't* adventurers, especially at first.

Bilbo was maybe a level 1 expert at the start.

Merry and Pippin weren't carrying their weight til at *least* Two Towers.

By the end of their stories, they were adventurers with levels, but they aren't the best blueprint characters for playing your own, and if people want to play a group of cool adventurers, a Merry or Pippin or even a Bilbo wouldn't fit... because that's not their role in the books. They're under-leveled people who get thrown into adventure.

Ironically it's implied in the past there were more badass Hobbits, defending the Shire with groups of deadly sling-throwers (that's where the sling thing originally came from, iirc) in the distant past, but you don't see any of those in the books.


I don't think I actually saw 'cool' halflings* that actually ring true as adventurers til, like, 3ed (Lidda the iconic Rogue). It's only after that that I started seeing the likes of Belkar and Brie Three-Hands (John Roger's D&D comic. Pick it up, it's seriously great).


*I'll also mention Athasian halflings, which were scary-deadily, but pretty much a pure inversion and very setting specific. They also didn't have to compete with other short races.

[Jay R]

Contempt for halflings pre-dates the introduction of kender. It may be aggravated by kender, but it didn't start there.

When the first D&D supplement, Greyhawk, came out, the Thief class was introduced and hobbits (not halflings) were finally playable. With originally D&D, they could only be Fighters, and only up to level 4. With one exception, every Thief I saw in original D&D was a hobbit.

By the time of 1e, hobbits, ents, and balrogs has been replaced by halflings, treants, and Balors. Halflings seemed to be much less common, and pretty soon I was hearing people who disliked them - a few years before kender came out in the mid-80s.

I suspect that part of it was the fact of the change. We didn't want to play halflings; we wanted to play hobbits.

[squiggit]

Funny, because most of the hate I saw for halflings was that people didn't like the inclusion of the Tolkein race.

[KillingAScarab]

Apparently, we hate Kender so much that we derailed a thread about Halflings to talk about pizza to avoid having to talk (more) about Kender.May I add this quote to my signature?

[ATHATH]

May I add this quote to my signature?
Sure!

It was partly inspired by a quote about a Truenamer thread that was derailed by a debate over the proper nomenclature of tomatoes, by the way.

[Hecuba]

They're not Kleptomaniacs because the book very clearly states that they abhor stealing. They just get distracted, similar to children. There shouldn't be hate unless the person playing the kender is using it as a means to party steal, which is not playing the race properly.

I think that Kender get a worse rap than they deserve, but you're being overly generous.

Canonically, there should be hate: a significant portion of the human population (to say nothing of the evil races) view Kender as pests that happen to be sentient.

And while Kender abhor what they regard as stealing, neither the players not the other characters should have the same outlook on what constitutes stealing as a Kender would (effectively limited to theft by force or fraud). They have a habit of picking up things that interest them and have little concept of ownership outside possession. While their motives may be better than a career theif, the outcome is not particularly distinguishable from a kleptomaniac.

People travelling to Kendermore should expect to lose anything they they don't take significant pains to retain. That's interesting from as narrative standpoint, but in terms of gameplay it would be frustrating for most players.

Moreover, while Kender should be just as interested in interesting but unimportant items for their handling, such items trend to be abstracted. Most tables don't tend to discuss things like mess kits or spoons, and thus there are relatively fewer situations where the handling takes an appropriately harmless tone.

There are solutions. You can use a pouches table. You can deliberately role play the handling of mundane items. But in all's cases I've seen, you have to make special efforts to assign narrative importance to the disposition of unimportant items.

[Florian]

Well, back to Halflings..

On the mechanical side, the race is pretty much inefficient for the roles it should be able to handle well.
A Halfling Rogue sneaking around brings the game literally to a crawl until some Fast Stealth options have been taken, even then...
They´re actually quite good casters but lack support options to enhance that further.

On the fluff side, they simply lack any profile or strong archetypes to go by, similar to many of the more exotic races that haven´t been fully fleshed out.

So, I would´t call it "hate", but really, I´ve gotta try hard at hiding my annoyance when someone brings a halfling rogue to the table.

[Coidzor]

Apparently, we hate Kender so much that we derailed a thread about Halflings to talk about pizza to avoid having to talk (more) about Kender.

Sounds about right.


When the first D&D supplement, Greyhawk, came out, the Thief class was introduced and hobbits (not halflings) were finally playable. With originally D&D, they could only be Fighters, and only up to level 4. With one exception, every Thief I saw in original D&D was a hobbit.

Could it be that some of it is a conflation with the way that people back in Oldschool D&D played Thief characters as out to backstab the rest of the group?

[Florian]

Could it be that some of it is a conflation with the way that people back in Oldschool D&D played Thief characters as out to backstab the rest of the group?

I don´t think so. Back then, they being more based on Hobbits, the more annoying part was the duality of "not being heroes" and "engaging in risky thief business".

[KillingAScarab]

Well, back to Halflings..

On the mechanical side, the race is pretty much inefficient for the roles it should be able to handle well.
A Halfling Rogue sneaking around brings the game literally to a crawl until some Fast Stealth options have been taken, even then...
They´re actually quite good casters but lack support options to enhance that further.

On the fluff side, they simply lack any profile or strong archetypes to go by, similar to many of the more exotic races that haven´t been fully fleshed out.

So, I would´t call it "hate", but really, I´ve gotta try hard at hiding my annoyance when someone brings a halfling rogue to the table.One of the things which has disinterested me in halflings has been their strength penalty on top of their small size carrying capacity limits. This pretty much stops most of my ideas for halfling characters at low levels.


Sure!

It was partly inspired by a quote about a Truenamer thread that was derailed by a debate over the proper nomenclature of tomatoes, by the way.Hm... character limits will allow me to link to it, but not include the full quote. Thanks for the background info.

[Jay R]

Funny, because most of the hate I saw for halflings was that people didn't like the inclusion of the Tolkein race.

Currently, yes. But in the 1970s, the road to D&D went through the Shire for almost all players. There is no way to express just how big LotR was with college-age Boomers.


Could it be that some of it is a conflation with the way that people back in Oldschool D&D played Thief characters as out to backstab the rest of the group?

Possibly, and the timing seems right. The back-stabbing was more common in AD&D than in original D&D, at least where I played.

[2D8HP]

Currently, yes. But in the 1970s, the road to D&D went through the Shire for almost all players. There is no way to express just how big LotR was with college-age Boomers.
This so very much!
I was a kid under the "age limit" when I first started playing DnD in the 1970's, but I can specially remember when I first got the (1e) PHB how my Dad's girlfriend and her friend (who were real live "adults"!) saw it and then expounded on their playing DnD (that deeper levels of the Dungeon had more dangerous monsters is what I remember them telling me). Tolkien was everywhere! I remember a girl named "Arwen" (yes she was cute, but sadly her ears were not pointed), our cat was named "Wizard" (parents picked the names not kids!).
While it was pretty close in time, I actually don't think I had read any Tolkien before playing DnD, I only saw the Hobbit cartoon on channel 5! Reading the books was what the "grown-ups" did! I was probably more influenced by seeing "7th Voyage of Sinbad" at the drive-in (since I later learned that the movie was made in the 1950's it must have been re-released). I can specially remember watching it through the back window of a V.W. bug while my parents watched something boring through the front window, and marveling at the Dragon and the sword wielding skeleton! And sometimes "Jason and the Argonauts" was on the T.V.!
I read Greek mythology and a lot of science fiction, but actual fantasy fiction before playing DnD? Maybe a couple of Conan short stories if that. The "Catspaw" episode of Star Trek influenced my vision of the Dungeon, and old Errol Flynn movies influenced my vision of what PC's should be like.
Except for the cartoon I absorbed "Middle Earth" second hand mostly from the grown-ups who loved LotR, but I myself definitely read it after DnD (I may have read the "Hobbit" about the same time though).
Decades later, while among a big pile of deceased PC character sheets of mine, they're Dwarves, Elves, half-elves, and half-orcs, they are no "halflings".

[Honest Tiefling]

I'm not sure what fluff you're reading, but that's not what I gathered about the fluff in the Dragonlance Campaign Setting at all...

I'm taking the fact that Kender do not comprehend the idea of property and the idea of fear. Concepts your CAT can understand. (Your cat just ignores the former.)

Kender are annoying not because they are kleptomanics, but because no matter how many times you explain to them to stop doing that, they will never stop. Their hatred of theives doesn't exnorate them, just makes them worse. So not only are they stealing from the party, they get all high and mighty because they hate people who do exactly what they do. The lack of attention span also doesn't help, because now you're trusting your life to someone who can't even function in society.

If you take a kender along adventuring, you're literally bringing a giggling lunatic with you because they cannot fully understand the world around them.


Currently, yes. But in the 1970s, the road to D&D went through the Shire for almost all players. There is no way to express just how big LotR was with college-age Boomers.

Did no one else go to school with an Arwen? Maybe that was just me.

[raygun goth]

*snipping such a post should be a crime*

This.

I came to D&D after world-building had been a hobby of mine. At a very young age I was exposed to Lovecraft, Shakespeare, Allen Ginsburg, and a host of women writers including but not limited to Sylvia Plath, Margaret Atwood, and Betty Friedan. Even after that it was the 000 section of the library that drew me (no kidding, when I first encountered the Dewey Decimal system, I thought you were supposed to read them all in order, that's why I thought logic, the occult, and philosophy showed up in that order, and we kept moving around so I kept starting over) - all that stuff about ghosts and psychics and UFOs and forbidden archaeology.

Sidelong with this were my grandparents and extended family, who were Crackers and Seminoles, and my life was filled with stories - about the south, about Pecos Bill, about the Alligator-Man who sang himself into a reptile skin, Whisky Jack, Glooscap, Nanabozho, and others. By the time D&D came along the very idea of "elves" and "dwarves" was a novelty to me (even though they were portrayed incorrectly - you have no idea how maddening it is to come from knowledge of Norse mythology and see elves and dwarves drawn like they're different things). I had no idea how baseline the whole thing was, because in my baseline humans were the race to be, and mages were more likely to throw spears that turned into hundreds or acquire gemstones from rattlesnakes made of clouds using their strength and honesty or rope tornadoes and ride them across the desert than they were to fold to a papercut or chuck charm spells.

When I realized where all the components of D&D had come from, I wondered why there wasn't more influence from weird fiction. The Tolkein race loadout seemed so simple and basic. But I've gone with it, because it's familiar, but halflings, elves, and dwarves all ring hollow to me. Where are the stats for playing a Being of Ib? Or a stone-walking little brother? Lightning bolts that are alive and crawl across the ground like an octopus made of electricity?

At the same time, D&D essentially served as a complete erasure of half my heritage. It's got potatoes, tomatoes, tailoring with hash-stitching, jackets, rubber, large-scale use of guano, among other things - everything that, historically, the Americas provided. D&D, at base, wants to be a pretendy-fantasy Europe, but it only ever wants to show the product, a melange bereft of the price of its goods.

So when I finally pulled my setting that I'd been building since before I even knew what D&D was on my players, I tore out anything and everything that had been inspired by Europe, Rome, and Greece. I thought it was only fair.

Halflings. Pfeh. The least of my problems.


If you take a kender along adventuring, you're literally bringing a giggling lunatic with you because they cannot fully understand the world around them.

This. Also, players choosing Kender are almost always just looking for an excuse to grief. They want to think their character is cute and cuddly and being a lolcat, but what's really happening is they're a liability. "It's just my character!" becomes the refrain when the Paladin's holy avenger is missing and he dies to a low-ranking demon.

[Clistenes]

A similar thread from some time ago. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?478457-Do-halflings-seem-out-of-place-to-anyone-else/page4)

What I said there. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=20451455&postcount=93)


*Snip*

I first learned about Elves and Dwarves from Tolkien, then learned all the real-world mythology stuff, and only afterwards I learned about D&D and D&D-related fantasy novels... Man, how I hated all the D&D playable races and all the non-human fantasy novel character! They are so dull and mundane when compared to the stuff from the myths!

Eventually, I learned to compartmentalize and to avoid comparing fantasy novel characters with real mythology characters, and I became able to enjoy the former.

[Honest Tiefling]

I dunno if I am so bothered with commoner halflings being good honest folk, and all of the PC halflings being thieves. I mean, most adventurers are going to be mercenaries, highwaymen, outlaws or pirates of one stripe or another, so why wouldn't those halflings that became criminals and lived not turn to adventuring? Clearly they got kicked out of their home and had to resort to less then honest means, or that was the reason they got kicked out.

[ZeroiaSD]

If we look at other fantasy literature, Elves and Dwarves became common. Halfings/Hobbits, less so. So I think there was also less of a feeling of them being generic.

[Elder_Basilisk]

If we look at other fantasy literature, Elves and Dwarves became common. Halfings/Hobbits, less so. So I think there was also less of a feeling of them being generic.

There is also less interest in the themes that Tolkein used them to develop. Most fantasy literature is about awesome people doing awesome things through their awesomeness. The hobbits of the Lord of the Rings were specifically not awesome people who accomplished things not by being awesome but by being humble, dutiful, and virtuous. As a character, none of the hobbits would fit into a Conan story, a Lankhmar story, or a David Eddings novel. John Carter of Mars or Leigh Bracketts' planetary romance heroes might rescue them (or might not) but they wouldn't share the spotlight with them. If the hobbits had the misfortune to show up in the Game of Thrones, they would probably be blinded, castrated, and raped before three pages were out. Put them in the world of Poul Anderson's Broken Sword and they'd be the token victims of a viking raid--some of them might be taken as slaves if they were lucky. Even in an old Abraham Merritt story, they would be out of place. Most D&D adventures owe more to wierd fiction and pulp fiction than to Tolkein and the themes and stories of most fantasy fiction are more amenable to the conventional heroism which Tolkein's hobbits specifically subverted.

[TheCrowing1432]

Gypsy Theives is really all we get out of them.

I didnt know people hated Halflings, Im fine with them, the only reason I dislike them is the damage die reduction

[Ninjaxenomorph]

This is the first I've heard of any halfling hate. Honestly, its one of the few core races I like besides humans; I've never particularly liked elves, dwarves don't fit very many of the character concepts I have, gnomes are... well, gnomes (only fun I've had coming up with a gnome character is subverting the stereotype), and the half-breeds never really caught my eye, minus one half-elf I played (a little to close to the 'brooding loner' stereotype, in retrospect). I've even theorized an all-halfling party for Pathfinder (mounted paladin/cavalier, witch with jinx, typical rogue, an oracle, and possibly a PoW warlord). It might be because I literally grew up with the Hobbit as a bedtime story, and never got through much of the Lord of the Rings books beyond Hobbiton.

Humans might pull out far ahead of any other character race for number of characters I've come up with (played or not), but hobbits pull a close second. Gnomes get two (but one was one of my early characters I was never happy with), half-elves/orcs get one each, dwarves get one, elves get zero.