A chat about halflings and your opinions on their subraces.

[Dankus Memakus]

So, i love halflings. I always have... although in my heart they will always be hobbits.. anyway ive played a few halfling characters (my favorite was my halfling fighter) and dmed for quite a heroic little halfling bard and today while reading Reddit I came across a whole group of halfling haters who whined about how boring the race is and now I feel like i have to rant about them. I personally don't find them boring due to the sheer versatility of their subraces. One gets CHA another WIS and the last (and my favorite) CON. They can basically fit any class and they are small and have the ability to re roll ones. What's not to love? Anyway, so most of you like or dislike halflings, whats your favorite subrace, and your most memorable halfling hero?

Edit: My favorite type of halfling? One in heavy armor preferably a stout one

[smcmike]

I like halflings, but I have realism problems with them as serious physical combatants. They are like 40 pounds. Grappling between a 40 pound person and a 200 pound person consists entirely of leg grabbing.

[JumboWheat01]

I like halflings, but I have realism problems with them as serious physical combatants. They are like 40 pounds. Grappling between a 40 pound person and a 200 pound person consists entirely of leg grabbing.

Ya gotta watch out for ankle biters. They're dangerous. :smalltongue:

I like both of the main subraces of halflings pretty equally, only iffy on the Ghostwise (they're creepy.) My crossbow wielding halfling rogue is still my favorite character so far, he was quite enjoyable and a fair skill monkey.

[Naanomi]

I love the race, but the artwork in this edition is a bit off-putting

[MeeposFire]

I love the race, but the artwork in this edition is a bit off-putting

I agree I like the 3e and 4e art design better.

[Dankus Memakus]

I agree I like the 3e and 4e art design better.

I also dislike the art

[MeeposFire]

I also dislike the art

Yea I think it is mainly the really big heads.

[Dankus Memakus]

https://i.warosu.org/data/tg/img/0396/96/1430524297574.jpg

I love this art here

Edit:although this is one of the more cartoon like ones

[Potato_Priest]

I too love halflings, and while they're not my most played race (variant human takes that cake), they're probably my favorites. I've got a (stout)halfling druid planned for an upcoming game, and I'm very excited about that.

In 5th edition, dex and con are useful (while perhaps not optimal) stats for practically any class, with very few exceptions. This, the poison resistance, and the fluff of being tough little bastards makes stout my favorite as well.

Edit: that art, for all its cartoonyness, is a lot better than the regular 5e stuff.

[Tanarii]

I've liked Halflings ever since 3e made them less hobbit and more gypsy nomad. Otoh I loved 2e kender, at least the physical aspects. Obviously the annoying little prat everyone should want to off aspect was ... uh, annoying.

So for me, 5e Lightfoot are where it's at for Halflings. I see them as nimble, dangerous, and adventurous.

Artwise, something like this:
https://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/forgottenrealms/images/6/6f/Halflings_-_Steve_Prescott.jpg

[MeeposFire]

https://i.warosu.org/data/tg/img/0396/96/1430524297574.jpg

I love this art here

Edit:although this is one of the more cartoon like ones

That is a lot better than the artwork in the PHB for halflings though even with that I like it better for civilians than the adventurer halflings.

[Dankus Memakus]

IThis, the poison resistance, and the fluff of being tough little bastards makes stout my favorite as well.

I like making knight like characters with stouts

[furby076]

This thread does not qualify as a valid halfling thread until we discuss our love for tasselhoff. Yes, tas is a dragonlance halfling, get over it. And if you dont love tas, then leave. Your presence is no longer requires on this planet

[Easy_Lee]

I'm fond of halflings, but I don't feel they represented them correctly this edition. My key complaint is the Hafling's Lucky feature. For one, they named it the same as the feat. For two, it only comes up on 1 in 20 rolls. That's infrequent enough for players to forget about it, and it doesn't compare with the feat Lucky.

I don't see why they didn't just give Lucky to halflings for free and make it reroll a single D20 (player's choice) per short or long rest. Would have been much simpler and would also make for a competitive racial.

As far as subraces go, Halflings have a great mix. Bonus dexterity plus almost anything else you'd need on a dexterity toon, very useful. Ghostwise are my favorite because you can make a druid that can talk while in animal form.

[Dankus Memakus]

I'm fond of halflings, but I don't feel they represented them correctly this edition. My key complaint is the Hafling's Lucky feature. For one, they named it the same as the feat. For two, it only comes up on 1 in 20 rolls. That's infrequent enough for players to forget about it, and it doesn't compare with the feat Lucky.

I don't see why they didn't just give Lucky to halflings for free and make it reroll a single D20 (player's choice) per short or long rest. Would have been much simpler and would also make for a competitive racial.

As far as subraces go, Halflings have a great mix. Bonus dexterity plus almost anything else you'd need on a dexterity toon, very useful. Ghostwise are my favorite because you can make a druid that can talk while in animal form.

Due to the fact that rolling a one is very dangerous in my group, re rolling ones is a blessing. I realize that this depends on dm so i understand why you'd prefer the feat. I also didn't think about druid potential with the ghostwise halflings!

[MeeposFire]

Agree on the artwork. Much (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/cc/20000626c) better.

Lightfoot for the CHA bonus.

I remind myself that my halfling is one inch taller than Mini-Me.

Yea the Lidda artwork in the 3e PHB were also really bad but generally the rest of the artwork in 3e of halflings in general looked a lot different and I think they even made Lidda look better as the edition went on.

[JellyPooga]

I've liked Halflings ever since 3e made them less hobbit and more gypsy nomad.

So much this. Hobbits, in my mind, are "surprisingly adventurous underdogs" at best; they're comic relief, plucky heroes and "heart-of-gold" burglars, while Halflings are badass in their own right; whether they be murderous psychos, cunning magi, deadly assassins or righteous Paladins. Divorcing Halflings further from their Hobbit roots was one of the best things 3ed did in my opinion and unlike that which can be said about most other races, the majority of the fluff written for Halflings in that edition was solid gold.

Needless to say, I'm a fan of Lightfoot Halflings; the charming Rogue, the flamboyant Bard, the loyal Paladin, the sinister Warlock. I've also dabbled with the idea of liking Ghostwise Halflings for the more nature-oriented Druid or Ranger take; "wild" Halflings opposed to their "civilised" Lightfoot counterparts. I'm not enamoured with Stout Halflings; to me, they feel like they should be the least adventurous, more Hobbit-like stay-at-home types; dour and sensible (though mechanically, they rock; Con boost for the win!).

I have no complaints about Halfling Luck, beyond the naming of it. I agree that they probably should have called it "Fortunes Favour" or something to avoid the duplication with the Feat, but that aside, I think it's an excellent mechanic to represent the Halfling tendancy to simply avoid bad luck. Yeah, it's not going to come up all that often (and I think that's a feature, not a bug) but when it does, you're going to love it.

[RazorChain]

What's not to love. I've loved them since Bored of the Rings


"PROLOGUE -- CONCERNING BOGGIES

This book is predominantly concerned with making money, and from its
pages a reader may learn much about the character and the literary integrity
of the authors. Of boggies, however, he will discover next to nothing, since
anyone in the possession of a mere moiety of his marbles will readily concede
that such creatures could exist only in the minds of children of the sort
whose childhoods are spent in wicker baskets, and who grow up to be muggers,
dog thieves, and insurance salesmen. Nonetheless, judging from the sales of
Prof. Tolkien's interesting books, this is a rather sizable group, sporting
the kind of scorchmarks on their pockets that only the spontaneous combustion
of heavy wads of crumpled money can produce. For such readers we have
collected here a few bits of racial slander concerning boggies, culled by
placing Prof. Tolkien's books on the floor in a neat pile and going over them
countless times in a series of skips and short hops. For them we also include
a brief description of the soon-to-be-published-if-this-incredible-dog-sells
account of Dildo Bugger's earlier adventures, called by him _Travels with
Goddam in Search of Lower Middle Earth_, but wisely renamed by the publisher
_Valley of the Trolls_.


Boggies are an unattractive but annoying people whose numbers have
decreased rather precipitously since the bottom fell out of the fairy-tale
market. Slow and sullen, and yet dull, they prefer to lead simple lives of
pastoral squalor. They don't like machines more complicated than a garrote, a
blackjack, or a luger, and they have always been shy of the "Big Folk" or
"Biggers," as they call us. As a rule they now avoid us, except on rare
occasions when a hundred or so will get together to dry-gulch a lone farmer or
hunter. They are a little people, smaller than dwarves, who consider them
puny, sly, and inscrutable and often refer to them as the "boggie peril." They
seldom exceed three feet in height, but are fully capable of overpowering
creatures half their size when they get the drop on them. As for the boggies
of the Sty, with whom we are chiefly concerned, they are unusually drab,
dressing in shiny gray suits with narrow lapels, alpine hats, and string ties.
They wear no shoes, and they walk on a pair of hairy blunt instruments which
can only be called feet because of the position they occupy at the end of
their legs. Their faces have a pimply malevolence that suggests a deep-seated
fondness for making obscene telephone calls, and when they smile, there is
something in the way they wag their foot-long tongues that makes Komodo
dragons gulp with disbelief. They have long, clever fingers of the sort one
normally associates with hands that spend a good deal of time around the necks
of small, furry animals and in other people's pockets, and they are very
skillful at producing intricate and useful things, like loaded dice and booby
traps. They love to eat and drink, play mumblety-peg with dim-witted
quadrupeds, and tell off-color dwarf jokes. They give dull parties and cheap
presents, and they enjoy the same general regard and esteem as a dead otter.
It is plain that boggies are relatives of ours, standing somewhere along
the evolutionary line that leads from rats to wolverines and eventually to
Italians, but what our exact relationship is cannot be told. Their beginnings
lie far back in the Good Old Days when the planet was populated with the kind
of colorful creatures you have to drink a quart of Old Overcoat to see
nowadays. The elves alone preserve any records of that time, and most of them
are filled with elf-stuff, raunchy pictures of naked trolls and sordid
accounts of "orc" orgies. But the boggies had clearly lived in Lower Middle
Earth for a long time before the days of Frito and Dildo, when, like a very
old salami that suddenly makes its presence known, they came to trouble the
councils of the Small and the Silly.

This was all in the Third, or Sheet-Metal, Age of Lower Middle Earth,
and the lands of that age have long since dropped into the sea and their
inhabitants into bell jars at the Ripley's Believe-It-or-Not Odditorium. Of
their original home, the boggies of Frito's time had lost all records, partly
because their level of literacy and intellectual development could have been
equaled by a young blowfish and partly because their fondness for genealogical
studies made them dislike the notion that their elaborately forged family
trees had roots about as steady as Birnham Wood. It is nevertheless clear from
their heavy accents and their fondness for dishes cooked in Brylcreem that
somewhere in their past they went west in steerage. Their legends and old
songs, which deal mainly with oversexed elves and dragons in heat, make
passing mention of the area around the Anacin River, between Plywood and the
Papier-Mache Mountains. There are other records in the great libraries of
Twodor which lend credence to such a notion, old articles in the _Police
Gazette_ and the like. Why they decided to undertake the perilous crossing
into Oleodor is uncertain, though again their songs tell of a shadow that fell
upon the land so that the potatoes grew no more.

Before the crossing of the Papier-Mache Mountains, the boggies had
become divided into three distinct breeds: Clubfoots, Stools, and Naugahydes.
The Clubfoots, by far the most numerous, were swarthy, shifty-eyed, and short;
their hands and feet were as deft as crowbars. They preferred to live in the
hillsides where they could mug rabbits and small goats, and they supported
themselves by hiring out as torpedoes for the local dwarf population. The
Stools were larger and oilier than the Clubfoots, and they lived in the fetid
lands at the mouth and other orifices of the Anacin River, where they raised
yaws and goiters for the river trade. They had long, shiny, black hair, and
they loved knives. Their closest relations were with men, for whom they
handled occasional rubouts. Least numerous were the Naugahydes, who were
taller and wispier than the other boggies and who lived in the forests, where
they maintained a thriving trade in leather goods, sandals, and handicrafts.
They did periodic interior-decorating work for the elves, but spent most of
their time singing lurid folk songs and accosting squirrels.

Once across the mountains, the boggies lost no time establishing
themselves. They shortened their names and elbowed their way into all the
country clubs, dropping their old language and customs like a live grenade. An
unusual easterly migration of men and elves from Oleodor at this same time
makes it possible to fix the date the boggies came on the scene with some
accuracy. In the same year, the 1,623rd year of the Third Age, the Naugahyde
brothers, Brasso and Drano, led a large following of boggies across the
Gallowine River disguised as a band of itinerant graverobbers and took control
from the high King at Ribroast. * [* Either Arglebargle IV or someone else.]
In return for the King's grudging acquiescence, they set up toll booths on the
roads and bridges, waylaid his messengers, and sent him suggestive and
threatening letters. In short, they settled down for a long stay.
Thus began the history of the Sty, and the boggies, with an eye to the
statutes of limitations, started a new calendar dating from the crossing of
the Gallowine. They were quite happy with their new land, and once again they
dropped out of the history of men, an occurrence which was greeted with the
same universal sense of regret as the sudden death of a mad dog. The Sty was
marked with great red splotches on all the AAA maps, and the only people who
ever passed through were either hopelessly lost or completely unhinged. Aside
from these rare visitors, the boggies were left entirely to themselves until
the time of Frito and Dildo. While there was still a King at Ribroast, the
boggies remained nominally his subjects, and to the last battle at Ribroast
with the Slumlord of Borax, they sent some snipers, though who they sided with
is unclear. There the North Kingdom ended, and the boggies returned to their
well-ordered, simple lives, eating and drinking, singing and dancing, and
passing bad checks.

Nonetheless, the easy life of the Sty had left the boggies fundamentally
unchanged, and they were still as hard to kill as a cockroach and as easy to
deal with as a cornered rat. Though likely to attack only in cold blood, and
killing only for money, they remained masters of the low blow and the gang-up.
They were crack shots and very handy with all sorts of equalizers, and any
small, slow, and stupid beast that turned its back on a crowd of boggies was
looking for a stomping.
All boggies originally lived in holes, which is after all hardly
surprising for creatures on a first-name basis with rats. In Dildo's time,
their abodes were for the most part built above ground in the manner of elves
and men, but these still retained many of the features of their traditional
homes and were indistinguishable from the dwellings of those species whose
chief function is to meet their makers, around August, deep in the walls of
old houses. As a rule, they were dumpling-shaped, built of mulch, silt, stray
divots, and other seasonal deposits, often whitewashed by irregular pigeons.
Consequently, most boggie towns looked as though some very large and untidy
creature, perhaps a dragon, had quite recently suffered a series of
disappointing bowel movements in the vicinity.

In the Sty as a whole there were at least a dozen of these curious
settlements, linked by a system of roads, post offices, and a government that
would have been considered unusually crude for a colony of cherrystone clams.
The Sty itself was divided into farthings, half-farthings, and Indian-head
nickels ruled by a mayor who was elected in a flurry of ballot-box stuffing
every Arbor Day. To assist him in his duties there was a rather large police
force which did nothing but extract confessions, mostly from squirrels. Beyond
these few tokens of regulation, the Sty betrayed no signs of government. The
vast majority of the boggies' time was taken up growing food and eating it and
making liquor and drinking it. The rest of it was spent throwing up."

From Bored of the Rings


But one of my favorite parts is when Dildo finds the ring

"When Dildo's eyes became adjusted to the pale light, he found that the
grotto was almost filled by a wide, kidneyshaped lake where a nasty-looking
clown named Goddam paddled noisily about on an old rubber sea horse. He ate
raw fish and occasional side orders to travel from the outside world in the
form of lost travelers like Dildo, and he greeted Dildo's unexpected entrance
into his underground sauna in much the same way as he would the sudden arrival
of a Chicken Delight truck. But like anyone with boggie ancestry, Goddam
preferred the subtle approach in assaulting creatures over five inches high
and weighing more than ten pounds, and consequently he challenged Dildo to a
riddle game to gain time. Dildo, who had a sudden attack of amnesia regarding
the fact that the dwarves were being made into chutney outside the cave,
accepted.

They asked each other countless riddles, such as who played the Cisco
Kid and what was Krypton. In the end Dildo won the game. Stumped at last for a
riddle to ask, he cried out, as his hand fell on his snub-nosed .38, "What
have I got in my pocket?" This Goddam failed to answer, and growing impatient,
he paddled up to Dildo, whining, "Let me see, let me see." Dildo obliged by
pulling out the pistol and emptying it in Goddam's direction. The dark spoiled
his aim, and he managed only to deflate the rubber float, leaving Goddam to
flounder. Goddam, who couldn't swim, reached out his hand to Dildo and begged
him to pull him out, and as he did, Dildo noticed an interesting-looking ring
on his finger and pulled it off. He would have finished Goddam off then and
there, but pity stayed his hand. _It's a pity I've run out of bullets_, he
thought, as he went back up the tunnel, pursued by Goddam's cries of rage."

[Dankus Memakus]

What's not to love. I've loved them since Bored of the Rings


"PROLOGUE -- CONCERNING BOGGIES

This book is predominantly concerned with making money, and from its
pages a reader may learn much about the character and the literary integrity
of the authors. Of boggies, however, he will discover next to nothing, since
anyone in the possession of a mere moiety of his marbles will readily concede
that such creatures could exist only in the minds of children of the sort
whose childhoods are spent in wicker baskets, and who grow up to be muggers,
dog thieves, and insurance salesmen. Nonetheless, judging from the sales of
Prof. Tolkien's interesting books, this is a rather sizable group, sporting
the kind of scorchmarks on their pockets that only the spontaneous combustion
of heavy wads of crumpled money can produce. For such readers we have
collected here a few bits of racial slander concerning boggies, culled by
placing Prof. Tolkien's books on the floor in a neat pile and going over them
countless times in a series of skips and short hops. For them we also include
a brief description of the soon-to-be-published-if-this-incredible-dog-sells
account of Dildo Bugger's earlier adventures, called by him _Travels with
Goddam in Search of Lower Middle Earth_, but wisely renamed by the publisher
_Valley of the Trolls_.


Boggies are an unattractive but annoying people whose numbers have
decreased rather precipitously since the bottom fell out of the fairy-tale
market. Slow and sullen, and yet dull, they prefer to lead simple lives of
pastoral squalor. They don't like machines more complicated than a garrote, a
blackjack, or a luger, and they have always been shy of the "Big Folk" or
"Biggers," as they call us. As a rule they now avoid us, except on rare
occasions when a hundred or so will get together to dry-gulch a lone farmer or
hunter. They are a little people, smaller than dwarves, who consider them
puny, sly, and inscrutable and often refer to them as the "boggie peril." They
seldom exceed three feet in height, but are fully capable of overpowering
creatures half their size when they get the drop on them. As for the boggies
of the Sty, with whom we are chiefly concerned, they are unusually drab,
dressing in shiny gray suits with narrow lapels, alpine hats, and string ties.
They wear no shoes, and they walk on a pair of hairy blunt instruments which
can only be called feet because of the position they occupy at the end of
their legs. Their faces have a pimply malevolence that suggests a deep-seated
fondness for making obscene telephone calls, and when they smile, there is
something in the way they wag their foot-long tongues that makes Komodo
dragons gulp with disbelief. They have long, clever fingers of the sort one
normally associates with hands that spend a good deal of time around the necks
of small, furry animals and in other people's pockets, and they are very
skillful at producing intricate and useful things, like loaded dice and booby
traps. They love to eat and drink, play mumblety-peg with dim-witted
quadrupeds, and tell off-color dwarf jokes. They give dull parties and cheap
presents, and they enjoy the same general regard and esteem as a dead otter.
It is plain that boggies are relatives of ours, standing somewhere along
the evolutionary line that leads from rats to wolverines and eventually to
Italians, but what our exact relationship is cannot be told. Their beginnings
lie far back in the Good Old Days when the planet was populated with the kind
of colorful creatures you have to drink a quart of Old Overcoat to see
nowadays. The elves alone preserve any records of that time, and most of them
are filled with elf-stuff, raunchy pictures of naked trolls and sordid
accounts of "orc" orgies. But the boggies had clearly lived in Lower Middle
Earth for a long time before the days of Frito and Dildo, when, like a very
old salami that suddenly makes its presence known, they came to trouble the
councils of the Small and the Silly.

This was all in the Third, or Sheet-Metal, Age of Lower Middle Earth,
and the lands of that age have long since dropped into the sea and their
inhabitants into bell jars at the Ripley's Believe-It-or-Not Odditorium. Of
their original home, the boggies of Frito's time had lost all records, partly
because their level of literacy and intellectual development could have been
equaled by a young blowfish and partly because their fondness for genealogical
studies made them dislike the notion that their elaborately forged family
trees had roots about as steady as Birnham Wood. It is nevertheless clear from
their heavy accents and their fondness for dishes cooked in Brylcreem that
somewhere in their past they went west in steerage. Their legends and old
songs, which deal mainly with oversexed elves and dragons in heat, make
passing mention of the area around the Anacin River, between Plywood and the
Papier-Mache Mountains. There are other records in the great libraries of
Twodor which lend credence to such a notion, old articles in the _Police
Gazette_ and the like. Why they decided to undertake the perilous crossing
into Oleodor is uncertain, though again their songs tell of a shadow that fell
upon the land so that the potatoes grew no more.

Before the crossing of the Papier-Mache Mountains, the boggies had
become divided into three distinct breeds: Clubfoots, Stools, and Naugahydes.
The Clubfoots, by far the most numerous, were swarthy, shifty-eyed, and short;
their hands and feet were as deft as crowbars. They preferred to live in the
hillsides where they could mug rabbits and small goats, and they supported
themselves by hiring out as torpedoes for the local dwarf population. The
Stools were larger and oilier than the Clubfoots, and they lived in the fetid
lands at the mouth and other orifices of the Anacin River, where they raised
yaws and goiters for the river trade. They had long, shiny, black hair, and
they loved knives. Their closest relations were with men, for whom they
handled occasional rubouts. Least numerous were the Naugahydes, who were
taller and wispier than the other boggies and who lived in the forests, where
they maintained a thriving trade in leather goods, sandals, and handicrafts.
They did periodic interior-decorating work for the elves, but spent most of
their time singing lurid folk songs and accosting squirrels.

Once across the mountains, the boggies lost no time establishing
themselves. They shortened their names and elbowed their way into all the
country clubs, dropping their old language and customs like a live grenade. An
unusual easterly migration of men and elves from Oleodor at this same time
makes it possible to fix the date the boggies came on the scene with some
accuracy. In the same year, the 1,623rd year of the Third Age, the Naugahyde
brothers, Brasso and Drano, led a large following of boggies across the
Gallowine River disguised as a band of itinerant graverobbers and took control
from the high King at Ribroast. * [* Either Arglebargle IV or someone else.]
In return for the King's grudging acquiescence, they set up toll booths on the
roads and bridges, waylaid his messengers, and sent him suggestive and
threatening letters. In short, they settled down for a long stay.
Thus began the history of the Sty, and the boggies, with an eye to the
statutes of limitations, started a new calendar dating from the crossing of
the Gallowine. They were quite happy with their new land, and once again they
dropped out of the history of men, an occurrence which was greeted with the
same universal sense of regret as the sudden death of a mad dog. The Sty was
marked with great red splotches on all the AAA maps, and the only people who
ever passed through were either hopelessly lost or completely unhinged. Aside
from these rare visitors, the boggies were left entirely to themselves until
the time of Frito and Dildo. While there was still a King at Ribroast, the
boggies remained nominally his subjects, and to the last battle at Ribroast
with the Slumlord of Borax, they sent some snipers, though who they sided with
is unclear. There the North Kingdom ended, and the boggies returned to their
well-ordered, simple lives, eating and drinking, singing and dancing, and
passing bad checks.

Nonetheless, the easy life of the Sty had left the boggies fundamentally
unchanged, and they were still as hard to kill as a cockroach and as easy to
deal with as a cornered rat. Though likely to attack only in cold blood, and
killing only for money, they remained masters of the low blow and the gang-up.
They were crack shots and very handy with all sorts of equalizers, and any
small, slow, and stupid beast that turned its back on a crowd of boggies was
looking for a stomping.
All boggies originally lived in holes, which is after all hardly
surprising for creatures on a first-name basis with rats. In Dildo's time,
their abodes were for the most part built above ground in the manner of elves
and men, but these still retained many of the features of their traditional
homes and were indistinguishable from the dwellings of those species whose
chief function is to meet their makers, around August, deep in the walls of
old houses. As a rule, they were dumpling-shaped, built of mulch, silt, stray
divots, and other seasonal deposits, often whitewashed by irregular pigeons.
Consequently, most boggie towns looked as though some very large and untidy
creature, perhaps a dragon, had quite recently suffered a series of
disappointing bowel movements in the vicinity.

In the Sty as a whole there were at least a dozen of these curious
settlements, linked by a system of roads, post offices, and a government that
would have been considered unusually crude for a colony of cherrystone clams.
The Sty itself was divided into farthings, half-farthings, and Indian-head
nickels ruled by a mayor who was elected in a flurry of ballot-box stuffing
every Arbor Day. To assist him in his duties there was a rather large police
force which did nothing but extract confessions, mostly from squirrels. Beyond
these few tokens of regulation, the Sty betrayed no signs of government. The
vast majority of the boggies' time was taken up growing food and eating it and
making liquor and drinking it. The rest of it was spent throwing up."

From Bored of the Rings


But one of my favorite parts is when Dildo finds the ring

"When Dildo's eyes became adjusted to the pale light, he found that the
grotto was almost filled by a wide, kidneyshaped lake where a nasty-looking
clown named Goddam paddled noisily about on an old rubber sea horse. He ate
raw fish and occasional side orders to travel from the outside world in the
form of lost travelers like Dildo, and he greeted Dildo's unexpected entrance
into his underground sauna in much the same way as he would the sudden arrival
of a Chicken Delight truck. But like anyone with boggie ancestry, Goddam
preferred the subtle approach in assaulting creatures over five inches high
and weighing more than ten pounds, and consequently he challenged Dildo to a
riddle game to gain time. Dildo, who had a sudden attack of amnesia regarding
the fact that the dwarves were being made into chutney outside the cave,
accepted.

They asked each other countless riddles, such as who played the Cisco
Kid and what was Krypton. In the end Dildo won the game. Stumped at last for a
riddle to ask, he cried out, as his hand fell on his snub-nosed .38, "What
have I got in my pocket?" This Goddam failed to answer, and growing impatient,
he paddled up to Dildo, whining, "Let me see, let me see." Dildo obliged by
pulling out the pistol and emptying it in Goddam's direction. The dark spoiled
his aim, and he managed only to deflate the rubber float, leaving Goddam to
flounder. Goddam, who couldn't swim, reached out his hand to Dildo and begged
him to pull him out, and as he did, Dildo noticed an interesting-looking ring
on his finger and pulled it off. He would have finished Goddam off then and
there, but pity stayed his hand. _It's a pity I've run out of bullets_, he
thought, as he went back up the tunnel, pursued by Goddam's cries of rage."

I was unaware of this grand tale

[Tanarii]

So much this. Hobbits, in my mind, are "surprisingly adventurous underdogs" at best; they're comic relief, plucky heroes and "heart-of-gold" burglars,
My understanding, which admittedly is word of Internet, is they were supposed to be Good Englishmen(TM). Solid & Salt-of-the-Earth, but in a British way, as opposed to the more common Central-South U.S. way. With some few more bookish types mixed in. Because they were supposedly a stand-ins for WWI Brits, this makes sense.

I found that incredibly boring when I was young. It's not 'edgy' they way I wanted my adventurers when I was 20. So when TSR redefined halfings with Tasslehoff, who is very much the opposite of a Halfing, it opened my eyes to how awesome they could have been. As far as I am concerned, 3e Halflings inherited the best of the Kender.

[Dankus Memakus]

So much this. Hobbits, in my mind, are "surprisingly adventurous underdogs" at best; they're comic relief, plucky heroes and "heart-of-gold" burglars, while Halflings are badass in their own right; whether they be murderous psychos, cunning magi, deadly assassins or righteous Paladins. Divorcing Halflings further from their Hobbit roots was one of the best things 3ed did in my opinion and unlike that which can be said about most other races, the majority of the fluff written for Halflings in that edition was solid gold.

Needless to say, I'm a fan of Lightfoot Halflings; the charming Rogue, the flamboyant Bard, the loyal Paladin, the sinister Warlock. I've also dabbled with the idea of liking Ghostwise Halflings for the more nature-oriented Druid or Ranger take; "wild" Halflings opposed to their "civilised" Lightfoot counterparts. I'm not enamoured with Stout Halflings; to me, they feel like they should be the least adventurous, more Hobbit-like stay-at-home types; dour and sensible (though mechanically, they rock; Con boost for the win!).

I have no complaints about Halfling Luck, beyond the naming of it. I agree that they probably should have called it "Fortunes Favour" or something to avoid the duplication with the Feat, but that aside, I think it's an excellent mechanic to represent the Halfling tendancy to simply avoid bad luck. Yeah, it's not going to come up all that often (and I think that's a feature, not a bug) but when it does, you're going to love it.

I also see the stouts as the more hobbit like ones but i guess that's why I love them. Really Middle Earth is my favorite fantasy setting and The Hobbit is my favorite book of all time and cultivated my love for Dwarves and Hobbits. A Stout halfling reminds me of the unlikely adventurers of those stories and it warms my geeky heart. Although i like lightfoot halflings since one of my favorite PC's was my friends lightfoot bard, stouts are really what I dearly love.

[KorvinStarmast]

This thread does not qualify as a valid halfling thread until we discuss our love for tasselhoff. There is a universally acceptable genocide in D&D: Kender genocide. The violence done to Hobbit/Halfling by Weiss and Hickman was a grave sin.
What's not to love. I've loved them since Bored of the Rings Yeah. I read Lord of the Rings so that I could read Bored of the Rings. (My friend in high school who had BoTR would not lend it to me until I finished LoTR.
I was unaware of this grand tale It is indeed a grand tail, but some of the humor is very 60's advertising-centric.

[Dankus Memakus]

There is a universally acceptable genocide in D&D: Kender genocide. The violence done to Hobbit/Halfling by Weiss and Hickman was a grave sin.

This is a very true statement, the time of kender was a dark time in the world.

[Regulas]

The issue with halflings is that gnomes exist. in D&D gnomes are usually drawn in a more proportionate way, are taller, usually portrayed as smarter and more elvish and they don't have the Frodo connotations or lazy/peaceful mindset that can seem a bit corny. The result is that if you want to be a short race people tend to pick the Gnome.


I like halflings, but I have realism problems with them as serious physical combatants. They are like 40 pounds. Grappling between a 40 pound person and a 200 pound person consists entirely of leg grabbing.

Think about Chimpanzee. Small yes... can tear your arm off? Also yes. I think of the small races as having more powerful muscles for their size (much as many animals do), so they probably have proportionately higher strength for their size, probably greater then a human for the same str score to balance out for their lower mass.

[Dankus Memakus]

The issue with halflings is that gnomes exist. in D&D gnomes are usually drawn in a more proportionate way, are taller, usually portrayed as smarter and more elvish and they don't have the Frodo connotations or lazy/peaceful mindset that can seem a bit corny. The result is that if you want to be a short race people tend to pick the Gnome.



Think about Chimpanzee. Small yes... can tear your arm off? Also yes. I think of the small races as having more powerful muscles for their size (much as many animals do), so they probably have proportionately higher strength for their size, probably greater then a human for the same str score to balance out for their lower mass.

I'm gonna disagree with your gnome statement because I've only seen one gnome played as opposed to the countless halflings. However i agree with the latter part of your post.

[smcmike]

Think about Chimpanzee. Small yes... can tear your arm off? Also yes. I think of the small races as having more powerful muscles for their size (much as many animals do), so they probably have proportionately higher strength for their size, probably greater then a human for the same str score to balance out for their lower mass.

While I agree that my experience with 40 pound humans is probably misleading, due to lack of coordination and muscle development, this line of reasoning only goes so far. Unless you are all in on the "feral halfling" idea, they just aren't very chimp-like. They are little people, not wild animals. Also, they are a lot smaller than chimps.

There isn't really a solution to my realism problem. I prefer that halflings make creditable warriors in the game, and it's really a symptom of a larger design choice: in general, size matters less in D&D (particularly 5e) than is realistic. It's heroic fantasy, and heroes are supposed to be able to do things like punch a giant to death.

[eastmabl]

I'm fond of halflings, but I don't feel they represented them correctly this edition. My key complaint is the Hafling's Lucky feature. For one, they named it the same as the feat. For two, it only comes up on 1 in 20 rolls. That's infrequent enough for players to forget about it, and it doesn't compare with the feat Lucky.

I've never seen a character playing a halfling forget the Lucky feature - and that's including a whole lot of organized play where people have pregens.

[Easy_Lee]

I've never seen a character playing a halfling forget the Lucky feature - and that's including a whole lot of organized play where people have pregens.

I've seen players forget much bigger things than halfling lucky, such as sharpshooter. I've also met a DM recently who still thought that feat doubled range, rather than removing the penalty for long range, this many years into 5e. I don't make any assumptions about how good players are with the rules, I just recognize when a feature doesn't come up often enough to be easily remembered by all players.

[Regulas]

While I agree that my experience with 40 pound humans is probably misleading, due to lack of coordination and muscle development, this line of reasoning only goes so far. Unless you are all in on the "feral halfling" idea, they just aren't very chimp-like. They are little people, not wild animals. Also, they are a lot smaller than chimps.

There isn't really a solution to my realism problem. I prefer that halflings make creditable warriors in the game, and it's really a symptom of a larger design choice: in general, size matters less in D&D (particularly 5e) than is realistic. It's heroic fantasy, and heroes are supposed to be able to do things like punch a giant to death.


Oh, the point of comparison is not that "wild animals are strong", the point is that muscles are not consistent between different species, and a different species may have muscles that are stronger or weaker for the same mass/volume. Chimpanzee is just a functional and visual example that shows exactly how a small tiny thing can physically overpower a giant.


Halflings and Gnomes have muscles that are just that, comparatively stronger then human muscles are, it's not about "wildness" it's just biology and physiology of their muscles. More it's most likely that a halfling of 16 str is actually stronger then a 16 str human because the humans str also accounts for it's larger mass.

[ZorroGames]

I also see the stouts as the more hobbit like ones but i guess that's why I love them. Really Middle Earth is my favorite fantasy setting and The Hobbit is my favorite book of all time and cultivated my love for Dwarves and Hobbits. A Stout halfling reminds me of the unlikely adventurers of those stories and it warms my geeky heart. Although i like lightfoot halflings since one of my favorite PC's was my friends lightfoot bard, stouts are really what I dearly love.

If I played halflings/hobbits instead of Dwarf or human characters, the above completely.

[smcmike]

Oh, the point of comparison is not that "wild animals are strong", the point is that muscles are not consistent between different species, and a different species may have muscles that are stronger or weaker for the same mass/volume. Chimpanzee is just a functional and visual example that shows exactly how a small tiny thing can physically overpower a giant.


Halflings and Gnomes have muscles that are just that, comparatively stronger then human muscles are, it's not about "wildness" it's just biology and physiology of their muscles. More it's most likely that a halfling of 16 str is actually stronger then a 16 str human because the humans str also accounts for it's larger mass.

This is reasoning from mechanics to description. The only reason to think that halflings and gnomes are extraordinarily strong for their size is because the stats say so, and the only reason the stats say so is to make a balanced game.

There isn't anything wrong with this sort of rationalization, but it doesn't solve the problem of "this doesn't ring true to me." There are no real world examples of 40 lb animals with the general strength of a 200 lb man.

[JBPuffin]

I'm fond of halflings, but I don't feel they represented them correctly this edition. My key complaint is the Hafling's Lucky feature. For one, they named it the same as the feat. For two, it only comes up on 1 in 20 rolls. That's infrequent enough for players to forget about it, and it doesn't compare with the feat Lucky.

They definitely need a different name for the feature, but rerolling every time you roll a 1 is actually pretty amazing. Niche? Yes, but it makes halflings more reliable statistically than humans, the hacks-of-all-trades, which I find hilarious.

[Ravinsild]

I prefer Goblins due to influences of the Pathfinder artstyle for them and Warcraft, but I'd play a ghostwise halfling if I had to play a small race and couldn't be a goblin.

[Dankus Memakus]

Oh, the point of comparison is not that "wild animals are strong", the point is that muscles are not consistent between different species, and a different species may have muscles that are stronger or weaker for the same mass/volume. Chimpanzee is just a functional and visual example that shows exactly how a small tiny thing can physically overpower a giant.


Halflings and Gnomes have muscles that are just that, comparatively stronger then human muscles are, it's not about "wildness" it's just biology and physiology of their muscles. More it's most likely that a halfling of 16 str is actually stronger then a 16 str human because the humans str also accounts for it's larger mass.

Also they may be 40 pounds on average but I assume a warrior halfling will probably be a bit heftier than an average halfling

[Regulas]

This is reasoning from mechanics to description. The only reason to think that halflings and gnomes are extraordinarily strong for their size is because the stats say so, and the only reason the stats say so is to make a balanced game.

There isn't anything wrong with this sort of rationalization, but it doesn't solve the problem of "this doesn't ring true to me." There are no real world examples of 40 lb animals with the general strength of a 200 lb man.

How does it not solve the problem of "this doesn't ring true"? It solves it perfectly, the fact that it's made that way might be from mechanical balance reasons doesn't mean there's anything wrong with having it set as such if it makes perfect sense. I also rationalise leather amour as being because the animals they use being in a fantasy world just have stronger hides (as there's little reason someone would voluntarily choose RL leather armour over cheaper iron [yes cheaper]).

Also ever heard of a Gibbon? they only weigh in the range of 10-15lbs and even these tiny things have a strength equal to or greater then a human does (though there tiny body mass does have a big impact on how they can use this strength). Humans really are on the weaker side for apes and monkeys (we are built for energy efficiency and fine control).

There's even a few smaller monkeys who's raw strength is nearly that of a 200lb human male.

[ZorroGames]

Well, halflings/hobbits, IMO, should be poking things to death from a distance or from behind (my view is pretty much LOTR driven) unless magic of some kind is involved. An arrow in the eye/brain or a shortsword in the kidneys sounds fairly lethal.

A monk is also fairly beliveable. Skill trumping size thing.

I have no problem with someone playing a grappler small creature. Not half as fantastic as arcane or divine spells TBH. See monk above.

[smcmike]

How does it not solve the problem of "this doesn't ring true"?

It doesn't solve it because it is a personal aesthetic problem. I recognize the validity of the reasoning that leads to super strong halflings. It still seems wrong to me.



It solves it perfectly, the fact that it's made that way might be from mechanical balance reasons doesn't mean there's anything wrong with having it set as such if it makes perfect sense. I also rationalise leather amour as being because the animals they use being in a fantasy world just have stronger hides (as there's little reason someone would voluntarily choose RL leather armour over cheaper iron [yes cheaper]).

Whereas I simply don't care about the relative strengths and costs of armor types, so this isn't even a problem for me. It sounds like your rationalization works, though.



Also ever heard of a Gibbon? they only weigh in the range of 10-15lbs and even these tiny things have a strength equal to or greater then a human does (though there tiny body mass does have a big impact on how they can use this strength).

I don't believe this, and I doubt that you'll be able to convince me outside of a in-person demonstration of gibbon strength. I don't think there is much in the way of good research on "how strong is this monkey compared to a person," since it's a pretty useless question in most contexts. If you isolate it to "grip strength" or "bite strength," that's another story, of course, but these are narrow categories, and unrelated to most uses of Strength in D&D.

If you don't have any realism qualms about a 40 lb halfling carrying 300 lbs with no problem, that's fine. I do. Like I said, I'm willing to overlook these qualms in the interest of a system that allows heroes to punch dragons and such, but it still strikes me as a silly image.

[Ravinsild]

How does it not solve the problem of "this doesn't ring true"? It solves it perfectly, the fact that it's made that way might be from mechanical balance reasons doesn't mean there's anything wrong with having it set as such if it makes perfect sense. I also rationalise leather amour as being because the animals they use being in a fantasy world just have stronger hides (as there's little reason someone would voluntarily choose RL leather armour over cheaper iron [yes cheaper]).

Also ever heard of a Gibbon? they only weigh in the range of 10-15lbs and even these tiny things have a strength equal to or greater then a human does (though there tiny body mass does have a big impact on how they can use this strength). Humans really are on the weaker side for apes and monkeys (we are built for energy efficiency and fine control).

There's even a few smaller monkeys who's raw strength is nearly that of a 200lb human male.

During the middle ages iron was not cheap or easy to get. Most people did not have swords, they had spears or pikes or bows, and most people did not have metal armor of any variety. They mostly wore leather, especially padded leather. According to Lindybeige and books like The Saxon Chronicles by Bernard Cornwell, etc..