Half of a whole: A halfling homebrew for your consideration.

[Barna13]

HALFLING TRAITS
Creature Type: Humanoid
Size: Small(about2–3 feet tall)
Speed: 30 feet
Life Span: 150 years on average
As a Halfling, you have these special traits:

Halfling Nimbleness. You can move through
the space of any creature that is of a Size larger
than yours, but you can’t stop there.

Halfling teamwork: 2, 4, 6, or 8 halflings can combine into a creature far grander than the sum of its parts. If 2 merge together, the creature created is a ling, if 4 merge it is a doubling, if 6 merge it is a tripling. The friendship of 8 halflings can form the mightiest creature in existence: the quadrupling.

The elder halfling has control of the fused creature, representing their influence. Any halfling can leave at any time, but this ends the teamwork.

The fused halfling hit points equal to the sum of all halflings involved. The fused being knows or has prepared any spells the halflings involved possess. Likewise, all feats, racial abilities, and class features are pooled (if both creatures have the same ability, the fused being gains it only once). For each of the six ability scores, the fused being’s score is the highest of all the halflings, and the fused being uses the better saving throws, attack bonus, and skill modifiers of all members.

You decide what equipment is absorbed into the fused being and what equipment remains available for use. These fused items are restored once the power ends.

A halfling teamwork can only be sustained for 1 hour, and after this, the halflings involved cannot use it until they have finished a long rest. When the teamwork ends, the fused being separates. The halflings appear stacked on top of each other.

Damage taken by the combined being is split evenly between the halflings involved. Ability damage is also split between the halflings involved. (If an odd number of negative levels or ability score reductions must be split, you decide whether you or the other creature receives the additional loss.)

If the combined being is killed, it separates into its constituent creatures, both of which are also dead.


(yes this is absolutely ripping off 3.5 psionics)

[GalacticAxekick]

This is an interesting concept! But it's a nerf.

While sharing all of your best stats and features is great, losing turns is terrible. Fusing two halflings is halving how many turns you get in combat. Fusing 8 halflings gives you 1/8th as many turns!

The increased accuracy and damage you gain from a higher ability score is never worth the lost chances to hit from all the turns your team isn't taking. The increases spell list and feature list you gain from fusing is never worth the lost chances to cast spells and use features.

I wrote a Monk subclass with a Dragon Ball Z-inspired Fusion Dance feature. And a VERY important detail is that the fused creature gets multiple turns: one for each "parent" that combined to create it. This solves the action economy problem, and this gives every fused player a chance to control the fused creature. I strongly recommend you do the same with your halflings!



Besides this, I have a few minor recommendations. Instead of dividing damage equally between the halflings, let them divide it however they want. Also, remove the thing about ability damage, since it doesn't exist in 5e.

[Loek]

An interesting idea that really doesn't work for PC races (As GalacticAxekick already explained). And even less so, if you sacrifice almost everything halfling to add it (no stat increases, no lucky, no brave. Though I guess you get a small speed increase...)

Instead, this might be interesting for some smaller hostile critters. Where individuals can be weak and killed by sneezing at them (rats, bugs, etc). But the fused form can take a punch and punch back.
That way you can also include variants, so you can get those racial abilities to not always be the same, thus not stack. (It'd become important to kill all of the cold bugs for example, so the big hulking bug monster doesn't gain immunity to cold damage on top of it's already resistances).
In that case, I'd probably make the small creatures use an action to join the fused being. Allowing it to gain abilities, traits and HP during the battle, if the party doesn't keep the extra creatures away from it.

[Notafish]

If this is a PC race, how many halflings do I get to play/does my elder halfling get to boss around? Do I gain more cannon fodder friends as I level?

I would totally be on board with a "several halflings in a trench coat" concept. Or a Merry-and-Pippen situation where it's mechanically one character (and almost narratively one character), but it can be in multiple places at once.