How do Halflings fight?

In a pitched batyle, I see halflings employing semi-domed 'tower' with notches that can lock with their light pikes, allowing them to brace and cover. They would also carry shortswords and sling as side arms.

The shields and pikes would offset cavalry both with pointy bits and with the shields providing treacherous footing for the horses. The low construction would also turn their disadvantaged height into a strength as taller races would have to reach down and around while halfling spears could go straight for the legs and groin.

Tacticlly, squads would operate like mobile barricades. Bracing in vanguard positions and using the counter height advantage to fell standing infantry. Flanking and back rank squads would brace and stand behind the cover of their shields to pelt enemies with bullets from their slings.

There would likely be other squads armed with bucklers (perhaps even stoed in the cavity of the dome shields) and shortswords who, upon command would assault opposing lines. Size would be offset with agility as the small, light bodies could dart to and fro through enemy ranks, slashing a knee here, dancing off between legs there and hamstringing as they pass. Confusion would be an ally in this tactic so smoke and fire and the ever present pelting with stones and pellets would all aid in the breaking of infantry lines.

Cavalry would have to be weathered and finished with short swords as horses stumbled on braced shields.

Archers would be dealt with as long, careful advances drove them into waiting ambush squads.

with ranged weapons

group melee against things that are all bigger than you is a really bad idea

That's why your melee units are actually kidnapped and brainwashed children of your attackers race.

Don't have halflings or gnomes in your setting.

Stealing this.

So they could opperate much like lighter and more mobile dwarves.

No one should have Gnomes, Gnomes are literally just shitty ohsoquirky midget dwarves. All their technological researcher/tinkerer nature can just be given to the Dwarves and nothing of value lost.

The halflings I've played - these are the civilized and organized ones mind you, strong hearts - tend to work like this:

Each village will have a small armor and Sherrif office, which will employ a local sheriff (guard Commander), cleric of arvoreen, and a dozen or two deputies who help keep the peace, settle disputes, and defend the village.

All the villages in a general region will cooperate, and generally if your in a day or two ride of another village you can expect them to send half a dozen to a dozen deputies riding wardogs to assist in emergency.

In case of true emergencies, the clergy will put out a call for mobilization, and all halflings in a certain age bracket will take up arms to defend their lands. This is very rare and requires the threat of an army bearing down on them

Halflings tend to fight as skirmishers and light infantry. Most Sherrif and deputies will be equipped with leather to chainshirt armor and have an assortment of short swords cudgels slings staves and short bows.

Halflings avoid trouble where ethey can and will often attack problems in a round about fashion. If they cannot deflect or lure off a threat, they will make use of traps, ambushes, nighttime raids, and other underhanded tactics to even the odds

Continued -

Halflings are cool but gnomes just seem kinda redundant, making the tinker stuff dwarven or halfling doesn't really change up much.

But what about the sexy hobbit women? Be honest, you thought this was gonna be a character from Alfie, right?

Something that is very, very, very important to remeber is the human concept of martial honor is completely alien to the halfling mind. Riding out into battle to fight your enemy one on one with strength and skill is bizzare, insane, and downright suicide. Halfling honor is entirely centered around how you treat your friends and neighbors

What this translates to is they will cheat, ruthlessly, at every opportunity

They will poison your water, rub shit on their arrows, leave traps designed to main and cause maximum suffering laying around, conduct raids in the read of night to slit throats and then run away. In extreme situations they will go to ground like angry midgit vietcong and use every underhanded, filfthy, war crime tier tactic to fight. Medics will be murdered, officers will be shot, mages will be geeked. There is no concept of honorable war to a halfling. If you have actually pushed them into war, honor is out the window.

In battles proper a small contingent of infantry will do their best to hold and protect ground while archers and skirmishers control the battlefield and do the actual killing. Mounted skirmishers will Harry flanks and chase down runners. Mercy will not be shown in any event to anyone or anything.

Once you surrender and apologize they will pick their farm tools back up and go back to selling you pies and copper pots until you feel the need to get your shit wrecked again

Given the halfling focus on mobility, forcing them into a battle not of their own choosing can be hard. The only thing they'll fortify are their towns, so these are the most obvious targets to force a fight. But if they see they're outmatched, more pragmatic halfling leaders will often order an evacuation. Everything of value will be stripped, herds driven into the hills, and the village and farms left abandoned except for whatever traps they leave for you to find.

It's really like fighting Vietcong. They just won't give you a solid engagement ever. To beat them you have to trick then with feints, or just raze the whole countryside and salt the earth

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Gnomes are elemental earth spirits.
I gave the tinkerer stuff to my humans.

This

So they're a bunch of faggots that don't know the concept of deescalation. That just gives their enemies a good reason for a good genocide.

>Halfling Tribal warfare thread.
>No mention of Eberron.

Why the fuck has no one mentioned the Halfling Barbarians that wield their boomerangs as they ride into battle on the backs of their trained Dinosaurs?!

M8, if you've declared war on the halflings of all people you've basically declared war on the plushie kingdom of puppies. There is no de-escalation. The very fact you are attacking the halflings at all means diplomacy has completely failed and was probably never an option because you're fucking orcs or something

.....if you're attacking halflings you deserve to die horribly.

>halfling cavalry outpace everyone and can ride for days because their load is lighter

and then hobbits were the mongols

>or just raze the whole countryside and salt the earth
You called?

Well no, the plushie kingdom of puppies is ruled by the Fey Corgies

these aren't halflings, they're hobbits

Eberron is literally /v/-tier memecore shit. Have some fucking pride.

What's the difference?

I wanna play in this guy's game

Aside from being differently owned intellectual property, hobbits are almost exclusively peaceful farmers who rarely travel far from the Shire. Halflings vary from source to source, but are often depicted as nomadic traders who follow a LG goddess of hearth and hospitality.

Eberron as seen in DDO? Yeah.

Eberron 3.5 setting Guide and Adventures? Far from it.

Eberron isn't perfect. But it's perfectly built.

The setting has a rich lore... that you can throw any part out the window if you so choose.

The books and games are all non-canonical. The setting's timeline reaches the present and just stops, ready for adventurers to drop right in.

You're free to follow or defy all racial tropes. Drow are fucking Playable in this.

Most of the map is empty.

Basically, it's the perfect setting to start out in, then do whatever the hell you want with it.

How?

Oh.

Oh I like this.

...

Seeing it mentioned would it be harder for Halflings to raise cavalry? Considering their small size. Seems like they would have to ride ponies into battle due to the difficulties of keeping and training anything larger, or some sort of riding wolf? A very classing fantasy mount though more usually seen ridden by gobbos.

And what would halflings call themselves? 'Halfling' seems like a slur more than anything else, Hobbit works as long as you don't have to worry about trademarks.

The way I see it, Halflings typically wander alone or live in small farming communities, meaning that they're usually only concerned with bandits or raiders rather than open warfare.

That, combined with their extra dexterity, small size, and preference for slings, means a group of raiders attacking a halfling village is going to get brained by sharp rocks from all directions from small creatures they can't even see.

Basically, they do the same thing as Elves on a smaller scale, except unlike Elves they don't have anything really worthwhile, so they never get overrun by evil armies or the like. Even if one marches through halfling lands, they're also less prideful, meaning they're more likely to just pack up and leave, unlike elves.

In short, basically take Elves, replace bows with slings, and then have them act like human frontiersmen instead of snobby dickheads.

I use M:tG's kithkins. Psychically linked Hobbits, but without the basic repulsion every author likes to put in their readers' mind about gestalt race. Besides, they don't do it all the time.

I'd say halfling don't often wage war. It's un-halflingesque in essence.
Although if they did, they'd strike first and most likely would send assassins instead of armies. They're stealthy and it would limit the losses far more than open warfare.
If they had to defend themselves, they'd do it guerilla-style, with traps and ambushes. Since they're a country folk, they'd use the environment they know so well to lead the attackers to their doom.
They definitively wouldn't be very good frontline fighters, but they'd be willing to go to great lengths to defend their home, or, most accurately, their kin.

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What are these midgets from?

What if halflings were just a race of crazed rapid-spawning barbarians who make up for their lack of height with pure balls-to-the-walls insanity? Swarming over monsters and big folk like ants when in groups and swinging oversized weapons/leaping at your throat/biting your testicles off individually.
You could even make them the orcs & goblins of the setting.

Knees too.

Why did you post the raw version? How did you even have the raw version?

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Pretty sure that's my ex.

I always liked the idea of halfling cavalry using riding dogs. Either light cav using large hunting dogs for a combination of tracking and quick attacks using bow and saber or "heavy" cav with armored big scary fuckyou guard dogs with an armored rider with a light lance.
A big advantage would be that normal sized foes are usually trained to fight people their own size

You lucky cunt, my commiserations on your loss.

Age of Wonders.

She's a nice lady. Five foot tall. D cups. Smart, kind, and sarcastic.

Distance ended it, not drama. We had a good run.

I'm not the mopey type, but I do miss running campaigns with her.

>Moot
who

The Moot, in Warhammer Fantasy, where the halflings live.

There's not other moot you could possibly be referencing.

Hey, have they been added the Mootlanders to Total Warhammer yet?

What about if we made the Halfling civilization Japan?

Tracking dog or Blink Dog cavalry is OP. Can't sneak across their borders or get near things they are screening. Can't escape when they pursue.

They're the same fucking thing. LotR hobbits used to be nomadic before they settled in the Shire, incidentally.