Dwarves and Halflings are different ethnicities/subspecies of the same race

>Dwarves and Halflings are different ethnicities/subspecies of the same race
How do you feel about this idea?

You could probably get away with them just being different cultures. I mean, aren't "hill dwarves" usually pretty halfling-like or something?

I actually did exactly that in my last fantasy game.

I homebrewed "Mountain Dwarves" and "Hill Dwarves". Mountain Dwarves were the classic mountain hall-dwelling society of minors, craftsmen, and warriors. The Hill Dwarves lived in the surrounding foothills as a vassal state. They had some societal similarities to Hobbits but with a more Dwarven appearance.

I never liked having actual Halfings in fantasy games. Unlike most races, Hobbits are something Tolkien has exclusive ownership over so as far as I'm concerned they belong in Middle-earth and Middle-earth only.

>throw gnomes in and you have a deal
>halflings are more inclined do druidism, ranger and barbarian, gnomes are the bards, sorcerers and wizards, dwarves are the fighters, clerics and paladins. Any of them can be monks.

Inb4 the human race

>How do you feel about this idea?

I didn't actually like Gnomes or Halflings until I started doing that; just making them different ethnicities of Dwarves that is.
Dwarves live in the mountain, Gnomes live in the forest on the mountain, and Halflings live in the valley that's beyond the forest that's on the mountain, but they are all fundamentally just Dwarves.

If the setting is one where things like orcs and drow are related to elves, sure why not.

Doesn't seem important in any way at all.

I've wanted to implement it as Hill Dwarves literally just being Halflings, basically exactly like said. I'm glad I'm not the only one with an idea like this.

I imagine Dwarven society being very hierarchical and caste based, with the Mountain Dwarves being the upper class, warriors, traders, artisans, nobles, and miners being up there with them due to the prestigious nature of mining and the dangers they face underground. They live in the Mountainhomes and are more adapted to underground life and culture, which explains their adaptations like being able to smell gold, see in the dark, detect changes in grade, identify old and new construction etc, being the hall builders, miners and architects.

The halfings, or Hill Dwarves live in the foothills and fill the caste of simple laborers, being farmers, ranchers, woodcutters and etc, they are more scrappy and less strictly traditional compared to their higher born cousins, and their more underground specific abilities have gone away or never developed after their generations upon generations of life in the Dwarven society's caste system, being rarely allowed to enter the Mountainhomes without actual business to do in them.
Think of how super traditional India was.

I really don't know how gnomes would fit in, I might consider adding them if I had somewhere they could fit in, though the system my group has been playing only has rules for Elves, Dwarves and Halflings as races besides humans, so I haven't really considered it much.

Not a fan. Prefer halflings as a subset of human.

hate it

Bad. It's wrong about both halflings and dwarves.

...

This is the realest way of doing things. Though in Tolkien's work the halflings aren't offensively nonsensical.

I have no strong feelings one way or the other.

You got the good and evil axes mixed up.

Why can't they interbreed then?
You have a much better argument for elf-human-orc.

>Why can't they interbreed then?
Who says they can't

>I've seen that picture before
>I know that green thing isn't a scarf
>I still think it looks like a scarf
I don't even blame Laius for getting that wrong

Only if Humans and Elves are part of that same race as well. If you're going to do it you may as well group all the near-humans together.

I made halflings a crossbreed of humans and dwarves who could reproduce with each other but breed with neither of their species.

What is it then?

That's how they do it in The Dark Eye, and it works fine. They're not even called halflings; they're called hill dwarves, but they have all the stereotypical hobbit traits like six meals a day and lack of ambition.

Dwarfs are Americans
Gnomes are Canadians

what does it add to a setting comapred to them being different race?

I'm okay with this. Halflings have never felt like a 'complete' race to me. Dwarves and elves feel like distinct and believable races, with their own customs and cultures, but halflings are just tiny humans.

I'm planning something like this for my homebrew vaguely-Dwarf Fortress game. In DF you'll find Hillocks and Mountainhomes with Dwarves, but Hill Dwarves are all just Drunks (as opposed to Mountain Dwarves all being alcoholic Masons or Carpenters or whatever).

So I'm just adding a lore component that the Mountain Dwarves shut their doors like 400 years ago, and now lots ofbpeoope have forgotten that "Halflings" in the Hills are just less conservative Dwarves.

This is how I like doing it, with gnomes and leprechauns also being dwarf subspecies.

yeah i guess halflings are basically just twink dwarfs if you think about it

Yeah, nah. The only thing they really have in common is that they're short. Their basic bone structure is totally different, not to mention shit like halflings being nimble while dwarves are clumsy, dwarves seeing well in the dark, etc.

Honestly, it would make more sense to have halflings be a different subspecies of *humans* than of dwarves. Height is by no means the most important indicator of speciation, not by a long shot. About the only way I'd make halflings and dwarves the same species would be if *all* humanoids are variants of the same species -- humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, halflings, goblins, etc.

halflings seem more like a species of short elves to me than humans or dwarves

Also a possibility. Depends on the versions of elves and halflings you're working with, really, but definitely a potentially reasonable way of doing it.

But at any rate, halflings and dwarves are pretty low down on the list of "common races that could be different branches of the same species".

all they have in common really is the height.

>Depends on the versions of elves and halflings you're working with
hobbits especially seem short weaker elves. Although it's possible that they are a gentler version of dwarves made by Eru.

Not far off from what I do in my homebrew settings. To everyone except Gnomes and Halflings, the two races are the exact same, or at least have negligible differences. To Gnomes and Halflings, such a claim is spitting in the face of their vast and complex differences.
It's like when someone with basically no knowledge of Veeky Forums hobbies asks what you do on the weekend and you try to explain FATE for about 30 minutes until they finally say "Oh, so it's like D&D?"

Halflings being a race of legal shota and loli in DM annoys me. It stinks of fujo/otaku bait.

Halflings being a kind of gnome makes sense to me but dwarves seem too tall to be related.

No.

Humans are DireHalflings, full stop. That's why the elves are retreating, the orcs are fighting, the dwarves are enfortressed, and the halflings are laying low.

I actually played with that in NY setting. In universe, due to a magic nation vs psionic nation war, mental states have strong physical effects on individuals. Over time, groups who act/look similar tend to congregate and breed. Because of this combination of nature and nurture, reinforced by the magical fallout of the war, within a few generations, humans had split off into fantasy races. Dwarves are stunted, malformed craftsman, who love a small number of subjects intensely, so they're descended from humans with aspergers. Halflings, being more social, young at heart creatures are descended from people who think/tell people that they have aspergers without a doctor telling them that they are on the spectrum. Elves are gay/trans. Orc are people with down syndrome. Of course, people born human can become halfling-like via inclination or orc-y after a blow to the head, but they won't be as different as a 2nd or 3rd generation nonhuman.

I love that picture. I really miss earnest fantasy like this. Now everything sucks.

Hate it.

I prefer making humans and halflings the same race and make dwarves longer lived.

Dislike. Halflings are most closely related to humans, the real world analog would be something similar to the Mbuti pygmies or Homo floresiensis. Their short stature largely informs how they respond to the various challenges of the world and is the core of their identity. This is a simple concept and why the halfling triggers the fa/tg/uy's autism so much is frankly a cringeworthy bore.

I prefer the idea that Halflings are just the children of Human/Dwarf relationships.

Holy shit why do people complain about alignments. They make sense

Who cares?

I would agree if you said halflings
Gnomes are actually cool

this

Gnomes and Dwarves were already supposedly the closest between the demihumans.
AD&D says something along the lines of them being cousins, only Gnomes are less rotund and enjoy food more then drink compared to Dwarves.

I enjoy the idea that Halflings are this race between all of them. Hairfoots are the Human ones, Tallfellows are the elven ones, and Stouts are the Dwarven ones.

That's an adorable little family unit there.

Jews and Mexicans?