Halfling General - Subraces Edition

What do you mean "strip away"? They HAD no distinguishing features besides being midget British farmers.

Personally, I really liked 4e's rendition of halflings. Got them fully out of that "hobbits with the serial numbers filed off" approach that AD&D had. Anybody else like them then?

I always assumed that they were also associated with defying expectations. Underdogs with the determination, courage and perseverance to overcome obstacles no matter how foreign or unwanted.

Problem is, you can easily do that with almost any civilized humanoid race by taking the Peasant Hero backstory. It's even had mechanical enforcements in certain editions.

>Why are you capitalizing names of species as if they were proper nouns? Are cats and dogs also proper nouns? Sapient or not, a species is just a species.

Are they cats and dogs or Cats and Dogs?

Can't you also adhere to any other archetype if you take a specialized background as well?

Are you Autistic or just a Complete Pedant?

Autism would be Arbitrarily capitalizing Things like Chris-chan.

being Autistic also means not being able to Understand Jokes and taking things Literally and at face Value

So, does nobody have thoughts on halfling subraces? Like I said, we had vanilla, half-dwarf and half-elf halflings from the start in AD&D.

Mazzy is the best character period.
Personally I prefer Hobbit halflings. Chubby with big hairy feet and a racial affinity for stealth and slings/thrown weapons. The newer ones just look scrawny and malnourished. Even Frodo had more meat on his bones.
I do like the riverfolk culture, didn't care so much for not!gypsies tho. That was just weird.

As for subraces, less is more. I always just treated them as agrarian surface dwarves and gnomes as arcane forest dwarves. But hybrid templates are useful on occasion.although mostly for magical realms.

Ghostwise were “savage” halflings that lived in this one region of Faerûn.
As it turns out the idea that halflings fought no wars is untrue, and ages ago the three primary halflings tribes (Strongheart, Lightfoot, and Ghostwise) all fought a war started by the Ghostwise when the turned to worshipping Malar. The war was so horrible that when the Ghostwise realized how bad they’d gotten they’d exiled themselves rather then fight anymore and the Lightfoot left Luiren rather then live with the memories of what they and the Stronghearts had done during the conflict, while the Stronghearts mostly stayed in Luiren.

Why were Ghostwise telepathic?

Honestly, I think Mazzy gave me my shortstack fetish; I always wished she'd been a romance option for my male human wizard PC.

Actually supposedly ALL Hin (halflings name for themselves) were capable of the telepathic speech thing, just that most of them went away with the Ghostwise and they sort of forgot the skill, while the Ghostwise are culturally basically mute as a way of repenting for their savagery during the Hin Wars.

Also for practical reasons staying silent and stealthy is a smart thing to do in the Chondalwood.

bump

Mazzy was my favorite too and she had some of my absolute favorite party interactions

Korgan and Mazzy's "romance" is pretty much the last (possibly only) good BioWare romance.

Also, yes this too.

So, I know it's not technically Veeky Forums, but... if there were a Mazzy Romance Mod for human Bhaalspawn, what would you like it to feature?

And how do you think it could get started, given it's implied Mazzy was in a relationship with Patrick in her old adventuring party? Then again, Jaheira was married to Khalid, and she's a canon romance...

>halfling barbarians riding dinosaurs
Literally why would you play anything else?

My party's first adventure involved dealing with a halfling 'mafia' and one of their street rats who betrayed a powerful merchant. I was going for a mildly sympathetic character, now two years later my players are still dedicated to the eradication of all halflings.

>what would you like it to feature?

Teasing her height and then she punches you in the kidneys.

I can never accept halflings as just shrunken humans. Idk why but it feels more uncanny to me than oddly proportioned pygmys. Plus the idea of an entire race of small gypsy humans filled with wanderlust also felt rather boring, somehow moreso than British country folk who don't like leaving their house.

I like them too because it allows me to play them as turbogypsies.

Why though does she have a set of eyes on her collarbone?

I've been wanting to play a halfling paladin forever. Many DM's hate the idea, though.

what a sad fucking life, to be human, marry another human and have a child that's a comic relief ultramanlet

...

I was thinking of having my Halflings have more of a stereotypical French culture to them (great with food, hairy, love to lay around and smoke, etc). The whole concept of riverfolk would take this to a whole different level, because who the hell would think of Creole Halflings?

That, and since I'm running BECMI D&D, there's the Crucible of Blackflame that Halflings have as their Relic of Power being similar to voodoo, in that you don't really want to fuck with the Hin, or they'll unleash otherworldly powers in you.

I fucking love it.

Agreed. Mazzy was well-written, believable as a hero of the people without being obnoxious. Her interactions with Korgan and Valygar are hilarious.

Good Charnames only, obviously, and maybe something about her swapping stories of her previous group with you telling her of your adventures in the first game? She's older than Charname, so she'd have a bit more to say. Pointers about being an adventurer, discussions about what it means to be good and to defy expectations (something both a good Bhaalspawn and Mazzy excel in by default).
Comfy stuff, too. Despite the tragedy of losing her team to the shadows, Mazzy isn't gloomy. I wouldn't go for a romance with too much drama. Something slow building.

fuck off

Sounds great. What about kids? Aerie has your son as an in-game event in canon, and halflings are a fairly fecund race; it'd be quite appealing, personally, to have the little halfling paladin go into battle with our daughter lashed to her back.

Also, should such a mod carry into Throne of Bhaal? Perhaps come with a new Epilogue for her?

So, I wanted to make an halfling paladin character that used a dog-mounted harpoon gun which doubled as a lance. It would not be usable without the mount. Would any DM's here allow that?

I ran a homebrew world with mercantile Halflings. Allied Halfling clans ran the river trades, sent armored wagons over land routes, and maintained fortified trading posts. Basically, a small people destined for powerlessness making a power bid through international finance.

Ghostwise Halflings were just pygmy savages.
Smiling cannibals with filed teeth putting poisoned blow darts into the unwary.

So, basically, Jews and Phillipinos.

I wouldn't have her get a kid during the course of the game. Aerie's pregnancy is pretty awkward.
In her epilogue, yes, they'd probably found a happy and numerous family once the characters are settled down a bit.

This is basically how I halfling as their own race and land, not the halflings that live amongst humans.

dndwithpornstars.blogspot.ca/2013/06/this-is-what-halfling-cities-are-like.html?zx=d213e31d48b6309

It really is. Many halflings born into human families are disowned, but this is usually not until the child has grown a bit where you can tell the difference. Many are put up for adoption, which further confuses orphanages. Others are abandoned. Many raise the child like a servant of the family, keeping them in the house, but also apart from it. Hence the whole "house elf" theme. Not all human families are unkind of their halfling children, and some even accept them as part of the family. Most however end up in shady practices to make ends meet, from cheap labour, thievery, to prostitution, which develop into a whole halfling underground. It unfortunately becomes a self fufilling prophecy of halflings being untrustworthy.

Even their name, Halfling, was originally derogatory as they were just "half" a person. Half as tall, half as human. They aren't whole, they aren't their own individual thing.They have since come to own the name as their own.

Personally, I really like the idea of halflings having a broad array of subraces; they've canonically been able to interbreed with quite a few races in D&D, and they DO tend to be portrayed as preferring to integrate themselves into other cultures rather than forging their own empires. So, a high level of mixed breeding makes sense, to me.

My only problem with this is... how do you mechanically justify it? We all know that they left out Tallfellows from the PHB because, classically, all they had were Elven as a bonus language and the elvish ability to find hidden doors.

Harvins are the best halflings.