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JohnLynch
Learned Scribe
Australia
243 Posts |
 Posted - 13 Feb 2015 : 02:45:49
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I'm continuing to work on a potential 5th edition campaign for Forgotten Realms. This time I wanted to incorporate all of the different halfling subraces from every single edition of D&D. There's been quite a few changes over the years, so this looks to have them represented as a cohesive whole without having to exclude any of them:
Halflings can be found throughout Toril in a number of locations ranging from deep forests to bustling cities. They are a fecund race with some halflings having elven or dwarven blood running through their veins.
Halflings range in height, although are typically somewhere between 3 feet and 4 feet tall. Their hair can range in colour anywhere from light blond or red to black with their eyes ranging from blue or hazel to black as well. Despite the rumours, many halflings do not have hairy feet and most are unable to grow any meaningful facial hair.
Halfling Racial Traits
Ability Score Increase. Your Dexterity score increases by 2.
Size. Halflings can range from under 3 feet to over 4 feet tall depending on their subrace. Your size is small.
Speed. Your base speed is 25 feet.
Lucky. When you roll a 1 on an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw, you can reroll the die but must use the new roll.
Brave. You have advantage on saving throws against being frightened.
Halfling Nimbleness. You can move through the space of any creature that is of a size larger than you.
Subrace. You may choose either the ghostwise, hairfoot, lightfoot, stout or tallfellow halfling subrace. You gain the subrace’s racial traits.
Ghostwise Halflings
Ghostwise halflings, also known as wild halflings, can be found in a number of forests throughout Toril, cut off from the rest of the world. Your communities are very close knit with your interaction with outside races kept to a bare minimum. Ghostwise halflings live in the Chondalwood, Methwood, Forest of Amtar and the jungles of Far Payit on the continent of Maztica.
Ability Score Increase. Your Charisma score increases by 1.
Telepathy. You may communicate with a single creature within 20 feet of you that you share a common language with.
Languages. You know Luiric and one other language of your choice.
Hairfoot Halflings
Hairfoot halflings are one of the most common of the halfling subraces. When people think of a halfling smoking a pipe after a long hard day on a farm, it is the hairfoot halflings that they are thinking of. Found in Luiren, south of Shaar, the Purple Hills in Tethyr and in eastern Amn. It is rare for a hairfoot to ever leave the village they grew up in unless the entire village must flee. Although if they do go out on adventure it is typically in their younger years.
Hairfoot halflings are so named due to the characteristic hair that grows on their feet, hairfoot halflings rarely wear shoes, with the bottom of their soles hardening over time.
Ability Score Increase. Your Wisdom score increases by 1.
Swift Escape. As a reaction you can try to hide.
Languages. You know either Luiric or Chondathan in addition to the Trade Tongue.
Lightfoot Halflings
Lightfoot halflings wander the greater world in large clans, traveling from city to city, making their home in the grasslands between locations, only ever settling down in one spot for at most a year or two. Lightfoot halflings have an insatiable curiousity of the world, but like other halflings want the comforts of home. So they take it (and their family) with them wherever they go.
The vast majority of halflings found in cities have typically lived there for less than two years and are almost always lightfoot halflings.
Ability Score Increase. Your Charisma score increases by 1.
Naturally Stealthy. You can attempt to hide, even when you are only obscured by a creature that is larger than you.
Languages. You know the Trade Tongue and one other language of your choice.
Stout Halflings
When a halfling and dwarf have offspring, the result is a half-dwarf (mockingly called a dwalfling by some) which largely takes after the dwarven side. However in the past dwarves and halflings interbred to such a high degree that over time the half-dwarves took on more and more halfling racial traits until the point today there is a breed of halfling that has very strong dwarven traits, but also a large share of the halfling racial traits. This subrace is referred to as stout halflings, sometimes known as strongheart halflings.
Unlike other halflings, stouts are able to grow full beards and often sport mutton-chops. They can be found in any community of hairfoot halflings, although are most common in the region surrounding Waterdeep and Silverymoon, the Purple Hills in Tethyr, eastern Amn and in the Shaar grasslands.
Ability Score Increase. Your Constitution score increases by 1.
Stout Resilience. You have advantage on saving throws against poison, and you have resistance against poison damage.
Languages. You know Chondathan and the Trade Tongue.
Tallfellow Halflings
The most remarkable thing about tallfellows is that they do not share the diminutive stature of most halflings. Over 4 feet tall in height, tallfellows betray their elven ancestry with pointed ears and their inability to grow any facial hair whatsoever. These half breeds tend to spring up in any community where elves and halflings live close together, largely in human cities.
Ability Score Increase. Your Intelligence score increases by 1.
Fey Ancestry. You have advantage on charm saving throws and cannot be put to sleep by magic.
Languages. You know Elven, Chondathan and the Trade Tongue.
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I hope that's useful to some people at least. The only subrace I've excluded are Wild Halflings which I've incorporated into Ghostwise Halflings. They seemed to have the same narrative place in the game and I couldn't find stats for wild halflings. In my view "wild halflings" is simply a racist or ignorant term to refer to ghostwise halflings by.
The only thing I didn't like was the language for Ghostwise halflings. In my view Luiric was named after Luiren and is only spoken by halflings of Luiren. But maybe Luiren was named after the language (or means something specific in Luiric). Any alternative suggestions would be welcomed :)
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DM of the Realms: A blog for my Forgotten Realms adventures. |
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Fellfire
Master of Realmslore
1965 Posts |
Posted - 13 Feb 2015 : 02:50:57
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| Nice. I'd like to see the kender get some love. |
Misanthorpe
Love is a lie. Only hate endures. Light is blinding. Only in darkness do we see clearly.
"Oh, you think darkness is your ally? You merely adopted the dark. I was born in it, molded by it. I didn't see the light until I was already a man, by then it was nothing to me but.. blinding. The shadows betray you because they belong to me." - Bane The Dark Knight Rises
Green Dragonscale Dice Bag by Crystalsidyll - check it out
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JohnLynch
Learned Scribe
Australia
243 Posts |
Posted - 13 Feb 2015 : 02:54:27
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quote:
Originally posted by Fellfire
Nice. I'd like to see the kender get some love.
Thanks. I believe WotC may be publishing those in the next couple of months (they've mentioned they've got kender stats so it's just a matter of where it fits into their publishing schedule). |
DM of the Realms: A blog for my Forgotten Realms adventures. |
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Ayrik
Great Reader
Canada
7970 Posts |
Posted - 13 Feb 2015 : 02:56:24
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| Kender are - thank Talos! - not native to the Realms. Hopefully, kender have not yet infested the setting enough to make their removal and population control an ongoing problem. |
[/Ayrik] |
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The Sage
Procrastinator Most High
Australia
31701 Posts |
Posted - 13 Feb 2015 : 04:05:04
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Though, I'll note that kender have been in the Realms -- via Emilo Haversack, from Tymora's Luck.
Which was later referenced in Grand History on pg. 148... if memory serves.
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hobbitfan
Learned Scribe
USA
164 Posts |
Posted - 14 Feb 2015 : 06:32:51
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My memory is a little hazy on that but wasn't that book more of a planescape novel than a realms one. Finder and his priest are from the Realms but I think most of the book takes place on the Outer planes, doesn't it?
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The Sage
Procrastinator Most High
Australia
31701 Posts |
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Wooly Rupert
Master of Mischief
USA
36779 Posts |
Posted - 14 Feb 2015 : 13:35:45
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quote:
Originally posted by hobbitfan
My memory is a little hazy on that but wasn't that book more of a planescape novel than a realms one. Finder and his priest are from the Realms but I think most of the book takes place on the Outer planes, doesn't it?
Correct. But at the end, the characters are talking about going back to the Realms - and Emilo decides to go with them. |
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Candlekeep - The Library of Forgotten Realms Lore
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Ayrik
Great Reader
Canada
7970 Posts |
Posted - 15 Feb 2015 : 21:38:04
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I should count that novel as Realmslore, not Planescape, anyhow. It is about stories which focus on the Realms, it is set largely in the Realms. Visiting/interloping characters within the story who hail from other planes and worlds have agendas which directly impact the Realms. The book does not blaze intrigue and adventure across the planes, it hardly describes some particular properties of only one or two planes as they are briefly visited - but the book delves deeply into history and geography and people and nations and gods of the Realms.
That particular kender, able to adapt and survive in a new place just like any other pernicious vermin, was no more native to the Realms than the Krynnish deity he interacted with. Sadly, some Dragonlance lore proves kender can interbreed with humans and perhaps dwarves, so it might be wise to quarantine any females (especially halfling females) this one may have encountered. Only for a couple generations past his death. Just to be safe. |
[/Ayrik] |
Edited by - Ayrik on 15 Feb 2015 23:58:33 |
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Brunellus
Acolyte
2 Posts |
Posted - 25 Feb 2015 : 19:07:53
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| Warlock? Of course not, some of my distant ancestors were Ghostwise. Yeah, that's the ticket... |
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Drustan Dwnhaedan
Learned Scribe
USA
324 Posts |
Posted - 25 Feb 2015 : 23:16:32
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quote:
Originally posted by Fellfire
Nice. I'd like to see the kender get some love.
Ah, kender; the one race my DM will never let anyone play, no matter what. |
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Nod_Hero
Acolyte
USA
5 Posts |
Posted - 26 Feb 2015 : 05:46:32
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quote:
Originally posted by Drustan Dwnhaedan
Ah, kender; the one race my DM will never let anyone play, no matter what.
Then your DM is a poo-poo head! |
"Bugs and robots ma'am, bugs and robots..." |
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TomCosta
Forgotten Realms Designer
USA
954 Posts |
Posted - 05 Mar 2015 : 19:12:55
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I took a slightly different path on the halflings..... I still hemmed and hawed about the low light vision, which is perfectly viable in 5E so I'm not 100% sure why they cut it except maybe for simplicity sake. That said, I did reinterpret the strongheart halflings a bit. I was always uninspired by the tallfellow and stouts which were basically rip offs of Tolkien and interpreted as half-elves and half-dwarves. Moreover the 5E stout ability is poison resistance, which is useful, but is boring as its already taken by dwarves and has nothing to do with their origin.
Halfling
Ghostwise
In the Forgotten Realms, these wild, nearly feral halflings rarely leave the confines of the deep forests. Strange and reclusive, they form close-knit communities because of their amazing talents and are uncomfortable with strangers. Like other halflings, they refer to themselves as the hin. They do not have a name for their subrace, because their culture is almost entirely cut off from the outside world and their awareness of other kinds of halflings is very low
Ability Score Increase . Your Wisdom score increases by 1.
Low-Light Vision . Accustomed to keeping a watchful eye out amidst the shadows of the trees or for nighttime attackers, dim light doesn’t impose disadvantage on your Wisdom (Perception) checks relying on sight.
Speak Without Sound. You can communicate telepathically with any creature within 25 feet, just as if speaking to him or her. You can initiate or terminate a telepathic conversation without using an action. You do not need to see the contacted creature and can end the telepathic contact at any time. You can only speak and listen to one creature at a time, and unless the other creature also has telepathy, you must share a common language to understand the creature you speak to telepathically. If you are incapacitated, you can’t initiate telepathic contact, and any current contact is terminated.
Stoutheart
Alternately known simply as stout halflings, strongheart halflings, or, because they often live among dwarven cities bordering on or in the Underdark, deep halflings. Stouthearts are physically more stout and hardier than their lightfoot cousins. Some say stouthearts have dwarven blood in their past. Moreover, perhaps it’s due to their less itinerant nature and exposure to Underdark aberrations and other threats, but these halflings have a decidedly resolute character.
In the Forgotten Realms, these halflings are most common in the south, where they often live near or among gold (hill) dwarf communities. Here they have been forced to fight aberrations above and below ground, as well as, at one time, their telepathic kin, the ghostwise halflings. The Ghostwars as the latter conflicts were known, were horrific and the stouthearts were unwavering in doing what had to be done. Following the destruction of much of Lurien, many more stouthearts moved below ground.
Ability Score Increase . Your Constitution score increases by 1.
Low-Light Vision. Accustomed to keeping a watchful eye out for nighttime attackers or life underground, dim light doesn’t impose disadvantage on your Wisdom (Perception) checks relying on sight.
Strongheart. You have advantage on saving throws against despair, dread, fear, hopelessness, horror, insanity, madness, and psychic damage, and you have resistance against psychic damage.
Thought Shield. You automatically detect attempts to sense your emotions, read your thoughts, or contact you telepathically. You cannot determine who is trying to do so (aside from any obvious clues), and these attempts only work if you allow them to do so.
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5e: Halfling Subraces
