[Lore] Halflings

A halfling taking a smoke break.

    I'll start off by saying that I like halflings a lot.  I like their cozy homes, agrarian lifestyle, and love of good food.  A halfling town would definitely be a nice spot to visit, just going off of the description found in Basic D&D.  Initially I was fine with this sort of take on halflings but lately I've been thinking about how I can make them a bit more interesting.  I admit that I do want to stick fairly close to the B/X rules but I still want to add some of my own stuff to it.

    Just like how I divided the dwarves and elves into a few different sub-races, I'd like to do the same for halflings but I'm not sure in what ways I could alter them.  One thought I had was to make the halflings feral.  I pictured them as the kindergarteners from the cartoon Recess and honestly, I really like this idea.  However, I don't want this to be the only type of halfling that exists since I still have a fondness for a Tolkien-esque halfling vibe.

Spinelli with her army of savage kindergarteners.

    Another thing I wanted to explore is the idea of halfling thieves.  According to B/X, halflings are closer to being rangers than they are thieves.  I also didn't want to just slap on the entire list of thief skills to the halfling class as 1. that would require way more XP for them to level up and 2. I don't think halflings should be THAT criminally inclined.  So, I'm thinking of giving them a 1 or more likely a 2-in-6 chance of being able to pickpocket.  This would put them roughly at the ability of a 3rd level thief (it also sticks with the other demi human skills all being 2-in-6 chance which is nice).  Halflings being good at picking pockets is much more in line with my concept of a halfling thief as opposed to giving them abilities to find traps.  I never really pictured halflings as being mechanically gifted since their agrarian lifestyle kind of goes counter to having machines.  I also don't even know if halflings would be familiar with locks, considering that they generally live in incredibly high trust societies.  Pickpocketing, on the other hand, does feel like a reasonably good fit to the class since it makes sense that a creature so small and agile would be able to pull off such a task fairly easily.  It also doesn't seem like that powerful of an ability for it to really warrant a change to the XP tables.

    Giving the halfling a thief ability also plays into the general tone of xenophobia that exists in Dragonwrath.  Each race is fairly isolated and distrusting of one another and few attempts are made to build more healthy relationships between the races.  This means that settlements are largely exclusionary to outsiders.  A human keep would rarely accept the visitation of a demi human and vice versa, unless the outsider has some sort of escort that belonged to the native population.  An elf, for example, could possibly gain entry to a stronghold or town if they were accompanied by a well respected human.  They'd probably have to pay some kind of tax, venders would likely overcharge them, and they'd experience some level of racism but they'd at least be able to enter the safety of civilization even if it is fairly unwelcoming.

    I also like the idea that halflings are basically never seen or even heard of.  Having a town or village that has a mixed population of human and halfling could be fun but I would want to make it special by keeping it incredibly rare.  It'd have to be located close to a halfling settlement since the little creatures rarely travel far from home.  Towns like this could also be a source of rumors that halflings, while generally nice to be around, are quite impressive thieves.  This would result in many human settlements being quite strict about who enters the settlement and banning halflings as a preemptive measure to reduce crime.

    Okay, so back to the idea of separating halflings into sub-races.  I'm not sure what I would call each group but one would be the typical halfling described in the rulebook and the other would be feral, as I mentioned before.  I could just call them halflings and feral halflings but I'm not quite sold on it yet.  Maybe I should stick with the theme I was already doing and name them after their favorite terrain.  Vale halflings and woodland halflings?  Hill halflings and woodland halflings, that sounds a bit better.  Maybe woodland halflings could be called wildlings or something, that might be cool.  It also is very close to halfling while still being different enough for players to not immediately hear the word and relate them to halflings which could play into how different the two groups are.  Yeah, I'll probably stick with halflings and wildlings.