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Dark halflings ARE human children. Thats why kids are so eeeevil.
Haven't you ever seen lord of the flies?
So if dark elves are the evil underground version of elves and Duergar are evil {more} underground dwarves and Dark Folk are like evil underground humans, where is the evil halfling race?
To actually give you an on-topic response, the 3.0 Book, "The Book of Vile Darkness" has a race of evil halflings. It basically boils down to "We're psychotic halflings that like to kill everyone!" It ends up not having its own flavor and is kind of boring (but then again, that happens a LOT with the jillions of races that Third Edition threw upon us).
Ultimately, if you want "evil halflings," it's probably best to have an evil society of them. Same with humans.
FWIW, in my homebrew world, dark creepers are underdark halflings, and halflings also share a common ancestry with goblins.
RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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My evil halflings, waterfolk, live in the lakes and rivers of Golarion. Think evil demented otters/beavers. They block water supplies to create droughts. Divert water routes to wreck havoc with trade. Swim under boats and drill holes in them. Breed and train dire crocs and other fresh water animals. Crossbred water lillies with various carniverous plants. They also have an underwater assassin's vine which they plant near docks and public swimming areas. They live in small air filled caves with underwater tunnels connected to the waterways they infest.
Variant Halfling
Lose Slow Speed, Sure Footed, and Weapon Familiarity racial ablities
Add:
Aquatic Adaptation Waterfolk have a base speed of 10 feet and a swim speed of 20 feet.
Hold Breath (Ex) A waterfolk can hold its breath for a number of rounds equal to four times its Constitution score before it risks drowning or suffocating.
Able Swimmer Waterfolk get a +4 racial bonus to swim checks.
Weapon Familiarity Waterfolk are proficient with nets and tridents.
Things often have a much older origin than one might think.
"Derro" are interpreted in D&D as degenerate dwarf things, or sometimes gnome things. But they originally come from an author named Richard Sharpe Shaver, who actually claimed he had communicated with an ancient race that lived beneath the earth. The good beings he communicated with, he called "Teros." The evil beings were the "Dero," which he said stood for "Degenerate Robot." They were not really robots. They just acted like them. If I recall, they weren't short like dwarves, but human sized.
There were dark elves in ancient Norse myth, though some scholars still argue whether the dark elves (who lived underground, as opposed to the light elves who lived above-ground) were really synonymous with dwarves. They were blacksmiths and miners and crafted things, the same as we now recognize dwarves to do.
On the other hand, Tolkien invented Halflings, and though he invented subtle offshoots (such as Riverfolk), he did not invent dark Hobbits. I personally do not like using Halflings in my games. Haven't really, since 2nd Edition. Feels too much like borrowing something iconic. Like covering a really great song whose original will always be the best and most classic. I wouldn't want dark halflings.
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(Derro) originally come from an author named Richard Sharpe Shaver.
I remember reading about this a couple years ago -- probably when Paizo did Classic Horrors. But there's some things in D&D that have been part of our lives for sooo long that, despite learning the truth, remain in our hearts as the D&D version.
I'll never pronounce "lich" L I K and kobolds aren't German goblins. I guess Derro are there for me, too.
Speaking of which, why aren't there any Dark Humans? You know, black skin, primitive barbaric cannibal tribes, kill white-skinned surface folks on sight...
Oh wait.
I see what you did there. I hope nobody gets offended by that, though.
And actually, some people here talked about derro maybe being
The hope is in vain, I'm technically "White", and I'm offended by it. I've pretty much have had it to here with assigning an automatic status of evil to dark skinned races and "good" to pale-skinned ones. Leave that sort of nonsense to the old White Dwarf.
Laz, please no. That's Groby's point: you can't do "dark humans" the way you do "dark <insert race here>", because that leads to all sorts of badness. Given what I've seen Gorbacz post, it seems that this might even be a repudiation of the concept, much like you.
Also, I find it interesting that, etymologically speaking, the dwarves, drow, and trolls are all very similar creatures.
Halflings are evil. We have yet to find their good counterparts. ;)
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He's a halfling; he's supposed to be jolly... Why isn't he jolly? WHY ISN'T HE JOLLY???
You beat me to it. Order of the Stick is just awesome.
Halflings are cool. They do not need one of those silly subterranean races!
but...
In a hole lived a Hobbit
These are the first words ever wrote about halflings!!!
He's a halfling; he's supposed to be jolly... Why isn't he jolly? WHY ISN'T HE JOLLY???
I would love to see what happens when the Slaad appears. It could be... Entertaining. Yes, I think that would be good term to use, entertaining.
Wait. Wasn't there a serial killer halfling in Baldur's Gate 1 and 2?
If memory serves, Neb the child killer was a hill dwarf.
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Halflings are cool. They do not need one of those silly subterranean races!but...
In a hole lived a HobbitThese are the first words ever wrote about halflings!!!
I was not referring to Tolkien, but more the 3.5e or Pathfinder halflings. Anyway, duergar and drow (and the such) live a lot deeper than the average hobbit.
However, since you pulled Tolkein out, there are plenty of hobbits that do not live in a hole. I believe the hobbits of Buckland and Bree live in houses above ground.
It has been almost thirty years since I read The Hobbit and not much less for The Lord of the Rings.
He's a halfling; he's supposed to be jolly... Why isn't he jolly? WHY ISN'T HE JOLLY???
I would love to see what happens when the Slaad appears. It could be... Entertaining. Yes, I think that would be good term to use, entertaining.
It has already happened, but with Elan.
It has already happened, but with Elan.
Forgot about that one. I guess that Belkar's Slaad would be much more badass than Elan's.
I believe the hobbits of Buckland and Bree live in houses above ground.
Oh absolutely! and some are even going about on boats... on a purpose! Uncanny I call it, and something 'unatural' will come out of it. Take Mr. Drogo Baggins for example; drowned on a romantic cruise on the river...
But I wasn't really serious, I only appreciated the irony in the opening line of The Hobbit after your remark. Other than spending the night with a foot of dirt over their head, Tolkien's halflings aren't really subterranean. They till the land, tend their garden and are about as pastoral as you can get.
'findel
I've used evil Halflings before in my games. The Blackthorns are based off of how I'd see Halflings handle warfare, only taken to the extreme. Essentially they see themselves as protectors of the Halfling race who carry out horrible acts so their people will be safe. They aren't just about sneaking in and slitting throats, they strive to make examples of those who might target their kin. Think Hassassins who see themselves as Judas Goats.
In one game I ran, a group of them had slipped into a nobles house at night who had been harrassing a Halfling Caravan. The Blackthorns killed every one in the house except for the baron, baroness, and their infant daughter. They mounted the heads on the iron spikes on top of the walls seperating their manor house from the city. They also marked the nobles (the child too) with a brand off a tree branch with no leaves but with thorns on their left cheeks. The noble was so scared that he begged the PCs for help and the PCs where so shocked that they agreed despite hating the guy from the out set.
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I seem to remember a bonus Bestiary somewhere mentioning "Deep Ones", or something similar. They were small, monstrous aquatic humanoids that tended to live in bogs and marshes near halfling settlements. They couldn't reproduce with each other, but they could breed with halflings (and the children would be Deep Ones). Halflings hated and feared them, but Deep Ones were willing to barter for the halflings' "service", and so occasionally a halfling would *ahem* agree to the Deep Ones' terms. For this reason, "swamp-dweller" is a pretty heinous insult to a halfling.
Basically the whole race is a send up of The Shadow over Innsmouth, only with halflings. Deep Ones could therefore be used as a "dark halfling" if you were willing to trade swamps and riverways with caves and caverns.
I think chokers make interesting evil halflings.
On the other hand, Tolkien invented Halflings, .
Tolkien invented hobbits, not halflings.
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Laz, please no. That's Groby's point: you can't do "dark humans" the way you do "dark <insert race here>", because that leads to all sorts of badness. Given what I've seen Gorbacz post, it seems that this might even be a repudiation of the concept, much like you.
Yeah, I was trying to subvert, invert and revert several tropes at once.
... who are named "halflings" by everybody who doesn't want to have a lawsuit from Tolkien Estate in their mailbox.
On the other hand, Tolkien invented Halflings, .
Tolkien invented hobbits, not halflings.
What Gorbacz said, hobbits are referred to 'halflings' by almost everyone but the halflings themselves. Otherwise the halfling as we know it (as a race, not a human youngster) is directly descended from Tolkien, unlike the Elves and Dwarves that he popularize rather than invented.
"Seek for the Sword that was broken:
In Imladris it dwells;
There shall be counsels taken
Stronger than Morgul-spells.
There shall be shown a token
That Doom is near at hand,
For Isildur's Bane shall waken,
And the Halfling forth shall stand”
From Order of the Stick volume D, Snips, Snails, and Dragon Tales:
HALEY: Hey look, this cavern has a village of deep halflings!
VAARSUVIUS: Excuse me?
H: You know, halflings that live underground.
V: No.
H: You don't think they are?
V: No, I mean that I can tolerate this no longer.
H: Vaarsuvius, are you OK?
V: I held my tongue at dark elves, grey dwarves, and even deep gnomes, but this has gone on long enough. Is the subterranean world utterly devoid of creativity? Everything we encounter is the same as on the surface, only with the appellations "deep" or "dark" added.
V: What is next? Deep humans?
H: They have those already. They're called underfolk.
V: Deep orcs?
H: Those too.
V: Deep dwarves??
H: Yup.
V: ALL DWARVES ARE DEEP DWARVES!
V: Then to service these people, they need to make darkcows and deep chickens and duskponies. And they, in turn, need to graze on grass mushrooms and shrub mushrooms and rest in the shade of giant tree mushrooms.
V: And while they all possess darkvision, they all forgot that you can't read with it, much less gaze across the majestic underground oceans when you can only see 60 feet! Naturally, there is convenient bioluminescent moss everywhere, therefore -- despite the fact that the widespread presence of such moss would have discouraged creatures from developing darkvision in the first place!
H: Everyone loves a good rant, V, but is there a point to this?
V: To the rant? Yes. To exploring the underdark? No. It is exactly the same as the upper world, only dimmer!
V: JUST STAY AT HOME AND PUT ON SUNGLASSES!
ELAN: Gosh, V, you shouldn't get so upset by this.
H: Yeah, races migrate here because the good stuff up top is taken, not because they WANT to be here.
V: (huff huff huff) I suppose... that would explain the parallels in agriculture...
E: Look, there's a pub up ahead. Let's go and get something to calm you down, OK, V?
V: Yes, that is probably for the best.
E: Darkwaiter, we'd like some deep tea and a plate of undercrumpets.
V: GAHHHH!
H: Extra shadowjelly on the side.
I don't have this problem with a lack of Deep/Dark/Under Halflings in my campaign world - back in the early '90s my players (on some insane whim) arranged to travel back in time a thousand years or so and started a program of genocide, eventually ending in the (apparant) eradication of all halflings, whatever their altitude/depth.
No great loss, as it turned out.
Reggie
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From the Heart of the Jungle(a Golarion guide for Mwangi campaigns and the Serpent Skull AP):
Halflings: Halflings have lived within the Mwangi Expanse for as long as humanity, and early explorers from the north occasionally mistook them for a race of pygmy humans. Mwangi halflings generally live within the jungles and are culturally identical to the Zenj tribes dwelling in close proximity to them, worshiping the same gods and totems. Within the Kaava Lands, however, the myriad tribes of halflings that inhabit the jungle interior and the northern coast of Desperation Bay differ markedly from their cousins in both culture and temperament. Savage and territorial even toward other halfling tribes, the Kaava halflings worship Zura and Lamashtu and treasure the preserved and posthumously tattooed heads of outsiders. The largest population of Kaava halflings, the Hazh’a tribe, dwells within the ruined city of Mbaiki, culling the inhabitants of the surrounding jungles for sacrifices to Zura and periodically mounting assaults on plains-dwelling Zenj tribes.
There you go, evil, dusky-hued, cannibalistic warrior-hobbits.
Total PFS character material there, btw. I have to remember this if/when I need a believable halfling barbarian.
From the Heart of the Jungle(a Golarian guide for Mwangi campaigns and the Serpent Skull AP):
Halflings: Halflings have lived within the Mwangi Expanse for as long as humanity, and early explorers from the north occasionally mistook them for a race of pygmy humans. Mwangi halflings generally live within the jungles and are culturally identical to the Zenj tribes dwelling in close proximity to them, worshiping the same gods and totems. Within the Kaava Lands, however, the myriad tribes of halflings that inhabit the jungle interior and the northern coast of Desperation Bay differ markedly from their cousins in both culture and temperament. Savage and territorial even toward other halfling tribes, the Kaava halflings worship Zura and Lamashtu and treasure the preserved and posthumously tattooed heads of outsiders. The largest population of Kaava halflings, the Hazh’a tribe, dwells within the ruined city of Mbaiki, culling the inhabitants of the surrounding jungles for sacrifices to Zura and periodically mounting assaults on plains-dwelling Zenj tribes.
There you go, evil, dusky-hued, cannibalistic warrior-hobbits.
Total PFS character material there, btw. I have to remember this if/when I need a believable halfling barbarian.
Hobbitses are tricksie and tastes like chicken, precious.
I'm not a great fan of having any race being set up as uniformly evil and psychopathic. It's generally more than enough to have a state religion or government doing that with a large percentage of the populace having drunk the Kool-aid.
This is a fancy way of saying that even if you have your halflings with a NG government and a NG religion with an accompanying NG goddess, free will being what it is, I'd expect something like 50% of them being Good, 40% being Neutral but with the lingo to talk about goodness as an ideal (even if they don't achieve it), and about 10% being Evil ranging everywhere from misanthropes to sociopaths simply because that's the way things tend to work out.
Conversely, if you decided to have your society of evil cannibal halflings, you'd get an evil government, an evil religion, and an evil god, then expect the percentages would go the other way around simply because, if free will is allowed, with humanoid nature being what it is, there will still be a lot of lip service and also a bunch of people who just never drank the Kool-aid.
Conversely, if you decided to have your society of evil cannibal halflings, you'd get an evil government, an evil religion, and an evil god, then expect the percentages would go the other way around simply because, if free will is allowed, with humanoid nature being what it is, there will still be a lot of lip service and also a bunch of people who just never drank the Kool-aid.
Evil beings in a good society would be better able to hide and survive than good beings in an evil society. One of evil's traits is lack of tolerance.
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I'm not a great fan of having any race being set up as uniformly evil and psychopathic. It's generally more than enough to have a state religion or government
Yeah, I'm with you.
But,...
Lots of gamers play to kill the monsters. It's a game -- they're monsters. Once the monsters surrender, or have sympathetic qualities, or can be good -- you have to deal with talking to them and accepting surrenders and such. For those gamers that's not fun. That's not what they signed up for.
I love the alignment dynamic; lots of gamers don't.
I try to distinguish between races that can be good even if they're typically "uniformly evil and psychopathic" and those, such as demons and medusae and beholders, that ARE uniformly evil and psychopathic. Then my Players know it's 100% okay to murder that Gelugon even if he surrenders or says something "good." And when I can have a sympathetic minotaur surrender and let the Players who like alignment dynamics deal with it in roleplay.
Conversely, if you decided to have your society of evil cannibal halflings, you'd get an evil government, an evil religion, and an evil god, then expect the percentages would go the other way around simply because, if free will is allowed, with humanoid nature being what it is, there will still be a lot of lip service and also a bunch of people who just never drank the Kool-aid.Evil beings in a good society would be better able to hide and survive than good beings in an evil society. One of evil's traits is lack of tolerance.
Lip service works both ways, and smart people, regardless of alignment, are perfectly capable of keeping their mouths shut or crying "Hail Asmodeus!" as appropriate.
One of evil's hallmarks may be intolerance, but by the same token, another hallmark is hypocrisy. Do dark priests accept bribes? If they don't, their commitment to evil is rather suspect. Evil also likes nepotism. If those virtuous people are related to the big bads, surely something would be arranged. If not, why not?
The only alternative is making Evil more intelligent and efficient than Good, and frankly that really doesn't work with intolerance because intelligent people will realize that they're never going to run shy of judgement calls and corner cases.
Intolerance is only one expression of Evil. I am essentially Evil-aligned by D&D standards, and I am remarkably tolerant of other people and their differences. If a person is useful enough to me, it doesn't matter what ideals or gods they believe in or even what they do to people who don't matter-- which is to say, anyone who isn't either part of my family or useful to me.
An Evil society is fully capable of promoting tolerance; it is the most perfect form of meritocracy possible because people only get what they can take and only keep what they can defend. I'm not going to pick a fight with a guy just because he likes to feed the orphans.
I made this for the Advanced Race Guide playtest:
http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/paizoPublishing/pathfinder/pathfinderR PG/advancedRaceGuidePlaytest/raceBuilderSampleRaces/v5748gbijjk53