Halfling

Many taller people dismiss halflings due to their size or, worse, treat them like children. Halflings use these prejudices and misconceptions to their advantage, gaining access to opportunities and performing deeds of daring mischief or heroism. A halfling’s curiosity is tempered by wisdom and caution, leading to calculated risks and narrow escapes.

While their wanderlust and curiosity sometimes drive them toward adventure, halflings also carry strong ties to house and home, often spending above their means to achieve comfort in their homelife.

If you want to play a character who must contend with these opposing drives toward adventure and comfort, you should play a halfling.

Get along well with a wide variety of people and enjoy meeting new friends.
Find it difficult to resist indulging your curiosity, even when you know it’s going to lead to trouble.
Hold a deep and personal hatred of the practice of slavery and devote yourself to freeing those who still labor against their will.

Appreciate your ability to always find a silver lining or something to laugh about, no matter how dire the situation.
Think you bring good luck with you.
Underestimate your strength, endurance, and fighting prowess.

Halflings are short humanoids who look vaguely like smaller humans. They rarely grow to be more than 3 feet in height. Halfling proportions vary, with some looking like shorter adult humans with slightly larger heads and others having proportions closer to those of a human child.

Most halflings prefer to walk barefoot rather than wearing shoes, and those who do so develop roughly calloused soles on their feet over time. Tufts of thick, often-curly hair warm the tops of their broad, tanned feet. Halfling skin tones tend toward rich, tawny shades like amber or oak, and their hair color ranges from a light golden blond to raven black.

Claiming no place as their own, halflings control few settlements larger than villages. Instead, they frequently live among humans within the walls of larger cities, carving out small communities alongside taller folk. Many halflings lead perfectly fulfilling lives in the shadows of their larger neighbors, while others prefer a nomadic existence, traveling the world and taking advantage of opportunities and adventures as they come.

Optimistic and cheerful, blessed with uncanny luck, and driven by powerful wanderlust, halflings make up for their short stature with an abundance of bravado and curiosity. At once excitable and easygoing, they are the best kind of opportunists, and their passions favor joy over violence. Even in the jaws of danger, halflings rarely lose their sense of humor.

Halflings reach physical adulthood around the age of 20. A typical halfling can live to be around 150 years old.

Despite their jovial and friendly nature, halflings don’t usually tend to congregate.

They have no cultural homeland and instead weave themselves throughout the societies of the world. Halflings eke out whatever living they can manage, many performing menial labor or holding simple service jobs. Some halflings reject city life, instead turning to the open road and traveling from place to place in search of fortune and fame. These nomadic halflings often travel in small groups, sharing hardships and simple pleasures among close friends and family.

Wherever halflings go, they seamlessly blend into the society they find themselves in, adapting to the culture of the predominant ancestry around them and adding their uniquely halfling twists, creating a blend of cultural diffusion that enriches both cultures.

Halflings are loyal to their friends and their family, but they aren’t afraid to do what needs to be done in order to survive. Halfling alignments vary, typically closely in keeping with the alignment of the other ancestries that live around them. Halflings favor gods that either grant luck or encourage guile, as well as any religions common among other ancestries around them.

Halfling names are usually two to three syllables, with a gentle sound that avoids hard consonants. Preferring their names to sound humble, halflings see overly long or complex names as a sign of arrogance. This goes only for their own people, however—halflings have names that suit them, and they understand that elves and humans might have longer names to suit their own aesthetics. Humans in particular have a tendency to refer to halflings by nicknames, with “Lucky” being common to the point of absurdity.

Sample Names Anafa, Antal, Bellis, Boram, Etune, Filiu, Jamir, Kaleb, Linna, Marra, Miro, Rillka, Sistra, Sumak, Yamyra

HALFLING ADVENTURERS

Halflings’ natural wanderlust and opportunistic nature make them ideal adventurers. Many people put up with their vivacious attitudes in return for the natural talents they provide and the popular superstition that traveling with a halfling is good luck.

Typical backgrounds for halflings include acrobat, criminal, emissary, entertainer, laborer, and street urchin.

Halflings make great clerics and rogues, but many also become monks or rangers.

Heritages

Living across the land, halflings of different heritages might appear in regions far from are their ancestors lived. Choose one of the following halfling heritages at 1st level.

GUTSY HALFLING

Your family line is known for keeping a level head and staving off fear when the chips were down, making them wise leaders and sometimes even heroes. When you roll a success on a saving throw against an emotion effect, you get a critical success instead.

HILLOCK HALFLING

Accustomed to a calm life in the hills, your people find rest and relaxation especially replenishing, particularly when indulging in creature comforts. When you regain Hit Points overnight, add your level to the Hit Points regained. When anyone uses the Medicine skill to Treat your Wounds, you can eat a snack to add your level to the Hit Points you regain from their treatment.

JINXED HALFLING (UNCOMMON HERITAGE)

Source PRG2:APG

You were born with a strange blessing: bereft of the typical halfling luck, you can instead manipulate the fortunes of others. You can never take the Halfling Luck feat, and you gain the Jinx action.

Curse Necromancy Occult

Frequency once per day You can curse another creature with clumsiness.

This curse has a range of 30 feet, and you must be able to see your target. The target gets a Will saving throw to resist this jinx, using your class DC or spell DC, whichever is higher.

Success The target is unaffected and is temporarily immune for 24 hours.

Failure The target is clumsy 1 for 1 minute.

Critical Failure The target is clumsy 2 for 1 minute.

NOMADIC HALFLING

Your ancestors have traveled from place to place for generations, never content to settle down. You gain two additional languages of your choice, chosen from among the common and uncommon languages available to you, and every time you take the Multilingual feat, you gain another new language.

OBSERVANT HALFLING

Source PLOCG

Your finely honed senses quickly clue you in to danger or trickery. You gain a +1 circumstance bonus to your Perception DC, though not to your Perception checks.

TWILIGHT HALFLING

Your ancestors performed many secret acts under the concealing cover of dusk, whether for good or ill, and over time they developed the ability to see in twilight beyond even the usual keen sight of halflings. You gain low-light vision.

WILDWOOD HALFLING

You hail from deep in a jungle or forest, and you’ve learned how to use your small size to wriggle through undergrowth, vines, and other obstacles. You ignore difficult terrain from trees, foliage, and undergrowth.

Ancestry Feats

At 1st level, you gain one ancestry feat, and you gain an additional ancestry feat every 4 levels thereafter (at 5th, 9th, 13th, and 17th levels). As a halfling, you select from among the following ancestry feats.