seanie4199 said:

Yeah I see what you mean by this, Im not saying the abhumans arent good to have i just feel like they dont really fit in with the rest of the squad. In the imperial guard most abhumans are looked down apon and not really a part of the group (IMO). It can be hard to fit in an abhuman among a squad of xenophobic, mutant-hating, and trigger happy players. Maybe it is just my group but unless it is a squad of abhumans it would be difficult to fit in with the rest of the squad.

Gokerz said:

Kender?

MILLANDSON said:

Apparently when writing the Dragon Lance setting for D and D the desginers descided that Halflings were insufficiently Twee.

Kender: annoying, overly locquacious, compulsively thieving, inattentive, and too inquisitive for their own (or anybody else's) good. Dragonlance's version of Halflings. HATE them. The universal monkey wrench that losens the bolts (and the pacing) on every single adventure the GM conceives. Want a PC wandering off by him/herself for hours upon hours of gaming time? Go for it. Otherwise, genecide is the best answer. Killed, every last one of them, by angry Minotaurs.

Years ago, while still running AD&D games, I murdered every Halfling, Hobbit, and Kender (and Gnomes, too…useless fecks). They simply did not exist. Never did, as far as I was concerned. Short, fat, always bitching about being hungry, or always eating, snooping, wandering off, stealing from the other party members ("Oh now, bother. Where did my sword +3 versus Lycanthropes get off to? Sure would be helpful about now…"), always getting into trouble and expecting others to help them out of it. Good for nothing but offering the constant question "Can I get a backstab in?" That is NOT comic relief. That is a GM's worst effing nightmare. And "Ratlings"? What the hell kind of nomenclature is that? Dwarfs became Squats, Halflings become Ratlings? More than anything, as Ratlings are concerned, it is their racial name that most bothers me.

Most (and I emphasize most, not all) people play Hobbits, Halflings, Kender, and Ratlings as if they were familial off-shoots of Pippin and Merry, there is no originality, it's boring to see, hear, and deal with, and I'll not have a game devolve into a completely unenjoyable morass because of them. My worst nightmare would be a duo of players that wanted to do the Master-Blaster Halfling/Ogryn routine. Nope. Not gonna have it.

Now, if someone wanted to play a Human IG specialist referred to as a Ratling, that would be a different story. You're playing a Ratling, it's just Human, and not an annoying little, fuzzy-footed, thieving, rolly-polly bellied munchkin shitestick.  

i do hate them, as gm and player, borring cliche, full of banality. With One big exception:

Sexy shoeless God of War, Belkar from Order of the Stick.

MILLANDSON said:

http://1d4chan.org/images/4/45/Kender_race_description_annotated.png gives a good introduction to Kender and most people's reaction to them.

boruta666 said:

Belkar for President

Alekzanter said:

I have to kinda agree until I saw the Dark Sun Halfling…

they were different, or worse yes they were hungry but they might eat u :D

and in my current group we have 3.5D&D game with a Halfing Monk who is going to try for the Drunken Master..  Currently hanging around with my Dwarf Barbarian going to Battlerager.  Man the drunking adventures we have had!!

Alekzanter said:

Haha!  Well said.

That's pretty much how I feel about them.  I've never liked any incarnation of halflings but the ratlings seem to be a particularly uninspired port.  Almost all the other demi-human and common fantasy tropes which made their way into 40k were implemented in a more thoughtful and imaginative fashion.  The ratlings are very little more than halflings in space . . . with sniper rifles.

The only ratlings the pcs have enountered in my camapign have been dead ones.  I plan to keep it that way.

srMontresor said:

I've never previously seen incarnations of halflings where the entire race is prone to kleptomania and other lawbreaking, are pretty much universally acknowledged to be criminal scum and not to be dealt with due to generally being undesirable, but are accepted due to being expert marksmen.

Care to indicate any previous usages of that particular style of halfling? Because from what I've read of Kender and DnD halflings, that's mostly nothing alike, other than halflings being good cooks too.

MILLANDSON said:

Indeed!
I find that people who hate halflings or kender or ratlings etc hate them because of past experiences in roleplaying games. And those experiences were negative for them not because of the diminutive chap involved, but because of asshat players who would rather act up, get their own way and ruin campaigns…. but hey! Those players will be that way regardless of what they play as, so don't go hating on the stunty ones - hate on the bad team players!

Bilbo was hired to be a thief. Not a marksman, not a cook, not a light-hearted and jaunty companion. A thief. Mold: cast.
Merry and Pippin were self-centered, self-absorbed whiners who were worried only about from where and when their next meal might come. I don't give a damn about how their characters matured throughout the stories; first impressions literally made reading Fellowship the most unremarkable experience in my reading career, and I will say with all honesty that I haven't finished it, not will I ever attempt to read it again. These images and behaviors have saturated the Halfling, and everyone I've ever known to play a Halfling plays them this way. I aggree that the Halfing (and its various offshoots) have a stigma attached to them, but its a self-fulfilling stigma, and I must strongly disagree with the statement that a Player will play any PC in this way. Never have I seen someone go from playing a coniving, thieving, greasy-mouthed Halfling to a coniving, thieving, greasy-mouthed Dwarf.

I played a Halfling many, many years ago (definitely not my first choice of character) in a local Con event, and the GM took me aside afterward and told me he was astounded with my RP of the pregen character. I was a Fighter/Thief, I was the stalwart leader of the party, I took risks to save lives, solved riddles, and was quite heroic. I never sat there thinking "I'll backstab it" or "I sure could use a muffin about now" during the entire combat encounter. I didn't cook anybody's food, I didn't steal from other party members (or anyone else, for that matter), and I didn't run off looking for loot on my own. Maybe it's because I hated them so much that I was determined to make them different, break the mold.
And of course, those who hate Halflings hate them because of previous RP experiences. It's not because we're racist; we haven't met any in real life that have rubbed us the wrong way, stolen our stuff, made us sit around wondering where the eff they are, and generally sowing tension and mistrust everywhere we go.

Back in the day, WFB Empire halflings used short bows, and huge slingshots to lob large kettles full of boiling stew at the enemy. And they fought side-by-side with big, dumb, brutish Ogres. The models were sculpted as tubby-gutted midgets with cooked chicken legs hanging from their belts. Mold: used.

"Hi! I'm a Kender! We're awesome, 'cause we like maps and misappropriating other people's stuff! Gotta go now! Wanderlust gives me the attention span of a goldfish! Oooh, look! A dragon! Ima say hi…" So annoying. Maybe (and I say maybe) they were good for a laugh in the novels, or being a broken-hearted crybaby for the human nature of a tragic plot device, but not so much in RP. But, new-old mold: cast.

Dennis McKiernan (author of 'The Iron Tower' trilogy, 'Eye of the Hunter', 'Dragondoom', etc) hated Halflings (and their kind) so much that he envisioned an entirely new race of humanoid to replace them; Warrows. Essentially, they were smaller versions of elves, but with distinct differences and traits. They weren't thieves. They weren't chow time cooks. Some were good with bows or slings, others with small swords. They stood toe-to-toe with Rock Trolls without bawling for someone to save their ases. They were honest, hard-working, heroic, staunch and loyal, intelligent, and gregarious, not social misanthropes.

In 'Band of Brothers', Malarkey did a lot of the cooking, he was a friendly guy, talkative, joking, good with a rifle. He wasn't annoying, running off on his own, constantly chomping on some bit of food-cud, or stealing from his buddies. Malarkey was a Ratling. So, like I said, if someone wants to play a Ratling in an OW game I run, it'll be a Human referred to as a Ratling. Ratling will be a Specialist "slang" word with prestigeous conotations. Not a disparaging term for a short, rotund, nappy-footed, deadeye shot who's a compulsive eater/pickpocket.

Kasatka said:

I think Alekzander replied well enough for me.  Thieving, rogueish halflings have been a fantasy cliche since shortly after Tolkien.  The fact that an 'entire race' is given over to it only makes Ratlings less interesting in my book (though in truth, I have not read fluff that states this, or at least I don't recall it).  My main problem with demi-humans in fantasy is that they all seem to get defined by a handful of things, as if they were all alike.  People do tend to play them that way, as Kasatka rightly points out, though I have seen interesting digressions.  Indeed, two of my favourite character concepts which I never actually got around to playing were demi-humans who completely subverted the type.