# Race: Halfling > [!info] Quick Facts > | | | > |---|---| > | **Rarity** | Common | > | **Perception in Gryth** | Positive. Ludland’s people are welcomed nearly everywhere they go. | > | **Subraces** | [[#Lightfoot Halflings\|Lightfoot Halflings]], [[#Stout Halflings\|Stout Halflings]], [[#Ghostwise Halflings\|Ghostwise Halflings]] | > | **Guide Section** | Common Races | ## Overview Halflings are held by most scholars to be a division of humanity rather than a separate creation: a population left alone on [[Region - Ludland|Ludland]] in the deep past and changed across the generations by that island’s climate, its isolation and the particular natural magics that run through its soil. Nobody has proven it, and the Ludlings themselves find the question less interesting than almost any other question available. What everyone agrees on is the result. Halflings are kind, generous and a great deal hardier than their size suggests, and they are found dotted through most towns and cities in the world. ## The Island Ludland lies many hundreds of miles off the western and southern shores of [[Continent - Auken|Auken]], safe, green and protected, and almost nobody goes there. Passing travellers and the occasional explorer make landfall and that is the whole of it. The island has not fought a war in over two thousand years; what fighting happens there is a drunken scuffle or a contest with rules. The economy is agriculture and the culinary arts, with woodworking and a little mining at the edges, and the Ludlings are devoted patrons of music, poetry and theatre. Their beer and cider are reckoned the finest produced anywhere in Gryth and are among the very few things the island exports. ## The Oath of the Grain The island keeps itself that way through a working woven four centuries ago. Landing anywhere but the port capital of Wentchester is near suicide, because the wards along the coast induce confusion and delirium in anybody who has not taken the island’s oath. To enter at Wentchester a visitor must swear the Oath of the Grain: pay gold into the island’s treasury, remain for at least one full season, work towards the betterment of Ludland while they stay, and vow never afterwards to speak of the island or carry information out of it, being permitted only to say where they were and how it made them feel. Every traveller who has ever come back from Ludland has given exactly that answer, which is one reason the place is so widely loved and so poorly understood. ## Welcome Almost Everywhere Halflings have a reputation other peoples would pay for. They are held to be trustworthy, civically minded, and good for a place: a halfling family moving into a town is generally expected to leave it wealthier or closer-knit than they found it, and that expectation is usually met. They are natural performers, and halfling players, singers and storytellers turn up far out of proportion to their numbers. They get on with gnomes particularly well, which surprises nobody who has watched the two of them in a room together, and the gnomish and halfling quarters of a city are frequently the same quarter. As a culture they hold a deep aversion to dark magic. It is not a law and there is no inquisition behind it, simply a settled and widely shared conviction that such things are not to be touched, and halfling communities abroad have been known to pack up and leave a place rather than live beside it. ## Roused, Rarely None of this makes them harmless. Halflings can be roused to war abroad when the need is real, and those who have fought beside them say so with some feeling. The records of halflings in large conflicts are extremely thin, which says more about how seldom they judge a war to be worth it than about how they conduct themselves once they have. ## Where They Are Now Most halflings live in Auken and [[Continent - Edaria|Edaria]]. They began on Ludland and spread first to the Auken mainland. During the Age of Kings many were taken to Edaria as servants, or travelled there as part of noble households. From Auken and Edaria they have slowly spread across the rest of the world. The name Ludling is reserved strictly for halflings of the island itself. Everyone else is simply a halfling, and most of them have never seen the place. ## The Tall Elves Halflings have long been enamoured of the elves, a fascination the elves have never entirely reciprocated. Ludland’s own records hold scattered accounts of Tall Elves arriving eons ago in great white and red ships, and it is thought that elvish emissaries made landfall on the island during the Eldari Ascension. What was said on those occasions is not recorded, or is not shared. The most famous halfling alive is the one who went the other way. Harry Whitewood bought his way into [[Region - High Vel'Nora|High Vel’Nora]] with gold and trade rights and became the only non-elf of the age to enter the island purely to look at it, producing the Whitewood Standard map and the travel journals that remain the only modern description of the elven interior. His account of being surveyed by an Eldari bloodline is the passage everyone quotes, and he wrote that he never recovered his sense of wonder afterwards. ## Halfling Traits **Ability Score Increase.** Your Dexterity score increases by 2. **Age.** A halfling reaches adulthood at the age of 20 and generally lives into the middle of their second century. **Creature Type.** You are a Humanoid. **Size.** Halflings average about 3 feet tall and weigh about 40 pounds. Your size is Small. **Speed.** Your base walking speed is 25 feet. **Lucky.** When you roll a 1 on the d20 for an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw, you can reroll the die and 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 yours. **Languages.** You can speak, read, and write Common and Halfling. ## Subraces ### Lightfoot Halflings Lightfoots are the leaders and the travellers of Ludland, affable, quick, and light on their feet exactly as the name suggests. They hold most of what passes for authority on the island and produce most of its sailors, and Ludling ships in foreign ports are lightfoot-crewed almost without exception. They are fewer than the stouts and a good deal more visible, which is a combination that has served them well for a very long time. **Rarity:** Common **Perception in Gryth.** Positive. As halflings generally. #### Lightfoot Halfling Traits **Ability Score Increase.** Your Charisma score increases by 1. **Naturally Stealthy.** You can attempt to hide even when you are obscured only by a creature that is at least one size larger than you. ### Stout Halflings Stouts are the most numerous halflings by a wide margin. They are the working families of Ludland, the farmers, brewers, bakers and builders who keep the island running, and they are also the halflings the rest of the world is most likely to meet, since the communities of Auken and Edaria are overwhelmingly stout. They are hardier than their kin and hold their drink in a manner that has led to persistent rumours of dwarven blood in the line. Given that Ludland’s cider and beer are reckoned the finest in Gryth and that stouts brew all of it, the rumour may simply be a compliment that got out of hand. **Rarity:** Common **Perception in Gryth.** Positive. As halflings generally. #### Stout Halfling Traits **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. ### Ghostwise Halflings Ghostwise halflings are an oddity among a people who are otherwise entirely straightforward. They are confined to the northern valleys of Ludland, they speak aloud only as a courtesy, and they are taught ancient secrets of magic and belief that the rest of the island does not ask about and would not be told. They do not come down to Wentchester to meet the ships. Outsiders who have sworn the Oath and spent a season on the island report that the northern country simply closes ahead of them as they walk. To see a ghostwise halfling anywhere outside Ludland is all but unheard of. A ghostwise character abroad has left for a reason, and should agree that reason with the DM before session one. **Rarity:** Very rare **Perception in Gryth.** Negative, in the few places they are spoken of at all. Ludlings who mention them do so uneasily, and a halfling who speaks into your head without opening their mouth does not put people at ease. #### Ghostwise Halfling Traits **Ability Score Increase.** Your Wisdom score increases by 1. **Silent Speech.** You can speak telepathically to any creature within 30 feet of you. The creature understands you only if the two of you share a language. You can speak telepathically in this way to one creature at a time. ## Connections - [[Region - Ludland]] — Island homeland of the halflings - [[Continent - Auken]] — First mainland the halflings spread to; most halflings live here - [[Continent - Edaria]] — Many halflings brought here during the Age of Kings - [[Region - High Vel'Nora]] — Visited by Harry Whitewood, the most famous halfling alive --- ## Gallery ![[Race - Halfling.jpg]] --- *See also: [[Races]]*