Halfling (Dungeons & Dragons)
fictional humanoid race from Dungeons & Dragons
The halfling is a fictional race (with many subraces) found in the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. Halflings are similar in appearance to humans, but about half their size. The creature was called a "hobbit" in the earliest edition of the game, but TSR changed the name to "halfling" after the Tolkien Estate sent a cease and desist.
Publication history
Original Dungeons & Dragons
The hobbit first appeared as a player character class in the original 1974 edition of Dungeons & Dragons.
In earlier editions of D&D, halflings are strongly inspired by Tolkien's hobbits (even referred to by that word frequently), being diminutive, chubby, furry-footed home-bodies with a penchant for dwelling in hollowed out hillsides and a racial talent for burglary.
The original Dungeons & Dragons included hobbits, but later the game began using the name "halfling" as an alternative to "hobbit" for legal reasons.
The Tolkien Estate sent a cease and desist to TSR that forced them to remove names such as hobbits from D&D.
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons
The "halfling" appeared as a player character race in the original Player's Handbook (1978). The halfling also appeared in the original Monster Manual (1977), which described the halfling subraces of hairfoot, stout, and tallfellow. A number of halfling subraces were presented as character races in the original Unearthed Arcana (1985).
Basic Dungeons & Dragons
The halfling appeared as a character class in the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set (1977, 1981, 1983), Companion Rules (1984), and Master Rules (1985).
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This entry incorporates text from “Halfling (Dungeons & Dragons)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.