Halfling:

Playable subraces: lightfoot halfling, strongheart halfling, ghostwise halfling

Misc bonuses: fearless

Description:

Halflings, the small folk (known to themselves as the Hin), are a group of quiet, family and home-oriented people. They are a cheerful and outgoing but hard-working folk, who are generally found living in peaceful villages. If provoked, however, they will fight with great ferocity and skill in defense of their homes, and the general cause of good. They are more in tune with the land than humankind, and are much given to farming as well as a partial knowledge of the wilds. They tend to shun water and extreme temperatures and settle in temperate countrysides. Their weapons of choice range through small blades, hand axes, slings, and bows, and they generally prefer comfortable clothing to fanciful shows of wealth.

Halflings live about twice as long as humans, and are fond of music, tales, simple crafts and good food. They have ruddy skin, and while their men usually wear long sideburns, beards are rare among them, and moustaches are near unheard-of. Halflings tend to be somewhat resistant to poisons and magic, but have little to no arcane affinity themselves. They are usually raised to be good aligned, so it is extremely rare to find one who has an evil nature.

While generally fond of simple pleasures and a cosy life at home, occasionally are given to wanderlust and will travel from home for several years. Between an insatiable curiousity, a lack of understanding of the strange ways of some of the larger races, and their fondness for tricks played on those larger than themselves, they often find themselves in more trouble than they bargained for. For example - in a halfling village, many items of value are communal - it would not bother one halfling for his neighbour to simply show up and borrow his plough without asking. In a human city, however, this would certainly not be taken well.

Most halflings will get along reasonably well with gnomes and tolerate other races except, of course, the evil drow and the cruder or giant races such as ogres, gnolls, bugbears, orcs, kobolds, etc. Lightfoot halflings, in particular, are regularly found amongst the settlements of other non-evil races, primarily humans.