 Howdy how's it going? My name's Daffy Chappy and it's time to teach you how to punch people from dick height because we're going to be going over the mechanical powers of halflings and how their racial abilities connect with the classes that you might want to play. As always, keep in mind that the majority of this is just my opinion and if you find yourself constantly being stolen by wizards who want to use you for impossible quests on the other end of the world, feel free to play your games however you want. But with that out of the way, let's begin. So the halfling is a race that doesn't get played quite as often because of the reduced speed of 25 feet that can get really frustrating to deal with. It feels inadequate to be just out of range of everybody else moving the standard 30 feet, so consider taking squat nimbleness, mobile, the barbarian slash monk for movement benefits, or just play a ranged character who doesn't care with distances. You're also a small size creature which may sound inconsequential until you remember that per the rules you can move into and through the spaces of creatures two size bigger or smaller than you. So anytime the party comes up against a large creature, it won't block your path. This is made even better with the halfling's unique squat nimbleness trait which means that even medium creatures can't stop your progress, so you're almost immune to being cornered. But now tiny creatures can bully you so if your DM really wants to keep you from moving, all they have to do is send a gang of pixies your way. Luckily, you probably won't feel too intimidated because halflings have advantage against being frightened, and they're even almost completely immune to natural ones, because if they roll a one, they automatically re-roll. However, if they roll a one again, then they're fucked. The chances of it happening are 0.002%, but hell befalls you if you beat those odds because every DM will punish you for playing the safest race in the entire game and constantly avoiding the previous consequences of a natural one. I know it's a house rule, it's not, we all do it, but there's a certain fun in being a DM and seeing the player roll a natural one, because now I get to go off script for a moment and create a scenario where the player is punished in a not too debilitating way, like maybe their weapon flies out of their hand, or they hit their partner, or the bad guy knocks them to the ground, you know, stuff that the player gets to roll with to make the scenario more interesting. But the halfling, ugh, the halfling burns my biscuit every time because I get the moment of creativity snatched away from me by a racial feature, so when the time comes for the halfling to finally get theirs, I will have had many an hour to stew on the punishment. But like I said, there's a statistically impossible chance of that happening, so feel free to play the halfling all you want, especially if you're new to the game, because it is the safest class there is, what with the three different protection from outside forces abilities that it has. Then it even has sub races, which admittedly don't give you a lot, most of them just give one new feature, but like all of the base features, almost everything is universally good, and they still feel different enough to make them seem like branching strains in the same lineage. Take the lightfoot halfling for example, which lets you hide behind people, that's it. Most players think they can do that anyway, but they cannot. This ability is less useful than you'd think since hiding behind a person usually implies that the person is out in the open, but I like to imagine that enemies walking around are now just new places to hide. Obviously this feature is best used on rogues who can hide as a bonus action, but I also find good use in monks who can use step of the wind to dash as a bonus action, and then hide behind the legs of one guard while they're busy talking to another guard. Beyond that, the only other core sub race option is the stout halfling, which nudges in on the dwarven stick by getting yet another resistance to poison, both the condition and the damage type. While not the standard bilbo archetype like the lightfoot halfling, it's probably the better option because as nice as hiding behind people is, you can hide behind other things, and poison is bound to come up often enough to make resistance to it worth the tray off. Granted, if you're playing a class that doesn't like to be in battle anyway, then who cares what you have resistance to, so the question between lightfoot and stout is do you want to fight or not? Now, if lightfoot halfling represents the exploration pillar, and stout represents the combat pillar, then the skag's ghostwise halfling is the de facto social pillar sub race by giving you telepathic communication between any creature within 30 feet of you so long as you both share the same language. Universal abilities like this make me wonder why I'm making a series centered around telling you what classes work with what abilities, because what am I supposed to say to this? Obviously, all the classes want to invade your personal bubble by speaking directly into your mind like an invasive bluetooth, but it's not going to help you if a yawn tea hocks a luge at you, or if you don't want to get seen by the snake man at all, so ghostwise just works best in games where social and political intrigue reign supreme. Just remember that you'll have to share a language with the target of your ghostly phone call. Now, we've covered three different sub races representing the three pillars of the game, but what if you want all of it in one package? That's where the lotus den halfling from Wildemount comes in. Lotus dens get free casting of druid craft, entangle, and spike growth, as well as a second feature that imposes disadvantage on attempts to track them, as well as immunity to non-magical difficult terrain if it comes from plants. As a knee-jerk reaction, I'd say that this is a lot. If we're comparing the lotus den to the other sub races, then much like Mercer's other creations, it cares not for consistency and balance. But when I look at it closer, the difficult terrain benefit is almost never going to come up because it's so specific. And likewise, tracking you down may be harder, but you're almost certainly going to be traveling with three to four other people who will be just as easy to follow as ever. The spells, however, are pretty great. Druidcraft is a very fun role-playing skill, and both entangle and spike growth are just great spells in their own right. Unless you're a two-lip-stepping barbarian, every class should make use of these, and there's no reason to restrict it to the druid. Honestly, I'd say that if you're looking to take the lotus den, you'd be better off not taking druid at all, because that class already provides you with the same spells, so why double up on them? For one free extra casting, that's neat, but both spells are druid and ranger exclusives normally, so this sub race could be your only chance to mix and match without having to spend a feat. For instance, a lotus den rogue could throw out an entangle and wrap up every enemy, then gain free advantage that doesn't come at the cost of the aim feature, or a mobile class could use spike growth to cut down the enemy's route to get to them, a tank could use it to funnel enemies directly at them, and yeah, a druid could use the class to save themselves a spell slot for other things, which especially at early levels is a pretty sweet deal. If you're going to take a nature boy, though, I'd pick up ranger at least, since anything that helps that class save spell slots is a blessing. Plus, by level six, you'll gain five feet of extra movement, and no longer will you be less in line. But if you want spells, just not those specific spells, then the everon book gives halflings not one, but two different dragon mark sub races with the marks of healing and the marks of hospitality. The mark of healing provides you with a d4 on all of your medicine checks and roles made with the herbalism kit, and you also get a free casting of cure wounds, lesser restoration, plus a whole bunch of new spells added to your spell list if you play spellcaster. I normally don't talk about the added spells, but look at this shit, it's all healing, all the way down, almost like they're trying to tell you something. And that thing is don't bother with healing classes if you're gonna play this. Seriously, just like with the lotus den, these added spells give every spellcaster the chance to be a healer, because most of the big tick healing spells are just deposited into your spell list. If we look at the classes that normally don't get healing spells, it's pretty much just the arcane three. And even though the sorcerer and the warlock can get sub classes that make them healers, this circumvents the need to, so you can play that aberrant mind sorcerer who just rends the minds of the weak willed, and also, you know, is willing to sit down and give some positive vibes for a while. I still wouldn't pick this option if you're not going to be a spellcaster at all, because this dragon mark in particular gets most of its value from the expanded spell list, but it's not like a free casting of cure wounds is bad by any means. It's just if you're looking for a more role play friendly subrace, then I'd rather point you towards the Mark of Hospitality, which gives you the Prestidigitation cantrip, the spells Unseen Servant and Purify Pood and Drink, another list of potential new spells, and an added d4 to any persuasion check or roll of Cooks Slash Brews utensils. All of this stuff is useless in direct combat, and also kind of in most exploration situations, except maybe Unseen Servant if you squint. The goal of this subrace is just to be a major bro, help everybody out with a quality of life, cook some food, make some beer, and maybe prevent political assassinations transferred via breakfast. You're playing a character who already has the other pillars figured out, or you're playing that NPC who got swept up in all the chaos and now has to pick up a plus one broom of smiting. Either way, you kept the skills you learned as a humble landsman, and now they translate into numbers. This is one of those magic based subraces where even if you're not playing a spellcaster, even if you're playing a barbarian, you're fine taking this because it plays a very specific purpose that often goes overlooked by the rest of the game, and therefore isn't likely to overlap with whatever else you've got going on. Honestly, the idea of a barbarian barkeep who flies into a rage every time their mugs get smashed is kind of a great idea. You can have that for free. And if you want the diluted essence of what it means to be a halfling, living a passive existence in a small community, drinking and knowing things, then this is the perfect subrace for you when you want your hole in the ground to mean comfort. But then I'm out to it. I hope you enjoyed this video. Be sure to leave a like, comment, subscribe, check out all my social media in the description below, and maybe support me on Patreon so that I can afford to get my gas bill half off. Haha. But yeah, there we go.