Halfling [Dark Sun]

These halflings average 3 1/2 feet and 50 to 60 pounds, built like small, quick, muscular humans and stronger than they look. Skin, hair and eye colors vary as widely as among humans, yet young or old they keep the face of a human child. Their own language is a medley of imitated animal noises, whistles, caws and chatter, and they also speak common.

Strict carnivores, they regard every animal, humans included, as potential food, and honor in battle means nothing to them; what others call dirty tricks are simply tactics. They craft weapons from natural materials and believe a weapon made from the same stuff as an enemy gives an edge, so a hunter of giant bloodwings might carve a dagger from one's talon.

Their weapons deal 1d4 or 1d6 points of damage. Except for renegades, they prefer small daggers, spears and slings to forged swords, and they gain +1 to hit with thrown and sling weapons, sometimes slinging live stinging beetles as bullets and occasionally coating blades with paralytic poison. They get +4 on all saves against magic, poison and disease, plus the usual Constitution-based bonuses of halfling characters.

A full tribe numbers 20-200. Every tenth member is a hunter-chief with 3 HD, THAC0 17 and the slight psionics of a 1st-level psionicist. Every fiftieth is a forest-chief (5 HD, THAC0 15, with either psionic or clerical powers, equally likely, two levels below his HD). Each tribe has a single tribe-chief (10 HD, THAC0 11) with 5th-level clerical powers, 1-3 magic items, and a 30% chance of psionics as a 6th-level psionicist.

Numerous halfling tribes hold a forested ridge and are many enough to defend their claim. Apart from the brutal renegades near the neighboring mountains, they share a common worldview that keeps them unified across distance and politics, and one halfling seldom kills another even over bitter disputes. Outsiders struggle to grasp their culture, which after ages of change values above all the inner self in harmony with the land and the race; conquest and plunder mean nothing to them.

Having seen the ruined wastes elsewhere, they are fiercely protective of their forests, changing the land only with careful respect for nature. Because they see other creatures as food, they assume others see them the same way and never fully trust any other species. They live up to 140 years.