Halflings of Golarion [RPG]

I've never had particularly strong feelings about halflings one way or another, and I don't think I've ever had one for a PC, so I wasn't sure what to expect with Halflings of Golarion, a 32-page entry in Pathfinder's Player Companion line written by Hal MacLean and Amber Scott.  I ended up having new appreciation for the race and good ideas for characters, which makes the book a success as far as I'm concerned.

The cover is great, with Lem, the halfling bard Iconic, using Countersong to distress a flight of harpies (it's only now that I'm prepping some harpies for use in an adventure that I understand why having a bard along would be so useful!).  The same art forms the inside back cover, while the inside front cover is a list of halfling racial abilities (as per the Core Rulebook) and a list of favored halfling deities, along with their portfolios, domains, favored weapons, etc.  All of this information is available elsewhere, but it's convenient to have it in one place.

The second page features a "halfling proverb" which sums up the theme of the book (and Golarion's approach to halflings) perfectly: they're a race that's usually overlooked and often forgotten, but their contributions to society as laborers, artisans, musicians, farmers, and more is inarguable.  Often enslaved and mistreated, halflings have made a virtue of blending in with the crowd: they survive and thrive by rarely being noticed by the far larger, stronger, and more dramatic races around them.  Whether the famed "halfling luck" is an actual phenomena or just halflings' knack for being in the right place at the right time is left for the reader to decide.  The rest of the book does a fantastic job incorporating these themes, making it a far more coherent Player Companion than some (more recent) ones that sometimes seem to be little more than a random collection of feats and spells.  The first five pages, covering the history of halflings in Golarion and exploring their physical and mental traits, are well-written and interesting.

A section titled "Halfling Culture" starts on page 8 and runs to page 21.  A *lot* of material is covered: birth, coming of age, and death rituals; how halflings are treated in various different parts of Golarion; communities that have a major halfling presence; religion; how well the different adventuring classes fit halflings; and much more.  You might expect some of the topics to be pretty dry, but it's actually very engaging.  In particular, there's interesting bits about halfling buildings (large first floors to accommodate human-size visitors, with small-size upper stories that are cleverly disguised to appear "normal" from the outside), gods (especially the halfling-specific ones), etc.  It's all "flavour" and no "crunch", but I didn't mind a bit.

The next section (2 pages) is "Combat", focusing on halfling slingcraft.  I really like the treatment given here, as several new types of slings and ammunition plus new sling-related feats make a halfling slingthrower sound like a fun and moderately viable build (even though it'd still be inferior to an archer).

"Faith", the next two-page long section, introduces the idea of "Sacred Keepsakes" which are items that a halfling receives as part of their coming of age task and that they continue to hold dear ever after.  The nature of the keepsake depends on the type of coming of age task they've been sent on, with several examples given.  In game terms, the different keepsakes allow for the halfling to make minor changes to first level divine spells.  It's fun and flavourful, but I'm not sure how the idea would be incorporated into character generation.

The concept of "halfling jinxes" is the topic of the "Magic" section (two pages).  The idea here is that, a handful of times in each generation, a halfling is born not with innate good luck but with the ability to spread bad luck to others.  In game terms, a halfling PC loses the "halfling luck" racial ability and substitutes the "halfling jinx" ability which allows them to curse other creatures to impose penalties to saving throws.  The section then includes almost a dozen feats to expand on the concept.  I've never seen a halfling jinx character in play, but it sounds like a really fun, debuffing-oriented character.  I might have to give it a try (combining some of the sling-fighting stuff from the Combat section), but I think it'd be even more fun to have an enemy NPC jinx, as the curses last for 24 hours.

The oddly-named "Social" section introduces a new five-level prestige class, the Halfling Opportunist.  It's not difficult to get into the class, and it has an interesting conceit that there are some halflings who are extremely skilled at taking advantage of other's mistakes to help themselves.  In game terms, the core ability of the prestige class ("Exploitive Maneuver") allows the Halfling Opportunist to use a combat maneuver check to force an enemy to use Aid Another on them, (+2) while the enemy takes the same penalty on an opposed roll (in essence, a 4-point swing).  The opportunities to use it are dependent on GM-discretion, but I think the core idea is well-suited to a very cinematic-oriented game.  The prestige class also receives some other solid abilities at higher levels.

The last two pages of the book introduce
new traits: 5 new race traits (including the fantastic "Helpful" which raises Aid Another bonuses to +4, which is crucial to certain builds), 8 new regional traits, and 9 new religion traits.  Most are definitely situational in nature, but they're interesting and tie in well to the theme of the book.

I have no reservations about recommending Halflings of Golarion.  I was quite pleasantly surprised by how much I got from this book, and I'll see it as a sign that an oft-neglected race in Pathfinder should perhaps get a little more attention.