Halfling Empire?

[Marcelinari]

Hi there. I've recently been trying to come up with a new campaign setting for a 5e game I may or may not end up running, and I'm trying to come up with interesting variations or subversions of the common tropes. Currently, I've only got a very simple scenario imagined, a small mercenary troupe of Spellknight High Elves assisting in the defense of a walled town against an Imperial army.

Except, of course, that the Empire is dominated by halflings. I got myself to thinking what a halfling empire might look like, how its army might be laid out, and I just can't bring the image to my head. So, my question to the forums: How would halflings build, and maintain an empire?

[GreaserFish]

Halflings are often depicted as being fairly nomadic in practice, rarely building complex architecture and infrastructure so much as just kind of inhabiting the land they are on. You could go off of that and draw on the Mongols for inspiration.

The main thing I would be wondering about, though, is religion. Most historical empires had religion as a focal point for how they conducted things. The Romans had the Latin-Hellenic pantheon (Followed by Christianity). the Byzantines (Who considered themselves Romans) were at the epicenter of an extremely important event for Christianity you've probably heard of called the Great Schism. The Holy Roman Empire, famous for the phrase calling it out on not being any of those three things in its name, was also at the epicenter of the aforementioned Schism. Ghengis Khan, Khan of Khans himself, cited the Sky Father Tengri for being responsible for allowing him his victories.

In short, blend their cultural practices with their religious ones, and you've got yourself a recipe for hereditary rule.

[Murk]

Right. "Empire" always has the undertone of a (forced) collection of different nations. With halflings being stereotyped as a bit silly, relaxed, maybe (as said above me) not city-building people, I would think about a Mongolian/Hunnic Empire too.
The big question to me would be: why would halflings build up a mighty, conquering empire, when they are probably content with their own little villages and pastures?
I would say something like overpopulation, or a dissapearance of fertile grounds. We have too many halflings, too little ground, so one community or village starts conquering other villages, which are then send to conquer new villages - only being part of the empire in name -, etc., etc., untill the outskirts of the empire approach the big city you were talking about. So, yeah, hunnic in movement, typically halfling (I wouldn't dare to say "hobbit like") in culture. A big religion would be nice, but in this case not necessary.

I'd say the army itself would have to be a rifraf of smaller groups, fighting bands who joined up. It mixes well with the typically roguelike halflings: a huge army consisting of small bands of five or six stone throwing, dagger wielding small men. It would be effective to conquer new small villages, and it would be hard to defend a whole city against, because the army doesn't have one consistent strategy. You could have bands of halflings all doing different stuff, trying to infiltrate the cities defenses in their own way (and it would allow for PC's to not only fight huge mobs, but small groups of skilled warriors too).

And I would want something silly in it. They're halflings, after all. Let them shoot sheep out of trebuchets, or ride warpigs, or use cabbages on sticks as mauls.

[Everyl]

A halfling-dominated empire isn't necessarily halfling-majority, or even anything close to it. Maybe the ruling class is mostly or entirely halflings, but numerous provinces and conquered territories are peopled with other races. The army recruits heavily from these provinces, resulting in a military where halfling generals and officers command units of humans, elves, dwarves, goblins, centaurs, and whatnot. The empire itself could have gotten its start less from overt conquest and more from trade dominance - nomadic halfling traders dominated major caravan routes, and eventually grew to be dominant in the politics of major cities along the routes. Several of these cities were eventually unified by a combination of diplomacy, back-room deals, and wars fought mostly with mercenary forces. The resulting empire continues to grow to this day, using economic pressure to force cooperation from its neighbors and occasionally raising armies when a stronger hand is needed to get what the leaders want. By now, halflings aren't remotely in the majority, but they wield the bulk of the political power, and whatever emperor/triumvirate/council/parliament/etc. that sits on top of the empire's power structure is going to be disproportionately halfling.

So in this scenario, the walled town has something that the halfling empire wants. Maybe it sits on a geographic choke point - a good mountain pass, reliable river ford or bridge, or a deep harbor, perhaps. Maybe the town has gold mines or some other rare resource of disproportionately high value. Regardless, the halfling empire wants this valuable resource or place, and economic pressure isn't getting them what they want as fast as they want it, so someone decided to take a more direct approach.

[Avaris]

A halfling empire doesn't necessarily have to be controlled through millitary means. It doesn't necessarily even need to be overtly an Empire. Maybe the Halflings are the political glue which is holding a group of nations together in alliance: they have influence in every major court, so if one nation angers them they'll quickly feel their neighbour's displeasure, whereas cooperating with the Halflings helps gain trade benefits as they facilitate better deals.

If you want a darker side, maybe the reason they are able to function in this way is targetted assasinations of others who try to influence events. They hold the strings of the Empire, but few recognise it as a single empire. Halfling illuminati!

[Admiral Squish]

I think 'empire' might be a bit much how about 'horde'?
Basically, I'm thinking riding halflings on those goat-things from the races of the wild. Brixashulties? The army specializes in cavalry tactics, moving quickly and volleying targets with dense slingstones and various alchemical and splash weapons.
The main advantage of such an army is that each unit is entirely self-sutaining. Each halfling can, thanks to their brixa, supply themselves with warm wool and milk, which is likely more than enough to sustain a halfling almost indefinitely. They can hunt and gather to supplement their diet, and they can gather sling-stones out in the wild, and even replace slings easily enough. the brixas are even better, able to survive in almost any climate on practically any organic material. They would need almost nothing in the way of supply lines, to wipe out the halfling horde would require you to kill every single halfling in the field.
Now, let's look at it by the numbers. An average, unremarkable halfling mounted slinger, a 1st level warrior, has a +4 bonus to attack rolls with a sling, deals 1d3-1 with a successful attack, a base armor of 14, assuming leather armor, and has a 40 ft base speed. An average, unremarkable human archer, a 1st level warrior, has a +1 bonus to attack rolls, deals 1d6 damage, a base armor of 12, assuming leather armor, and has a 30 ft base speed. Granted, the human has better damage per hit, but the archer only has a 35% chance to hit the halfling, all things being equal, while the halfling will hit 60% of the time. Sling's main disadvantage is the reload time, but since they're mounted, they don't really need that move action for anything else, so they would have the same rate of fire. If you want to just make the halflings entirely superior on the battlefield, you could make some sort of halfling mounted combat feat that gives them a d6 of skirmish damage when slinging while mounted.
And then take the mounts into consideration. Horses are faster and overall stronger, but much, much more expensive, to aquire, to train, and to upkeep. A brixa can run for longer than an average horse (non-warhorse), has better AC, a better main attack, which even comes with a knockback ability, and the brixa is much better equipped to operate on rough or uneven terrain, with ranks in balance and jump.

Overall, once you get into it, a properly-developed halfling military is really impressive!
And heck, if the players aren't intimidated by your goat-riding-halfing-mongols, swap the goats for deinonychus (deinonychuses? deinonychi?) and go eberron on them. Heck, if they have other semi-domesticated dinos, they could use them as war machines. A triceratops would be a living battering ram on its own, and would be able to haul seige weaponry and huge quantities of supplies with ease.

[Marcelinari]

I'd like to play up the halflings themselves as a significant military threat. The Mongolian example is a good starting point - perhaps the major halfling presence in the armies might be in dual-purpose chariots, designed for chariot-archery and maybe lance combat? They could bring along dwarven or gnomish siege experts (willingly or no), in order to construct siege engines on the spot. I know chariot combat fell out of favour in European warfare after... probably the Roman invasion of Britain? I know that the British tribes used chariots extensively, backed up by foot troops. What advantages does traditional cavalry hold over charioteering? Better terrain handling?

As for administrative tendencies, the new 5e halflings are helpfully delineated into Lightfoot (+ dex, +cha) and Stout (+dex, +con) subraces. Lightfoots look to make a good ruling class, Stouts a successful military class, and other races fulfilling the lower societal rungs. Any more thoughts?

[Beneath]

I had a halfling empire in an old worldbuilding project of mine I never ran.

Halflings make astounding riders, because they're small enough that they can ride medium mounts. In the worldbuilding thing I did, this was for D&D3, advanced 3 hit die medium eagles were more common, and the halflings had a knightly caste that mostly rode those into battle.

Because of this there were few natural barriers that could stop them or even slow them down, so their empire grew pretty quickly.

[Marcelinari]

I've come up with a fairly good way of adapting halfling physiology and cultural quirks to their way of war. The idea is now that halflings tend to work in teams of 3 or more, using shields to provide protection to their allies (the fighter 'protection' fighting style). As for a delivery system, each squad of halflings is driven into the opposing front lines in a scythe-wheeled chariot, from the back of which the squad leaps and exploits the swathe that the scythes just carved.

I've also decided that, as an empire, the halflings have successfully subjugated and enlisted as auxiliaries several dwarven hill and mountain tribes, as well as a wood elven population. This gives their armies a dedicated archery wing and a solid backbone of dwarf warriors.

[Corneel]

What advantages does traditional cavalry hold over charioteering? Better terrain handling?

Yes, much better terrain handling.
Plus:
- no need to construct a chariot, which needs extra skills and resources (wood and metal, which might be in short supply on the steppes).
- a chariot typically has at least two horses drawing it - for one active warrior (and you might need an extra non-combattant to drive), so cavalry gives you more spare horses per active warrior (for extra mobility - the Mongols had about 3 to 4 horses to a warrior).

[MKV]

My conception of Halflings has always been one of traders and highly successful ones at that. From this perspective an empire of halflings might be much like the historical Dutch. they wouldn't need an army because everyone who would normally be fighting them would be too busy buying things from them. You could take this one step further and blatantly plagiarize creatively borrow from them as far as dress and architecture go.

[GreaserFish]

(for extra mobility - the Mongols had about 3 to 4 horses to a warrior).

I'd like to address this, specifically. The Mongols developed advanced riding and survival techniques, part of which involved using, as I recall, horse blood (Taken from a live mount) in order to sustain themselves while on the march. Or canter. Trot, maybe.