Arelith

Ghostwise halfling, despite being a normal award requirement, are (in my opinion) rather lackluster.

First of all, after a bit of digging, here's what they get that's not mentionned in the Wiki or at Creation :

• Bonus to hide your tracks (+10), bonus to recognize tracks (+10) : https://wiki.nwnarelith.com/Investigate
• Unless I'm mistaken, that's it

Now, quoting from the Wiki (and PGCC's award choice), Ghostwise Halflings get:

Retains base race abilities.
Bonus Feats:
Weapon Proficiency (Primitive) - Club, Dart, Dire Macuahuitl, Great Club, Macuahuitl, Short Bow, Sling, and Spear

It could be justified that this is all they get if Weapon Proficiency (Primitive) was absolutely worth the trade off... and yet.
Here's what's wrong with Weapon Proficiency (Primitive).

It grants the ability to use a few weapons. Here's the detail :

-Club, Dart, Sling, Spear ->
Already granted by Weapon Proficiency (simple), which is a feat given to every class.

-Dire Macuahuitl, Great Club ->
Weapon size Large, cannot be used by small sized race of which Ghostwise Halflings are part of

-Short bow
I'd argue that if you want to play a short bow character you're more than likely to pick a martial class either as a main or as a dip, which will have access to Weapon Proficiency (martial) making Weapon Proficiency(Primitive) moot in most but not all cases

-Macuahuitl
Macuas are great, a neat addition for weapon variety. Sadly, they're medium sized, which means that you cannot use your DEX modifier when using it and you have to use STR. Now combine that with the fact that Ghostwise receive their -2 to STR and you get the issue that you're "nerfing" yourself to use this weapon, effectively shooting yourself in the foot just to play with the only benefit brought by your race. You probably will not be using this if you go for a Caster class too.

So as a conclusion to this breakdown, for the cost of a normal award which could've been a multitude of other benefits, you essentially get the ability to use two weapons. One that is widely accessible to most builds and the other that cannot be used effectively unless you make the sacrifice to go for a STR build, but even then you will be behind because of the fact that you have to sacrifice more attribute points at Creation to match the base Strength.

Another thing I would like to point out is how they don't get access to things like Armor of the wild, and do not have their own race crafting recipe (Dale sword excluded).

In true "Ghostwise STR build" fashion I'm going to shoot myself in the foot : The lack of particularity worth mentionning has never stopped me from playing and enjoying the race.

That will be all, thank you for reading.

Awards are about enabling different RP venues, not power. Certain races that were 'misroleplayed' or too numerous for what should be an uncommon race before have been locked behind awards. Gnolls, wild elves and ghostwise halflings come to mind in regards to that.

Correct.

First of all, let's not pretend every single race is picked solely because of the RP it allows and never for the power or exclusive mechanics.
I'm not advocating for power, I'm advocating for anything of value that would differentiate them, on a "mechanics" stand point, from their base race. Which in turn would enable a whole lot more different RP venues. Look at that, two birds with one stone!

Right now they do have something that differentiate them from base halfling. But as soon as a base halfling picks up a feat(Weapon prof exotic for macua) or a martially inclined class (most 3/4BAB and all Full-bab, gaining Weapon prof martial for shortbow), this little mechanical nuance disappears leaving only a bonus to spot tracks. I don't think any other race on the normal award tier suffers from this fact.

A few more data points to illustrate how poorly considered they are :

• In the most recent player count, 9 active Ghostwise characters. At least two of which are veteran characters who've been around for longer than I as a player have been playing this game. They're tied at 9 with wild dwarves, yet the wild elves you mentionned sit at 32. The balance is off.

• They have been moved up to Normal award at some point one or two years ago yet :
  The wiki still lists them as a minor award.
  On live server the Award selection screen when selecting "Normal award" properly lists "Ghostwise halfling [ECL+0]" but spells [Minor award] next to it. Which is a display bug, it should spell [Normal award]. My point is that, it would have been noticed way earlier if the race was even considered either by the players or the dev team.

The truth is, the race is partially dead because no one plays it, and no one plays it because it's not interesting. More than 110 Lightfoot halfling, so clearly playing as a halfling is not uninteresting. But paying a normal award in order to play a Ghostwise with no real added benefit (not even a language) when you could get a neat headstart (Lv8 minor award, Guldorand start normal award, Bonus language, reduced ECL) is simply not appealing, despite the neat opportunity to RP as a totally different an unusual kind of halfling. RP is important but as you can see with the contrast between Ghostwise and Wild elves, when mechanics don't follow the interest for RP wanes.

Now I'll agree with you. Ghostwise numbers should remain low, and it's going to be tough to give them something without impacting the pick rate or their Utility/Power potential too much.

Ghostwise is just bad, it's not worth spending normal on a race that gets nothing going on it, You could pick lightfoot and use normal on that and actually get something worth mentioning. Absolutely no one cares about primitive weapon proficiency, it's literally worst subrace of all subraces.

The issue with ghostwise is that it's a naturally psionic race.

Of all their defining traits, the fact they are not lucky and this makes it hard to give them anything meaningful.

Page 15 of the 3e Players Handbook wrote:

Speak without Sound (Su): A ghostwise halfling, unlike other halflings, can communicate telepathically with any creature within 20 feet, just as if speaking to him or her. The halfling can only speak and listen to one person at a time, and he must share a common language with the other person or creature he speaks to telepathically, or the telepathic link fails.

While I could throw together a system to do this, it has a few issues.
Firstly that it's not defined if you can intercept it.
Secondly, it's not possible to prove it took place on a player level to report for metagaming, and is easily overlooked as a feature.
Thirdly, we then open the way for psionic classes which certain races would be meta picks due to their latent psionic nature.
Fourthly, it would upturn the servers setting for not having any. This is generally an issue with any psionic ability.
Duergar for example should be able to psionically enlarge themselves as per the spell Enlarge self.

We effectively have a bag of content that once opened brings up the issue of legitimising psionic metagaming and design.
Spells or abilities to intercept are then needed. Possible mechanics to be able to passively tell something is happening. It gets complicated fast and consequently needs alot of thought which, given the decision was made years ago to not have psionics, it's probably already been discussed before.

As to what could be done to make Ghostwise more attractive?
I don't know. There's room to argue deviating from the handbook and possibly give a +2 wisdom for that -2 strength to represent their mental acuity, in exchange for no psionic ability.
Or It could just be removed as a choice since you're right to point out there's little that we support that distinguishes them from their base race, adding ontop they are meant to be rare.

Admittedly, I know little of halfling lore, but if Ghostwise Halflings have some minor psionic abilities that need a way to be represented how about some psychic damage resistance that'll stack with resistance from items? Or maybe they get a bonus to learning/understanding languages because of their telepathic abilities.

-Or- simply rework Macuahuitl.

Dire to Medium, Regular to Small, Finesseable.

Boom. Done.

You would see alot more savage weaponry about and they certainly aren't overpowered as there are no +4 variants.