Every time I accidentally kill a halla I feel like utter scum.
What sort of Dalish accidentally murders halla?
I tried pretty hard to avoid them with my Dalish too, yeah. On a weird but related subject, depending on what characters I make, I like to play by different rules. For example, in VERY HEAVILY OMG SO HEAVILY modded Skyrim, I had a cannibalism thing going on with a wood elf (no lore argument about the purpose of doing that outside of home, there were reasons!) who could only kill what she could carve into steaks and eat. Stealth missions were really important, or we'd sit and freeze to death waiting to finish off the leftover bandit sandwiches. Or perhaps you only turn in a direction where something is red. Whatever.
This relates because my Dalish (and me, since I hadn't been there before) actually found the grove in the Exalted Plains by deciding to interpret a herd of halla in an area as a sign to find a way around rather than risk them as collateral damage. It was pretty cool, and my inquisition write-up pretty much revolves around bringing insignificant accidents like that into the spotlight. The character-specific stories it turns my otherwise standard playthroughs of games into is what makes me happy.