D&D General Should Bearded Female Dwarves be the Default?

[Oofta]

"Do not have beards" is too ambiguous.

You need to check if they do not grow breads or can not grow beards.

1. Female dwarves can grow beards and do grow beards
2. Female dwarves can grow beards and do not grow beards
3. Female dwarves cannot grow beards and do grow beards
4. Female dwarves cannot grow beards and do not grow beards

A new poll is required.

After another exhaustive survey of 50% of the original survey subjects, the results are in.

"Female dwarves do not, have never, and will never have beards. Now stop asking me [remainder of sentence deleted to adhere to forum guidelines]"

So there you have it. Can't fight science.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Female dwarves cannot grow beards and do grow beards

Female dwarves are stubborn.

 

[Umbran]

Out of curiosity, how do you all feel about this topic?

I think this ought to be up to the players of female dwarves at a given table.

 

[Minigiant]

Neat! Not sure I’d use it in my world, but it’s an interesting take.

It's the basic settler dynamic.

When dwarves first settle in a mountain,there aren't enough dwarves to differentiate roles as every dwarf has to work and fight. There are little to no children, no set occupations, and homes are more communal. Clans are just family groups and there are no clan traditions to follow.

As time progresses and populations increases, dwarves begin to specialize and change in appearance based on age, skill, class, and gender. The old prouldly display their greyhair. The man and women wear different hair and clothing styles. The warriors wear armor all day whearas the farmers only during battle.

But since it's dwarves, the time between point A and point B might be thousands of years.

 

[DammitVictor]

I have a preference for this... to be honest, I have a strong preference for this, because anything that sets humanoid PC races apart from human races is a net positive.

But as a core rule this is something that should be decided on a setting level, and as a setting detail it should be decided by players. At the very least, they can always shave, and if they have any kind of cultural exchange with races whose women aren't bearded, there's an infinite number of possible cultural reasons why large numbers of dwarven women might have decided to.

Just because elves can voluntarily change sex during a long rest doesn't mean that they have to, or that any given elf ever has.

 

[Dioltach]

How about Brazilian dwarves?

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Like anything else in D&D, Specific beats General, even in fluff. The PHB could say they all have beards, but a setting book (or homebrew) could say the opposite, and if you are playing in that setting, then that is the rule.

I remember when Cubicle 7 was previewing new art for the 2nd edition of The One Ring and one of the character pieces was a female dwarf adventurer with no beard. That got a lot of Tolkien fans in an uproar. The discussion thread about that is still around here somewhere.

So if you are playing in a Middle-Earth style world, where the female dwarves are rare and the birth rate is low, then either those females that go out in public or out adventuring either can, and do, grow beards, or they wear false beards, for their own protection and the protection of the future of the race.

 

[Charlaquin]

. The warriors wear armor all day

Oh, god, the heat exhaustion!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

My wife plays female dwarves and is extremely over people who don't telling her what her character ought to look like.

This should be something that is setting-specific at best.

But honestly, I don't know anyone who actually plays dwarves (as opposed to wielding Lord of the Rings like a weapon) who is passionate about female dwarves having beards.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Plus I think the bearded Dwarven women idea is a kind of a concept/joke in Lord of The Rings too.

That's not worldbuilding. That's Tolkein trying to come up with a reason that, yet again, women are largely invisible in his work. (The Rankin-Bass Hobbit movie has zero women in it, which is remarkable and raises some real questions about what kind of community Laketown was.)

"Uh, no, there's female dwarves all over! They, uh, just look pretty much the same as male dwarves!"