D&D 5E Dwarves Could Use A Rethink

[Tales and Chronicles]

To me, Dwarves and Gnomes are the same creatures,
one is the Hidden Folx of the Sky-reaching Mountain,
one is the Hidden Folx of the Wandering Hills.

Both are hardy craftspeople, lovers of the hidden gems of the earth, dont trust strangers but are loyal to the end to their true friends and have their origins shrouded in mystery.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

To me, Dwarves and Gnomes are the same creatures,
one is the Hidden Folx of the Sky-reaching Mountain,
one is the Hidden Folx of the Wandering Hills.

Both are hardy craftspeople, lovers of the hidden gems of the earth, dont trust strangers but are loyal to the end to their true friends and have their origins shrouded in mystery.

In my ttrpg gnomes are the children of Freya with the Bricings, and so they are directly related to dwarves, but have elements of feline characteristics like being nimble, and having fairly feline eyes, subtly felinoid faces (like how Ron Perlman kinda looks oddly catlike?) and being very nimble and clever. They're basically somewhere between the land spirits and dwarves.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Or Fyreslayers, if you want to go heavy metal;

View attachment 140469

Oof, no. I can respect most of Age of Sigmar, but Fyreslayers are the worst case of flanderisation I can think of in any medium.

Seriously, the Warhammer Fantasy Dawi are a nuanced race with reverence for tradition and honour to a sometimes ridiculous degree - but Slayers are there because among any people who revere honour the dark side is what happens to those who are dishonoured? And that was how you got the punk deathwish unarmoured slayers who added shading and details to the wider dwarfish culture. They were there to answer, in part, if this race has a hat what of those who don't wear it?

Meanwhile the Fyreslayers took the slayer aesthetic - and just about nothing else about them.

 

[Charlaquin]

I can't find the article now, but I remember reading a designer complain about how dwarves are terribly adapted to underground living: beards would get dirty, the eyes and ears are too small, they should have longer arms, etc... they re-drew a well-adapted (in their mind) dwarf and it was basically just a goblin.

I think way too many fantasy setting include dwarves because they're expected.

That was an MtG article by Matt Cavotta, and it was a tongue-in-cheek explanation of why they don’t print dwarf cards any more. Which is pretty funny in retrospect since they do print dwarf cards again now.

Here it is: Metadwarfosis

 

[Tinker-TDC]

I also read something once that I can't place now, but it recast dwarf beards as essentially whiskers. Dwarves could rely on their whiskers in part to move around safely underground, and gained some kind of bonus to detecting things when they couldn't otherwise see.

I don't know about a bonus if it's from a game but in the Artemis Fowl series that's a thing.

 

[ECMO3]

Hey! Don’t get me wrong, Dwarves are cool. But…they’re at risk of getting a bit stale in D&D.

what if we went back to origins and rethought what a Dwarf can be?

For instance, and mind this ain’t a scholarly source because this ain’t an academic discussion, this article goes into just how ambiguous stories about dwarves are in Norse myth. Dwarves in Norse Mythology

Now I’ve done a decent amount of research on this topic over the years, myself, and yeah, Ivaldi is never said to fear the sun, nor the Bricings, nor Gandalfr, nor Alberich IIRC, nor the 4 who hold up the sky, etc, and none of them are described as short, either.

So perhaps a line of dwarves, Dvalin’s kin, fear the sun, while others simply live underground, and still others live in the forest.

What do Norse dwarves have in common?

Well, they’re very magical, for one.

For another they are excellent craftsfolk.

They seem to tend not to like outsiders much to me, and they are almost certainly related to elves. Too many of thier names have variants of alfar in them to be otherwise.

Okay, so this sounds more like gnomes than dwarves in a lot of ways, but let’s roll with it. How can we make more magical dwarfs while keeping them dwarfy?

Anyone here knowledgeable about dwarves from other cultures, or have some really interesting tales on

dwarves are the only tace that can get a +4 on their stats and in addition they pick up medium armor, wespons, darkvision and some ribbon abilities. i think that is top tier

as far as thematics, that is campaign dependent but i think for most d&d campaigns the current stereotypes fit well.

 

[Vaalingrade]

As miners, the element they most revere shouldn't be earth. Earth is common. It's all around. We take the metal from the earth. Water also abounds beneath the ground, as does fire.

No, dwarves should be masters of precious air; becoming adept at controlling ventilation, clearing dust, and following the breezes that snake through their subterranean cities which are akin to termite mounds in their ingenious air moving systems.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I’ve done some different things with dwarves:

1) in a post apocalyptic Homebrew, dwarves TPK the brains of the few Psionic members of their species and placed the in the humanoid war machines they had been commissioned to make for one of the major antagonists. They did this because their patrons had been wiped out, and most of the dwarves were lost as collateral damage. Known as “The Inheritors”, they remain culturally Dwarven, but their physical forms are anything but, (Essentially, reskinned Warforged, but with Dwarven cultural and skill blocks.)

2) in a different setting, Moradin blew life into his carvings, and called them Dwarves…but this lot continued to emulate their god. Dwarves reproduce asexually, by carving others out of stone and using magic rituals to bring them to life. The stone from which each is carved determined his preferred class. Iron ore would be a fighter, for instance; opal would be a sorcerer.

3) my River Folk (size S) were anthropomorphic snapping turtles, culturally drafted along the lines of certain halflings, but with certain abilities and attributes modified from dwarves. Making a size M variant out of anthropomorphic alligator snapping turtles would work just fine.

 

[Dire Bare]

Hey! Don’t get me wrong, Dwarves are cool. But…they’re at risk of getting a bit stale in D&D.

what if we went back to origins and rethought what a Dwarf can be?

For instance, and mind this ain’t a scholarly source because this ain’t an academic discussion, this article goes into just how ambiguous stories about dwarves are in Norse myth. Dwarves in Norse Mythology

Now I’ve done a decent amount of research on this topic over the years, myself, and yeah, Ivaldi is never said to fear the sun, nor the Bricings, nor Gandalfr, nor Alberich IIRC, nor the 4 who hold up the sky, etc, and none of them are described as short, either.

So perhaps a line of dwarves, Dvalin’s kin, fear the sun, while others simply live underground, and still others live in the forest.

What do Norse dwarves have in common?

Well, they’re very magical, for one.

For another they are excellent craftsfolk.

They seem to tend not to like outsiders much to me, and they are almost certainly related to elves. Too many of thier names have variants of alfar in them to be otherwise.

Okay, so this sounds more like gnomes than dwarves in a lot of ways, but let’s roll with it. How can we make more magical dwarfs while keeping them dwarfy?

Anyone here knowledgeable about dwarves from other cultures, or have some really interesting tales on them?

I think a good start is making dwarves, gnomes, and halflings the same race. Or connect them more closely like the eladrin-elf-drow split from 4E (bring that back too).

I like the dwarves of the Chainmail miniatures game, which took place in another part of Oerth (the World of Greyhawk). They were communists who had long ago overthrown their kings and managed a working communist society . . . the dwarven focus on work and craftsmanship married well with a simplistic view of communism.

There's also a lot of other fun, alternate dwarf cultures that have popped up over D&D's history. The dream dwarves, frost dwarves . . .

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I think a good start is making dwarves, gnomes, and halflings the same race. Or connect them more closely like the eladrin-elf-drow split from 4E (bring that back too).

I like the dwarves of the Chainmail miniatures game, which took place in another part of Oerth (the World of Greyhawk). They were communists who had long ago overthrown their kings and managed a working communist society . . . the dwarven focus on work and craftsmanship married well with a simplistic view of communism.

There's also a lot of other fun, alternate dwarf cultures that have popped up over D&D's history. The dream dwarves, frost dwarves . . .

I reeeally don’t like making the short folks one race. Gnomes and Dwarves, sure, but Halflings should stay separate.

I do like the communist dwarves, though.