D&D General I miss Mountain Dwarfs

[Xeviat]

I miss every species having subraces. The lineage/Ancestries of Tieflings and Elves are great, but I wonder why they dropped them from Dwarves and Halflings. Humans could even have Elven ancestry, Orcish ancestry, dragon ancestry...

Starting with Mountain Dwarves, what would you give them? Strength and Armor proficiency are right out.

 

[jmartkdr2]

If you want subraces, you’re going to need to add something major to dwarven lore. We don’t want to make ability score adjustments for skin tone or beard style (which seems to be the only differences between gold and shield dwarves, and that’s actually more intrinsic difference than Dragonlance dwarves get).

I’ve considered adding strong elemental themes (fire dwarves, stone dwarves, ice dwarves, wood dwarves, etc). The only downsides are running out of elements and the fact that there’s already three major races with strong elemental themes so it’s not enough to make them stand out by itself.

If you’re not willing to use magic, your options are even more limited.

 

[Oofta]

The fact that we're down to 1 version of mountain dwarves but still have (at least) 3 variations of elves is annoying.

As far as specifics? Give me a few days until I have access to the new PHB since I'm not sure we have all the specifics unless I missed it. But at the moment they seem like they really lost out on just about everything that made them fun to play. Maybe bonus weapon proficiency or fighting style, not sure.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I miss every species having subraces. The lineage/Ancestries of Tieflings and Elves are great, but I wonder why they dropped them from Dwarves and Halflings. Humans could even have Elven ancestry, Orcish ancestry, dragon ancestry...

Starting with Mountain Dwarves, what would you give them? Strength and Armor proficiency are right out.

I would use Level Up's system for mixing heritage gifts and traits.

 

[Minigiant]

Hill Dwarves get +1 HP per level

Mountain Dwarves can change any one saving throw into a Con saving throw once per long rest.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'm a big fan of dwarves, but separating them by how high of a mountain they lived inside was weird. It's apparently from Tolkien, but that doesn't make it necessarily something worth emulating -- we don't have a special stat block for treantwives, for instance.

I think mountain dwarves are a place where the 2024 books would have benefited by splitting culture off from species and background, as A5E and ToV have done, since their differences are more likely be cultural than "well, you live under an especially big rock, so therefore, you're physically different in these ways."

In my own campaign, there is a 3E-legacy split in the types of dwarves, with more urban mountain dwarves and hill dwarves who fit into Appalachian stereotypes. (It turns out there's a lot of crossover between hard drinking, family feuding and digging after valuable stuff in the earth among both groups.)

If I were going to mechanically represent that in 5E, I'd probably have the Grail (urban/mountain) dwarves have free proficiency with heavy armor. Barring that, I would have them suffer fewer penalties from armor generally.

 

[Minigiant]

I think part of the problem is the humanization of dwarves over time in many fantasy worlds.

Dwarfs are just small people who have poison resistance in many games or a minor resistance to magic. They don't feel like a whole new species of thing that have their own new real features.

So when dwarves are treated more like a split off of humanity there's not that much to grasp on to separate them into several different subspecies once culture is removed.

When dwarfs have a bit of supernaturalness or at least abnormality in their physiology For example having natural geomantic power or being able to turn into stone or metal, There is something that you can now gauge.

Mountain dwarves can have more of it whereas the hill dwarf could be more humanlike. Mountain Dwarves couldn't be stone and hill dwarfs can be steel and volcano dwarves can be lava.

But if you just make them stout human, there's nothing to go on.

Edit: Fixed errors

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think part of the problem is the humanization of dwarves over time in many fantasy worlds.

Doors are just small people who have poison resistance in many games or a minor resistance to magic. They don't feel like a whole new species of thing that have their own new real features.

So when dwarves are treated more like a split off of humanity there's not that much to grasp on to separate them into several different subspecies once culture is removed.

When dwarfs have a bit of supernaturalness or at least abnormality in their physiology For example having natural geomantic power or being able to turn into stone or metal, There is something that you can now gauge.

Mountain dwarves can have more of it whereas the hill dwarf could be more humanlike. Mountain Dwarves couldn't be stone and hill dwarfs can be steel and volcano dwarves can be lava.

But if you just make them stout human, there's nothing to go on.

This is why removing the cultural aspects of characters was, IMO, a terrible idea, and why I'm so happy Level Up kept and greatly expanded upon it.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

When dwarfs have a bit of supernaturalness or at least abnormality in their physiology For example having natural geomantic power or being able to turn into stone or metal, There is something that you can now gauge.

World of Warcraft's newest playable race, the earthen, are dwarf-shaped stone constructs (actually the ancestors of dwarves, because fantasy).

They're also rigidly hierarchical and the decision of whether or not to adhere to the "edicts" that were literally coded into them thousands of years ago by gods whose servitor they gave the heave-ho to at some point after that is one of the biggest cultural fault lines among their people.

They're extremely dwarfy while also being recognizably not humans in funny suits, being closer to robots who like beer or silicon-based life forms.

 

[Minigiant]

This is why removing the cultural aspects of characters was, IMO, a terrible idea, and why I'm so happy Level Up kept and greatly expanded upon it.

Removing cultural aspects from characters wasn't a bad idea.

The issue is not replacing them with anything and then using a mindset of old fantasy where people are humanocentric and thus turning those species into humans.

It's like playing Vampire The Masquerade and playing a clanless character who doesn't have a clan bane nor any vampiristic weaknesses or strengths. You're just a boring Caitiff or thin blood who acts like a human. Boring.