D&D General why are dwarves harder to think of varients for?

Dannyalcatraz · Aug 29, 2023

Staffan said:
The Swedish RPG Eon has dwarves with a very keen sense of balance. The upside is that it allows them to navigate relatively narrow ledges underground without much problem, but the downside is extreme susceptibility to motion sickness.

Just had a vision of heavily armored dwarves defying gravity a la various kinds of goats & sheep.

Imagine the horror of their enemies, navigating through passageways and caves towards a Dwarven settlement, when out of the darkness above, they hear “DEATH FROM ABOVE” in Dwarven!

Voadam · Aug 29, 2023

Dannyalcatraz said:
Just had a vision of heavily armored dwarves defying gravity a la various kinds of goats & sheep.

Yeah I was thinking mountain goat dwarves as well from that reference.

Dannyalcatraz said:
Imagine the horror of their enemies, navigating through passageways and caves towards a Dwarven settlement, when out of the darkness above, they hear “DEATH FROM ABOVE” in Dwarven!

Or rather "I am batdwarf" as a fully armored dwarven warrior swoops down on them.

Shardstone · Aug 29, 2023

Only due to lack of great examples.

Kurotowa · Aug 30, 2023

One direction I'd like to try taking dwarves sometime is to shift the emphasis of their social structure from clans to trade unions. A dwarf who doesn't work is no dwarf, and not being properly remunerated for your work is the deepest insult. So every dwarf joins the trade union for their chosen field of work, be it crafting or sanitation or military defense. And that union handles everything from training to promotion to juggling all the contracts between the different unions so that the results of their labor are properly distributed and paid for.

Basically, trying to downplay the "drunken Scottish Viking" idea down a bit, and play up the lawful and hard working elements more.

Aldarc · Aug 30, 2023

Scribe said:
It wouldnt be, it would be less so, as big or small as that difference is to you. If all else is equal, removing origin based ASI IS factually a decrease in differences between options. Its as simple as that.

Gaining a floating ASI is factually an increase in your range of options when customizing your character concept. It also means that there will be greater variation with every dwarf, which increases options overall. Simple as that as well. I call that a win.

Kurotowa said:
One direction I'd like to try taking dwarves sometime is to shift the emphasis of their social structure from clans to trade unions. A dwarf who doesn't work is no dwarf, and not being properly remunerated for your work is the deepest insult. So every dwarf joins the trade union for their chosen field of work, be it crafting or sanitation or military defense. And that union handles everything from training to promotion to juggling all the contracts between the different unions so that the results of their labor are properly distributed and paid for.

Basically, trying to downplay the "drunken Scottish Viking" idea down a bit, and play up the lawful and hard working elements more.

My hammer and sickle-wielding dwarven Forge cleric started a trade union.

Mind of tempest · Aug 30, 2023

bedir than said:
@Mind of tempest how many of these ideas are you going to run with?

no idea but it is better to have lots of ideas and only use the best or add some together than to be with out them.

Charlaquin said:
Of course it’s to do with our world. Art imitates life, which imitates art in a symbiotic cycle. Drizt was one of the first popular drow characters to significantly buck the trends of how drow were portrayed up until that point, which changed what was seen as possible for drow characters to be. That example was imitated over and over again, and eventually, people demanded more diversity from portrayals of drow as a whole, not just a bunch of individual exceptions. A big part of the reason it’s hard to create dwarf variants that still feel dwarvish is that this process hasn’t happened with dwarves.

broad structure you are right but Drizzt did not cause a grope of good dark elves who where not already a thing.
it was an inevitability that some one wanted a bad guy option and make it a popular good guy that it was made for a licensed product was more unique.

dwarves never seem to get a staring role as drizzt only really worked because he was a protagonist, and dwaves tend to not be protagonists

and lack much to distinguish the few types we have let alone craft a new one.

Vaalingrade said:
I mean dwarves are just... good how they are. Grumpy little diligent guys with beards and beer. It's hard to do variants because everything is a step down.

It's not like elves where the variation is how they're insufferably better than you, or humans where there's no uniformity, or halflings where people don't understand the point and keep trying to ruin it with edge.

The only improvement was making them grubby chaos goblins like in Dwarf Fortress.

okay can you make any of the few categories of dwarf we have feel in any way distinguishable from each other as we have two who have so few differences they could just be two different cities in a nation and the standard evil one can you make them cool and see a logical other direction dwarves could go past sticking them in a different environment?

Scribe · Aug 30, 2023

Aldarc said:
Gaining a floating ASI is factually an increase in your range of options when customizing your character concept. It also means that there will be greater variation with every dwarf, which increases options overall. Simple as that as well. I call that a win.

If one needs to min/max their stats to achieve their 'character concept', sure.

Incenjucar · Aug 30, 2023

Scribe said:
If one needs to min/max their stats to achieve their 'character concept', sure.

Will be the case as long as to-hit is gated by stats.

Scribe · Aug 30, 2023

Incenjucar said:
Will be the case as long as to-hit is gated by stats.

As long as folks admit its all about that +1, sure.

Voadam · Aug 30, 2023

Scribe said:
If one needs to min/max their stats to achieve their 'character concept', sure.

For the modern design concept of characters being mechanically balanced at combat I think it is better to have floating ASI or no ASI instead of hard wiring in some racial options as mechanically better or worse than others.

D&D General why are dwarves harder to think of varients for?

Dannyalcatraz

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