Andy Collins' "Personable Dwarves" Variant Rules from Dragon #308

[Oni]

I wouldn't do it. Constitution is far too important of a stat in 3e. Honestly I do not be believe any other one stat has as much effect on the survivability of a character as Con.

Let's take your typical dwarven fighter, throw him in heavy armour and give him a big whalloping shield who cares about dex.

And while all the saving throws are important, face it reflex is less so than Will or Fort. There's not a whole lot of save or die reflex saves out there.

 

[paulewaug]

well I could be totally wrong but I seem to recall reading somewhere that Charisma will be the 'base/mod stat' for some of the Saves in 3.5 that Con was used as the base for in 3.0?

The one that comes to mind was-
recovery from Negative Energy Levels.

so if this issue is regarding 3.5, and this is true that could play along with the comment about Cha being "more important" than Con.


then again, like I said, I could be totally wrong?!

Also,
I have thought about house ruling a Dex mod rather than a Cha mod, so I am not opposed to this idea.
I don't think it's the most important change that could be made either though,
at this point I would probably just "put it out there" as an option to my players durring PC generation.

And we use Dwarves a lot
we are running 2 seperate campaigns right now and at one point in our last campaign we had 1 characer die and another left the group due to this death. (just the character not the player BTW) and both of those characters (a human and a 1/2orc) were replaced by dwarves.
A few sessions later another of our group (5 pcs at the time, this one was an elf) 'bought it' and he made up a Dwarf as well. (although he did die later and was going to make up another elf hehe)
(OT-one of the players left at this point and we stareted a new campaign, btw, all humans by DM decree)
in our other campaign we have 1 human, 2 elves, and 1 dwarf.
The dwarf just started his own "posse" by pickung up 2 dwarven followers...
what can I say?! IMHO Dwarves Rule!

 

[Gez]

Funny thing is, if you take the Rock Gnome and advance it to Medium size using the size increase rules of the Monster Manual, adjustments would become +2 Str, -2 Dex, +4 Con.

 

[Mercule]

Well, WotC is already setting the stage to balance it for you. As confirmed somewhat by their racial description in Urban Arcanna, dwarves receive a "Stability" feature that gives them +4 to resist bull rushes and trip opposed checks, but explicitly only when they're standing on the ground. As far as I can tell, they don't lose anything to balance that out, so a penalty to a couple of situations where dwarves don't have their feet firmly planted on the ground provides a workable symmetry.

In addition, they also gain Weapon Familiarity with the waraxe and urghosh. All these bonuses are irksome IMO since dwarves already had way more perks than the other races, without any real attempt at a balanced tradeoff.

Excellent. I really like the idea of making them more stable, too. I can see my homebrew dwaves getting better defined even as I type.

Unfortunately, I'm far from happy with the Weapon Familiarity rules. If you leave out the Ranger (and please do, I don't want to hijack this thread), that's the only thing that really annoys me about what I've heard of 3.5. There's absolutely no reason for it. It makes no sense from either a meta-game or an in-game point of view (Bastard sword is exotic to humans, but war axe is martial for dwarves? What?).

Since I think it's an absurd mechanic, it doesn't do much for balance in my game. In fact, I may have to do some rebalancing if WotC is trying to use it as a balancing mechanism.

 

[Felon]

Unfortunately, I'm far from happy with the Weapon Familiarity rules. If you leave out the Ranger (and please do, I don't want to hijack this thread), that's the only thing that really annoys me about what I've heard of 3.5. There's absolutely no reason for it. It makes no sense from either a meta-game or an in-game point of view (Bastard sword is exotic to humans, but war axe is martial for dwarves? What?). Since I think it's an absurd mechanic, it doesn't do much for balance in my game. In fact, I may have to do some rebalancing if WotC is trying to use it as a balancing mechanism.

Yes, I have to agree that weapon familiarity is a patently stupid idea. I listened to Ed Stark's interview on Mortality Radio waiting to hear this point addressed. It was brought up, but Ed never actually provided a concrete reason for tacking it on.

 

[DWARF]

Anyone else run a game where "balance" isn't the most important thing?

 

[Felon]

Anyone else run a game where "balance" isn't the most important thing?

lol, sure, you're unbiased on this thread's topic, right?

I imagine most people run a campaign where balance isn't the number-one priority. But hopefully the deem it important enough to deserve some attention.

 

[Wormwood]

Anyone else run a game where "balance" isn't the most important thing?

I have no idea what you are talking about

And a quick point regarding Familiarity: It remains the single 3.5 rule that has me confused. It adds nothing for flavor (we already know that Dwarves like Axes and Hammers) and actually *removes* balance.

One of the cool things about 3e is that all weapons are, by and large, equal within their subsets. Exotic weapons are almost always statistically superior to their Martial and Simple counterparts. By allowing Dwarves access to an Exotic Weapon (Waraxe) as if it were Martial (Battleaxe), you are effectively saying that no Dwarf would ever use a battleaxe.

Which is kind of odd if their goal was to reinforce the 'Dwarves like Axes' thing.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

So, he's suggesting +4 Con, -2 Dex?

Yeah, that's balanced.

I could see +2 Con, -2 Dex, but not +4.

Incidentally, I like playing dwarves, but I find their biggest drawback isn't the Cha hit but their movement. Since the character's usually in medium or heavy armor, it takes a long time to get anywhere with a 15 foot movement rate.

 

[Storminator]

Excellent. I really like the idea of making them more stable, too. I can see my homebrew dwaves getting better defined even as I type.

Unfortunately, I'm far from happy with the Weapon Familiarity rules. If you leave out the Ranger (and please do, I don't want to hijack this thread), that's the only thing that really annoys me about what I've heard of 3.5. There's absolutely no reason for it. It makes no sense from either a meta-game or an in-game point of view (Bastard sword is exotic to humans, but war axe is martial for dwarves? What?).

Since I think it's an absurd mechanic, it doesn't do much for balance in my game. In fact, I may have to do some rebalancing if WotC is trying to use it as a balancing mechanism.

I don't think balance had anything to do with it. I think they just want Urgoshes to be used. Has anyone seen one in a game? Same with the DWA. Cool weapons no one touches.

And in terms of balance, the elven proficiencies are worse. At least with Weapon Familiarity it only applies to classes that have MWP. I'm sick of low level elven wizards that are more effective archers than spell casters.

PS