Duergar Article

[TerraDave]

I am almost seeing a gradual rebound in quality.





Almost.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Actually, there was a fiendish dwarf creature in 3E, whose name I can't remember, that got "merged" with the duergar concept for 4E. That's where all the fiendishness and beard quills came from.

Not everybody appreciated the change to a classic D&D creature, but I dig it.

Can I be so bold as to ask you to explain how/why? What is cool about beard quills? Do they just fall into that whole "D&D can sometimes be wacky, now go kill flumphs with your facial hair, you crazy helldwarf!" bracket? I like modrons, so I can grok that different people have different, arbirary calibrations for "too frickin' goofy."

I mean, I think they were goofy on the barbazu, and in the 3e monster, too. The devils get a mild pass from me (they're goofy, but in one monster out of over 5,000, it's easily overlookable), but I wonder if I'm honestly not appreciating some subtle way in which a sword-n-sorcery hedgehog is truly the stuff of awesome.

Unless you just mean the whole "helldwarf" angle is cool? In which case I'd broadly agree, though I've got plenty of quibbles with this particular angle on the helldwarf. But really, I'm interested in finding out what people <3 about those beard quills, since they're the thing that I can't easily swallow.

 

[mattcolville]

The whole beard quills thing is odd, but I assumed it was because they were creating a greater connection to "bearded devils", which have been around for quite some time and all that.

Ie, the whole duergar <-> durzagon <-> barbazu circle of "life".

Everyone's goofy-meter pegs at different places.

Though certainly, for me, my red line is somewhere to the left of "dwarves with metal quills for beards that drip poison."

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm thinking I'm going to at least give them a peripheral role here in my next story arc. There's a mountain labeled on my oldest maps within 40 miles that is a duergar settlement, and there's even a tale that explains how it got there. Wouldn't it be nice if they decided to show up? hehe. Quills and all, we'll just have some fun with that...

 

[Dire Bare]

Can I be so bold as to ask you to explain how/why?

Shrug. I think that the revamped 4E duergar concept only gains with the fiendishness. They are more distinct from standard dwarves then they were before, they have more backstory, and . . . I just find it cool. The new duergar has everything the old duergar had, plus more. It also reduces "creature bloat" by taking two "evil dwarf" concepts and merging them into one. 3E got a little crazy with the many varieties of planetouched, IMO.

The beard quills are a physical difference that stands out. If I'm your DM, and I describe a somewhat standard dwarf, but with a more greyish cast to its skin . . . . meh, not much of a standout. But that same dwarf with reddish, metallic quills throughout it's hair? That's a difference that stands out and makes me remember the creature . . . it's a hook. Plus, I just don't find the idea goofy. Or, at least, no more goofy than anything else you'll find in D&D. Quills are, after all (biologists correct me) in the same "class" as hair and occur within hair/fur in real world animals.