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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 3939277" data-attributes="member: 2067">Y'know, I'm a bit with Pawsplay on this one. I liked the Duergar because they weren't "in your face!" evil. They were quietly, selfishly, insularly evil, an example of the sort of everyday cruelty you find amongst humans in your own neighborhood. Cold, distant, pitiless, they would smile as you starved and they would kick you for begging. They were a quiet, icy-stare kind of evil that sent chills down your spine rather than claws in your chest. Their powers of invisibility and growth just added to their deceptions, and their schtick of being hardcore craftsmen lent them a sort of Industrial Revolution kind of villainy: any price, any labor, all fuel for the fire of the physical object. They were potential: short things that could grow immense, the invisible sounds of scuffling on the stones behind you, the sense that maybe the blade you wield has a much higher price than gold attatched to it...I imagined them as Gray in the "dark, dismal, clouded, hard" kind of motif. Grey like the stone, cold like metal, evil like a stereotypical Big Corporation is evil, crushing all beneath it without regard to sympathy or emotion, pursuing the goal of gold above all. Gray dwarves were what happened when a dwarf valued money over friendship, family, and clan. This change seems to take them away from that insidious level of wickedness into a more XTREME DEVIL BLARGH. Which kind of sucks. It's not like there's not enough devil-dealing whatsis out there who grow spikes and shoot fire from their bums.Let's see where I'd take the Duergar, if I had my druthers...[sblock]As An Adversary: Two things should emerge in combat with a Duergar: their finely crafted goods, and their deceptive quiet. Duergar should make good Defenders. They are, after all, dwarves. The giant growth would be their main thing here. However, they should also have great stealth skills. Think armor that doesn't make noise when they move, and that is gray like the stone. This plays in with their Invisibility angle. They watch you like a thousand invisible eyes, and they form something of a wall of potential intimidation. If you fight a Deurgar, you should never know where the next attack is coming from, and they should be as hard to penetrate as solid stone. High AC. High HP. Decent Dex. Good Sneak skill. Powers related to stealth, defense, and, of course, the ability to grow large and lay the smack down (perhaps even make that available after being bloodied).As An Ally: Outside of the party, their goods should be very valuable. Duergar weapons are better than most dwarf's, duergar armor is smoother, less noisy. The efficiency is rutheless -- it invites you to use it, and spares nothing on decoration or embellishment. When teaming up with a Duergar in an encounter, they should be your silent pair of eyes on the other side of the enemy, ready to spring out and deal with them in rutheless efficiency. Duergar should make good fighters, and their racial abilities should focus on making them *stealthy* fighters. NOT Fighter/Rogues. We don't want them leaping all over the battlefield and pulling out Sneak Attacks, necesarily. We want them to lurk in the darkness, invisible, and then spring out all of a sudden, giant-sized, a wall you didn't even know was there. As Anybody: Duergar fill the role of the "fallen dwarf." They have become too insular -- they have become pitiless. They have become too greedy -- their materials are all that matter to them now. They have become too deep underground -- now they are part of the shadow and the stone. Whereas the Drow are ostentatious decadence, the Deurgar are reserved simplicity. They are the Pilgrims' harshest punishments. The dour faces of American Gothic. The hard life, the stony heart, the cold metal. They lurk deep underground, banished from the halls of those dwarves who still know the value of a heart and a soul, who have not offered their beings to the dark deapths of greed, of cruelty, and of isolated distance. They serve as a lesson for the other dwarves of the world: if gold or forgecraft is all that matters to you, if you cannot care for your family and your clan and your friends, if you forget the songs of the beerhalls and the warm roar of a fire and the smiles and laughter of a feast....you have become duergar, Gray, pitiless....[/sblock]I mean, I don't really MIND them having an attatchment to a devil. It's totally in-character. But it seems that the design is going a little too far afield, a little gee-whiz, bang-zoom-pow, now they have BLOOD RED SKIN and SHARP CLAWS and FIERY BREATH and SPIKEY BEARDS and they can LAUGH MANIACALLY!In an adventure, I can easily relegate this to a quirk of a particular clan. That's fine with me. I'd hate to totally loose the idea of "The Gray Dwarf" though, and trading it out for "The Devil Dwarf" seems a bit like it's been done before with a hundred other humanoids.</blockquote>

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