Dwarven Subrace, underpowered, overpowered or okay?

[Moe Ronalds]

I'm making a new dwarven subrace that I play on letting my players play. They're kinda like the Amish (very religious and hard workers, shun magic rather than technology), except every once in a while one will leave his community and become an adventurer. So far they're like normal dwarves as far as Race Attributes go, but with two differences.

+4 Con, -2 Cha
Favored Class-- Commoner

Any advice??

 

[Wolf72]

my guess this is gonna be teleported to house rules ...

but instead of fav class: commoner ... how about fav class: none.

npc classes do not incur xp penalties anyway

that's a fairly big jump in stats you have there ... but I don't think it requires an ECL

you might want to drop a couple of dwarf combat abilities too, that'd help compensate.

 

[Omegium]

I think it's a bit too strong. A net +2 on stats is too much, and if you only let it be corrected by a favored class, something you don't even have to use, its really overpowered. Maybe it's my style, but I seldomly multiclass (except for prestige classes), and this would be THE race for a mage or a cleric. If you are one of those classes you don't want to multiclass anyway.

 

[JacktheRabbit]

There is also the question. Why are these dwarves tougher than normal dwarves? It cannot be from being harder workers. I think everyone pretty well considers dwarves to be workaholics.

 

[Wicht]

If they, as a race shun magic even more than normal dwarves, balance it with a penalty to using magic of some sort. That would IMO be the obvious solution. Or perhaps give a penalty to intelligence.

 

[Moe Ronalds]

I thought about not allowing them to take spell casting classes, but that seemed a bit too limiting.

 

[CRGreathouse]

npc classes do not incur xp penalties anyway

Since when?

 

[Wicht]

I thought about not allowing them to take spell casting classes, but that seemed a bit too limiting.

If they are very religious they should have no penalties playing a cleric, but if they as a race have nothing to do with arcane magic than you could limit them only in some way in relationship to arcane magic (i.e. intelligence or a flat out prohibition of some sort.)

 

[Moe Ronalds]

Does this work then?

Favored class:Cleric
Prohibited Class: Sorcerer, can't be Wizard until 5th level
Ability Modifier: +4 Con, -2 Charisma

 

[Wolf72]

um? (good call)

Since when?

could be mistaken ... but I thought it was part of a Sage Advice. I am pretty sure that he did specifically come out and say that Prestige Classes do not count v. xp penalties ... and I thought that also applied to NPC classes as well.