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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DragonTurtle" data-source="post: 2620620" data-attributes="member: 26206">Hammer of the Dwarven Lords is an 87 page bookmarked pdf in portrait style with a color cover and black and white illustrations. The interior art  is good and matches the contents of the book. I have the impression, and it may be wrong that in many campaigns dwarves are heavily inspired by Scottish and Norse cultures. This book does a lot of the homework for those that feel that their dwarves should come from a similar background. The book then breaks the mold by modeling a 3rd race on the Mongol horde. You won’t find any hill dwarves or mountain dwarves in this book, instead three new clans are described. The book doesn’t include any stats for theses dwarves, and the ones from the PHB should do well, except you may feel like tweaking a few things, such as giving the nomadic dwarves a bonus to ride and handle animals instead of crafting for example.Chapter 1: The Painted Dwarves- very Pict like dwarves that tattoo themselves in clan colors. It feels like a mix of Scottish highlanders and Picts for the culture. The dwarves live in clans that each have their own color that they display in clothing and flags.Chapter 2: The Hallvring, the Reaving Dwarves- These dwarves are seafaring Viking like dwarves. They even believe in a Valhalla like afterworld. Chapter 3: The Khura, the Steppe Dwarves- These are the mongol like dwarves. They usually attack anyone that comes into their lands and so they can play the antagonist in a campaign if so desired.Chapter 4: Dwarven Gods-  This chapter discusses possible archetypes that the dwarven gods might follow, names such as the Hearth Lord and the Judge, seem to be only place holders for the DM to change to specific gods in his campaign. This is a nice touch which allows the DM to really customize the information and pick and choose roles that he wants.Chapter 5: Equipment- Starts off with Arms and Armor, which is probably a requirement in each racial book. The weapons and armor are not your stereotypical dwarven arms as they really are put here to expand on the racial types described in the earlier chapters. This means you will get stats for the Clachduin Knife which every painted dwarf gets upon reaching adulthood and other weapons that match the various tribes. You also get some alchemical items, and a number of alcoholic beverages. The drinks all have an in game effect which can be ignored or used as per DMs preference. I like the fact that each type of brew has a number of brand names. This will really help DMs whose players spend a lot of time in taverns, Dwarven spirits just got a lot less generic.The last section of this chapter deals with magical items, quite a few interesting items, including a bow that allows you to effect your allies with the rage spell as long as your willing to shoot them with an arrow.Chapter 6: Magics of the Dwarves- Starts with magical tattoos known as Pellidgeis and some feats allowing crafters to create them. You also get 2 new domains, Stone and Sea which seem balanced. The chapter ends with almost 50 new spells.Chapter 7: Dwarven Wrestling- Introduces a number of grapple feats for those wanting to master dwarven style wrestling, an interesting chapter that adds a lot of flavor to dwarven pastimes and competitions.Chapter 8: NPC and Prestige Classes. First is the Slonelecta who is a midwife and healer for the painted dwarves, a nice variation of the adept class. Seyders appear to be more powerful bards, using a fighter’s BAB and d8 hitdice, while still getting full progression in Bardic Music and Bardic Spells. The only balancing issue I see is the reduction of skill points to 4 a level. I feel that this class is unbalanced especially since it is mentioned as a NPC class. The new PrCs are listed below, the requirements almost all include a required base save, I am not a big fan of this requirement as muticlassing can allow a +6 base save at 3rd level. I would suggest tweaking skills to ensure that the character must be at least 5th level to take the class.Alpine Ascetic- A dwarven monk, howeve nothing in its requirements require it to have any levels in monk. I would replace the Will save requirement with something such as the still mind class feature. This class also has some spell casting ability.Hearthbreaker- An assassin that specializes in killing other dwarves. An interesting class that doesn’t have to be evil.Mountainheart-A spellcaster who gains powers from the mountains themselves, full spellcasting abilities and higher BAB and Hitdice for most arcane casters, so a look at balance is suggested. For Druids the class is probably ok as they would stop progressing in wildshape and would actually decrease in hitdice.Pyroclastic Celebrant- Pretty much the same argument that I used above, class abilities every level, plus full spellcasting and higher BAB and Hitdice. For a class designed for arcane casters it is not well balanced.Soulsick Slayer- A fallen priest or paladin that continues to gain some divine power.Vault Cracker-A dwarf specializing in bypassing traps.Overview: I like the alternate takes on dwarven culture, and if you are looking for a way to separate your dwarves form those in the PHB, this is a good resource. While I agree that new dwarven subraces don’t need new mechanics, I do feel that tweaking should be done if racial abilities no longer make sense. The Viking dwarves for example don’t need stone cunning and may benefit from another advantage instead, however the book never points this out and I think even a sidebar giving possible changes would be nice. I also feel that the PRCs could have been designed for some of the individual dwarven races described in this book. While the options here are interesting they really apply to standard dwarves and not the races presented here. In conclusion this is an interesting book on dwarves and is a great starting ground for DMs to use when creating their dwarven races. I give this book a 4, only to those looking for non PHB like dwarves.</blockquote>

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