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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MoogleEmpMog" data-source="post: 1999719" data-attributes="member: 22882">Where combat and dungeoneering are concerned, I would rank dwarves first by a wide margin, humans second, gnomes third, a gaping hole, then halflings, elves, half-elves and half-orcs (in the order) last.Dwarves are in many ways like druids - not only are they better at one thing, they're better at almost everything.  Dwarves have almost no disadvantages and significant advantages as eight of the eleven core classes: barbarians, clerics, druids, fighters, monks, rangers, rogues and wizards.  Despite having a disadvantage as paladins (lower Charisma), they end up with better saves, and hit points in place of superior lay on hands - even at worst.  Despite a hit to their primary casting stat, Cha, they are passable sorcerers, although much better wizards.  About the only class dwarves aren't good for is bard.In core, the dwarf reigns supreme, but he falls off as you expand into splats, becoming only slightly better than equal to the human at low levels.A human can get +2 to one save as his bonus feat; a dwarf has, in effect, +2 to all saves almost all the time, +1 to Fort saves all the time, and a stacking +2 to Fort saves some of the time.  Compared to saves, hit points and armor class are a total afterthought, and become more so with every passing level.However, the proliferation of effective feat trees (not the least of which are the more, well, exotic Exotic Weapon Proficiencies) do help humans.  Not only are these useful in and of themselves, they also help a human character to quickly gain a good PrC, and to dip multiple PrCs for useful abilities.Unfortunately, then you get back to the advantages dwarves have in qualifying for PrCs: they're dwarves.  Dwarven Defender, Deepwarden, Dwarf Paragon, Runecaster... dwarven racial PrCs are over the top excellent, much better than their elven equivalents.Moving on to non-core, orcs and warforged are also quite effective, although I would consider them inferior to dwarves and the former to humans as well.  Some of the elven subraces are quite good, but most still take a Con hit without getting save bonuses back.  Dwarf subraces, of course, add customizability to the extremely effective core dwarf, make for the best paladins, and make dwarven sorcerers and bards viable.Gnomes have a +2 Con and are small, which makes them defensive powerhouses and superb spellcasters.  Other than that, they'd be on the outside looking in, same as the other core races.</blockquote>

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