Homebrew Race: Take That Laws of Nature!

[snowbard55]

Just something for a Homebrew I'm working on, I'm sure someone has done this before, but I would like some feedback; please and thankyou.

Half Dwarf
+2 Strength -2 Dexterity
Medium Size
Base Land Speed is 30 feet
Darkvision(out to 60 feet)
Dwarven Blood
+2 racial bonus on Concentration, Jump, and Climb checks.
+1 racial bonus on Intimidate checks.
+1 racial bonus on saves against poison.
Automatic Languages: Common and Dwarven. Bonus Languages: Any
Favored Class: Barbarian
LA: +0

Physical Description: Half-dwarves are actually sort of funny looking. They have a very dwarf-like upper body, but they have long human-like legs, creating the effect of someone chopping a dwarf's legs off and grafting on human ones. However, they trade style for function, as the longer legs allow for higher speed than dwarves. Their bulky build prevents them from being too dexterous. Hair and eye color is as diverse as humans. Males cannot help but grow long facial hair, but are actually low on body hair. Fashion varies depending on upbringing.

Personality: Half-Dwarves are somewhat anti-social and negative, due to their ostracised nature. However, they do believe in courtesy in civility, in most cases. However, they are not the most happy-go-lucky of races.

Lands: Half-Dwarves have no major kingdom of their own. They are most often found either in or around human and dwarven lands or, more often, in nomadic bands in the wilderness.

Relations: Half-Dwarves are capable of being polite to just about everyone. They got along the best with Humans, who are more open-minded. They also, obviously, get along well with Dwarves, but less so due to the Dwarves' unease with accepting the half-breeds as fellow dwarves. The only people Half-Dwarves don't get along too well are certain bands of Elves, mainly the upper class Elves who don't like much of anybody to begin with and see Dwarves, Gnomes, Halflings, and their kin in an especially bad light.

Language: Most Half-Dwarves only speak Common and Dwarf. More educated members of the race, however, can learn just about any language, due to inheritance of some of their Human parent's adaptability.

Alignment: Half-Dwarves tend more towards Chaos than Law due to their preferred way of life in the wilderness, although Lawfull members do exist.

Religion: Half-Dwarves are not especially religious by nature. They may worship any gods they were raised with, if raised by Human and/or Dwarf parents, but other than that they don't really actively worship.

Names: A Half-Dwarf's name can be anything from Human or Dwarven lands, and can sometimes be a combination there-of.
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That's about all I have right now. I made the Half-Dwarf as a replacement for Half-Orcs. I wanted something a little more civil that the stereo typical angry, stupid barbarian. Any feedback is appreciated.

[EDITS] Got rid of extra skill points and Strong Survivor. Added bonus on saves against poison.

[togapika]

Ummmm What????
Interesting to say the least, although most will probably say something about your decision to give them bonuses to skills in addition to the bonus skill points

[The Neoclassic]

I'm not sure why you chose to give them a Str bonus, given that neither humans nor dwarves have one. The Dex penalty at least makes sense given their ungainly appearance (though I would guess that offspring would have a more intergrated appearance, rather than dwarf on the top, human on the bottom- look at the other half-something races).

As far as the Survival thing, while I do like experimenting with using different bonuses for different checks and such, I don't see what the realistic basis would be for using Strength here. Wisdom is usually used because it represents awareness of one's environment, common sense for how to find food and not get eaten, etc. Strength won't help you find food or water, or maintain any awareness of your self or surroundings; it'd only be useful hitting rabbits you want to eat, and they are weak enough that once you get close to one or catch one, it doesn't really matter how strong you are.

Comparing half-dwarves with half-orcs and half-elves, I'd say that the extra skill points are uncalled for and tip this race towards being comparatively overpowered. Seriously? No. Enough so that you might as well remove them? Yes.

Finally, a note on the fluff: You mention that half-dwarves often live in the wilderness and hence prefer chaos to law more often than not? An explanation of why would be rather useful; dwarves tend to live underground or near the underground in close-knit communities and humans are the generally the world's foremost city builders. As long as humans and dwarves aren't seriously at odds with each other, I don't see why their children would be outcast (though they would certainly receive some discrimination within society). If the two races do hate each other that much, half-dwarves would be extraordinarily rare, enough so that I'd say it's unrealistic to expect there to be any bands or other sort of organization of them.

Interesting idea. My response may be slightly biased by my brief attempt at doing half-dwarves a while back, but I hope some of it turns out to be useful!

[snowbard55]

Thankyou both for the feedback. :smallbiggrin: I have removed the extra skill points because I can see how it makes the race overpowered, or boderline.

On the Survival ability, I can see how it doesn't really make sense. However, I added it as a flavor thing. I had an image of the Half-Dwarves being powerful nomads, running around and, using your actually very apt example, thwacking rabbits, and other things, on the head. Although, I can see its strangeness and will give some thought to changing around an ability.

On the subject of their stat bonuses, the have a Dex penalty because, as you mentioned, they are rather awkward an ungainly. The Str bonus is there due to what I pictured as greater upper body strength due to the particular combination of genes in a dwarf and human.

On the fluff, it is sort of hard to explain without a giant wall of text. But to cut it short I have changed some things for my setting. Dwarves don't live underground, but up in the mountains of the land's primary continent(or continents, I'm still tweaking things). As for racial relations, there is a lot of tension between the races, but due to the need for trade and mutual protection from various pirate and bandit factions, the races are forced to spend a lot of time together. Thus, it is not uncommon for Dwarves and Humans to come into contact, sometimes one thing leads to another and voila! However, it is viewed as shameful in enough places to have a Half-Dwarf child that there is a decent-sized Half-Dwarf population that was abondened in the wilderness. However, some areas would reagrd the abandonment as bad public relations with the other races, and thus raise their Half-Dwarf children, thus creating another good-sized population in the two parent race nations.

Again, I would like to thank everyone for their critiques and I hope this may have explained some of my "logic":smalltongue:

[Chrono22]

My friends and I always called half-dwarves the "hobos" of DnD.
Your version of the race fits that theme quite nicely.

[snowbard55]

My friends and I always called half-dwarves the "hobos" of DnD.
Your version of the race fits that theme quite nicely.

lol...I'm not sure if this is good or not:smallwink:

I suppose that would be a good way of looking at some of them...