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Thread: Dwarves aren't cool anymore
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2024-02-02, 07:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dwarves aren't cool anymore
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2024-02-02, 07:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dwarves aren't cool anymore
I mean, there are a LOT of races in D&D. A lot. Oodles. Just pick and choose what works for your worldbuilding. You can omit a lot of races, yes, even core races, when doing your world design. Yes, even humans if it works for you.
The same with classes.
You have a very large palette to work with. You don't need to use all of them. You don't even have to use the ones that came in the core, and indeed... you probably shouldn't. Not because they're bad, but because there's just so much material to work with."We were once so close to heaven, Peter came out and gave us medals declaring us 'The nicest of the damned'.."
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2024-02-02, 07:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dwarves aren't cool anymore
Massive, broad chested, rugged beings with wonderfully ornate armor and weapons. Woven, braided and flowing hair. Runes, sigils, woad...all things that differentiate them from the short, fat neckbeard aesthetic. These aren't halflings! I understand what you're saying. So we just need to make sure the images are less Gimli and slice-of-life dwarves and more GW dwarves, or fighting-video-game style dwarves.
4'8" in all directions with a cartoonishly large axe and Liefield-esque armor screams bad-a$$.
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2024-02-02, 09:40 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dwarves aren't cool anymore
For the record I literally just rolled up a BG3 Half-Elf who's doing all of this, none of this is exclusively the purview of dwarves. Not massive or broad chested, admittedly, but that's because Elf, if I'd gone with a Human or Half-Orc I easily could have.
The problem is that they kind of are? Or rather that the differences between them aren't physical, they're cultural. A Halfling who grows out their beard and trains with heavy weapons and armour is going to feel like a Dwarf, a Dwarf who shaves and does sneaky rogue stuff is going to feel like a Halfling.Last edited by Errorname; 2024-02-02 at 09:42 PM.
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2024-02-02, 11:20 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dwarves aren't cool anymore
To be fair, they're already doing that - for example, Ravnica doesn't have dwarves minus the odd multiversal interloper, and Theros is missing dwarves AND elves.
So... Azers?
A lot of Duergar are pretty much what evil, well, ruthless/opportunistic dwarves would be like.
Yeah, the new core is going to have lots of options for broad-chested characters besides Dwarves - Orcs, Goliaths, Dragonborn, Humans, Tieflings, and half-versions of all of these.Plague Doctor by Crimmy
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2024-02-03, 12:53 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dwarves aren't cool anymore
You are right, but this could be addressed if dwarf mechanics dipped into the "natural connection with stones" themes D&D dwarves get. In the past dwarf warriors have been allowed to reshape the rocky battlefield. How much of that is cultural vs physical depends on how you interpret the dwarf's connection with stones. Are they a human that likes rocks, or are they kin to the earth.
For example a dwarf rogue could have very very very minor earthbending.
A: Stone yielding to their touch like firm clay to ours.
B: 5ft tremor sense.
But instead dwarf species mechanics give cultural features like weapon proficiency.
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2024-02-03, 01:38 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dwarves aren't cool anymore
I think that's just part of how the fantasy Dwarf has evolved. They aren't spirits of the earth anymore, they're short dudes who have big beards, big axes and big livers. I don't actually know if you could give D&D Dwarves inherent earthbending powers and have it feel right.
If you were making your own setting, I think you could go back to the source and build out something different and new, but it wouldn't feel like a dwarf to people. Like if you built a fantasy setting and you leaned into the idea of Dwarves as creatures of earth and stone, and the theory that "Svartálfar/Dark Elves" in Norse Myth might be meant to be dwarves, I don't think people would recognize them as Dwarves. I realized while writing this that this might not even be a hypothetical either, I'm starting to think this was the thought process behind the Dredge from Banner Saga, and even though they're a subterranean race with a gift for shaping stone whose women have big stone mustaches I've never seen anyone make that connection, although admittedly Dredge draw a lot on the Jotnar as well, including being quite large, which makes any Dwarven influence easier to miss.
Maybe a better example would be Elder Scrolls, because while the Dredge = Dwarf connection is kind of a stretch and even if true requires a few asterisks, the Dwemer = Dwarf connection is undeniable. Dwemer are a cool take on Dwarves, and they're a pretty reasonable interpretation of the folkloric version into the Elder Scrolls setting that is a very stark departure from the stock Tolkienesque Dwarf. They're cool and they work really well in the context of the Elder Scrolls and they're very memorably distinct from the stock Dwarf, but also nobody would be happy if the next edition changed D&D Dwarves to be more like the Dwemer.
Ultimately people do like the classic fantasy Dwarf. It may not be as popular as it was in the past, but I don't think if in the next player handbook they radically changed what a Dwarf looked like it or gave them brand new poers, I don't think it would make anyone happy. It's sort of a limited archetype, but in the context of D&D I don't think it needs to be fixed.Last edited by Errorname; 2024-02-03 at 01:45 AM.
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2024-02-03, 09:58 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dwarves aren't cool anymore
Of course you could, because all races in D&D are humans with sufficiently bumpy foreheads.
Which is actually why I like that "the dwarf" is a strongly defined image, because that that is why I would actually use the fantasy race, for a strong image as a base (then spice as appropriate for the story). If I want something nice and open ended, I'd just use humans.
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2024-02-03, 10:21 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dwarves aren't cool anymore
I am going to press X to Doubt on this one. Varric from Dragon Age is pretty close to this but his vibe feels off for halfling.
Most differences between species in D&D are cultural. Just about all of them fit into human ranges and the natural variation in them will lead to similar indistinctions. In the one D&D material a medium sized halfling and small sized human are both doable.My sig is something witty.
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2024-02-03, 10:48 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dwarves aren't cool anymore
Liefeld-esque? Totally inaccurate. They have visible feet and no pockets.
The stereotypical dwarf is very masc-presenting... beards, big hands, strong arms. I have to wonder if part of the declining popularity of dwarves doesn't tie back to the broadening of the fanbase. The stereotypical gamer of the 70s-80s looked like a dwarf, or wanted to when they grew up. Heck, I'm one of those guys, and I still kinda dream about being able to braid my beard. However, since the mid-90s, especially, the population of RPG-players has broadened, and it broadened again with 3.x, and again with 5e. The percentage of gamers for whom the traditionally masc dwarf was aspirational reduced... even if you had 100 players who wanted to look like a dwarf in 1974 and 2024, in 1974 that was 100 out of 1000, instead of 100 out of 10,000.The Cranky Gamer
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2024-02-03, 11:25 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dwarves aren't cool anymore
I would argue that the 'problem' with Dwarves is that they have insufficiently bumpy foreheads, they're so close to human that they're extremely reliant on the stock Dwarf traits to make them feel like themselves.
I don't fully disagree, but I do think that in a D&D context with a completely unchanged design he could easily pass muster as a Halfling.
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2024-02-03, 02:07 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dwarves aren't cool anymore
Size is an important difference there. I think a lot of people don't realize exactly how short 3' is. An average kindergartener in the US is 3'6". Especially since they are now mostly skinny (instead of fat hobbits), halfings are tiny. That's short enough that most doorknobs are above their eye level. In a modern human home, they couldn't reach most lightswitches without jumping. That's short enough to run between a tall human's legs WITHOUT DUCKING.
Dwarves are short, but not THAT short.
On a side note, what do people think of the new "Any race can be any height" thing? I know that in the new edition you can play 7' halfings and 3' humans, but is anybody actually planning on doing that? Especially for the races where their small size is one of their defining features.
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2024-02-03, 03:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dwarves aren't cool anymore
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2024-02-03, 04:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dwarves aren't cool anymore
(The above are merely some relevant posts snatched for context.)
Two things:
1. racial monocultures are stupid and their face is stupid; "Dwarven culture is boring" is a self-imposed problem;
2. if one uses 5e's "all should deliberately made pretty much the same with maybe cosmetic differences" design philosophy as a benchmark, everything without a hideously overdone rubber forehead will look the same as everything else, but that's not a Dwarves problem; that's a 5e problem. Meanwhile in 3.5, we have:
Hill/Deep/Mountain/Gold Dwarves, the Dwarves as you know them;
Duergar, industrious and Lawful, but far less hairy, stealthy, magical and more sinister Dwarves;
Badland Dwarves, adapted to a desert habitat and mining for water (and having innate Watersense for that), creating logistical hubs for travellers;
Dream Dwarves, contemplative Dwarves so in tune with earth that they can tap into a shared subconscious mediated through it, the "earth dream" that lets them see into the spirit world;
Arctic Dwarves, cold-adapted, semi-barbaric survivalists, Small in size but strong as an Orc;
Urdunnirs, grey-skinned, silver-eyed Dwarves with high-powered magic, able to Stone Shape at-will and walk through stone and metal as though it were water;
Wild Dwarves, Small but broad forest-dwellers, sneaky, but durable as a true Dwarf and supremely capable at weathering and using poison (and disease);
Fireblodd Dwarves, volcanic Dwarves formerly enslaved by Red Dragons, resistant to heat and fire and born with the skill to battle Dragons;
Ice Dwarves, former Duergar that resided with and served Frost Giants on a frigid outer plane and were shaped by it;
Midgard Dwarves, shaped like and possessing the temperament of Dwarves, but in truth, strange Outsiders and the ultimate craftspeople, capable of creating just about any magic item
And the list goes on.
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2024-02-03, 04:32 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dwarves aren't cool anymore
You're correct that it's self-imposed - but there's still an interesting question as to why the devs have felt the need to impose it on themselves this long. Or perhaps more accurately, why the playerbase's expectations for the expression of "dwarf" has imposed it on them.
As per usual, genuinely holding this belief requires either ignorance or willful disregard of the actual mechanical features of 5e species. They are not just cosmetically different, not by a longshot.
Aren't several of these monsters, i.e. Dwarves in name only? The OP is very clear that they're talking about Dwarf PCs. Midgard Dwarves and Urdunnir for example are well above the CR expected to be playable in most campaigns.
If you're throwing "dwarf-shaped monsters" into the mix then every edition can have a lot of dwarven variety.Plague Doctor by Crimmy
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2024-02-03, 04:54 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dwarves aren't cool anymore
There's no reason you couldn't just use the fluff and make a lower-level statblock.
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2024-02-03, 05:05 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dwarves aren't cool anymore
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2024-02-03, 05:07 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dwarves aren't cool anymore
What do you think that reason is? I doubt it is specific to Dwarves, at any rate, seeing how "racial monoculture" is the default assumption of the developers for literally anything barring Humans.
As per usual, genuinely holding this belief requires either ignorance or willful disregard of the actual mechanical features of 5e species. They are not just cosmetically different, not by a longshot.
Aren't several of these monsters, i.e. Dwarves in name only? The OP is very clear that they're talking about Dwarf PCs. Midgard Dwarves and Urdunnir for example are well above the CR expected to be playable in most campaigns.
If you're throwing "dwarf-shaped monsters" into the mix then every edition can have a lot of dwarven variety.
EDIT: Oh, and the Urdunnir is labeled as a race, rather than a monster. It is primarily meant or at least considered suitable for player use.Last edited by Metastachydium; 2024-02-03 at 05:09 PM.
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2024-02-03, 05:11 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dwarves aren't cool anymore
I mean yes, this is a HUGE issue with races. Strip the culture from a race and look at just the stat block. Does that stat block have a place? Is the stat block going to kneecap people thinking outside of the stereotype and thus possibly need a revision that further dilutes the stat block? Is that NEW stat block sufficiently unique to earn a place in the campaign?
I would argue that MOST races fall apart in that process somewhere, and "core" races shouldn't be exempt from the culling and refining stage.
You can have an extremely diverse world with one (1) race in it, where the different cultures are very different to the point that they are MORE distinct than the "core" races are from each other. It's not even hard.
The core races are basically just rubber stamping a certain relationship between a couple of nations that really haven't shown a big need for actual species traits; "proficiency with longbows" is a cultural trait and has no business being treated as genetic, it's more a trait of "people raised in a certain city". It starts to feel more like "No matter what world you make, it has to include Ireland, London, and France, and they have to be stereotypical as heck."
Dwarves' racial thing is the resistance to toxins and whatnot and their culture doesn't highlight it; if a city of dwarves was born without it, arguably nobody would really have reason to notice. They get radically different cultures with different settings and just... why do they earn a place on the map? Why do elves? Why can't you work from the level of building your cultures first, then slotting races in as fit best rather than the other way around?"We were once so close to heaven, Peter came out and gave us medals declaring us 'The nicest of the damned'.."
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2024-02-03, 05:26 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dwarves aren't cool anymore
Basically every core race has gotten these sort of subraces, because it's real easy to fill out a sourcebook with "Upland Temperate Rainforest Elves" or whatever. I don't think they're actually very useful, and they only make the racial monoculture issue worse by assigning variation that could be individual or cultural into a separate subrace.
It's a widespread problem, but within D&D I think Dwarves absolutely have it the worst. It's much easier to make Elf or Orc or Tiefling characters that break from the established monoculture and still feel like a member of their fantasy race.
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2024-02-03, 05:35 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dwarves aren't cool anymore
Except it's not. We even covered this earlier in the thread; Faerun elves are very different from Eberron elves which are very different from Ravnica Elves which are very different from Krynn elves etc. Same for Halflings and Orcs, and you yourself mentioned humans. Dwarves are a true outlier in terms of cross-setting consistency if not homogeneity.
I don't know what else to tell you other than you're wrong. Variation does not have to be tied to fixed ASIs or slow movement to be meaningful, and that's really all 5e did away with.
Well again, by that logic anything vaguely dwarf-shaped is a dwarf too, which means Azers and Earthen and Primordial Dwarves and Dwarf-Aasimars all count too. In which case 5e has nearly as much variation as 3.5e and the artificial edition barriers you're pointing to don't mean anything.
This too. I'd rather represent "Arctic Dwarf" and "Jungle Dwarf" with a background or starting feat than have two dozen different subraces for everything. 5e's approach was the right one.Last edited by Psyren; 2024-02-03 at 05:36 PM.
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2024-02-03, 05:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dwarves aren't cool anymore
You'll have to explain to me how "can go for 48 hours without experiencing thirst", "can see ethereal creatures", fire resistence 5, "3' tall but as strong as a freaking Orc" or literally everything about the Urdunnir "could just be cultural", dude, because I'm not sure I follow. Also, these mechanical differences are separate from lazy fluff that just shuffles them under the headings of "here, have another monoculture".
They all come in silly monocultures, and while I'm not intimately familiar with Dragonlance, let alone new stuff like Ravnica Eberron doesn't do much about the basic archetype for Elves in particular as far as I can tell.
I don't know what else to tell you other than you're wrong. Variation does not have to be tied to fixed ASIs or slow movement to be meaningful, and that's really all 5e did away with.
Well again, by that logic anything vaguely dwarf-shaped is a dwarf too, which means Azers and Earthen and Primordial Dwarves and Dwarf-Aasimars all count too.
In which case 5e has nearly as much variation as 3.5e and the artificial edition barriers you're pointing to don't mean anything.
This too. I'd rather represent "Arctic Dwarf" and "Jungle Dwarf" with a background or starting feat than have two dozen different subraces for everything. 5e's approach was the right one.Last edited by Metastachydium; 2024-02-03 at 05:47 PM.
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2024-02-03, 05:57 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dwarves aren't cool anymore
Fair point, they also include sorts of variation that are largely uninteresting and should be discarded. "Fire resistance" and a hue shift is lazy and slapdash, it's the sort of thing you get from writers who are never going to produce anything better than a boring monoculture.
Again, my specific issue is that I think there are limited amount of characters that you can play that still feel Dwarven. Whether or not a game includes dozens of largely interchangeable biome specific dwarf subtypes that let players pick if they want to be an Arctic Dwarf or an Ice Dwarf does not actually address the problem.Last edited by Errorname; 2024-02-03 at 05:59 PM.
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2024-02-03, 06:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dwarves aren't cool anymore
TBH I think there's far more people in the target D&D bracket with big ol' dwarf beards now than there ever were back in the day.
I mean you may think all these newfangled races are popular, but they don't even have their own metal genre.
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2024-02-03, 06:19 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dwarves aren't cool anymore
You're joking, right? Aerenei ancestor-worshipping mummies/liches? Valenar dervish desert barbarians? Which other setting has elves like those? And don't even get me started on the changes to their Drow.
If you consider things like dwarf-shaped monsters and Arctic Dwarves to be separate races - yes, for the reasons I previously mentioned.
Exactly, I don't see what's so difficult to grasp about this concept. Jungle and Fire and Strawberry and Caffeine-Free Dwarves or whatever else 3.5 came up with so they could try selling 40 books a year was purely variation for variation's sake.Last edited by Psyren; 2024-02-03 at 06:24 PM.
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2024-02-03, 08:20 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dwarves aren't cool anymore
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2024-02-03, 11:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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2024-02-04, 03:04 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dwarves aren't cool anymore
Metastachydium was literally list off Dwarves. Not "dwarf-shaped monsters". Those were literally dwarven subspecies from 3.5E that players can pick for their Dwarf PCs. The Dream Dwarf subspecies can be found on pg 88-89 of Races of Stone if you continue to find 3E Dwarven diversity incredulous and you decide you want to check the source.
If you don't count them (by pretending they are "dwarf-shaped monsters", whatever you meant by that), then 5E has 0 Dwarves by the same logic.
Sidenote: The phrase "dwarf-shaped monsters", if it means dwarf-shaped monsters, can also be applied to all Dwarves. Dwarves are dwarf shaped and exist in D&D monster manuals. Almost like being included in the monster manual does not imply what you want it to imply.Last edited by OldTrees1; 2024-02-04 at 03:49 AM.
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2024-02-04, 04:10 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dwarves aren't cool anymore
The OP was very clear that he's talking about Dwarf PCs. CR 2 and CR 5 monsters, from a book that literally has Monsters in the title, are not PCs at 90% of tables, and when they are they're at a huge disadvantage compared to other playable races. So no, I don't count them, and stand by what I said.
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