I've been itching to redesign the core races for a while now. Part of the reason is 5th edition with its really appealing broad-strokes approach to game design, and part of the reason is that Pathfinder is almost 10 years old, based on a system over 15 years old, and it is starting to collapse under its own weight. In terms of character creation, playable races are the bread on which you build your open-faced sandwich of a character. The toppings are the class and feats and other customization choices, and you can be as simple or as complex as you want with those, but underneath it all you need that bread to be characterful and easy to understand. Sorry, that metaphor broke down quickly.
What I'm trying to say is that I want the playable races to be as simple and evocative as possible. They need to get across the core idea of the race without getting in the way with too many extraneous skill bonuses or abilities that function in instances so specific that you forget about them when the time comes to use them. I'll start things off today with an easy one: the dwarf.
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| Montalore Bearbriar, by Kent Hamilton |
The following material given in gold text and its accompanying table is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2016 Jonah Bomgaars.
Dwarf
Racial Traits
+2 Constitution,
+2 Wisdom, -2 Charisma: Dwarves are hardy and wise, but rather gruff.
Saving Throws: +2 Fortitude,
+2 Will, -2 Reflex: Dwarves can shrug off poisons, diseases, and magical
effects, but are not quick on their feet.
Medium: Dwarves
are Medium creatures and have no bonuses or penalties due to their size.
Slow and Steady:
Dwarves have a base speed of 20 feet, but their speed is never modified by
armor or encumbrance.
Darkvision: Dwarves
can see in the dark up to 60 feet.
Defensive Training:
Dwarves get a +4 dodge bonus to AC against monsters of the giant
subtype.
Direction Sense: Dwarves
have an uncanny natural ability to intuit the direction they are facing, the
grade or slope of the passage they are standing in, and their approximate depth
underground. They gain a +4 racial bonus
to Survival checks made to determine this information. This sense is temporarily disrupted by strong
magnetic fields.
Grudgebearer: Dwarves
gain a +1 racial bonus on attack and damage rolls against one creature type or
subtype from the ranger favored enemies list due to special training against
their clan’s ancient foes. They can also
use a Knowledge (history) check in place of the appropriate knowledge skill to
identify monsters of that type and their special powers or
vulnerabilities. This selection must be
made upon character creation and cannot be changed.
Stability: Dwarves
receive a +4 racial bonus to their Combat Maneuver Defense against bull rush, drag,
or trip attempts when the dwarf has both feet firmly planted on solid
ground.
Stonecunning: Dwarves
receive a +2 racial bonus on any skill check made in relation to stone and
stonework, be it a Perception check to notice a hidden door or pit trap, a Knowledge
(history) check made to determine the origins of a stone structure, a Craft
check to create a stone tool, or a Climb check made to ascend a stone wall or
natural cliff. In addition, the GM
should roll a secret Perception check for the dwarf to notice stone doors or
traps within 10 feet, even if they are not actively looking for them.
Treasure Lore: Dwarves
receive a +2 racial bonus on all Appraise, Craft, and Knowledge skill checks made in relation to gems and
precious metals, similar to their stonecunning ability.
Weapon Familiarity:
Dwarves are proficient with all simple and martial axes, hammers, and
picks, and treat all exotic weapons of the same type as martial weapons.
Languages: Dwarves
begin play speaking Common and Dwarven. Dwarves
with high Intelligence scores can choose any language they want to study.
Sub-Races
Deep Dwarves
Some dwarven clans live deep in the tunnels below, never
venturing to the sunlit surface world.
Improved
Darkvision: Deep dwarves can see in the dark up to 120 feet, but are
dazzled so long as they remain in areas of bright light. This ability replaces Darkvision.
Tunnel Warrior: While
underground, deep dwarves gain a +2 racial bonus to Initiative checks. This ability replaces Defensive
training.
Languages: Deep
dwarves begin play speaking only Dwarven.
Surface Dwarves
Some dwarven clans have long since abandoned the
tunnel-dwelling ways of their ancestors and established mighty cities on the
surface.
Stone Lore: Surface
dwarves receive a +2 racial bonus on all skill checks made in relation to stone
and stonework. This ability replaces
Stonecunning.
Treasure Cunning: Surface
dwarves receive a +2 racial bonus on all Appraise, Craft, and Knowledge skill checks made in relation to gems
and precious metals. In addition, the GM
should roll a secret Perception check for the dwarf to notice hidden gems or
precious metals within 10 feet, even if they are not actively looking for them,
reflecting the surface dwarves’ uncanny ability to locate hidden wealth. This ability replaces Treasure Lore.
Low-Light Vision: Surface
dwarves can see twice as far as humans in conditions of dim light.
Allow me to walk you through the changes step by step:
Saving Throws: The first change you see is a flat +2 bonus to Fortitude and Will saves and a -2 penalty to Reflex saves. As-written in Pathfinder, Dwarves get a +2 bonus to Fortitude saves against poison and to all saves against spells or spell-like abilities. That covers about 80% of all the Fortitude and Will saves the average character would have to make over the course of a campaign, with the added incongruity of making dwarves oddly nimble when diving out of the way of fireballs. For the sake of simplicity, I decided to expand that +2 bonus to cover every Fort and Will save just to make the paperwork easier. So what if dwarves end up being slightly better against diseases and non-magical fear than they used to be? To balance things out, I added the penalty to Reflex saves, because 'dwarves' and 'reflexes' just don't seem to go naturally together. I like the simplicity of the result, and I think I will try to give many of the other races I revisit in this way a flat bonus and/or penalty to one or more saving throws.
The other route I could have gone was more old school. In 1st and 2nd Edition AD&D, dwarves couldn't be magic-users and they were so naturally resistant to magic that when they tried to use a magic item it had a 20% chance of failing. It's a cool idea and I love that old school feel, but I am also really glad that modern RPGs are trending toward diversity and player choice; if you want to play a dwarf wizard, have at it!
Defensive Training: I considered a number of options to shake this ability up or remove it entirely, but I just didn't have the heart. Dwarves' +4 bonus to AC against giants has been in the game forever, basically unchanged.
Direction Sense: Another thing dwarves have always had is the ability to sense their depth underground and the slope of the tunnel they are in. This was barely present in 3.5's version of Stonecunning, and was dropped entirely in the translation to Pathfinder. As you know, I like to kick it old school, so I'm bringing this back. I figured I would throw the ability to sense direction in there as well, since that is the sort of evolutionary advantage a race of tunnel delvers would really need.
Grudgebearer: Instead of the +1 attack against orcs and goblinoids, we now have a more backstory-friendly character choice. If your clan of dwarves dwelt deep in the earth fighting aberrations, or was embroiled in a centuries-long conflict with lizardmen, why should you be saddled with the generic hatred of orcs and goblins? #NotAllDwarves
The Grudgebearer ability gives the player more choice in deciding what ancestral hatred their dwarf character will be burdened with. It's punched up with a bonus to damage this time as well, to make things more visceral. And since the grudge is tied in to the dwarf clan's history, I figured letting characters learn about enemies with a Knowledge (history) check made sense. Plus, as a historian, I can't encourage Knowledge (history) checks enough.
Stonecunning: My rewording may seem pretty close to the original, but the key difference is that it applies to all skill checks, not just Perception checks. After all, dwarves aren't just great at seeing stonework, they are great all things stone-related, from making stonework, to identifying its history, to spotting just the right handhold to climb with.
Treasure Lore: Dwarves aren't just masters of stone, they are also masters of gold and gems! A dwarf should be able to craft something beautiful out of gold and silver, read the history of a legendary ancient gemstone, or recognize that the unassuming falcon statue is probably hiding a wealth of precious gems beneath its drab exterior. Yes, that was a Maltese Falcon reference, and yes, dwarves would make excellent noir detectives.
Weapon Familiarity: This was yet another case where expanding a rule so it encompasses more things made it make more sense. As written in Pathfinder, all dwarves are proficient with warhammers, heavy picks, and battleaxes. It's a nice touch, but it has the odd consequence of making a dwarf wizard proficient with a heavy pick but not a light pick, or a battleaxe but not the lighter hand axe. By expanding dwarven weapon proficiency to include all axes, hammers, and picks (simple or martial), everything gets just a little bit better.
The Sub-Races: I'm a sucker for sub-races and alternative racial builds, so this was a no-brainer for me. Your typical dwarven civilization straddles the border between the surface world and the ridiculous, geology-defying underground tunnel complexes that plague every fantasy world. But what makes sense for those dwarves might not make sense for dwarves that spend their whole lives in the dark, or conversely for dwarves that live in cities and might never venture underground (for some reason I tend to include a lot of surface dwarven civilizations in my campaign settings). The minor changes you see above for deep dwarves and surface dwarves alter just enough about the standard dwarf to make it feel a little different but still obviously dwarven. Deep dwarves, for instance, will probably never encounter a giant to get a +4 AC bonus against, but they spend their whole lives in dangerous tunnels and so are particularly adept to reacting to danger in such a setting. Surface dwarves don't have quite the knack for stonecunning that their mountain-hold-dwelling cousins do, but they are even more attuned to treasure, to the point that they seem to know whether a box contains gold without even opening it. Surface dwarves aren't allowed on Let's Make a Deal.
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That's it for the first installment of Races Revisited. Let me know what you think in the comments below!
-your grudge-bearing d20 despot
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