Homebrew Athasian Dwarf Species Details

The worst thing you can say to a dwarf is “It can’t be done.”  If he’s already decided to do it, he may never speak to you again. If he hasn’t decided to take up the task, he may commit himself to it simply out of spite. “Impossible” is not a concept most dwarves understand.  Anything can be done, with enough determination.

-- Sha’len, nibenese trader

Personality:

Dwarves seek out meaningful work to occupy their time. A dwarf is never happier than when he has a cause to work or fight for. A stoic race, dwarves love to approach tasks with a single-minded intensity. They devote their very beings to these tasks, laboring for weeks, years, even decades to the exclusion of other endeavors. Once a dwarf is committed to a particular task, it takes a great deal of coercion to make him set it aside for even a limited amount of time. A dwarf strives for the personal fulfillment he achieves upon completing a lengthy, difficult task. A dwarf’s present task is called his focus. The concept of the focus is integral to a dwarf’s makeup and is even tied to his physiology-so much so that those dwarves who die before completing their foci become undead banshees who wander the wastes haunting their unfinished works.

Physical:

Short and powerful, dwarves stand between 4½ and 5 feet tall.  Their frames are nevertheless extremely massive, and an average dwarf weighs in the vicinity of 200 pounds.  Life in the Athasian wastes make them rugged, tanned, and callused.  Dwarves are hairless, and find the very idea of hair repulsive.  Dwarves can live up to 250 years.

Relations:

A dwarf’s relation with others is often a function of his focus.  People that help the dwarf accomplish his focus or share his goals are treated with respect and considered good companions.  There is little room for compromise, though, with those that disagree with the dwarf’s focus.  If they hinder the dwarf, they are considered obstacles that must be removed.  Community is important to the dwarves.  Dwarves have a very strong racial affinity.  They rarely share their history with non-dwarves; it can take years for a stranger to gain enough trust to be admitted into a dwarven family circle.

Lands:

There are three main dwarven settlements in the Tablelands: Kled, located near the city-state of Tyr, and the twin villages of North and South Ledopolus located in the southwestern edge of the Tablelands.  Some dwarven communities have developed in the city-states and in some small villages, while other dwarves have taken up residence with the slave tribes of the wastes.

Religion:

Dwarven communities are ruled by their elders; dwarves are particularly devoted to their community leader, the Urhnomous.  Dwarves typically worship elemental earth.  Fire is sometimes worshiped for its destructive power and water for its healing nature.  Air’s intangibility and chaotic nature attracts few dwarven worshippers.  Dwarven druids are unusual, and tend to take a guarded land and become grove masters.

Psionics and Magic:

Dwarves possess the structured mind necessary to excel at psionics.  They make formidable egoists and nomads.

Dwarves are nonmagical by nature. They can’t use wizard magic of any sort, though they can employ priestly magic.  Some dwarves will travel with a wizard who proves himself a worthy companion, but few dwarves will truly ever trust a wizard.

Language:

Dwarves have a long and proud oral history.  They have an old written language, but this is mostly used for writing histories.  Dwarves will not teach their ancient language to outsiders, they prefer to keep that knowledge to themselves.  The dwarven language is deep and throaty, composed of many guttural sounds and harsh exclamations.  Most non-dwarves get raw throats if they try to speak dwarven for more than a few hours.

Male Names: Arvego, Bevis, Birk, Bokum, Caelum, Drayden, Garok, Ghedran, Gurrednek, Murd, Nati, Portek, Shardivan.

Female Names: Ardin, Erda, Ghava, Greshin, Gudak, Palashi, Vashara.

Adventurers:

Dwarves adventure for different reasons.  Sometimes they may adventure in order to learn about the Tablelands, although these curious adventurers tend to be young and brash.  Many adventuring dwarves travel the Tablelands to complete their focus because sometimes a task may take them away from their communities.  Some search for ancient dwarven villages and the treasures they contain.

Role-playing Suggestions

Remember the intensity of your focus.  Breaking or ignoring a focus has social, philosophical and spiritual repercussions.  For someone to stand in the way of your focus is an assault on you.  There is no greater satisfaction than fulfilling a difficult focus, and the DM will reward you depending on the difficulty of the fulfilled focus.  Keep a serious, sober attitude nearly always.  The only time you show your festive side is when you have recently fulfilled a focus, during the hours or days until you set a new focus.  Only during these brief “days of fulfillment,” and only to other dwarves and your most trusted non-dwarven friends, do you show your full joy and sense of humor.  But these days are also a time of vulnerability, for until you set a new focus you lose all of your special focus-related bonuses.    

Dwarves receive bonuses to every effort when working to complete a task.  The task must be directly related to the focus, however.  For example, Grelak, protector of his dwarven community, chooses as a focus to retrieve a sacred book that was stolen in a raid.  After a week of gathering clues, he sets out to retrieve the artifact from its current possessor, who hides in Outpost 51, a two-week journey.  On the way to the outpost, he encounters a wild lirr; while battling his foe he receives his bonuses.  However, Grelak stops in Nibenay for some rest, and gets in a brawl.  He doesn’t receive his bonuses, as he isn’t actively pursuing his focus.

Athasian Dwarf Traits

Your dwarf character has an assortment of inborn abilities, part and parcel of dwarven nature.

Ability Score Increase

Your Constitution score increases by 2 and your Strength score increases by 1.

Age

Dwarves mature at the same rate as humans, but they’re considered young until they reach the age of 50. The maximum age a dwarf can hope to live to is 260.

Alignment

Dwarves tend towards a lawful alignment, with most members either good or neutral.  Their devotion to following the established hierarchy in their village means they tend to follow the rules, sometimes to the point of ridicule.

Size

Dwarves stand between 4 and 5 feet tall and average about 200 pounds. Your size is Medium.

Speed

Your base walking speed is 25 feet. Your speed is not reduced by wearing heavy armor.

Darkvision

Accustomed to life underground, you have superior vision in dark and dim conditions. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can’t discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.

Dwarven Resilience

You have advantage on saving throws against poison, and you have resistance against poison damage (explained in the “Combat” section).

Dwarven Focus

While performing actions directly related to pursuing your Focus, you have a +1 to all ability checks and saving throws.

Tool Proficiency

You gain proficiency with the artisan’s tools of your choice.

Languages

You can speak, read, and write Common and Dwarvish. Dwarvish is full of hard consonants and guttural sounds, and those characteristics spill over into whatever other language a dwarf might speak.