The Stalwart Folk of the Mountain - Dwarves!

Proposition: Work in progress - rough draft

Gifts of the Iron

Ironguard
Ironguards are the dwarves who dedicated their life to protection of nobility and dwarven principles of the world. They are the elite warriors, able to stand more punishment than most others. Ironguards gain +1 wound, which is lost with first hit without inflicting any wound pentalty to rolls. Ironguards can not be Berserkers.

Berserker
Dwarven berserkers are yet another path some of the dwarves follow in their life, they are incredible killing machines, fearless warriors, who dive into the battle almost naked, to become one with the war, to feel the pain to fuel them further in their rage. It takes two post rounds for them to enrage out of combat, and one in combat. They can only wear light armor as their best form of protection for their rage to be applicable. The berserkers ignore any roll penalty inflicted from any wound and they get a bonus of their resolve value divided by two (rounded down) into their wounds pool and their weapons count as one size larger than they are. However, this comes at a cost. A berserker never rolls for defensive rolls, they are simply all offensive warriors. As well, they can never retreat from the battle or stop the battle before it ends, they always fight to the end and who would try to stop them would be considered an enemy by them. Berserkers can not be Ironguards.

Ancient Mastery
Dwarves are master crafters, hoarders of knowledge and skills. This ability allows the dwarves to pick a bonus +1 to either their Fighting, or their Knowledge.

Runecrafting
While dwarves are incapable of casting any magic themselves, they mastered the secrets of the runes, and through such they are able to create items that help them mitigate their magic inability. Runecrafters are therefore able to use Enchanting, using their Knowledge trait instead of Magic trait.

Magically Inert
These dwarves as if did not exist for the world of magic. They can not receive any positive or negative spell effect, not even from talismans and items that would be affecting them, not from any potions that are magic based. They are for all means and purposes entirely mundane. In further explanation that means that a magic trinket or potion that should make the dwarf faster would not work, however a runic sword would still work in the dwarf's hands as it would be effecting someone else. Also any natural non-magical medicines would still work on this dwarf.

Heroic Ancestry
Some of the dwarves are descendants of great heroes, and in such they are taken for their continuation. There is a huge social demand on them to be paragons among other dwarves, to be fearless and decissive in every situation and they tend to live up to their expectation. They gain +1 Resolve OR +1 Social.

Shield Wall
Dwarves are natural users of shields. They are relatively slow on their feet, and so their only defensive mechanism against archery is to be well protected and so shields become their second nature. When fighting with a shield in their hand, their armor counts as one class bigger.

Dwarven Mastercraft
Dwarves are said to be gifted by unbelievble ability of craft, and that all of them are masters of the forge. This is only partially true, as while most dwarves are able of the smith's craft, only few rare are considered to be real smiths, and craft of those is far superior to craft of others, light weight, perfectly balanced, flawless. Pick armorer OR weaponsmith. Within your selected area, items you forge are considered one class bigger for purposes of combat. Such roleplay to to forge an item of this quality must be done actively, for at least a week of real time. You can pick this gift twice for a full range mastery in both weapons and armor.



Limitations

Surface born
Surface born dwarves are the dwarves coming from the families of outcasts, being second generation and more living outside the underground cities. The surface dwarves suffer -1 Social trait and while maintaining some rough orientation in the darkness, their Darkvission is almost useless by now. You can not have Social trait score lesser than 1 to take this Limitation.

Greedy
Some of the dwarves are simply said irresistably controlled by greed. Their decisions are skewed, against their better judgment, blinded by the vision of hoarding their pile of riches. They rarely spend, they rarely share if not for further profit, and they have very hard time turning down any opportunity to get richer.

Disgraced
Sometimes, the crimes of your fathers are your own crimes, when you are a dwarf. The wrong deeds of your ancestors lie on your bloodline heavy and dwarven society rarely forgives. There is pretty much no way back for you, your cause is lost. This reflects poorly on your morale and you suffer a penalty -1 to your Resolve trait AND -1 to your Social trait. You can not have Resolve or Social trait score lesser than 1 to take this Limitation.

Deep Born
You come from a family that never left the darkness of the underground, for generations now. When exposed to the sun, your skin reacts poorly and quickly burns, in manner of minutes, you suffer a -1 penalty to all rolls as if you acquired a wound, and each hour afterwards actually earns you a very real wound with all applied penalties. It takes a whole day to restore yourself to a working condition and remove the penalty. This effect can be prevented by full cover clothes.

Path to Glory
Some dwarves are born to be lesser, some dwarves are born to shine, they are driven by the will to leave their mark on the world. They are in any regard pushing for perfection, they are dedicated, obsessed, they are honest to bone, they never lie, they put themselves in the danger for others, they consider their own name sacred and are scared to death they could mess up it's reputation. This might not seem as much as a limitation, however, if anyone put together statistics, only a few dwarves do ever reach this glory or live full life. This is a path of hero who might as well die very young.

Water Phobia
Dwarves in general do not like water, they like solid ground under their feet. However, some of them are reaching the state of panic when it comes to the rivers, ponds, seas and oceans. This is a real phobia - such a dwarf would not enter the water, would try to get off the bridges fast, would be refusing to step on a ship if it can be helped any. Oh, and let us not forget, they do not wash themselves much, so they smell a bit.

Ancestral enemy
Dwarves waged many wars. With elves, with orcs, with the drow, with humans... and their memory is long. Some dwarven families just do not forget. Pick one of the native races of Valesk - your character will never trust anyone of that race, wont make friends, will blast prices up for them, overreact, or be plain aggressive towards them.

Alcoholic
Some dwarves can not say a no. Just can't. They are constantly under weather, always drunk. They act like drunk, they act stupid. And if they are not drunk, they are grumpy, their head aches, their focus is gone. When sober, you gain a -1 penalty to all rolls, as if wounded. Better get another round in!

Bonvian
Some dwarves like to drink, and some dwarves like to eat. And some just enjoy their damn good underground life. And they grow fat. With this limitation, you suffer -1 to Shadow and -1 to Reflexes, and either of those can not be higher than 4. You can only gain this limitation if you have at least one of the traits 1 and more.

Headstrong
There is one thing that defines dwarves like children of the stone - their ability to maintain shape over centuries, to resist change. Some of the dwarves take this feature to perfection, they are obsessive and once decision is made, it is near impossible to change their mind about it. It does not really matter if it is right or wrong. The decision was taken and so that's how it is going to be.

Impaired
Despite every effort, your ability to craft is simply said shit. Your youth was marked by shouting and beatdowns by your betters when you were ruining materials at the forge. You craft worse than any other dwarf, and this is a thing that is hard to live down in a dwarven society. Whenever you try to craft something, it ends in disaster. Whenever you try to repair your damaged arms or armor, you only damage it. Additionally, as a result, you suffer -1 Social penalty because you have limited ability to get your materials, and are a constant target of jokes of dwarven society. You can not pick this limitation if you have Social trait lesser than 1.

We are happy you like it, and absolutely looking forward to working on this more.

The list of gifts and limitations got updated and I think it is fairly complete now.

I an addition, I think it would be good if there was a specific rule for dwarves on top height. Something akin to 1.65 meter (5.43 feet) for women and 1.75 meter (5.73 feet) for men on SL appearance scale. So the dwarves remain dwarves, yanno.

Well we are holding our hopes and all that.

This. So much of this. 

Definitely interesting ideas to work with if we decide to expand the native races in the future. Some good thoughts here to work from!