Gully Dwarf

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Salt of the earth, indeed.

There are some people who want to be the Mighty and the Great, be it as the genius wizard or the master of combat, the Paragon Champion of Good or the Terrible (in both the old and new sense of the word) Scourge of the World.

There are some people who want to be the "Everyman": The regular Joe of humble origins possessed of modest competence, strength and discipline, who faces and overcomes foes trials and tests with grit, pluck and determination.

There are some people who want to be the Underdog: The laughable underachiever or belittled lowborn whom nobody would bet on when placed up against the world, but whose accomplishments are all the more sweet for having achieved them with a massive handicap.

But nobody sane wants to be the absolute dregs.

Enter the Gully Dwarves. They are like dwarves, except minus everything that makes dwarves cool.

According to the Dragonlance Campaign Setting, the gully dwarves all belong to the loose clan of Aghar. Their accepted history is that they are Tinker Gnome-Dwarf hybrids which managed to inherit the worst qualities of both races and none of their good qualities.

They have strong survival instincts, a baffling amount of pride, endurance, and a will to live. While they are utter cowards whose first reaction to being caught in a fight is to flee or beg for their lives, they fight with the desperation of cornered rats if they are forced to do so.

However, they are generally very stupid and often hold menial jobs. The highest an average gully dwarf can count is 2, though some have become smart enough to count to 3. To put this into perspective, crows can count to three, some parrots can go up to 6. They are smaller than normal dwarves. They have no land of their own and live in ruined cities, sewers, and dirty parts of cities. They do not revere Reorx, instead having a tribal ancestor worship system, and are not intelligent enough to understand concepts such as law or morality. They believe magical items to be useless since other races put their magic into them, and believe that the most powerful items are those that do absolutely nothing. The shaman of a gully dwarf clan is typically appointed the keeper of their "relics", which are invariably useless crap like bent sticks and dead lizards. The leader of the Gully Dwarves, the Highbulp, is whoever is most accomplished at grovelling his way out of any situation.

They speak their own guttural "language" that sounds like a broken form of whichever languages are spoken by the races that live in the area, and it is said to evolve so rapidly that scholars have given up on trying to study it.

Playable Stats

Gully Dwarves have, alongside Kender, Tinker Gnomes, Irda and Minotaurs, been playable in every single edition where Dragonlance got a splatbook. Because you've read this far, we'll show you what you were working with depending on edition and sourcebook.

Dragonlance Adventures

In this, the original Dragonlance splatbook for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st edition, gully dwarves took their first shape.

Ability Score Minimum/Maximum: Strength 6/18, Dexterity 6/18, Constitution 3/12, Intelligence 3/9, Wisdom 3/9, Charisma 3/9

Racial Ability Score Dice: Gully Dwarves don't use the normal rules for generating Stats, but instead use a custom set of dice values:

Strength: 4d4+2

Dexterity: 4d4+2

Constitution: 3d4

Intelligence: 2d4+1

Wisdom: 2d4+1

Charisma: 2d4+1

Racial Class/Level Limits: Fighter 6, Barbarian 7, Thief 8, Acrobat 8, Cleric (Holy Order of Stars) 5

The Complete Book of Dwarves

When updated to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition, gully dwarves changed to the following mechanics:

Ability Score Minimum/Maximum: Strength 6/18, Dexterity 6/18, Constitution 8/16, Intelligence 3/12, Wisdom 3/14, Charisma 3/12

Ability Score Adjustments: +1 Strength, +1 Dexterity, -2 Charisma

Racial Class/Level Restrictions: Fighter 8, Cleric 8, Thief 16, Fighter/Cleric, Fighter/Thief

Thieving Skill Adjustments: +10% Pick Pockets, -5% Open Locks, +5% Find/Remove Traps, -5% Hide in Shadows, -5% Climb Walls, -25% Read Languages

Infravision: 60 feet

Special Advantages:

Standard dwarf stonecunning and bonuses to saves against poison and magical attacks.

Ogres, Trolls, Oni, Giants and Titans suffer a -4 To Hit penalty when attacking a gully dwarf.

By spending a turn groveling and pleading for mercy, a gully dwarf forces all opponents that can see or hear the aghar to make a Save Vs. Spells; if they fail, they cannot attack the gully dwarf (but can restrain or nonlethally dispose of it) for 1d6 rounds. Success means they can go ahead and beat the gully dwarf up as much as they like. Targets suffer a -2 penalty to their save if the gully dwarf is level 5-8, a -3 penalty if the gully dwarf is level 9-12, and a -5 penalty if the gully dwarf is levelk 13+.

Special Disadvantages:

The standard chance a magical item will misfire for dwarves is doubled from 20% to 40% for gully dwarves.'

Though your gully dwarf is undoubtedly smarter than the average aghar, they're still an idiot, and the DM may declare that a sufficiently clever idea your character suggests must either be not taken or require you to pass an Intelligence test first.

It's unclear if gully dwarves are supposed to get the standard +1 to hit bonus when attacking goblins and hobgoblins (they clearly wouldn't get the orc and half-orc bonus, since those races aren't native to Dragonlance), given the cowardly and non-confrontational nature of gully dwarves.

Dragonlance Campaign Setting & Races of Ansalon

Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition brought with it a new take on gully dwarves.

Ability Score Modifiers: +2 Dexterity, +2 Constitution, -4 Intelligence, -4 Charisma

Small Size

Base Land Speed 20 feet

Survival Instinct: +2 racial bonus to Hide, Move Silently and Survival checks, can make a Survival check in an urban environment to scavenge for food, shelter or other necessities.

Hardy: +2 racial bonus to Fortitude saves against Poison and Disease.

Pitiable: +4 racial bonus to Diplomacy checks made to convince enemies not to harm you.

Cowardly: -4 racial penalty on level checks against Intimidation and saves vs. Fear.

Favored Class: Rogue