Dwarf (Facts)

This is the factual Dwarf page on 1d4chan; if you were looking for the meme-based lulzy depiction of dwarves, see Dwarf.

Dwarves (also Dwarfs) are one of the most iconic non-human races in fantasy media, alongside their eternal rivals, the elves. Popularized by the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and Gary Gygax, dwarves are fundamental to most fantasy games and have earned themselves a place of eternal love on /tg/.

Dwarven Physiology

Let's start with the obvious; dwarves are most readily distinguished from humans by their stature, being notably shorter than the human average. Over the editions, this has fluctated somewhat, but in general dwarves have a height range between 4 and 5 feet - which still makes them taller than gnomes and halflings, who average closer to the 3ft-4ft mark. Combined with their strong builds and stocky frames, dwarves are technically considered Medium creatures rather than Small ones, although usually they're slower than "full-sized" Medium races.

Dwarves are noted for their rugged natures; their Constitution is higher than average and even beyond that, they're inherently resistant to poisons. This, incidentally, may play a part in their famous love of alcohol. In earlier editions, dwarves are also strongly resistant to magical energy, due to a combination of physical and mental fortitude; this aspect has died away over the editions as it was mostly used to justify dwarves not being able to play wizards or bards.

One of the most famous aspects of dwarven physiology is the beard. Dwarven men are prone to male pattern baldness, but compensate for it with the ability to readily grow thick, luscious, bushy beards and/or moustaches. Why? Well... because dwarves are just associated with beards. You can have cleanshaven dwarves - in fact, the dwarves of Dark Sun are naturally hairless - but the image is quite subversive.

Dwarves are often depicted as having difficulties reproducing - they may not be formally considered a "dying" race, but they often have either a slow population growth rate, or a dearth of females, if not both. In the Forgotten Realms, traditional lore states that not only do dwarf men outnumber the women (only 3 in 10 dwarves are female), but also that 55% of the total population has fertility issues so bad tht they might as well be sterile when interbreeding with each other.

Mind you, Forgotten Realms actually gives a reason for this in the "Spawn Wars"; an ancient dwarven civil war where the dwarves used aberrations called Deepspawn to produce huge armies of clone soldiers. When the war ended, they were left with not only a surplus of males, but interbreeding with these clones (and clones of clones of clones) damaged their genetic stock, leaving the dwarves with their current damaged fertility.

Until 3rd edition basically retconned all the damage away, at least.

As part of this, dwarves usually aren't depicted as being capable of crossbreeding with other races, as elaborated on the half-dwarf page.

The Bearded Females Debate

If you bring up dwarves anywhere, chances are, you'll hear somebody mocking them for the idea that their womenfolk have beards. This stems from Tolkein, whose works established that dwarven women visually resemble dwarven men to the extent that human eyes can't tell them apart at a casual glance.

To be fair, in the earliest days of D&D, dwarf women did grow beards. But it wasn't long before TSR realized that, really, this was a silly idea. It was hastily retconned that in both Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms that some (or even all) dwarf women could grow beards, but they usually preferred to shave. In Dragonlance, it was established that female dwarves don't grow beards proper, but instead merely have very bushy sideburns.

When WoTC took over, they did their best to sweep this under the rug. When Eberron was released, it was eplicitly stated that the native dwarves do not have bearded women. When 4th edition was rolled out, female dwarf beards were officially striken from the canon of D&D - they even devoted a section of "Wizards Presents: Races & Classes" to it - and this seems to be one 4e change that has since been preserved by 5e.

As an aside, 4th edition actually made its female dwarves surprisingly attractive, which, given that muls also lost their grimderp "sterile and usually kill the mother in birth" lore, should have made human/dwarf relationships a lot more common...

Dwarven Psychology

Dwarves are generally described as a naturally Lawful race, if you put stock in alignment.

Specifically, dwarves tend to be focused, discplined, organized, and naturally driven. When they start something, they devote their whole attention to it, and they hate to either leave something unfinished or give it anything less than their best.

In contrast to the elves, dwarves are usually described as being a very stoic and emotionally closed off sort of race. Which is rather weird given how cheerful and friendly the dwarves are in Tolkien's original "The Hobbit" - most sources try to rectify the discrepancy by claiming that dwarves are naturally suspicious and so only let their hair down around people they feel they can truly trust.

Furthermore, dwarves tend to be deeply conservative; they don't like change very much and are deep believers in the importance of tradition.

All of these factors combine to form the stereotype of the dwarf as a grumpy, surly, hard-working yet unpleasant little bugger.

Two main failings are known to plague dwarves; the first is avarice, with dwarves readily succumbing to the siren call of greed, and the second is arrogance.

Dwarven Culture

Dwarf culture is usually described as fairly monolithic, although settings do play around with the basics - Dragonlance in particularly gives dwarves a very fleshed out history and culture.

Typically, dwarven culture is clannish, where extended family groupings form the foundation of greater dwarf society. Clans may be independent nation-states in their own right, or they may be used to form specific divisions of skill in dwarf society as a whole; for example, one clan may actually mine the ore, a second smiths it, a third trades with other races, and a fourth clan produces livestock.

Dwarven leadership is usually a form of parlimentarian monarchy, with clan-chiefs forming councils that advise but ultimately answer to a single reigning dwarf king. Dwarven culture may also have some aspects of a gerontocracy, although being a full-fledged case of "rulership by the eldest" is actually rarely seen.

Because dwarves don't like change much, dwarven society is usually depicted as being at best conservative and at worst stubbornly hidebound. Whether this is admirable, a surmountable issue or a fatal flaw tends to depend on what the setting designer thinks of dwarven conservatism.

Mining and smithing are usually portrayed as hugely important to dwarven culture, which is mythologically true. Of course, in the hands of some authors, this can be taken to silly extents - in Mystara, originally, the Dwarves of Rockholm valued mining and smithing so much that the single clan responsible for herding livestock and farming was considered second-class and literally treated as a bunch of near-criminals. This was ultimately retconned via a case of reality ensuing, when the farmer-clan barricaded the smiths in their underground tunnels and told them "Okay you shits, let's see you eat that fucking gold!" As the smiths learned they couldn't actually eat gold, coal or iron, and so they were forced to admit that the farmers actually were an important part of the dwarven society.

In general, dwarf culture usually borrows a lot of themes and concepts from Nordic cultures, seeing as how the fantasy dwarf is most closely derived from the Nordic dwarf. Depending on a DM's taste, they may supplement or replace this influence with Germanic, Scottish or Welsh attributes.

Dwarven Religion

Dwarven religion usually centers around implicit or explicit ancestor worship. Dwarf gods tend to exemplify what dwarves consider both the proper way to behave and the iconic virtues of their race.

In D&D lore, the traditional leader of the dwarf gods is Moradin (or Reorx, on Krynn); a gruff, no-nonsense creator-deity obsessed with making stuff and ensuring the multiverse is filled with creation.

Other deities tend to be subordinate to Moradin and usually a lot more forgettable, being just "dwarfy" takes on standard archetypes like the War God or the Love Goddess.

Variant Dwarfs

Though the above is pretty much the standard template for dwarves, some settings have shown some deviance from them... usually in the form of sub-races or offshoot clans.

• Duergar are the most famous, having originated in the Forgotten Realms setting. Essentially the dwarf equivalent to Drow, they have been typically characterized as joyless pricks who hate sunlight, ornamentation, all other races, and pretty much anything other than working themselves to death, to the point their racial patron doubles as a god of slavery and toil (appropriate given their frequent use as slave labor by the drow). Except in 4e, where they were diabolists who interbred with devils and gave themselves big sharp poisoned quills in their beards.
• The other big name in alternate dwarves are the Derro, who are basically completely bug-fuck insane dwarves who dwell in the Underdark.
• Innugaakalikurit, or "Arctic Dwarves" are white-haired, live on the surface in the Arctic tundra, wield harpoons and bows instead of axes and picks, are immune to the cold and love to suntan themselves until their skin turns red.
• Wild Dwarves live like feral headhunting pygmies in the jungle and use poisoned weapons.
• Desert Dwarves are native to Maztica, they use stone tools instead of iron.
• Dragonlance divided its dwarves up into Mountain and Hill clans, with the addition of "Dark" clans who lived alongside the Mountain Dwarves and were really weird - the Daewar, for example, were all sorcerers. This setting also introduced the abomination of the Gully dwarf species; filthy, stupid, ugly, smelly, disgusting abominations that are the bastard offspring of dwarves and gnomes.
• Kogolor Dwarves are technically the oldest dwarves in all of D&D; native to Mystara, these dwarves are literally the ancestor species of the modern dwarf, and are much more like gnomes in behavior. Most notably, they lack the dwarven knack for craftsmanship - save in brewing beer, ale and wine - and are cheerful, outgoing, friendly and welcoming. Also, absurdly Swedish, to the point of dressing in lederhosen and having a special proficiency in yodelling. Because of the Rain of Colorless Fire and the intervention of Kagyar the Artisan, they only survive in the Hollow World, having been abandoned there after being replaced with "conventional" dwarves.

Elemental Dwarves

Since the dawn of the game, the Elemental Plane of Fire has been home to Azers, who look like bronze-skinned dwarves with great flaming beards & hair. For most editions, they have been officially classified as "not dwarves", with Pathfinder describing them as a race of elemental constructs who just happen to look like dwarves (a step 5e basically stole). 4e, however, went and said "yes, they're dwarves; at the dawn of time, dwarves were slaves to giants (who're elementals) - the ones who didn't get away in time eventually became elementals themselves".

There's also the oft-forgotten Earth elemental the galeb duhr, who became a rock-elemental dwarf in 4e, the never-made-it-out-of-2e Urdunnir/Sonsannan (a gem-eating grey dwarf with innate earth walk, shape stone and shape metal at-will spell-like abilities) and the 4e-exclusive Eisk Jaat (ice dwarf).

Dragon Magazine #383 contains the rules for Forgeborn Dwarves, a dwarfin variant representing clans who didn't quite get away from the Giants in time. They basically took a racial feat that gave them resistance to Acid, Cold, Fire and Lightning damage and let them deal bonus elemental damage whenever they hit someone once per encounter.

Dwarves vs. Gnomes

Casuals who stumble across Dungeons & Dragons may find themselves wondering why there are two races of mechanically adept, artist, short hairy men in the game; the dwarves and the gnomes. Well, the answer is fairly simply.

See, in mythology, "dwarves" and dwarf-like beings cover a wide spectrum of critters. They're usually considered a kind of faerie, and thusly in many cultures, dwarves are depicted not as the stern, grim, magical craftsmen of Viking lore, but as surprisingly down-to-earth people, but possessed of many magical abilities. There are many stories of dwarves in European cultures weaving illusions and changing shapes and otherwise performing all manner of mystical feats. Now, Gygax and his buddies were big mythology buffs, and they knew these stories. But, at the same time, they were also huge Tolkien fans, and their vision for the prototype of D&D was to use the Tolkienian model for dwarves. So, in the end, they said "fuck it", and just brought the magical yet down to earth dwarves of Europe into D&D as gnomes, whilst dwarves in the Tolkien model were allowed to retain their name. And it has continued ever since out of tradition.

The highlight of this has to be found in Mystara, the very first campaign setting of Dungeons & Dragons. In this setting, originally, the dwarves were a people known as the Kogolor, who dwelled in cities they established on the mountains. Physically and mentally, they were more like the gnomes of the present day; outgoing, cheerful, talkative and gregarious. They had no particular resistance to magic or toxin, nor any great focus on craftsmanship, although they were (and remain) great brewers of liquor. During the Great Rain of Colorless Fire, their numbers began to drop rapidly, as the poisons released by the Blackmoor disaster devastated their number. An Immortal named Kagyar decided that he could use the dwarves to create a race to his design; one shaped to survive against future disasters of this scale. He took the hardiest of the Kogolor and made them tougher still, granting them resistance to magic and toxin. He filled their minds with an obsession to craft lasting works in stone and metal - things would survive the passage of time - and made them feel an instinctive yearning for the shelter of deep caves, that they would naturally gravitate towards homes that doubled as fallout shelters. He made them stubborn, conservative, and xenophobic, inclined to shun others and to cling to tradition above all else, that they would not stray from this mold. Satisfied with his work, he dubbed them "dwarves" and returned them to claim the mountains of Mystara, whilst the Kogolor he absent-mindedly swept away and discarded in the Hollow World. This did not sit particularly well with one of Kagyar's students, Garal Glitterlode - the prototype for Garl Glittergold, himself an ascended Kogolor. Since his former people were gone, he recreated them, this time shaping them to be smaller and more flexible, to seek out shelter in forests as well as mountains, and thus were born the first gnomes, as a more "true to the original" descendant of the original Kogolor.

Unique Dwarven Strains

For obvious reasons, this page has mostly talked about dwarves as depicted in Dungeons & Dragons, which is the most widespread of /tg/ games and thus the most iconic depiction of dwarves. But, there are other games on /tg/ that have more unique depictions of dwarves...

The dwarves of Warhammer Fantasy have their own page, but in a nutshell can be described as taking the D&D dwarf stereotype and cranking the knobs up a couple of notches. They are Grudge-obsessed, culturally unchanging, and absolutely racist fucks who only barely tolerate humans and hate every single other thing, especially each other when they have a reason, to varying degrees. They almost wiped themselves out just out of their inability to resolve conflicts such as those caused by an insult given by accident ten generations ago while a third invading force was on the march causing a three-way fight where the Dwarfs could only lose. But out of sheer tenacity and refusal to admit weakness or being wrong, they managed to make it to the death of the setting as a powerful force.

Their cousins, the evil Chaos Dwarfs, force magic into their own bodies unnaturally (as Warhammer Dwarf bodies and minds resist and nullify magic) which slowly turns them to stone. They have an intense hatred of all other races, to the point of being like their kin with an even bigger Grudge. They are based on Mesopotamians, and the size and type of their hat is more important to them than a beard.

In Shadowrun, the dwarven fondness for crafting and artisianship has led to them mostly abandoning old-fashioning smithing and turning to cybernetics and digital engineering - the iconic dwarf is a cybered-up hacker, not a warrior or a smith. Also, beards are basically unimportant to dwarves, but the males usualy wear beards in order to stop humans from mistaking them for children.

In Castle Falkenstein, dwarves are an all-male race of artificers, who do the mining and smithing thing mostly to support their love of being mad scientist engineers. In fact, they used to be magical fairies, but they gave up their magic and their immortality (although they still like a long time) to be able to work with iron. They couldn't give two shits about their beards, are immune to fire and magic, are superhumanly strong, have goose-like feet (which they're very embarrassed about, so don't mention them), and reproduce by interbreeding with female fairies; sons are dwarves, daughters are fairies. Incidentally, this is why they tend to be so obsessed with making their mark on the world; this is the only way they can change their name to what they want, instead of being stuck with a typical fairy name like "Morningblossom" or "Buttercup". Also, rather than an axe, an angry dwarf will usually try and club you to death with a fuck-off-huge wrench.

Dwarf PCs Throughout History

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5th Edition

• Ability Score: +2 Constitution
• Typical Alignment: Favor Lawful Good.
• Size: Medium. Listed as being between 4 and 5 feet tall, and average 150 pounds.
• Speed: 25 feet
• Darkvision
• Dwarven Resilience: Advantage on saving throws against poison, and resistance against poison damage.
• Dwarven Combat Training: Proficiency with Battleaxe, Handaxe, Light Hammer, and, of course, Warhammer.
• Free tool proficiency with choice of smith's, brewer's or mason's tools.
• Stonecunning: Double Proficiency bonus when making history checks on the origin of stonework.
• Languages: Common and Dwarvish.

Of course, subraces get their own bonuses.

Hill Dwarf

• Ability Score: +1 Wisdom
• Dwarven Toughness: Free +1 max hp every level.

Mountain Dwarf

• Ability Score: +2 Strength (only subrace which allows you to start with two +2 bonuses)
• Dwarven Armor Training: Free Proficiency with Light and Medium Armor.

The Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide also gave info on the Duregar subrace, the dour, evil cousins of the dwarves that inhabit the Underdark.

Duregar

• Ability Score: +1 Strength
• Superior Darkvision (120 feet max instead of plain Darkvision's 60 feet)
• Duregar Resilience: Advantage on saves against illusions and being charmed or paralyzed.
• Duregar Magic: Free Enlarge/Reduce at 3rd level, and free Invisibility at 5th level, but has an interesting limitation: they cannot be cast when you are in direct sunlight. The spells still work while you're in sunlight if you cast them somewhere else, but while you're in the sun, nada. Both spells recharge on a long rest, and use Intelligence as their spellcasting Modifier.
• Sunlight Sensitivity: Disadvantage on attack rolls and Perception checks that rely on sight when you, the target of your attack, or whatever you're trying to perceive, is in direct sunlight.

The Races of Pathfinder
Player's Handbook:	Dwarf - Elf - Gnome - Half-Elf - Half-Orc - Halfling - Human
Advanced Race Guide:	Aasimar - Catfolk - Changeling - Dhampir - Duergar Drow - Fetchling - Gillman - Goblin - Grippli - Hobgoblin Ifrit - Kitsune - Kobold - Merfolk - Nagaji - Orc - Oread Ratfolk - Samsaran - Strix - Suli - Svirfneblin - Sylph Tengu - Tiefling - Undine - Vanara - Vishkanya - Wayang
Bestiaries:	Android - Astomoi - Caligni - Deep One Hybrid - Gathlain Gnoll - Kasatha - Munavri - Naiad - Orang-Pendak Reptoid - Rougarou - Shabti - Trox - Yaddithian
Adventure Paths:	Being of Ib - Kuru
Inner Sea Races:	Ghoran - Monkey Goblin - Lashunta - Skinwalker Syrinx - Triaxian - Wyrwood - Wyvaran
Ultimate Wilderness:	Vine Leshy
Blood of the Sea:	Adaro - Cecaelia - Grindylow - Locathah - Sahuagin - Triton
Planar Adventures:	Aphorite - Duskwalker - Ganzi