Dwarven Racial Bonuses

[Balek]

Looking through the system reference document, I noticed that dwarves have quite a few bonuses that aren't represented in the game. Selveem noted in another thread that dwarves get stonecunning. I don't believe dwarves on FK actually have this ability, and it seems like it would be fairly hard to code, as it only applies to somewhat specific situations. Some other bonuses however seem like they would be much easier to code, for instance:

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Medium: As Medium creatures, dwarves have no special bonuses or penalties due to their size.

This might not seem like a bonus, but as it stands dwarves are considered small creatures on FK. This makes things a little more difficult as far as finding armour and weapons. Additionally (and this may be incorrect) I believe there is a damage penalty for being a small size character.

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Darkvision: Dwarves can see in the dark up to 60 feet. Darkvision is black and white only, but it is otherwise like normal sight, and dwarves can function just fine with no light at all.

This should apply to halforcs, orcs, and probably some other rare races as well. Dwarves (unlike elves, gnomes, halfelves, halflings and humans) can see perfectly well in the dark, albeit in black and white. This could be represented in game terms by simply allowing dwarves to see as if there's a light in the room, perhaps with a coded message to the player that they can only see black and white (or maybe by changing all color codes to gray).

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Stability: A dwarf gains a +4 bonus on ability checks made to resist being bull rushed or tripped when standing on the ground (but not when climbing, flying, riding, or otherwise not standing firmly on the ground).

This would probably come into play as a penalty to anyone trying to bash or trip a dwarf, but there might be another way to code it.

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+1 racial bonus on attack rolls against orcs and goblinoids.

+4 dodge bonus to Armor Class against monsters of the giant type. Any time a creature loses its Dexterity bonus (if any) to Armor Class, such as when it’s caught flat-footed, it loses its dodge bonus, too.

Both of these are basic combat modifiers. I guess they might function similarly to a ranger's chosen enemy sort of thing.

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+2 racial bonus on Appraise checks that are related to stone or metal items.

+2 racial bonus on Craft checks that are related to stone or metal.

These would function simply as bonuses to armoursmithing, weaponsmithing, and appraise checks.

[Selveem]

I never understood why Dwarves were all resized to small. When this occurred, it really baffled me. I believe in 2nd edition or some very archaic version of D&D that I may not have ever played, Dwarves were.. small. Now, as my original main character was a Dwarf and OOCly I am extremely biased to Dwarves.

Stonecunning could be like an increased percentage to find precious ore or find valuable gems while mining.

Personally, I would like to see a general thread opened to all races regarding their bonuses. Such as Halflings. Many rogues actually avoid halflings because there is an _extreme_ prejudice against them in both their love lives and because they're 'all thieves.' Despite this, the most they get in-game from what I've seen is slight increase in poison resistance. What of their huge bonuses to hide/sneak?! They get an AC modifier that may be present in the game, but players can't tell (which I am hoping will change based on the other thread..).

[Dalvyn]

Dwarves were kept small because they were small in 2nd edition (I think) and turning them to medium would entail changing every single item made for them.

As far as I know, small races currently have only negative affects on FK, and no real positive aspects (oh, they might have the +1 to hit and +1 to AC bonuses, but since the game does not use the regular DnD scale for those things, +1 means next to nothing currently).

Another negative effect is the fact that magical items cannot be easily resized. That sucks, not only for dwarves, but also for halflings and gnomes.

I would rather try to come up with a solution that would make smaller races more interesting stat-wise to play than simply making the dwarves medium, because, if we just change the dwarves to medium size (and modify all the related areas), we will still be left with 2 "sucky" races.

[Balek]

Resurrecting a dead thread here, but is there any possibility of any of the dwarven racial bonuses getting coded?

[Solaghar]

Bonuses to small races should definitely come into play. Right now, as Dalvyn said, there is nothing but negatives for choosing to be a gnome, dwarf, halfling, goblin, whatever. AC bonuses for being harder to hit are the easiest one I can think of. I am too tired to think of others offhand, but I know they exist. It deserves mention, as these races get the short end of the stick.

[Dalvyn]

Correct. I am all for trying to come up with advantages to balance the many disadvantages the small races currently have.

I think that just setting dwarves to size Medium is a cheap solution. "Cheap" because that only solves the problem for dwarves and leave the gnomes and halflings behind.

One of the things that need to be done in my opinion is:

- make it so that smaller-sized weapons and pieces of armour weigh less (that goes with the reduction in encumberance); currently, when you resize a piece of armour to small, the weight does not change

- give small creatures effective to-hit and AC bonus (the bonus is +1 in D&D, but would need to be much more than +1 in the current combat system)

- switch to an "opposed roll" skill system instead of the current "try again and again till you succeed" system, and give small characters bonus to skills like hide, sneak, ... maybe search and spot too (after all, the smaller you are, the more you notice finest details)

- ...

[Selveem]

I really would still like to see Dwarves changed to proper medium size.. When it was changed to small, I really didn't enjoy playing my Dwarf as much. It may not seem like such a big thing, but to me it is. I can't speak for anyone else, but if I wanted to play a small race, I would choose (which I have) a Halfling, Gnome, or any other smaller race.

I do, however, reeeeally believe those 'small' races should start getting their bonuses, though.

[Dalanna]

No offense here, but from the standpoint of someone playing a dwarf, if you change it now, all those Dwarves with incredibly expensive Mithril Armour are going to suffer huge expenses resizing their armour.

[Selveem]

Not any more pricey than repairing it anyhow. *shrug*

Those who have it generally can afford it. Those who can't likely shouldn't be wearing it yet.

[Dalanna]

That re-weighting really dealt a blow to dwarves. Since their small armour still seems to weigh just the same, they now seem to be able to carry a lot less before their weight becomes "heavy."

My dwarf has a strength of Titanic and still seems to be hovering over that Heavy mark at all times. Everytime he loots something from a mob I have to check. Sometimes in mid combat he'll loot something and cross that mark, and suddenly, his AC is non-existant. Even kobolds can and do hit him when he crosses over to Heavy. After every couple kills I have to run up to my cart and mount and hand off coins and anything he looted. Mining is exceptionally dangerous, a couple pieces of ore make him so he can't defend himself readily.

Dwarves are renowned for their armours and weapons. I'm not terribly up on FR 3.5... but in 2nd edition dwarves get a +1 to con and a -1 to dex. They are flat out designed to wear heavy armour as a race. If heavy armour is too heavy for them.. then that really disables a lot of the race.

I dont know if resizing them is a good idea. There are feats such as strongarm that would be neutralized by adjusting their size. Maybe something smaller like an extra pre-set feat dwarves get at creation in addition to their others, allowing them to manage a better load, or giving some of the aformentioned bonuses. Seems like something needs to be done, unfortunately I'm not sure what.

[Selveem]

That re-weighting really dealt a blow to dwarves. Since their small armour still seems to weigh just the same, they now seem to be able to carry a lot less before their weight becomes "heavy."

The same thing happens with my halfling. Really, when you increase or decrease the size of something should change the weight, but it doesn't to my knowledge. I don't know if this is possible to code without making each object resized automatically unique.

My dwarf has a strength of Titanic and still seems to be hovering over that Heavy mark at all times. Everytime he loots something from a mob I have to check. Sometimes in mid combat he'll loot something and cross that mark, and suddenly, his AC is non-existant. Even kobolds can and do hit him when he crosses over to Heavy. After every couple kills I have to run up to my cart and mount and hand off coins and anything he looted. Mining is exceptionally dangerous, a couple pieces of ore make him so he can't defend himself readily.

Is this confirmed? Or, rather, is this intentional? It makes sense, surely, but with the amount of stuff we have to carry around for quests and the like, I don't think we should be penalized. With housing made easier and the new luggage system, maybe that's fine. I dunno. Maybe that's why I think Selveem sucks so much. With his losing 8 points of strength during a time when older characters were being 'standardized' maybe his AC got shot to hell?

Dwarves are renowned for their armours and weapons. I'm not terribly up on FR 3.5... but in 2nd edition dwarves get a +1 to con and a -1 to dex. They are flat out designed to wear heavy armour as a race. If heavy armour is too heavy for them.. then that really disables a lot of the race.

I completely agree with this. This would also be why their movement isn't impeded for wearing heavy armor when normally it would be.

I dont know if resizing them is a good idea. There are feats such as strongarm that would be neutralized by adjusting their size. Maybe something smaller like an extra pre-set feat dwarves get at creation in addition to their others, allowing them to manage a better load, or giving some of the aformentioned bonuses. Seems like something needs to be done, unfortunately I'm not sure what.

Actually, I believe it would make the people who took Strongarm feat able to wield weapons larger than most 'medium' creatures. I really would just prefer them to be medium, but I hadn't taken into account that people who had feats like that would be much more powerful than any other medium humanoid warriors. Really, I would like to see Strongarm feat opened up through a hard, long quest to other races, as well. Not as easy to get as for the Dwarves.

[Glim]

If we are going by D20 rules, then having a heavy carry wt should encumber your dexterity bonus just the same as if you were wearing heavy armour. The max dex bonus penalty shouldn't "stack" per se, but if you are wearing heavy armour, a heavy carry wt shouldn't affect your max dex bonus because heavy armour already does in the exact same way.

Btw, I am not making the special properties of mithril into account writing this. That would be another story.

Also, it shouldn't have affected your ac by that much unless you were a high dex character. It might have affected your dodge skill by quite a bit, though.

[Larethiel]

In D&d dwarves have a special rule that makes them more stable means, giving them +4 on ac when they are charged or bull rushed.

[Dalanna]

Actually after the weight change anything I don't absolutely need including quest trinkets are stashed on my mount or cart because that seemingly tiny weight begins to add up and can put me over. Since these trinkets can way a couple units each. I don't even carry a pack anymore, just a small ore bag for storage to minimize my weight. I even removed all the jewlery, which really bugged me because a gold dwarf should wear lots of gold... but its too heavy. Each ring/earring was 2-3 units of weight.

And I don't even have a full set of heavy armour. I just have the breastplate and arm guards that are heavy, the rest is chain. I cant imagine if I had a full set of plate.

And yeah the instant it changes from heavy to medium or vice versa there is a drastic change in the success of attacks against him. When Heavy my armour takes around twice the damage, and I take a ton more damage. usually I can fight kobolds and not take more than a scratch, but if heavy they actually chew me up a bit and score more damage on my armour than ussual. Its REALLY bad against mobs that are armed. So I have to really be careful not to pick up extra weapons.

The Heavy carry load penalty seems to be in addition to the the removed Dex from the heavy armour. From what I've witnessed its pretty severe.

[Jaenoic]

Maybe it would help if dwarves were made size medium instead of small, so their carry capacity increased? *winkwinknudgenudge*

[Dalvyn]

Making dwarves Medium is not a good solution, for several reasons.

• First of all, that might fix the problem of the dwarves. But what then of gnomes and halflings and goblins? A specific solution to one race clearly does not seem the way to go for me. If small races are unplayable, let's find a solution to change that, not just to fix a part of the problem.
• Second, making dwarves medium mean that all dwarven characters would have to resize all their equipment.
• Third, making dwarves medium would mean that builders would have to go through all the dwarven areas and changing item size.

I would think that we'd gain much more by considering other solutions, like

• making sure that small-sized armour correctly weighs only half the weight of normal-sized armour; same for weapons;
• adding in the to-hit and AC bonuses for small characters (once the AC system is recoded);
• Finding other kinds of advantages (e.g., racial bonuses to "mine", increased chance to find gems while mining, spell-like abilities, ...)

[Oghma]

I agree, instead of making medium-sized dwarves it would prove better to create concrete solutions for dwarves of small sizes, that way other races can benefit by an existing typeset.

[Selveem]

Making dwarves Medium is not a good solution, for several reasons.

• First of all, that might fix the problem of the dwarves. But what then of gnomes and halflings and goblins? A specific solution to one race clearly does not seem the way to go for me. If small races are unplayable, let's find a solution to change that, not just to fix a part of the problem.
• Second, making dwarves medium mean that all dwarven characters would have to resize all their equipment.
• Third, making dwarves medium would mean that builders would have to go through all the dwarven areas and changing item size.

In some ways, I agree with you. I don't want things 'crappy' for small races, but with our expansion of races, there will be plenty of other races who will benefit from other changes aside from just the Goblins, Halflings, and Gnomes. I don't feel that should condemn Dwarves to a life they (in my opinion, only) are not supposed to live per 3rd Ed.+ rules.

I also agree that changing sizes is a labor-intensive project, but this has already been done once before. Changing sizes is a fairly simple task that even a new builder can busy themselves with. I would even be willing to put forth the time required to do so. The effect there should be negligible.

The only thing that would be fairly rough would be the resizing equipment project. But, again, this either was never done before or has already been done. My Dwarf currently wears plenty of armors that are too big for him because of when he was created. I've dealt with it - I haven't seen any real difference between his (my Dwarven fighter) taking a beating and my normal human fighter who are nearly the same level.

I also noticed, and maybe this is just my opinion, but there was a sharp decline on players who play Dwarves after the size was changed to small. I know I'm probably the most outspoken of the bunch here and that some people may agree or disagree, but I want to be fair and put this out there rather than allow it (the issue) be swept under the rug in an effort to make everything look 'tidy.'

I would think that we'd gain much more by considering other solutions, like

• making sure that small-sized armour correctly weighs only half the weight of normal-sized armour; same for weapons;
• adding in the to-hit and AC bonuses for small characters (once the AC system is recoded);
• Finding other kinds of advantages (e.g., racial bonuses to "mine", increased chance to find gems while mining, spell-like abilities, ...)

Now, that being said I do agree with your solutions for the other smaller races (who are supposed to be small). I think you did a fine job of outlining some things that would help those smaller races. Perhaps Halflings could have some sort of bonus (based on a racial appraise skill) to occasionally find a piece of silver or other odd goods - a gem, ring, etc. I'd also like to see a racial bonus to luck for these poor guys.

[Dalanna]

There are problems with the dwarves, halflings, goblins, and gnomes. But, its very unlikely that all four of these extremely unique and different races will be fixed by one alteration. The real draw to these races are the differences, so those should be stressed. Im not sure a universal fix will make any of them desireable. It will probably be a serious of modifications that makes them all playable.

While I'm not crazy about enlarging the dwarves as it means a lot of resizing and costs that I can't justify IC. I can see the point. Dwarves really were never meant to be so small, and so shouldnt be lumped in with the small races to begin with. They are shorter than humans, but they make up for that in their girth which generally gives them equal or greater weight to humans.

The suggested solutions to the Halflings, goblins, and gnomes look promising, and these races as far as I know are meant to be small. (I admittedly know very little about gnomes) I think new a new thread should be created for the exploration of each. These races are all VERY different and shouldn't get changed the same as the dwarves, or any of the other races. Their fixes may turn out to be similar but the races are very different and each should get its own fix. Otherwise you're just going to have three or four races that are functionally the same with different names, which puts us back to where we are now.

[Kregor]

If they are all enhanced and changed, they won't be all changed the same. Each individual race has their entry in the Player's Handbook with a listing of their advantages, disadvantages, and racial abilities. I'm certain we can make for a set of enhancements to each race from the D20 standards that would make each of them worth the tradeoff in size.

SOME things, however, would be the same, simply because of the mechanic of things and what being small means. Being small SHOULD mean a bonus to your AC (smaller means harder to hit), a bonus to your hitroll (easier to maneuver around larger opponents to get a hit in), bonuses to hide (harder to see), etc. Those are common traits among small races, but there are race specific advantages that make each separate race a boon to play. The dwarves' bonuses would more than offset the small size in FK house rules, if they were implemented.

Some of the racial specs in D&D terms, for halflings:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/races.htm#halflings
gnomes:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/races.htm#gnomes
dwarves:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/races.htm#dwarves