Jerimiah Stonecrack and the Diamond Dwarves

Jerimiah isn't exactly a 'looker'.

1 NPC: Jerimiah Stonecrack - Diamond Dwarf Cleric

Race	Mountain Dwarf
Class	Cleric 9, Thief 11
Alignment	LN
Age	296 (Old)
Ht	3’9“
Psi Ability	182
Psi Strength	91
Attack/Defense	A-E/F,I
hp	39 (78/2)
Spells	7/6/4/4/1

Str	15
Int	19	100% MR to 1st level illusion/phantasim
Wis	19	100% MR to cause fear, etc. (see D&DG).
Con	13
Dex	13
Cha	18 (17 to non-dwarves)
Com	4 (3)

1.1 Clerical Abilities

If encountered outside of his home city, Jerimiah will be prepared with normal clerical spells. The list below is a sample but he will of course prepare for specific situations as needed. His normal role is as a member of a diplomatic party where he can pretend to be a minor clerk or functionary, too old to be of much use but valued for his experience and nothing else. His “cane” is a powerful weapon.

Within the dwarf clan, Jerimiah is a very important person indeed and will normally have special spells memorised when at home which deal with aspects of creating new dwarves and maintaining the birth pots. These spells are not useful in combat or normal role-playing situations and are left to the DM to fill in if needed. The most critical spell (mould dwarf) is 5th level and this is a primary reason why Jerimiah rarely leaves the city - he’s just too valuable.

Jerimiah is utterly ruthless in his defense of his home and his kin.

1.1.1 Standard spells

1. 1st level
   
   1. Combine
   2. Cure Light Wounds
   3. Detect Evil
   4. Endure Cold
   5. Penetrate disguise
   6. Protection from Evil
   7. Sanctuary
2. 2nd level
   
   1. Aid
   2. Find Traps
   3. Hold Person
   4. Messenger
   5. Spiritual Hammer
   6. Snake charm
3. 3rd level
   
   1. Cure Disease
   2. Dispel Magic
   3. Feign Death
   4. Speak with Dead
4. 4th level
   
   1. Exorcise
   2. Cloak of Fear
   3. Cure Serious Wounds
   4. Giant Insect
5. 5th level
   
   1. Cause Critical Wounds

1.2 Thief Abilities

Backstab	x4 damage
PP	90%
OL	77%
FT	85%
MS	86%
HiS	70%
HN	35%
CW	89.1
RL	50%

1.3 Magic items

1.3.1 The Cane

Jerimiah’s cane is the unique rod of kill or cure. With 50 charges, the rod attacks as a +1 bo stick. However, each touch of the rod - not necessarily in combat - can cause or cure 1d8 hp of damage per charge expended, to a maximum of 3 charges per touch. Expending 4 charges will cast cure or cause disease, deafness, or blindness as the user chooses. All effects are at 11th level for the purposes of magic resistance etc. It can be recharged and Jerimiah will make sure it is fully charged before leaving on any external mission. Otherwise, assume it has 38+1d12 charges.

Inspection of the cane by any dwarf or anyone using detect invisible, true seeing, and similar magicks (including identify) will reveal complicated dwarven runes which effectively are a user manual listing the various dwarven activation words for the different effects (12 in all). One effect may be learnt per minute if the user is familiar with both the spoken and written dwarven language (comprehend languages is not enough), otherwise only one effect per hour may be learnt (roll 1d12, re-rolling effects already known):

d12	Trigger learnt
1	1d8 cure
2	1d8 cause
3	2d8 cure
4	2d8 cause
5	3d8 cure
6	3d8 cause
7	cure deafness
8	cause deafness
9	cure blindness
10	cause blindness
11	cure disease
12	cause disease

When used in combat, the user activates the desired effect and rolls to-hit (modifications Vs armour are recommended for this). Outside of combat it is assumed that the cure effects are desired by the target and need no save. The “cause” effects allow a saving throw if the target is otherwise unsuspecting. If the save (vs death) is made, then the user may still make a to-hit roll. Attempting to cure a target who is engaged in combat requires a to-hit roll and the risk of wasting charges. The holder can always use cures on themselves without any roll to-hit.

The cane can be used by clerics (inc. druids) and magic users. Charging must be performed by a magic user or a dwarven cleric.

G.p. value: 30,000 X.p. value: 8,000

1.3.2 Other Items

• Amulet of proof against detection or location.
• Boots of pass without trace (8,000gp, 1,500xp).
• Items not normally used/carried on missions outside of Jerimiah’s homeland:
  • Full Plate +2
  • Medium shield +2
  • Hammer, +3.

The armour and shield declare in runes visible under the same conditions as the runes on the cane that the wearer is the Jerimiah Stonecrack, High Priest of the Lawful Elemental Power of Earth and acts as a symbol of fear to any non-dwarf who reads them. These runes will disappear if the armour is ever worn by a non-dwarf (the armour will adjust to fit as small as a gnome or halfling, or a short elf or human female or very short human male).

2 Psionics

2.1 Body Weaponry at 11th level (1pt/rnd)

AC 1, longsword +1; CL 8, d8+1/d12+1.

2.2 Expansion at 11th level (5pt/rnd)

14’ 9“ tall. CL 5, d8+11/d12+11. Can be combined with above to give CL8, d8+12/d12+12.

2.3 Molecular Agitation at 11th level (1pt/rnd)

Effects felt after 1 round of concentration.

3 Diamond Dwarves

The diamond dwarves are dwarven clerics who have psionic abilities and have risen to High Priest level (9th) - a level not normally available to dwarven clerics but which is possible via various methods, the easiest one of which is living long enough to attain a wisdom ability score of 19. Any dwarven cleric with psionic abilities is given a title as a gem dwarf as follows:

Level	Title
9+	Diamond
8	Sapphire
7	Ruby
6	Emerald
5	Topaz
4	Amethyst
3	Opal
3	Quartz
1	Turquoise

Diamond dwarves are likely to be invited to join the Cabal if they are Neutral.

Rebuilding Dwarves

Art: Ben Hodson 

Following on from the previous post, here’s a look at dwarves under this thought experiment.

1 (N)PC Clerics

The fact that dwarven clerics were only NPCs always sparked ideas in my head about what was so special about being a dwarf cleric that they had no time for adventuring.
Some of the answers are hidden below, but the obvious answer in these posts is that they are intimately concerned with creating new dwarves from the pots.
Slightly awkwardly, of course, the PHB rules don’t allow dwarves to reach “high priest” level, although I allow that for WIS scores over 18. UA confused the issue by making dwarf clerics just the same as any other clerics.
On the one hand, it was nice that players could play dwarves with some type of magic. On the other it seemed to rob them of a big part of their mystery.
But, even sticking with the PHB, there is surely scope for dwarven PCs of levels too low to play a key role in the reproduction of the tribe.

2 Here we Stand (yes, we are standing)

The pots from which dwarf children (they’re not really babies) emerge are large and carved into the solid rock, much like the Cambodian temple in the illustration. If a pot ever becomes disconnected from the living rock it becomes inert and only a limited wish, alter reality or wish spell can restore it (roll 1d10 and if the result is equal to or less than the level of the spell used it has succeeded. Failure means that spell will never work for the specific pot). As an aside, the pots must be pots for technical, practical, and ritual reasons; they can not be pits.
Because of this, dwarven tribes are very strongly tied to the location of their pots and the creation of a new tribe - which requires the creation of new pots - is a rare thing. Each dwarf is strongly and instinctively protective of the pot in which it was created and if placed in a dilemma between protecting it from imminent damage and obeying an order to leave (or similar), will have to make a loyalty check at -30%.
The importance of the pots, and their nature, mean that there are almost no modern cases of pots being constructed in the open air - although there may be some ruined sites around the world. Almost all dwarven homes are therefore underground.
All of the ritual and paraphernalia associated with creating new dwarves, and still more that associated with the creation of pots, is very secret indeed and very little has leaked out even to the normal dwarf-in-the-hall, let alone humans and their ilk.
However, whatever is done and however it is done is surely fertile grounds for creating macguffins for scenarios and NPCs on various missions. Perhaps the rood-flangler has been stolen and no new dwarves can be created until it is retrieved, or replaced by one languishing in a deserted dwarf city.
Perhaps the melding irons have become distended by some careless use and only meteorite iron can be used to mend them… etc. etc.

3 Diversity

Dwarves are probably the most diverse races in the campaign world. Each tribe, indeed each pot, produces young dwarves who’s appearance reflects the stone from which the pot was carved. Hill Vs Mountain is the most well-known distinction but that is crude compared to the subtle differences between granite and basalt, limestone and marble dwarves.
The differences are often only something that a dwarf can see - and almost all dwarves can recognise the tribal affiliation of another dwarf on site, assuming that the viewer already has knowledge of the other tribe. Sometimes the differences are visible enough that even humans and elves can see them - some chalk and flint dwarves (pech) have very pale skin indeed, and a few marl tribes even have blue or green skin. Hair colour varies from steel-grey to jet black and rarely changes with age, making it hard for outsiders to judge the age of a dwarf on first meeting, although there is a tendency in some tribes to age-related baldness.

4 The Great Outdoors

Although dwarves spend a lot of time underground and are famous devourers of mushrooms and fungi of all sorts, many hill dwarves are in fact farmers and many hunting tribes are formidable hunters.
Most dwarves share a deep love of nature and beauty, adorning their underground homes with things which remind them of the world outside their stone mansions - gold, silver, and copper flowers and trees displayed in caverns whose ceilings are studded with gems representing the night sky.

Martial Arts

The fact that dwarves can not easily move location, and the disaster that befalls a tribe whose home is overrun, means that dwarves have always been strong on the field of battle. As well as possessing keen tactical minds, their smiths have reach pinnacles of weapon-crafting only surpassed by the elves, who may have more than a thousand years extra practise compared to even the most venerable dwarven smith.
Homelands are always well stocked against siege, as retreat is never an option and it is rare indeed for any dwarf to be captured alive if a homeland is conquered.
Dwarves need not devote any bodily energy to reproduction and they are tough and strong far beyond a similar-sized human, or even many human-sized humans.

5 Diplomacy? That’s a Game, Isn’t It?

Because of the above factors, dwarven homelands are always self-sufficient and the need to hold or control territory sufficient to support that is the most common cause for conflict between dwarves and other races (since tribes are always settled at a safe distance, there’s no case recorded of dwarf Vs dwarf combat).
It is also a reason why dwarves tend not to be good at diplomacy or even plain old tact; they simply don’t need to be. They also don’t normally need to trade, another activity which helps knock the corners off a race (see the upcoming gnome post). Hill dwarves are somewhat more prone to interaction with others, simply because they tend to live in more accessible areas, but even they are not normally much involved with their neighbours.
This does not alter the fact that dwarves are generally Good-aligned but it’s a very metaphysical alignment. They are hard to fool, cautious, and frequently disinterested enough to be hard to corrupt. They also have been the victims of some of the world’s worst underworld monsters. So they are not tools for Evil and generally go beyond that, eschewing neutrality as well.
However, on an individual level they may seem gruff to the point of grimness unless they’ve had a few drinks. At such times they can surprise companions by eloquent discussions of what constitutes great Art, or even recite poetry extolling the wonders of the natural world - although few of these are in a human language.

Language

Dwarves are apparently born/created with language imprinted in their minds. The few foundlings ever raised outside of the homelands have grown up speaking the language of their upbringing but also perfectly able to speak the tongue of their birthplace.
Each dwarven language is intelligible to every other and as such they are really dialects and sometimes a dwarf who struggles to understand another will say something like “His speech is very slatey,” or “There’s a strong greensand tone to his voice”. These dialectal variations seem to be wider than the differences seen in appearance.

6 The Crackpots

But not everything in the world of dwarves is rose-quartz.
It is said that a pot can be damaged or can develop a flaw before, possibly long before, it is noticed by the priests in charge of the making-rituals.
The resulting dwarves are known as “duergar” - literally “crackpots” in an ancient dwarven tongue.
The evil nature of these dwarves will eventually be found out. If the problem is caught early, then the individual or two will simply be killed. If the problem has been able to fester the result will usually be akin to civil war. This has destroyed the pots of more than one homeland, scattering the survivors from both sides out into the world, or the underworld.
Constant strange behaviour my any dwarf can lead to whispers of “he’s cracked” or “There’s a chip off there somewhere” and so on.

7 Race Relations

Humans

As discussed, dwarves have little contact with humans for the most part. They view human society as very badly organised and prone to outbreaks of evil behaviour. As such they remain cautiously unenthusiastic in their dealings with humans - neither shunning them nor trusting them overmuch.
For their part, humans tend to melt all demi-humans into the same category of “nimble-fingered foreigners” and view the dwarven desire for beautiful things as the result of barely controlled congenital greed.

Elves

The mutual dislike of dwarves and elves comes mostly from the fact that many dwarven homelands depend on wood for fuel. There are exceptions where coal has been found but broadly speaking, dwarves cook their meals and sometimes prop up areas of weak tunnel using wood.
For mountain dwarves this dislike is reinforced by their relatively constant trouble with the Dark Elves - the snow-skinned nocturnal terrors of the high woods and frozen lakes. Dark Elves are practically the only surface-dwelling race that the mountain dwarves encounter with any frequency and they tend to tar the other elves with the same brush. It is not helped by the fact that many elves will not speak against the Dark Elves for reasons of kinship - a reason the asexual dwarves find to be weak.
Hill dwarves might be expected to be rather less hostile to elves as they have much more contact with the typical elf - the small flighty, fun-loving spirits of the wood as well as their taller and (slightly) more serious cousins - but they are also much more likely to be in dispute over access to trees.

Kobolds

As miners, dwarves particularly hate kobolds and will generally attack them on sight unless the weaker kobolds outnumber the dwarves by three or more to one.

8 Changes to the MM

• Dwarves do not have females and all references to such will be confused observations of dwarves aged under 30, when the full beard starts to develop.
• “Young” dwarves are those dwarves aged under 10. A dwarf resembles a beardless garden gnome in size when it first emerges from its pot. They are “born” with full knowledge of their language (and the other languages listed for PC dwarves) and all the lore which allows them to detect secret doors, sloping passages and so on, as well as an instinctive talent for carving stone.

Next: Gnomes.

Sex and D&D: Making alien babies

It's what it's all about

"I don't understand - what does
'plant your seed' mean in your land?"

Almost all human history, politics, art, science, and behaviour is shaped by reproduction - how we do it, how it works, who decides. So I was thinking that if we change those things we almost inevitably start to approach a much more genuinely alien race. So, here’s a set of ideas to change the demi-humans.

Dwarves

• Dwarves do not reproduce biologically. Dwarven clerics use secret rituals to make new dwarves in huge stone pots. If these are destroyed, the tribe is effectively doomed to extinction unless new ones are made, and it’s very very hard to make them.
• Young dwarves (i.e., under 30) do not have beards and are sometimes mistaken for females.
• All dwarves have penises, which are for waste excretion only.

Gnomes

• Gnomes also do not reproduce biologically, but are dug out of geodes in metamorphic rocks.
• Most of gnome society is devoted to finding seams of these geodes.

Kobolds

• Kobolds (evil gnomes) also breed using these same geodes. 
• They have a process which converts the geode's contents into kobolds instead of gnomes. The process uses silver and they prize this metal higher than any other.
• They also preserve the stones rather than "hatching" them immediately in the way that gnomes do. The stockpiles of geodes has lead outsiders to believe that kobolds are oviparous.
• The geodes are saved for when new silver or gem seams are found and the tribal leaders want more labour. Kobold children - "scamps" - can work usefully from the age of two.

Elves

• Female elves have a gestation period of about two weeks, at the end of which they secrete a small seed which must be planted and tended for about a year before the child emerges in the form of a pixie.
• This form is retained for about two years before it finds a hollow in a tree and forms a cocoon. The following spring the child elf is born “for real”.
• Adult elves take no part in raising a child until it reaches the age of 20, at which point the pixies take the young elf to meet its parents (or wider family).
• Half elves born of human mothers grow like a human child.
• The dark elves of the high boreal forests with their snow-white skin and raven-black hair breed only in the winter and their children take the form of and are raised by goblins.

Halflings

• Halflings are much like humans except for a shorter gestation period of only three months, during which time the mother is said to be “eating for four”.
• Fertility rates are low, with twins being exceptional and most births being separated by 5-12 years.
• Halfling children mature slowly.

The more I think about these changes, the wider the ripples become. Dwarves are rooted to the place where their pots are; gnomes are nomadic; elves protect their woods as a matter of life or death; halflings are stay-at-homes. All common tropes, but with an underpinning beyond "because".

Dwarves

Dwarves are an interesting race in AD&D. On the one hand, they're the race that derives the least from folklore on paper (except half-orcs, I guess, but I've never seen anyone actually play a half-orc) but in a way they have marched away from The Lord of the Rings and manage to not feel like a lift from Tolkien during play, at least in my experience. They have managed to become just a "role-playing race", independent from any particular origin. In the process they have diced with becoming dangerously generic but never quite tipped over the edge.

I think part of what saved them is the fact that there are dwarves in folklore. Probably the best known (to me, at least) being Albrecht from the legend of the Rinegold and the Ring of Power - which obviously lay under Tolkien's work. So, unlike Hobbits halflings, there was somewhere else to mine for background material and inspiration. Indeed, even JRRT seems to have translated "real world" dwarves into his setting in the form of the "petty-dwarves" of the Silmarillion, who bear no real resemblance to the more typical Gimli/Thorin types that inspired the AD&D race.

"I never even met Tolkien!"

It's worth pointing out, perhaps, that dwarves are unique among the playable fantasy races in actually being real in some sense. The vast majority of folktales of "dwarves" are obviously based on mediaeval views about very short people, and reflect the typical accepting, tolerant, and cosmopolitan outlook of that period. It's noticeable, for example, that legends about dwarves rarely feature large numbers of them mixing with "normal" people - they are loners, because real dwarves were unusual and if a mediaeval peasant ever saw any, it was probably just a single man or woman surviving as best they could in a world where their very bodies were seen as a mark of sin. Groups of dwarves are always depicted as being in wild places or deep underground where, in fact, most people would never be.

Snow White

As Matthew has said on Silver Blade Adventures, the main motivation for adding dwarves to the Chainmail rules was to allow re-creation of stuff like The Battle of the Five Armies in The Hobbit. But for me, that battle was the least interesting part of the book - almost completely irrelevant to the main story of Bilbo's travels, it's as if Saving Private Ryan had included a section about  the bombing of Nagasaki. What The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings really gave D&D was a vision of a party of characters on an adventure where they encountered other characters of various non-human races. But, even if that's what JRRT gave D&D in general, he gave our group nothing at all directly, at least initially.

Too much "snow white"

It's funny looking back on it how little we as a group took inspiration in our play from Tolkien - in fact I doubt that any of my original group had even read his work before we started play and when the BBC Radio version came out in '81 it was too late to really make a mark on long-established play styles.

The class restrictions in AD&D - fighter, thief, or assassin - always struck me as a bit odd and I only remember one dwarven thief. A dwarven assassin seemed, and seems, to me as a strange combination as a dwarven monk. In actual play this meant that dwarves were always fighters. So mostly it was the "angry Glaswegian" version that triumphed over the "tragic race" picture in LotR and dwarves were popular choice in AD&D play.

In the original D&D's little brown books, the dwarves' advantages were slight and the race rarely played although there were many NPCs, particularly on trips to Thunderhold in CSIO but the PHB presented dwarves in a much more expansive way, including several great illustrations by Trampier, including page 108 (the magic mouth) which is one of the best of all AD&D's artworks. And, since being a fighter is an easy option for newcomers, dwarven fighters were common enough that one even managed to make it to the level cap at 9th level! Through various magical quests, the limit was gradually and with great difficulty lifted a level at a time until he reached 12th level, at which point our campaign ended.

I suspect that the director hasn't actually read The Hobbit

Unearth Arcana's solution of generally increasing level limits by 2 for single-classed characters seemed a little strained to me, in that I could not imagine a dwarf ever being multi-classed - the idea that dwarves were only fighters had become self-reinforcing by the early 80's - and, anyway, it took so long to reach the level limits that I thought it reasonable for the player to have the resources to sort that out themselves.

So, dwarves sit in a strange place for me. They're the go-to race for fighter characters and they have interesting mechanical advantages in AD&D, and suffer very little from the Tolkien effect in play, but they've become perhaps a little too generic and these days I'd quite like to play a dwarven cleric or even druid and explore that relationship with the other dwarves than just another "Is that tha best ya kin do, pal?" fighter. But then, I've never played a dwarf at all, other than NPCs!