Dwarven Peoples

• Ability Score Increase. Your Constitution score increases by 2.

• Age. Dwarves mature at the same rate as humans, but they're considered young until they reach the age of 50. On average, they live about 350 years.

• Size. Dwarves stand between 4 and 5 feet tall and average about 150 pounds. Your size is Medium.

• Speed. Your base walking speed is 25 feet. Your speed is not reduced by wearing heavy armor.

• Darkvision. Accustomed to life underground, you have superior vision in dark and dim conditions. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can't discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.

• Dwarven Resilience. You have advantage on saving throws against poison, and you have resistance against poison damage.

• Dwarven Combat Training. You have proficiency with the battleaxe, handaxe, light hammer, and warhammer.

• Tool Proficiency. You gain proficiency with the artisan's tools of your choice: smith's tools, brewer's supplies, or mason's tools.

• Stonecunning. Whenever you make an Intelligence (History) check related to the origin of stonework, you are considered proficient in the History skill and add double your proficiency bonus to the check, instead of your normal proficiency bonus.

• Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and Dwarvish. Dwarvish is full of hard consonants and guttural sounds, and those characteristics spill over into whatever other language a dwarf might speak.

Cultural Trivia

Historically, most dwarven societies have lived in mountainous regions, in stonework cities built into the mountains themselves. Many generations hence, however, a fraction of Destrea's dwarven population opted instead to join broader migration waves to regions such as the Great Wide and the Caravan Delta. As such, these dwarven sub-populations are called 'Dwellers', as in 'surface-dwellers', by their mountain cave counterparts.

It should be noted however, to add to this confusion, that those same dwarves, in turn, have dubbed their counterparts in the Stön Trillium with that same moniker- 'Dweller', as in 'they who dwell underground'. The term is, evidently, intended as a pejorative.

Editor's Note: The cultural debate to settle which is which has raged on for decades, with no end in sight, hence the confused title of this section of the Guide. -M.G.

Origin Theories

According to Elementist theology, dwarves of all kinds are said to have been moulded from clay found in the mountains of the Torrhen Shield, many millennia ago, during the Founding Era.