The Dwarf


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Dwarves are a rugged, ferocious, hard driving race in 1E AD&D.  I enjoy using them as NPCs in my campaigns, have a couple of dwarven cities/fortresses for adventures, and think they have a lot of potential as a player character.

Male dwarves are between 44 and 54 inches tall and between 134 and 174 pounds.  Female dwarves are between 42 and 50 inches tall and between 104 and 140 pounds.  Dwarves start a campaign at between 45 and 290 years old depending upon their class (clerics are oldest).  In 1E AD&D there are some slight differences between dwarves and mountain dwarves.  Mountain dwarves live longer, so that's why the information that I'm about to present about age categories has ranges.  Dwarves are mature at 51 or 61, middle ages at 151 or 176, old at 251 or 276, and venerable at 351 or 401.  Dwarves can live to be 450 or 525 years old.

Dwarves have a number of advantages.  These include adding 1 to their constitution.  For every 3.5 points of constitution, they add 1 to saving throws against spells, rods, staves, and wands.  They get the same benefit to saves versus poison.  

Dwarves are able to speak dwarf, gnome, goblin, kobold, common, and orcish.  However, no matter what their intelligence is they are only able to learn up to two more languages in addition to their alignment language.

They have infravision up to 60' and have some special abilities underground.  They can detect grade and slope in passages with 75% probability, detect new construction with 75% probability, detect sliding/shifting walls/rooms with 66% probability, detect traps with pits etc 50% of the time, and detect approximate depth underground with 50% probability.

In melee, dwarves add +1 "to hit" against half orcs, hobgoblins, goblins, and orcs.  Giant sized creatures subtract 4 from their "to hit" rolls against dwarves.

Dwarf characters do have some disadvantages.  First, they subtract one from their charisma roll and have a maximum possible charisma of 16.  They have a maximum possible dexterity of 17.  

Player characters can be fighters, thieves, or assassins.  The only class that they can be unlimited in is the thief.  Fighters and assassins are limited to 9th level.  They can multi-class (so fighter/thief, fighter/assassin).  NPCs can be clerics, with a maximum of 8th level.

A ninth level fighter doesn't sound like much, but when combined with a thief it is going to take a long time to earn enough experience points (remember they have to be split between each class) to be a 9th level fighter/thief.  Then there are going to be some really interesting abilities!    They could wear a fighter's armor (but would have to take it off to do thief abilities) and they would be able to use a fighter's weapons.  When wearing the appropriate armor they'd have a thief's abilities at the appropriate level.  

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