Kings of the Mountain: Dwarven Archetypes

Show What A Real Dwarf Is Made Of!

Stoic and steadfast, dedicated warriors and master craftsmen, there’s a lot that can be said about dwarves. They are often praised for their amazing works of stonemasonry and engineering, as well as the incredible weapons, armor, and other metal objects that they produce from their world-class forges. As a people, their crafts are rivaled only by their twin loves of fighting and drinking.

Of course, when you choose to make your player character an dwarf, all that you really care about is the +2 bonus to your Constitution and Wisdom scores (and who needs Charisma, anyway?), so why bother playing a dwarven shaman or bard? Even if a +2 bonus doesn’t really make that much of a difference, it just feels so wrong to knowingly combine a race and class that don’t go well together, and, as a result, many players never bother to consider it.

This book aims to give players who want the fact that their character is a dwarf to matter more a way to make that happen, while also providing support for dwarven characters of a variety of classes that don’t typically make much mechanical sense for elves. Included are the dwarven deepdelver, a rogue archetype that take the dwarf’s natural stonecunning to a whole new level, which can also literally sniff out gold and gems, the dwarven lorekeeper, a skald archetype with divine spellcasting that grants his allies a battle focus, instead of sending them into a rage, the dwarven scallywag, a swashbuckler archetype that turns a dwarf’s small stature to his advantage, the dwarven stoutshield, a cavalier archetype for rugged mountain dwarves who fight on foot and take no quarter, and the stonespeaker, an oracle archetype for dwarves devoted first and foremost to dwarven culture and ancestors.