Are dwarves the official low IQ race?

>racist human Paladin obsessed with crusades
That exists outside of /v/ autists?

I've never encountered it myself, but you know some imbecile somewhere thinks it's a brilliant idea.

>racist
>Paladin

Pick one.

Kangs n sheet.

The entire point is the cliche ! If you want to play something different that would make you special snowflake donut steel stand out then it would probably be better to play your disgusting half whatever sue.

I am tired of hearing people bitch and moan all the time about cliches when they are genuinely beloved by people whom grow up to them with books and movies.

>never pick casters or any class that makes you think about your strategy
Wrong

You don't try to make a fleshed out believable character though. If you want to have one dimensional characters and play it like a beer and pretzels game then by all means do so but don't tell me it's the same as people who lean towards story writing, acting and role playing believable characters. Especially don't tell me that your generic dwarf fightet, Axefist McBeardaxe, is the equal of most genre fiction or even the prototype of Gimli and the Lonely Mountain dwarves from The Hobbit.

Goblin Slayer's dwarf priest is probably one of the better dwarves I've seen. As is Senshi from Goblin Meshi.

The former is a genuinely kind character that uses just enough of the old tropes to be familiar while changing the coat of paint in a neat way; the latter is also a genuinely kind character who defies enough of the tropes that he's only familiar if you look at his aesthetic. Other more stereotypical dwarves are weirded out by him.

Sure. beloved. But I don't want to see 100000 grimeleys and only that. That's like playing with just warrior, no monks, nothing interesting, just asshole that hit things.

A person should have a bit more depth to them than that to qualify as a person.

Tieflings are perfectly fine. The universal story is whether or not to identify with your blood heritage or try and forge your own destiny despite what everyone thinks of you; and despite what greater powers try to exert influence over you.

It's literally a new version of the Drizzt syndrome, and the worst part about that era was that everyone wanted to play Drizzt--including his inherent un-beat-ability--without focusing on the themes that made his story good.

C'mon son, real vikings can actually be some cool shit. Read up on the Icelandic Sagas.

As soon as it gets a helm with horns it's all ruined.

>viking fanboys (cringiest thing on earth)
Like most everything else, ripping Norse mythology and aesthetics for fantasy can work well or poorly.

The not!vikings of the Iron Islands with an entire culture that revolves around boating and fighting because the author knew little else about the culture? Bad.

A game like the Banner Saga series that uses as much of the culture(s) as possible, instead of just their popular myths, modern image of constant warfare, and general aesthetic? All while introducing us to a unique-enough world that it doesn't entirely rely on what it takes from Norse culture? Good.

this. religiously zealous =/= racist

racism is a prejudice that most good-aligned deities wouldn't be cool with. leads to lynching & hate in many settings.

Will you stop whining like a child because I dislike how the vast amount of your "community" constantly plays dwarves with the same cliches, never changing anything but a surname. Instead of trying to make a slight difference, you go an play Kurgen Ironbelly a drunken "Scot" You only take the accent and nothing else who's got a little Nordic flavor and always hates elves for one reason or another. Hell, if you want to copy and paste another culture for flavor then go ahead, but the dwarven cliches that came to be by Jackson's movies are the only things people play. I have the same problem with DUES VULT smite everything paladins and Not!Legolas wood elves.

Herge flurge bork bork bork

kinda related, what does Veeky Forums think of skellige from the witcher franchise? i personally like what it does with the viking theme a lot because it sort of tries to keep things realistic-ish alongside all the heroism and bragging.

That's dumb. Religious zealotry can easily lead to atrocities that border on or entirely jump into racism.

Someone's not!Templar killing not!Saracens may be an autistic fuck and argue that he's slaughtering these people for GOD and not because they're DIRTY ARABS (or orcs or whatever is being used), but everyone at the table knows that's bullshit.

Even if we don't go with the obvious meme straw man example, it's far too easy to slip from one to the other. Unless you play the religious zealotry PERFECTLY, everyone there knows that you're eventually going to take the next step.

I like them because they borrow from Irish and Scottish culture and not just from the Scandi. They also don't make the GRRM mistake and make the entire culture about fighting and raiding; in fact one of the two monarchs you can choose from stands on a platform of internal building up and leaving the outside world alone for a while.

Except when it's about killing completely evil-aligned creatures. Corellon Larethian likes it when you kill many orcs.

aye, but that's the temptation, isn't it? a paladin who commits acts of violence in the name of their god is always going to be tempted to take that next step. the step where their zealous love for their god's doctrines starts turning sour.

i guess my point is more it can be played righteously, and racism can't. i'm not gonna try to generalize players and say it will/won't be.

I don't play casters because i'm not a sissy faggot that uses magic

>never pick casters or any class that makes you think about your strategy
>the easiest most op archetype in dnd and its equivalents
>"strategical"

I don't think I've ever seen an elf player give the tiniest shit about nature.

I thought it was refreshing that they went for a norse-gaelic type vibe. Like the kingdom of the Isles rather than Scandinavia. It was also nice to see their society depicted as one that does rely on consensus between and within clans, lacking any notions of divine right and absolute authority.

Would've been interesting to see them tackle the clan "democracy" more though, and the way laws and the Lawspeakers worked. But we can't have everything, and I very much doubt we'll ever get as good of a look at (relatively accurate) norse society as my autistic ass would like.

I don't find the temptation intriguing like you do, I suppose. Besides, that goes entirely out the window if they are serving a deity whose doctrine is itself racist.

ironically the most nature-loving character in any campaign i've played is a 'nam vet sniper who's super environmentalist because he wants there to always be forests for him to snipe from

true, the doctrine itself is always going to come into question. but can the doctrine of a good-aligned deity really be racist? that doesn't seem super "good" to me.

i mean, obviously it can if it's in the setting, but it seems like it could be an interesting "this is the interpretation of the followers of this deity and the deity can't/doesn't intervene directly to stop them" type thing

Now we have to ask how much influence that good god has.

If they're like typical D&D where they can speak to their subjects or occasionally manifest avatars, then it's a lot less likely for religious zealotry to drift toward racism if the doctrine doesn't really include a scenario that could bridge the gap.

But if it's like our world where there is no discernible influence, then any people with an opposing religion or sect could easily be prosecuted as an ethnic group because "any one that stands still is a well-disciplined Saracen!" and the deity could do fuck-all to intervene.

How do you play as a tiefling who is neither a thief nor a former street urchin? What themes can be played with such character?

One of my PCs is a child of a minor noble family that had a grandfather make a deal with a devil. She is the first real manifestation of proof of that deal.

Her family locked her away but provided her with books, instruments, and a childhood friend in the form of a servant's daughter to keep her occupied. She was well-loved but a massively dangerous family embarrassment.

When she got older she decided to go on a walkabout. This went over well with her family but she can't really come back home or draw attention to them; she had to take a different name and stay out of her homeland.

The primary themes here are coming to grips with whether or not she is as bad as her family's shame implied; what she is going to do to make things right; and what her future holds if she is well and truly doomed to wander because of her birth.

Any and all?

Yeah, lots of interesting questions from this. I always try to make the theology semi-deep in my settings kinda deep from this, or as deep as i can anyway.

I like the polytheistic lots-of-gods approach but if it's me creating rather than playing I prefer simple with deep religious ideology conflicts

I'd kind of like to hear more about how Veeky Forums does theology in their settings but that's a far throw from this thread's topic

I prefer the "belief gives power," approach with deities allowed very limited influence in the form of occasional visions and once-a-generation avatar influence. Competition for followers is stiff and makes for something of a hyper-secret celestial Cold War.

>leads to better roleplaying than "racist human Paladin obsessed with crusades" or "snobby elf treehugger" or "tiefling anything."
I will HEAVILY contest that. Dwarves are tsundere for every plot point or even just trekking across the surface so you always have to drag them along kicking and grunting.

Jesus fucking christ. There is nothing special about the tiefling.
Since the 4th edition the tiefling is now just some guy with horns. You can be the town baker and nobody would give a shit. The halfling thug would intimidate you, you fucking "fiendish" peasant.
Stop making the tiefling look like something it is not anymore.

I like this approach. Cold war between faiths with the metaphorical nukes being divine favors/other providence is a cool way to run it

Chads

Me Ghor'Zokk Thunderdikk, chieftain of Wenchploughers

They're not but appear to be for a variety of reasons.
The main reason is that all classic fantasy settings, from D&D to Warhammer always focused a lot more effort into diversifying Elves instead of dwarves, and such diversification actually captured the player's interest, who now had an excuse to play different flavours of elf. Not to mention all of these different flavours of elves are usually properly fleshed out and different.
They tried the same thing with dwarves but they soon saw that it didn't catch a lot of interest in the customers. The fact that these different kinds of dwarves are poorly fleshed out doesn't help. If you look at the Drow, they have distinctive traits and a culture that makes them stand out from other elves, Duergar are just evil dwarfs with grey skin.
So dwarfs are stuck in this limbo where the most widespread and known variety of them is rooted into most fantasy settings with negligible differences, and since the dwarfs are stuck in this limbo dwarf players are also stuck there, because varying from the given archetype feels odd or wrong.
There are shitty dwarf players and excellent dwarf players, but eventualy they all end up playing a shitty or a good version of the same archetype

>Be swedish and playing the witcher 3, at the skellinge part
>all of the skellige words/names for things are just random swedish words

An example was when you needed to find the special mushrooms called "Moerdroeme" mushroom, prounced like the swedish word for nightmare "Mardröm".
Morkvarg the angry black wolf? Swedish for darkwolf, the rain summouner was just yelling random shit in swedish during the ritual.

Rather distracting, but for voice actors pretending to be vikings with scottish accents their swedish prounication was quite good.

>be washed up on Skellige
>first thing that happens is that a dog called "Trofast" (Faithful) sniffs you
They set the scene pretty damn early

Is this a folklore thing I'm unaware of? Dumb amerifat here

I like to make my Dwarves Russian.

I dont like 4/5th edition tieflings. Call me a classicist, but I prefer to play them in by the oldschool.

I was once working on a Dwarf focused setting where pretty much any nationality/ethnicity often thought to be loud and hairy had a Dwarf culture equivelant
>Russian and other Slavic Dwarfs
>Honhonhoning pompous French Dwarf knights
>Norse Dwarfs
>Italian Dwarfs
>Scottish and other Celtic Dwarfs

>loud and hairy
Oh, and with a love of booze of course.

>golden age Dwarf-Arab scholars
>nomadic Gypsy-Dwarves

>>loud and hairy
just like your mother

I don't see any tag saying Orcs are always chaotic evil.

And one badly written deific outlier does not define every single good aligned God. Modern Paladin's don't even need to worship a god to get their power, its all about oaths and righteousness.

...We must make Dwarf World, a world where the only race is Dwarves.

>never pick casters or any class that makes you think about your strategy
BUT MUH RUNES!

You take that back right fucking now

Dwarfs weren't the only race but they were pretty much the setting equivelant of humans. Well, I mean, they took on the role that humans usually have. Humans themselves were tartan wearing Celtic and Central Asian horse barbarians who harassed good civilised Dwarven nations.

Trofast is just one of those incredibly generic dog names. Like Rover.

>Since the 4th edition the tiefling is now just some guy with horns.

Then play a hooman/alf/durf who's been cursed by some witch to have horns.

this but one race of humans or human-sized creatures.

>"we calls 'em tall un's."
>"stuff it, tallboy!"

Dwarves are for people who like tropes.
Elves are for people who want to invert tropes, and end up going full cliche.

My little brother 's first pathfinder character was a dwarf druid, didn't fall into any of those stereotypes actually.
Then again , his character's name was grimdark and weapon of choice was a scythe.
I love that little edge lord.

Plenty of zealots like to hide behind a greater mandate to justify their bigotry and hate

Look at modern day SJWs

As opposed to actual stormniggers who run people over with their cars?

Neither side is blameless in this arguement (something something baseball game), let's just drop the /pol/ before we all get banned.

>this thread

INTO THE BOOK IT GOES

>Kicking doors into a church and going deus vult. Lead storming a county concert. Hiding in the trunk of a sedan in DC for a week and popping randos. Shooting cops during a protest about being treated like "normal".
This is ok somehow.
>Smacking a landwhale with your chad-mobile after some fuck smashes your rear window in.
Absolutely disgusting!

>Hiding in the trunk of a sedan in DC for a week and popping randos.
I could guess the context of the other ones, but either I missed something or you're just describing the plot of The Jackal

I guess that's a Yes to OP's question.

>dwarves react to microaggressions by ranting about them in their diary
Truly the girliest race.

>manletism
Then it's gnomes

But mate, Warhammer, AoS in particular, is one of the few settings that has significantly different dwarven subraces. The Old World had vanilla Nordic dwarves and Chaos dwarves, who are basically steampunk Mesopotamians. On top of that, AoS adds Fyreslayers, who are Spartans with a massive hardon for fire, and Kharadron Overlords, who are cyberpunk sky pirates. Needless to say, they are all extremely different and unique.

>Never play casters
>a key stereotype is the Dwarven Cleric

nigga the fuck you smoking?

KO are steampunk/aetherpunk, definitely not cyberpunk.

>"Try not ta bump yar head in on the way out ya lanky git!"

Should female dwarves have beards or not?

Guys guys, if there's one thing we can ALL agree on, its that hobbits are criminally underused.

Hobbits belong in lotr.

IN THE BOOK.

THAT'S A GRUDGE

>tsundere
more like fundere

t. fling

sorry you play with boring dwarves, user

Since we're on the subject of Dwarves, I'm looking to play this character in a new campaign but I can't tell if it's shit or not. The character is:

>Washed up dwarf who's obsessed with money because he wants to feed his alcohol addiction. I'm not talking about tavern singer drunk but actually depressed and just drinking until he gets his proper battle death
>I'd play him as the wise in his years leader, who's been around the block a few times.
>Mule like work ethic, no passion at all, no room for games.
>Very static line between adventuring and "friends", he would say something like, "I demand your best for this group, we've a job to do. Don't fuck around because adventuring isn't some fun little game, we're not friends we're business partners"
>I'd probably have him repressing a softer open side he's not willing to tap into because he doesn't care about these folks he travels with.

Is this idea shitty or no? How can I make it more fun to play with for others? How can I make it less cliche or boring or edgy?

Most people have no idea how to play one and we end up with something like Kender
>hobbits
If you mean Hobbits specifically, Tolkien would be displeased with them being used in RPG's at all, as he explicitly described them as the least likely race of all to take up adventuring.

Sure about that?

That's the point. By walking on a tight line between doing something out of religiousness and doing something out of malice, there's some form of challange and suspense for the paladin that ISN'T bullshit no-win scenarios on the GM's part. If the paladin goes all the way he's done, and he should know this, which is why he must never make prejudice or vengeance a part of what he does. Else he becomes as vile as the orcs.

>you will never play a game of a squad of dwarves in the underdark
Why live?

>Chaos dwarves, who are basically steampunk Mesopotamians
Who lasted for about one edition before becoming a sidenote that nobody remembers about.
>On top of that, AoS adds Fyreslayers, who are Spartans with a massive hardon for fire, and Kharadron Overlords, who are cyberpunk sky pirates. Needless to say, they are all extremely different and unique.
And they're both shit. Fyreslayers are shit on a pury aesthetic point of view, because i don't know their lore and don't care. The others are shit because steampunk is shit no matter what you spread it onto

Just like Space Wolf players

I played that once, it was fucking awesome.
>huge sprawling network of tunnels
>team of five Dwarves, a Sorc, two fighters, a Paladin, a Warlock
>spend our time all roleplaying the shit out of our group
>all our characters came from the same settlement, growing up together as kids
>band of merry fuckin' men if I ever saw one
>getting down to business in combat
>any scenario we can get away with it we employ "classic Dwarven combat maneuvers
>wall of Paladin and Fighters, with Warlock and Sorc in the back slinging spells and shit
>despite a real grueling motherfucker of a DM, don't lose a single man for the first time in ages

So much fucking fun being part of a beefy tank crew of a team, I highly recommend

That sounds awesome

Yes.

One on each breast.