Our tour of the monsters in Mentzer's Basic rulebook now brings us to the dwarves. Not only can PCs be dwarves, but NPCs can too. Dwarves hate goblins and will usually attack on them on sight. They are on friendly terms with gnomes and Neanderthals. In alignment, they might be Lawful or Neutral.
As happens with some other monster entries that are also PC options, some questions about the dwarven NPCs and PCs come up almost immediately, but their answers look easy:
How fast is a dwarf? The rules for PCs don't slow dwarves down for their small stature. An unladen dwarf moves 120' per round, as does an unladen human. But the monster entry lists 60' (20') as dwarf speed. That doesn't mean PC dwarves are automatically that slow, however. The entry also gives them AC 4, which is the equivalent of chain mail and a shield. And a character with chain mail and a shield does move at 60' (20'). So there's no contradiction.
How much damage do dwarves do? Unless variable weapon damage is used, all PCs deal 1d6 damage with weapon attacks. But the monster entry for dwarves lists their damage as "1-8 or weapon." Does that mean PC dwarves should deal 1d8 damage instead of 1d6?
I don't think so. Instead, I think it can be read in either of two ways. First, you might suppose that dwarves are typically stronger than average, as reflected in PC ability scores and in the bigger damage die for NPCs. If you use variable weapon damage (as just about everyone does), then you can just see that entry as pointing to the default weapons dwarves like to use: swords and battleaxes, which both deal 1d8 damage.
Do dwarf NPCs have all the special abilities of dwarven PCs? I see no reason why not. The monster entry is pretty clear that the dwarves it describes have at least one level of the Dwarf character class. The additional information there should be seen as adding to what else is said about dwarves elsewhere.
Dwarven War Parties
Most dwarf encounters are with clan groups, war parties, or mining expeditions. Encounters with any of those could happen in the wilderness or in the dungeon. In the dungeon, however, war parties and mining expeditions are likely the most common, with clan groups being encounter in or near their wilderness lairs.
Dwarves can be Lawful or Neutral. Their war parties will most often clash with goblins, whom they hate, but Dwarves do speak kobold and gnome as well as dwarven and goblin. It should not be unusual for dwarven war parties to assist gnomes in their ongoing struggles with kobolds.
But those are not at all the only enemies dwarven war parties might fight. Dwarven clans might clash with each other — especially if one clan is predominantly Lawful and the other is predominantly Neutral. And dwarves and humans might well find themselves at war over mineral resources or farmland. The monster entry doesn't mention dwarves farmers, but dwarves do need to eat. If they don't eat rocks in your setting, the dwarves need farms, tended by either the dwarves themselves or their vassals. A dwarven clan that is not in control of its food supply is in an intolerable condition of servitude and dependency to whoever does control their food.
Their stat block indicates that dwarves will typically have chain mail, a shield, and a sword or battle axe. The Expert Rulebook's description of dwarven mercenaries includes heavy foot equipped with swords, chain mail, and shields, along with two sorts of crossbowmen.
The basic crossbowman has chain mail and a heavy crossbow. But what's a heavy crossbow? I recommend ignoring it and just treating them as wielding normal crossbows. OD&D, Holmes Basic, and AD&D all distinguish "light" and "heavy" crossbows, as does BECMI starting with the Companion set. Unfortunately, as I hope to say more about in a later post, it's not all that clear how to translate any of those to B/X.
Mining Expeditions
The very idea of a "mining expedition" is a little weird. Mining isn't really an "expeditionary" type of activity, for many of the same reasons there aren't "farming expeditions." Mining requires staying in one place and extracting its mineral resources. So, what are you really encountering when you encounter a dwarven mining expedition?
One possibility is that it's really a scouting expedition, looking for promising locations for future mining. Scouting expeditions might be found in the wilderness. Another possibility is that the "mining expedition" is there to secure a location previously identified as worth mining. This might be the most common "mining expedition" found in a dungeon, and it will not be very different from a war party. It will be an organizes military force tasked with capturing and fortifying territory to be mined once the location is secure. Such expeditions are interested in clearing out monsters and any other dangers from the area.
Finally, there is the possibility of a mining camp. Not all places with rich mineral resources are suitable places for a settlement whose population consists of permanent residents. Some are too remote from other settlements, or in places where it is impractical to grow food. In such places, dwarves might set up encampments of miners, protected by soldiers, who live there for only a few months or years at a time. The permanent population might be quite small, with miners and defenders rotating in and out regularly. Such an encampment could occur in some kinds of dungeons, especially if they are very large. They are ore likely to be in the wilderness.
Clan Groups
The Basic Rulebook says that dwarves "often live underground" and that they are "expert miners." Their mining expertise is what enables them to detect slopes, traps, and shifting walls better than others. But notice that those are abilities of all dwarves—not just most dwarves or of stereotypical dwarves. We should assume, then, that all dwarves are expert miners.
And that raises its own question. If all dwarves are miners, who grows their food? Who processes the minerals they mine? Who sews their cloaks or cobbles their shoes? To answer those questions, a DM will need to make some decisions about how dwarven culture works. For example, as dwarves have such long lives anyway, you might suppose that no dwarf is considered fully adult until they have spent 25 years or more working as a miner. After that time, dwarves might develop other skills, such as farming, tailoring, cobbling, or whatever. But for the dwarves, the mines are their elementary school. (And since they are all about equal to first-level fighters, we might add that the militia is also their elementary school.)
The Expert Rulebook has more to say about dwarven clans. Each one lives under the protection of a dwarven lord, and it is rare for multiple clans to live amongst each other. It's left to the DM to decide exactly what a dwarven clan is. It's likely not simply a family group, as dwarven lords who establish strongholds can try to establish their own clans (presumably by attracting other dwarves to come live under under their protection).
The defining feature of a dwarven clan, it seems, is its living under the protection of a single lord. Although they "are generally friendly to each other and may join forces in times of need," each clan is likely independent from others politically. There is no King of the Dwarves.
So, what do PCs encounter when they encounter a dwarven clan group?
It'll depend on whether it's a lair or not, and whether it's an a dungeon or not. If it's a lair in the wilderness, it's a dwarven settlement, complete with underground stronghold, surface farms, and everything else you would expect from a settlement of a civilized group. Wandering clan groups in the wilderness are dwarves on pretty much any civilian mission you want, other than being a mining expedition. Often, they'll be merchants carrying goods between dwarven settlements or between dwarves and their main trading partners, the gnomes and humans (and Neanderthals, if they are in the area). B/X doesn't include Tolkien's rivalry between dwarves and elves, and it's likely that each has something the other needs. So, trade with the elves might not be uncommon either.
In the dungeon, there isn't much for dwarves to be doing if they aren't war parties or working on establishing a mine. Still, there might be cases in which a dungeon is home to some lost dwarven clan (who is, quite possibly, unable to get out because they are surrounded by hostile forces too strong for them to overcome). And dwarven traders, heavily armed, might delve into some dungeons to trade for the kinds of rarities that only dungeons tend to hold. In that last case, though, the "clan group" is likely to be a group of dwarven adventurers who happen to be from the same clan.
Dwarves in the Dungeon
Dwarves wander the first level of the dungeon in groups of 1-6, and their dungeon lairs will include 5-40 dwarves. For every 20 dwarves, there is a leader of levels 3-8. That leader is not a dwarven lord. The leader is a stronger, more experienced and capable dwarf who is part of a chain of command that ultimately answers to the clan lord.
Dungeon lairs are not clanholds, but they might be mining camps, military encampments, or even outposts guarding the underground approach to a clanhold. They have a lot of treasure — type G is second only to the dragon hoard type H in average value. Given that one would find the same treasure type in a wilderness dwarven clanhold of 25-200 dwarves, it's likely that the dungeon lair is involved in moving treasure in some way. Military and mining encampments need payroll, and the latter probably has mineral goods stockpiled for transport later. Dwarves aren't listed as carrying individual treasure apart from their leaders' chance to have magic items. Still, unless the dwarves in your campaign have a purely collectivist economic system, their hoard should be spread out amongst the private holding of those who live in the lair.
Dwarves in the Wilderness
The Expert rulebook includes dwarves as wandering monster encounters in the Barren/Mountain/Hills and City/Inhabited environments. They are just over 2% of wandering monster encounters in the former environment, and just over 1% of encounters in the latter. Neanderthals, surprisingly, are twice as common as dwarves in the Barren/Mountain/Hill environment!
Dwarven layers in the wilderness are always in hills or mountains, and they are protected by subterranean strongholds. That doesn't mean the lairs won't have above-ground components, though. The dwarves will have farms above ground to raise their food, and they are likely to have some industry above ground as well—particularly foundries, smithies, and anything else that requires a lot of heat and ventilation for smoke and fumes. If such industries are located below ground, the dwarves will certainly have built chimneys, smoke stacks, or special tunnels to handle the great quantities of smoke they produce.
The wilderness lair includes 25-400 dwarves, which makes most dwarf lairs about the size of human villages. If, like humans, dwarves' rural population is about 80%, a typical lair might have about 40 farms (each home to five dwarves) with another 50 or so (10 families) in the central village and stronghold. The farms will most likely be in a valley protected by the hills or mountains that hold the main stronghold, and the central village will be near the public entry to the stronghold.
The purpose of a stronghold is protection. By locating their strongholds below ground, the dwarves protect themselves from aerial attack. However, dwarven bunkers are not ideal for protecting their above-ground assets. So, dwarves will want to build their strongholds in mountains and hills that overlook the surface farms and industries they protect. They will have strictly controlled (and probably secret) entrances. In case of attack from the surface, the dwarves on the surface will evacuate to the underground. While tunneling and mining are offensive tools in the siege of a castle, they are important defensive tools for the dwarves. If dwarves are besieged from the surface, they can put their mining expertise to work digging their way out of the stronghold, in a location unknown to their enemies, from which they can move to break the siege.
Many dwarven strongholds will have main entries that are not secret, used by visiting merchants and others in peacetime. Those entries may resemble the gatehouses of above-ground strongholds, or even castles with one or two curtain walls. In any case, the dwarves will have constructed heavy stone barriers that can seal these entries. They may even be prepared to collapse the tunnels to cut off entry to their stronghold.
Underground, the dwarven stronghold will still be built with defense and efficient construction in mind. Bearing in mind that goblins have better infravision than dwarves (90' vs. 60'), the dwarves will ensure that no tunnel goes more than 60' with changing direction (horizontally or vertically) to break goblin line of sight. Except for main access tunnels used to transport trade goods, tunnels will be just under 5' tall—forcing even elves to crouch or "duck walk" their way through them, while the dwarves can stand and fight upright. They will be about 10' wide, again so that the dwarves can use their size to their advantage and fight 3 across.
The tunnels may also empty into chambers 50' to 60' tall, with narrow exit into passages approaching the main stronghold. Near the top of these chambers, there will be ledges accessible by their own tunnels, where the dwarves can station crossbowmen to kill invaders from above.
Inside the stronghold, low ceilings will continue to be the rule. There may be some places that are intentionally built so that human-sized visitors will be comfortable, and there may be some that need high ceilings for other reasons. But dwarves build for dwarves, and dwarves are about 4' tall. A 5'4" ceiling is as high, proportionate to a 4' dwarf, as a 10' ceiling is to a 6' human. The same will hold for dwarven surface buildings. Unless they need high ceilings, or they want humans to be comfortable, dwarven buildings will be very cramped for most humans and even elves.
When PCs come upon a wilderness dwarf lair, they will probably first encounter the dwarves' surface constructions, or possibly patrols tasked with keeping the area clear of monsters or, failing that, alerting the central stronghold to possible dangers in the area. It is unlikely that anyone will just stumble onto the entrance to a dwarf lord's underground stronghold. The dwarves will have taken measures to prevent that.
Wandering dwarf encounters with the wilderness will be of the same sorts as encounters in dungeons, but they will be with larger groups of 5-40. War parties may be on the march, either heading to or from battle. Other groups are either on their way to other settlements for trade or on their way to places where the dwarves either have, or hope to have, mining or military outposts.
Dwarf Reactions
Dwarves might be Lawful or Neutral. Groups encountered might be alike in alignment, or they could be mixed. In any case, dwarves don't want to die, and they are smart enough to avoid fights they know they can't win. They are also smart enough to be decent judges of what fights they can't win. For example, they won't fight a group of archers in light armor in terrain that allows their enemies to skirmish and pick the dwarves off. Lawful dwarves (in the B/X alignment system), also won't attack humans or demihumans without reason to believe they are threatened.
When dwarves encounter goblins, though, they will be willing to take more risks to fight and kill them. If they don't attack immediately, the dwarves will identify the goblin threat and try to gather sufficient forces to meet them and win. For dwarves, any goblin is an emergency situation that must be dealt with and eliminated immediately. (It's up to the DM to decide why that's so. In my Blacknight campaign, it is because goblins are literally dwarf-hate walking around in humanoid form. See my post about goblins for more.)
If you need to determine dwarven reactions randomly, here are some suggestions:
- 2 Immediate Attack. Right or wrong, the dwarves think the PCs are their enemies—goblin allies, human invaders, or in some other way opposed to them. If the dwarves are Neutral, it could be as simple as the PCs' having something the dwarves think they can most easily get by force, and the dwarves' thinking they could win the fight. But if it looks like a potentially costly fight, the dwarves' "immediate attack" will be a matter of immediately leaving to gather enough reinforcement to win the fight.
- 3-5 Hostile, Possible Attack. The dwarves suspect the PCs are either enemies or (if the dwarves are Neutral) worth fighting. They will give the PCs one—and only one—chance to give them what they want. If the PCs don't comply, it'll be a fight unless the dwarves think they couldn't win. In that case, the dwarves will leave and try to fight the party later, in circumstances more to their advantage.
- 6-8 Uncertain or Curious. The dwarves don't know if the PCs are allies or enemies. They will be cautious as they try to find out.
- 9-11 No attack, monster consideres offers. The dwarves take a neutral stance toward the PCs. They will probably ignore the party and leave if they can, but they will negotiate or parley if the PCs want to talk.
- 12 Enthusiastic friendship. Right or wrong, the dwarves think the PCs are allies and will treat them as such. They may ask for or offer assistance.
Combat Tactics
Apart from their standard infravision—which dwarves share with almost all other monsters—dwarves don't have special abilities that are specifically geared to combat application. Their tactics will depend on how they are equipped and whether they have a leader present.
Equipment. Dwarves could have any armor and weapons (apart from two-handed swords and longbows), but they standardly have chain mail, a shield, and a sword. Their size means that they should be able to fight in ranks of three in a 10' wide passage, which gives them a slight advantage over larger enemies. But it is no help against most common enemies, goblins.
Organization. Dwarves will form orderly battle lines. They are likely to space themselves out so that that injured dwarves in the front rank can make fighting withdrawals and be replaced by fresh troops. Artillery support from crossbowmen is invaluable in protecting the dwarves from advancing troops, so they will try to position crossbowmen where they can protect and be protected by the foot soldiers.
If present, the dwarf leader will usually be on the flank, and it will typically be the right flank. The leader is much harder to kill than the other troops, and that position fortifies the flank significantly. Neutral dwarf leaders may sometimes instead lead from the center or even the rear, surrounding themselves with other dwarves to protect them. Those leaders, one must assume, have unusually high Charisma, which inspires their troops to protect them with astonishing doggedness (morale 10!).
How many troops? As a rule, dwarves are smart enough to avoid fights they don't have an advantage in. They'll avoid engaging faster, missile troops, unless they have crossbowmen in sufficient numbers to have the advantage. They might fight goblins or other lightly armored melee opponents without a numerical advantage, but they will generally prefer a 2:1 or 3:2 advantage going into a fight.
Morale. Dwarves have good morale even without the presence of a leader, but with a leade their morale is extremely high. Don't take this to mean that dwarves are likely to stupidly let themselves be slaughtered in a hopeless battle! Rather, especially when a leader is present, dwarves have a good sense of when things are going against them and might begin an orderly retreat or withdrawal before they fail a morale check. If the dwarves have taken losses of about 10%, and their losses are less than those of their enemy, or if they lose their numerical advantage, they will first attempt fighting withdrawals to see if their enemies let them disengage. If that doesn't work, the front ranks will continue to withdraw until the rear ranks have successfully fled. At that point, the front lines will retreat or, if successful retreat seems unlikely, surrender.
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