Feels like a pitch from corporate.

“Clearly dwarves are the most cost effective solution.”

“How will the dwarves feel about eating spoiled food and being separated from everything their culture cherishes?”

“Excellent question and the answer is simple: Rum and spiced Whiskey.”

I would say dexterity isn’t such a bad stat while moving on the masts or wet planks. and since they can see in the dark too, and further because they are much larger, elves win again -.-

I’m deeply disappointed you didn’t take the chance to go with “Ditch the caves, hit the waves!”

They aren’t very buoyant though, are they? What happens when one falls overboard?

You’ve got a bright future in dwarven politicking/travel agency. 🤌

Can dwarves survive such prolonged periods so far removed from rock, stone, and dirt?

You go back and mine another one.

Having lived on a boat for years, I can tell you right now, you show me a body building midget, and I’ll show you an amazing marine mechanic.

Craftsmanship is also highly valued on a boat…

I have issue with almost all of your points.

• Dex & wisdom would be the important stats for sailors IMO (i am not saying strength and con are useless, but just not as important, they would be 3rd and 4th IMO).
• Darkvision wouldn’t do a damn thing, its range would barely get off the side of the boat.
• Poison resistance is not disease resistance.
• Some spoiled food would be poison, but some would also be disease (depends on how it spoiled and the food).
• In order for short stature to be relevant to ship design, they would need a completely custom designed ship tailor made for them, which would have benifits but sounds unlikely for what pirates would be sailing. (That being said, a dwarven merchant ship designed speciifcally for their stature would be a massive pain for normal height characters to battle on)
• lower speed means they swim slower too which means going overboard is even worse.

EDIT: dwarven submarines!

• short stature actually hugely relevant as submarines are notoriously cramped
• darkvision means no need for lights in the sub, beneficial for multiple (admittedly somewhat minor) reasons.
• honestly no clue what stats would be important for a sub, no argument here
• toxic gasses less of a problem thanks to poison resistance
• Dont even need to go to the surface, a fully underwater submarine port could be connected to existing dwarven settlements near the ocean with the correct design and planning.
• Also benefits from legendary dwarven engineering.

Similar to vampires, every dwarven ship has an enormous boulder occupying a conspicuous place in the quarters. Sleeping near this “home stone” is necessary to prevent dwarves from going sea crazy.

These are all problems humans already have and try to get around. A few adventurous and entrepreneurial dwarves is all it would take to kick start the golden age dwarven naval empire.

I am looking at this from a fun world building viewpoint and I find this idea exciting.

Dex is valuable for tall ships, but steamships and ironclads, str/con is the way to go.

I am a dwarf and I’m sailing a ship

Saily saily ship

Saily saily ship

Ah like in Warcraft 2 you can have submarines with dwarves

Dex would be super important for them too. Cannons of all flavors aim with dex due to being ranged weapons.

What is this, dwarves for giants? Those fuckers are at least 5m tall, goddamn.

Ditch the earth, hit the surf!

Get out of the tunnel and swab the gunnel!

Ran a Pirate campaign once. Had a pirate faction of Dwarfs called the Reefbeards.

They lived up, under and along the water for so long, they had colorful corals growing in their beards.

They also had a lot of cool technology, so they shot grapplehooks to swing over and ran around with entire cannons on their back.