Have you considered?
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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.
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My previous character was a Dwarf Marine (barbarian, path of the ancestral guardian). He was wielding an anchor as a 2-handed weapon.
He met his fate killing a sub-boss. (that is: a boss that came from the sea floor, the captain of a submersible galleon)
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Splittermond, a German RPG, has a culture of arctic viking dwarves. It’s perfect.
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Dex is valuable for tall ships, but steamships and ironclads, str/con is the way to go.
tall ships are a hate crime to dwarves
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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.
For sure wisdom being the highest priority unless they always sail near the coast, but to be fair you only need 2 people with high wisdom
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One of my favorite campaigns I was a tempest cleric dwarf in a sea campaign. She came from a clan of dwarves that would take longboats along river coasts downstream from a mother clan’s mountain mining to find pockets of washed down minerals. It was so fun and eventually she started her own seafaring clan the Sundersalt. We were based on an island but controlled a lot of trade in the area with ships modeled after Korean turtle ships
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The copper dwarves are excellent sailors.
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Get out of the tunnel and swab the gunnel!
Get off that rock, we’re about to undock!
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THANKS I NEEDED THIS
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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.”
“How will the dwarves feel about eating spoiled food and being separated from everything their culture cherishes?”
Same way human sailors do, probably. Humans didn’t exactly evolve for being stuck on a small wooden thing for months on end, living off of hard tack.
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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.
Dex is good, but IMO it’s not as vital as Con. Sailors were dying a LOT, and it wasn’t from accidents. Con would help a lot with diseases (those were rather common on sailing ships), the exhaustion inherent to working on a sailing ship and the lack of nutritious food. And scorbut, which is a disease, was one of the biggest issues in intercontinental sailing.
Darkvision might not do jack for navigation, but it would be very useful when you need to work day and night and the only available light sources are torches, oil lamps, candles, moonlight and starlight.
The OP never even mentioned pirates.
AFAIK most sailors couldn’t swim at all, and when would the lower speed actually be an issue? In most cases, it’s all about whether you get exhausted before you’re at your destination.
Great point with the submarines, though.
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Marcus Miles has entered the chat.
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Darkvision limited to 60ft. Nighttime navigation was based on stars.
A ship can barely contain enough ale to last a dwarf a month, let alone an entire crew…
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Darkvision limited to 60ft. Nighttime navigation was based on stars.
A ship can barely contain enough ale to last a dwarf a month, let alone an entire crew…
below decks in ships were notoriously dark
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below decks in ships were notoriously dark
That’s a feature, not a bug.
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That’s a feature, not a bug.
indeed, get boarded by someone without darkvision/good light source? just retreat below decks and slaughter them
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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.
The height being an issue for other creatures gave me a funny thought. If dwarves didn’t build massive structures and instead built for their height, people invading them would have such an issue. You’d have dwarves running through halls chopping at them while they’re crawling around or bent down. Invaders wouldn’t stand a chance.
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indeed, get boarded by someone without darkvision/good light source? just retreat below decks and slaughter them
Probably a bad idea. If I was leading a boarding party, and all the defender’s retreated below decks, I’d consider it a victory. Take down the sails, pin the rudder, then park my ship outside of their cannons’ firing arc. Then just wait. Maybe have my crew bring over buckets of shit, vomit, or whatever other vile substances we could find, and dump them down the grates. If I got real desperate, I could just board up the doors and set the ship on fire. Sure, I’ll miss out on most of the treasure, but those dwarves will probably burn to death before the boat totally sinks.
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Probably a bad idea. If I was leading a boarding party, and all the defender’s retreated below decks, I’d consider it a victory. Take down the sails, pin the rudder, then park my ship outside of their cannons’ firing arc. Then just wait. Maybe have my crew bring over buckets of shit, vomit, or whatever other vile substances we could find, and dump them down the grates. If I got real desperate, I could just board up the doors and set the ship on fire. Sure, I’ll miss out on most of the treasure, but those dwarves will probably burn to death before the boat totally sinks.
fair point
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I like the mental image of a dwarf ship that’s 6 ft tall and got 47 masts to make up for it.
