"The Boat Ramp of Durin, Lord of Mooria. Speak, matey, and enter. I, Narvi, made it."
I'm deeply disappointed you didn't take the chance to go with "Ditch the caves, hit the waves!"
Ditch the earth, hit the surf!
Off the turf, in the surf!
Get out of the tunnel and swab the gunnel!
Get off that rock, we're about to undock!
No time to mine, we're sailing the brine
Saily saily ship
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...
Tbh, that's a rule that makes sense in context and something where I as a GM would make a house rule.
Even the darkest night at sea is not nearly as dark as the mines, so I'd totally allow for darkvision to be range-less (or long-range) on the sea.
Edit: deleted because I replied to the wrong person
below decks in ships were notoriously dark
Gay darkroom vibes
That's a feature, not a bug.
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.
Depends on your goal. If you just want to sink the ship, boarding is unnecessary. If you want to loot it, you have to go below at some point.
fair point
Darkvision limited to 60ft. Nighttime navigation was based on stars.
You don't need darkvision to see stars and that would be dim light, so darkvision is a boon
Then it doesn't help navigation
It still means they can see the area within 60' of the boat as bright light
How does that help with navigation?
It helps them navigate around the ship. But seriously, it could be used as a strategy to navigate with lights off and not be seen by other ships.
Marcus Miles has entered the chat.
That dude's a beast.
I have issue with almost all of your points.
EDIT: dwarven submarines!
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.
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.
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
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
I like the mental image of a dwarf ship that's 6 ft tall and got 47 masts to make up for it.
like one of those italian airplanes from the 1920s!
Dex would be super important for them too. Cannons of all flavors aim with dex due to being ranged weapons.
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.
Splittermond, a German RPG, has a culture of arctic viking dwarves. It's perfect.
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.
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
I am a dwarf and I'm sailing a ship
Saily saily ship
Saily saily ship
The copper dwarves are excellent sailors.
THANKS I NEEDED THIS
They aren't very buoyant though, are they? What happens when one falls overboard?
You go back and mine another one.
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 -.-
What is this, dwarves for giants? Those fuckers are at least 5m tall, goddamn.
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)
Can dwarves survive such prolonged periods so far removed from rock, stone, and dirt?
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.
Ah like in Warcraft 2 you can have submarines with dwarves
Craftsmanship is also highly valued on a boat...
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