Dream Dwarf
One of the races not commonly found in Faerûn - they may be new arrivals or live in other lands or Planes, or their populations are so small your party's members never noticed them until now.
Dream dwarves feel the hills slumber beneath them. They see the world as a resting giant of inestimable power, and they are caught in the dreaming. While other dwarves shape metal and stone, dream dwarves contemplate and meditate. Wise and cautious, they understand nature in a way at once similar to and wholly alien to the understanding of druids and shamans of other races.
Dream dwarves share a sort of collective subconscious with the world around them, a phenomenon they call the earth dream. The earth dream shapes many aspects of a dream dwarf's life, and no discussion of dream dwarves can be complete without at least some understanding of the earth dream. The earth dream is a powerful force, and members of other races can occasionally feel its pull and become earth dreamers.
Personality: Dream dwarves have little of the natural craftsmanship of other dwarves, and they instead spend many hours in somber contemplation of the earth dream.
They are inquisitive, and they seek to supplement the information and wisdom they gain from the earth dream with personal experience. To those who don't know them well, dream dwarves can seem shy or wary, but in truth they are merely reserved; they are more likely to utter one carefully chosen phrase than engage in a prolonged discussion.
Physical Description: Dream dwarves stand about 4 feet tall and weigh about 10 to 15 pounds less than a typical dwarf. Their skin color ranges from dark gray to deep brown, and their hair is dark brown or black. They have pale eyes, usually green or blue in color but with the occasional lavender or pale red. Dream dwarves usually decorate their clothing with abstract symbols that represent important personal experiences within the earth dream.
Relations: Dream dwarves get along well with other dwarves, who look up to them as shamans and prophets. They also get along well with gnomes, who share their love of the earth, and they even enjoy the company of halflings and elves. They are friendly with druids of any race, sharing the class's love of nature and natural power. Their silent and mystical demeanor can cause humans, half-elves, and half-orcs to think dream dwarves a little strange, but rarely causes significant problems in relationships with members of these races.
Alignment: Dream dwarves are most often neutral good. They share a bond with the earth and the earth dream, and this bond helps them see the power and energy inherent in a peaceful life. As a result, most dream dwarves remain kind and good-hearted even through adversity, and they value a balance between law and chaos.
Dream Dwarf Lands: Dream dwarves almost always build their homes within or near those of other dwarves, and many members of other races don't even realize that dream dwarves are a separate subrace. Their homes are often underground, embodying their love of the earth. Occasionally, dream dwarves form small, secluded monasteries high up on a mountainside in an effort to become closer to the earth dream.
Religion: Although dream dwarves pay homage to Moradin and the rest of the dwarf pantheon, their primary deity is the earth itself, as expressed by the collective experience that dream dwarves call the earth dream.
Language: Dream dwarves speak Dwarven.
Names: Dream dwarves place great significance on their names, believing that even the most common version of a name carries power. Their names are likely to change over time, as they incorporate new syllables or words into their names. Dream dwarves believe that they find these words and syllables within the depths of the earth dream, and they incorporate them into their identities out of reverence and to show that they understand the power of the earth.
It is quite likely for a dream dwarf's name to change or grow longer after he goes through a particularly harrowing or dangerous experience; as such, it's usually true that an accomplished dream dwarf adventurer has a long, intricate name that recalls his greatest exploits.
>Male Names: Bren-Iol, Bollinak, Car-Innul, Derinar, Harar, Malanath.
Female Names: Allalia, Assanae, Giallin, Kula-Tai, Mala, Shelbath.
Clan Names: Brekaran, Esstranak, Penathan, Quwerthena, Skarnath.
Adventurers: Dream dwarf adventurers seek the wisdom that comes from personal experience. Some, driven by the earth dream's urgings, wander to find more of what they've seen in the dream. Others seek to escape the dream and their people's involvement in it, traveling to other lands to be rid of its pull. Most however, travel and adventure to better understand the parts of the earth dream that they can sense, to experience the dream in other places, and to broaden their own understanding of the world.
Dream Dwarf Racial Traits
- +2 Constitution, -2 Dexterity: Dream dwarves are as tough as other dwarves (and stronger of personality), but they are a bit clumsy and slow to react.
- Medium: As Medium creatures, dream dwarves have no special bonuses or penalties due to their size.
- Dream dwarf base land speed is 20 feet. However, dream dwarves can move at this speed even when wearing medium or heavy armor or when carrying a medium or heavy load (unlike other creatures, whose speed is reduced in such situations).
- Darkvision: Dream dwarves can see in the dark out to 90 feet. Darkvision is black and white only, but it is otherwise like normal sight, and dream dwarves can function just fine with no light at all.
- Stonecunning: Dream dwarves have the same knack for finding unusual stonework that dwarves do. This ability grants a dream dwarf a +2 racial bonus on Search checks to notice unusual stonework, such as sliding walls, stonework traps, new construction (even when built to match the old), unsafe stone surfaces, shaky stone ceilings, and the like. Something that isn't stone but that is disguised like stone also counts as unusual stonework. A dream dwarf who merely comes within 10 feet of unusual stonework can make a Search check as if he were actively searching, and a dream dwarf can use Search to find stonework traps as a rogue can. A dream dwarf can also intuit depth, sensing his approximate depth underground as naturally as a human can sense which way is up. Dream dwarves have a sixth sense about stonework, an innate ability that they get plenty of opportunity to practice and hone in their underground homes.
- Weapon Familiarity: Dream dwarves treat dwarven waraxes and dwarven urgroshes as martial weapons rather than exotic weapons.
- Stability: Dream dwarves are exceptionally stable on their feet. A dream dwarf gains a +4 bonus on ability checks made to resist being bull rushed or tripped when standing on the ground (but not when climbing, flying, riding, or otherwise not standing firmly on the ground).
- +2 racial bonus on Diplomacy checks made with creatures of the earth subtype: Dream dwarves get along well with earth elementals and similar creatures.
- Dream Sight (Su): A dream dwarf can see ethereal creatures as easily as she sees material creatures and objects. A dream dwarf can easily distinguish between ethereal creatures and material ones, because ethereal creatures appear translucent and indistinct.
- Spell Power: When in contact with the ground, a dream dwarf's effective caster level when casting divination spells or spells with the earth descriptor increases by 1. This increase applies when determining level-dependent spell variables and on caster level checks. This increase stacks with other spell power abilities, such as from the hierophant prestige class.
- Automatic Languages: Common and Dwarven. Bonus Languages: Draconic, Elven, Gnome, Terran, Under-common.
- Favored Class: Druid. A multiclass dream dwarf's druid class does not count when determining whether she takes an experience point penalty for multiclassing.
Source: Races of Stone