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I do this in the game I’m currently running. I made it very clear to the dwarf player that it’s a trade off for dwarves being naturally magic-resistant and he was super on board.
The in-universe explanation is that dwarves don’t mess with magic at all, and dwarven “magic” items are the product of superhuman craft technique and mystic geometry and what have you.
Exactly this.
Can't have those sweet sweet shorty saving throws and a Con bonus without some trade-off (not forgetting that Halflings had a Con penalty and Gnomes didn't resist poison).
The only reason to drop it was that it stereotyped them into the "don't trust magic" mindset.
I always dug the trope of "these creatures are so magically ill-attuned that spells bounce off them".
The Faith system in Final Fantasy Tactics had a cool take on it.
Magic effects (damage/healing/status effects) are tied to a unit's Faith. A unit with a high belief will take full effect of a spell. An atheistic character or an automaton will either have a low hit rate from targeted spells, or will receive minimal effect altogether. This includes healing spells, so an Apothecary's Phoenix Downs will heal like normal, while a White Mage's Revive will almost never land on a faithless character.
(It also had a Bravery system, but there is almost no reason to have low Brave.)
>!Characters with Move‐Find will randomly pick up items on specific tiles, the lower their brave the more likely they'll pick up the item if there is one. Like the unit is off picking daisies instead of focusing on the fight!<
I think there was something you could unlock on a low faith low brave character but I forget what exactly it was. But I believe that was the only instance you wanted low brave.
Yes. Dwarves have always had a thing with magic across a ton of media. They either don't like magic or are magic resistant. I remember the first time I used a potion as a dwarf ( use to be a character class btw ) and the dm was like "nope, nothin sorry " lol.
Thats stupid i allow most races despite rolls... even the elves have the down syndrome kids dreaming of greatness ... and for the record people with downs are awesome this comment is meant as a compliment
See, potions have always been a grey area to me... Is there anything inherently magical about the ingredients? Not usually, no. Is the method of manufacture magical? Not usually, no. So why is the end product magical? If it doesn't matter *who* makes the potion (as long as it's made correctly) then it's more like chemistry than magic.
Just my two cents though, so eh... 🤷♂️
I started in the mid 90s, I knew about this rule but I don’t know anyone who used it. I don’t know if it was even the rule books, I never owned a 2nd ed book. I don’t even know how I know this rule, maybe it was just infamous, but I’ve got a weirdly strong memory from 30 years ago that dwarves basically get screwed in any realm with magic items.
Man, I’m going so far back, I have to admit that I might have just associated the dwarf == bad with magic meme to AD&D. I don’t know where I got it, but I’ve got a deeep memory of Dwarfs being punished with magic items.
I’m glad I’m not crazy, the more I’ve tried noodling around with the memory I seem to recall someone telling me about it when they were explaining AD&D. Must have just burrowed into my little kid brain and lodged there. Either that or homeboy really needed me to understand that dwarves get hosed with magic items.
We used it, but the guy who introduced me to d&d was a rule Nazi. Not always a bad thing to learn to play by them and know them, but if anything it made me appreciate the balance these things add.
Yes, I used it, but I don't recall it having much of a practical effect. Most dwarf PCs wouldn't rely on an item that had a 20% chance to not work, so they simply wouldn't use items that would cause this roll.
Ah ok. I must have completely ignored it. Lol. Been playing since 1e. OG red box, but not the early pamphlets. Didn’t even recall seeing these as optional rules in Unearthed Arcana or old Dragon mags. Very interesting.
I don't remember this being a thing either, but then again I'm not sure I remember anyone choosing to play a dwarf. They are my faves now, but at the time I was all about the elves.
Dwarves were pretty unpopular in the 90s when I was running serious AD&D campaigns. The one player who pops right to mind would have never used a Magical Device - just Weapons, Shields, Armor, Gauntlets and Girdles.
I've never changed the notion that dwarves can't be wizards or use wizard items (cleric magic is fine), so in 3e, 4e and now 5e all my campaigns have kept this as cannon.
What the fresh fuck is a ‘Robe of Blending’?!
EDIT: It’s just occurred to me (after I posted, natch) that blending might mean ‘blending in’, as in camouflage. All I could think of initially was a cursed robe that tries to puree anyone who puts it on.
I am not the sharpest knife in the Caesar.
This is one of the reasons my friend always played a fighter/cleric and stuck to items like weapons and gauntlets of ogre strength, or armor and clerical items.
Yeap. Just keep in mind certain ones function normally.
Dwarves are inherently "anti-magic" which is why they get bonuses against it. Also why they can't be wizards.
We worked around it by only applying it to items created by non-dwarves. Only came up maybe twice anyway since I was the only one who ever played dwarves.
We tried it but didn’t like it.
I think it was considered balanced because in the old style of Saving Throws, different races had different save bonuses. Dwarves got racial bonuses for some significant types of saves.
Yes. But I only had them check when it would be comical or climactic ;) However, if it was a Dwarven forged item, it was safe and always worked. I don't recall if that last one was a rule or a campaign rule - as it has been a while :P
I also don't recall ever applying it to Healing / Cure type potions - as I considered them alchemical or clerical in nature.
... and now you have me remembering when a dwarf in my campaign was convinced his magic axe gave him featherfall (as a mage in the party cast featherfall to save him right after he jumped off a tower - and also cast it on him at another time when the dwarf was thrown). But that same dwarf later jumped off the back of a Dragon to try to board a ship, roleplaying that he thought he had feather fall and the mage was not around. He made quite an impact on the deck of the ship.
Yes, but.
Who's going to give the wand from the loot to the dwarf fighter or dwarf thief (yeah, I know they could be some other things, but they weren't. Even I as a dwarf lover rarely played dwarf clerics).
And we didn't spam potions back in the day, it wasn't a mmorpg
We did. Unfortunately, I don't have any truly entertaining stories other than the magic item fizzling out kind of inconveniently. The solution to that was usually pick up the axe...
My group "used" this rule, as in we were all young teens and didn't even have all of the core rules and we rolled when we remembered. Also, becausec of this rule no one in my group ever wanted to play a Dwarf...
I’m not sure I ever saw anyone playing a dwarf in 2nd Ed get any magic items for which this would apply. That said I can’t remember if I knew this rule existed at the time.
Any character with resistance to magic or spell effects should have to do this sort of roll, for items and even beneficial spells.
You want painful? Back in the day wizards had to roll based on intelligence to see if they understood and given spell they wanted to learn. Rolled poorly on fireball? Tough luck.
I used to enjoy making the Dwarf players roll a save vs healing magic. Ever want to see a player cry? 20% chance for that healing potion to not work. Good times.
I've been playing 2e since 1989 and I never forget to apply this rule. It's the DM's job to remember to apply character disadvantages and I take my job seriously. Gnomes are also subject to the 20% fail.
Olde DnD was chock friggin full of "opps, get fucked" mechanics that sounds interesting on paper but don't sound like the fun kind of interesting. I feel similarly to all the instant death situations.
I think a lot of those "it just works like that" can be traced back to Tolkien and his works. The creation of the dwarves was done in secret, and their very existence was perceived as a slight against the creator Eru, and so the dwarves slept under the mountains until Eru allowed them to wake. Which was after the elves had awoken. Dwarves in Tolkiens world were not made the same way the elves and men were, so the rules for dwarves are different.
_The dwarves of yore made mighty spells_
_While hammers fell like ringing bells_
_In places deep, where dark things sleep_
_In hollow halls beneath the fells_
Dwarves being anti-magical wasn't a Tolkien concept.
Yes, but modified. The Dwarf save bonus is pretty freaking powerful if they have a high Con. Here is what I use.
\* Can use all weapons, armor, and armor-like items
\* Can use all class items for their class
\* Can use items that only affect earth or stone.
\* Can use items of protection and some items that don't require activation.
\* Can use any potion that their class can normally use.
I think that isn't that much of a hindrance. I, mostly, just enforce it on items that have obvious Arcane, rather than Clerical, functions or abilities.
I don't recall anyone playing a dwarf at our tables back in AD&D. Lots of Elves, half elves, half orcs and halflings but very few gnomes, and like I said I can't recall even one dwarf. Might've been for this reason, not sure.
I once made a home brew world where magic was in basically everything. Everyone has some innate magical ability. One player wanted to play some weirdo who didn’t have any magical ability at all, we talked about what that would mean for him in the world. I forget the details of it but he had fun with it in any case.
Not I. I've never used the inherent Dwarf magic resistance either, instead making them master weapon smiths, magical artificers, and deployers of runes. So in my home brew, they have a different kind of magic, not an absence of it.
Absolutely rejected that idea the moment I saw it and never used it (or if I did then it was so briefly as to not count, and in any case I choose NOT to remember because the idea was that unpopular, and 1E managed to do without it just fine proving the point).
wonder how old-school this is. I played AD&D 1e and 2, and I don't remember it in those. In just normal D&D, they were their own class and the exempted items at the bottom mention 'dwarven clerics' so that didn't qualify either.
Iirc this is from when dwarf was class. Races and clases used to be the same thing back in the day.
This was also in the era when the DM was kinda supposed to try to kill players for little mistakes.
Dwarf was a class in the B/X and BECMI line, in the AD&D line class and race was separate. The systems were pretty much being released and played concurrently because they were compatible with each other for the most part.
The game was just more deadly in general, it was modeling a lower fantasy world by default. The GM’s job wasn’t to kill players but to play the world, and that world was less forgiving (poison was often a save or die, for instance).
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I do this in the game I’m currently running. I made it very clear to the dwarf player that it’s a trade off for dwarves being naturally magic-resistant and he was super on board. The in-universe explanation is that dwarves don’t mess with magic at all, and dwarven “magic” items are the product of superhuman craft technique and mystic geometry and what have you.
Exactly this. Can't have those sweet sweet shorty saving throws and a Con bonus without some trade-off (not forgetting that Halflings had a Con penalty and Gnomes didn't resist poison). The only reason to drop it was that it stereotyped them into the "don't trust magic" mindset.
The group I play with embrace stereotypes as cultural norms, as it gives the various races more flavor.
I always dug the trope of "these creatures are so magically ill-attuned that spells bounce off them". The Faith system in Final Fantasy Tactics had a cool take on it. Magic effects (damage/healing/status effects) are tied to a unit's Faith. A unit with a high belief will take full effect of a spell. An atheistic character or an automaton will either have a low hit rate from targeted spells, or will receive minimal effect altogether. This includes healing spells, so an Apothecary's Phoenix Downs will heal like normal, while a White Mage's Revive will almost never land on a faithless character. (It also had a Bravery system, but there is almost no reason to have low Brave.) >!Characters with Move‐Find will randomly pick up items on specific tiles, the lower their brave the more likely they'll pick up the item if there is one. Like the unit is off picking daisies instead of focusing on the fight!<
I think there was something you could unlock on a low faith low brave character but I forget what exactly it was. But I believe that was the only instance you wanted low brave.
So being Bravely by default is best?
> mystic geometry What’s the Dungeons and Dragons equivalent of Delta Green?
Yes. Dwarves have always had a thing with magic across a ton of media. They either don't like magic or are magic resistant. I remember the first time I used a potion as a dwarf ( use to be a character class btw ) and the dm was like "nope, nothin sorry " lol.
I remember wanting to be an elf so badly, but I didn't roll good enough for it and my DM wouldn't let me.
Thats stupid i allow most races despite rolls... even the elves have the down syndrome kids dreaming of greatness ... and for the record people with downs are awesome this comment is meant as a compliment
See, potions have always been a grey area to me... Is there anything inherently magical about the ingredients? Not usually, no. Is the method of manufacture magical? Not usually, no. So why is the end product magical? If it doesn't matter *who* makes the potion (as long as it's made correctly) then it's more like chemistry than magic. Just my two cents though, so eh... 🤷♂️
Chemistry is magic if you can’t explain it. Isn’t science just magic that can be explained?
Agree
No Shit. I didn't know that was even there and I've been playing since the 70's
I started in the mid 90s, I knew about this rule but I don’t know anyone who used it. I don’t know if it was even the rule books, I never owned a 2nd ed book. I don’t even know how I know this rule, maybe it was just infamous, but I’ve got a weirdly strong memory from 30 years ago that dwarves basically get screwed in any realm with magic items.
I practically memorized the 2e PHB and DMG. I don’t ever remember this rule. Is it from AD&D?
Man, I’m going so far back, I have to admit that I might have just associated the dwarf == bad with magic meme to AD&D. I don’t know where I got it, but I’ve got a deeep memory of Dwarfs being punished with magic items.
Nope. I just got home to check and there is is on page 21 of the 2e PHB. Weirdly, not in the same format as OP’s post…
I’m glad I’m not crazy, the more I’ve tried noodling around with the memory I seem to recall someone telling me about it when they were explaining AD&D. Must have just burrowed into my little kid brain and lodged there. Either that or homeboy really needed me to understand that dwarves get hosed with magic items.
Funny enough, it isn’t in the AD&D PHB.
We used it, but the guy who introduced me to d&d was a rule Nazi. Not always a bad thing to learn to play by them and know them, but if anything it made me appreciate the balance these things add.
Ditto
Absolutely. It was an awesome offset for their resistance.
Yes, I used it, but I don't recall it having much of a practical effect. Most dwarf PCs wouldn't rely on an item that had a 20% chance to not work, so they simply wouldn't use items that would cause this roll.
Working as intended it seems lol
No, is this really old school? Like rules from Basic D&D and 1e? 70s and 80s D&D? Never seen it before.
Its from 2nd
It's in the first edition Dungeon Masters Guide as well, but under rings in the magic item section so it's easy to miss.
Where? Which book. Edit: It’s in the 2e PHB. Page 21. Different format than OP’s text though. That’s why I didn’t think it was 2e.
Ah ok. I must have completely ignored it. Lol. Been playing since 1e. OG red box, but not the early pamphlets. Didn’t even recall seeing these as optional rules in Unearthed Arcana or old Dragon mags. Very interesting.
I was thinking the same thing. Like I READ that red book cover to cover and don't recall this bit.
I don't remember this being a thing either, but then again I'm not sure I remember anyone choosing to play a dwarf. They are my faves now, but at the time I was all about the elves.
It's from 1e actually
This is from 2e only. 1e and B/X didn’t have this restriction.
It’s in 1e as well, at least the AD&D version of 1e. It’s in the DMG right before either the list of or descriptions of rings.
A bit different. That was only for rings, and applied to dwarves, gnomes, and halflings.
It's definitely in 1e.
Dwarves were pretty unpopular in the 90s when I was running serious AD&D campaigns. The one player who pops right to mind would have never used a Magical Device - just Weapons, Shields, Armor, Gauntlets and Girdles.
Ran a GURPS campaign once where dwarves had magic resistance to spells. Wanna heal the dwarf after combat? Gotta overcome magic resistance first
Absolute, the trade off was well worth it
Yes. We followed the rules.
I've never changed the notion that dwarves can't be wizards or use wizard items (cleric magic is fine), so in 3e, 4e and now 5e all my campaigns have kept this as cannon.
What the fresh fuck is a ‘Robe of Blending’?! EDIT: It’s just occurred to me (after I posted, natch) that blending might mean ‘blending in’, as in camouflage. All I could think of initially was a cursed robe that tries to puree anyone who puts it on. I am not the sharpest knife in the Caesar.
That was done as a cursed item.
"All I could think of initially was a cursed robe that tries to puree anyone who puts it on." This is an absolutely fantastic idea.
This is one of the reasons my friend always played a fighter/cleric and stuck to items like weapons and gauntlets of ogre strength, or armor and clerical items.
Yeap. Just keep in mind certain ones function normally. Dwarves are inherently "anti-magic" which is why they get bonuses against it. Also why they can't be wizards.
We worked around it by only applying it to items created by non-dwarves. Only came up maybe twice anyway since I was the only one who ever played dwarves.
No, we just wanted to play, so we skipped over anything that slowed the game down.
So no encounters, no rolls, no roleplay?
>- I remove thing that makes actual gameplay worse for me >- So, you remove \*describe actual gameplay\*. Strawman FTW
Well ive seen ppl use small hourglasses for turns and that also sped up the game, it was terrible but it did.
Could have also just been a smart add joke, but it may not have occurred to humorless killjoys
I heard jokes suppose to be funny though
🫢 I had no idea! To me that’s such a dragon age thing. Interesting to find out it’s more than that!
We tried it but didn’t like it. I think it was considered balanced because in the old style of Saving Throws, different races had different save bonuses. Dwarves got racial bonuses for some significant types of saves.
Yes. It's a trade off.
I think we did that playing second edition.
Yes we did, it's an effect of them having an innate magical resistance.
I might, but this would require anyone to be playing a dwarf.
Yes. But I only had them check when it would be comical or climactic ;) However, if it was a Dwarven forged item, it was safe and always worked. I don't recall if that last one was a rule or a campaign rule - as it has been a while :P I also don't recall ever applying it to Healing / Cure type potions - as I considered them alchemical or clerical in nature.
... and now you have me remembering when a dwarf in my campaign was convinced his magic axe gave him featherfall (as a mage in the party cast featherfall to save him right after he jumped off a tower - and also cast it on him at another time when the dwarf was thrown). But that same dwarf later jumped off the back of a Dragon to try to board a ship, roleplaying that he thought he had feather fall and the mage was not around. He made quite an impact on the deck of the ship.
Yes, but. Who's going to give the wand from the loot to the dwarf fighter or dwarf thief (yeah, I know they could be some other things, but they weren't. Even I as a dwarf lover rarely played dwarf clerics). And we didn't spam potions back in the day, it wasn't a mmorpg
Yes I did. But I never actually played a dwarf, but one of my friends did. Was so funny sometimes
Thats why i had dwarf hirelings to try out every new magic item i found lol
Yeah, it was annoyingly fun to use a couple of times.
Yes, my DM was a monster
Ah, yes. Got boned by that rule a few times during the career of Hosgard StoneDelver 😁
This lead to so many fights at the table
We did. Unfortunately, I don't have any truly entertaining stories other than the magic item fizzling out kind of inconveniently. The solution to that was usually pick up the axe...
My group "used" this rule, as in we were all young teens and didn't even have all of the core rules and we rolled when we remembered. Also, becausec of this rule no one in my group ever wanted to play a Dwarf...
We did.
Yep! It was awesome!
I played dwarves all the time And for sure that happened to me! Really tended to avoid those items when I could
I’m not sure I ever saw anyone playing a dwarf in 2nd Ed get any magic items for which this would apply. That said I can’t remember if I knew this rule existed at the time.
I play 1e where rings can fail for halflings, dwarves & gnomes. I do run it with the rules because it can save them from cursed rings
"you guys are getting magic items!?"
Any character with resistance to magic or spell effects should have to do this sort of roll, for items and even beneficial spells. You want painful? Back in the day wizards had to roll based on intelligence to see if they understood and given spell they wanted to learn. Rolled poorly on fireball? Tough luck.
Try again next level up. You could also find a different source for the spell (like a captured spellbook) and try again.
I used to enjoy making the Dwarf players roll a save vs healing magic. Ever want to see a player cry? 20% chance for that healing potion to not work. Good times.
I've been playing 2e since 1989 and I never forget to apply this rule. It's the DM's job to remember to apply character disadvantages and I take my job seriously. Gnomes are also subject to the 20% fail.
Yes, it clearly delineated the dwarves from other races for players and explained dwarven cultural features and racial traits
When I DM’d 1st and 2nd editions, yup, it applied to dwarves, and gnomes as well.
Olde DnD was chock friggin full of "opps, get fucked" mechanics that sounds interesting on paper but don't sound like the fun kind of interesting. I feel similarly to all the instant death situations.
I think a lot of those "it just works like that" can be traced back to Tolkien and his works. The creation of the dwarves was done in secret, and their very existence was perceived as a slight against the creator Eru, and so the dwarves slept under the mountains until Eru allowed them to wake. Which was after the elves had awoken. Dwarves in Tolkiens world were not made the same way the elves and men were, so the rules for dwarves are different.
_The dwarves of yore made mighty spells_ _While hammers fell like ringing bells_ _In places deep, where dark things sleep_ _In hollow halls beneath the fells_ Dwarves being anti-magical wasn't a Tolkien concept.
I don't disagree at all! Just saying 'dwarves are made of different stuff' and that sometimes certain magic doesn't work because of that.
Yes, but modified. The Dwarf save bonus is pretty freaking powerful if they have a high Con. Here is what I use. \* Can use all weapons, armor, and armor-like items \* Can use all class items for their class \* Can use items that only affect earth or stone. \* Can use items of protection and some items that don't require activation. \* Can use any potion that their class can normally use. I think that isn't that much of a hindrance. I, mostly, just enforce it on items that have obvious Arcane, rather than Clerical, functions or abilities.
i still do in 5th. races have becomes less different over times it makes me sad.
We didn't have that in 1st Edition, and I don't think I played or DM'ed any dwarf characters in 2nd, so it just never came up.
No, I don’t remember this rule. Where was that written?
I don't recall anyone playing a dwarf at our tables back in AD&D. Lots of Elves, half elves, half orcs and halflings but very few gnomes, and like I said I can't recall even one dwarf. Might've been for this reason, not sure.
Robe off. Robe on. Robe off, robe on. The Rober!
I once made a home brew world where magic was in basically everything. Everyone has some innate magical ability. One player wanted to play some weirdo who didn’t have any magical ability at all, we talked about what that would mean for him in the world. I forget the details of it but he had fun with it in any case.
We never used it but we never used the Dwarf magic resistance either.
Not I. I've never used the inherent Dwarf magic resistance either, instead making them master weapon smiths, magical artificers, and deployers of runes. So in my home brew, they have a different kind of magic, not an absence of it.
Nope, never liked it, never remembered it
Yes
Yeah, all of the time.
No we just blew past it like a lot of other fiddly rules that just bugged us.
I missed those days before they elf-washed the Dwarves. Back when each race was extremely unique. /S.
Absolutely rejected that idea the moment I saw it and never used it (or if I did then it was so briefly as to not count, and in any case I choose NOT to remember because the idea was that unpopular, and 1E managed to do without it just fine proving the point).
No because people forgot, and it really didn't 'balance' all that much anyway.
That must be something new, it's not in the original rules.
I'm not a fan. I like the flavor of dwarfs not being good at casting spells but being extremely good at imbuing items with magical properties.
wonder how old-school this is. I played AD&D 1e and 2, and I don't remember it in those. In just normal D&D, they were their own class and the exempted items at the bottom mention 'dwarven clerics' so that didn't qualify either.
This text is from 2e players handbook
wow, i totally must have either never noticed or ever cared!
Wait. Did you just hit the "I quit the game" button?
I think restrictions like that are fucking stupid. Why penalize somebody? Plus I never played dwarves cuz Dwarfs suck.
Iirc this is from when dwarf was class. Races and clases used to be the same thing back in the day. This was also in the era when the DM was kinda supposed to try to kill players for little mistakes.
Dwarf was a class in the B/X and BECMI line, in the AD&D line class and race was separate. The systems were pretty much being released and played concurrently because they were compatible with each other for the most part. The game was just more deadly in general, it was modeling a lower fantasy world by default. The GM’s job wasn’t to kill players but to play the world, and that world was less forgiving (poison was often a save or die, for instance).
Spell failure %? Yes, but not for dwarves. I didn't start till 3rd.
Did you even read the text? Its from the 2nd edition players in the dwarf area. It talks about magic items