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The Complete Book of Dwarves
This 128-page accessory presents everything players want to know about dwarves and their way of life. It includes new magic, cultural details and abilities of dwarves of all types.
128 pages, Paperback
First published November 5, 1991
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 9, 2017
Of the D&D Demi-human races the dwarves were my personal favorite (with Dragonborns from 4th and 5th edition next in line). I found this to be a good resource for people interested in playing dwarven characters. Some of the optional rules were a little much but I thought the equipment section was good and some of the Character Kits were interesting (of note the Hearth Guard, Battlerager, Sharpshooter, Vindicator, and Vermin Slayer).
June 27, 2014
I loved these old D&D player character books back in high school. I read this one on dwarves many times, and it was nice writing a dwarven character in my own book The Hirelings.
This has clear rules on what the race can and can't do for the game, but it also has a lot of cultural aspects that are great for fantasy readers and writers.
The pictures in the book are full-page and world-class as well. $20 well spent!
This has clear rules on what the race can and can't do for the game, but it also has a lot of cultural aspects that are great for fantasy readers and writers.
The pictures in the book are full-page and world-class as well. $20 well spent!
September 29, 2013
This book was and is an awesome resource for those of us who may possibly be part dwarf, and also who love to play dwarves in the game. This book has excellent random name generation tables for Dwarves. Great rules for creating dwarven strongholds. It has sweet weapons and armor. The history and creation myth I think is a decent addition, but should really be left up to the DM of a certain game to create the individual creation myths of each race. The artwork is unbelievable. Most of it done by the renowned fantasy illustrator named Boris Vlajenko or something like that.
Basically reading this book is jsut as fun as playing DnD. Furthermore, the kits available to dwarves are really good, the Hearthguard, the Battlerager, and Beast Rider all come to mind as top notch kits. One of the greatest and most unique characters my group ever had was a gully dwarf named Dilly. Thanks to this book, we had specific rules that allowed him to be very strong, and very stupid, and very uncharismatic. Great book.
Basically reading this book is jsut as fun as playing DnD. Furthermore, the kits available to dwarves are really good, the Hearthguard, the Battlerager, and Beast Rider all come to mind as top notch kits. One of the greatest and most unique characters my group ever had was a gully dwarf named Dilly. Thanks to this book, we had specific rules that allowed him to be very strong, and very stupid, and very uncharismatic. Great book.
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December 9, 2025Review of the book for Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes & Halflings (one book), and Humanoids.
How? Got these all as a child, rereading now.
What? The PHB supplement series started with 4 books about expanding options (and including roleplaying notes) for the four main class groups (fighters, thieves, clerics, wizards); the 5th book was about psionics.
Then they produced these 4 books about race (not totally consecutively--Dwarves is book 6, Elves is 8, with Bards coming in between).
Now, race and class are the primary ways to describe characters in 2e, so that makes sense. And the breakdown of races makes some sense, though the gnome/halfling book argues that it's not just about them being on the shorter side -- even though it mostly is. (In 3e, they did sort of theme race collections, like Races of Stone, that covers dwarves, gnomes, and goliaths.)
Like the first four books, these books include character options (including kits and proficiencies, but also sub-races) and also roleplaying or place in society notes (like ethos and mythology).
So we learn that Dwarves are clannish and love of wealth; and there's a chapter on mining and on a Dwarf community (and how dwarves are so often at war with other underground people). And Elves: they are ancient, dying out, never sleep truly but enter a reverie; and here's a few different communities for the different sub-races and rules for archery.
For gnomes and halflings: they are short, they value cooperation; gnomes are humorous tricksters, into crafting and sometimes mechanics; halflings are homebodies but some are struck by wanderlust. (Both gnomes and halflings get their Dragonlance sub-species described.) We get communities for each.
And for humanoids, well, this includes a lot of humanoids from the monster manuals -- orcs, goblins, kobolds, gnolls, centaurs, wemics (lion centaurs), etc. And the thing about these monsters is that they often have some special abilities -- and to balance that out, they have some disadvantages, the most notable of which is that they are almost all superstitious primitives, and in a human-dominated world, well, the world is just not made for them. (There's a few campaign options, almost all of which are "here's one humanoid joining the adventuring party"; there's no "you're all orcs fighting off an elvish invasion" or what not.) This worldview (humanoids are primitive) also shows up heavily in the kits, with these creatures having specific class restrictions, i.e., you can't just play a cleric, you're either a witch doctor or a shaman.
Yeah, so? So what's interesting about these books? I struggle to answer, as you'll see. I mean, I like the character options, or at least I did, though I have to point out that characters now have both sub-race and kit options. It's just starting to feel like material for the sake of material.
The stuff about the mythology and ethos is interesting -- maybe precursor for the Monster Mythology book or the Monstrous Arcana books, where they dug into the psychology of beholders, et al.? -- but it's also got a hard needle to thread: on one hand, they have to be interesting and on the other hand, they have to be generic fantasy.
Pause here for a moment to remember that back in the 80s, the RPG Talislanta produced ads touting "No elves", which was shorthand for fantasy that looks different, not factory-stamped generic fantasy. That is a clear shot at D&D (and some others, all either based on or responding to D&D), but it's also a fair shot: D&D is built from an agglomeration of cultural stuff, and part of its strength was always that it was recognizable stuff. Like Tolkien? You can play it! Like Conan or the Dying Earth? You can play it! (Or you can play something that at least includes parts of it.)
And so when they put out a book all about dwarves -- for all of their campaign worlds -- it's going to feel a little.... thin. Honestly, I loved the character options as a kid, but even then in the Dwarf book I was most interested by the "Sundered", the idea of dwarves who have been driven from their mines and have adapted to life on the surface and lost or adapted a lot of their culture. Back to Wagner, at least, there's some anti Jewish tropes that attach to dwarves or vice versa, so the idea of diasporic dwarves seemed like a great acknowledgement of this. But it's also the most original idea in these books. Otherwise, elves are elves, dwarves are dwarves, halflings are halflings (which are hobbits), etc.
And that brings us to the Humanoid book, a chance to maybe think about what it might actually mean to live with wings or in some other alien world, but what we get is more like... well, it's humanoids from the POV of the humans: they are primitive, bestial, monstrous to humans, but what're the roleplaying notes? Be primitive, bestial, monstrous. I want to say that there's some lost potential in these books, but I'm not even sure what would be truly interesting and useful.
Or, possibly, these were really interesting and useful in the 90s, when I was a child, and time has merely moved on.
How? Got these all as a child, rereading now.
What? The PHB supplement series started with 4 books about expanding options (and including roleplaying notes) for the four main class groups (fighters, thieves, clerics, wizards); the 5th book was about psionics.
Then they produced these 4 books about race (not totally consecutively--Dwarves is book 6, Elves is 8, with Bards coming in between).
Now, race and class are the primary ways to describe characters in 2e, so that makes sense. And the breakdown of races makes some sense, though the gnome/halfling book argues that it's not just about them being on the shorter side -- even though it mostly is. (In 3e, they did sort of theme race collections, like Races of Stone, that covers dwarves, gnomes, and goliaths.)
Like the first four books, these books include character options (including kits and proficiencies, but also sub-races) and also roleplaying or place in society notes (like ethos and mythology).
So we learn that Dwarves are clannish and love of wealth; and there's a chapter on mining and on a Dwarf community (and how dwarves are so often at war with other underground people). And Elves: they are ancient, dying out, never sleep truly but enter a reverie; and here's a few different communities for the different sub-races and rules for archery.
For gnomes and halflings: they are short, they value cooperation; gnomes are humorous tricksters, into crafting and sometimes mechanics; halflings are homebodies but some are struck by wanderlust. (Both gnomes and halflings get their Dragonlance sub-species described.) We get communities for each.
And for humanoids, well, this includes a lot of humanoids from the monster manuals -- orcs, goblins, kobolds, gnolls, centaurs, wemics (lion centaurs), etc. And the thing about these monsters is that they often have some special abilities -- and to balance that out, they have some disadvantages, the most notable of which is that they are almost all superstitious primitives, and in a human-dominated world, well, the world is just not made for them. (There's a few campaign options, almost all of which are "here's one humanoid joining the adventuring party"; there's no "you're all orcs fighting off an elvish invasion" or what not.) This worldview (humanoids are primitive) also shows up heavily in the kits, with these creatures having specific class restrictions, i.e., you can't just play a cleric, you're either a witch doctor or a shaman.
Yeah, so? So what's interesting about these books? I struggle to answer, as you'll see. I mean, I like the character options, or at least I did, though I have to point out that characters now have both sub-race and kit options. It's just starting to feel like material for the sake of material.
The stuff about the mythology and ethos is interesting -- maybe precursor for the Monster Mythology book or the Monstrous Arcana books, where they dug into the psychology of beholders, et al.? -- but it's also got a hard needle to thread: on one hand, they have to be interesting and on the other hand, they have to be generic fantasy.
Pause here for a moment to remember that back in the 80s, the RPG Talislanta produced ads touting "No elves", which was shorthand for fantasy that looks different, not factory-stamped generic fantasy. That is a clear shot at D&D (and some others, all either based on or responding to D&D), but it's also a fair shot: D&D is built from an agglomeration of cultural stuff, and part of its strength was always that it was recognizable stuff. Like Tolkien? You can play it! Like Conan or the Dying Earth? You can play it! (Or you can play something that at least includes parts of it.)
And so when they put out a book all about dwarves -- for all of their campaign worlds -- it's going to feel a little.... thin. Honestly, I loved the character options as a kid, but even then in the Dwarf book I was most interested by the "Sundered", the idea of dwarves who have been driven from their mines and have adapted to life on the surface and lost or adapted a lot of their culture. Back to Wagner, at least, there's some anti Jewish tropes that attach to dwarves or vice versa, so the idea of diasporic dwarves seemed like a great acknowledgement of this. But it's also the most original idea in these books. Otherwise, elves are elves, dwarves are dwarves, halflings are halflings (which are hobbits), etc.
And that brings us to the Humanoid book, a chance to maybe think about what it might actually mean to live with wings or in some other alien world, but what we get is more like... well, it's humanoids from the POV of the humans: they are primitive, bestial, monstrous to humans, but what're the roleplaying notes? Be primitive, bestial, monstrous. I want to say that there's some lost potential in these books, but I'm not even sure what would be truly interesting and useful.
Or, possibly, these were really interesting and useful in the 90s, when I was a child, and time has merely moved on.
January 11, 2025
This is among the best of this series of handbooks, both from a world-building and a gameplay standpoint. The lore is fairly flexible so that it can fit various campaign settings, but still has enough flavor to justify its presence. This made dwarves feel more alive than a few stat enhancements without wildly overpowering them.
May 1, 2015
LOve it!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews