What race would you create to replace dwarfs with?

[StickMan]

So I'm writing a P6 (E6 setting for Pathfinder), and I'm not using any of the standard PC races. That means no Elves, Dwarfs, Halfings, Gnomes, Orcs or Humans! Honestly I'm not having that hard of a time of it really, with the exception of the niche that dwarfs fill. I need an underground living race that likes to mine and a race that wants to act as the bankers of the world. Honestly though I'm having a hard time coming up with ideas. Maybe some kind of Kobold like race. But I'll love to give out a CP for your thoughts on the subject.

[Vitruviansquid]

I have an idea. You can have a race that lives underground, runs banks, as according to your specs. But also, they'll be obsessed with warhammers and beards, they love to drink and write in runes, and then they are also short and stout and known to be grumpy. We'll call 'em Dwoogs. They'll be adorable and sell millions.

But no, really, if you want dwarves by another name, why not just use dwarves? Did you want them to have some undwarfly characteristics on top of living underground and running banks?

[GorinichSerpant]

Some sort of mole people could work.

You could also have some other kind of rodent, like more rat-like kobolds.

For something a bit more out-there, you could have a blind race with tremorsense and/or a keen nose.

They could be humanoid worms, not actually having bones and have them be really flexible, that would make sense with the tremorsense idea.

[Sidmen]

The Nearb are a race somewhat resembling humanoid seals (remove the humanoid if you want to make em weirder) that glow with bioluminescent light beneath their transparent skins. They are best known for tunneling beneath the earth to create massive vaults in which they grow their coral-like cities. The amphibious Nearb fill their city-vaults with underground rivers to form lakes of glowing blue sludge (the alge that is their primary foodstuff).

The Nearb are masters of semi-organic semi-crystalline technologies; using large tunnler beasts to dissolve the rock and expose the precious metals and gemstones their kind so enjoys. It isn't the shining gold or glittering gems that they like, but the counting of precious things (precious to other races) that draws their attention. The Nearb love to have more than anyone else - more gold, silver, jewels - and to show them off to whomever will watch.

A first, quick attempt.

[Red Fel]

I have an idea. You can have a race that lives underground, runs banks, as according to your specs. But also, they'll be obsessed with warhammers and beards, they love to drink and write in runes, and then they are also short and stout and known to be grumpy. We'll call 'em Dwoogs. They'll be adorable and sell millions.

But no, really, if you want dwarves by another name, why not just use dwarves? Did you want them to have some undwarfly characteristics on top of living underground and running banks?

This. The fact is, you can do a lot of cool things with an underground race, or a mining race, or a banking race. But once you pack all of those things into one neat little bundle, it screams "This is a dwarf!" And you can say, "No, it's not a dwarf, it's a Smeerp," all you want. Your players will refer to it as "Those guys who are like dwarves but aren't."

If you don't want to use the traditional races, that's fine. Then don't make a pretense of doing so. Don't have your underground race be miners or bankers. Let the people who live in the trees be your bankers. Let the people who live underground... I dunno... Be shaman or something. Make them tragic instead of jovial, like they're cursed if they ever see sunlight or something.

But giving them all the standard dwarf traits, they're dwarves. It doesn't matter if you make them into moles, or twelve feet high, or a psychic collective intelligence composed of cloned forms created from soil that decay over a period of months. Players will look at them and say, "That's a dwarf."

[StickMan]

I need an underground living race that likes to mine and a race that wants to act as the bankers of the world.

So I guess I wasn't clear here with the and separating those two parts. I am actually looking for more than one race to fill in the gaps. I'm not necessarily looking for one race too do both. Frankly I'd like to see more than one race that lives underground even just to fill out an ecology.

[Knaight]

An anthropomorphic ant-aphid system of two species could be fun. The ants have their tunnels underground but do a lot on the surface, have a species wide inclination towards storage and hoarding, maintain ant social structures involved, use pheromones, and are generally disinterested in metallurgy. Then there's the aphid species, which manages lots of underground agriculture for the ant species, along with handling the more technological things. Between the two of them, banking might occur, but contextualized as storage first and foremost.

[(Un)Inspired]

So I guess I wasn't clear here with the and separating those two parts. I am actually looking for more than one race to fill in the gaps. I'm not necessarily looking for one race too do both. Frankly I'd like to see more than one race that lives underground even just to fill out an ecology.

Use Morlocks. You can never go wrong with Morlocks.

Or how about a race of origami people; literally made from magically animated paper. They harvest large mushrooms underground which they then compress into sheets of paper that they fold into new people as a means of reproduction.

Or you could use subterranean reverse centaurs. They can really fit in anywhere, underground is no exception.

Or you could use Axolotlfolk. A race of amphibious egalitarians that lack human notions of personal space!

[Jay R]

The race that wants to be bankers would have been thrown out of many lands, and be looked down on by many. Since they cannot successfully own land, the only other source of great wealth (and by far the lesser) is finance. They have learned the need to be scrupulously honest, since they were already mistrusted and nobody trusts bankers. But they have long memories and excellent records on who has tried to cheat any of their race, at any time, in any place. They do not require friendship nor respect from their customers, merely strictly honest dealings.

The race that wants to be miners can see in the dark, and mine well, which means high strength and endurance, and small size. Since they are happier underground, they are likely albinos. People who live underground will die in a cave-in if their engineering does not hold up, so they are absolutely precise in tunneling, building with rocks, or stone architecture. They have very few dealings with the surface world, and only a few of them care to learn their languages. They probably get along well with the bankers, who they often employ as go-betweens.

[DigoDragon]

In the last campaign I ran, I plucked the warforged from Ebberron and made them the 'dwarves' of my world. They were built long ago to be miners and builders so that the civ that designed them could enjoy a labor-free lifestyle. I believe I renamed them 'Forgers', as the civ was so peaceful that they didn't need their machines for fighting. Course then society collapsed when something came and destroyed them (I didn't specify what it was), but most of the Forgers survived and continued working the mines. They rebuilt the city and now interact with the outside world since their creators are gone.

In the fluff I mentioned that one reason they want to be the bankers of the word is that the precious metals used for currency is also important building materials to make more Forgers. Thus, investing your funds with them helps them maintain their numbers so they may continue to serve your banking needs.

[Heemi]

Kobolds sound like they fit the bill perfectly, TBH. In Races of the Dragon it's explained that they have much more material wealth than most other settlements because nearly every Kobold is a miner!

[Faily]

In the last campaign I ran, I plucked the warforged from Ebberron and made them the 'dwarves' of my world. They were built long ago to be miners and builders so that the civ that designed them could enjoy a labor-free lifestyle. I believe I renamed them 'Forgers', as the civ was so peaceful that they didn't need their machines for fighting. Course then society collapsed when something came and destroyed them (I didn't specify what it was), but most of the Forgers survived and continued working the mines. They rebuilt the city and now interact with the outside world since their creators are gone.

In the fluff I mentioned that one reason they want to be the bankers of the word is that the precious metals used for currency is also important building materials to make more Forgers. Thus, investing your funds with them helps them maintain their numbers so they may continue to serve your banking needs.

I like the idea of using Warforgeds as miners. They don't need to breathe, which solves a huge problem, and if there is a cave-in, causing the loss of many workers, the worst part of it is that you need to get more Warforgeds to replace the lost workers.

[LibraryOgre]

So I'm writing a P6 (E6 setting for Pathfinder), and I'm not using any of the standard PC races. That means no Elves, Dwarfs, Halfings, Gnomes, Orcs or Humans! Honestly I'm not having that hard of a time of it really, with the exception of the niche that dwarfs fill. I need an underground living race that likes to mine and a race that wants to act as the bankers of the world. Honestly though I'm having a hard time coming up with ideas. Maybe some kind of Kobold like race. But I'll love to give out a CP for your thoughts on the subject.

What about a race of debased Earth elementals? Or maybe something akin to the Janni? You'd want to reduce their power a bit, but a race of semi-elementals who don't so much mine as "Make cave galleries as an art form" could be an interesting twist.

For your banking race, what about a race that travels? It's not so much that they hoard gold in one place, but that they will honor notes for gold from other groups of their race, and have some way to authenticate it. So, if you're in a strange city, you find one of them, present your note, and get some walking around money, without having had to carry it from point A to point B. For this, I might use something like kenku, and maybe give them a Wizard's Mark ability, so the notes can be authenticated.

[EisenKreutzer]

So I'm writing a P6 (E6 setting for Pathfinder), and I'm not using any of the standard PC races. That means no Elves, Dwarfs, Halfings, Gnomes, Orcs or Humans! Honestly I'm not having that hard of a time of it really, with the exception of the niche that dwarfs fill. I need an underground living race that likes to mine and a race that wants to act as the bankers of the world. Honestly though I'm having a hard time coming up with ideas. Maybe some kind of Kobold like race. But I'll love to give out a CP for your thoughts on the subject.

Why not create a world without those niches? It will be painfully obvious that you've filed the serial numbers off dwarves if you stick another race (or races) into the same stereotypes.

Does your setting really need a subterranean race of miners? Can't all the other races mine the mountains for minerals? You know, like we humans have been doing for centuries?

And can't every race have a banking system? Why does a single race have to serve as your settings bankers?

[torrasque666]

Use Dorfs for the mining race. Short, beardy, hates elves, but also has a tendency to do things in an either stupid or overly complicated manner(sometimes both) and loves !!magma!!.

[jaydubs]

You can always draw on the natural world for inspiration, and to give them a more developed theme.

I need an underground living race that likes to mine...

What types of real world organisms tend to live in the dark? Worms, fungus, micro-organisms, insects, and similar.

The first that comes to mind is some kind of sentient, light producing fungus. They can form limbs to move around, and they can vibrate to create speech, but their natural form of communication is through brilliant displays of light that appear as patterns on their bodies. And those light displays allow them to show emotion to other races, despite having no faces, eyes, or ears. Despite the idea of walking and talking fungus being somewhat disgusting, they are actually some of the most beautiful creatures in the world, being able to form their bodies into living pieces of art.

Their skill in mining and metalwork comes not from learning to make war, as with many other races, but in a yearning for self-improvement and expression. They forge from steel and rare metals the skeletons around which they form their bodies. Usually this takes the form of a humanoid, but on occasion they wander the world as hounds, horses, or even creatures not to be found in the natural world.

...and a race that wants to act as the bankers of the world.

Same deal. When I think of an animal that likes to hoard shiny bits, I think of ravens or crows. The central themes would be:

Greed - The same as the birds on which they are based, Corvids love the accumulation of "shinies." They often accumulate wealth for no purpose other than in and of itself. They are happy as well to provide monetary services to other races, though it is not unheard of for them to charge usurious rates of interest or to prey upon kingdoms in the direst of circumstances.

Inventiveness - To use the word "clever" when describing Corvids would be an understatement. To date, they are responsible for the vast majority of world's inventions. The steel plow, mechanical clock, printing press, and a wealth of others - all spawned from Corvid minds.

Flight - These bird-like creatures live in cities far above ground, kept in place by containers filled with lighter gasses. Landbound races have few ways to enter their flying cities. And Corvid mercenaries are always in high demand for the advantage they present as scouts and raiders.

[Judge_Worm]

Bankers- Kobolds, they are draconic, so a love for wealth makes sense, and they might've built the deepest mine ever.

Miners- Kobolds, they might've built the deepest mine ever, and they are draconic, so a love for wealth makes sense.

[Sartharina]

I once created a tiger-person race that's a blend of dwarves and elves - they live in mountains, and have a Himalayan-inspired culture. Statistically for Pathfinder, they have a strength+wis bonus and con penalty (And bonus to dex-based skills, though not a dex bonus), which meshes nicely with their fluff of using their affinity for Blades-on-A-Stick, allowing them to use their great strength effectively while protecting them from getting involved in melee.

They are excellent artisans and stoneworkers, reshaping the faces of mountains into their monastary-cities.

[nedz]

Miners

Eealfs: Earth Elemental Elf Analogs.

The concept of elemental analogs is that an elemental analog is almost just like their prime material equivalents — only they are mainly made out of just one element. Earth is obviously best for mining and Elf is obviously not Dwarf. Elemental analogs were a 2E concept that never really made it into 3E, and was pretty marginal in 2E.

Tauric Dwarf-Badgers.
Now these are still Dwarves obviously, except from the waist down.

Tuaric Kobold-Rabbits
OK - You get the idea. There are numerous combinations here.

Bankers
I was going to suggest Illuminium, but those are more wordy. What you need is a numberwanged Illuminium variant — shouldn't be too hard.

[StickMan]

Why not create a world without those niches? It will be painfully obvious that you've filed the serial numbers off dwarves if you stick another race (or races) into the same stereotypes.

Does your setting really need a subterranean race of miners? Can't all the other races mine the mountains for minerals? You know, like we humans have been doing for centuries?

And can't every race have a banking system? Why does a single race have to serve as your settings bankers?

Because it's my world firstly, I asked for ideas not attack on why I wanted those idea. I'm doing away with all of the core races because I want to do away with all the stereotypes attached to them. Every setting that reuses Tolkens leftovers deals with certain tropes of Dwarfs, Elves, Hobbits, and Orc/Goblin/Hobgoblin/Bugbears. I'm trying to fill ecological niches, not racial tropes. Frankly I just want to. Why do people have such a problem with that?

That said the reason I'm looking for races that specialize in certain areas was up until two centuries ago Humanity had basically established a setting wide empire that had authority over all of the other races. Humanities driving goal in this setting was delving deeper and deeper into the magical and arcane arts. Toward the peak of the empires height most humans where engaged in arcane, alchemical or some other field of magical research. Something as mundane as banking was largely seen as beneath them. Something most humans would not want to do. Basically the other races of the empire supported humanities endeavors by doing the things they didn't want to some level or another. This is not to say that some humans did not farm, bank, mine or perform other common tasks. But basically the other races where most allowed to do there own thing as long as it supported the empires goals. That was up until humanity went and got itself wiped out killing off the whole of the population or turning them into undead or worse. This shattered the empire, and while things have settled down, the once unified world order has been replaced by a world of endless city states and rule by the strong.

Lot of you have given me some great ideas and I'll likely have two or three races that live underground and one or two dealing with banking. I'd already planed to have a tengu/avian race, I don't know why I didn't think of them as natural bankers/traders.

I'm thinking I'll be running a Kobold race, though I'm picturing them more like Sandshrews with the half dragon templet applied.
Also I'm liking the idea of Ant/Insectoid race that would also be involved to a limited degree in mining.
While humanity was wiped out there are human decent races still around, predominant those who where tied to elemental magics. So the Earth based group will likely have some mining connections in the present.
I'm playing with the idea of a Warforged like race. But I've already have a Android rewrite based on Pathfinders Androids. They where created by outsiders basically to act as agents against humanity playing withing thing beyond what they should have been. Might be interesting to have the Androids deal with another more traditional construct race.

I once created a tiger-person race that's a blend of dwarves and elves - they live in mountains, and have a Himalayan-inspired culture. Statistically for Pathfinder, they have a strength+wis bonus and con penalty (And bonus to dex-based skills, though not a dex bonus), which meshes nicely with their fluff of using their affinity for Blades-on-A-Stick, allowing them to use their great strength effectively while protecting them from getting involved in melee.

They are excellent artisans and stoneworkers, reshaping the faces of mountains into their monastary-cities.

Totally going to steal this concept.

Thanks for the idea guys. I think I'd just gotten writers block filling up so many other ecological niches that I was like, underground=Dwarfs... Underground=Dwarfs... Darn it brain other ideas...

[Solaris]

I rather like the notion of a creature that's essentially a scaled-down version of the delver mixed with a xorn. In essence, a half-worm, half-humanoid (albeit only in the loosest sense) that burrows/glides through the earth, devouring rocks and minerals but collecting metals for trade with the surface creatures. You could partner them up with the smaller, weaker, but more sensible ant-people for a symbiotic civilization, like Knaight suggested.

[Duke of Urrel]

J. K. Rowling's goblins, such as the security-obsessed guardians of the vaults of the Gringotts Wizarding Bank, are different enough from Tolkien's goblins that you may find them useful. If you don't use the name, you may use some of their traits as described in the Harry Potter series.

Postscript: An easy way to come up with a name for your dwarf-like race might be simply to translate the word "dwarf" into various other languages, the less closely related to English, the better.

[Solaris]

Postscript: An easy way to come up with a name for your dwarf-like race might be simply to translate the word "dwarf" into various other languages, the less closely related to English, the better.

Call them dokkalfar or drow. That'll really confuse people who aren't up on their mythology.

[YossarianLives]

What about Lurbilaxllbanams. A race of psychic sentient mushroom-people with twelve arms. The Lurbilaxllbanams also spit acid, have a special weapon that's like a spear but with four tips and it's also serrated, darkvision, a racial bonus to perception because they have 56 compound mushroomy eyes and they really like vampire romance novels.

[Renen]

Can always make kenders...
Players wont stick around long enough to critisize kenders...

[Psyren]

Ratfolk warrens can go pretty deep as well.

[Knaight]

Ratfolk warrens can go pretty deep as well.

Speaking of ratfolk, there are a number of burrowing mammals that could potentially work pretty well. Rabbits, ferrets, even prairie dogs. The prairie dogs probably wouldn't work all that well if the players have something against the species, but the other two could work.

Another option would be to go for something a bit more marine. A lot of cave systems have a lot of submerged areas, and focusing on underground rivers, partially submerged areas, etc. as habitats gives a pretty distinct feel. The terrain is no dwarven hall, and even if a short humanoid is used the sort of traits beneficial in the environment aren't particularly dwarf like.

[atemu1234]

Kobolds, probably adding in stuff from 3.5's Races of the Dragon. After all, they are the only race that gets a bonus on Profession (Miner) and can make awesome traps. Combat Trapmaker Kobolds, anyone? (Even though this is a PF thread, I like the idea)

[Terror_Incognito]

Here is an idea I had today, though it does borrow from other posts here. I'm a terrible writer so I'm just going to dump my ideas here and hope it makes sense.

Eusocial, anthropomorphic glow beetles (I'll call them Betes for now) in a mutual symbiosis with Magma Elemental Worm people (Maelworms)

Betes dig extensive, simple tunnel-cities (they are your digging people). They aren't particularly adept with metal or stone (average skills).

They reproduce asexually via parthenogenesis, with the breeders being the older, larger members.

Betes can communicate vocally by squeezing air out of their spiracles, but talk to each other with light. Because of this they are sometimes distracted by flickering flames and other lights.

Personality-wise they are a cheerful, bright, energetic people.

As they age they moult to grow. Society is divided into four castes based (loosely) on size. They can choose not to moult (so players can stay the same caste)

"Little Sisters" are Small sized and are the most numerous caste. Often seen hurrying about gathering food and materials. They perform most of the digging.

"Sisters" are Medium sized and perform most of the skilled work.

"Big Sisters" are Large sized. They do the heavy work and guard.

"Mothers" are Huge. They lead the tunnel-cities and birth new sisters.

They secrete a luminescent resin from glands on their face (some people call them Weeping Sisters), becomes hard after a short time. A glows with the same light as a candle for an hour. Can be used in various ways multiple times (stick a large glob to a wall to aid climbing) OR once per day add +1 to natural armour with a Dex penalty (takes an hour to apply).

Maelworms are a magical/elemental burrowing creature. Very slow (aging, movement). Super heated bodies allow them to eat stone and store molten metals. They can't consume gems so these are stuck on the outside of their bodies. Defend themselves by being super hot and firing streams of molten metal at enemies burning them at trapping them in place. Are excellent with metalwork with precise use of metal excretion.

Maelworm only communicate with pulsing light which is how they paired with the Betes.

Betes help the maelworms by moving them more quickly than normal and by bring them metals, maelworms craft metal and help improve the tunnel-cities.

Banking with the Beted consists of them feeding metal to the maelworms which is then excreted when needed.

I hope this make some sense. I was inspired and I really wanted to share this.