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2019-09-30, 12:49 AM (ISO 8601)
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"Dwarves can't swim" where did this come from?
In my very early days as a player, the people I played with (my family) had a houserule that dwarves sank in water (I say houserule because this was definitely not RAW or RAI in 3.X, which we usually played). I never questioned it, assuming they knew what they were talking about. Then many years passed without more than one or two dwarf PCs and even fewer going near water and I completely forgot about it. But as I was thinking about making dwarves stand out in a home game, I suddenly recalled it. I assumed it had come from old-school DnD, which my father played, but my internet search capabilities have failed me. I've found a few scant references to the idea coming from rpgs, but nothing concrete. So, does anyone know where this idea came from? Was it ever a real rule, or just a popular houserule in old editions or even other rpgs? Maybe it was much rarer than I think it is and I just happened to find related results in my own research?
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2019-09-30, 02:16 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "Dwarves can't swim" where did this come from?
I think it started as a joke when someone looked at the average height and weight of dwarves and noticed that they are too dense to float in water.
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2019-09-30, 03:55 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "Dwarves can't swim" where did this come from?
It might have stemmed from one of the possible origin stories for dwarves, being that the first dwarves were carved from stone. And since stone sinks, so do dwarves.
There might also be a possible link with people who suffer from dwarfism. Their disproportioned body and the top-heavy head make it very difficult to keep the head above water, so it's often thought they can't swim at all (which they can, just with a lot of training).
Bit like how some people argue that bumblebees shouldn't be able to fly because their wings are too small for their fat body.Just remember... if the world didn't suck, we'd all fall off.
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2019-09-30, 04:35 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "Dwarves can't swim" where did this come from?
There's also a few larger creatures in D&D 3.5 that are, like, denser than rock. I think a handful of (organic) creatures are denser than some metals.
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2019-09-30, 05:48 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "Dwarves can't swim" where did this come from?
Well - I guess it came from Dragonlance? Didn't Flint Fireforge say something like that? Anyways, I don't suppose it's far from the truth - if any single race has a specific prediliction towards heavy armor, it's the dwarves. They could remove it, I suppose, but would they really want to, when they could built a bridge instead?
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2019-09-30, 07:38 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "Dwarves can't swim" where did this come from?
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2019-09-30, 09:11 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "Dwarves can't swim" where did this come from?
A dwarf feel kinship with the plane of Earth by culture. Water covers Earth, and with erosion carves it. So dwarves don't swim is closer to the thuth.
In humans lower lung capacity will affect swimming. Less air inside less buoyancy in the water.
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2019-09-30, 09:29 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "Dwarves can't swim" where did this come from?
Elf propaganda, no doubt.
Originally Posted by KKL
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2019-09-30, 10:56 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2015
Re: "Dwarves can't swim" where did this come from?
I certainly think I recall something vaguely like that from the TSR era, but it was more along the lines of 'Dwarves do not make good sailors.' They are mountain/hill-dwelling miners and craftsmen and goblin/orc-fighters, not sailors and marines. It was more theme and interest rather than physical ability. Throw in their tendency to be fighters (and thus wear lots of armor), and swimming requiring a separate skill/proficiency (if late 1e, late BECMI, or 2e) that might never come up, and the number of dwarves seen out there swimming laps was pretty small.
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2019-09-30, 11:04 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "Dwarves can't swim" where did this come from?
Dwarves can do better than swimming, they utilize their density and strength and streamlined roundness just like hippos and run on the bottom.
Black text is for sarcasm, also sincerity. You'll just have to read between the lines and infer from context like an animal
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2019-09-30, 12:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "Dwarves can't swim" where did this come from?
Birthright calls out Dwarves as tending to sink in water (and gives them some damage reduction too if I recall correctly)
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2019-09-30, 12:32 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2009
Re: "Dwarves can't swim" where did this come from?
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2019-09-30, 01:19 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "Dwarves can't swim" where did this come from?
In Joel Rosenberg's Guardians of the Flame series, specifically Road to Ehvenor, one of the characters, Ahira Bandylegs, specifically notes that dwarves cannot swim, due to density... and, in true fashion, is promptly knocked off the boat they are on.
Humans float ok, and better the more fat that they have. Someone with a lot of muscle floats poorly. A dwarf, with a lot greater density, and often a lot of muscle, is going to have trouble floating, but I don't see it implemented very often.The Cranky Gamer
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2019-09-30, 02:23 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2019
Re: "Dwarves can't swim" where did this come from?
so what do you do with stone?
You build bridges out of it.
But can you not build bridges out of wood?
ooh.
do stones burn?
no, no, they just get hot.
so what also does not burn?
apples,
horseshoes.
leather.
very small twigs.
cider.
grape gravy.
some water.
exactly, so logically...
if he's the same temperature as some water, he must be a dwarf.
and therefore, i think, I shall use my largest thermometre.
Right, remove the stops!
A dwarf! burn him burn him!!
it's a fair cop.
I'm sorry for the overlong and not very good conversion, but I just had to.Last edited by notXanathar; 2019-09-30 at 02:23 PM.
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2019-09-30, 06:56 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2014
Re: "Dwarves can't swim" where did this come from?
It's actually a rule in HARP (and I suspect in Rolemaster) where Dwarves get the equivalent of +1 to-hit and +1 AC for a -5 Swim penalty.
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2019-10-01, 02:40 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "Dwarves can't swim" where did this come from?
The AD&D 2e Monster Manual has this line about dwarves and the sea:
For a dwarf, the earth is something to be loved because of its stability and the sea a thing to be despised - and feared - because it is a symbol of change.
Rolemaster and a number of other games I've played has this codified as direct penalties to swimming and often sailing as well.
It seems likely that the origin is somewhere in Tolkien. A quick googling doesn't turn up anything specific concerning dwarves and the sea (or water in general), but the fact that they awoke from stone and spend all their time in mountain delvings may have led to the inference that dwarves have an active dislike or fear of open water.
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2019-10-01, 03:20 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2017
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2019-10-01, 04:54 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "Dwarves can't swim" where did this come from?
As long as they don't have to row or sail 'em I guess. Bloody stowaways...😉
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2019-10-01, 02:09 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2009
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- In my library
Re: "Dwarves can't swim" where did this come from?
This. It's probably a mixture of dwarves tending to carry relatively heavy items and mostly not living near water. In fact, in most settings the majority of PCs shouldn't be that great at swimming, with most of them (potentially even sailors) not having been properly trained. If you want to model dwarven density making it harder for them a small penalty might be appropriate, but as an untrained human can keep their head above the water an untrained dwarf should be able to.
Widespread swimming ability is a relatively recent development, IIRC for the majority of history being able to swim was a special skill for a sailor, and sometimes considered a downside (because they can jump off the boat and swim back to shore if you press-gang them). A dwarf is highly unlikely to be living near a coast or a lake, and so unlikely to be able to practice swimming, and even if they did they might not want to. Plus although you can swim in plate armour the more weight you're carrying the harder it is (although body fat mitigates this by making you less dense), so once you've taken the battle axe, the town axe, the formal axe, the wood cutting axe (ideal for annoying elves), the pickaxe, and the sleeping axe into account they might not have it so easy.
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2019-10-01, 05:59 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2008
Re: "Dwarves can't swim" where did this come from?
There's some major regional variation here - especially when it comes to sailors. Inland cultures generally didn't have lots of particularly strong swimmers, though there are significant exceptions for areas with rivers, and for coastal cultures it often depended more on water conditions than anything. Temperature especially seemed to play a huge part here. Polynesian and Carribean cultures, where the water is exceedingly warm and the land temperature leans towards hot tended to have really extensive swimming cultures. Southern China and India, both of which have notable rivers that aren't pparticularly fast flowing and are fairly warm by the time the south is reached also had significant swimming cultures, which tapered off a fair bit towards the north where rivers were colder. In Europe Mediterranean cultures tend towards more swimming than Atlantic cultures, and the Atlantic is a far colder body of water - and you also tend to see less swimming in rivers, many of which are particularly mountain fed and chilly compliments of the Urals and the tendency for them to be smaller, faster flowing streams. You can also see a similar dynamic in the Americas, though the Amazon river is a bit of a weird case there in terms of not really knowing the history. Still, you tend to see a lot more in the way of swimming in more equatorial zones, with the cutoff line running more or less through the modern day US.
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2019-10-01, 09:17 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "Dwarves can't swim" where did this come from?
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2019-10-04, 04:04 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "Dwarves can't swim" where did this come from?
In "The Dark Eye" (THE german RPG), dwarves get penalties in the swimming skill and have to spend more points to raise it.
The reasoning is actually, that they are too dense, don't live near water AND their culture
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2019-10-04, 05:14 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2012
Re: "Dwarves can't swim" where did this come from?
In the Tolkien stories I seem to remember dwarves not being comfortable with the open sea. The sound or the vast ocean fills them with dread.
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2019-10-04, 07:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "Dwarves can't swim" where did this come from?
I was generalising to make the point that 'not able to swim beyond instinctual ability' is more likely to be the default. Of course there was massive variation, but if we take the population of the setting/the world au ab equivalent historical era then dwarves being unable to swim doesn't make them outliers, especially if you consider the terrain they tend to inhabit.
I'm glad you like it, although amusingly the setting I'm hoping to run next actually goes in an entirely different direction (that's just been my traditional depiction of them). While most dwarves in that setting own weapons few carry them every day, dwarves tend to carry the tools of their craft (which has been their focus since early childhood, dwarves specialise where elves diversify) with only dedicated warriors seeking the most aesthetically vibrant forms of weaponcraft carrying them every day. There's a note in the players' document that dwarves tend to keep their beards neatly trimmed, long beards/locks means you have no work for it to get in the way of.
There's quite a bit more, I really like how I took some of their common traits and built something less standard out of them. I really struggled to do the same with Elves.
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2019-10-04, 10:13 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "Dwarves can't swim" where did this come from?
For all this talk of density, I feel the need to point out that swimming is specifically the act of constantly not sinking when you otherwise would sink. Whether a dwarf floats or not isn't terribly relevant to swimming. I can swim, but I can still sink if I stop swimming.
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2019-10-04, 10:48 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "Dwarves can't swim" where did this come from?
Yes, but humans don't have to fight it nearly as hard.
If you drop a person in calm water, and they themselves remain calm, depending on the fat content of their body and composition of the water, they'll reach buoyancy pretty close to the surface... practically on top of it, if there's enough salt in the water.
A dwarf, though? With their far smaller volume (Shadowrun put it that they tend to be able to wear human shirts, but need different pants; similar weight, similar x and y, much smaller z), but similar weight, is going to have a neutral buoyancy far deeper than a human... a human has to bob up for air, a dwarf has to swim up for it.The Cranky Gamer
*It isn't realism, it's verisimilitude; the appearance of truth within the framework of the game.
*Picard management tip: Debate honestly. The goal is to arrive at the truth, not at your preconception.
*Mutant Dawn for Savage Worlds!
*The One Deck Engine: Gaming on a budget
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2019-10-05, 01:23 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2016
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Re: "Dwarves can't swim" where did this come from?
Lots of ideas all around, which I'm kind of surprised by. It seems that, in my case, it was probably born from what was suggested earlier: that just going by weight and height, dwarves should be denser than humans. And somebody in probably a long line of DMs and tables decided to implement it as a houserule. Where it was eventually passed on to me. OTOH:
This is probably a good enough reason for them to swim easily enough, at least in the games I've played. Much joking has been made of dwarves being two feet shorter than humans and twice as wide.Avatar by linklele
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2019-10-05, 09:01 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "Dwarves can't swim" where did this come from?
Someday someone’s first D&D game will have a rule that dwarves are afraid of trees, and they will never know the idea came from a joke in The Order of the Stick.
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2019-10-06, 02:07 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2008
Re: "Dwarves can't swim" where did this come from?
Outliers, no. But between coasts having way higher population densities than inland areas for the vast majority of history (also the present) and the tendency for warmer areas to also have higher population densities the idea that sailors wouldn't be expected to swim is a major quirk, where most people most places had at least some swimming practice.
I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums.
I'm not joking one bit. I would buy the hell out of that. -- ChubbyRain
Current Design Project: Legacy, a game of masters and apprentices for two players and a GM.
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2019-10-06, 08:37 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2015
Re: "Dwarves can't swim" where did this come from?