Gully Dwarf (5e Race)

Gully Dwarf

Life like Stew! -Gully Dwarf Saying

Design Note: While easily transferable to any setting with dwarves and gnomes, gully dwarves originate from and are heavily associated with the Dragonlance setting.

Physical Description

Larry Elmore

Depending on perspective, gully dwarves look like slender dwarves the size of gnomes or hirsute gnomes with dwarven complexions. Either way most gully dwarves are rather ugly to look at with random patches of missing hair, gangly proportions, and pot bellies. Unless forced to by other races, gully dwarves rarely bathe so are often dirty and gross to be around, if not covered in sores, splotches, stains, or warts. Gully dwarves have no sense of fashion and will usually just wear whatever they can scavenge or cobble together, badly, until it falls apart.

History

More properly called the Aghar by other dwarves, gully dwarves are hybrids that result from the unions between dwarves and gnomes. They are also the reason such congresses are frowned upon, though in modern times most gully dwarves are born to other gully dwarves. Gully dwarves have very little history of their own since they are almost all illiterate and generally live in the shadows of other races or their follies.

Society

In their own communities, gully dwarves divide up into different family based clans, likely in emulation of their dwarven cousins. The defining traits of gully dwarves are their stupidity, their cowardice, their poverty, their hardiness.

To the first point, most ogres are considered outright geniuses by gully dwarves. No gully dwarf society has yet mastered the ability to count past 2, which is their general for things that number more than one. Most still aren’t quite sure how wheels work. Despite these limitations, gully dwarves often display a confidence born of ignorance in their intellectual abilities, often believing whatever they are doing to be the obvious, proper course of action and other folk as over complicating a thing, though few will ever back up their assertions if confronted with a mightier debater.

To the second point, the gully dwarves possess no military tradition or specialties in combat, unless you count pleading for their lives. Gully dwarves have survived by serving anyone they fear, or occasionally respect, to the best of their limited capabilities. Most sentient creatures find gully dwarves a combination of too pathetic and too dirty to be worth killing, and thus the gully dwarves survive another day. This is why most gully dwarves live in towns and cities since usually wild beasts, who will just eat them, are more dangerous than routine harassment by a metropolis’s criminal elements. However, when backed into a corner, gully dwarves can by surprisingly vicious fighters. Gully dwarves also often get alog as friends with the nomadic kender.

To the third point, most gully dwarves live in the slums, gutters, dumpsters, and occasionally sewers of larger settlements, though some adventurous communities set up in ruins. There they eke out a living doing odd jobs for the taller folk, mostly dwarves and humans, and scavenging what they can from their waste while living in hovels and shacks. Given their meager mental and physical capabilities, this usually isn’t much, with one exception. Gully dwarves are often considered some the best cooks on Krynn, especially in sparse culinary circumstances. Despite often using ingredients like roadkill, rotten produce, and borderline toxic substances, the gully dwarves can generally make palatable, if not tasty, meals. They are especially good at soups.

All this leads to the fourth point. Despite their many, many disadvantages, gully dwarf populations have been able to survive if not thrive for centuries thanks to their low living standards, lack of dignity, and general willingness to whatever is needed to survive whatever cataclysms or wars they find themselves surrounded by. Their adaptability means they can serve an evil master as well as a good one in any circumstance. While they will never develop calculus, most gully dwarves have long since made the calculation that survival matters more than capability.

Gully Dwarf Names

Most gully dwarves use short names derived from a combination of dwarven and gnomish, though many will easily replace their names with whatever strikes their fancy or sounds nice to them in the moment.

Male: Erm, Andri, Merg, Orom, Pip, Pryl

Female: Delle, Dol, Enna, Ermin, Gers, Raeng

Clan: Boop, Crudd, Fup, Furt, Slep, Zooot

Gully Dwarf Traits

Moronic yet durable dwarf/ gnome hybrids
Ability Score Increase. Your Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma scores all increase by 1.
Age. Gully dwarves reach maturity around 20 years old and can live up to 350 years.
Alignment. Gully dwarves tend towards neutral good or true neutral alignments.
Size. Your size is Small.
Speed. Your base walking speed is 25 feet.
Darkvision. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can't discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.
Dunce. You have disadvantage on all Intelligence ability checks. Whenever you try to count to a number higher than half your Intelligence score, rounded up, you must make an Intelligence ability check with a DC equal to an accurate count. On a success, you count correctly. On a failure, you will count to your roll and be convinced beyond nonmagical persuasion that you are correct in your accounting.
Gnomish Near-Cunning. You have advantage on all Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma saves against magic unless the saving throw is to avoid or end the frightened condition.
Gutter Gourmet. You have proficiency with cook’s utensils. Whenever you make an Wisdom (Survival) check related to foraging for food in an urban environment, you are considered proficient in the Survival skill and add double your proficiency bonus to the check, instead of your normal proficiency bonus.
Pathetic. During the first round of combat, hostile creatures will not attack or cast harmful spells against you if they can attack or cast harmful spells against other, non-gully dwarf characters. This trait does not affect attacks and spells with an area effect, such as fireball or sleep. During this round, you may use Dash, Disengage, Dodge, or Hide as a bonus action.
Semi-Dwarven Resilience. You have advantage on saving throws against poison and diseases, and you have resistance against poison damage.
Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common. You can speak and understand Gullytalk. Gullytalk is a pidgin language spoken almost only by gully dwarves. Every clan has their own dialect of Gullytalk as they add or modify words based on chance and the languages of their neighbors. Most gully dwarves are illiterate so Gullytalk has no written form or alphabet.

Random Height and Weight

Base Height	Height Modifier*	Base Weight	Weight Modifier**
3′ 0''	+1d12	70 lb.	× (1d8) lb.
*Height = base height + height modifier **Weight = base weight + (height modifier × weight modifier)

Suggested Characteristics

Whatever your ability scores and class, you are likely to be a super genius by the standards of the gully dwarves. Is that phenomena natural, or did something happen to you?

d12	Source of Inspiration
1	I was just born this way and quickly realized I was smarter than every member of my clan combined before I got my first chin hair.
2	I found a strange little grey gem in a gutter while searching for dinner. I don’t know what it did before I lost it, but I think it altered my mind somehow when I licked it.
3	I was raised by a gnomish artificer that wanted to see if the gully dwarves could be uplifted through education alone. Suffice it to say, the results were mixed.
4	I am one of the rare first generation gully dwarves born to dwarf and gnome parents. They did their best to raise me in a constructive environment, but could only do so much.
5	I helped a nice old man escape some wolves with his pet canaries. After we were safe he gave me a shiny dragon scale. When I wear it, it helps me think better.
6	I was thirsty one night, so I drank a bunch of glowing vials someone threw out behind an alchemist shop. The rest of the stuff was drunk by a wererat and four baby tortles.
7	Some tall, purple people with squid faces put a worm in my eye. They seemed confused and angry when I got smarter a few days later, so I ran away from their giant sea shell.
8	My ma said I am so smart since I was born when all three moons lined up right overhead.
9	A wizard in black robes used me a test dummy in some brain enhancement spell they were casting. It worked on me, but when they tried it on themself they got dumber.
10	I’m actually a dragon in humanoid disguise. Unfortunately, I copied the gully dwarf brain too well and forgot how to turn back into my scaly form.
11	I beat a black-bearded dwarven blacksmith wearing fancy clothes in a long drinking contest. Afterwards I blacked out and woke up with a hangover and some extra smarts.
12	While exploring some ruins I was in, I found a half-dozen magical books that made me smarter after I spent a week reading each.

5.00

(one vote)

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