Hello adventurers! Welcome to my spellbook and thank you so much for checking out the fourth and technically final sub-race of the dwarf. We’re gonna be rounding it out with the hill dwarf which is found in the player’s handbook and i have high hopes for them adding more dwarven subraces in the future. In any case if you want to see the full dwarf or even the full race category click on the links there. So let’s now move on to its mechanics.
Mechanics
So right off the bat here there’s not really a whole lot to go over. You’ll notice this with a lot of the player handbook sub races they’re very very simple, the dwarf especially was meant to be kind of newbie friendly and the hill dwarf is certainly no exception to that rule.
So right off the bat you get a plus one to wisdom for your ability score increase and you also gain access to dwarven toughness. Your hit point maximum increases by 1 and it increases by 1 everytime you gain a level. So essentially if you take your character up to 20th level you’ll get 20 extra hit points by the end of it. Which is okay, i guess there’s a feat that does something very similar.
So i don’t know the usefulness may vary i find as you get to those higher levels. Typically a couple extra hit points doesn’t make a huge difference. That being said, if you’re also playing a barbarian you have that resistance which effectively more often than not will double your hit point total at least that’s how the math works out because you’re only taking half damage. So in those cases it can be worthwhile.
That being said, is it worth a whole sub-race. I don’t know let’s move on to my personal thoughts and i’ll flesh out my thoughts a little bit better here.
Thoughts
So this is gonna be one of those things where i feel like nostalgia is gonna get in the way of mechanics. Mechanically the hill dwarf it doesn’t really stack up to the duergar or even the marked dwarf. That being said, however a lot of people are likely gonna have fond memories of the hill and mountain dwarves and their respective lore which is totally fine and there’s nothing wrong with that but mechanically speaking they are relatively inferior.
However if you’re only playing with a player handbook subclasses or sub-races rather then you kind of get into the field of does it really make a huge difference in the player’s handbook there aren’t a ton of obvious choices for superior sub-races versus inferior. That being said however, personal play style is going to factor in the dwarfs were meant to be really easy and really newbie friendly. The hill dwarf as i mentioned earlier is definitely no exception to that rule.
Conclusion
That being said, let me know what you think down beneath in the comments section. Be sure to mention any thoughts, questions, comments or concerns you have regarding the hill dwarf, as well as any cool stories and character ideas you have i’m sure you have a quite a few. That being said, hope you all have a great day and of course happy adventuring.