Mountain Dwarf

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Mountain Dwarves are stout and hardy folk, adept at fighting with axes and blugeoning weapons, though lacking the dexterity to excel at other forms of combat. Their reserves of magic are somewhat poor, though they still make passable spellcasters, and their connection with the blood of the earth gives them a particular talent at fire and earth magics. Their spell success is significantly less encumbered by armour than other species. They are superlative artisans and smiths, employed in ancient times by even the gods themselves, and this spiritual history makes them exceptional at invoking divine aid. They can even use enchantment scrolls to improve artefacts that would be beyond the understanding of any other species.

Innate Abilities

• Runic Magic: The encumbrance rating of all armour you wear is reduced by 1/2 for purposes of spell success.
• Artefact Enchanting: You can use scrolls of enchant weapon and armour upon random artefacts. This includes artefacts cursed by Ashenzari. Note that you cannot enchant unrands, only randarts.

Mountain Dwarves have a base Strength of 10, Intelligence of 8, and Dexterity of 5 (before background modifiers).

Preferred Backgrounds

• Warriors: Fighter, Monk
• Zealots: Berserker, Cinder Acolyte
• Warrior-Mages: Reaver
• Mages: Fire Elementalist

Level Bonuses

• +1 strength or intelligence (equal chance) every 4th level.
• 10% more HP than average.
• +4 willpower per level.

Starting Skills and Equipment

Mountain Dwarves start with the skills and equipment listed for their background.

Difficulty of Play

Mountain Dwarves are an easy species to play, as they have high HP and good aptitudes for melee combat. They also have excellent skill in Invocations, making them better at using certain gods' abilities. In addition, they can make passable and durable spellcasters.

Compared to Minotaur

Melee Mountain Dwarves are similar to Minotaurs. Their differences are listed below:

• Minotaurs deal somewhat more damage in combat, due to having Horns. This can make a difference, especially in the early Dungeon.
• Minotaurs have better defensive aptitudes (Armour, Dodging, Shields), while Mountain Dwarves are better at Invocations.
• Minotaurs are better at most weapon skills, especially the Dexterity-based ones (Short Blades, Long Blades, Ranged Weapons).
• Minotaurs are terrible at all magic schools. Mountain Dwarves not only have better magic aptitudes, but they also have an easier time casting in heavy armour.
• Mountain Dwarves can enchant randarts, which makes it more viable to take a randart with a good base and properties even if the enchantment is low.

Overall, Minotaurs are better at pure melee, but both species are strong. Games are rarely lost because you picked one over the other. (It's worth noting that Trog, one of the most popular 'melee gods', doesn't rely on the Invocations skill at all.)

Skill aptitudes

The higher the value, the better the aptitude.

Skill	Aptitude	Skill	Aptitude	Skill	Aptitude
Attack		Miscellaneous		Magic
Fighting	1	Armour	1	Spellcasting	-2
		Dodging	-3
Maces & Flails	2	Shields	1	Conjurations	-1
Axes	2	Stealth	-2	Hexes	0
Polearms	0			Summonings	0
Staves	1	Invocations	3	Necromancy	1
Unarmed Combat	0	Evocations	1	Translocations	-2
Throwing	-2	Shapeshifting	-2	Alchemy	-2
				Fire Magic	2
Short Blades	-2			Ice Magic	-1
Long Blades	-1			Air Magic	-3
Ranged Weapons	-2	Experience	-1	Earth Magic	1

History

• In 0.33, Mountain Dwarves will get -2 to Summoning and +2 to the newly introduced Forgecraft.
• Mountain Dwarves returned in 0.32, replacing Hill Orcs. This had no particular explicit connection to the prior flavour desires for a Tolkein dwarf (and multiple devs didn't care for the flavour of dwarves in the first place), so much as a pressing need to revise Hill Orcs in the face of massive flavour changes to Beogh being made available to all species.
• Mountain Dwarves were removed in version 0.10, which was met with protest from quite a few Crawl players. They were removed as MD, Minotaur, and Hill Orc were all very similar melee/armour species. Most discussion happened in the #crawl-dev IRC channel; a lack of transparent communication meant that players who liked roleplaying as a Tolkien dwarf were upset at the sudden removal. Ultimately, the decision to axe MD and not Minotaur was somewhat arbitrary. For more context, see the aforementioned announcement and the Tavern discussion about it.
• Prior to 0.8, Mountain Dwarves received only +2 MR per level.
• Prior to 0.6, Mountain Dwarves received +4 magic resistance points per level.