Close to the Earth, Close to the Soul

Once, many moons ago, I came up with a sect of dwarven earth elementalists within the priesthood of Dugmaren Brightmantle (the dwarven god of scholars). As these priests were often responsible for any books that came into the hands of dwarves during raids (both for and against the dwarves), they had quite a collection of spellbooks (mostly written in the drow dialect of elven, though a few human and illithid texts, as well). Sometimes, an acolyte (0th level priest) who was studying these books (mostly so they could be properly classified, but also for any marginal notations that might give insight or advantage to the dwarves) would be called by Dugmaren to learn to use the magics within them. Because of the nature of the dwarves, these mages had trouble with the spells and with society, but they also had some other aspects (that were more governed by numbers than by role-playing).

At first level, the dwarven elementalist's bonus versus magic attacks was 1 lower than normal for his Constitution. Each time he got a new spell level, it dropped one more, to a minimum of +1. Furthermore, they suffered a penalty to all casting times of less than one round equal to their bonus versus magic (so that penalty went down for each level of spells accquired, but would always be at least 1). While they were technically earth elementalists, their opposition school was water _and_ air, because of their rather dense structure. All spells they did learn they were able to cast normally.

They did have their upside. They had a wider range of weapons than normal mages (adding warhammers and hand axes, though they still had the same number of proficiency slots as other mages), and could be either wizard/priests (always specialty priests of Dugmaren Brightmantle, though they were not part of the church) or fighter/mages (allowing them to wear metal armor, though every point of AC adjustment penalized their spellcasting speed by 1, and introduced a 5% chance of spell failure... most went no higher than chain mail).

In dwarven society, being a wizard wasn't easy by any means. This wizards were officially heretics according to the clergy of Dugmaren Brightmantle, but were officially tolerated because of their usefulnes... though tolerated in no way means accepted. If they remained at home, they were often spat upon, assualted, and cut off from their families, all for associating with the forbidden magics.

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