Dwarf Racial Characteristics - Cost Past Dwarf 0?

I was wondering if people had any thought on the dwarf racial characteristics in terms of the proficiencies and their overall cost? Do they feel balanced or do people feel they may be overcosted?

It’s an interesting one, I had given it thought a while ago as I replaced gnomish infravision in my campaign with a version of it.

It costs 200 per level. At face value a proficiency is 40 in cost, which would give 160 to the +1. 

But... (a lot of but’s here) it’s not a fixed proficiency but a choice proficiency. Does that make it more flexible than other racial templates? I think it does so I mentally double it. So 80/120 in my mind.

Is the +1 to all proficiencies worth 3 powers? It’s extreamly powerful in some class builds, anything that tests on proficiencies gets a lot of benefit for it. To me it’s the stacking nature of it that’s the main cost, but if your build gains no benefit from it then it’s a bit wasted (in which case go dwarf 0).

So, in the grand scheme of things if you costed the +1 at a power that’s about an 80 overcost, I don’t think that’s a good view of it though. Considering a fighter trade off can price a power at around 150 I see it as a reasonable cost that’s not going to overburden a build.

Finally proof is in the classes built from it right? If I look at the delver and mechanist they both get a lot of value out of the bonus. Craftpriest maybe not so much, but then it depends on is proficiency choices, of which the template takes two proficiencies that gain the bonus.

So, I don’t use dwarfs in my game so maybe I’m not the best to say how it works, but as I said earlier I put the +1 version into my gnomes in place of infravision, but with a fixed craft proficiency as the choice. So by my own action priced it as 1/2 ish points for the craft, 2 points for the +1.

I think that’s most of my thoughts :) not sure if they are in the right order.

The bonus proficiencies are nice but what you are really paying for is getting +1 to all proficiency throws. A typical proficiency will grant +2 to two other proficiencies (like Skulking) or +4 to a second rank (like Alchemist). So +1 is 1/4 of that, or about 10 points. But it applies to ALL your proficiency throws and it stacks with all those other proficiencies. Since a Thief 3 could in theory have 15 proficiencies at level 1(!) that's 150 points right there...

Whether it's fairly costed - hard to say. I think so. And no one has complained that Dwarves are under- or over-powered in ACKS, so it seems OK.