Not only are dwarves not exactly singers and artisans, but bards are finesse oriented. Combine the low racial dex with low racial charisma, and I don't see why they'd be any good at it.

I see your point, but I don't think they'd make that poor bards, they'd just be different. Certainly to an elf one might appear very rough and maybe even barbaric, while among their own kind they'd be very appreciated entertainers and masters of lore.

In general, I'm not a fan of "Let every race be every class they'd be remotely half-good at." I think it dilutes the culture of a race.

IMO there's a pretty good argument for dwarven culture producing bards. Also, I see variety as a good thing, currently dwarves have only four (IIRC) class choices.

Halflings have come up before, and they always sound exactly like dextrous gnomes to me. What role opportunities exist there that gnomes don't cover?.

Sure there's some overlap and lots of, um little guy roles that gnomes are perfectly adequate for. But for one thing gnomes are neutral by default, whereas halflings could be good. Also I see their cultures to be quite a bit different from each other, gnomes are generally the wise and studious type, while halflings are happy-go-lucky simple folk, so even mechanics-wise they wouldn't be just "dextrous gnomes". Additionally in the grand scheme of things a new race tending towards good would balance the available racial alignments.

Anyway, thanks for the reply, it's good to hear how you guys see things.