That's true in Middle Earth and on The Disc, but I couldn't find that mentioned anywhere for AD&D 2E, the current Forgotten Realms Wiki says it's a "common misconception."
It gets mentioned in the first Dungeons and Dragons movie (Hair on her chin you can hang on to xD) and if I remember right you can find quotes of female dwarves being impossible to tell from male ones from Bruenor in the Drizzt's books. I can specifically remember one in the beginning of the Legacy of the Drow. Also not to mention Pwent telling Catti-brie to grow a beard to be a true "Handsome" woman.
About the lost source assets one point: A single 3dsmax scene can be quite big and you save a lot to get back to a point when needed. I have for example for an entire new troll creature w/o animations a 500kb scene save and around 12 saves... + the PSD files which explodes quite fast too. So you end up with lots of HD space and back then... we all know the HD´s werent what they are today.
@Sceptenar - BG2 dwarves also use the same avatar and have a beard. You need 1PP to get beardless lady dwarves.
Actually, female dwarves in BG2 have the same appearance as female gnomes, they realized how idiotic it looked with bearded women. And when they upgraded Icewind Dale to the BG2 graphics with the Heart of Winter expansion, they kept the joke about bearded female dwarves in, even though the dwarf woman making the joke now looked female.
@Moomintroll If you look at the pictures of the female Dwarven Deities in "Demihuman Deities", they all have beards. Forgotten Realms campaign setting states specifically that female dwarves have beards but usually (but not always) shave.
"Male dwarves of any type take pride in their beards, the most remarkable of any race. Some female dwarves of Faerûn can grow beards, too, often passing as males among the nondwarves of the surface lands. Dwarven women may choose to shave their beards to match human-style expectations of beauty, while others glory in luxurious plaited beards that match their hair or wear sharply cut goatees."
That's from 3rd. I guess it was more or less the same in 2nd?
FR11 Dwarves deep has alot of pictures of dwarves,and the dwarf gods in avatar form, all of them sporting beards...and i believe i read somewhere that female dwarves purposely make themselves masculine for protection, to blend in, since the dwarf race is only 1/3 female.
@LordsDarkKnight185 There is certainly a female Dwarf pretending to be male in one of the Dragon Magazine Adventures, but it's not set in FR (but in some non-specific world).
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A single 3dsmax scene can be quite big and you save a lot to get back to a point when needed. I have for example for an entire new troll creature w/o animations a 500kb scene save and around 12 saves... + the PSD files which explodes quite fast too. So you end up with lots of HD space and back then... we all know the HD´s werent what they are today.
It would be interesting to see if IWD had assets available, since it practically looks the same as BG.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/75851781/2e-FR-Campaign-Setting Page 7, near the bottom
That's from 3rd. I guess it was more or less the same in 2nd?