Balance Check: Gnomish Racial Enemies

Lord Morte

First Post
Anyway, I was working on my homebrew world, establishing the fluff for the gnomes and had an idea to change the races that gnomes get an attack bonus against. I was wondering how people thought this would affect game balance.

Fluff is: Gnomes live in the 'shallow' Underdark, sandwiched between the human kingdoms of the surface and the dwarven empires of the deeper Underdark and mercilessly exploited by both. Cramped already, the gnomes also have to fight for territory against underfolk, a barbaric breed of subterranean human (found in Races of Destiny). They seldom come into conflict with goblinoids, who inhabit a more southern plains region.

Crunch is: Gnomes receive a +1 attack bonus against humans and kobolds, instead of goblinoids and kobolds. Alternatively, they only get the bonus against humans, but not kobolds.

I'm unsure about how unbalancing this is. Sure it makes gnomes more effective against humans, but goblinoids are common foes in regular DnD and wouldn't be in this campaign so I think a more effective ability is better than nearly useless ability.

Thoughts? Views? Opinions? Suggestions?
 

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given that gnomes are small, don't they already get defacto bonuses against humans, who are medium? Giving them a +1 vs humans as opposed to kobolds effectively gives them a +2 against humans... the racial +1 they get agains Kobolds and Goblins are against races that are also small, but transferring it to humans effectively gives Gnomes +2 vs them.
 

A bonus against humans is likely to persist as a useful ability for more levels, since humans generally are more likely to have high class levels than goblinoids. In the typical campaign I would think it'd see less use over the same number of encounters with the enemy race.
 


It's more useful, but it's also gnomes we're talking about here. :) I don't think a change as minor as that will have any great impact on the game.
 

So the general consensus is that it isn't game-breakingly unbalanced? More useful, but not a problem?

Daalbar said:
given that gnomes are small, don't they already get defacto bonuses against humans, who are medium? Giving them a +1 vs humans as opposed to kobolds effectively gives them a +2 against humans... the racial +1 they get agains Kobolds and Goblins are against races that are also small, but transferring it to humans effectively gives Gnomes +2 vs them.

A good point and one I hadn't considered. However, gnomes are physically weaker (-2 Str = -1 to hit) so the size bonus is offset somewhat. Overall, my variant's bonus to attack against humans is effectively only +1, which makes it about the same as the dwarven bonus to attack against orcs.
 

Lord Morte said:
So the general consensus is that it isn't game-breakingly unbalanced? More useful, but not a problem?

I'd say so. Gnomes are really kind of weak, so a slightly useful bonus only serves to make them more interesting, not to overpower them.
 

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