D&D 5E Conerning Gnomes (+thread. please don't crap the thread with anti-gnome negativity)

[doctorbadwolf]

I also always challenge traditionalism (tradition for the sake of tradition) in world building.

If dwarves and tinker gnomes are “too similar” (they aren’t), then I’ll ditch dwarves long before I consider ditching gnomes. Same with wood elves and Firbolgs, or gnomes in general and halflings, orcs and Goliaths, etc.

(Tangent: autocorrect is weird. I’m not capitalizing some race names but not others; autocorrect is. It also refuses to learn “orcs” as the most likely thing I mean to type, rather than “orcas”, or “IRC’s”)

 

[Charlaquin]

My argument, and part of the premise of the thread, is precisely that no race needs to have some unique standout.

I can’t really use Firbolgs as an example, because I don’t see much in common with forest gnomes outside of living in the forest and talking to creatures, which is about as similar as elves and dwarves.

But even if Firbolgs were high Int, hyper creative, etc, I’d still reject the notion that, broadly speaking, it matters how well distinguished from forest gnomes they are in terms of including them in the game or a setting.

If someone’s home setting is designed for simplicity, and there is only 1 animalistic race, 1 druidy-nature-hippy race, 1 clever crafter race, 1 small “forgotten folk” race, 1 “dark” race, and 1 “mysterious magical folk” race, more power to them.

My argument isn’t that such world building is bad. It is that such world building isn’t better than “cantina” world-building, or something in between.

Again though, you seem to either be misunderstanding or misrepresenting the position of those of us who prefer our fantasy races to have unique features. The aim isn’t to have only one race of each of these archetypes. There could be 57 animalistic races for all I care, the desire is for each of those races to have something interesting about them that is iconic to that race. Again, it’s not about avoiding overlap between races, it’s about insuring each race has something special about them.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Again though, you seem to either be misunderstanding or misrepresenting the position of those of us who prefer our fantasy races to have unique features. The aim isn’t to have only one race of each of these archetypes. There could be 57 animalistic races for all I care, the desire is for each of those races to have something interesting about them that is iconic to that race. Again, it’s not about avoiding overlap between races, it’s about insuring each race has something special about them.

I addressed and disagreed with that in the post you're quoting. A good example is the lizard people that could have been in the Ravnica book, but were instead "use lizardfolk stats". Lizardfolk stats don't actually represent the race, so that shouldn't have been the solution in an ideal world. Obviously sometimes you have to sacrifice something for page count, or because the customer base has a surprising and weird preference, or whatever, but the ideal shouldn't be, for a game that isn't designed to be super thematically tight and focused, to ditch unique race stats just because there isn't a singular thing they have that is "iconic" to them.

Mountain and Hill Dwarves don't have anything iconic that isn't shared between them, IMO, but it's still good that they're distinct. The fact that there are hard mechanical distinctions between races means that in 5e, for me and every other player I've ever met who isn't deeply invested in FR lore (for example), moon elves and whatever other elves that are also High Elves mechanically are just High Elves. They're not actually distinct groups, they're just the elf equivelent of humans from Cormyr and humans from Sembia. Which isn't bad at all, but it's good that there are actually distinct mechanics for wood elves and high elves and eladrin and sea elves, because thematically they are distinct, and it would be completely innapropriate for wood elves to have a wizard cantrip.

In the same way, mountain dwarves and hill dwarves don't have iconic traits, but they do have both mechanical and thematic distinction, and a different story, which is all they need to justify their distinct existence in the rules.

 

[Charlaquin]

I addressed and disagreed with that in the post you're quoting. A good example is the lizard people that could have been in the Ravnica book, but were instead "use lizardfolk stats". Lizardfolk stats don't actually represent the race, so that shouldn't have been the solution in an ideal world. Obviously sometimes you have to sacrifice something for page count, or because the customer base has a surprising and weird preference, or whatever, but the ideal shouldn't be, for a game that isn't designed to be super thematically tight and focused, to ditch unique race stats just because there isn't a singular thing they have that is "iconic" to them.

Mountain and Hill Dwarves don't have anything iconic that isn't shared between them, IMO, but it's still good that they're distinct. The fact that there are hard mechanical distinctions between races means that in 5e, for me and every other player I've ever met who isn't deeply invested in FR lore (for example), moon elves and whatever other elves that are also High Elves mechanically are just High Elves. They're not actually distinct groups, they're just the elf equivelent of humans from Cormyr and humans from Sembia. Which isn't bad at all, but it's good that there are actually distinct mechanics for wood elves and high elves and eladrin and sea elves, because thematically they are distinct, and it would be completely innapropriate for wood elves to have a wizard cantrip.

In the same way, mountain dwarves and hill dwarves don't have iconic traits, but they do have both mechanical and thematic distinction, and a different story, which is all they need to justify their distinct existence in the rules.

That’s fine. We don’t have to agree about the importance of races having unique characteristics, and given the + nature of this thread I don’t want to derail the conversation with arguments about it. I just felt that you were misrepresenting the position of those of us who do desire unique characteristics in our races and wanted to set the record straight.

 

[GnomeWorks]

Gnomes are good.

Deal with it.

 

[Zardnaar]

Mechanically they're a bit lackluster partly because if the intelligence statbbeingbkostly useless and power creep on charisma based spellcasters so a wizard isn't even that good most of the time at low levels. And charisma I'd much more useful.

WotC dropped the ball on around half the races IMHO.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Mechanically they're a bit lackluster partly because if the intelligence statbbeingbkostly useless and power creep on charisma based spellcasters so a wizard isn't even that good most of the time at low levels. And charisma I'd much more useful.

WotC dropped the ball on around half the races IMHO.

Plus thread.

I’m not interested in diatribes in desperate need of editing about how bad Int is.

 

[Zardnaar]

Friday night here. Posting plus Bud bad idea.

 

[Zardnaar]

Interesting is entirely subjective. But advantage on mental saves, stone camouflage, and 120' darkvision w/o sunlight sensitivity makes for pretty damn awesome rogues. With an intelligence bonus to boot for arcane trickster.

Deep Gnome Abjurer plus that racial feat is good.

I kind of like Gnomes, the main problem is only 1 class has intelligence as a primary stat and two archetypes as a secondary or tertiary stat.