doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
A gnome is a creature of incredible cunning, creativity, and curiosity. They live in "bright burrows", speak to small critters, enjoy the company of other races but also treasure their own spaces, and absolutely love life. Rock gnomes are more robust in health, and generally more interested in invention and technical discovery, while Forest Gnomes are more nimble, and more interested in illusion and artistic expression, but in every Gnomish culture there are all manner of creatives, inventors, thinkers, and other enthusiasts of intellectual pursuits.
They are also one of my top three favorite races, and about in the middle of the pack according to DnDBeyond data from a couple years ago.
However, as much as I love them, I think they made a key mistake when designing the 5e Gnome.
For one, Advantage on all mental stat saves against magic is an enormous race feature. It consumes most of the space available to the race in terms of power. Meanwhile, they put the ability to speak to small animals into one subrace, which leaves many classic dnd gnomes in a weird place.
Sure, David the Gnome should be able to talk to foxes, but even looking at DnD 5e art, so should Gnomish inventors and alchemists!
Meanwhile, the Rock Gnome is just sort of...weaker...than the Forest Gnome or Deep Gnome? The Tinker's Tools proficiency can be strong, but only if your DM is willing to deal with invention in a game that doesn't have any actual rules for it. You can use magic item crafting rules as a baseline, and use DMG guidelines to determine balance by translating damage into spell levels, and then spell levels into item rarity, and use XTGE tables to figure out if a tinker item is more like a minor or major of a given rarity. However, that is a lot of work to ask of your DM.
If your DM isn't up for that, you have some toys, and your Forest Gnome cousin has a really useful cantrip and the ability to speak to small animals.
My current concept of a solution is simply to give all Gnomes critter speech, and see how it plays out. But maybe one could also add more useful tinkered inventions to the list, like repeating crossbows, or automated grappling hook devices, or nonmagical darkvision goggles, or something?
Conceptually, I think they've done a good job of presenting Gnomes in 5e, though I do find I have to draw upon 3.5 and 4e a lot for both Rock and Forest Gnomes quite a lot. My Forest Gnomes just are the 4e Gnome entirely, at this point, and Rock Gnomes are defined mostly by the 3.5 Races of Stone supplement.
I think that each Gnome subrace, much like elven subraces, have a stronger ID on their own than as a group. I don't put much stock in races needing to have a strong and distinct narrative niche, tbh, but I do think that Gnomes have that. I'll go more into in a second post in this thread, so that this one doesn't get too enormous.
I want to hear from other people who actually like Gnomes, and I'm not interested at all in why some folks don't like them tbh! Don't yuk others' yum.
Also, is anyone like me in having rarely if ever played Gnomes who are ridiculous?
They are also one of my top three favorite races, and about in the middle of the pack according to DnDBeyond data from a couple years ago.
However, as much as I love them, I think they made a key mistake when designing the 5e Gnome.
For one, Advantage on all mental stat saves against magic is an enormous race feature. It consumes most of the space available to the race in terms of power. Meanwhile, they put the ability to speak to small animals into one subrace, which leaves many classic dnd gnomes in a weird place.
Sure, David the Gnome should be able to talk to foxes, but even looking at DnD 5e art, so should Gnomish inventors and alchemists!
Meanwhile, the Rock Gnome is just sort of...weaker...than the Forest Gnome or Deep Gnome? The Tinker's Tools proficiency can be strong, but only if your DM is willing to deal with invention in a game that doesn't have any actual rules for it. You can use magic item crafting rules as a baseline, and use DMG guidelines to determine balance by translating damage into spell levels, and then spell levels into item rarity, and use XTGE tables to figure out if a tinker item is more like a minor or major of a given rarity. However, that is a lot of work to ask of your DM.
If your DM isn't up for that, you have some toys, and your Forest Gnome cousin has a really useful cantrip and the ability to speak to small animals.
My current concept of a solution is simply to give all Gnomes critter speech, and see how it plays out. But maybe one could also add more useful tinkered inventions to the list, like repeating crossbows, or automated grappling hook devices, or nonmagical darkvision goggles, or something?
Conceptually, I think they've done a good job of presenting Gnomes in 5e, though I do find I have to draw upon 3.5 and 4e a lot for both Rock and Forest Gnomes quite a lot. My Forest Gnomes just are the 4e Gnome entirely, at this point, and Rock Gnomes are defined mostly by the 3.5 Races of Stone supplement.
I think that each Gnome subrace, much like elven subraces, have a stronger ID on their own than as a group. I don't put much stock in races needing to have a strong and distinct narrative niche, tbh, but I do think that Gnomes have that. I'll go more into in a second post in this thread, so that this one doesn't get too enormous.
I want to hear from other people who actually like Gnomes, and I'm not interested at all in why some folks don't like them tbh! Don't yuk others' yum.
Also, is anyone like me in having rarely if ever played Gnomes who are ridiculous?