D&D Race Survivor -- Round 1

[Gez]

Gnomes are completely unnecessary.

D&D is completely unnecessary. Get over with it.

They combine features of dwarves, elves, and halflings, without a distinctive niche of their own.

So, "stout" or "small" are features, heh? Tell me, which other race has the distinctive niche of being skilled alchemists and potent wizards, with large erudition (favored class: bardic knowledge) and a great empathy with nature (speaks with animals)?

I don't see one. Definitely not dwarves or half-orcs, not halflings, not humans... Elves? If that's the elves' niche, why don't you say it's elves who do not have a distinctive niche of their own? Because they're really bad at filling this one. If anything, the elven niche is more about archery and multiclassing between fighter-class and wizard than about being the setting's strong magical race.

When they're gone I'm going to vote out the half-breed races, for similar reasons. The four core races without which D&D just wouldn't have the D&D flavour will then go to the wire. Maybe I'm biased for having gotten my start with Basic. Or maybe I'm biased from loving Tolkien too much when I was a kid. Or maybe it's just that Tolkien was smart enough to realize that if you want to represent the unification of all the good races in the face of a big enough evil, you put elves, dwarves, humans and halflings together in common cause. The rest are just for people who get bored without endless variations.

Tolkien contributed the halflings, orcs, and ents to D&D. (D&D elves are not from Tolkien, but from older sources.) Anderson, though, contributed paladins, gnomes, swanmays, trolls, nixies, the Law vs. Chaos alignments, and more. Sure, he's a less popular author, but he's still recommanded reading for all D&D gamers.

 

[Gez]

Early predictions (Before looking at the current results) Gnomes get deported first, followed by either halflings or half-elves.
After both of them are extinct will come half-orcs, and elves.

The last survivor will be humans.

Yeah, I fail to see the point of making a "Race Survivor" thread. We knows human will win and eradicate all others, 'cause that's what humans are good at doing, eradicating other species.

In the meantime, it's just going to be a rehash of the old-fashioned "OMG THERE ARE NO GNOMES IN TOKLIEN, THEY HAVE NO MEANING IN LIFE!!!1!one one one" drivel 96% of EN Worlders mindlessly parrot everytime there's a thread of this kind.

 

[D-rock]

Actually, I like all of the races.

Your thoughts intrigue me and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Seriously though, I can't find a race I don't like, and none of them has a flaw that is big enough to keep me from choosing it if that's what would make a good character for me.

 

[orsal]

So, "stout" or "small" are features, heh? Tell me, which other race has the distinctive niche of being skilled alchemists and potent wizards, with large erudition (favored class: bardic knowledge) and a great empathy with nature (speaks with animals)?

I don't see one. Definitely not dwarves or half-orcs, not halflings, not humans... Elves? If that's the elves' niche, why don't you say it's elves who do not have a distinctive niche of their own? Because they're really bad at filling this one. If anything, the elven niche is more about archery and multiclassing between fighter-class and wizard than about being the setting's strong magical race.

For one thing, elves got there first. Gygax started with humans, elves, dwarves and halflings, and only added gnomes to give some more variety to players who liked to play the demi-human races. (Source: one of the Gygax Q&A threads on these boards, a while back. If I have time I'll look it up for you.)

But more importantly, elves are creatures of the air, while both dwarves and gnomes are creatures of the earth. This dates back to the mythical tradition which spawned all of these races, before either Tolkien or Anderson, or any other modern fantasy writer, adapted them).

Try listing all the marked contrasts between dwarves and elves: caverns vs. forests; mundane vs. magical; high-con vs. low-con; heavyset vs. light; etc. Collectively these attributes establish dwarves and elves as a sort of pair of polar opposites, while gnomes can be seen as a cross between the two. (Add to the mix the frivolity more associated with halflings than with either elves or dwarves.) Get rid of either elves or dwarves and you substantially reduce the variety major races; get rid of gnomes, and the only thing you lose is the chance to have PCs with spell-like abilities as a racial feature. Personally, I'm happy to do without that; I prefer, for flavour, restricting Sp-abilities to those who pursue a path to obtain them, and to creatures too exotic to be PCs.

 

[Trickstergod]

Gnomes've gotta go. They're not always bad - I really like their presentation in Midnight - but they're one of the races that's suffered from Dragonlancification, in my opinion. I liked tinker gnomes just fine on Krynn. I didn't like them so much anywhere else; I find the port of absent-minded tinkerer to generic gnomes more obnoxious than anything else.

 

[FireLance]

I'm for getting rid of all the crossbreed races, because the degree of inter-racial relationships required to make them so common boggles my mind. I'll start with half-elves since the half-orcs are a little more distinct.

 

[Haloq Jakar]

Gnomes got to go..... they are nothing now that they are favored classed as bards


their stat line makes them better as illusion users than as high charisma bards or Gnomes should have been the natural rogues and halfling should be the bards

 

[Elephant]

Half-orc. Two penalties for a STR bonus isn't proper balance. Also, I've never liked the brutish flavor of the race.

 

[Gez]

But more importantly, elves are creatures of the air, while both dwarves and gnomes are creatures of the earth. This dates back to the mythical tradition which spawned all of these races, before either Tolkien or Anderson, or any other modern fantasy writer, adapted them).

If you want to go back to mythical traditions, then you can have elves and dwarves be the same race (dwarves just being underground elves, and the Nibelungen's king's name, Alberich, is basically Alb Rich, or Elf King). And you can have gnomes as the undisputed masters of alchemy, knowing everything about transmutation of metals. (One of them, the shady Rumpelstitskin, was able to transmute straw into gold.)

And you can have gorgons be the three Serpent Sisters and be a variant of the catoblepas (which is, after all, just a drunkard's depiction of a wildebeast) at the same time.

Mythical tradition is far from being a single common ground. What's a mythical elf? A sidhe? An alf? A sylph? Danu, Ogma, Boand, and Lir; or Titania, Oberon, Puck and Queen Mab; or Elrond, Galadriel, and Legolas?

It's known that Tolkien first named the Noldor Gnomes, before he coined the term "noldor", afraid of the "wee folk from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" baggage that was associated to them. Tolkien was already somewhat unhappy of using elf and dwarf (which is why he pluralized them elves and dwarves rather than elfs and dwarfs), wanting to move beyond the mawkish Walt-Disneyesque imagery of happy prancing fairies. He also disliked, from what I've read, the Shakespearian vision of fay.

Me, I like gnomes. They're the yodas of my setting. Physically weak, but mentally strong, wise and skilled in magic. And while they can behave in a silly fashion, it's an act to hide the true extent of their power and wisdom from strangers. (Again, see Yoda when Luke first meet him. Really a silly little creature.)

 

[IronWolf]

Nice knowing you gnome.