Oh Yeah.. Gnomes...

[Dragonbait]

Honestly, when making a new campaign setting, even if it's just fleshing out an unexplored area of an existing game world, I would start with NO races and only put in what you want. The notion that any race is required is why so many settings, including homebrews, suck so much. Every flavor mingled together every time gives you tasteless mush.

off-topic comment: Which is exactly who some of my players that are not into D&D hard-core have no idea of the differences between the Realms, Dragonlance, Mystara, or other homebrews. They don't pay attention to the minor detail. They see elves, dwarves, goblins, and so on, rather than Kagonesti elves, Talentia halflings, sky gnomes, and so on.

 

[Umbran]

If you can't think of a way to use gnomes or halflings, don't include them. But do the same for elves, dwarves and orcs, who typically get the most stale LotR tropes for personalities and cultures and that's it.

How stale something is depends almost entirely upon the group, though. If a given group's never had someoen play a half-orc, that thing is going to be fresh, for them, even if you think it's been done to death.

Setting elements are not produce - they don't go bad strictly with time. They go bad with overuse, and that's a local phenomenon, not a global one.

 

[Kwitchit]

I think that one of the problems with gnomes is that they are the only core race which is not in Tolkien (Half-elves are represented by Elrond, and the Uruk-hai are the equivalent of half-orcs). Therefore, if you say "gnome" to a non-DnD player who's seen LotR, they either don't know what you're talking about or think of the guys who fish from toadstools.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

By core, gnomes are bland, and IMO, they need some major change-ups in regards to favoured class. Rock Gnomes need Beguiler or Illusionist. Period. Forest Gnomes get druid, obviously. Deep Gnomes should prolly get illusionist or Beguiler too.

Or, alternately, instead of dividing their flavor up into three tiny piles, 4E should have NO subraces of gnomes (and arguably of any race) and cherry pick all the best flavor to create new baselines for each race.

Illusionists who live in the woods and are close to nature sounds pretty darn fey-like to me, especially since fey in English folklore often lived in hollow hills, which certainly sounds a whole lot like gnome burrows.

And yes, if Beguilers were in the PHB, that seems like a cinch for their preferred class, although really, giving every race two preferred classes would be a lot better, if they didn't just drop the concept altogether. Beguiler/Druid as a preferred classes would give you a quick shortcut to understanding the race better than the current attempts do. (I like Races of Stone, but the philosophical stuff about duality and illusion and reality seemed very grafted-on to me.)

 

[prosfilaes]

One of the problems I have with them is their size (same with halflings) - I have three nephews, aged 4, 2, and almost 1, and the two older boys are now on the low end of the size range for gnomes or halflings. Makes it hard to suspend disbelief and imagine a gnome or halfling as any kind of threat when they're about the size of pre-schoolers.

I seriously doubt that hill giants generally know that there's a difference between halflings and humans, and I suspect that many other huge creatures, even if they know there's a difference between the PC races, don't pay that much attention to them and get confused some times.

If D&D were a more realistic setting, where a hill giant's hit or a dragon's breath would kill a human, no matter how long he'd been fighting, a halfling would have nowhere near the strength and hit points a human has. But even then, they would still make perfectly effective spellcasters. And D&D isn't that realistic setting; just because you're twenty feet tall, doesn't mean that humans have a real problem killing you, even one-on-one in a lot of cases.

Admittedly the discovery of homo floresiensis has made that a bit easier to swallow,

Why? There's been a lot of short humans throughout history, and none of them would I really want attacking me with a short sword. If you add a few rogue levels to Noodles MacIntosh (played by Billy Barty in UHF) and give him a sword and crossbow, I think he could carved through the bad guys in that movie.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

In my current Oathbound game, gnomes factor in somewhat heavily. They, coupled with the Dun-Bor (a human sub-race of hill people) slew the goddess of magic some 100 years ago in an attempt to steal her arcane might, and were cursed. Mine dont look like the cute little gnomes in the PHB, more like twisted earth fey with large heads, lumpy grey skin and sparse hair. They still have the minor magics (what they stole), but thats the only spells they are able to work. Gnomes have pioneered technological advances, warlock invocations and shadow magic (not true magic) as a result, and are generally hated by most sentient races.

 

[Lancelot]

As a player, I'm a great fan on gnomes... particularly as wizards. Con bonus, Small size (harder to hit), many other benefits - what's not to like?

As a DM, gnomes are a prominent race in my 20-year homebrew. Halflings are absolutely marginalised; restricted to a small nomadic population in a tropical desert region. Gnomes, on the other hand, fill the role of the "small folk". They are arcane technocrats. Similar to Dragonlance, they have a fascination with building steam-powered gadgets but with a few key differences: their machines are designed to serve useful purposes, they run solely on steam and/or arcane magic, and they *work*.

As a D&D consumer, I'll also add my perspective that... love them or hate them... it's disappointing that gnomes are so under-represented in the D&D minis line. There are twice as many warforged (1x titan, 1x scout, 6x regular) than gnomes in the DDM line. There are three times as many halflings. When you have more types of troglodytes (!!!) than *one of the core PC races since 1st edition*... well, it's just poor form.

Admittedly, you can use many halfling miniatures to represent gnomes (although there are few halfling bards, wizards, artificers, or anything else that distinguishs gnomish racial identity). But I honestly don't see why WotC can't just cut out a few halfling figures and add a few more gnomes. Or better yet, cut some of the 60 different flavors of kobold. No gnomes for the last 3-4 sets, and we get a kobold monk in the next set to go with the five or so kobolds in the last one. Wonderful. :\

 

[blargney the second]

I'm thinking of giving gnomes Beguiler as a favoured class.

 

[SWBaxter]

I seriously doubt that hill giants generally know that there's a difference between halflings and humans

That's about as reasonable as saying that humans don't generally know that there's a difference between Great Danes and Shetland Collies - both dogs, who'd notice more than that?

Why? There's been a lot of short humans throughout history

Sure. The various pygmy tribes average around 4'6" tall, and some of 'em hunt elephants. But that's a good 1'-2' taller than halflings and gnomes. Halflings and gnomes aren't just short by human standards, they're preschooler size. On getting to know a fair number of preschoolers, that just doesn't wash with me any more. YMMV.

 

[cybertalus]

The problem with gnomes is that their main niche outside of the game is whimsy. Whimsy is something a lot people, at least on this side of the Atlantic, don't seem to understand very well. Whimsy is subtle, playful, joyful, and a bit outside the expected.

The best recent example I can recall of a whimsical gnome are the Expedia commercials with the garden gnome who escapes and goes travelling. Whoever wrote those commercials understands whimsy.

Whimsy (like most humor) also isn't necessarily a good fit for an RPG.