NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pawsplay" data-source="post: 4924838" data-attributes="member: 15538">And now they're gone. Or at least, relegated to being fey ninja halflings tucked into the Monster Manual who turn invisible in much the same way some lizards lose their tails. Comments about the "sacred gnome" are off-base. Clearly, different designers of D&D at various times have struggled with defining what a gnome was. Nonetheless, AD&D has always had the gnomes, less staid versions of the pick-toting dwarves with illusion spells and more reclusive but congenial personalities. At times they may have been presented in a ridiculous way, but they have long-time been a part of the D&D milieu. I remember, when I was a wee lad playing Red Box D&D, being perturbed that the D&D gods had granted gnomes to players of AD&D but not the basic set. There was a gnome illusionist in the AD&D miniatures set, along with a gnome thief-illusionist. Now that gnomes have been made over (to wingless pixies, essentially), you would have to go back to every D&D product that featured a gnome and replace 95% of them with something else. While every setting treated gnomes differently, all were clearly humanoid creatures with resemblances to humans and other humanoids. Gnomes are one of those creatuers that actually has roots in the culture outside D&D and its more specific influences. Unlike, say, a dragonborn, they do not have as compelling a visual hook and really rely on designer love to be appealing to a lot of people. 3e seemed to have trouble doing something with the gnome.So bringing use back to the issue at hand. Gnomes were excised for page count. They were cut because they did not generate enough revenue to justify an extra one or two pages in the main book. Despite that WoW, that mutant offspring of D&D, features gnomes as a popular race, despite the gnome love of many Krynn fans, and so on, and so forth, the gnome was cut. Ok, that happens. You cannot make space for everything. Even though I personally would have tried to find a place for gnomes, for continuity's sake, I can respect that decision. Let's get back to the marketing campaign. The message in a nut-shell: "Gnomes are useless because no one wanted to play them." So if you liked gnomes, you were "no one," and if you like playing them, you like playing something that is useless. Ouch. So then people started to grumble. Wotc came back with, "Well, they're in the monster manual." Then, later, "Here's a funny cartoon that portrays gnomes as something useless and vacuous that no one plays. Haha. Don't worry, you won't even miss them." Let's review a few of the intended and unintended messages of that cartoon.- Gnomes are squeaky, stupid dorks who feel good about being sidelined into being monsters. They are so stupid, they are actually happy not to be in the PHB. It is good they are not in the PHB and that the stupid gnome is happy.- It's funny when gnomes die.- If a playable race isn't popular with the largest segments of the D&D buyer, it isn't worth having.- Things are monsters because they are intended to be slain. Logically, a gnome cannot then be something which you would not slay.- Edgy, sociopathic tieflings are better than gnomes. - Gnomes look like halflings. You wouldn't want to play a stupid, beardless halfling would you?And let's review the PHB situation at that time:- Gnomes out, tieflings and dragonborns in.- Any setting with gnomes either has to lose the gnomes or else customize something for that setting to be a "gnome" which is not the MM gnome.- Similarly, to cover the PHB options, all settings now need an ancient race of dragon people and a fallen empire of fiendish casters. - Illusions are saved for a rainy day.- The nature race is now the elf.- Actually, you can forget about thief-illusionists for now, since multiclassing has been nerfed-by-unsupport for the time being and illusions are for later. So not only have basic assumptions been rewritten so that your home campaign now needs tieflings and there is no gnome, but if you wanted to play a thief-illusionist, whether a nature lover or a slightly impish craftsman, there really is not much left for you. In 4e, you might go with a half-elf wizard with skill training. And if you waited long enough, illusions did come back... sort of.But this is funny, right? The gnome is just a particularly innocuous target in a broader theme: start a new campaign, your old one is obsolete. "Enjoy your half-elf wizard, lol."</blockquote>

Verification