THREE elven races, plus half-elves ... but they say gnomes have no niche?!

[Najo]

Gnomes can hold off until they get them designed right. Gnomes will eventually be back an they wsill do a good job on them too. Relax. Gnomes being taken out was a good thing.

 

[Ahrimon]

I so dig the idea of the "Holy Gnoman Empire". I can just picture romanesque buildings and society with a gnome twist. They're the logical and ordered society. I can just see phalaxes of gnomish troops marching across the field of battle. The roman empire did have many scientific and alchemical advances that the rest of the world didn't have. I can see that fitting in with the scientist schtick people associate gnomes with. Illusion magic, well, it could be for battlefeild control, but blasty stuff would probably more effective. Still, if used right it could be an awesome addition. It would also make the perfect society to bring the artificer class into the game.

 

[Deset Gled]

Because some of us do like it, and it harms nothing to have it there, that's why.

The fault I see in this arguement is that it does harm something to force gnomes into the PHB1. It hurts the development of the books and designers spend valuable time trying to force them in, when not many people care. It hurts the cost of publishing the book due to the extra pages spent on it. It hurts the identity of the gnome to introduce it to the books without a proper niche, or without proper support for that niche.

It hurts much less to wait for the PHB2, when gnomes can be completely supported and designed with better specialization.

 

[Nahat Anoj]

I'd rather have no gnomes than crappy ones.

In any case, my gnomes would be guileful, sly, and crafty. They love to understand how things work, such as complicated artifice and machines. This makes them good masterminds and manipulators, and they have a talent for misdirection and deceit (such as illusions). So political wheelers-and-dealers, con-men, underworld crimelords, tacticians, wizards, artificers, and so on would be good careers for my gnomes.

They can be related to dwarves just like how eladrin are related to elves. The gnomes just went another path. Perhaps they didn't like Moradin and lived with the god of trickery for a while (perhaps it was Corellon?).

I think gnomes would tend to be secretive and find it difficult to make friends. But once they do, they protect their friends fiercely using the gifts of their race.

I'm going to have a big gnomish city in my game and call it Zurick. Get it - the Gnomes of Zurick? har har (I'm actually only half joking ...)

 

[Thunderfoot]

You're coming at this the wrong way. The problem isn't that Gnomes "don't have a niche." The problem is that there isn't any single, clear conception of them. Are they mad inventors? Illusionists? Mini-Eladrin? Fuzzy Dwarves?

Until the 4E designers would say with confidence "This is a Gnome", there's no Gnome.

This has to be the best summation I've seen yet. I love gnomes, but have seen so many incarnations that they just haven't gotten the love they deserve.

I hated tinkers, but loved the fuzzy dwarf illusionist, & the tiny forest protector, & the oddly playful magic using hill dweller. Frankly it appears that gnomes are simply suffering from an identity crisis.

I would love to see gnomes as hill people, using strip mines and logging as their racial background make-up starting points. Like miniature turn of the century West Virginians without all the 'family' sterotypes. Maybe tying magic and machines together in an elegant package instead of the comical 'gnome flinger of death' angle and steering away from outright cyberpunk or steampunk styles. Is there any other race that is both bookish and hardworking? No wonder they would lean towards technology instead of pure magic.

 

[TerraDave]

Do they? I've never seen any. 'Meh' is by far and away the most common emotion.

You can tell that something is really popular by the amount of hate it generates online. Elves? Tons of hate. D&D? Tons of hate. Gnomes? Zero hate. No one cares enough about them to hate.

I'd never thought about it until now but I just realised I've played elves, a dwarf, a halfling, a half-elf and a half-orc (and also a catgirl, a medusa, an air elemental, a drider and a hadozee), but never a gnome.

I think your poll actually demonstrates how unpopular they are. 50% of ENWorld have *never* played one. Ever. And this is just about the most hardcore gaming crowd possible. People so jaded they need to combine 12 obscure splats just to get excited about a PC. And half of them have never even tried a gnome? Man, that's one big 'meh' there.

Doug, there have been several threads and hundreds and hundreds of pro and anti gnome posts, some quite dramatic, since it became clear that gnomes would not be in PHB I. This thread alone is the counter-proof to your statement. It is already out to 4 pages, and mosts posts are on gnomes, not elves. And there is no shortage of gnome hate from a vocal minority.

As for the poll, I know of no player who has covered a majority of 3rd ed PHB classes...I mean, I even know a guy who hasn't played a human (except in Call of Cuthulu...or maybe he wasn't...) in about 10 years of playing. Does that mean humans are not popular? And I have certainly known people, all over the US, who played gnomes. Are you really saying that an option a majority have used, and said they like, and that only 20% don't want, is not worthwile?

 

[Thunderfoot]

What a pitty.
If that's 100% accurate they really blew it.
I can't wait to see the 4E MM gnome...

No they didn't, gnomes were only tinkers due to Dragonlance, popular, yes, gnomes - not in the very least.

Dragonlance is wildly popular and I am loathe to say this because, frankly it causes people to squeal, but that crappy setting completely destroyed both gnomes and halflings.

I hated tinkers and I despised kender! Unfortunately, a large majority of RPG players feel that these two races are full of awesomeness and that is why gnomes are not in 4e. Playing a half-crazed, lunatic, inventor that is as likely to kill the party with their latest invention as the monsters they face is NOT going to endear them to anyone.

Let the tinker die and create a good gnome, while I miss them, I would rather have a well constructed gnome than a craptacular piece of overdone tripe.

 

[Driddle]

While I miss them, I would rather have a well-constructed gnome than a craptacular piece of overdone tripe.

I agree with you and others here who have expressed the same sentiment. I hope it's not a long wait.

In the meantime, I also reserve the right to be disappointed and even perhaps outraged that the designers weren't willing and/or creative enough to do so for the 4th edition PHB.

 

[TwinBahamut]

Gnomes have had a few niches in D&D. Sometimes they are close to nature (speak with animals - the lawn gnome type like in that old Nickeloden cartoon), other times they are the science guys (either alchmical or engineering as in Dragonlance), sometimes they are a very magical race (great with illusions), and they most recently they are the pranksters, jokesters, and singers. Even in 3.5, they were muddled: illusionists (+1 DC), bards (favored), achlemists (+2 craft), speak with animals (1/day), meele (bonus vs golbins and kobolds, and trained to dodge giants), and dwarfy (+2 con). They are a mix of every gnome stereotype, and can't focus on anything.

Gnomes could be split into several racial niches:
Natural - but elves got that

Magical - elves got general magic, but gnomes could get illusions/shadowy, but the PH1 doesn't seem to be focuses in on that, so why have a race good at something that there is no class for yet?

Science - again, Science as a power source is not core. WotC might do a book about it later (Eberron, after all hinges on a lot of science), but they didn't want this to be PH1 info. If they don't do it, surely a 3rd party pub will, and gnomes might take center stage in such a book.

The bard/trickster - people seemed to hate that when it came out in 3.5, but maye it would work. Oh shoot, bards might not be PH1 either! Once more, a class that would play to this gnomish niche might not be PH1 so why have the gnome there?

There is one more role for gnomes that is missing from this list. While it has not been seen in D&D much, one of the most widespread version of the gnome that I have seen is the gnome as earth-elemental creature. Other than games directly stealing the mixed up idea of gnomes from D&D (which mostly results in tinker gnomes), most games that have gnomes feature them as a magic creature which heroes can summon, rather than as a species of hero. I prefer them that way, myself.

As a whole, I agree with the WotC people that gnomes just lack any clear place in the game, and every attempt to give them one has either fallen flat or resulted in a terrible abomination. Eberron gnomes are something of an exception, but I really think the culture of Zilargo is not very closely tied in to the nature of gnomes as a whole, and would work equally well as a nation of humans or dwarves.

 

[The Ubbergeek]

I would be sad to see the gnomes gone... One of the few non-human races I like.