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

[Arkhandus]

It's funny Arkhandus - +1 to hit with rays is a HUGE bonus in your mind, but -1 damage is "pathetic damage in melee".

You forget the smaller weaponry and all. Gnomes deal at least 1 less damage with weapons, on average, before even considering their lower Strength. And the difference is much greater when you consider spells like Enlarge Person or Righteous Might; a human or dwarven cleric will deal substantially more damage enlarged by those spells, with a greatsword or other such weapon in hand, than a gnome will.

 

[Wolfspider]

Flip flops? Real swamp dwelling halflings wear Crocs.

Ha!

 

[Hussar]

You forget the smaller weaponry and all. Gnomes deal at least 1 less damage with weapons, on average, before even considering their lower Strength. And the difference is much greater when you consider spells like Enlarge Person or Righteous Might; a human or dwarven cleric will deal substantially more damage enlarged by those spells, with a greatsword or other such weapon in hand, than a gnome will.

Actually forgot the -2 Str.

OTOH, the other bits are no different than any other small sized race. That's not a gnome deficiency, that's just a size thing. Halflings, kobolds, goblins, etc - all suffering the same penalty.

Before, you were comparing the damage of halflings to gnomes, now you're comparing humans and dwarves. Which is it?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Actually forgot the -2 Str.

OTOH, the other bits are no different than any other small sized race. That's not a gnome deficiency, that's just a size thing. Halflings, kobolds, goblins, etc - all suffering the same penalty.

Before, you were comparing the damage of halflings to gnomes, now you're comparing humans and dwarves. Which is it?

Halfling and Gnome are very weak in the damage department.
Their strength means an average of -2 to damage per hit. At least their size bonus can offset the strength penalty in regards to hitting.
A Halfling wins out if he chooses Weapon Finesse (another 5% better than the Gnome). Even if he focuses on his strength, he has an easier time to qualify for Two Weapon Fighting, which is useful for the typical Halfling Rogue, and also for Halfling Fighters (Weapon Specialisation). (But it's obvious, this is all pretty feat intensive.)

Both really suck in the "combat maneuver" area - low strength, -4 in grapples, disarm, trips and sunder attempts.

For spellcasting, the +2 to Dex of the Halfling helps a lot with ranged touch spells, which aren't uncommon for spells. The +1 to illusions of Gnomes might be similar, but illusions seem to be unable to achieve the effectiveness of the more aggressive schools like Evocation, Necromancy or Transmutation. Even worse, a lot of useful illusion effects don't require a save at all. (I think the only interesting ones might be Phantasmal Killer and the Shadow spells) Mirror Image and Invisibility don't force saves.

Personally, I think that the real killer for both characters are the size penalty for the afromentioned combat maneuvers. If you never encounter them, you can probably compensate the worst. But if you do, you are in far worse trouble then any other character of your class and level.

 

[Rechan]

Mustrum, you forget the +2 Con for the gnome as a caster. That, I think, is a helpful thing - a net +1 HP per level, and +1 to fort saves.

 

[Cadfan]

3e gnomes = hobbit background characters + illusions and badgers.
3e halflings = hobbit novel protagonists.

We honestly didn't need two PC races, each acting as 1/2 of a tolkienesque hobbit.

I'm going to kind of miss the possibility of getting a Mad Inventor gnome. But considering that we never had them before now either, I can't miss it too much.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I like how most of this has boiled down to "the developers just don't care about gnomes!" Well, apparently, neither do most players, so why should the gnomes be in the PHB then?

Its kind of a feedback loop.

1) If the developers don't care, they won't do the race justice, and the result will be an unappetizing mess- see 3.5 Gnomes with Bard as a favored race.

2) Few players will be willing to play that unappetizing mess.

3) Developers hear that players don't play gnomes, thus care even less than before.

If developers devoted the same kind of thought to gnomes as to expanding the Elvish family tree, you'd probably see more players looking at their PHB entries going "HELLYEAH!"

Isn't this supposed to be the edition where we finally kill the sacred cows that hold the game back?

I haven't heard anything about that, and in my 30 years of gaming, it is some of those "sacred cows" that keep me playing D&D. Don't get me wrong- I play a wide variety of systems (and personally, HERO is my fave), but what some consider to be detrimental to the game are actually attractive and charming to me. Probably to others as well.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Mustrum, you forget the +2 Con for the gnome as a caster. That, I think, is a helpful thing - a net +1 HP per level, and +1 to fort saves.

Hmm. I was pretty sure I had a paragraph about comparing the dex benefit to AC of the Halfing compared to the COn bonus to hit points, but I seemed to have edited it out again.

THe +2 to Dex grants (on average) 5 % less damage against the PC (against most attacks and most area spells), which is equivalent to a 5 % increase in staying power. The Gnomes extra hit points are - speaking relatively - stronger for wizards then these 5 %, but it's a bit "harder" to count, since the percentage bonus depends on the base hit points (calculated from unmodified con, hit dice and other effects besides race increasing Constitution). Staying power for wizards is usually less related to hit points and more to spells per day.


Do the designers just not care about Gnomes, or are they just unhappy with what they came up with for the Gnomes, and therefore decided to put them in the MM and avoiding a detailed study on personality and background for the moment?
In a better world, the designers might have more time to think about the Gnome or been hit by a better inspiration particle and had given us PHB-worthy Gnomes.

---
As a side note, I just notice that I think as someone not regularly reading fantasy novels and being a native German speaker to boot, I don't feel qualified to give accurate "concepts" of Gnomes. I am simply not aware of the real finepoints between Dwarves and Gnomes (as I said somewhere else/earlier, in german, the lawn ormanenent Gnomes are also called by the German word for "Dwarf").
And for me, Elves definitely are the more Tolkien-inspired variant, since the Santa Elves are not (a strong) part of German folklore. The only other relation to Elves I know from folklore is that to Nightmares. These are called "Alpträume" in German, the part "Alp" apparently going back to "Elves" and "Alpdruck", symbolizing an Elf (some evil creature in that case) sitting on your chest and causing nightmares.

 

[Arkhandus]

OTOH, the other bits are no different than any other small sized race. That's not a gnome deficiency, that's just a size thing. Halflings, kobolds, goblins, etc - all suffering the same penalty.

Before, you were comparing the damage of halflings to gnomes, now you're comparing humans and dwarves. Which is it?

I was mentioning how drastic the difference in combat ability was between a gnome and the bigger races.

Also, regarding halflings and gnomes: a halfling has some offensive advantages whereas a gnome has none (unless he's fighting one or two particular kinds of foe, which he rarely will, in which case he gets +1 to attack rolls; woop-dee-doo). A halfling's Dexterity bonus and their bonus with thrown weapons gives them some advantages (and if you use Forgotten Realms, Strongheart halflings get a bonus feat like humans, in exchange for losing the +1 save bonus other halflings get). So halflings can get a nice accuracy boost with javelins or the like, and there's another thing.

With the Tome of Battle, halflings can overcome their offensive deficiency by taking Exotic Weapon Proficiency (Spiked Chain), Weapon Finesse, and Shadow Blade; a halfling swordsage 2/fighter 1 can be pretty effective on offense, or a swordsage 1/fighter 2 could take Power Attack and further boost their offense (since their higher Dex and size bonus means they can afford to Power Attack for 2 more points without losing any accuracy, compared to an equal-level human). A strongheart halfling can do this at 2nd-level (swordsage 1/fighter 1), but would need to wait until 3rd-level for Power Attack.

A gnome will have a tougher time of it (especially since there's no gnome subrace, that I'm aware of, anyway, who gets a bonus feat of choice).

(A quick edit: I forgot for a moment, but, even with this 'patch' for a halfling, it's debatable whether or not Shadow Blade stacks Dex bonus to damage with Str bonus to damage, or just replaces it, in which case it might still be slightly worse than having a human with high Str getting 1.5x Str bonus to damage with the spiked chain)

 

[Hussar]

Its kind of a feedback loop.

1) If the developers don't care, they won't do the race justice, and the result will be an unappetizing mess- see 3.5 Gnomes with Bard as a favored race.

2) Few players will be willing to play that unappetizing mess.

3) Developers hear that players don't play gnomes, thus care even less than before.

If developers devoted the same kind of thought to gnomes as to expanding the Elvish family tree, you'd probably see more players looking at their PHB entries going "HELLYEAH!"

The problem is, this "cycle" has been going on since day 1. It's not like gnomes were hugely popular before 3e. They weren't. They never were. Looking at 1e modules, outside of Krynn, name a single adventure that features gnomes as a main race. Name a supplement devoted entirely to gnomes in any edition.

As I mentioned before, gnomes have ALWAYS been the red headed stepchild. They've never gotten any love. Heck, they weren't even a race in Basic/Expert. The inclusion of gnomes has had more to do with inertia than any real inspiration.