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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arkhandus" data-source="post: 3957361" data-attributes="member: 13966">Bah.  Gnomes in 3E are poor melee combatants, worse ranged combatants than everyone else, and decent only as caster or skillmonkey types.  They're marginally better in a spellcaster role only because of their Constitution and size bonus to AC, both of which are fairly minor (dwarves get the same Con boost and some save boosts, halflings get even more AC and some save boosts).Their bonus to illusions doesn't matter much because of the limited effectiveness of illusions in 3rd Edition.  Halflings make better ray-focused spellcasters.  Humans are better at utilizing magic feats, which can be pretty significant with some books.  And humans make better warrior-mage types too.Gnomes in 3E make terrible paladins compared to humans, their only advantage over halflings as paladins is that a halfling's high Dex is wasted on a paladin, because paladins are geared towards heavy armor, melee combat, and high Str.  Both gnomes and halflings deal pathetic damage in melee compared to humans or dwarves.  Dwarves make better or at least equally effective paladins to gnomes (it's not like a small Cha penalty is a deathwish for a paladin, it's just a slight reduction in some of their class features, whereas a dwarf's racial advantages make it quite worthwhile).The best core races, mechanically, are dwarves, humans, half-orcs, and halflings.  With elves somewhere between that and the miserable gnomes and half-elves.  Whisper gnomes and other non-core races don't count for much in this, since they're non-core, and most of 'em are horribly balanced (either too strong or too weak).  Of course whisper gnomes and goliaths and such are used a lot by optimizers, because they're non-core stuff that was never given any serious balance-checking or playtesting, only a cursory bit of it instead.Gnomes are barely worth playing as bards, druids, or wizards in 3E, and not really worth playing as anything else.  Mechanically speaking, of course.  Yet a dwarven druid is tougher and more powerful, a halfling wizard is better with rays and avoiding harm (whereas the gnome is just able to endure a tiny, tiny smidgen more harm), and a human bard is better in combat and nearly on-par in spellcasting (and bards don't have much in the way of offensive spells to rely on, neither, whenever they need to fight).</blockquote>

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