tinker gnome

[Quickleaf]

I am blessed with 2 gnomes in our D&D party. One uses the gnome as presented in 4e, but the other plays a tinker gnome (an artificer). We've just started playing, but it seems to me the standard 4e gnome's racial traits don't map well to the tinker gnome concept. Things like "+5 vs. illusion" and "fade away" don't seem like good fits, for example.

Has anyone made up a tinker gnome for 4e or have ideas for where I could look for inspiration?

 

[JoeNotCharles]

There's the Earth Gnome from the Advanced Player's Guide, which isn't exactly tinker-gnome like but not so obviously Fey. It's got an affinity with burrowing mammals (kind of useless to your concept), bonuses to Stealth which are less magical than fade away, and a power called Battlefield Trickery which lets you make ranged or area attacks without provoking OA's. (Although the fluff mentions doing this through illusions, I think it works ok for mastery of ranged technological weapons too.) It also has the same +5 vs Illusions, but I think that's appropriate for tinker gnomes. It can be flavoured that they spend so much time dealing with real, concrete, only-semi-magical effects that they're able to spot the inconsistencies in illusions.

Or you could allow a character to play a Halfling or Kobold and call it a TInker Gnome - both Second Chance and Shifty make sense for someone who spends a lot of time dodging explosions.