What's with the Gnome Hate?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

without Tolkien spelling out differences between them by tying certain characters from mythology specifically to the word and separating them out, he probably condemned them to the relative obscurity that they suffer in D&D.

Although, it's interesting that in his drafts of the First Age tales, he does use the word gnome to refer to the Noldor, based on the idea that gnome was probably derived from the Greek word gnosos and therefore implied that the Noldor were wise, knowledgeable and crafty.

If he'd just done that, today we're be busy screaming about WotC cutting the half-orc from 4E instead.

 

[Desdichado]

KM, I see that, but I wonder which came first... the sidelining of the gnomes leads to the loss of archetype, or the lack of strong archetype (or more specifically, lack of popular archetype) leads to gradually sidelining them until they reach the point where they get relegated to the MM?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Being in the MM in 4E hardly is predictive of the future. The bard, monk, half-orc and assassin have all jumped back and forth between editions. Sometimes they're core, sometimes they're optional. I suspect the gnome will be back in the PHB, and one of the two new races will be gone, in the 5E PHB in 2016 or so.

 

[AllisterH]

Why all the blame for 3.x?

How come nobody comments on how gnomes were treated in 2E via the campaign settings by TSR?

 

[Wormwood]

And what's the problem with that? Double them in size, and they're very close to D&D gnomes, except for those people who think that tinker gnomes are the only gnomes that exist in any edition.

If nothing else, the book gives a well-rounded view of a culture, belief system and even gnomish aesthetics. Of course, it's also a good argument for making gnomes as rangers or druids, but that's an interesting spot for them.

Ironically, Gnomes is one of my all-time favorite books. In my life I've owned three copies, happily passing them down to succeeding generations.

The only problem I have is that association is so ingrained in me that I find it difficult to appreciate gnomes any other way---especially my admittedly narrow view of fantasy gaming.

If Smurfs had spent the past 30 years in D&D books, I'd likely feel the same way.

 

[Vocenoctum]

Why all the blame for 3.x?

How come nobody comments on how gnomes were treated in 2E via the campaign settings by TSR?

I commented above that the sidelining of the gnomes was from late 1st edition on. The simple fact is, the Tolkien Bunch is "safe", but otherwise it comes down to the designers preferences. Obviously whoever liked half orcs and gnomes for 1e, wasn't there (or at least not influential) when it came time for further works to place gnomes.

When Eberron came out, it had the directive that "everything in D&D has a place in Eberron", and suddenly gnomes "needed" a niche. Most folks LIKE that niche, btw.

The design philosophy is different for 4e. If it doesn't fit, just cut it.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

How about tricksters, illusionists, tinkers AND master craftsmen?

Tricksters? Annoying.

Illusionists? Poorly supported by rules. (I was a veteran of 2e's incredibly terrible illusionary magic. How does the spell work? However the DM says it does. And 3.x ... stupid Will disbelief system!)

I've seen a gnome illusionist (and alchemist, talk about stereotyping) in a Drizzt book, but that's a book, not a game.

Tinkers? This is DnD, not Shadowrun. I don't allow guns in my DnD game, so why should I allow high technology? (Even Eberron, often derided for having "steampunk", doesn't actually have high technology in it.)

Master craftsmen? That's not a "racial" skillset, that's a "personal" or "character" skillset. (And if it is racial, it's already taken by dwarves.)

Have you ever considered why they are tricksters, and don't reveal their real names to outsiders?

And where is the good flavor text (outside of Eberron) to support this? And this isn't new either. Plenty of dwarves won't give their real names. Plenty of humans won't give their real names.

 

[The Little Raven]

And what's the problem with that?

They belong on my lawn, not in a dragon's lair.

 

[Sylrae]

1) Elves already had wizard as a favored class (instead of ranger, which they should have had, IMO), and having gnomes have a favored class that was a sub-set of the elves' favored class was a bad call for a PHB race.

I agree about the illusionist being a bad call as it's a subclass of wizard.

Flavor wise, Bards rock. they're alot of fun. unfortunately they have the big drawback of the fact that as a class, statistically, they still suck. 3.5 made them suck less with the ability to wear armor and whatnot, but they aren't particularly good at anything really except diplomacy. - and making money in a non-adventuring way.

Elves having Wizard as the favored class kindof works. They weren't supposed to be forest elves, they are the universal elves. Like Moonelves in FR. They're more magically oriented, not melee oriented (hence the -2 con). If you want rangers, you're looking at wood or wild elves. Wood elves are probably the strongest 0 LA race I can think of, cause theyre the only ones who dont get royally shafted for having +2 Str.

If you want a woodsy elf then the wood/wild eves should be the core elf race you use, in my opinion. Should they have been the core elf race in the PHBs instead of in the monster manual/FRCS? maybe.

I think the PHB should have had the high elf and wood elf as races, and put the standard elf in the MM. but then you'd have people bitching about 2 elves in the PHB. This is basically what 4e did, cept they called the high elves eladrin,(thus removing the eladrin monsters) and gave them a goofy teleport ability.

Human
Orc
Halfling
Wood Elf
High/Grey Elf
Dwarf
Gnome

would have been my ideal 'standard' setup.

Tieflings shouldnt be a core race, cause theyre anti-aasimar, and well, I think if you put in tieflings you have about 7 other planetouched you should add in - FR did this, and if youre gonna have all the different types of planetouched fine, but don't make one of them core and the others not, that just doesn't make much sense. Plus the teifling is poosly defined. With the big rift between Demons and Devils in D&D you really need 2 types of hellish races. And planetouched would make much more sense as a series of templates than races, because why is it so hard to imagine an outsider reproducing with a different type of humanoid? Planetouched races were poorly thought out in 3e in my opinion, and this holds in 4e as well.

Dragonborn, well, dragon people are not something i see as a player race. Halfogres seem more reasonable, even though dragonborn are powered down to player power levels.

I dont 'love' gnomes, I just wanted to know why there were gnome hate posts. they're a race that sees occasional use in my games, whereas halflings see less use. I see more goblin players than halflings. (though I made the goblins slightly more attractive by dropping their extra -2 they get).

I don't have a problem with steampunk. The game I'm running right now has 2 core races (Humans and Dwarves - the dwarves have been changed though)the rest are all non-standard, being either from a different source, modified, or wholly original. They live in flying mechanical cities powered by levitation spells in some cases and machines in others, and the general tech level is up to flintlock weapons. This is obviously not the 'standard' campaign, and this is the first time I've run a game with this much tech, but it's not bad. Actually, gnomes got cut from my steampunk setting, but so did most of the standard classes: cleric, paladin, monk, sorcerer, bard. I decided to run somethign really different this time. (classes come from other sources than the phb, obviously)

It's not hard to have gnomes without tech though as pointed out above.

but if they had to cut them, that's fine, I just think they picked bad things to replace them with. A rakshasa would have been much better than a tiefling. Hell, there are a bunch of really cool monsters that would make awesome player races:

If you want exotic- Dryad, Rakshasa, Centaur, Satyr, Githyanki/Githzerai

If you want something less exotic: Goblins, Hobgoblins, Bugbears, Kobolds, Troglodytes, Lizardfolk, Lizardfolk (Blackscale), Gnoll, Minotaur.

I think any of those would have been better player race additions than the Dragonborn or the teifling.


Favored classes never really made much of a difference in any ofthe games I played, we didn't use multiclassing penalties, cause the dms never gave just combat experience. experience is often just per session, and if thye think you did something extra above the other players then you get a little more. combat experience almost never happened, cause we foudn that made players have WAY unevern levels. like by the time one player got to level 9 the others would be at 6, and the rift would keep getting bigger. Cause the way the standard system works is you difide encounter xp by the party. what if the party splits up into pairs, or if one player runs off ahead and does stuff on their own? it was much easier to drop that method of experience distribution. So for a while "nobody had a favored class" until we found the variant on here where favored class gives you extra feats, which made the favored classes relevent again, but that was just recently...

 

[Vocenoctum]

They belong on my lawn, not in a dragon's lair.

"You know, I really wish I had a garden where I could put a couple of human statues."