When did gnomes fall from grace?

[Vocenoctum]

The Talenta Plains are a "culture" built around riding and a nomadic lifestyle. But the halfling "race" isn't. Halflings don't Climb and Jump better because they've been doing it a lot. They do it better because their small, compact bodies are akin to the body of an olympic gymnast, with stronger muscles than their size would indicate.

Halflings are innately stealthy, and the race advanced along a path that let it compensate for its lack of sheer brawn, i.e. attacking with surprise to cause most damage to unaware foes. The entire race can take easier to the path of the rogue, even if their culture breeds more rangers than rogues. Ditto for valenar elves and wizards.

Look at humans. You can have a mongol-like mounted warrior from a nomadic culture or a sophisticated scholar from a Renaissance city. Yet they have the exact same racial traits. This cultural difference is represented through class, feats and skills. Same goes for Khorvaire and Talenta halflings.

Actually humans have developed into an Adaptable Culture, hence their stats. Taking your logic though, the halflings are quite silly to live in the plains. They should be living in the jungles where their Mutant Powers would be beneficial.

 

[Klaus]

Actually humans have developed into an Adaptable Culture, hence their stats. Taking your logic though, the halflings are quite silly to live in the plains. They should be living in the jungles where their Mutant Powers would be beneficial.

Sorry, what "mutant powers"?

And humans have developed into an adaptable "race", hence their stats.

 

[ForceUser]

With apologies to Hellcow , here are my gnomes, straight out of Eberron thematically, but with homebrew racial stats.

GNOMES
Gnomes harbor a thirst for knowledge that can only be described as lust. They believe that every piece of information, no matter how trivial, may someday have value. Combined with a meticulous discipline, this love of knowledge makes gnomes superb librarians, accountants, bards, artificers, and alchemists, but this attitude has a sinister side as well. The same talents that make an accomplished bard can produce a skilled spy, and gnome society is filled with webs of intrigue and blackmail that often pass completely unnoticed by human eyes. The gnomes have no history of empire-building, but their talents for diplomacy and espionage have allowed them to maintain their independence throughout the history of Eriador. In addition to their skill as alchemists, gnomes have mastered the art of elemental binding, which they use to power the ships and other vessels they construct in the dry docks and shipyards of Yoppletop.

The gnomes’ homeland is the craggy island chain of Yoppletop, in the chilly North Sea off the coast of Eriador. Known for its stores of knowledge and its schools of learning, Yoppletop is also a significant trading power among northern neighbors. The gnomes of Yoppletop are expert shipwrights, and the volcanic caves deep under their islands hold fine gem mines.

Gnomes speak their own language, Dwer, and the languages of their human neighbors.

GNOME RACIAL TRAITS
• +2 Constitution, -2 Strength. Gnomes are hale, but they are small and therefore not as strong as larger humanoids.
• Small: As Small creatures, gnomes gain a +1 size bonus to AC, a +1 size bonus on attack rolls, and a +4 size bonus on Sneak checks, but they use smaller weapons than humans use, and their lifting and carrying limits are three-quarters of those of a Medium character. As Small creatures, they also suffer a -4 size penalty to grapple checks.
• Gnome base land speed is 20 feet.
• Darkvision: Gnomes can see in the dark up to 60 feet. Darkvision is black and white only, but it is otherwise like normal sight, and gnomes can function just fine with no light at all.
• Educated: Knowledge is always a class skill for gnomes. All gnomes matriculate through an education system from a very young age.
• Guild Affiliation: At character creation, the gnome character selects a Guild with which he is affiliated. Since there are innumerable guilds, they are technically broken into three major categories: Craft Guilds (bowyer, blacksmithing, leatherworking, and the like), Technical Guilds (architecture, chemistry, engineering, scriveners, and others), and Sage Guilds (botany, biology, education, mathematics, philosophy, and so on). If the gnome selects a Craft Guild, he gains a +2 racial bonus on all Craft checks. Technically inclined gnomes gain a +2 racial bonus on all Profession checks. Sage gnomes receive a +2 racial bonus on all Knowledge checks.
• Weapon Familiarity: A gnome may treat gnome hooked hammers (see page 118 of the Player’s Handbook) as martial weapons rather than exotic weapons.
• Artful Dodger: A gnome gains a dodge bonus to AC against any foe that is at least one size category larger than him. The bonus is equal to the number of categories the foe is larger than the gnome’s current size. Thus, a gnome would gain a +3 dodge bonus to AC against a behir (a Huge creature) and a +1 dodge bonus to AC verses an orc (a Medium creature). Gnomes are taught from an early age how to avoid the wrath of larger folk.
• Child of Garl: Starting at 1st level, gnomes gain an additional action point every level (although non-player character gnomes do not normally gain an action point progression, they do gain this single action point every level. Any action points not spent at a non-player character’s previous level are lost.) Garl Glittergold, guardian deity of gnomes, bestows this special blessing upon his children.
• Automatic Language: Regional human language, usually Arbonnesse or Sturmmen, and Dwer. Bonus Languages: Draconic, Giant, Gobbledygook, and regional human language (Arbonnesse, Eloi, Genovan, Sturmmen, Tiamni, Ulvmann, Vangal, and Vistani). Gnomes usually learn the languages of their enemies and their significant human neighbors.
• Favored Class: Artificer. A multiclass gnome’s artificer class does not count when determining whether he takes an experience point penalty for multiclassing (see XP for multiclass characters, page 60 of the Player’s Handbook).

 

[Morgenstern]

Uh, no. There is a type of dwarf mentioned in The Silmarillion called "petty dwarves", who aren't really very clearly defined anywhere but they're basically a type of dwarf and not really anything at all like D&D gnomes.

Then those aren't the ones I meant . I am recalling the specific use of the word "gnome", so perhaps I am thinking of some of his other stuff rather than the Silmarilion.

Tolkien's pre-Silmarillion writings used the term "gnome" specifically for Noldorin Elves. It was not in any sense an attempt to equate them with the "little people", it was simply an alternative to "elf" that drew on folklore.

I can sort of follow that from what I recall reading. It seemed to involve a large hall on another continent, but the elf-like trappings do seem to bleed through. Then again, his older races of Men have a lot more qualities that were only retained by elves by the times of the Red Book .

However, Tolkien eventually abandoned the name in favour of calling all the elves "elves" (differentiated by the different tribes, i.e., Sindarin, Noldorin, etc.), partly at least because people associated the word "gnome" too strongly with those small big-nosed chaps who sit in the garden.

Funny.

I should add that for a long time Tolkien wasn't especially enamoured of the term "elf", either, partly because in Norse tradition the elves and the dwarves were essentially identical (and he wanted them to be distinct races), and partly because people associated "elves" with small pixie-like critters. Tolkien's elves were not "dwarves" and they certainly weren't "pixies", but he also wanted them to be "remembered" by humans in folklore, and he eventually decided that "elf" was as good as he was going to get. The rest, as they say, is history.

In the Norse mythology I read they seem pretty distinct , but I can see how he ended up with the current mix.

My point in bringing up Tolkien having used "gnomes" is that D&D's earliest incarnation(s) clearly draw almost exclusively from his work, and not from a broader mythological base. My own inclination is to totally rework them so they AREN'T just more of the same in the Small size category, or scrap them entirely in favor of any of a double handful of races that are more varied than just humans with cheap make-up .

 

[Vocenoctum]

• Child of Garl: Starting at 1st level, gnomes gain an additional action point every level (although non-player character gnomes do not normally gain an action point progression, they do gain this single action point every level. Any action points not spent at a non-player character’s previous level are lost.) Garl Glittergold, guardian deity of gnomes, bestows this special blessing upon his children.

Um, Garl?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Garl didn't get the memo that he's not an Eberron god. Or maybe he's just THAT tricksy!

 

[The Souljourner]

I hated the hobbit-like halflings of past editions. Fat, lazy little guys who are somehow remarkably dextrous? What? Dumb dumb dumb. Frodo et. al. were the exception to the rule (and even then, not much.... they whined for home through the whole thing). 3E halflings are WAY better. I like the seriousness they added to the race, how they now actually look like they could do something other than sit on a stump and smoke a pipe.

As for gnomes vs. halflings, I think the difference is clear. Halflings are mainly physical - running, jumping, sneaking. Gnomes are mainly mental - socializing, singing, creating.

Halfling children compete to see who can skip a rock the most times. Gnome children compete to see who can build the most elaborate sandcastle.

Halflings are realists, gnomes are dreamers. I think bard is the perfect class for gnomes.

If you have any doubt about where gnomes fit, read their chapter in races of stone. I, too, used to look down my nose at gnomes, but since reading that, a lot has become clear.

I'm actually making a gnome for my next campaign. Only the second gnome to be run by anyone in the 9 year history of my D&D group (the previous was a tinker gnome run by someone else).

-The Souljourner

 

[ForceUser]

Um, Garl?

Homebrew world.

 

[Gez]

My point in bringing up Tolkien having used "gnomes" is that D&D's earliest incarnation(s) clearly draw almost exclusively from his work, and not from a broader mythological base.

You make Baby Gygax cry.

D&D's earliest incarnations clearly draw almost exclusively from the works of Jack Vance, Poul Anderson, Fritz Leiber, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert Ervin Howard, Michael Moorcock, Richard Shaver, Alfred Elton Van Vogt, John Milton, Sigmund Freud, Dante Alighieri, whomever wrote the 1001 Nights, various folktales and mythology, and that toy company that produced cheap plastic monsters.

Tolkien's contribution was limited to orcs, hobbits, treants, and balrogs. Which is a good start, but not enough to be what I would consider "almost exclusive".

 

[Gez]

Um, Garl?

Um, Yoppletop and Eriador? Um, regional human languages (Arbonnesse, Eloi, Genovan, Sturmmen, Tiamni, Ulvmann, Vangal, and Vistani)?

It's clearly not Eberron. ForceUser said it was thematically lifted from Eberron, not that it was in Eberron.