D&D General Why Do People Hate Gnomes?

[jmartkdr2]

Gnomes, I think, missed the boat on being a first-round race. Elves, dwarves, and halflings were all established really early in the games run as distinct classes. As classes, they needed to be complete characters: there's a bit of chicken-and-egg here, but like most early DnD classes they were designed to emulate specific characters from fiction, but rather quickly were expanded into entire peoples.

If gnomes were included that early, I feel they would be just as established. But that would need there to be a popular gnome character to emulate. I don't know of any such character, but I'm not an expert on the history of fantasy fiction.

All the races that were added after that first round and had good traction had a strong hook. Half-elves, half-orcs and tieflings were/are all edgy, which is always popular. Half-orcs and goliaths are big strong guys. Dragonborn are dragons.

Gnomes' hook seems to be 'wacky engineers' - which isn't the least popular hook but isn't as popular as edgy or dragon seems to be.

All the races shift and expand over time. Heck, at this point I'd sat dwarves, elves, and halflings don't have a central idea anymore - but they're established in the imaginations of the player base, so they're not going anywhere. Gnomes aren't quite there. They're close, though.

 

[CleverNickName]

I guess to me they just feel kinda redundant. It doesn't help that garden gnomes are known as Gartenzwerge -garden dwarves- in German. Muddying their unique identity even further.

But since they combine a lot of dwarfish and elvish tropes, I usually use them as the mixed offspring of those two. They conveniently already have corresponding subraces to the common elven subraces. So Dwarf+Wood Elf= Forest Gnome; Dwarf+Drow=Deep Gnome and Dwarf+High Elf= Rock Gnome.

This is my favorite new take so far.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'll take gnomes over all the elephant-people, turtle-people, dog-people etc.

Whereas I'm mostly the reverse. I love seeing what creative things people come up with for these options, and find most people fall back on tired, cliche, dull, repetitive tropes with most of the so-called "common" races.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

No. The abusive combinations didn't happen by accident.

Max, you seem to be of the impression that these folks are saying the feats were overpowered.

I'm fairly sure they are saying most of these feats were crappy. Like really, really awful, "why would anyone ever take this" bad.

 

[Maxperson]

Max, you seem to be of the impression that these folks are saying the feats were overpowered.

I'm fairly sure they are saying most of these feats were crappy. Like really, really awful, "why would anyone ever take this" bad.

Because powergamers take crappy feats!

It doesn't matter, though. They are only crappy(and even that's debatable) if the DM doesn't adjust for them.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Because powergamers take crappy feats!

It doesn't matter, though. They are only crappy(and even that's debatable) if the DM doesn't adjust for them.

How, exactly, does a DM adjust for something like Mobility or the ur-example of "a total waste of a feat," Toughness? And why is it the DM's job to continually fix the system when it offers crappy options?

 

[Maxperson]

How, exactly, does a DM adjust for something like Mobility or the ur-example of "a total waste of a feat," Toughness? And why is it the DM's job to continually fix the system when it offers crappy options?

The DM was already doing it. The CR system was so broken that it couldn't be used, so the DM needed to choose creatures based on what the party could do. That's how you adjust for those feats. You just didn't give them much weight when comparing party ability vs. creature.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Oh, it gets even worse.

Tabaxi do get darkvision. And the part of the race that explains why they get darkvision says it's because "You have a cat’s keen senses, especially in the dark."

So, in D&D 5e, cats don't have darkvision, but the catfolk race does, and the reason why the catfolk get darkvision is because they have the senses of . . . a cat.

Tbf, I think they meant for keen senses to make critters good at navigating the darkness, but then didn’t add something to make that actually work.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Whereas I'm mostly the reverse. I love seeing what creative things people come up with for these options, and find most people fall back on tired, cliche, dull, repetitive tropes with most of the so-called "common" races.

honestly, it is not that there are more possible interesting ways to take the Tolkien classics but it is hard to generate the remaining ones.
so honestly, I want a setting without dwarves, halflings or elves just to see what could be built without them?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Gnomes have just been added to Baldur's Gate 3 (early access). It's worth taking a look at the visuals. They have made their gnomes much more alien-looking than their halflings.