My Life As A Gamer: The Gnomes As They Are

(This is a series. First post is here; yesterday's is here.)

The Gnomes of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition are notable for being the only other playable race with access to the Illusionist class. Otherwise, they are skinnier Dwarves; they also live underground, have goblinoids and giants as enemies, are noted for craftsmanship, etc. with a noted difference in typical Alignment: Neutral to Lawful Good. We haven't had that explicit variability before, and it's going to make a mark (see below) that allows for distinction.

It's no surprise that later editions did a lot to make them stand out; they needed it.

The Gnome

Racial Benefits:

• Ability Score Modifiers: None.
• Ability Score Limits:
  • Male: Strength (6/18), Intelligence (7/18), Wisdom (3/18), Dexterity (7/19), Constitution (6/18), Charisma (3/18)
  • Female: Strength (6/15), Intelligence (7/18), Wisdom (3/16), Dexterity (7/19), Constitution (6/18), Charisma (3/18)

  Class Limits:

  • Cleric: 7th (NPC Only)
  • Druid: Not Allowed
  • Fighter: 5th (STR 17-)/6th (STR 18+)
  • Paladin: Not Allowed
  • Ranger: Not Allowed
  • Magic-User: Not Allowed
  • Illusionist: 5th(INT or DEX 16-)/6th (INT and DEX 17)/7th (INT and DEX 18+)
  • Thief: Unlimited
  • Assassin: 8th
  • Monk: Not Allowed
  • Multi-Class Combinations: Fighter/Illusionist, Fighter/Thief, Illusionist/Thief

  Racial Abilities:

  • +1 to Saving Throws vs. spells, wands, staves, and rods per 3.5 points of Constitution.
  • Infravision: 60 feet.
  • +1 to attack rolls vs. goblins and kobolds; gnolls, bugbears, ogres, ogre magi, trolls, giants, and titans are -4 to attack rolls vs. the Gnome.
  • Detect Grade/Slope of Passage: 1-8 on d10, Detect Unsafe Walls/Ceilings/Floors: 1-7 on d10, Determine Approx. Depth Underground: 1-6 on d10, Determine Direction of Underground Travel: 1-5 on d10. (Must be actively done; not a passive trait.)

  Aging: Young Adult (50-90), Mature (91-300), Middle Age (301-450), Old (451-600), Venerable (601-750), Upper Limit (1130).

Gnome Culture

Again we have a purported Good Guy race, one said to be potent with magic--Illusionism this time--that is actually just competent and instead dominated by sneaky people. Unlike Dwarves or Elves, who could have Name Level characters other than Thieves, Gnomes cannot do this. All Name Level Gnomes have to be Thieves.

This points to a severe racial character flaw. Couple this with their racial animosities, their clan-oriented social structure, and their preference for burrowing into hills and readers more familiar with post-Gygax iterations of the game may recognize a more well-known midget race dominated by sticky-fingered professions: Kender.

Yet they live, like Dwarves, for centuries at a time- up to just over half what a High Elf can manage. All of the problems of the former two races therefore apply to Gnomes as well: they are few in number compared to their far more numerous enemies, so they compensate for a lack of might with magical prowess and further augment that with the cunning and guile that being either a Thief or an Assassin requires.

Also like the other two, the Assassin subset are far more marginalized than what would otherwise by the case (or their general Alignment would be Good)- and like those other two, the leadership of the Gnomes finds the Assassins too useful to do away with.

The lack of playable Clerics, and the lack of capacity among those few, points to a weak link to the divine- something else in common with the previous two. With no other way to access the divine among them, we see that Gnomes are not a race given to going much beyond the material- and that relationship is complicated further by the racial reputation for Illusionism.

Gnomes may not be the best Illusionists around, but they are a lot of them and this magic is commonplace among their kind. The influence of Illusionist thinking, with its big emphasis on liminality and using seeming and pretense to conjure the appearance of power and substance where none exists, coupled with their long lifespans and few numbers means that it is likely that a lot of their inter-racial animosities are their own fault.

If not for some solidity in their character, they would not be a Good race overall. Their culture and mythology, therefore, has to have strong social taboos against using their wit, guile, and acumen at deception (magical and ordinary alike) lest they make an already shakey situation untenable.

Past TSR publications portray Gnomes as given to a Trickster-style mode of behavior, especially with outsiders, and that is not wrong in the least; once cannot look at these traits and deny that as a valid interpretation. The Assassins, therefore, are half of the substance behind the glamor; their Fighters (pure and multi-classed alike) are the other half. Like the Dwarves and Elves, Gnomes also prefer unconventional warfare and battlefield shaping to rig the results in their favor and reduce risk to zero; if that means they let one of the Assassins gank a high-value target, so be it.

Unlike the Dwarves and Elves, who seem to be frustrated at being barely or unable to live up to their iconic representations, the Gnomes are in a position to fully exploit it due to their Illusionists being good enough to keep the trick running long enough to get away with whatever stunt they're looking to pull off. If they weren't a Good race, such a race would be easy to dismiss as being fantasy Gypies or Irish Travellers (with all that entails), and that was before TSR published the Vistanti.

I see a race that got too full of themselves here. Despite still being, at their core, good-natured folk they took their own hype about their magical prowess seriously as well as become collectively enraptured by the Illusionist mindset of liminality and its weaponization via this form of magic and as a result they are slowly fading away as if a cosmic wind blew away the sand castle bit by bit until it was gone. Imagine an entire race that lived like this Conan quote (but not so violently):

It would take just one detail to cement this: that a dead-for-good Gnome (one that cannot be raised due to age or whatever) leaves no corpse behind, but instead just winks out of existence the way Yoda does in Return of the Jedi as a racial curse.

As there is a persistent pattern among the demi-humans, this warrants separate commentary (which I reserve for Saturday). The Halflings are next.