Café de Nuit

This is perhaps my biggest pet peeve with the PHG 3.0, if only because I fancy myself as a gnome player.

Why the hell don't Gnomes get a bonus to Intelligence? The idea behind a gnome is that it is generally better than humans at tasks that are associated with Intelligence (memory, creativity, knowledge, etc). Baldurs Gate gave them a bonus to intelligence and a penalty to wisdom. The ancient Advanced D&D Monster Manual by Gary Gygax (don't ask how I actually have a copy) listed their Intelligence as 'Very'. I'd argue Intelligence is what defines gnomes as a race. BG also threw in the fact that they had a lower wisdom (which makes sense). I also understand them getting a -2 to strength due to their size.

But instead, they get a +2 to Con because of their relation to dwarves, making them a very obtuse race to use. Never mind how apparently they make good bards in 3.5.

Can someone suggest a legitimate reason why Gnomes were done this way in 3.0? And before anybody says it wouldn't be balanced to have a Wizard favoring race with a bonus to Intelligence, consider that the barbarian favoring race gets a +2 to strength, and the rogue favoring race a +2 to dexterity.

If you look over the core races, you'll see that not one of them has a bonus to a mental stat. Apart from balance reasons (and a +2 doesn't make much difference in the long run), I believe the main idea behind this is that WotC didn't want to make a race that was tailored to any of the caster classes. The fighter and utility classes can take advantage of different stats in different ways (finesse fighter, ranged fighter, diplomatic rogue, etc.), but caster classes are more dependent on a single stat. So the lack of mental bonuses is to prevent all casters from being of one particular race.

I agree that a +2 intelligence, -2 strength makes gnomes very good wizards. After all, strength is the wizard's least useful stat. However, it makes sense for gnomes, flavor wise.

I agree that +2 int, -2 strength seems unbalanced for a mage. So I would suggest that they have a +2 int, -2 strength and:

They don't get the racial +1 DC to illusion spells, the +1 against goblins and kobolds, the +4 AC vs giants, the +2 to listen and the ability to speak to burrowing mammals.

However, they get a +2 bonus to all invention crafting skills like and to craft skill checks to create machines, siege engines, clockwork devices etc.

How about that? They keep the creativity, their resistance to illusions, their alchemy and invention aptitude ... but nothing else.