 My name's Davy Chappy and today it's time to sit down on a front lawn and terrify some children because we're going to be going over the off-forgotten core race of D&D, the gnome. I'm going to go over the lifestyle and legends of the gnome race as presented by Mordenkainen's Tomofo's and I'll even let you in on their mechanics so that you can play your little small fey however you want. As always keep in mind that a lot of this is just my opinion, so if you want to tinker with the gnome in a completely different direction, feel free to run it however you want. But with that out of the way, let's begin. So the gnome has had a bit of an identity crisis throughout the history of D&D, but 5e has streamlined them to essentially be two halflings what elves are to humans. They look and act relatively similar to halflings, but with a hard streak of inventiveness and fairy-like magicianry that propels them into being the biggest and bestest industrialists, alchemists, artificers, and animal handlers in the whole of the multiverse. Gnomes are born raised and respected as investigative creators, constantly inquiring into new discoveries about technology and magicry, often mixing the two to spawn amazing trinkets such as self-sweeping brooms, clockwork machinations that have their own semi-sentience, and potions that'll actually grow your hair, we promise. Luckily for the rest of the world, gnomes also have a deep propensity to love every aspect of their life, and so their technological nature always works for the better men of all kind, with no gnome upset when their inventions are overtaken by a new creation, because it just means that advancement is happening. It's as if all gnomes are in a room filled with tools, every one of them trying to make the brightest lamp, and every time a better one's created, it illuminates a little bit more of the room, and a few more tools that they previously didn't even know were in the room, and so they all work together so that the room may one day be fully lit, and they can all bask in the beauty of the light that they created together. It is that never-ending drive to create more and more and more cool things that leads them down one of two specializations, these specializations often being dictated by what type of gnome they are. Forest gnomes, who, as you may have guessed, live in forests that either are or soon will be enchanted, have a touch of fey magic in their blood that allows them to more innately cast magical mysticisms, and keeps them more in tune with nature, and connecting with those animals that make up the earth's grand clockwork design, and their overbearing penchant on performing non-stop illusion magic on other races really manages to bring out their face side by really straddling the line between a nice pleasant halfling and fuck fey. Meanwhile, rock gnomes traded expansive forests and trees for burrows, warrens, and tunnels in the ground, and are more the type to bang rocks together until something happens, usually something impressive, such as a mechanical pixie that can actually fly, or a noisemaker that sounds like it's doing the fork in the garbage disposal. These are the extreme inventors that'll just fall deep into their work, spending hours, days, months, however long it takes to finally, through all their experience and research, prove that the world is indeed flat. Now, on the flip side, the more solemn and decrepit deep gnomes manage to defy all expectations in true gnomish fashion by managing to live in the Underdark without being raging dicks about it. Granted, deep gnomes, or swerve neblins, as they're called by people who hate the human mouth, are still about as underdark as gnomes can get, usually surviving by trying not to make enemies, and ignoring those looking for allies, because hey, the ally of my enemy is my enemy, am I right? And speaking of enemies, the humble gnome has an unfortunate ancient blood feud, with another equally small and ingenuative race, the cobalt, to explain why we have to go back in time just a little bit. See, like all other races, gnomes have their own plentiful pantheon packed with a plethora of patrons for them to peruse, all with extremely colorful and sometimes a little creepy names, from flandell steel skin, the god of metal and minecraft, to barricar cloak shadow, the god of illusion and deception, to calladurin smoothhands, the god of stupid names and bad touches, connecting them on a spiritual level to the swerve neblins. But on top of them all, the leader of the bunch was Garl Glittergold, the shining beacon of everything it means to be a gnome that serves as the beacon to unite them all. Long ago in the ancient land of the gods, good guy Garl noticed that the cobalts were being treated poorly by their draconic masters, and that one cobalt in particular, the god Kurtlemak, was being a crafty boy by delegating all of his work to a colony of gnomes that he had gotten his cobalt buddies to enslave. Glittergold thought, hey, that's not nice, and proceeded to dissuade Kurtlemak by being an unrepentant cock for an extensive period of time. Eventually, Kurtlemak decided, you know what, fuck it, just kill all the gnomes! To which Glittergold thought, hey, that's not nice, and mocked Kurtlemak into chasing him deep within a cave, all the while throwing jest and jab at the poor cobalt god. Eventually, after luring him far enough into the maze, Garl turned back to Kurtlemak, snapped his fingers, and disappeared in a cloud of glittering gold, but not before setting the entire cave system to collapse. Kurtlemak had just enough time to think, hey, that's not nice, before he was crushed beneath the rubble, trapped underground forevermore. To this day, cobalt still hold a garage against gnomes everywhere, and whenever the two races meet, those little lizard boys take every opportunity to remind the gnomes that it was, in fact, not nice. But now that we've got the history and lifestyle out of the way, I bet you're wondering what gnomes are capable of doing on the tabletop. Well, I'm glad you asked, disembodied voice in my head, because all gnomes start with a plus two to intelligence, a speed of 25 feet, a size of small, dark vision, the gnomish language, and advantage against mental magic saves. After that, the gnomes splits up into three paths. The forest gnome increases their dexterity by one, they can communicate with small beasts, and they can innately cast minor illusions. Rock gnomes increase their constitution by one, they get expertise in history checks related to any artificer related subjects, and they get the coolest goddamn ability in the entire book, tinker, which lets you make little clockwork doodads that play music, start fires, or just be neat little clockwork toys. Deep gnomes also increase their dexterity by one, they have a dark vision of 120 feet, they have advantage on stealth checks to hide in rocky terrain, and they get an extra language in the form of undercommon. To be fair, I think a lot of the reason why I see record low amounts of people playing gnomes is because it has disadvantages coming from every angle. Lower wise, a lot of people have a hard time conceptualizing what a gnome even represents, unlike elves, dwarves, or even halflings, which paint an immediate picture in your head as soon as you see them or hear about them, and mechanically, a plus two to intelligence benefits literally the wizard and that's it, so playing any other class puts you at a disadvantage. To the lore problem, I honestly just think it comes down to gnomes not being present in Lord of the Rings, meaning they haven't been absolutely plastered in every fantasy world this side of the universe, but I really think that we'll start seeing gnomes being played more often once the artificer makes its fated appearance, which might be sooner than we think, but that'll about do it. I hope you enjoyed this video, leave a like and comment if you did, subscribe if you want to be a cool dude, and maybe support me on Patreon so that I can slowly make my entire life of all-round D&D. Also, if you want to stay up to date on all of your avenues, I keep a link to my social media in the description below, but yeah, Davy out.