Mystara3E: Race: Earth Gnome

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Earth Gnome Racial Details
Earth Gnome Traits
Earth Gnome Vital Statistics

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Earth Gnome Racial Details

PRODUCT IDENTITY NOTICE

The Mystaran Wood Elf Racial Details included herein are Product Identity belonging to Wizards of the Coast.

The details were generated by merging appropriate details about the elven race from the following 3E and 0E resources:

Primary Source Material:

Major Sources:
- Dungeons & Dragons: Player's Handbook: Core Rulebook I [PHB]
- Top Ballista [PC2]
Minor Sources:
- Dungeons & Dragons: Dungeon Master's Guide: Core Rulebook II [DMG]
- The Grand Duchy of Karameikos [GAZ1]
- The Dwarves of Rockhome [GAZ6]
- The Wrath of the Immortals [WotI]
- The Republic of Darokin [GAZ11]
- Mystaran Almanac: 1010 [AC1010]

Sources of Lore:
(major) PHB, PC2
(minor) DMG, GAZ1, GAZ6, WotI, AC1010

ystaran Earth Gnomes are welcome everywhere as technicians, alchemists, and inventors. Despite the demand for their skills, most gnomes prefer to remain among their own kind, living in comfortable burrows beneath rolling, wooded hills where animals abound but hunting is a very bad idea.

Personality: Gnomes adore animals, beautiful gems, and jokes of all kinds. Gnomes have a great sense of humor, and while they love puns, jokes, and games, they relish tricks - the more intricate the better. Fortunately, they apply the same dedication to more practical arts, such as engineering, as they do to their pranks.

Gnomes are inquisitive. They love to find things out by personal experience. At times they are even reckless. Their curiosity makes them skilled engineers, since they are always trying new ways to build things. Sometimes a gnome pulls a prank just to see how the people involved will react.

Physical Description: Gnomes stand about 3 1/2 feet tall and weigh about 45 pounds. Their skin ranges from dark tan to woody brown, their hair is fair, and their eyes can be any shade of blue. Gnome males prefer short, carefully trimmed beards. Gnomes generally wear leather or earth tones, and they decorate their clothes with intricate stitching or fine jewelry. Gnomes reach adulthood at about age 20, and they live about 100 years, though some can live almost 200 years.

Relations: Gnomes have a particular affinity with Dwarves, believing themselves to be related, and often living and working together with them. They share the Dwarves' love of precious objects, their curiosity about mechanical devices, and their hatred of goblins and giants. As a curious and jolly folk, Gnomes enjoy visiting strange and exotic places and people and playing exotic practical jokes on them. This means that, while Gnomes, are friendly with most races, most races may find them a little irritating!

Alignment: Gnomes are most often good. Those who tend toward law are sages, engineers, researchers, scholars, investigators, or consultants. Those who tend toward chaos are tricksters, wanderers, or fanciful jewelers. Gnomes are goodhearted, and even the tricksters among them are more playful than vicious. Luckily, evil gnomes are as rare as they are frightening.

Gnome Lands: Gnomes make their homes in hilly, wooded lands. They live underground but get more fresh air than dwarves do, enjoying the natural, living world on the surface whenever they can. Gnomes are a clannish folk, living and working in complex burrows chock full of densely packed chambers connected by twisting passageways. Not much given to shouting, they often use an extensive system of ceiling-wires and message-holding cups to send communications. Their burrows are well hidden by clever construction and expertly defended by ingenious mechanical devices. Those who come to visit and are welcome are ushered into the bright, warm burrows. Those who are not welcome never find the burrows in the first place.

Gnomes who settle in human lands are commonly gemcutters, mechanics or sages.

Major concentrations of Gnomes in Mystara can be found living amongst the dwarves of Rockhome, while Karameikos also has several communities of gnomes living in its more distant, hillier regions (mostly in the Gnome stronghold of Highforge).

Religion: The chief Mystaran immortal of the gnomes is Garal Glitterlode (also known as Garl Glittergold). It is common belief that Garal created the Mystaran gnome race based on suggestions from Kagyar, the creator of the dwarves. Garal's clerics teach that gnomes are to cherish and support their communities. Pranks, for example, are seen as ways to lighten the spirits and to keep gnomes humble, not ways for pranksters to triumph over those they trick.

Language: All Mystaran gnomes and gnome subraces speak a single common gnome language. Slight differences in dialect reveal the origin of the speaker but do not interfere with mutual understanding.

The gnomish language, which uses the dwarven script, is renowned for its technical treatises and its catalogs of knowledge of the natural world. Human herbalists, naturalists, and engineers commonly learn gnome in order to read the best books on their topics of study.

Names: Most Mystaran gnomes have a given name and a clan name. In general, gnome names are two-syllables, similar to the Celtic and Norse naming traditions of our own world.

Gnome clan names are combinations of common Gnome words, and gnomes always translate them into Common when in human lands (or into Elven when in elven lands, and so on).

Common Given Names: Branwys, Dorfus, Erwys, Glimreen, Gundal, Marrak.

Major Clan Names: Karameikos: Hilltopper; Serraine: Firehand, Goldhand, Lodestar, Skyratchet, Stormkinder.

Adventurers: Gnomes are curious and impulsive. They may take up adventuring as a way to see the world or for the love of exploring. Lawful Gnomes may adventure to set things right and to protect the innocent, demonstrating the same sense of duty toward society as a whole that gnomes generally exhibit toward their own enclaves. As lovers of gems and other fine items, some gnomes take to adventuring as a quick, if dangerous, path to wealth. Depending on his relations to his home clan, an adventuring gnome may be seen as a vagabond or even something of a traitor (for abandoning clan responsibilities).

Earth Gnome Racial Details last updated: March 20, 2002 (version 1.1)

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Earth Gnome Racial Traits

Earth gnome characters have the following racial traits:

Regions: (The Known World) Earth gnomes do not have a country they call their own and they are much less common than the other core races throughout this region of Mystara. Major concentrations of Gnomes can be found amongst the dwarves of Rockhome, and there are several gnomish communities in the hillier regions of the midlands of Karameikos, most notably the gnome stronghold of Highforge. Gnomes who are not from one of these larger communities are generally from the larger, more cosmopolitan areas, where gemcutters, mechanics or sages are in high demand. The most common countries an adventuring Gnome could be from include: Darokin (esp. Darokin City, Athenos, Selenica); Karameikos (esp. Highforge, Specularum); Ierendi (esp. Ierendi City); Minrothad (esp. Minrothad City); Rockhome and Thyatis (esp. Thyatis City);
Ability Modifiers: +2 Constitution, -2 Strength.
Size and Speed: Small size; Earth gnome base speed is 20 ft.
Low-light Vision: Earth gnomes can see twice as far as a human in starlight, moonlight, torchlight, and similar conditions of poor illumination. They retain the ability to distinguish color and detail under these conditions.
Saving Throw Bonus: +1 racial bonus on saving throws against earth-based spells and attacks, including acid and petrifaction.
Stonecunning: Stonecunning grants earth gnomes a +2 racial bonus on checks to notice unusual stonework, such as sliding walls, stonework traps, new construction (even when built to match the old), unsafe stone surfaces, shaky stone ceilings, and the like. Something that isn't stone but that is disguised as stone also counts as unusual stonework. An earth gnome who merely comes within 10 feet of unusual stonework can make a check as if he were actively searching, and an earth gnome can use the Search skill to find stonework traps as a rogue can. An earth gnome can also intuit depth, sensing his approximate depth underground as naturally as a human can sense which way is up. Earth gnomes have a sixth sense about stonework, an innate ability that they, like their Rockhome Dwarf cousins (with whom they share much in common), get plenty of opportunity to practice and hone in their underground homes.
Stone and Metal Craft: +2 racial bonus on Craft checks that are related to stone or metal; +2 racial bonus on Appraise checks that are related to stone or metal items: Earth gnomes share the Dwarves' particular affinity to stone and metalwork.
Invention: +1 racial bonus on Craft checks that are related to machinery and works of Engineering; +2 racial bonus on Alchemy checks: earth gnomes love to tinker and create all kinds of wonderful inventions involving strange mechanism and frequently explosive chemical reactions.
Traditional Enemies: +1 racial bonus to attack rolls against kobolds and goblinoids (goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears); +4 dodge bonus against giants: earth gnomes battle these creatures frequently and practice special techniques for fighting or avoiding them.
Automatic Languages: Local Regional Language, Local Common (if different from Local Regional Language) and Gnome.
Bonus Languages: Draconic, Dwarven, Elven, Giant, Local Regional and Local Goblinoid languages. (Exact list of available bonus languages varies with region.) Earth gnomes deal more with elves and dwarves than elves and dwarves deal with one another, and they learn the languages of their enemies (kobolds, giants, goblins and orcs) as well.
Speak with Burrowing Creatures: Once per day, an earth gnome can use speak with animals as a spell-like ability to speak with a burrowing mammal (a badger, fox, rabbit etc.). This ability is innate to earth gnomes. It has a duration of 1 minute (the earth gnome is considered a 1^st-level caster when he uses this ability, regardless of his actual level). See the speak with animals spell description in Chapter 11: Spells of the Player's Handbook.
Favored Class: Rogue. A multiclass earth gnome's rogue class does not count when determining whether he suffers an XP penalty (see "Experience for Multiclass Characters" in Chapter 3: Classes of the Player's Handbook).

Earth Gnome Racial Traits updated: July 04, 2003 (version 2.0)

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Earth Gnome Vital Statistics

Mystaran earth gnomes mature at a faster rate than the standard gnome race as defined in Chapter 2: Races of the Player's Handbook [PHB], and their average height is also several inches taller.

Add the information for standard gnomes to Tables 6-4, 6-5 and 6-6 of the Player's Handbook [PHB]:

Table 6-4: (modifications) Random Starting Ages
                                      Brd      Clr
                             Brb      Ftr      Drd
                             Rog      Pal      Mnk
Race           Adulthood     Sor      Rgr      Wiz
Gnome, earth   20 years      +2d4     +3d6     +4d6

Table 6-5: (modifications) Aging Effects
               Middle                                 Maximum
Race           Age          Old          Venerable    Age
Gnome, earth   50 years     75 years     100 years    +5d20 years

Table 6-6: (modifications) Random Height and Weight
                      Base    Height         Base     Weight
Race                  Height  Modifier       Weight   Modifier
Gnome, earth, man     3'0"    +2d6           40 lb.   x 1 lb.
Gnome, earth, woman   2'10"   +2d6           35 lb.   x 1 lb.

Earth Gnome Vital Statistics updated: July 11, 2003 (version 1.1)

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Race: Mystaran Earth Gnome

Earth Gnome Racial Details

Earth Gnome Racial Traits

Earth Gnome Vital Statistics