So how do you differentiate Gnomes in Halfings in your game, assuming both exist in your setting?

To put in perspective why Gnomes have such an idenitity crisis it's because back in the AD&D day races were pretty much a classes so all dwarves had to be hardy warriors and all halflings had to be sneaky thieves, Gnomes were incorporated to be the magic wielding manlets who filled in the more mystical aspect that dwarves and halflings couldn't because of crunch. Now that races are independent of class they have completely lost any reason to exist and they are left as some weird indefinite amalgam of dwarves,halflings and goblins.

I've always thought they should be replaced with some kind of pixie or something. PF and I think 5e already give them fey trappings. Just go whole hog and make them full on faeries.

>descended from the fey

That's the gimmick of elves already, not to mention that to add insult to injury halflings are also said to decend from fey in some accounts so that's another poorly conceived way of differentiating them.

But then they would not be a race anymore, they become variety of brownies, pixies, knockers and other varied assort of fey that resemble comically sized humans.

In addition to the Fey/Mortal distinction, I've been tilting towards portraying them along a class divide. The Gnomes are essentially protestant/middle class - the Tolkien vision of a race obsessed with comfortable and idylic domesticity, fundamentally conservative, and tied to whatever space they settled in the liminal space between the Otherworld and Mortal Realm, be it a obscured rocky defile, the roots of some great old tree, or a suitably clandestine crevasse in the Underdark.

Halflings are infinitely more proletarian. A perrmanent subaltern race that gathers in the nooks and crannies of larger species settlements, or is permanently displaced, wandering the wilderness in caravans. This isn't to say they don't have a vibrant culture, but people tend to view them like the Romani or the Irish. Bit un-PC, but I figured your given group of rootless murderhobos might have some affinity for them since it isn't Ledgers & High Tea, after all.

Gnomes are culture leeches that always seem to be underfoot when they're least welcome. Halflings are short farmers and cheap labor.

The Fey is far ranging, they can both be descended from Fey.

I also unironically enjoy how Eberron portrays both. The dinosaur-riding Halfling are fine, since it's a half-fresh inflection on your given Dungeon Dog Hobbit.

But the real money's with the Gnomes. The idea of a bunch of seemingly genial burghers structuring their society around the fact that they all have dirt on each other is great. There's a fantastic Columbo/Morse-style procedural to be had about trying to untangle which one of the infinitude of unspoken grievances, faux-pas, and Bougie deviencies drove a one of those pint-sized Stepford fuckers to murder.

Gnomes are sluts in my settings

I guess I treat gnomes like the gnomes in Warcraft and halflings like hobbits. In that Sense, halflings are a lot more grounded, traditional, and sensible, and concerned with application, while gnomes are way more experimental, adventurous, and wild, and more concerned with the theoretical.

It’s important to create psychological generalities while avoiding occupational ones. Even humans have similar psychology despite being as diverse as, well, humans. It’s also important to detach races from one another so that X race isn’t just a short version of Y race, though I’m certainly guilty of this myself.

Agreed. I want to play a game where 'Gnome' is a subtype of a 'fae' race, alongside things like 'Pixie,' 'Knocker,' and everything else that mentioned.

Maybe 'the small fae' or something. Give them a more unique niche than 'elf-halflings.'

4e made lots of races fey.

That was OD&D/Basic, AD&D introduced race and class as distinct.

Couldn't those all be the same race, just one with a lot of variation within it?

Halflings are more like humans, gnomes are more like fairies.

Yes and it was pretty shitty IMO, I'd rather not equate fey to "races".

It's the opposite for me. Halflings have a sky-high safety and comfort drive, and nearly no concept of personal space, at least with their own kind. You get two tired halflings together, and they'll cuddle. You get five tired halfings together, and you get a big pile of halflings where everyone insists they're the littlest spoon.

Elves and Dwarves jape about how humans are King Slut of THOT mountain, but it's mostly because all three are kind of uncomfortable about ridiculous amounts of competely casual sex halflings end up having.

Meanwhile, gnomes are sleeping in separate beds celebrating the anniversary of their wedding day with a chaste closed-mouth kiss.

>Couldn't those all be the same race, just one with a lot of variation within it?

Sure why not, I think that would make them more boring and ultimately defeat the purpose of differentiating gnomes but that's just my opinion.

How tf do they reproduce?

Very carefully.

How would having a greater variety of characters you could play as a member of a race make it more boring?

Any creature you give to your players the agency to control must be reduced to a gameplay optimized statblock, I wouldn't let them play brownies because I don't want brownies to become more boring for the sake of throwing a bone at gnomes.

So a Hafling/Gnome couple would basically be Dharma and Greg?

But in all seriousness, Gnomes have the benefit of inherent magic in their blood and culture. They speak the old language of the wood, and the wise women of their society can commune with the ancient fey that consider their domain to be fertility and motherhood. Almost no gnome pregnancy carries the threat of miscarriage, maternal fatality, or infant death. So they can reasonably maintain their population at a replacement level with a minimal libido.

Meanwhile, Halflings society developed in a cave somewhere, surrounded by terrifying apex predators. They quickly glommed onto pack hunting and other tier-one survival strategies, but by the time their society managed to produce shamans or fire-speakers or whatever that could at least approach what the elves and gnomes took as read, they'd settled biologically on the rabbit method of population continuity.

Gnomes are taller than Halflings and live to the east, with a culture based largely around success equally never having to work again, which leads them towards slavery and machinery. Most Gnomes retire as soon as they can settle down, and you'll likely never meet the same slaver twice for that reason. They live underneath the desert in vast tunnel cities consisting of metal and wire. Gnomes are unplayable because the way to the east is undiscovered as of the current campaign.
Halflings are renamed Earthlings because they are the most in tune with the physical plane (a.k.a. they have literally no spiritual presence on other planes, things in the interstitial Spirit World cannot affect them without fully manifesting). They're shorter than Gnomes and just taller than Kobolds, and weight very little. If they take off their equipment and heavy boots (if they're wearing any) there are very few traps they would set off. Earthlings are easy going and most ultimately want to settle down and live a simple, rustic life at some point (not unlike Gnomes).
Gnomes can use magic, but rarely do so, whereas Earthlings literally cannot cast magic in any form.

Halfling and gnomes are redundant in the same way having humans and elves are redundant.