Tieflings and/or aasimars outside of Planescape

Tieflings are a great way to make player backstory relevant and can either be played for humor or very seriously. If you go by the book they're really not that edgy.

My go-to Warlock character great-great-great-great-grandfather was a legendary bard, the source of tiefling's fiendish heritage is a doting grandfather/mother figure that was overjoyed when they were asked to make a pact. Occasionally the party encounters other descendants who are invariably some weird-ass templated shit because grandaddy was a freak.

Or you can play it straight and have the PC dealing with the fallout of their ancestor's Faustian bargain, and despite wanting nothing to do with planar bullshit they're hounded and tempted by merciless evils after their soul

It's funny how we have threads about gnomes all the time and nothing ever sticks. It's been decades of D&D and gnomes are still nebulous in traits and characters and depend heavily on their setting.

It's funny that gnomes are brought up in a thread about tieflings when the latter famously replaced them as a core race in 4e.

I can't believe this fucking video was ten years ago
youtube.com/watch?v=4UqFPujRZWo

Why are they fighting Darkseid?

Thanks.
This is good advice.

For one or several of the following:
1: Shits
2: Giggles
3: Money
4: XP

Now that you mention in, in all my years, having played (A)D&D since 1982 I have yet to see anyone voluntarily playing a gnome.

I've had plenty of fun with Tiefling Party members. Hell, the best Pyro-mancer/-maniac character I've played with was a Tiefling, although he played that off far less destructive and more light-hearted than you'd think.
Another Tiefling was the straight man of our group. Factotum character who was more studious and intellectual. Unfortunately, that was when we had our EdgeLady in the group, Female Rogue Assassin with a Rabdumb Homicidal Sociopath for a personality. She got him killed and we had to reincarnate him as a female goblin(No, this didn't enter Magical Realm Territory, the Female Goblin was "Wort, the Raidmother"-tier hideous) He was a pretty good sport for having been killed.
Also Skeletons should be a core race.

Also very little R34 on aasimars or gnomes.

Core-race skeletons should be dapper and fancy.

Thpppp, you're no fun. Just because you haven't found a way to distinguish them from dwarves or halflings doesn't mean the rest of us are creatively stunted.

They HAVE a shtick, that even crosses multiple settings and multiple franchises, it's just that no one on Veeky Forums wants to actually accept it because it doesn't fit into their Tolkienesque pseudo-early/mid Medieval fantasy mindset.

They're tinkerers, artificers, and builders. They are contrasted against dwarves by being innovative and interested more in machinery and gadgets, by being optimistic rather than dour, and by being innovative and progressive rather than conservative or even regressive. They're contrasted against halflings by having nothing in common with them other than the height.

Wouldn't Skeletons be way overpowered? In 5e right now with bounded accuracy having a race that has such a huge bonus to strength and AC seems broken. You could play the weakest skeleton but after carrying around all that useless flesh for so long he's probably str 20.

>hey're tinkerers, artificers, and builders

I seem to recall that becoming a thing only after Dragonlance.

Before that they were pretty much illusionists and that's all they were.

>They're tinkerers, artificers, and builders. T
This isn't outside of Warcraft, dragon lance and forgotten realms.

People hate Gnomes because their annoying pieces of shit, and people don't dislike them because tinkering because of the interfering with that mindset. If anything gnomes fucking ENFORCE IT by sequestering anything technological behind a race of retarded silly looking midgets who don't have any reason to exist. What's more they don't have any fucking racial features that lend themselves to being tinkers usually beyond being "kinda smart".

Agreed

Don't forget the massive bonus to INT. Without a brain he doesn't have all those hormones and chemicals holding him back from thinking with perfect clarity.

>Tinkerers.

It's too narrow. Dwarves, are crafters, yes, but they are also thought and resilient fighters, have strong values, have a well-defined position as mountain people etc. Gnomes are tinkerers at best and weirdos at worst, nothing more.

Gnomes and Halfings shouldn't be a thing at all in my opinion. Dark Sun is the only other setting I've seen where halfings are kind of interesting. Outside of that they need to stay the fuck in lord of the rings.

Harshly phrased but valid points.

I always felt they came across as halflings with a different logo, so to speak.

>This isn't outside of Warcraft, dragon lance and forgotten realms.

So we're just casually ignoring my examples of Eberron, Majesty, and Magic, then? Plus probably some other examples I could go digging for. I do below a bit - Warhammer, GURPS, Urban Arcana...

> who don't have any reason to exist

I could just as easily say the same thing about fine craftsmanship and dwarves; or high magic and elves. None of the fantasy races in and of themselves have a reason to exist; it's up to the DM to integrate them into his world, if he wants to include them.

Yeah, sure, if you want to go back to original D&D. But that's 40 or so years ago. Ever since Dragonlance, gnomes have evolved into a tinkerer role in the general mindset of gamers. Warcraft isn't solely responisble for this - Majesty predates World of Warcraft by four years (and for that matter, Warcraft III by two years).

Urban Arcana, the d20 Modern campaign setting, also embraced the "scientific" route of gnomes. GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, too. Gnomes also used to exist in Warhammer Fantasy and were basically dwarves without the warrior aspect. The point is, Dragonlance's Tinker Gnomes angle has caught on and given them their shtick outside of being forest-dwelling illusionists.

You just don't want to embrace it.

>They're tinkerers, artificers, and builders.

That's far too narrow and also ignores how gnomes are also illusionists and deceivers.

>Yeah, sure, if you want to go back to original D&D. But that's 40 or so years ago

I am pretty old, yeah.

Shh! /pol/ might hear you.

>Eberron
A clusterfuck that jams everything in D&D that has ever been in the game into it's setting as part of it's ethos.
>Majesty
A frankly mediocre series of games that exists as a deliberate parody of fantasy tropes.
>Magic
Like Eberron, has pretty much everything under the fucking sun anyway.
>I could just as easily say the same thing about fine craftsmanship and dwarves; or high magic and elves.
Let me put it like this. Gnomes bring nothing particularly interesting to the setting like the honor codes of dwarves or the long lives of elves generally speaking. Much like Halfings(who have a similar issue in that they do not fucking work as a race outside of LOTR, Gnomes don't work at all) they bring nothing to the table uniquely in their most common appearance. If anything they take interesting things away by insuring nothing technological in the setting will actually be useful and all that cool stuff will amount to dumb jokes. Dwarves are good at making stuff, but that's not all they have going for them in terms of plot potential. Elves are good at magic/archery whatever, that's not all they have going for them in terms of narrative. Orcs are good at fighting, but that's not all they have in terms of narrative. Golarion gnomes come close, because they have that whole "our race may not just be fey surveillance devices to spy on mortals" and the whole bleaching thing.

What setting has gnomes, and these gnomes are anything more than a fucking after thought in the worldbuilding as a quirky racial option for the adorable scamp everyone loves?

Kobold master race

Gas the gnomes
Race war now.

Interestingly enough Arcanum Gnomes are kinda interesting in that they're basically /pol/ Jewish conspiracies given life. Right down to forced interracial breeding facilities. They still suffer from the issue in that outside of Tarant's bullshit, gnomes in Arcanum still had little going for them.

Yeah, the Ogre Island-side quest was kinda dark.

>Tinkerer midgets
>Illusionist midgets
Both are pretty shitty design spaces to have, to be honest.

Smart skeletons without hormones, haha good one user
>Furiously scribbles in campaign journal

Because they will die for Darkseid