The Gnomes
Maximum Ablilty Scores-
90
Gnomes are welcome everywhere as technicians, alchemicsts, 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're 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 3 to 3 1/2 feet tall and weigh 40 to 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 40, and they live about 350 years, though some can live almost 500 years.
Relations:
Gnomes get along well with dwarves, who share their love of precious objects, their curiosity about mechanical devices, and their hatred of goblins and giants. They enjoy the company of halflings, especially those who are easygoing enough to put up with pranks and jests. Most gnomes are a litle suspicious of the taller races - humans, elves, half-elves, and half-orcs - but they are rarely hostile or malicious.
Language:
The Gnome language, which uses te 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.
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 homeclan, an adventuring gnome may be seen as a vagabond or even something of a traitor (for abondoning clan responsibilities).
