Are there any gnome races with no Str penalty?

[Zelkon]

I'm trying to play a Gish in an upcoming game and I was hoping to not have a Str penalty. Gnome is required.

[Techsmart]

Looking at my books, I don't see any gnome variants that have a different penalty. The Primary reason for the Strength penalty is due to them being small sized, moreso than the race itself.

[rockdeworld]

No, sorry. These are all the gnomes:
Gnomes
Rock Gnome: -2 Str +2 Con, small, 20 ft., speak with animals 1/day (Cha 10 or better dancing lights, ghost sound, prestidigitation 1/day), bard, humanoid (gnome), players handbook pg.16
Air Gnome: +2 Dex -2 Str, small, 20 ft., speak with animals 1/day (Cha 10 or better dancing lights, ghost sound, prestidigitation 1/day), bard, humanoid (gnome), unearthed arcana pg.16
Aquatic Gnome: -2 Str +2 Con, medium, 20 ft. (swim 20 ft)., speak with animals 1/day (Cha 10 or better dancing lights, ghost sound, prestidigitation 1/day), bard, humanoid (gnome, aquatic), unearthed arcana pg.7
Arctic Gnome: -2 Str +2 Con, small, 20 ft., speak with animals 1/day (Cha 10 or better dancing lights, ghost sound, prestidigitation 1/day), bard, humanoid (gnome), unearthed arcana pg.9
Desert Gnome: -2 Str +2 Con, small, 20 ft., speak with animals 1/day (Cha 10 or better dancing lights, ghost sound, prestidigitation 1/day), bard, humanoid (gnome), unearthed arcana pg.12
Forest Gnome: -2 Str +2 Con, Small, 20 ft., pass without trace (su), (Cha 10 or better dancing lights, ghost sound, prestidigitation 1/day), bard, humanoid (gnome), monster manual pg.132
Ice Gnome: -2 Str +2 Con, small, 20 ft., speak with animals 1/day (Cha 10 or better dancing lights, prestidigitation, ray of frost 1/day), bard, humanoid (gnome), frostburn pg.35
Jungle Gnome: -2 Str +2 Con, small, 20 ft., speak with animals 1/day (Cha 10 or better dancing lights, ghost sound, prestidigitation 1/day), bard, humanoid (gnome), unearthed arcana pg.14
Lesser Deep Gnome: +2 Dex -2 Str, small, 20 ft., resistance, daze, lullaby 1/day, rogue, humanoid (gnome), player’s guide to faerun pg.191
Mad Gnome: +2 Dex -2 Str , small, 20 ft., special, dragonlance campaign setting pg.27
Stonehunter Gnome: -2 Str +2 Con, small, 20 ft., speak with animals 1/day (Cha 10 or better dancing lights, ghost sound, prestidigitation 1/day), ranger, humanoid (gnome, dragonblood), dragon magic pg.9
Tinker Gnome: +2 Dex +2 Int -2 Str -2 Wis, small, 20 ft., special, dragonlance campaign setting pg.27
Wavecrest Gnome: -2 Str +2 Con, small, 20 ft, speak w/animals 1/day (Cha 10 or better, dancing lights, know direction, prestidigitation), bard, humanoid(gnome), stormwrack pg.44
Whisper Gnome: -2 Str +2 Dex +2 Con -2 Cha, small, 30 ft., silence 1/day (Cha 10 or better ghost sound, mage hand, message 1/day), rogue, humanoid (gnome), races of stone pg.96

Source: http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19546874/Master_Player_Race_List_Version_2.0

OTOH, you could be a cool roguelike gish with any of those races, but especially whisper gnome. I just hope you're not going for gnome giantslayer.

[Flickerdart]

Can you fit three levels of Stoneblessed into your build? You can finish it by level 6, so it won't get in the way of PrC plans much, and will make you count as a Gnome.

[Morbis Meh]

I'm trying to play a Gish in an upcoming game and I was hoping to not have a Str penalty. Gnome is required.

Have you thought of doing a whisper gnome sword sage focusing on dex (yay shadow hand!) then going into jade phoenix mage? This is a very viable way to get dex to damage whilst still gishing it up!

[Icewraith]

Half dragon (or other +str template).

Half dragon gnome gets +6 to str.

Edit: Gish with level adjustment might suck a bit. This is probably a better option for a gestalt game, where the DM lets you take the LA on one side of your progression.

[KillingAScarab]

Looking at my books, I don't see any gnome variants that have a different penalty. The Primary reason for the Strength penalty is due to them being small sized, moreso than the race itself.A long time ago I came across an argument that the strength penalty for a small sized race was unnecessary for a playable race, since they already get 3/4 carrying capacity. While this breaks the way the bonuses and penalties to creature size works, it also went on to say that gnomes specifically were worse off for this, since a constitution bonus did not offset a strength penalty (http://rpg-crank.livejournal.com/534.html), and that part I agreed with at the time. No idea how I feel now.

More relevant to the topic, the author also wrote a homebrew gnome (http://rpg-crank.livejournal.com/868.html) (well, more like a list of changes) with a wisdom penalty and an intelligence bonus (or just no bonuses or penalties), among other changes in line with their view on the official gnome not quite matching the fluff, even in 3.5.

[Greenish]

A long time ago I came across an argument that the strength penalty for a small sized race was unnecessary for a playable race, since they already get 3/4 carrying capacity.Well, the small races have 3/4 carrying capacity, but quite a lot of their gear only weighs 1/2 of what medium would.

[Phelix-Mu]

No, sorry. These are all the gnomes:


Hmm, that seems to actually be a list of all +0 LA gnomes. It's missing both the actual deep gnome, and the fire gnome from Planar Handbook...also chaos gnome from Races of Stone.

None of these other choices fix the OP's str penalty problem, though.

[Venusaur]

A long time ago I came across an argument that the strength penalty for a small sized race was unnecessary for a playable race, since they already get 3/4 carrying capacity. While this breaks the way the bonuses and penalties to creature size works, it also went on to say that gnomes specifically were worse off for this, since a constitution bonus did not offset a strength penalty (http://rpg-crank.livejournal.com/534.html), and that part I agreed with at the time. No idea how I feel now.

What? +Con -Str is really good for any caster or rogue or basically anyone not playing a fighter type.

[Namfuak]

What? +Con -Str is really good for any caster or rogue or basically anyone not playing a fighter type.

Funny enough, the blog post points out a section in the DMG that says losing strength for con is not worth it, but the other way around is fine. Shows you how well they understood their game (also see half-orcs).

[Phelix-Mu]

What? +Con -Str is really good for any caster or rogue or basically anyone not playing a fighter type.

Especially when combined with the benefits of small size. I would argue that a small sized rogue, or similar sneaky class, is much better than a medium sneaky person at low levels. Anyone that complains about a boost to Con is silly.

Along the same lines, I've heard (and accepted) a good argument that creatures of the size described for halflings and gnomes in the PHB could not have the range of Str scores indicated for those races, due to mechanical limits like leverage, and the general limits of being the size of a toddler.

Without going into too much detail, I bought the argument and summarily raised the height of all the shorter demihuman races by 6-8", to maintain the relative height difference. Thus, now elves are only moderately shorter than humans, dwarves are short by Medium standards, and halflings and gnomes exist at the top of Small, instead of down near pixies. While this doesn't fix the mechanics problem, it can boost verisimilitude (in my mind), as no one will be playing characters that are small by human child standards.

[Greenish]

Especially when combined with the benefits of small size. I would argue that a small sized rogue, or similar sneaky class, is much better than a medium sneaky person at low levels.Whisper gnomes have pretty much cornered that market, yeah

[rockdeworld]

Hmm, that seems to actually be a list of all +0 LA gnomes. It's missing both the actual deep gnome, and the fire gnome from Planar Handbook...also chaos gnome from Races of Stone.
True, that's just LA+0 gnomes.

[KillingAScarab]

What? +Con -Str is really good for any caster or rogue or basically anyone not playing a fighter type.A portion of the argument was that the racial qualities given to gnomes weren't flexible enough. The bonus to illusion DCs could only be used by a few classes. Anyway, this was all well before JaronK's single-class tiers, or years and years of 3.5 splat books and homebrew. I think maybe two of the "Complete" books were out.


Funny enough, the blog post points out a section in the DMG that says losing strength for con is not worth it, but the other way around is fine. Shows you how well they understood their game (also see half-orcs).This reminds me of how Masters of the Wild recommended half-orc druids, because they didn't have a penalty to their wisdom score. It was the book that introduced the shifter prestige class and the "opposable" magic weapon quality, yet they couldn't see that good mental attributes were more valuable when building around wild shape. It was firmly in splat territory, though.