From what you're saying there's an easy way for my drow to avoid that mithril wrath wielding giant who burns my ass to a cinder in 2 rounds? Please tell me what it is!

I'm sure the elves would love to hear how to avoid my iron as well.

You remove that big drawback from Gnomes, then someone better start rethinking mith/iron vulns. Right now that's why you hardly ever see more than two elves on at a time. Drows? Yea, you see them more of them but some people are just inherently evil and put up with the added pain.

Trust me, every single newbie has a mith or iron weapon and there's a lot more of those type weapons lying around than there are blunts.

Gnomes are compensated for thier vuln with a huge wisdom and more pracs than they can count. You may die to that blunt but think how many times that stupid mace wielding giant can gain convert, instead, he's doing gain reverts just so he can learn a blunt. Elves and Drow have that god-like int so they can learn things faster and therefore gain a few extra pracs from that.

It's newtonian physics at work and I like it that way.