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.

This is incorrect. (High) Elves are consistently about the 4th most popular race, and that is consistent at all ranks.

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.

This is incorrect. Maces, flails, and most whips together outnumber iron/mithril by a clear margin. There's also a few blunt polearms around, and rare examples from other weapon categories. Also, the recent limiting changes were the result of us accounting for object material, and high-end iron/mithril numbers have come down considerably.

That said, I still see no reason to remove any of the vulns mentioned. They're good balancers on popular races that do well as a number of classes.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com