I would argue that for most purposes, svirf is better. Stone skin, detect invis, different mage bonuses and the gnome gets a whole wad of nothing on top of the larger xp penalty. For warriors it's not even close, for example, and I bet there aren't many worse options for ranger and thief. Realistically, only shapeshifters play them for hp and because they don't care about stats and vuln, which seems dull.

Santa Zulg's options:

1) Remove/reduce to 100 xp penalty
2) Give sexy inherent (comparable to stone skin)
3) Give sexy resist
4) Combination of the above, maybe getting rid of shapeshifter as an option. Side benefit: more variety to shapeshifters.
5) Do nothing and ignore
6) File for later

Personally, I feel you can achieve a lot pretty fast by going with 1, 2 and 3 - not much effort for much greater player options.

>I would argue that for most purposes, svirf is better.

It's not always about "better"

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

nt

I never choose gnome for anything but Healer or Shapeshifter, because they are useless for everything else.

Useless != optimal

They make perfectly good Transmuters/Invokers/Conjies. In fact, in some respects they are better than Elves as their wisdom confers a superior health pool. Sure, your transmuter wont spin/malleability dodge as well as an elf/drow/arial, but that means you will need to take a page out of the svirf book and go for the hardening/petrify/stone skin route, assuming you are ready to eat the drawbacks.

Gnome warrior requires a fairly specific build as 18 str/20 dex doesnt really confer impressive defenses, but warrior HP + bonus trains from wisdom will help you stay in combat long enough for STSF to start stacking to compensate (Or just go autumn harvest). You'll probably want to grab some light damage reduction to stretch out your generous health pool a little longer.