Gnome

The Ingenious

The diminutive gnomes of Deus Augustus are energetic and joyful creatures, curious and easily delighted by the many wonders of the world. Driven by a hereditary curiosity bordering on obsession, the gnomes have fused magic and technology in ways other races do not care to match. While gnomes often live in large families within the bustling burrows and warrens in which they tend to dwell, each typically walks their own path except where collaboration or pooled resources are required.

Features

Your gnome character has certain characteristics in common with all other gnomes.
Ability Score Increase. Your Intelligence score increases by 2.
Appearance. The appearance of gnomes reflects their personalities; generally unkempt except where they focus. For example, a male gnome may have wild hair and a very tightly maintained beard, or a female gnome may be paint and dirt-splattered except for her immaculate overalls. Hill and rock gnomes have pale skin and coppery hair, while forest gnomes have more earthy tones and darker hair colors. Both types of gnomes usually have big green eyes flecked with gold. It is quite normal, however, for all gnomes to dye their hair various colors.
Age. Gnomes mature at roughly half the rate of humans, and live about twice as long.
Alignment. Gnomes tend toward a chaotic temperament, and tend to follow their impulses and obsessions. This chaotic temperament tends to make gnome society quite disorderly by the standards of other sentient races, following a rhythm few but the gnomes truly understand. The gnomish cities of Brightburrow and Sputterspew are two sides of this coin; Brightburrow is a place of one-of-a-kind marriages of technology and nature, where clockwork and tree weave a comfortable and safe place for the exploration of ideas. The city of Sputterspew, however, finds engineering and science perpendicular to the natural order, and strange, awful, amazing discoveries are made every day at unspeakable moral prices.
Size. Gnomes are between 3 and 4 feet tall and average about 40 pounds. Your size is Small.
Speed. Your base walking speed is 25 feet.
Darkvision. Accustomed to life underground, you have superior vision in dark and dim conditions. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can’t discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.
Gnome Cunning. You have advantage on all Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma saving throws against magic.
Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and Gnomish. The Gnomish language, which uses the Dwarvish script, is renowned for its technical treatises and its catalogs of knowledge about the natural world.

Variants

Standard Gnome

Standard gnomes are hardy and inventive, as described above.
Ability Score Increase. Your Constitution score increases by 1.
Artificer’s Lore. Whenever you make an Intelligence (History) check related to magic items, alchemical objects, or technological devices, you can add twice your proficiency bonus, instead of any proficiency bonus you normally apply.
Tinker. You have proficiency with artisan’s tools (tinker’s tools). Using those tools, you can spend 1 hour and 10 gp worth of materials to construct a Tiny clockwork device (AC 5, 1 hp). The device ceases to function after 24 hours (unless you spend 1 hour repairing it to keep the device functioning), or when you use your action to dismantle it; at that time, you can reclaim the materials used to create it. You can have up to three such devices active at a time.
When you create a device, choose one of the following options:
Clockwork Toy. This toy is a clockwork animal, monster, or person, such as a frog, mouse, bird, dragon, or soldier. When placed on the ground, the toy moves 5 feet across the ground on each of your turns in a random direction. It makes noises as appropriate to the creature it represents.
Fire Starter. The device produces a miniature flame, which you can use to light a candle, torch, or campfire. Using the device requires your action.
Music Box. When opened, this music box plays a single song at a moderate volume. The box stops playing when it reaches the song’s end or when it is closed.
Proficiencies. You can replace all the proficiencies granted by the Tinker trait to another proficiency of your choice.

Disparate Gnome

As a Disparate gnome, you come from a stock that has leaned quite heavily into the 'eccentric' side of your gnomish heritage. So heavily, in fact, that your gnomish eccentricity has strayed to a place adjacent to madness. All Disparate gnomes are, as the name implies, at least a little off, but they are as prone to flashes of genius insight as they are to wandering aimlessly. Disparate gnomes appear randomly but with some amount of regularity within normal gnomish populations.
Ability Score Increase. Your Charisma score increases by 1. While not everyone likes you or wants to be around you, you have an undeniable presence.
Hounded By Madness. Where you have not been specifically trained, your mind wanders and becomes overwhelmed with possibility. Whenever you make a skill check in a skill in which you are not proficient, roll 1d4. On a 1 or a 4, you make the check with disadvantage as you attempt to do it in a way that is counterproductive or simply wrong.
Fragmented Mind. You may concentrate on two spells at once. You may do this for a number of turns equal to half your proficiency bonus without penalty. After that, at the beginning of each of your turns, if you are concentrating on two spells, you take damage equal to your proficiency bonus plus the combined level of the spells.

Graftblessed Gnome

In the gnome cities of Sputterspew (in the Dohas region) and Brightburrow (in the Darret region), magnificent and terrifying mechano-magical experiments of all kinds take place. From artificial limbs to genetically engineered catpeople and turtle-man slaves, these cities have it all. But innovation requires testing, and what may work on a captured human, dwarf, or genetically engineered dog-person may not work on a gnome. So gnomish subjects are needed - enter the Graftblessed. Some Graftblessed gnomes do it by choice - it can be extremely lucrative and endlessly fascinating to modify one's body over and over, or to allow it to be modified. Others do it less by choice and more because a mad gnome (of which there are more than a few) has somehow exerted leverage over them via debt or threat. In Sputterspew, the Graftblessed are more likely to be mechanically augmented, while in Brightburrow, they lean toward the biological, but cross-disciplinary work is not unheard of. Whatever the reason, whatever the modification, all Graftblessed have some things in common.
Ability Score Increase. If you weren't unnaturally robust, you'd probably be dead by now. Your Constitution increases by 1.
Appearance. The bodily shock of being experimented on and "augmented" causes Graftblessed gnomes to undergo a specific mutation: their hair and skin become desaturated, losing most if not all of their hue, and their irises become a bright, scintillating kaleidoscope of color that can shift slowly or quickly between all the colors of the rainbow. This shifting can be willful or dependent on changes in bodily or emotional state. You also likely have a mismatched limb or body part; a mechanical hand with thieves tools' hidden in the fingers, webbed toes, acidic spit, or a fake knee that contains a dart launcher are all possibilities.
Grafts and Mutations. You can choose any two of the following - either two grafts, one graft and one mutation, or two mutations.
Grafts.
Pipette. This hollow dart implement is built to siphon both blood and life energy from victims. It is tethered to your body by a sturdy woven steel cord, and that cord is part of a graft fused to your bone. You may fire it as an action and retract it as an action or bonus action. Its stats are identical to those of a dart, except that you are healed for 2 points of damage whenever you hit an enemy with it for the first time in a round.
Utility Hand. This brass implement replaces your arm beginning halfway down the forearm. It is a facsimile of a real arm, except that the hollow interior is packed with various implements and, potentially, ingredients. This graft may be considered any one of the following kits, and you have proficiency with it:

• Any two gaming sets.
• Thieves' tools
• herbalism kit
• forgery kit
• disguise kit
• poisoners' kit
• navigators' tools

Hidden Scalpel. Somewhere on your hand, wrist, or fingers, you have a retractable blade implant. The blade of this implant slides in and out painlessly and seamlessly, and is undetectable without extremely close inspection to find a hard lump deep beneath your skin. The ceramic blade of this implant is useful for precise cutting and stabbing. It can be used in any way that a knife would be, and its stats are identical to that of a dagger, except that it cannot be thrown and it deals 2 additional points of damage when you hit an enemy with it for the first time in a round.
Antiseptic Glass Organ. You have an artificial organ installed within your body. This organ uses a combination of your life essence and humors to produce an antiseptic and spontaneous healing serum. With the power of this organ, you may spend an action to use hit dice to heal yourself as though you were taking a short rest. When you do, you may spend a number of hit dice equal up to your proficiency bonus. Using the organ exhausts it, and it becomes usable again after you finish a long rest.
Mutations.
Digitigrade Joints. Your lower body has been broken, bent, and reshaped to resemble and function like that of a cat or other mammal that walks upon its toes. Your footfalls are soft, and you treat all rolls below 5 on a Dexterity (Stealth) check as though you had rolled a 5. Additionally, when you would take fall damage, you take one die less.
Myostatin Inhibition. You have unnaturally accelerated muscle hypertrophy, resulting in a freakish amount of muscle mass and strength potential that you can tap into. When any roll would use your Strength ability modifier, you can double your modifier for that roll. However, doing so is dangerous, and each time you do so, you risk damaging your muscles. Each time you tap into this strength, if you have not taken a short or long rest since the last time you used it, roll a d6. After the roll, your Strength ability score is reduced by that number until your next long rest. This effect stacks.
Animal Ears. You have a pair of functional animal ears in addition to your normal ears. When you would take Thunder damage, you instead take twice as much. This is cumulative with vulnerability. There is no other effect or benefit.
Transmutative Stomach System. You can eat almost anything and derive meaningful nutrition from it, including wild grasses, plants, bark, leather, and even metals like copper and iron.
Nansplanted Seventhic Sense Gland. You may use a bonus action during combat to learn what an enemy plans to do during its next turn. This mutation only functions in this way when you are in combat, under genuine duress and threat. Outside of combat, you may use an action to learn what a particular creature likes to eat or its favorite color. The creature knows you have done this.

Deepfey Gnome

Deepfey Gnomes emerge from woods near gnomish settlements or places where large numbers of gnomes have gathered. They are not created through reproduction and indeed, may not be gnomes at all except for their similarities in appearance and demeanor. Unlike other gnomes, they are trueborn Fey creatures, perhaps native to a land quite unlike any familiar to the denizens of the continent of Deus Augustus or even the planet of Kraynor writ large.
Deepfey gnomes wander from the woods fully grown, with command of speech and certain skills, but with no sense of who they are or how they came to be. They are either quickly found and taken in by nearby gnomes or devoured by wildlife. In either case, they all have a few things in common.
Ability Score Increase. Your Wisdom score increases by 1.
Type. Your creature type is Fey.
Appearance. Deepfey gnomes are similar in morphology to Forest gnomes. However, the color of their hair and skin can change to match their mood, with their baseline skin tones typically being a placid peach or tepid tan. Under duress they may turn raucously red or a yearning yellow, and while elated may turn a goofy green or mellifluous marigold. The changes of a Deepfey gnome's appearance are quite idiosyncratic, and only by getting to know one can their particular habits be gnown.
Alignment. Deepfey gnomes are heavily impressionable and will take on the alignment and views of those who first meet and imprint upon them.
Unstable Step. As a bonus action, you choose a an unoccupied space within 10 feet of you. You appear in the chosen space in a puff of colored smoke. Until the beginning of your next turn, the space you left counts as occupied; creatures can feel a tangible magical force in the space, though nothing is there.

Update Notes

10/21/21 - changed wording on several abilities to better convey attention and renamed Disparate variant. added fey type to deepfey. made graftblessed NSSG a bonus action rather than an action and added fall damage reduction to digitigrade joints.
12/21/21 - pruned extraneous wording and abilities on Deepfey gnomes. 5/5/22 - Deepfey gnomes can now use Unstable Step basically at-will. Clarified and pruned wording on abilities of other subraces. removed antiseptic bibcock due to being poorly written. removed inexplicable insight from disparate gnomes.