So mechanically it's pretty easy to see the difference between the two, but flavorwise what is the difference.
Are Halflings just happier Gnomes?
Are Gnomes more magical Halflings?
What would a halfling archetype be for a sorcerer, vs a gnome archetype?
What about rogues? Or Fighters?
In my campaign, Gnomes are distant cousins of the Dwarves and are very attached to the Feyrealm. Halflings in my world are like pygmies on Earth. A tribal people far removed from the civilization that is Morvia. They are brought into the slave trade where they serve their rich masters. They are no more or less magical than what appears in the core book.
But you're probably thinking in more generic fantasy terms. My answer would be that it's whatever you want them to be. I prefer to make Gnomes more mysterious, and xenophobic toward the big folk akin to Hobbits in Tolkien's works.
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So mechanically it's pretty easy to see the difference between the two, but flavorwise what is the difference.
Are Halflings just happier Gnomes?
Are Gnomes more magical Halflings?
What would a halfling archetype be for a sorcerer, vs a gnome archetype?
What about rogues? Or Fighters?
Firstly Halflings are much more tender and juicy than Gnomes, but they require more seasoning than the stringier Gnome. That's an Orc's take on it anyway...
Halflings, in the Pathfinder campaign, are much like in the Hobbit (the few adventuring ones at any rate), but Gnomes are still foreign to the world of Golarion, which in part, leads to their obsessive traits and need to adventure as they die from boredom (look up bleaching on the pathfinder wiki).
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So mechanically it's pretty easy to see the difference between the two, but flavorwise what is the difference.
Flavor-wise, the races are very different. Beginning with appearance, the gnomes are a lot more exotic than halflings, who seem to be pointy-eared human children. Halfling's habitats tend toward the city and urbane, gnomes toward the earth and nature.
Are Halflings just happier Gnomes?
I'd argue gnomes are happier halflings. Well, that may be incorrect. Gnomes simply happen to be more intense in whatever their disposition is (Someone mentioned the Bleaching earlier, which explains a lot of it), which tends toward the happy, curious, and good-natured jesting. The archetypal gnome is a somewhat magical trickster, doing minor illusions and cantrips to amuse friends and baffle foes.
Are Gnomes more magical Halflings?
I'd think it more accurate to say a gnome is a more magical dwarf. But really, a gnome is a more magical (Any Player Race).
What would a halfling archetype be for a sorcerer, vs a gnome archetype? What about rogues? Or Fighters?
This is where the flavor REALLY comes in, I think. A halfling is more about utility, whereas the gnome is all about style.
Rogue halflings are . . . . rogue halflings. They sneak, they're hard to spot, they're not much good one-on-one in a fight, but are great at being in the right spot at the right time.
A archetypal rogue gnome, on the other hand, is half-caster. He uses the gnome's innate magical abilities to cast ghost sound and dancing lights, speaks with animals to do his bidding and any sneak attack will most likely be the end result of that overbearing mischief. It's the difference between being attacked a real-life sniper and an over-the-top cartoon villain.
Out of combat, halflings tend toward the more standard unassuming rogue, whereas the gnome is a much more likely candidate for the party face.
A halfling sorcerer archetype is a bit harder to pin down against a gnome, since sorcerers are defined more by their class than by their race no matter what. But it's telling that according to most campaign settings, gnome sorcerers are fairly common (Especially in PF with the Fey bloodline) whereas halfling sorcerers are relatively rare.
Fighter is where the largest difference would come in. Halfling fighters do what necessity dictates, mostly being ranged or mounted attackers who use their quickness to compensate for their small stature. In demeanor, they're usually the same as a Medium sized fighter.
An archetypal gnome fighter, on the other hand, is ostentatious to the point of absurdity. He fights with an exotic weapon, and will take more (seemingly) senseless risks than a halfling fighter would dream of. Fighters of other races would hardly recognize the disciplines gnomes train their fighters in, and would find them alien. (Coincidentally, all of this could also apply to the monk class.)
I'm not saying that this is the be-all-end-all of how you have to play a gnome or a halfling, just that according to their basic descriptions, these are the differences you would most likely find.
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In Golarion, Gnomes are fey originally from the First World. They have a unique link to the land and must forever explore new things and keep life exciting or suffer from the "Bleaching", Halflings are a small race of human like people. Nothing really interesting about their history other than they are treated poorly by most races.
Where halflings are perky, gnomes are obnoxious.
The only good gnome...
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now you want to see what happens when a hafling mingles with the fey to much... go look up every DM's nightmare and every players Nightmare... The dreaded KINDER. A race that sparks memories of old and many a campaigns death. KINDER the race so evil their name sparks fear across multiple worlds.
honestly, I want them back.
Ha, me too. I remember several arguments at the gaming table about allowing kenders. Even in Dragonlance settings, kenders were banned.
Of course, Dragonlance had some of the most ridiculous PC-races available. They were tailor-made to annoy the other people in your group. If you had a kender and a tinker gnome (A variant gnome whose life's work was to invent devices that would lead them to great "discoveries" or "inspirations", i.e. horrible---possibly fatal---malfunctions.) in your party it was like playing DnD with The 3 Stooges.
The sad thing is that they were interesting character concepts that could be played to great effect. Unfortunately, those traits just happened to coincide with the traits most desired by players who like to play Chaotic Stupid.
I've always seen gnomes as little men similar to dwarves, but smaller and considerably weaker. For me the unique aspect to gnomes is that they are esoteric and a little bit different, maybe a tad "off." While this can express itself in the traditional "trickster" or "tinkerer" sense, I can also see gnomes as extremely intense creatures. With such capacity for emotion and desire for new sensations, I can envision them as being morbidly curious and a little macabre, seeking novelty through acts of evil or weirdness.
A halfling is well... A happy little man child. It's a race of tiny Will Farrels. And believe me, I LOVED step brothers with a passion, but I wouldn't take that man with me on a serious adventure.
I declare this thread... ALIVE!
I've solved the halfling/gnome problem in my campaign.
The Halfling empire committed somewhat unintentional genocide against them a hundred years prior to the storyline. Problem happily solved.
So an army of elite spellcasters was destroyed by an army of... child like, approachable happy men?
Okay.
I keep to 3.5 definitions:
halfling = gypsies
gnome = fun loving, magically gifted little men with big noses.
Are elves just magical, longlived humans?
Are orcs just angry green humans?
I see halflings and gnomes pretty distinct from each other, they're not just both short. I think maybe where the difficulty is is that halfling and gnome flavor, while distinct, is most subject to change. A Golarion gnome is different (an alien, fey creature) from a Faerunian gnome (a short larged nosed tinker). A hobbit is different from a 3.5 gypsy halfling. So maybe that's why they feel more variable. Just pick a flavor you like and go with it.
Halfings have built their entire existence on living among humans without drawing attention to themselves. Playing a halfling should have that at the core.
Gnomes, on the other hand, are completely over-the-top. If you can think of it in your wildest dreams, tripping on acid, after a sever head injury, with a heavy suicidal tendency, a gnome has already tried it.
The Pathfinder gnome is far and away their best race concept, with the halfling a distant second. The rest, sadly, don't seem much different from any other D&D style campaign world.
The Golarion gnome seemed a unique vision of gnomes, nowhere near the same mold as folklore gnomes, garden gnomes, and D&D gnomes. Two years ago I decided to see what those gnomes were like by playing one. I made a lawful good gnome ranger.
He embraced the gnomish over-the-top style without breaking his lawful alignment. He was the glue that held the party together and he was doing it for a lark. He worshiped Desna and freedom with great devotion, and he pulled innocent pranks such as constantly changing the name of the party. He befriended the local mayor and sheriff and made sure to work with them, but liked to drop surprises on them about what the party had just encountered nearby to watch their jaws drop. He had no malice for his enemies yet was a master at taunting them to lure them away from the party spellcasters. He could teach the theory of battle strategy learned from his days as a gnomish soldier or decide tactics with, "Yeah, let's try that!" in response to the first suggestion. When he multiclassed to monk, the GM felt he was entirely lawful.
Gnomish life is about trying something new even if the new is simply training something old to new levels of accomplishment. To human eyes, the constant experimentation looks chaotic, but the choices of which new things he tries reflect a coherent pattern.
It is a fun way to play a character.
What would a halfling archetype be for a sorcerer, vs a gnome archetype?
What about rogues? Or Fighters?
As a ranger, my gnome was a frontline melee combatant. The -2 to strength and the small weapons made him more a speed bump than a damage dealer, but when he called Ranger's Focus (the Guide archetype version of Favored Enemy) he could make mincemeat of his opponent. And given that he and the tough dwarven fighter were accompanied by a blaster wizard, a curse-tossing cleric, and a spring-attack rogue, being a speed bump was a balanced role in the battles. Later, he adopted monk abilities to have new ways to combat. They weren't good ways, but as a gnome, he was more interested in variety.
That is a problem with gnomes: they go for variety. That is fine for a wizard but poor for a fighter. Fighters work best when specialized.
He would shine more when using ranger skills, such as tracking or scouting. The enthusiastic, "Yeah, I can do that!" is very gnomish.
I have not played a Golarion halfling yet.
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