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Gnomes get -2 to Strength and weapon shrinkage due to small size, so they serve poorly as melee-based characters.
I've always hated that double-team effect. I would love to see a size Small race that *didn't* also have a Strength penalty. Small races automatically get smaller weapon dice (or smaller unarmed attack dice) and a 3/4th carrying capacity. *Also* giving them a -2 or -4 (for kobolds) Strength penalty feels like kicking a man when he's down.
If I were to re-write the core races, Gnomes would have no racial bonuses or penalties to physical attributes at all, but have a +2 bonus to one mental attribute of choice (Int, Wis or Cha), allowing them to be the more cerebral illusionists and clockwork toymaking 'tinkers' of one rules assumption, the more spiritual 'wood gnomes' and druids of another, and the more sociable 'favored class - bards' of a third. Gnomes being as whacky as they are, there would be no correlation between a gnomes parents choice and the gnome child's choice. The child of two gnomes who took a +2 Cha could assign her +2 to Int or Wis (or Cha). Whatever it is that determines a gnome's mental traits, it's not inherited!
If I were to re-write the core races, Gnomes would have no racial bonuses or penalties to physical attributes at all...
If I were to re-write the core races, Gnomes (and Halflings) would be obliterated off the face of the earth. The only small race playable would be Kobolds, but only under special permission because they'd have a +4 Awesome bonus to all attributes.
to me, All the core races are too human.
If I had my way, I'd do up an entire campaign the is centered around less than human races.
PS. Smurf.
@mplindustries, I hope the goblins come and get you before you rewrite the core races.
the -2 Str for small races seems okay, they have less muscle mass (yes, I know a slender elf can have 20 Str), it seems normal they have less carrying capacity. The less damage for small weapons might seem weird and I would accept a change there, getting your leg cut by a knife or a sword is quite close, but then we enter Hp=real life? discussion.
Also dwarf might be what you are looking fore, from body size it would be more appropriate to be small, but they have all the boni of medium (and penalties of being fat, ... heavy boned).
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If I were to rewrite the core races, it would be a weird combo of scattershot and pedantic, droning on needlessly on unimportant details before switching to odd random facts. Did you know that halflings are the mutated midget descendents of the wholelings? I know, because I met a wholeling once who needed just 50 gp to continue his research into how to restore his rare race by curing his diminished cousins of their size-halving curse. How could I begrudge 50 gp to help a whole race? Good luck, C. Onman! And you know where to find me if you need any more.
Humans.
My latest game does them differently alongside another House Rule of mine.
All players get an 'overlaid' secondary character class on their primary at 1st level. So if they pick let's say Warrior and Wizard they get the best HP, Skill, BAB etc of EITHER one or the other as their starting stat. If you pick Commoner - you get compensated with an extra Trait.
They also get a bonus 1st level feat.
Humans in my game are regionally flavoured using the racial build rules and NO race gets a bonus feat.
Everyone starts with the same number of feats as a regular PF human, and playing any one of the human regional variants is an 'advantage' over any other race.
I also have half-elves stated as full elves, and my full elves as an advanced race with 30 points and they are fae (think Sidhe).
My Goblins are intelligent and 'alchemically engineer' hobgoblins as their enforcers (they are all born from eggs). Goblins are essentially nomadic Ferengi in my game.
The Dwarves are all dead (aka Golem/Construct builders like the Dwemer in Skyrim) and Gnolls (Shagaal), Cat People (Simbani), Lizard Men (Scaled), Snake People (Skath) and the Xill (Hive) (non-evil variants of all) all have vibrant civilisations which trade, war and conduct themselves as competitors/allies based on their self-interest.
I have NO Gnomes or Halflings.
I have NO Gnomes or Halflings.
What about half-orcs?
Just so you know. One day gnomes and roaches will rule . . .
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Well, humans get set as the central race usually, because Western fantasy is essentially reborn of our own mythology, where the stories were told by us about the strange creatures that lived on the fringes of our own society. Same reason humans are assumed as the "average" -- no stat bonuses (or self-assigned one), etc.
Nonhuman races also tend to be established as longer lived, with humans being more fertile, so there will be more of them.
And as the standard of the trope, I'm okay with that.
But I definitely like the idea of a setting with no humans and focusing on other races. The recent message board exercise of randomly rolling your races and then designing your setting based around that was a really cool idea. Hope some of those settings show up here.
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Golarion, utterly stripped of humans, could be funky.
Ulfen Dwarves. Shoanti Half-Orcs. Mwangi Elves. Varisian Gnomes. Garundi Anpur (civilized version of Gnolls, from Hamunaptra). Tian Kitsune and Tengu and Nagaji (yes, that's right, *everybody* over there is a furry!).
Taldan/Andoran/Chelish Halflings (with man-on-halfling slavery replaced by halfling-on-goblin slavery in Cheliax?)?
Azlanti weren't even humans, but they're dead now anyway.