Tinker Gnome
In one respect the tinker gnomes resemble the rest of gnomedom—in the fact that they do value various types of stones, attributing to them great and supernatural powers. However, while the tinker love for peridot is great, tinker gnomes hold another substance to be just as grand: coal. The tinker gnomes hold that coal is the most valuable substance of the world, and those places where it can be mined quickly become tinker gnome warrens.
In size and stature, tinker gnomes resemble rock gnomes—so much so that the difference is not immediately apparent, at least to those who have only met a handful of gnomes before. Perhaps because their numbers are fewer, there is not such a variey of hair and skin color among tinkers as is found in their more common cousins: their hair is almost always white or a slightly colored shade that is nearly white. Their skin tends toward fair colors though rare ones can end up bearing ruddy and earthen shades. Their eyes tend to be blue, green, or rarely violent, but the noses are every bit as prominent as those of any other gnomish subrace.
The clothing of a tinker is likely to be representative of his or her travels and background. It will have parts of all kinds of things somehow attached together and providing a modicum of covering. As a rule, the more exotic the better, though the tinker gnomes tend to be fastidious about cleanliness due to the dirtying nature of the coal and powder they so often work with tending to stain everything it touches black.
Tinker gnomes who live out their lives can attain an age of 250 or 300 years, but it must be noted that this is a rare occurrence among the members of this subrace. If one of his or her own inventions doesn’t do the tinker in, chances are good that one of his or her neighbor’s gadgets will.
Even in childhood, tinker gnomes are encouraged to experiment with gadgets and gimmicks, trying different means of making things to perform tasks that could otherwise be easily done by hand. The gnome reaches adulthood at about the age of fifty rather than 100, by which time perhaps 10-15% of them have already succumbed to the common fate of their kind. Despite this high attrition, it’s not until maturity that a tinker gnome’s activities begin to get really dangerous.
Upon reaching adulthood, the tinker gnome must select a guild for himself or herself. The number of guilds available varies by location, but in Mount Oldsmoke—which is the center of tinker civilization and by far the largest community of these inventive creatures anywhere—there are more than 150 active guilds. These include virtually all areas of practical endeavor, and quite a few impractical ones as well: weaponry, steam power, hydraulics, mathematics, agriculture, warmaking, animal taming, brewing, carpentry, astronomy, ceramics (rockmaking), air utilization, history, coalmining, rockcarving, vehicale design, and music.
These guilds are not like the guilds common in many human and dwarven societies, however; in the latter cases, the guild’s purpose is generally to impart the knowledge of the masters to a steadily growing crop of apprentices and journeymen. The tinker guilds have a different philosophy dedicated to a righteously-held belief, to wit: whatever has been done before can be done better with a new and improved invention. Consequently, a tinker gnome who enters the Music Guild, for example, will spend the bulk of his or her life trying to design a musical instrument with at least one more moving part than the last instrument designed by a guildmaster. It is not advisable to ask the guild for a performance—whole audiences have been scalded by ruptured steam pipes or deafened by ultrasonic waves of crushing sound.
However, tinkers are nothing if not tenacious. After selecting a guild, each member of the subrace settles upon a Lifequest. The actual choice of the quest may take several decades, but once it has been decided, it becomes the reason behind that tinker’s existence. The Lifequest is an attempt to reach a perfect understanding of some device—ranging from something as complex as a ship’s mystic core to as simple as a single screw, a task at which the Tinker very rarely succeeds. Indeed, the best estimate is that less than 1% of these gnomes ever do fully grasp the nature of the object that has occupied their attention for so much of their adult lives; the rest of these easily-distracted gnomes get hopelessly sidetracked somewhere along the way.
Despite the vagaries of their existence, the tinkers are a fun-loving and generally sociable race. Their speech is unique in both its speed and complexity. Two tinkers can rattle off information and opinion to each other in a succession of thousand-word sentences, speaking simultaneously and yet listening and understanding (as much as is possible, given the esoteric nature of many discussions) each other even as they voice their own points of view. Those tinkers who have had some experience interacting with other races have learned to slow the pace of their communication but never quite overcome their frustration with those who can’t talk and listen at the same time.
Despite the chaotic impression given by an initial encounter with the tinkers, these gnomes have a highly-organized societal structure. Their culture is unusual, for gnomes, in that guilds are more important to most tinkers than their clans; the typical tinker identifies himself or herself not by the family he or she was born into but the guild he or she joined upon reaching adulthood. The community is ruled by a council made up of the masters of the various guilds and the patriarchs of the various clans. The result is a paralyzed bureaucracy that nevertheless keeps itself going with debate, argument, near resolution, and subsequent disagreement. Following long and careful consideration (sometimes lasting for years, even decades) the various concerned parties go off and do whatever they wanted to from the beginning.
However, the debates themselves can be well-reasoned, extremely polite, and quite extensive. Just the recital of names at the beginning of a presentation can often take weeks, since the full and formal title of each gnome involved is used–and remember, this is despite the fact that tinker gnomes speak very rapidly indeed! For those tinkers who come from extensive and well-documented ancestry and have themselves lived long and eventful lives, the formal introduction can last the better part of two days. Because of this inconvenience, an abbreviated form of a gnome’s name—usually taking less than a minute to recite—is used in daily life.
Tinker gnomes have the least involved family life of any of the subraces, since all adults are too involved with their Lifequests to devote much time to the raising of their children. The youngsters learn mostly by example, and of course are possessed of that insatiable curiosity that seems to take the place of so many other emotions in the lives of a tinker. Tinker males and females accept their Lifequests with equal obsession; there is no difference between the sexes in level of recognition and attainment. For example, guildmasters and clan leaders are as likely to be female as male.
Their communities are located underground, but always close to the surface, with plenty of access to fresh air. Their penchant for burning coal to achieve steam makes good ventilation necessary—we needn’t dwell on the unfortunate results of those experiments in deep subterranean quarters amid caverns warmed by vast, oxygen-devouring furnaces.
The various chambers of a tinker community will be connected by various means of transport, powered by steam, spring-power, wind, water, gravity, and any other means available. Types include cars that run along rails or are suspended from cables and pulleys, soaring gliders, “gnomeflingers” (catapults), elevators that run up and down through shafts bored through rock, and independently-steered carts and cycles propelled by various means. Needless to say, there is a high rate of attrition on gnomish transport—generally an individual stands about a 3% chance per trip of suffering grievous injury (usually about 1-12 hit points of damage).
For private living quarters, tinkers are inclined to settle for any old niche in the wall that can be closed off for a little privacy. They like to sleep in absolute darkness but have absolutely no trouble slumbering amid a thunderous cacophony of noise.
Far more important than his or her bedroom, to a tinker, is his or her workshop. This area will be a private chamber, if the gnome is influential enough to warrant such a luxury, or if he or she inherits it from a deceased parent (for obvious reasons, tinkers tend to gain their inheritance at a far younger age than do any other gnomish subrace). The shop should ideally be well-lit, by candle, coal-oil lantern, or natural light. One of the more successful gnome inventions is a network of mirrors aligned to reflect sunlight through long tunnels so that it reaches caverns far underground. Despite its utility, this invention is considered an abysmal failure by most tinkers, due to its utter lack of moving parts.
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Game Statistics
Custom System5th Edition
To Be Made
4th Edition
To Be Made
3.5th Edition
To Be Made
2nd Edition
| Ability | Minimum | Maximum |
|---|---|---|
| Strength | 6 | 18 |
| Dexterity | 8 | 19 |
| Constitution | 8 | 18 |
| Intelligence | 8 | 19 |
| Wisdom | 3 | 12 |
| Charisma | 3 | 18 |
| Class | Maximum |
|---|---|
| Fighter | 14 |
| Paladin | — |
| Ranger | — |
| Barbarian | — |
| Mage | 5 |
| Specialist | 151 |
| Warlock | 9 |
| Cleric | 9 |
| Druid | — |
| Monk | — |
| Shaman | — |
| Thief | 10 |
| Assassin | 10 |
| Bard | — |
| Psionicist | 11 |
Tinker gnomes do not provoke an attack of opportunity for using a firearm to make an attack while engaged in melee.
When employing a firearm of any sort, tinker gnomes gain a bonus of +1 to their attack and damage rolls.
Tinker gnomes get easily distracted by new discoveries, often jumping from one thing to another at a moment’s notice.
Pathfinder 2e
To Be Made
Encompassed species
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