It's a shame gnomes are among the least popular choices for player characters. I love gnomes. In this post I will be exploring magic item creation and invention for gnomes. I believe that magic item creation is an art-form; it's a shame when you get players who only create the generic items already presented in the Dungeon Master's Guide without even so much as a personalized name for them. It's a REAL shame when a gnome character does that.
Many races share in a heritage of creating things that last. Dwarves create practical and useful items from metal and stone that will still work millennia from now. The long-lived elves create lasting items with the same grace and delicate beauty common to their race.
Gnomes? Gnomes create items that are often as impractical as they are complicated. Do you really need a remote-controlled orbital laser to chop vegetables for stew? Yes, you do. Will such a thing be as likely to burn your house down as it would be to work properly? Probably, but such mishaps are beneficial because they fuel the invention process. Okay, so the orbital laser idea didn't work, how about a swarm of telekinetic knives or a stew-pot magically enchanted to cast a self-contained (we think) fireball to blow the vegetables up into smaller pieces?
Gnomes are always trying to figure out new ways of doing things. Easier living through magic and technology, that's the gnome way. There's a gnome proverb that goes: "Small, simple machines are made by small, simple minds." The more bells, whistles and (if campaign allows) steam engines attached to a project, the greater likelihood of success.
Above all, gnomes embrace failure. You never know when a mistake with one project will provide an intriguing lead for a completely new project. A pocket-watch enchanted to cast haste on the user when a button is pushed has a 5% chance to instead cause the user to get lost in the time stream, disappearing and reappearing 1d6 rounds later. Congratulations! Your magic item's malfunction inadvertently led you to discover time-travel.
Things to think about when creating magic items:
1. Is there a more creative way of accomplishing your goal? Sometimes generic items are really the only solution to a problem, but don't just always assume that's the case. Boots of striding & springing are nice and would help the gnome overcome some disadvantages of being small. Do you know what else would help you move faster and jump farther? Rocket-boots would. Think about it.
2. The very process of creating a magic item requires the creator to instill some of his/her life-force into the item (that's the idea behind the XP cost). One would think that is enough justification to be attached enough to name the item. Also, remember that gnomes LOVE names. Boots of striding & springing (or even a pair of rocket-boots) could be renamed three-dimensional-area-propulsion-enhancifiers. Goggles of night? Darkness-visibilifying-spectrometers. Don't ever settle for the name the book gives you.
3. Malfunctions are an inevitability of gnomish invention simply because malfunctions are the cause of gnomish invention. Hopefully, your DM will be nice and let you take a deduction in market cost if you add a chance of mishap, but even if he/she doesn't you should still be thinking, "is there a creative way that this item could misfire?" I know, it means the item isn't "as good" as if it worked as intended always, but it also means the item is more fun. Malfunctions should be creative, not just "item doesn't work," think of a way it could "work" but differently. Not all items can really have malfunction chances (like baleful-and-hazardous-momentum-reorganizers (rings of protection)), but ones that can should. It adds flavor and flavor is good.
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