[Indemaijinj]

Death Spell is also quite handy in certain situations. Still, you are right the drawbacks are far outweighed by the advantages.


What is significant is not the extra point in intelligence though. It is the fact that specialist mages get an extra spell per day at each spell level.

Gnomes might be forced to choose the Illusionist specialist mage class, but they are also the only ones who can multiclass a specialist mage.

Also I think gnomes have some racial saving throw modifier somewhere. All the "short" races seems to have those.