Certain races excel at one class while completely failing at other classes. Which leads me to believe that either these underdog class/race combos should either be removed, or repaired. I personally think that there are RP reasons for most of these classes to exist, therefor I bring this thread up for discussion to get input from my fellow players on ideas for balancing these combinations. I am not suggesting we try to balance a gnome warrior to an ogre warrior, I am suggesting we balance the gnome warrior to the gnome invoker in scale of survivability, playability, and repeatability.
While gnome warriors are one example, there are poor class choices for most races. My suggestion is that we develop racial sensibilities, combo specific spells or skills, that help to balance the fire giant cleric to the fire giant berserker for instance.
I look forward to reading the ideas you all may have.
I've offered up a few ideas that might approach the effect you're looking for here. I think giving these underplayed or underpowered combos "privilege" over some items would buff them peripherally. By that I mean they won't get any actual bonus that other combos can't achieve, but they would have item priority over the more common combos. The way to do this would be to copy known items, change the name, and make it gnome-only. Or underpoweredcombo-only. Want gnome thieves to feel a little more competitive? Make gnome only copy of godforged sacrificial dagger, change its name to fit gnome lore, and put it somewhere new. Bam! Exciting new location to collect a weapon for gnome thieves, and a slight priority on a very strong weapon. Does this stop slith/feral/drow thieves from getting a godforged? Nope!
Are you looking at giving them PK incentives comparing the two, or mostly just want to beef up the combo in terms of making them more appealing? If you want balance between races in one class versus choosing another, a lot of ideas can be thrown on the table. Start off with your example of Gnome Warrior vs Gnome Invoker:
Due to high intelligence/widom, Gnome Warriors could potentially learn an additional weapon mastery and expertise. This makes it interesting because potentially they may learn weapons to such a degree that they could even be given a second Warrior Lore. Gnome Thieves get the innate ability for the Brambus Needler (I haven't played once so I'm guessing here) and potentially a second trap to boot.
Gnome only armor that gives resistance to bash and bodyslam. You can exclude specific classes so you don't see Gnome Invokers or Gnome BMG wearing them for a just in case situation. Since they're small, they tend to be quite easily picked on and bashed or bodyslammed to death if they don't have a protective shield. Or it could be a piece of armor that just gives them +1 to size to help in that area as well, and make it so that they're boots and noremove so they can't be doubled up on with stomping boots. It could also be made to be usable for the enlarge spell for 20+ hours but would take three times longer for them to recharge and be used again later.
Fire Giant Clerics could be given a spell to cut back a persons regen by a factor of 5 but only if they choose to follow a specific religion. It isn't a huge buff, and they're already pretty strong, or at least were, if played right.
Fire Giant Clerics could have the innate ability to create orbs of light that give actual stats to it, but they end up eventually fading away after X time. Such stats could be like +3 hit/dam, or even +100 mana.
There's a lot of things that could be done and/or added, but whether they actually would or not is another matter entirely. Perhaps we need another one of those top 5 changes threads we had a couple years ago to whittle things down some as players.
I will not act as if I know all of the ins and outs of the code itself, so forgive me if I get this wrong. But, here is an example of what I am thinking
Level 30. Ingenuity
If character = gnome and character = warrior then skills such as shield block and two handed utilize intelligence as opposed to strength for code modifiers.
Level 40. Intuition
If character = gnome and character = warrior then dexterity based skills like dodge utilize wisdom as code based modifiers.
I am intrigued at the ideas already posted. As a family of players, I believe the solution can be discovered.