This is just a question not sure if it's been answered.

Is it too cliche to have elves, trolls, dwarves, or gnomes in your story?

Or have these types of characters become staple characters in a story?

As long as you don't have a stereo-typical member of each race banding together in some way to go on a journey, I think you're all set.

Darn I had them all set for a journey..lol just kidding.. Thank you Lady, I definitely appreciate the response. This is something I have been wondering for a while..now.

This is a controversial topic. Some people decide that they can stick with the traditional races, some go for changing them some (like Eleutheria), some make up completely new races (like Neil of Erk). Basically, I think you should take into account all objections and arguments, and then decide what you feel goes best with the world you are creating and the stories you want to write. Neither choice is a bad choice, it simply sends you down a different road.

I think I will definitely do that before I decide on using them. I have already come up with a different type of gnome or dwarf but I'll read around first.
But you're right, it's sort of to each his own, but both options are good just as long as you creatively come up with your own versions...

Thank you for this!

You can make your Elves and Dwarves bad while your Trolls and Gnomes good. Then it won't be cliche. Joke.

Indeed I could do that...lol...but I am going to challenge myself to creatively come up with my own version if I choose to use elves or dwarves.

My Elves have the ability to control fire, water, air, and earth, depending on the clan they come from. They also can change into the form that they control. My Dwarves are made out of stone, on a certain day they gather around a certain rock and a Dwarf comes out of it.

Very cool sir...I like the rock idea with dwarves...very simple but creative.

It really comes back to the plot though. If your focus is world building, you might want to try for uniqueness, but if you just thought of a great story that goes with such creatures, it often times seems less original if you rename the races rather than let them be themselves.

James Blish (under the pseudonym William Atheling Jr.) gave the defining critique of that sort of "worldbuilding" in one of the columns later collected in The Issue at Hand: if you have a creature that is in every respect a rabbit, you shouldn't call it a "smeerp" because “if you call them smeerps that makes it science fiction.” And the same principle applies here: if you have a troll, or a dwarf, or an elf, more or less as our culture traditionally conceives them, use the traditional name for them. (Now, having another name that they use for themselves is a nice, if somewhat common, touch of worldbuilding, on the other hand.)

Unless your goal is linguistic world building, in which case no English at all is better.

It also might be helpful to give your races different names besides the typical elf, dwarf, etc.... I have a race of elf-like people in my current story world that are called the Jordæ. They even consider it an insult to be called elves because elves are mythical creatures that are found in tales and legends....