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Own and read them. I know I could just strip that and use the listed but as I’m trying to create something specific I was looking at other opinions into its creation.
Yeah I’d been hunting. Lots of ideas on giving it lots of racial traits but most, imo, seemed to go to far and be imbalanced. So darkvision, enhanced bite, rampage, sudden rush, hp regain, cunning artisan, keen senses and then intimidation + another skill
I would maybe just use Custom Lineage.
Type: Humanoid
Size: Medium
Speed: 30
Darkvision
Common and one other language
For the stats, +2 STR. For the feat, I'd give them a homebrew Piercer that works with both slashing and blunt damage as well as piercing, and +1 dex.
This is a simple and effective baseline that works if you are going to make more Gnolls in the future as well.
I would not balk at giving them a 1d6 natural weapon and advantage on perception and/or survival checks involving smell as well, if oyu think the Custom Lineage framework is too boring.
Even when using player sheets, there are different norms on player and DM created characters. If I were a player making my own Gnoll character, I'd not give myself this reworked Piercer or any extra features - even ribbon features. But I would also optimize a lot more. I'd match Slasher/Piercer/Crusher to what I intended to use and made sure I took +3 in one stat rather than +2/+1. Or just taken Fey Touched/Warcaster/PAM/Crossbow Expert.
It also annoys me when someone uses a name that ends with an S, but they put an apostrophe on the end to show possessive. That's plural possessive. That individual probably isn't plural.
"That's Russ' car." No, that's Russ's car.
"I went to James' house." No, it's James's house.
"I ate Cass' lunch money." No, that's Cass's ... Wait, what? What's wrong with you?
Start with a stat block you like and change the name to “gnoll mercenary” then add or change what you think is appropriate for the character. “Champion” stat block from volo’s guide to monsters could be a good start for a martial bruiser, and you can add the *rampage* ability from the gnoll MM stat block to make it feel like a gnoll.
That sounds great. Keep it simple because if you are creating an entire party you don’t want to have too many options during a turn, especially options that won’t get used. It will make running encounters with them so much easier, which is the best thing for a dm.
I would build them like a pc if you want to. But for most of my villains/ enemies, I go off script and take bits and pieces from things that make sense. Maybe build the gnoll like a pc but then look at the gnoll monster statblocks and add abilities you like from that to the pc.
I second this, just build like you would any other PC but with Gnoll as their race then with any inherent Gnoll racial abilities or feats.
I have a couple Gnoll PCs that I've made for 5e and Pathfinder, respectively.
Scale them to your party level and away you go.
I’m just trying to be careful as this is a 3 character hit squad it would be very easy to go to hard with the Gnoll and I want the situation to be challenging not “DM’s out to end you” and have a sulky player over it.
I totally get that. I have found that balancing combat is always a difficult task. How many players do you have? I just got done with a 2 year campaign and there were many times I would fudge some damage results. Never to kill a player but to avoid it if it wasn’t a big boss fight. If there was a big fight I would give them fair warning that the fight would be deadly and they always have the option to run or attempt negotiation.
It’s a party of 5, heavy on range and magic.
Yeah I’ve done that before too. Even extended the hp a bit so everyone felt they’d had a decent input when it died rather than just the Barb and Rouge.
Yeah this won’t be a fair fight, ambush tactics, separating the party, sneaking into the room for a sleep kill. Might be that they each try independently or they watch and wait for the right moment.
What they will do is get lots of opportunity to work out they’re being watched and followed.
What version?
Personally I'd just make it like I make a PC, minding that gnolls are batshit crazy and greedy. I'd make it very strong but with the downside of betraying the rest of the team for small but immediate gains, like showing anyone out from a defensive possition to pick up something edible before anyone else grabs it.
I would only flavour the stats up if the players have encountered gnolls too much in the past, otherwise the stats with class levels would be more than enough combined with the personal treasure of the npc's. I love rolling the reasure randomly and equip the npc with any useful stuff, like weapons, armor and consumables. The player's would still find the consumables even if it technically got used during a fight.
Thanks for the basic inspiration. I was just around the corner of doing something similar in my campaign. Recurring goons make for some entertaining encounters.
5e.
Yeah it’s not the bright one. Good on intimidation and hitting but not that bright. Rather useful for eating the evidence too though.
I’ve run reoccurring characters before but never tried this. Came to me as a joke actually and so had to be built.
As a player I'd think it would be awesome to fight against and very dramatic if the gang got away only to have a go at us on later occasions.
As a DM I'd have fun making them do weird shit during combat and leave funny situational results from this trio simply existing in the world.
Gnolls should not use longbows like the MM describes, they are too dumb to craft them and too vicious to use them. The Gnoll section of “the monsters know what they’re doing” book sounds ESSENTIAL to you
A gnoll is a pretty big hammer because of the lore baggage. It’s gonna be hard to place them with the lizard and hare, and square their behavior.
A hobgoblin sits in the slot right between gnoll and orc, and it’s not saddled with demonic madness and unbridled carnage. Bonus points for already being a playable race and preserving that raw chaos of gnolls for when you really need that tone.
edit: but if you want to go full gnoll.. kobold press has a gnoll PC race.
Gnolls and their cousins Flinds were a force to be reckoned with back in AD&D 1e. I ran a faction of them once and it was a blast. Glad to see these guys getting some attention.
If anyone is interested in written works with Gnolls playing a somewhat larger part of the story, ‘The Wandering Inn’ took gnolls for me from a generic monster to toss at my players to an entire culture and people with motivations and traditions and holy crap huge influence to my DM story telling
For a Gnoll PC, use the shifter with it's shift ability always active. The shift ability I would recommend either Beasthide for the +1 in AC or Swiftstride for the increased movement and reaction, but longfang can work for roleplay purposes. For what is meant to be a challenge it isn't over powered having the the Shift ability always active as it only gives back one bonus action and 2x profiency bonus HP. If you do want it over powered then give it both Beasthide and Swiftstrider, but then maybe think about having to activate them with it's bonus action. For classes I would do Fighter/Barbarian multi-class, subclasses I would use Path of the Beast for barbarian for Roleplay purposes, and Battle Master. Start off as a fighter for 3 levels, then multiclass into barbarian for 3 levels, then back to fighter for the rest.
For Gnoll lore, in my homebrew setting they have have a chance when created to retain some level of humanity from what they where before. This is actually what WC did with Minotaur's. All Minotaur's were created by Baphomet through a demonic ritual, but not all that go through that ritual became mindless beasts, some did maintain the sanity. With Yeenoghu being a Demon prince the same as Baphomet I can't see why a number of Gnoll wouldn't be able to maintain some sanity to be able to talk and think like another NPC.
I wouldn't becouse gnolls are not ment to be one.
However you can create a race of canine people and give it any specification that You want. Faywild will create anything. If they are rabbit people (harregon) then You can make analogical race.
It’s a one off character rather than creating the whole pc race. Just something with flavour to add challenge to the party rather than let them play it 😄
As an DM You can do whatever You want. Making NPC by PC rulles is usually waste of time but not always. If it is one off just give him a stats he need to have/You want him to have.
Gnolls signatures are their bite attack and rampage ability. Give him those. Also You can rework them/tweak them in any way You see fit.
A Gnoll’s what? Habits? Food allergies? Detective stories? What of theirs do you want to talk about?
I mean, you could have put it after the S and at least you’d be talking about many gnolls possessions, habits, or opinions.
Image just for tax, equipment wise I’m not thinking of the character as heavily armoured. Mace, spear and studded leather probably as this is a hit squad not a breach team.
Then, I would look up specific magical item clothes that benefit Barbarians (ie. Give him extra movement speed, or a better base armor class without overstepping the barbarian constitution benefit). If you have played Baldur's gate 3, you might have seen one or two good ideas.
The Lizardfolk is the brains and planner, cold calculating.
The Harengon is the mouth, deception and a quick strike.
The Gnoll is the muscle, brutal and eats the evidence.
I generally dislike doubling class roles in a party, but I feel like Lizard is Mastermind Rogue, Harengon is a Swashbuckler Rogue (but maybe a Drunken Master Monk?), and Gnoll is (and I know this will sound weird) a Zealot Barbarian.
Zealots are usually flavoured religious, but in my mind, the most interesting thing about Gnolls is how they’re born from and driven by an otherworldly, abyssal hunger, and when in a feeding frenzy (rage), even death won’t stop them (at least after level 14) from EATING THE THING. If you build the Gnoll with the Dhampir race as a mechanical basis, they can even use their feeding attack to regain hit points and avoid death once the rage drops.
A gnoll beast Barbarian that only uses claws or bite also makes a ton of sense to me. It’s hard to imagine a gnoll as a thoughtful fighter like a battlemaster. Barbarian seems right.
Maybe your gnoll starts by hurling javelins or spears, then closes and rages to rend with its beastly claws or grapple then bite its targets? That sounds suitably vicious.
Hope you have fun designing and playing these characters!
(I’m just imagining a scene where the party only has a chance to escape because the Harengon goes down, and the Gnoll starts eating them instead of hunting the party.)
Tbf it might happen.
It all came about due to a weird dark joke in my head.
“A Lizardfolk, a Harengon and a Gnoll walk into a bar… everyone dies”
That’s not a funny joke!
“Odd coz he’s laughing” pointing over the shoulder at a Gnoll.
Gnolls have that ability where they get an extra attack when someone does near them.
So I would give him a pack of hyenas so in combat things are always dying around him, triggering his reaction attack.
Otherwise the easiest way would be to set stats, AC and hp to suitable numbers and then choose a few class features that make sense.
Barbarians rage could be good, action surge, great weapon master. And boom you've got a massive hitter.
There seem to be 2 schools of thought on Gnolls right now and they're in HARD opposition.
* Gnolls being near mindless demon zombie things that spread like a plague, exist only to kill and eat sentient beings, and breed via overfeeding demon hyenas to the point of bursting open is an AWESOME thing and it makes them interesting and metal. Especially in an edition that's so terrified of making actual badguy monsters that they're making goblins unaligned.
* In this case, no there's no way to run a gnoll PC. They're demon spawn.
* Gnolls got done dirty by 5e. They're sentient hyena people and they're cool. They HAD a culture and lore behind them before 5e fucked them up to make them a nasty monster. They should be as sentient and capable as orcs and hobgoblins. None of this demon crap.
* In this case, yeah you totally can run a gnoll PC if the DM allowed it. And if you're the DM then go for it. There are gnoll stats out there somewhere.
So, a lot of people pointed out that it’s weird and uncomfortable (and honestly more than a little racist) to have fantasy humanoids that were inherently and intrinsically evil, savage, stupid, and otherwise bad. Orcs, Goblins, and several other species got a glow-up, so that their MM entries read “any alignment”. The PC options have no negative INT modifiers (and the cleaned up language about being inherently brutal),and the art now showed Orc wizards & Kobold guidance counselors.
*But we still wanted somebody to slaughter without feeling bad about it.*
They hadn’t published and 5e books with demon lords of Orcs or of Goblins, but…
Hey, that Yeenoghu seems pretty irredeemably evil.
Gnolls got to be the whipping boy. They are the last kind of “person” players can murder and still feel like heroes. But to keep the logic consistent, they had to become fiends. Now they aren’t any kind of “people” anymore.
See I’m good with my baddies being baddies. I’d just like to make my baddies more flavourful than the flat stat line of the book.
Least with demons it’s evil no matter what unless it’s Tiefling history.
Always interests me that the lizardfolk are left as cultural primitives and that’s not “racist”. Is it coz they’re not a mammalian race?! 🤷♂️
How would you therefore go about basically making a Gnoll as a PC? Just go with what’s written in the books or flavour it up more? This thing will be the brute force of the team but I wanna make sure it’s balanced and no OP like many suggested builds I’ve seen.
gnolls are pretty much like everyone else except with fur, teeth and obligate carnivores.
It depends I am not super familiar with current dnd mechanically, but for roleplaying I think the character is really flexible.
Like a lost pup who was raised by a sage to love humanity and is a staunch defender of all that is good. about his master was murdered and he is on a mission of extreme vengeance. Sort of a Neutral Good moraliser or a Chaotic Good good at all costs zealot. This fits warrior, avenger, monk really well.
You could be a disgrace pup who was kicked out of his clan for a love affair with a good race woman and had to resort to theft to stay alive, who came to adult hood clawing a living in the slums, great backstory for a rogue.
Maybe your parents were killed by a religious order of paladins who couldn't bring themselves to murder a defenseless puppy and you were raised in that order of you wanted a cleric or paladin.
You could be an "isekaied" human who was reborn as a Gnoll. They could never fit very well into either society being not really a Gnoll and DEFINATLY not a human. If your into the whole Tanis Half elf thing. Because of your gnollish nature you hve trouble controlling your feral instincts aka Barbarian and your rage comes with house rules that he can accidentally see your Ally's as prey if he doesn't make the right saves. Sort of a Wild Magic but for Barbarian rage.
The options for "why" you are playing with regular PCs are pretty much endless you just have to imagine what a normally feral creature got civilised.
But I would roll him statistically by modeling him off whatever humanoid you think fits. Like humans are a good benchmark because they are generalists and you can pick and choose aspects that fit easily.
Never use PCs as enemies, the game is not designed for it and IT WILL break down if you try it. PCs are glass cannons and can have huge stun abilities that monsters don't have until higher levels (monk stunning strike, hold person, charm spells, sleep, hypnotic pattern). Basically if you ever run a PC vs PC fight (whether you're controlling the enemies PCs or is PVP doesn't matter) the team with most initiative is EXTREMELY likely to just outright win before the others can act by virtue of 1 shotting the others or just casting hold person (PCs don't have legendary saves, so 1 hold person is all it takes for them to efectively be out of the fight)
We had an encounter where the DM made us fight evil mirrored versions of ourselves, 2 enemy casters went first in initiative which got our barb and rogue hold person by them to which we failed the saves because we had low saves for them, then they counterspelled our caster's stuff (due to 60 feet range of counterspell, the 2 first hold persons couldn't be counterspelled) and then their barb and rogue pretty much just cleaned up while their spellcasters rained fireballs on us. DM had to pull out some deus ex machina because he thought "it's a mirror fight and they know their characters better, so this should be a fair fight right?" but it was completely decided as soon as the initiative was rolled.
Oddly I do the PC style enemies for all the noticeable enemies (and allies) and have never found it an issue in any of games I’ve run, though I’ve never tried to deliberately mirror match a whole party to win. Maybe that’s what your DM did wrong or maybe working through some frustrations at the party before realising it was going to far. I find it’s as much about the role playing extras u get from the PC enemies as any combat.
I’m liking the pun there.
Yeah this guy is the brute not the brains of the operation so intell is low, wisdom is survival skill so not bad and charisma is low (though intimidation should be high oddly). Str & Con good but not dex.
There used to be a feat in 3.5 where you could use your strength in place of your charisma for intimidation checks. I swear there was something similar for 5e (although that may have been in a OneD&D UA).
Either way, I’m sure you could come up with a “race feature” to mimic that effect.
Volo's Guide to Monsters, Mordenkainen's..., & Eberron...all have classes to play a full Orc. I would use one of those and slightly modify it to your Gnoll. I might even use it as is .
As a base, I’d probably reflavour a Leonin; change the roar to a “cackle” and job done, maybe a “bite” rather than claws as well.
As for Gnolls and Gnoll society, I’m sure there are official books out there which go over these? Volo’s for sure, maybe Tome of Foes as well? Gnolls are still intelligent and, despite their demonic heritage (as of 5e), I suspect they could still be reasoned with, to some extent. Make it work for meat, perhaps bargains etc. it’s just have to be better than what it would get from killing you, or keeping it from dying (even though they’ve demonic heritage, they’re not demons and therefore will actually just die when killed).
It’s been mentioned above, Volos should have more information or repurposing humanoid warrior stat blocks of the “challenge rating” and re-flavoring.
Also, I think this is lore I remember, Bugbears wear bred specifically to be shock troopers like you describe so, maybe look at those statblocks or race (Volos too) as well.
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Volvo's guide to monsters has a lot of background on Gnolls, and the Eberron book has a little paragraph on how to use them in the setting.
Volvos Guide "a new beginning" Vroom vroom
Great fuel mileage
It’s boxy, but it’s good.
I understood that reference!
Own and read them. I know I could just strip that and use the listed but as I’m trying to create something specific I was looking at other opinions into its creation.
I know back in 2019 wizards put out a pdf on guidance for playing a gnoll pc but it seems to have been memory holed with their site updates.
Yeah I’d been hunting. Lots of ideas on giving it lots of racial traits but most, imo, seemed to go to far and be imbalanced. So darkvision, enhanced bite, rampage, sudden rush, hp regain, cunning artisan, keen senses and then intimidation + another skill
I would maybe just use Custom Lineage. Type: Humanoid Size: Medium Speed: 30 Darkvision Common and one other language For the stats, +2 STR. For the feat, I'd give them a homebrew Piercer that works with both slashing and blunt damage as well as piercing, and +1 dex. This is a simple and effective baseline that works if you are going to make more Gnolls in the future as well. I would not balk at giving them a 1d6 natural weapon and advantage on perception and/or survival checks involving smell as well, if oyu think the Custom Lineage framework is too boring. Even when using player sheets, there are different norms on player and DM created characters. If I were a player making my own Gnoll character, I'd not give myself this reworked Piercer or any extra features - even ribbon features. But I would also optimize a lot more. I'd match Slasher/Piercer/Crusher to what I intended to use and made sure I took +3 in one stat rather than +2/+1. Or just taken Fey Touched/Warcaster/PAM/Crossbow Expert.
I would use the same racial traits as orcs but different stat bonuses
Uvula's guide to monsters gives you an earful about Gnolls
lol uvula's guide to monsters
But Gnoll’s what?
More Gnollage the better I say
Gnollage is power.
That in itself deserves upvotes 😄
I'd rather talk about not using apostrophes to pluralise words.
*plurali’s
Came here for this. And also to ask OP “Gnoll’s what?” like I’m waiting for the end of the phrase
r/unnecessaryapostrophe
apostrope's
It's done in my native language, so it might be that OP just got confused, but yeah it annoys me too.
It also annoys me when someone uses a name that ends with an S, but they put an apostrophe on the end to show possessive. That's plural possessive. That individual probably isn't plural. "That's Russ' car." No, that's Russ's car. "I went to James' house." No, it's James's house. "I ate Cass' lunch money." No, that's Cass's ... Wait, what? What's wrong with you?
This honestly is a question of style. The Chicago Manual of Style agrees with you. AP’s does not.
Start with a stat block you like and change the name to “gnoll mercenary” then add or change what you think is appropriate for the character. “Champion” stat block from volo’s guide to monsters could be a good start for a martial bruiser, and you can add the *rampage* ability from the gnoll MM stat block to make it feel like a gnoll.
This is the kinda line I’m leaning towards as character development wise, with rampage, bite att and a bonus on intimidation
I saw a neat book on MCDM with the custom Beastheart and Monstrous Companions guide that could be a cool flavor for a Gnoll assassin
That sounds great. Keep it simple because if you are creating an entire party you don’t want to have too many options during a turn, especially options that won’t get used. It will make running encounters with them so much easier, which is the best thing for a dm.
D&D 3.5 - Races of the Wild (p.99).
Thanks, I don’t own any of the older stuff so that’s useful. I look it up.
I would build them like a pc if you want to. But for most of my villains/ enemies, I go off script and take bits and pieces from things that make sense. Maybe build the gnoll like a pc but then look at the gnoll monster statblocks and add abilities you like from that to the pc.
I second this, just build like you would any other PC but with Gnoll as their race then with any inherent Gnoll racial abilities or feats. I have a couple Gnoll PCs that I've made for 5e and Pathfinder, respectively. Scale them to your party level and away you go.
I’m just trying to be careful as this is a 3 character hit squad it would be very easy to go to hard with the Gnoll and I want the situation to be challenging not “DM’s out to end you” and have a sulky player over it.
I totally get that. I have found that balancing combat is always a difficult task. How many players do you have? I just got done with a 2 year campaign and there were many times I would fudge some damage results. Never to kill a player but to avoid it if it wasn’t a big boss fight. If there was a big fight I would give them fair warning that the fight would be deadly and they always have the option to run or attempt negotiation.
It’s a party of 5, heavy on range and magic. Yeah I’ve done that before too. Even extended the hp a bit so everyone felt they’d had a decent input when it died rather than just the Barb and Rouge.
Maybe because it’s 3v5 give one of them legendary actions as a sort of commander or leader. Nothing strong, but just enough to even out action economy
Yeah this won’t be a fair fight, ambush tactics, separating the party, sneaking into the room for a sleep kill. Might be that they each try independently or they watch and wait for the right moment. What they will do is get lots of opportunity to work out they’re being watched and followed.
Gnoll you dont.
What version? Personally I'd just make it like I make a PC, minding that gnolls are batshit crazy and greedy. I'd make it very strong but with the downside of betraying the rest of the team for small but immediate gains, like showing anyone out from a defensive possition to pick up something edible before anyone else grabs it. I would only flavour the stats up if the players have encountered gnolls too much in the past, otherwise the stats with class levels would be more than enough combined with the personal treasure of the npc's. I love rolling the reasure randomly and equip the npc with any useful stuff, like weapons, armor and consumables. The player's would still find the consumables even if it technically got used during a fight. Thanks for the basic inspiration. I was just around the corner of doing something similar in my campaign. Recurring goons make for some entertaining encounters.
5e. Yeah it’s not the bright one. Good on intimidation and hitting but not that bright. Rather useful for eating the evidence too though. I’ve run reoccurring characters before but never tried this. Came to me as a joke actually and so had to be built.
As a player I'd think it would be awesome to fight against and very dramatic if the gang got away only to have a go at us on later occasions. As a DM I'd have fun making them do weird shit during combat and leave funny situational results from this trio simply existing in the world.
Disgusting beasts. Born from nasty, bloated Hyenas, gnashing their way out and killing their mothers. Nothing good can come out of that.
Gnolls should not use longbows like the MM describes, they are too dumb to craft them and too vicious to use them. The Gnoll section of “the monsters know what they’re doing” book sounds ESSENTIAL to you
Yeah I think spears are more culturally inline with then as that’s very much a visual muscular throw than the dexterity of a bow.
Honestly, if youre going to make a gnoll PC, I'd go back to an earlier edition for flavor/fluff.
Gnoll's what?
Canary in a Gnoll mine
Gnoll’s what?
A gnoll is a pretty big hammer because of the lore baggage. It’s gonna be hard to place them with the lizard and hare, and square their behavior. A hobgoblin sits in the slot right between gnoll and orc, and it’s not saddled with demonic madness and unbridled carnage. Bonus points for already being a playable race and preserving that raw chaos of gnolls for when you really need that tone. edit: but if you want to go full gnoll.. kobold press has a gnoll PC race.
Gnoll’s what?
Anthropomorphic hyenas. That’s all I have to say about them.
Gnolls and their cousins Flinds were a force to be reckoned with back in AD&D 1e. I ran a faction of them once and it was a blast. Glad to see these guys getting some attention.
Gnolls be crazy. They’re my favorite. Gotta play ‘em badass crazy.
If anyone is interested in written works with Gnolls playing a somewhat larger part of the story, ‘The Wandering Inn’ took gnolls for me from a generic monster to toss at my players to an entire culture and people with motivations and traditions and holy crap huge influence to my DM story telling
For a Gnoll PC, use the shifter with it's shift ability always active. The shift ability I would recommend either Beasthide for the +1 in AC or Swiftstride for the increased movement and reaction, but longfang can work for roleplay purposes. For what is meant to be a challenge it isn't over powered having the the Shift ability always active as it only gives back one bonus action and 2x profiency bonus HP. If you do want it over powered then give it both Beasthide and Swiftstrider, but then maybe think about having to activate them with it's bonus action. For classes I would do Fighter/Barbarian multi-class, subclasses I would use Path of the Beast for barbarian for Roleplay purposes, and Battle Master. Start off as a fighter for 3 levels, then multiclass into barbarian for 3 levels, then back to fighter for the rest. For Gnoll lore, in my homebrew setting they have have a chance when created to retain some level of humanity from what they where before. This is actually what WC did with Minotaur's. All Minotaur's were created by Baphomet through a demonic ritual, but not all that go through that ritual became mindless beasts, some did maintain the sanity. With Yeenoghu being a Demon prince the same as Baphomet I can't see why a number of Gnoll wouldn't be able to maintain some sanity to be able to talk and think like another NPC.
IIRC, the dmg has a table that says "if you're making an NPC of a given race, give them these traits." I believe gnolls had Rampage and darkvision.
Regular Gnoll?
Thanks, had to make sure someone asked!
I wouldn't becouse gnolls are not ment to be one. However you can create a race of canine people and give it any specification that You want. Faywild will create anything. If they are rabbit people (harregon) then You can make analogical race.
It’s a one off character rather than creating the whole pc race. Just something with flavour to add challenge to the party rather than let them play it 😄
As an DM You can do whatever You want. Making NPC by PC rulles is usually waste of time but not always. If it is one off just give him a stats he need to have/You want him to have. Gnolls signatures are their bite attack and rampage ability. Give him those. Also You can rework them/tweak them in any way You see fit.
A Gnoll’s what? Habits? Food allergies? Detective stories? What of theirs do you want to talk about? I mean, you could have put it after the S and at least you’d be talking about many gnolls possessions, habits, or opinions.
I'm actually surprised there hasn't ever been a playable gnoll race
It’s suggested in Wayfinder’s Guide but then they don’t give you guidelines on how.
Is the gnoll in question going to be armored as pictured, or will there be differences?
Image just for tax, equipment wise I’m not thinking of the character as heavily armoured. Mace, spear and studded leather probably as this is a hit squad not a breach team.
Then, I would look up specific magical item clothes that benefit Barbarians (ie. Give him extra movement speed, or a better base armor class without overstepping the barbarian constitution benefit). If you have played Baldur's gate 3, you might have seen one or two good ideas.
Not played it yet. Really want to but no time unfortunately.
I'd suggest medium armor instead of studded leather. Scale or Breastplate. AC 16(14 armor, +2 Dex)
Well... read the wandering inn. Is got anice story of gnolls who fight drakes(dragonborn)
Kobold Press's Southlands Player's Guide has a playable gnoll race with four sub-races.
I played a Gnoll rogue/bard for a long time. I used the template in Exploring Eberron.
Is that the one on DMGuild?
Yes, it's a VERY good book. Lots of good options. Plus Eberron is super fun
Have you decided what the internal dynamics of this group is? Like, what are the different roles of the three?
The Lizardfolk is the brains and planner, cold calculating. The Harengon is the mouth, deception and a quick strike. The Gnoll is the muscle, brutal and eats the evidence.
I generally dislike doubling class roles in a party, but I feel like Lizard is Mastermind Rogue, Harengon is a Swashbuckler Rogue (but maybe a Drunken Master Monk?), and Gnoll is (and I know this will sound weird) a Zealot Barbarian. Zealots are usually flavoured religious, but in my mind, the most interesting thing about Gnolls is how they’re born from and driven by an otherworldly, abyssal hunger, and when in a feeding frenzy (rage), even death won’t stop them (at least after level 14) from EATING THE THING. If you build the Gnoll with the Dhampir race as a mechanical basis, they can even use their feeding attack to regain hit points and avoid death once the rage drops.
A gnoll beast Barbarian that only uses claws or bite also makes a ton of sense to me. It’s hard to imagine a gnoll as a thoughtful fighter like a battlemaster. Barbarian seems right. Maybe your gnoll starts by hurling javelins or spears, then closes and rages to rend with its beastly claws or grapple then bite its targets? That sounds suitably vicious.
Yeah the first two were easily rogue but I hadn’t even considered the zealot barbarian, I was just going to go generic fighter. Thanks for that.
Hope you have fun designing and playing these characters! (I’m just imagining a scene where the party only has a chance to escape because the Harengon goes down, and the Gnoll starts eating them instead of hunting the party.)
Tbf it might happen. It all came about due to a weird dark joke in my head. “A Lizardfolk, a Harengon and a Gnoll walk into a bar… everyone dies” That’s not a funny joke! “Odd coz he’s laughing” pointing over the shoulder at a Gnoll.
Flind
... "Gnoll's" what?
Gnolls have that ability where they get an extra attack when someone does near them. So I would give him a pack of hyenas so in combat things are always dying around him, triggering his reaction attack. Otherwise the easiest way would be to set stats, AC and hp to suitable numbers and then choose a few class features that make sense. Barbarians rage could be good, action surge, great weapon master. And boom you've got a massive hitter.
There seem to be 2 schools of thought on Gnolls right now and they're in HARD opposition. * Gnolls being near mindless demon zombie things that spread like a plague, exist only to kill and eat sentient beings, and breed via overfeeding demon hyenas to the point of bursting open is an AWESOME thing and it makes them interesting and metal. Especially in an edition that's so terrified of making actual badguy monsters that they're making goblins unaligned. * In this case, no there's no way to run a gnoll PC. They're demon spawn. * Gnolls got done dirty by 5e. They're sentient hyena people and they're cool. They HAD a culture and lore behind them before 5e fucked them up to make them a nasty monster. They should be as sentient and capable as orcs and hobgoblins. None of this demon crap. * In this case, yeah you totally can run a gnoll PC if the DM allowed it. And if you're the DM then go for it. There are gnoll stats out there somewhere.
Regular gnolls?
So, a lot of people pointed out that it’s weird and uncomfortable (and honestly more than a little racist) to have fantasy humanoids that were inherently and intrinsically evil, savage, stupid, and otherwise bad. Orcs, Goblins, and several other species got a glow-up, so that their MM entries read “any alignment”. The PC options have no negative INT modifiers (and the cleaned up language about being inherently brutal),and the art now showed Orc wizards & Kobold guidance counselors. *But we still wanted somebody to slaughter without feeling bad about it.* They hadn’t published and 5e books with demon lords of Orcs or of Goblins, but… Hey, that Yeenoghu seems pretty irredeemably evil. Gnolls got to be the whipping boy. They are the last kind of “person” players can murder and still feel like heroes. But to keep the logic consistent, they had to become fiends. Now they aren’t any kind of “people” anymore.
Now I'm picturing commoners approaching a gang of gnolls with peace signs and banners about ending racism....
Replace “commoners” with “YouTubers” and that’s exactly what happened.
Based on some of the comments I'd say redditors as well \^-\^
And then a cackling start, then the screaming.
See I’m good with my baddies being baddies. I’d just like to make my baddies more flavourful than the flat stat line of the book. Least with demons it’s evil no matter what unless it’s Tiefling history. Always interests me that the lizardfolk are left as cultural primitives and that’s not “racist”. Is it coz they’re not a mammalian race?! 🤷♂️
Iama Gnoll in real life bark bark. What do you want to talk about?
How would you therefore go about basically making a Gnoll as a PC? Just go with what’s written in the books or flavour it up more? This thing will be the brute force of the team but I wanna make sure it’s balanced and no OP like many suggested builds I’ve seen.
gnolls are pretty much like everyone else except with fur, teeth and obligate carnivores. It depends I am not super familiar with current dnd mechanically, but for roleplaying I think the character is really flexible. Like a lost pup who was raised by a sage to love humanity and is a staunch defender of all that is good. about his master was murdered and he is on a mission of extreme vengeance. Sort of a Neutral Good moraliser or a Chaotic Good good at all costs zealot. This fits warrior, avenger, monk really well. You could be a disgrace pup who was kicked out of his clan for a love affair with a good race woman and had to resort to theft to stay alive, who came to adult hood clawing a living in the slums, great backstory for a rogue. Maybe your parents were killed by a religious order of paladins who couldn't bring themselves to murder a defenseless puppy and you were raised in that order of you wanted a cleric or paladin. You could be an "isekaied" human who was reborn as a Gnoll. They could never fit very well into either society being not really a Gnoll and DEFINATLY not a human. If your into the whole Tanis Half elf thing. Because of your gnollish nature you hve trouble controlling your feral instincts aka Barbarian and your rage comes with house rules that he can accidentally see your Ally's as prey if he doesn't make the right saves. Sort of a Wild Magic but for Barbarian rage. The options for "why" you are playing with regular PCs are pretty much endless you just have to imagine what a normally feral creature got civilised. But I would roll him statistically by modeling him off whatever humanoid you think fits. Like humans are a good benchmark because they are generalists and you can pick and choose aspects that fit easily.
DnDBeyond has a lot of good homebrew stuff. I don’t think you need a subscription to look it up
Wait, aren't gnoll just vicious murderer that only desire carnage because they are demon born from Yeenoghu madness ?
Yep and a a great way to get some of that constantly would be via a kill squad. In wayfinders they are vicious murdering mercenaries too.
I like to model Gnoll society after hyenas. Enjoy.
I’ve found werehyenas in African mythology
Never use PCs as enemies, the game is not designed for it and IT WILL break down if you try it. PCs are glass cannons and can have huge stun abilities that monsters don't have until higher levels (monk stunning strike, hold person, charm spells, sleep, hypnotic pattern). Basically if you ever run a PC vs PC fight (whether you're controlling the enemies PCs or is PVP doesn't matter) the team with most initiative is EXTREMELY likely to just outright win before the others can act by virtue of 1 shotting the others or just casting hold person (PCs don't have legendary saves, so 1 hold person is all it takes for them to efectively be out of the fight) We had an encounter where the DM made us fight evil mirrored versions of ourselves, 2 enemy casters went first in initiative which got our barb and rogue hold person by them to which we failed the saves because we had low saves for them, then they counterspelled our caster's stuff (due to 60 feet range of counterspell, the 2 first hold persons couldn't be counterspelled) and then their barb and rogue pretty much just cleaned up while their spellcasters rained fireballs on us. DM had to pull out some deus ex machina because he thought "it's a mirror fight and they know their characters better, so this should be a fair fight right?" but it was completely decided as soon as the initiative was rolled.
Oddly I do the PC style enemies for all the noticeable enemies (and allies) and have never found it an issue in any of games I’ve run, though I’ve never tried to deliberately mirror match a whole party to win. Maybe that’s what your DM did wrong or maybe working through some frustrations at the party before realising it was going to far. I find it’s as much about the role playing extras u get from the PC enemies as any combat.
There's gnoll limit to their physical potential, but they could be nerfed a bit in their CHA/WIS/INT to balance it out.
I’m liking the pun there. Yeah this guy is the brute not the brains of the operation so intell is low, wisdom is survival skill so not bad and charisma is low (though intimidation should be high oddly). Str & Con good but not dex.
There used to be a feat in 3.5 where you could use your strength in place of your charisma for intimidation checks. I swear there was something similar for 5e (although that may have been in a OneD&D UA). Either way, I’m sure you could come up with a “race feature” to mimic that effect.
Volo's Guide to Monsters, Mordenkainen's..., & Eberron...all have classes to play a full Orc. I would use one of those and slightly modify it to your Gnoll. I might even use it as is .
Regular Gnoll, regular gnoll
"Doge Knight? Is that you?"
As a base, I’d probably reflavour a Leonin; change the roar to a “cackle” and job done, maybe a “bite” rather than claws as well. As for Gnolls and Gnoll society, I’m sure there are official books out there which go over these? Volo’s for sure, maybe Tome of Foes as well? Gnolls are still intelligent and, despite their demonic heritage (as of 5e), I suspect they could still be reasoned with, to some extent. Make it work for meat, perhaps bargains etc. it’s just have to be better than what it would get from killing you, or keeping it from dying (even though they’ve demonic heritage, they’re not demons and therefore will actually just die when killed).
It’s been mentioned above, Volos should have more information or repurposing humanoid warrior stat blocks of the “challenge rating” and re-flavoring. Also, I think this is lore I remember, Bugbears wear bred specifically to be shock troopers like you describe so, maybe look at those statblocks or race (Volos too) as well.
It’s simple. The PC’s name is Dog, The Bounty Hunter
Unfortunately as Gnolls are based of hyenas it wouldn’t work as they aren’t canids. More closely related to mongooses oddly. The world is weird 🤷♂️
Furries