In my homebrew setting I made gnolls the cursed form of humanoids who succumbed to desperation and hunger before becoming cannibals and slaves to Yeenoghu's temptation. Sort of like wendigoes. It was a way to keep the flavor of gnolls on point while explaining why they were beyond the point of redemption while orcs, goblins, etc. were "people".
The stuff on the forgotten realms wiki refers to previous edition rules on gnolls. The demonic tie to yeenoghu and all encompassing hunger is new to 5e
The thing I miss from 4E is the Dragon magazine article on Playable race gnolls. Gnolls are my favorite monstrous race ever since I saw the D&D mini of the gnoll ranger. My avatar is a gnoll named Fingerbone. I like gnolls
Same here. Gnolls are one of my favorite races in D&D. The 4E article about the "neutral" gnolls inspired (and allowed) me to play one myself in my current campaign.
I played pathfinder first and made a big meaty girl druid gnoll. Wound up dating the kitsune gunslinger guy and from then on most of my gnoll characters are her descendants. Children with magic grow tails like their grandfather. Also need to make the Gonsune race (half-gnoll, half-kitsune). So far really enjoy playing a cannibal who is good natured, and even a doctor. Plus it has lead to the jar of orc butter my gnoll keeps.
Hello 4 year old comment. I recommend the good homebrew that literally shows up at the top of a Google search rn. I'm absorbing all possible information because my table wanted me to make a spellcaster DMPC so I made a gnoll warlock/sorceror who's meant to be like a shaman of yeenoghu. I want to give them the least trustworthy support caster possible. Yay. I hope this information helps you. There's a cool race feat you can take at an ASI that lets you eat vital organs of a powerful enemy to basically get portent to use on any d20 roll your gnoll can see.
I prefer the old rules when Gnolls were a playable race. No intelligent creature should be completely irredeemable and even demons can switch sides if they really want to. It just make for more interesting storytelling.
In the D&D cosmology demons are Chaotic Evil incarnated, so if they switch alignment, they cease to exist. But I agree with gnolls being redeemable. 4e had an interesting supplement for gnoll player characters. I have no idea, what WotC thought when they wrote the 5e gnoll.
I disagree, I feel that the current gnoll lore fills a role that no other low to mid level monster really fulfills, the role as a malevolent force of nature that carves a path of death and carnage in their wake. No other major monstrous humanoid fills this role: the United Goblinoid Host or Just Hobgoblin the elite martial conquering army, the Orcs are the barbaric superstitious raiding horde, Yuan Ti are Masterminds that only directly face their when they are forced too or can easily overwhelm their victim. Making Gnoll autonomous removes an important niche in storytelling and only serves to make Gnolls an off brand orcs with a demonic coat of paint.
Gnolls just got a whole lot scarier. My only previous reference to gnolls is from heroes of might and magic 3, in that game they were just some hyena dudes from the swamp city... but they did have flails!
Yeah - I was thinking about too! They were the tier 1 cannon fodder creature for the swamp castle (forgot what it was actually called) and you're right - they were just flail-carrying hyena-men. They weren't even big, in fact they looked a bit smaller than humans. Basically, in HoMM 3 gnolls were NOT intimidating!
They are in HoMM VII too, although the game itself is a buggy mess sadly. In HoMM III some Fortress heroes were also gnolls, where males were rangers and females were voodoo witches.
I have a campaign where the PCs watch the exploding hyenas. Also: I use giant hyenas and turn them into ogre sized Gnolls. Gnollgres. Please feel free to steal.
They obviously haven't read too much into them. Gnoll have actually been around more than the demon lord. The demon lord just used their lesser intelligence to convince them to gain power to summon him. Gnolls live in different parts of the world and some are even soldiers, trackers, rangers, rouges, and fighters. Read more on them.
I played a gnoll once. He had a savage looking glaive and an orcish bow. He lived for the hunt(like Predators). Whenever he successfully killed something he would always take a tooth off it, if able, and put it on a bone necklace. In one instance our party took down a T-rex and he crafted a dagger out of its tooth. But it gets better, while our party was camping outside I was on night watch. I encountered a shadow demon, having no magical weapons I couldnt harm it, but I rolled three nat 20s in a row, the demon was so impressed with my gnolls fighting that he decided to possess his glaive. So now my gnoll has a demon glaive that may or may not occasionally take control from time to time :)
I remember being really confused, because it says that Gnolls don't make their own weapons or tools, but then they all carry longbows. And I was thinking "Don't you need a lot of training to use a longbow?" and then I remembered how tall Gnolls are. To a Gnoll, a Longbow is more like a shortbow :P
I had a socially functional Gnoll character for a brief game! (Im starting him over, a little redone, after he got eaten by a hydra.) It took a hot minute to work out how he became a "decent" Gnoll, but I figured without their shamans influencing him the influence of Yeenoghu would lessen to the point it was about the strength of a distant whisper in his mind. Argued that he'd learn common in a colluseum pit from a sentient slave fighter who shared food and talked at him etc, and in the end (before campaign) he'd learn common and consider other species as potential companions.
I'm currently playing in a campaign set in Aglarond, circa 1485 DR where Gnolls are ravaging the Wizards Reach and they are seriously badass, especially since they are supported by actual demons from the abyss.
The other Undead Gnolls; if I'm correct: "Rot Walkers" - the dead in battle that aren't eaten are subject to dark rituals by nightfall, carried out by the Fangs of Yeenoghu - the result being a "Rot Walker." These Undead Creatures & Gnolls carry a particularly nasty disease: "Cackle Fever" - that causes victims to cough & cackle uncontrollably, hence the name - similar to Joker Gas. Soon after; the exposed will be ill or dying - leaving the Pack Lords of Gnoll Warbands to charge right in... and we all know what happens next...
I love Gnolls.the will ignore an enemy infront of them to chase after a fleeing civillian. great to have a town assault were gnolls are just grabbing everyone who doesnt fight back. they then take their captives back to camp for a feast. so the party has time to go stage a rescue.
Remember hyenas like most pack or clan animals mark their territory. Urine soak scat piles, corpses piled or left hanging from trees an eaves of buildings these 'snack caches' are often left for the next group of gnolls to enjoy and devour.
Has this ALWAYS been the lore on gnolls? I started getting into D&D when I was 8 and I was into "Fantasy" as a genre a year or two before that so I've pretty much always had at least basic knowledge of fantasy races & monsters, but I've never heard anything like (most of) this about gnolls! So is this all relatively new? Did they just decide it was time to flesh out the lore on gnolls a bit more for 4th or 5th edition, with a particular focus put on how their demonic origins make them especially twistws & chaotic?
Yeah gnolls have always been tied to Yeenoghu and been chaotic murder machines. FR lore adds a bit more nuance and personality to them. But D&D as a whole treats them as chaotic demon monsters.
Eric, i take the lore on gnolls with a grain of salt. Here is why. All we know about gnolls in D&D is what their enemies write about them. It is sort of the way that for thousands of years, all we knew about the ancient Gauls is what Julius Caesar wrote about them in his own propaganda memoirs while he was waging a genocidal military campaign against them in the first century BC. Unfortunately for the Gauls, they didn't write histories, so we never got their side of the story, & their story was written by their enemies who had their own reasons for needing to spin the narrative to their own benefit.
I played a Gnoll Bard named Gretel and shes still one of my favorite characters. She was chaotic evil but she, rather than destroy with physical violence, liked to just tell really horrible jokes in attempts to make people suffer.
By that logic all half man half animal breeds aren't from D&D. African and Native American tribes had numerous mythological beasts that were crosses between man and every single fucking animal they could find
In my homebrew setting I made gnolls the cursed form of humanoids who succumbed to desperation and hunger before becoming cannibals and slaves to Yeenoghu's temptation. Sort of like wendigoes. It was a way to keep the flavor of gnolls on point while explaining why they were beyond the point of redemption while orcs, goblins, etc. were "people".
An interesting way to I produce Gnolls would be to have a sickly, bloated hyena crawl in front of the party before exploding into ravenous Gnolls.
This happens in Baldur’s Gate III
@@Anthadanthis guy deserves credit tbh
@@petermorrison1487 true bro, I didn’t see the timestamp 😂
Well, looks like I found the mob to scare the pants off my players
MeowbBoss nothing scares players they see ur mob as a bunch of XP and level up.
The stuff on the forgotten realms wiki refers to previous edition rules on gnolls. The demonic tie to yeenoghu and all encompassing hunger is new to 5e
For a show about horrible, blood thirsty, carnage, this is one of the funniest episodes I've watched.
20:50 wow that explains wtf I was seeing in BG3. Apparently you get to see the results of this early on in BG3... it's pretty wicked.
The thing I miss from 4E is the Dragon magazine article on Playable race gnolls. Gnolls are my favorite monstrous race ever since I saw the D&D mini of the gnoll ranger. My avatar is a gnoll named Fingerbone. I like gnolls
Tyler H did they ask about the demon lords control on gnolls during your run?
Same here. Gnolls are one of my favorite races in D&D. The 4E article about the "neutral" gnolls inspired (and allowed) me to play one myself in my current campaign.
Tyler H My Dragonborn fighter warlock uses their heads as weapons by keeping their skulls on chains like a thrown bear trap
I played pathfinder first and made a big meaty girl druid gnoll. Wound up dating the kitsune gunslinger guy and from then on most of my gnoll characters are her descendants. Children with magic grow tails like their grandfather. Also need to make the Gonsune race (half-gnoll, half-kitsune).
So far really enjoy playing a cannibal who is good natured, and even a doctor. Plus it has lead to the jar of orc butter my gnoll keeps.
Hello 4 year old comment. I recommend the good homebrew that literally shows up at the top of a Google search rn. I'm absorbing all possible information because my table wanted me to make a spellcaster DMPC so I made a gnoll warlock/sorceror who's meant to be like a shaman of yeenoghu. I want to give them the least trustworthy support caster possible.
Yay. I hope this information helps you. There's a cool race feat you can take at an ASI that lets you eat vital organs of a powerful enemy to basically get portent to use on any d20 roll your gnoll can see.
I prefer the old rules when Gnolls were a playable race. No intelligent creature should be completely irredeemable and even demons can switch sides if they really want to. It just make for more interesting storytelling.
I'm working on one a homebrew for them, one idea I have is you are immune to madness because your already insane and make them immune to diseases
In the D&D cosmology demons are Chaotic Evil incarnated, so if they switch alignment, they cease to exist. But I agree with gnolls being redeemable. 4e had an interesting supplement for gnoll player characters. I have no idea, what WotC thought when they wrote the 5e gnoll.
Well if Tieflings can be good
Yeah they have just f themed up pick and trashed there old lore
I disagree, I feel that the current gnoll lore fills a role that no other low to mid level monster really fulfills, the role as a malevolent force of nature that carves a path of death and carnage in their wake. No other major monstrous humanoid fills this role: the United Goblinoid Host or Just Hobgoblin the elite martial conquering army, the Orcs are the barbaric superstitious raiding horde, Yuan Ti are Masterminds that only directly face their when they are forced too or can easily overwhelm their victim. Making Gnoll autonomous removes an important niche in storytelling and only serves to make Gnolls an off brand orcs with a demonic coat of paint.
For all you Warhammer fans Gnolls make a great conversion for beast men.
Yeah but they’re all Khorne worshippers
i would love to see them in warhammer
Gnolls just got a whole lot scarier. My only previous reference to gnolls is from heroes of might and magic 3, in that game they were just some hyena dudes from the swamp city... but they did have flails!
Yeah - I was thinking about too! They were the tier 1 cannon fodder creature for the swamp castle (forgot what it was actually called) and you're right - they were just flail-carrying hyena-men. They weren't even big, in fact they looked a bit smaller than humans. Basically, in HoMM 3 gnolls were NOT intimidating!
They are in HoMM VII too, although the game itself is a buggy mess sadly. In HoMM III some Fortress heroes were also gnolls, where males were rangers and females were voodoo witches.
I have a campaign where the PCs watch the exploding hyenas.
Also: I use giant hyenas and turn them into ogre sized Gnolls. Gnollgres.
Please feel free to steal.
They obviously haven't read too much into them.
Gnoll have actually been around more than the demon lord.
The demon lord just used their lesser intelligence to convince them to gain power to summon him. Gnolls live in different parts of the world and some are even soldiers, trackers, rangers, rouges, and fighters.
Read more on them.
Check out Forgotten Realms Gnolls, the lore behind them is much better.
As a biology major, I am really glad you stopped talking about real hyenas when you did.
I developed stats for Gnoll Variants based on the Gnolls in Kingdom Rush: Origin. I honestly love gnolls, theyre my favorite monster to use
This is my first episode watching you guys, and this is a stellar episode! This is my new favorite podcast!
I played a gnoll once. He had a savage looking glaive and an orcish bow. He lived for the hunt(like Predators). Whenever he successfully killed something he would always take a tooth off it, if able, and put it on a bone necklace. In one instance our party took down a T-rex and he crafted a dagger out of its tooth. But it gets better, while our party was camping outside I was on night watch. I encountered a shadow demon, having no magical weapons I couldnt harm it, but I rolled three nat 20s in a row, the demon was so impressed with my gnolls fighting that he decided to possess his glaive. So now my gnoll has a demon glaive that may or may not occasionally take control from time to time :)
U got a cool dm
I remember being really confused, because it says that Gnolls don't make their own weapons or tools, but then they all carry longbows. And I was thinking "Don't you need a lot of training to use a longbow?" and then I remembered how tall Gnolls are. To a Gnoll, a Longbow is more like a shortbow :P
I had a socially functional Gnoll character for a brief game! (Im starting him over, a little redone, after he got eaten by a hydra.)
It took a hot minute to work out how he became a "decent" Gnoll, but I figured without their shamans influencing him the influence of Yeenoghu would lessen to the point it was about the strength of a distant whisper in his mind.
Argued that he'd learn common in a colluseum pit from a sentient slave fighter who shared food and talked at him etc, and in the end (before campaign) he'd learn common and consider other species as potential companions.
Gnolls:
Basically one of the most death metal of all the Races in D&D.
I'm currently playing in a campaign set in Aglarond, circa 1485 DR where Gnolls are ravaging the Wizards Reach and they are seriously badass, especially since they are supported by actual demons from the abyss.
My party tried to befriend a vrock at level 2. I should've had it fly away with the player who was trying to talk to it.
One of the old gnoll gods makes gnolls get as big as giants.
Haha may have finally found the mob that the Bard can't "negotiate" his way out of the encounter
One of my top favorite creatures. Simple yet dangerous.
The other Undead Gnolls;
if I'm correct: "Rot Walkers" -
the dead in battle that aren't eaten are subject to dark rituals by nightfall, carried out by the Fangs of Yeenoghu - the result being a "Rot Walker." These Undead Creatures & Gnolls carry a particularly nasty disease: "Cackle Fever" - that causes victims to cough & cackle uncontrollably, hence the name - similar to Joker Gas. Soon after; the exposed will be ill or dying - leaving the Pack Lords of Gnoll Warbands to charge right in... and we all know what happens next...
Gnolls are basically the Mad Max of Fantasy Games.
I love Gnolls.the will ignore an enemy infront of them to chase after a fleeing civillian. great to have a town assault were gnolls are just grabbing everyone who doesnt fight back. they then take their captives back to camp for a feast. so the party has time to go stage a rescue.
Remember hyenas like most pack or clan animals mark their territory. Urine soak scat piles, corpses piled or left hanging from trees an eaves of buildings these 'snack caches' are often left for the next group of gnolls to enjoy and devour.
Do you guys read older source material? Gnolls have been around since the beginning - including early modules from 1e.
WooT! I still don't know what to do durng a short rest,, Hit Die? IDK.. I need help!
Nothing on the Flind bar? Fiend Folio said it was like a metal nunchaku?
I think he got messed up between flails and the flind nunchaku.
Is this where we started the Demogorgon thing? Lol
These mobs would be perfect for a Lord Of The Rings themed campaign! :)
Has this ALWAYS been the lore on gnolls? I started getting into D&D when I was 8 and I was into "Fantasy" as a genre a year or two before that so I've pretty much always had at least basic knowledge of fantasy races & monsters, but I've never heard anything like (most of) this about gnolls! So is this all relatively new? Did they just decide it was time to flesh out the lore on gnolls a bit more for 4th or 5th edition, with a particular focus put on how their demonic origins make them especially twistws & chaotic?
Yeah gnolls have always been tied to Yeenoghu and been chaotic murder machines. FR lore adds a bit more nuance and personality to them. But D&D as a whole treats them as chaotic demon monsters.
Eric, i take the lore on gnolls with a grain of salt. Here is why. All we know about gnolls in D&D is what their enemies write about them. It is sort of the way that for thousands of years, all we knew about the ancient Gauls is what Julius Caesar wrote about them in his own propaganda memoirs while he was waging a genocidal military campaign against them in the first century BC. Unfortunately for the Gauls, they didn't write histories, so we never got their side of the story, & their story was written by their enemies who had their own reasons for needing to spin the narrative to their own benefit.
I played a Gnoll Bard named Gretel and shes still one of my favorite characters.
She was chaotic evil but she, rather than destroy with physical violence, liked to just tell really horrible jokes in attempts to make people suffer.
Now I have to read all about real hyenas...
you forgot the Half Gnolls
Yeenoghu: "E-no-Goo"
You mean how to run FROM gnolls, right?
... right?
Orcs average 6'2 extraordinary ones can be up to 7 feet
i like this video but im at this video for all the manscaped ads that reek havoc on my screen like gnolls on a corpse
When do you expect the Deities and Demigods episode on Bahamut since you guys did Tiamat?
It is on the schedule for February! :)
Video on tabaxi?
Or volos!
Tabxi is coming. We are making our way through Volo's Guide to Monsters playable races.
The Dungeoncast I can't wait! Starting a campaign as a Tabaxi on Sat! Love the show guys! Keep up the great work!
Not one Beyonce Gnolls joke hu?
Actually based on African Folklore. D&D didn't create the 'WereHyena'. They exist in tribes :)
By that logic all half man half animal breeds aren't from D&D. African and Native American tribes had numerous mythological beasts that were crosses between man and every single fucking animal they could find
I hate to do this but... after watching a ton of your episodes I think y'all need to just stay on topic.
Let them cook 🍳
Maybe... close your closet?
Watching again.
January 4th, 2024.