I backed the Kickstarter and got 4 color printed miniatures for my evil Drow and I totally love them! I had ordered a Drow character before and was completely impressed.
No dogs here! Hyenas are not members of the dog or cat families. Instead, they are so unique that they have a family all their own, Hyaenidae. There are four members of the Hyaenidae family: the striped hyena, the “giggly” spotted hyena, the brown hyena, and the aardwolf (it's a hyena, not a wolf).
When I was in college, I joined a group. They had captured a Gnoll rogue NPC, and I played him. His name was Billy the Gnoll. Fast forward to Billy using the halfling paladin’s shield as a snowboard, hitting a jump, launching himself into the air, and bringing a harpy crashing down. 10 years later and we still reference Billy and his antics. He ended up starting a small settlement, helping members of other evil races who wanted to walk the path of good. He died an old man, surrounded by his friends and family.
Eberron gnolls were not redeemed by any effort by 5e's writers. Znir Pact gnolls were just a consequence of Eberron's default "no mortal is inherently evil" approach, applied to third edition's rather standart gnolls. 5e's "gnolls are inherently, at natural level evil" approach is an anomaly, to previous editions, most settings, and even works that have gnolls as part of D&D heritage (Warcraft, for example). Gnolls always had CE bent, and they were indeed hard to break from it, but that was thanks to their creation by Gorellik, the ancient and amoral deity of hunt and scavangers. However, they also inherited their divine creator's laziness and lack of care towards anything but hunting; getting no care from their creator, they have abandoned him, robbing Gorellik of their faith and reducing him to a lonely demigod, easily taken over by Yeenoghu, who drives gnolls even deeper into evil. But, besides that, gnolls worshiping other archfiends, like Geryon, giantkin deities, or even more chill nature gods were always possible. Fifth edition removes any interesting complexity to this part of their lore, for sake of... what? Being easier to understand? Being slighly more readily useable? It is just a waste of very good ideas, in the end, and if they want to return gnolls to more ambiguous nature, they must get back here.
You could merge both and say Yeenoghu not only replaced Gorellik, but also imitated him and created his own vile version of gnolls (he could himself be a gnoll that ascended to become an archdemon). That would make 2 subtypes, one fiendish, and the other culturally corrupted by Yeenoghu. This allows for variety, and for plague-like gnoll incursions simultaneously.
@@Menzobarrenza Agreed. While I do not like it as much I do see some potential merit in the new gnolls; for some reason, divinities do not usually create more mortals in their image, and I would not be against seeing that among all races (imagine how much pride in his clan a dwarf would have if his great-great-grandma was created by Berronar Truesilver herself, fully-formed and blessed to be a perfect matron).
I got a cool idea for gnolls. They're different from the ones that you described. There are two types of gnolls, legionaries and outcasts. Legionaries are the friendly type of gnolls. They're like silver dragons, but humanoid hyenas. They obsess over humans, their culture, and arenas (outcasts are formed here). They fight a lot in the arena, rarely one dies, it's mostly either a yield or an injury that ends the fight. The gnoll that lost packs it's stuff and leave to become an outcast. Outcasts are the opposite of legionaries, they can be found in war bands, evil empires, dungeons, and even the underdark (mostly serving the gith or drows). Outcasts despise humans and see them all as abominations who should be put down (until proven otherwise). You can have a gnoll for a companion. Usually you have to forgive the gnoll who lost right after the arena fight, but you can also find some who are just wandering around the forest wanting to move in with other humans. Having a gnoll will take a lot of work to keep it, but the upsides are that it will catch a grenade for you and are very lovable. I also buffed them up to 8-10 cr.
I can't help but be reminded of how they are shown in The Unexpectables. Sax, jazz, guitar musicians and all round chill dudes vs these fiend dogs you keep describing, heh heh he.
I play a Gnoll Druid named Barley. His clan domesticated themselves by capturing sheep and were about to eat it til they effectively saw the sheep "make more sheep". Nomadic Gnolls with a pastorial lifestyle.
1:35 "In some gnoll clans, the group rarely engages in violent raids." Okay, but like....if you have a neighbor who "only rarely" breaks into your house and murders your family members, that's a problem.
I actually got the chance for almost a year to play as a Gnoll in a campaign. Borrowing a little from gnoll culture and a bit of Geralt from The Witcher series, I actually played a gnoll who grew up more among people rather than his own kin, albeit finding his way into a group of Blood Hunters who both indoctrinated and used his blood for research purposes, infusions, and general curiosities. While I never really got much of a chance to explore that side of him in the campaign, he often was one of the more intelligent and well-read members of the group. He always had to make saving throws every morning due to the call of Yeenoghu affecting how he rested and how his hunger was controlled (or not) and how his strict intentions to snub a god would cause him genuine discomfort and severe penalties to his ability scores. He was a complex fellow that maybe was a little hard to manage in my first long-standing game, but I loved it despite how much I kinda realized there were changes I would've liked to have made or would do over in another iteration.
You know one thing I love about Baldurs Gate 3 (It was my entry into the Forgotten Realms lore; I’m not trying to pretend otherwise lol) is that under the absolute you had Gnolls, Bugbears, Ogres, Orcs, Hobgoblins, goblins and their beasts, Duerger, deep gnomes (as unpaid interns of course) and Drow all coming together in a horde like faction similar to the horde from WoW and the Dark Lords Army from LOTR. I was surprised to find out all those races normally stick only to their own kind. Like I at least thought you’d see some Orcs, hobgoblins, goblins, and Ogres all coming together to coexist in the same clans. I was completely caught off guard to learn that Gnolls see everyone and everything as good and definitely don’t form friendships and that they come from dead fetuses? Well at least dead Hyena fetuses. But there’s a remark that led me here to want to learn more where the Narrator says “Gnolls are born from decaying flesh and that *sometimes* includes wombs of dead unborn hyena offspring
If you want a good player aid for a gnoll character use the Midgard setting from kobold press. The southlands players guide has multiple gnoll optio s such as civilizes gnolls, wilds gnolls and necropolis gnolls
so, a heyenna eats a dead demon and then becomes a gnoll? you see, recently i saw a cutscene where a heyenna fell over, split open, and out of the shower of blood a fully grown gnoll emerged out of the heyenna's carcas, all while king charles III stands there watching with an expression of twisted glee on his face.
I've been playing a gnoll bard/warlock named Jakk in a custom setting campaign. He's pretty fun, he dealt the final blow to a penultimate boss dragon by dimension dooring on top of him 60ft in the air and stabbing him in the head.
I have a player in my campaign who’s a Warlock of Baphomet, I took inspiration from the cultists’ section in Mordenkaiken’s Tome of Foes to expend their spell list and have it fit to their patron a lil’ bit better.
I can see some good Knoll descendants that are druids and are crazy about recycling and repurposing, giving everything a second chance, due to the trials of their kind and how they were able to fundamentally change and their scavenging nature.
I would see good knolls as monks or the like. Overcoming their instincts through self-discipline and enlightenment. Living life in a monetary of some sort. Perhaps debating philosophy. I can see a cranky gnoll scolar threatening to take the equivalent amount of damage out of the hide of the perpetrator if any of the research materials come back damaged. Like threatening to literally tan someones hide so as to repair torn pages in a book.
Great video! I am wanting to play a striped gnoll druid named Yash Taarush. It would be cool to have a giant spider as a mount. He would be CN maybe or just N, but one with nature instead of death and destruction.
Hyenas are actually more closely related to cats then dogs . But are still not cats . They are from a family that branched off before true cats . Note cats & cainines are related to each other .
Another suggestion for Gnolls. Make them Crafty! They Should be the Architects of your Party's Demise! And Desert Gnolls should always have Methods of Tracking and Ambushing! Heck, you should even allow for Gnolls to use magicc, especially for the benefits of their Pack! You can even have Gnolls use spells like miniature Sandstorms, Quicksand, or even allow them to use Spells like Hold Person!
Thanks for the video! That's an interesting change to the gnoll lore. I had no idea it was so different until I was of course paying Baldurs Gate 3. Not sure I like it but its certainly different!
Yeenoghu should be described (personified?) as female by WotC. Female hyenas like lions are the dominant ones and (unlike female lions) have bigger pen*ses than the males! Literally sort of, no kidding XD We’re doing OotA module and her avatar is a BAMF. Love your videos, I share them all the time with the groups I play in - especially if I’m DMing and there’s a monster the players haven’t faced before ❤️
They don't have real penis', but their larger size and hyper aggressiveness means they do rape the males. Among other interesting and horrifying facts about the giggling not-dogs.
1) The only matriarcal hyenas are the spotted ones. Many of the gnolls in the video look like stripped hyenas 2) In many real world mythologies there are female deities of war and destruction so I don't see any issue here
Lack of player option? Broski, you can just ad hoc play them in 3.5e by not doing the outrageous monsterlevel classes and just bump class level advancements. I do it all the time.
HALF!!?? It was like 15-20 seconds, which is all my sponsored video plugs. More research doesn't magically translate into less commercial. Although it would change the ratio to sponsorship plug in the video; so I understand why you'd think that. Take care I hope you find the information on Gnolls you wanted!
Gnolls in 1st edition were just one evil race among many. They ate people, they could generally be killed on sight, but no more so than bugbears or orcs. Yes, they worshipped Yeenoghu, but orcs worshipped Gruumsh and so on. The break point between "just another evil race" and "somehow supernaturally evil" seems to have happened when some pack of nitwits or other decided that orcs were "black coded" which prompted a desperate scramble by the D&D writers to explain that orcs aren’t always evil, that it’s wrong to judge them and so on. Now needing a replacement for the kill on sight orcs, gnolls suddenly became objectively evil, demon tainted monsters that would improve the world greatly if they all died. This will presumably last until the next pack of whiners makes the case that gnolls are "Asian coded" or some such.
Half of the Hero Forge materials are unavailable, and the color option is unavailable, unless you're plugging their product. Don't go there for your miniatures. THEY HAVE NO PRODUCT TO SELL!
D&D is incredibly disappointing to furries because there are no dog-people, wolf-people, fox-people or bunny-people. Scalies however are happy - they can be dragonborn, lizardfolk or yuan-ti.
If nobody cared, I wouldn't be seeing so many comments about it. You'd probably get a similar reaction if the game called whales (which are mammals) as fish.