If Gnolls were a favored race to play in prior editions, I can understand the frustration. There's certainly nothing stopping anyone from homebrewing it in though. In fact, there are four homebrews here already if you don't want to make your own. Additionally, there's been rumors that Eberron might be getting it's own book soon.
Personally, I'm happy with the Gnolls as is, both as a player and a DM. There gets to be a point where making every sentient monster race playable just takes it too far. To do so, you would have to sacrifice the story of their race, and there's little reward in that for me. The Gnolls as is are an interesting, villainous race to face or utilize. Whereas most cases of a player choosing a monstrous race tend to be overt displays of 2edgy4me super spesh murderhoboing.
Probably not all players, but I'd be surprised to find one that proves me wrong.
Anyone else have a massive problem with this? Not for any list of reasons, but the whole, "gnolls are just born bad, because they are too demonic." Where as Tieflings are also like, half demonic.
If we follow the logic of how Gnolls are, gnolls are Atleast 40 percent of demonic heritage, they don't even speak abyssal. They don't have any particular group of powers beyond that of other races. They get Rampage, but guess what? Orcs can pick up a rampage like ability as well. Tieflings literally have demonic bloodline powers.
I do not know what it is, but it smacks of some kind of hatred for monsterous race players. Like kobolds got hit hard, a number of monsterous creatures that were somewhat uncommon but still played got the short end of the stick. Where I Do greatly enjoy the whole, narrowing and focusing of the lens, the excuses for why we can't have some creatures that were playable in the past, are flimsy at best.
Thoughts?
Hi. I know this has been around for a while, but I'd like to respond with what I understand the issue is. This has nothing to do with a bias against monster races. For instance, the Yuan-ti are insanely powerful for a monster race, with immunity to poison, spell abilities, good stats, magic resistance that puts gnome's to shame, and darkvision. There's been quite some effort to get minotaurs as a PC race (at least two Unearthed Arcana), and minotaurs are basically in the same boat as gnolls, at least in reference to their demon lord origins.
Rather, gnolls aren't really a thing for a PC race because what the race, as a whole, represents within the default D&D cosmology. They're cannibals. Even regular hyenas in the real world are well known for hunting and eating humans. Gnolls take this tendency and extrapolate it. Even if you purge the demon lord's influence, like Eberron did, that eat-sapient-beings itch still makes the core of what a gnoll stands for. That's a biological imperative that you can't just cultural-transplant away, considering it ties into the animal that spawned gnolls. Turning them into a PC race would effectively require you to rewrite the defining features of the race, and at which point, they'd be entirely a different race.
At least, that's the impression I received from the devs, like on Lore You Should Know, when the subject came up.
Also, a minor nitpick about tieflings - cambions are the half-fiends; tieflings, those not created by ritual anyways, can be quarter fiend at most.
They're basically designed specifically to be unplayable. So if you want playable gnolls you're going to have to invent your own lore to justify it (and you totally should because, again, 5e gnolls are a huge waste as written and having real gnolls would be cool).
Can I ask what a "real gnoll" is, then? Hyenas, even in real life, are pretty unfriendly to people, and from what I understand, legends about hyenas are even worse than the creatures themselves. What would your version of gnolls be, then? I'm not familiar with any lore that really makes them more grey or sympathetic.
Now, I know that there's some Eberron lore that tries to make them into generic tribal cultures in the wilderness, and some stuff in 4e that does the same. Its notable, however, that this is the exact same redemption story arc that orcs took.
Which brings us to this - what is the core identity of the gnoll? How are they set apart from other races, and what makes them unique? There should be more than just making them furry orc clones
There have been numerous versions of gnolls throughout the editions and settings, and I don't think that the 5e version is inherently better or worse than any other version; it just comes down to personal taste. Change them if you want.
That said, the best gnolls are the ones that are half-gnome and half-troll, and I will brook no disagreement as to this point.
That said, the best gnolls are the ones that are half-gnome and half-troll, and I will brook no disagreement as to this point.
Headcanon approved.
According to wikipedia, that's actually the original gnolls. They started off as a gag enemy, and eventually transformed into the hyena-people we know and love today. Gnolls have always been this kind of half-ignored splat that's never really been that well fleshed out, usually getting about half the word treatment as any other race. The moved from a generic savage-evil tribal killers to the occasional savage tribal hunter people when given the "not ebulz" treatment.
I have always liked the image of gnolls, and bought the book Soldiers of Ice purely because the main bad guys were gnolls (yeah, 20+ years since I last read it, but I still remember) so I am not against gnolls in any way, nor having the earlier gnolls playable (a gnoll ranger would be awesome!)
But....currently gnolls are irredeemable. You don't negotiate with them any more than you would a pack of starving hyenas or a great white shark. The trouble is, if just one gnoll gains 'redemption' (whatever that means in the context of your world) then suddenly ALL gnolls are redeemable. No longer can a holier-than-thou character enjoy wantonly slaying without staining his immortal soul. Dead or Alive posters will have to be recalled so that ALL gnolls can get the fair trial they deserve, just in case they are that 1-in-a-million that might have a chance of being redeemed, or is innocent, or was suffering temporary insanity or whatever other BS his (not it's anymore) lawyer can dream up. Forms will need to be filled in (in triplicate!) whenever one is harmed. Paladins will have their powers suspended pending an inquiry.
James Haeck wrote a very contentious/controversial/thought provoking article on the Eladrin recently and I think a lot of what he said is also worth applying to gnolls. Even though they are polar (solar?) opposites.
Either a fantasy race is literally irredeemable or it isn't.
And yet Drow are on the list of playable characters. Well that's really only because of Drizzt but there can be exceptions to the rule and Gnolls are no different. We've been using Gnoll PC's since 2nd edition, Perkins needs to stop with the copout crap of Gnolls being "too bad". What about the murderous "hobos" who go around killing things and taking treasure?
Mr. Perkins doesn't need to supply any reason to avoid making up and publishing rules for gnoll PCs therefore when he does explain his thoughts, it is probably genuine. I also think the accountants at WoTC would rather the ideas men work on stuff that is useful to the greatest number of potential consumers, but that kinda negates my initial answer. :(
"What about the murderous "hobos" who go around killing things and taking treasure?" That is mostly through choice, rather than demonic mandate. Even the most murderous of hobos (I may have met them) is slightly short of the gnoll's MM entry: "No goodness or compassion resides in the heart of a gnoll. Like a demon, it lacks anything resembling a conscience....."
To have a playable character race based on the current batch of gnolls would require changing what makes them special in the first place. Except they would still look cool!
"Why can't there be an all Gnoll party or an all monster party containing a Gnoll?" Nobody is saying there can't be. Go for. Stream it for the world to see. But if every table at a AL meeting has 2 gnolls sat around it, they may have lost that uniqueness that people wanted to connect with in the first place.
Some things should just remain homebrew, and only relevant to the singular world it was designed for. (And any others that want to use it singularly.)
A good rule of thumb for Life and D&D : Don't change the rules until you understand the reasons behind them.
Drow : I wonder how many Drow have been able to saunter up to the gates of towns and cities, safe in the knowledge that the exploits and tales of Drizzt are widely known and that the gate guards are going to assume that they are "one of the good drow?" We will probably never know, as those guards are currently lying in pools of their own blood.
Perhaps Drizzt leaving the Underdark was the singularly most selfish thing he ever did.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with a redeemed evil race. Hells, we've seen it with drow, druegar, orcs, goblinoids, githyanki, yuan-ti, kobolds, even the occasional chromatic dragon, and that's what I remember off the top of my head. One of my favorite stories is called The Wandering Inn, which heavily features gnolls, draconic people, and goblins that aren't evil.
The fundamental issue with D&D gnolls, however? They act one heck of a lot like D&D orcs, just with hyenas instead of pigs. Their not-evil path is the same exact one as the orcs as well. There's just too much overlap in terms of story, and, yes, the story matters. In my personal experience, when people play an "evil" race, they tend to play a more party-friendly version. Most drow PCs I've seen don't pull a Drizz't reject-everything move, but rather still embrace the shadowy nature and intrigue the drow are famed for. Tiefling PCs are well known for being hell knights, rogues and warlocks for a reason. Orc PCs tend to be barbarians, because they tend to want to keep the famous anger Gruumsh is renowned for as well as the tribal-animism flavor.
What is there about the gnolls that make their story stand out for PCs that won't overlap with orcs? Or, for that matter, won't play like we have the minotaurs and centaurs? There's been a lot of beast-kin warrior culture races lately. Even as antagonists, the writers wanted gnolls to stand out in some way in stark contrast to orcs. What makes them different? Orcs move and act like bandits, like barbarian-at-the-gate raiders who come into civilization, steal everything that's not nailed down, take slaves, and leave. Gnolls originally did the same. How do we differentiate them? Well, 5e went with the Eat People route. The cannibal thing is a bit too iffy to make into a PC option. But, without it, gnolls don't really have a different story or a unique niche, and that's the fundamental design philosophy behind 5e - every race, subclass, etc should tell a story of some kind.
In the end, the reason why gnolls aren't PCs has nothing to do with being fiend touched (everyone and their brother are fiend touched these days). It has to do with their story, and the dev team probably felt that cannibals was too hard a sell for a race, given the history of cannibalism being such a taboo in the game. That said, I personally would totally be down with it in mine - if I was going to make gnolls into a PC race? I'd go full on scavanger with them as well. So what if they eat sapient races? There's always a war of some kind going on. Traveling mercinaries going from battle to battle, and eating the dead that died for other reasons. People will give you strange looks, I'm sure. But its not outright villainous evil.
EDIT - well, in my opinion anyways. I don't think cannibalism is really evil, its the whole murdering-to-get-the-meat angle that's bad. But there's lots of people who will shy away from that taboo as being innately evil as well.
You do know that Orcs, Goblins, Bugbears, etc... all eat humans, elves, halflings etc. right? Elves are a delicacy to orcs so that doesn't cut it I'm afraid. They should have left the gnolls alone but of course anything Chris Perkins touches goes to crap.
Yes and no. An orc or goblinoid might eat another humanoid occasionally, but that's not a given in all settings or tables. At best, its a footnote for something that the race doesn't have to do. Meanwhile, for the 5e gnolls, its the raison d'etre for all they do, something inborn that the race has no choice but to indulge. Orcs will attack a settlement, but their main focus is stealing food and loot, not prisoners or anything else. Steal stuff for their settlements to survive. Goblinoids take over settlements because they're a conquering army building an evil empire. There's no need of eating people for any of the others. But gnolls? Gnolls attack settlements is in order to eat the people, and nothing else. They're constantly described as hungry, that you can tell their attacks from any other monster because there will never be corpses left behind while all the other riches will be, etc. The Volo writeup makes a huge issue out of the overwhelming hunger, being a compulsion, etc. No stealing, no conquest, just eating as the focus.
There's a reason the gnoll's subtitle is "The Insatiable Hunger."
I've been playing D&D since 1985 so I have a fantastic grip on the rules. This is simply the designers putting their own personal bias into the mix, which they have done for years now. We are seeing a lot of change for the sake of change and not stuff that actually makes sense. You do know that Gnolls aren't the only ones who follow a demon right?
If these stories are goign to be written then don't cherry pick.
Actually Chris Perkins does need to give a reason as to why, not these lame ass excuses we've been getting.
All the stuff in the gnoll writeup was drawn from previous editions. None of it really a change, merely going back to the roots and emphasizing certain aspects. Calling it cherry picking is .... well, considering that gnolls have always had all this in the first place, I could say that everyone here, myself and yourself included, are cherry picking everything.
Hells, everything in new editions is always picking what the writers want and thought worked well in old editions, and slimming off the bad. That's how games are improved.
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ModeratorIf Gnolls were a favored race to play in prior editions, I can understand the frustration. There's certainly nothing stopping anyone from homebrewing it in though. In fact, there are four homebrews here already if you don't want to make your own. Additionally, there's been rumors that Eberron might be getting it's own book soon.
Personally, I'm happy with the Gnolls as is, both as a player and a DM. There gets to be a point where making every sentient monster race playable just takes it too far. To do so, you would have to sacrifice the story of their race, and there's little reward in that for me. The Gnolls as is are an interesting, villainous race to face or utilize. Whereas most cases of a player choosing a monstrous race tend to be overt displays of 2edgy4me super spesh murderhoboing.
Probably not all players, but I'd be surprised to find one that proves me wrong.
Hi. I know this has been around for a while, but I'd like to respond with what I understand the issue is. This has nothing to do with a bias against monster races. For instance, the Yuan-ti are insanely powerful for a monster race, with immunity to poison, spell abilities, good stats, magic resistance that puts gnome's to shame, and darkvision. There's been quite some effort to get minotaurs as a PC race (at least two Unearthed Arcana), and minotaurs are basically in the same boat as gnolls, at least in reference to their demon lord origins.
Rather, gnolls aren't really a thing for a PC race because what the race, as a whole, represents within the default D&D cosmology. They're cannibals. Even regular hyenas in the real world are well known for hunting and eating humans. Gnolls take this tendency and extrapolate it. Even if you purge the demon lord's influence, like Eberron did, that eat-sapient-beings itch still makes the core of what a gnoll stands for. That's a biological imperative that you can't just cultural-transplant away, considering it ties into the animal that spawned gnolls. Turning them into a PC race would effectively require you to rewrite the defining features of the race, and at which point, they'd be entirely a different race.
At least, that's the impression I received from the devs, like on Lore You Should Know, when the subject came up.
Also, a minor nitpick about tieflings - cambions are the half-fiends; tieflings, those not created by ritual anyways, can be quarter fiend at most.
Can I ask what a "real gnoll" is, then? Hyenas, even in real life, are pretty unfriendly to people, and from what I understand, legends about hyenas are even worse than the creatures themselves. What would your version of gnolls be, then? I'm not familiar with any lore that really makes them more grey or sympathetic.
Now, I know that there's some Eberron lore that tries to make them into generic tribal cultures in the wilderness, and some stuff in 4e that does the same. Its notable, however, that this is the exact same redemption story arc that orcs took.
Which brings us to this - what is the core identity of the gnoll? How are they set apart from other races, and what makes them unique? There should be more than just making them furry orc clones
There have been numerous versions of gnolls throughout the editions and settings, and I don't think that the 5e version is inherently better or worse than any other version; it just comes down to personal taste. Change them if you want.
That said, the best gnolls are the ones that are half-gnome and half-troll, and I will brook no disagreement as to this point.
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ModeratorHeadcanon approved.
In the D&D white box it's just regular canon.
According to wikipedia, that's actually the original gnolls. They started off as a gag enemy, and eventually transformed into the hyena-people we know and love today. Gnolls have always been this kind of half-ignored splat that's never really been that well fleshed out, usually getting about half the word treatment as any other race. The moved from a generic savage-evil tribal killers to the occasional savage tribal hunter people when given the "not ebulz" treatment.
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ModeratorHuh. The more you know! What I get for mostly only being aware of Gnolls history from 3.5 to today, and of those I do prefer 5e's.
I have always liked the image of gnolls, and bought the book Soldiers of Ice purely because the main bad guys were gnolls (yeah, 20+ years since I last read it, but I still remember) so I am not against gnolls in any way, nor having the earlier gnolls playable (a gnoll ranger would be awesome!)
But....currently gnolls are irredeemable. You don't negotiate with them any more than you would a pack of starving hyenas or a great white shark. The trouble is, if just one gnoll gains 'redemption' (whatever that means in the context of your world) then suddenly ALL gnolls are redeemable. No longer can a holier-than-thou character enjoy wantonly slaying without staining his immortal soul. Dead or Alive posters will have to be recalled so that ALL gnolls can get the fair trial they deserve, just in case they are that 1-in-a-million that might have a chance of being redeemed, or is innocent, or was suffering temporary insanity or whatever other BS his (not it's anymore) lawyer can dream up. Forms will need to be filled in (in triplicate!) whenever one is harmed. Paladins will have their powers suspended pending an inquiry.
James Haeck wrote a very contentious/controversial/thought provoking article on the Eladrin recently and I think a lot of what he said is also worth applying to gnolls. Even though they are polar (solar?) opposites.
Either a fantasy race is literally irredeemable or it isn't.
Roleplaying since Runequest.
Mr. Perkins doesn't need to supply any reason to avoid making up and publishing rules for gnoll PCs therefore when he does explain his thoughts, it is probably genuine. I also think the accountants at WoTC would rather the ideas men work on stuff that is useful to the greatest number of potential consumers, but that kinda negates my initial answer. :(
"What about the murderous "hobos" who go around killing things and taking treasure?" That is mostly through choice, rather than demonic mandate. Even the most murderous of hobos (I may have met them) is slightly short of the gnoll's MM entry: "No goodness or compassion resides in the heart of a gnoll. Like a demon, it lacks anything resembling a conscience....."
To have a playable character race based on the current batch of gnolls would require changing what makes them special in the first place. Except they would still look cool!
"Why can't there be an all Gnoll party or an all monster party containing a Gnoll?" Nobody is saying there can't be. Go for. Stream it for the world to see. But if every table at a AL meeting has 2 gnolls sat around it, they may have lost that uniqueness that people wanted to connect with in the first place.
Some things should just remain homebrew, and only relevant to the singular world it was designed for. (And any others that want to use it singularly.)
A good rule of thumb for Life and D&D : Don't change the rules until you understand the reasons behind them.
Roleplaying since Runequest.
Drow : I wonder how many Drow have been able to saunter up to the gates of towns and cities, safe in the knowledge that the exploits and tales of Drizzt are widely known and that the gate guards are going to assume that they are "one of the good drow?"
We will probably never know, as those guards are currently lying in pools of their own blood.
Perhaps Drizzt leaving the Underdark was the singularly most selfish thing he ever did.
Roleplaying since Runequest.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with a redeemed evil race. Hells, we've seen it with drow, druegar, orcs, goblinoids, githyanki, yuan-ti, kobolds, even the occasional chromatic dragon, and that's what I remember off the top of my head. One of my favorite stories is called The Wandering Inn, which heavily features gnolls, draconic people, and goblins that aren't evil.
The fundamental issue with D&D gnolls, however? They act one heck of a lot like D&D orcs, just with hyenas instead of pigs. Their not-evil path is the same exact one as the orcs as well. There's just too much overlap in terms of story, and, yes, the story matters. In my personal experience, when people play an "evil" race, they tend to play a more party-friendly version. Most drow PCs I've seen don't pull a Drizz't reject-everything move, but rather still embrace the shadowy nature and intrigue the drow are famed for. Tiefling PCs are well known for being hell knights, rogues and warlocks for a reason. Orc PCs tend to be barbarians, because they tend to want to keep the famous anger Gruumsh is renowned for as well as the tribal-animism flavor.
What is there about the gnolls that make their story stand out for PCs that won't overlap with orcs? Or, for that matter, won't play like we have the minotaurs and centaurs? There's been a lot of beast-kin warrior culture races lately. Even as antagonists, the writers wanted gnolls to stand out in some way in stark contrast to orcs. What makes them different? Orcs move and act like bandits, like barbarian-at-the-gate raiders who come into civilization, steal everything that's not nailed down, take slaves, and leave. Gnolls originally did the same. How do we differentiate them? Well, 5e went with the Eat People route. The cannibal thing is a bit too iffy to make into a PC option. But, without it, gnolls don't really have a different story or a unique niche, and that's the fundamental design philosophy behind 5e - every race, subclass, etc should tell a story of some kind.
In the end, the reason why gnolls aren't PCs has nothing to do with being fiend touched (everyone and their brother are fiend touched these days). It has to do with their story, and the dev team probably felt that cannibals was too hard a sell for a race, given the history of cannibalism being such a taboo in the game. That said, I personally would totally be down with it in mine - if I was going to make gnolls into a PC race? I'd go full on scavanger with them as well. So what if they eat sapient races? There's always a war of some kind going on. Traveling mercinaries going from battle to battle, and eating the dead that died for other reasons. People will give you strange looks, I'm sure. But its not outright villainous evil.
EDIT - well, in my opinion anyways. I don't think cannibalism is really evil, its the whole murdering-to-get-the-meat angle that's bad. But there's lots of people who will shy away from that taboo as being innately evil as well.
Drow can choose to turn away from Lolth and leave their society. Gnolls can't ignore the hunger of Yeenoghu. It's that simple.
The Forum Infestation (TM)
Yes and no. An orc or goblinoid might eat another humanoid occasionally, but that's not a given in all settings or tables. At best, its a footnote for something that the race doesn't have to do. Meanwhile, for the 5e gnolls, its the raison d'etre for all they do, something inborn that the race has no choice but to indulge. Orcs will attack a settlement, but their main focus is stealing food and loot, not prisoners or anything else. Steal stuff for their settlements to survive. Goblinoids take over settlements because they're a conquering army building an evil empire. There's no need of eating people for any of the others. But gnolls? Gnolls attack settlements is in order to eat the people, and nothing else. They're constantly described as hungry, that you can tell their attacks from any other monster because there will never be corpses left behind while all the other riches will be, etc. The Volo writeup makes a huge issue out of the overwhelming hunger, being a compulsion, etc. No stealing, no conquest, just eating as the focus.
There's a reason the gnoll's subtitle is "The Insatiable Hunger."
All the stuff in the gnoll writeup was drawn from previous editions. None of it really a change, merely going back to the roots and emphasizing certain aspects. Calling it cherry picking is .... well, considering that gnolls have always had all this in the first place, I could say that everyone here, myself and yourself included, are cherry picking everything.
Hells, everything in new editions is always picking what the writers want and thought worked well in old editions, and slimming off the bad. That's how games are improved.