Homebrew Gnoll Species Details

In realms besieged by the extraplanar entity known as Yeenoghu, gnolls are created from hyenas as tools of mindless destruction. Often influenced by both Yeenoghu and people’s perceptions of their race, gnolls tend to be horrific nomads scouring the fringes of society and devouring all in their path.

Gnolls created in realms without the influence of Yeenoghu might act dramatically differently, such as those in Eberron and Ravenloft. Without an evil deity contorting their minds, gnolls are capable of as much diversity as any other intelligent race, though they tend towards a more nomadic lifestyle.

Creating Your Character

If you create a gnoll character, follow these additional rules during character creation.

Ability Score Increases

When determining your character’s ability scores, increase one of those scores by 2 and increase a different score by 1, or increase three different scores by 1. Follow this rule regardless of the method you use to determine the scores, such as rolling or point buy.

The “Quick Build” section for your character’s class offers suggestions on which scores to increase. You’re free to follow those suggestions or to ignore them. Whichever scores you decide to increase, none of the scores can be raised above 20.

Typical gnolls gain +2 to their Dexterity score and +1 to their Strength score from a fast-paced & combat-heavy lifestyle.

Creature Type

Every creature in D&D, including every player character, has a special tag in the rules that identifies the type of creature they are. Most player characters, including gnolls, are of the Humanoid type. Creature types don’t have rules themselves, but some rules in the game affect creatures of certain types in different ways. For example, the text of the cure wounds spell specifies that the spell doesn’t work on a creature that has the Construct type.

Life Span

The typical life span of a player character in D&D is about a century, assuming the character doesn’t meet a violent end on an adventure.

Height and Weight

Player characters, including gnolls, typically fall into the same ranges of height and weight that humans have in our world. If you’d like to determine your character’s height or weight randomly, consult the Random Height and Weight table in the Player’s Handbook, and choose the row in the table that best represents the build you imagine for your character.

Gnoll Traits

You have the following racial traits.

Creature Type

You are a Humanoid.

Size

You are Medium or Small. You choose the size when you select this race.

Speed

Your walking speed is 30 feet.

Darkvision

You can see in dim light within 60 feet of yourself as if it were bright light and in darkness as if it were dim light. You discern colors in that darkness only as shades of gray.

Bite

Your bite is a natural weapon, which counts as a simple melee weapon with which you are proficient. You add your Strength modifier to the attack and damage rolls when you attack with this bite. It deals 1d4 piercing damage on a hit.

Rampage

When you reduce a creature to 0 hit points with a melee attack on your turn, you can take a bonus action to move up to half your speed and make an attack with your bite trait.

Nomadic Skillset

Your nomadic culture of quickly moving from location to location has gifted you with a variety of talents, represented by the following proficiencies:

• Your choice of proficiency between Nature or Survival.
• Proficiency with both Carpenter’s Tools and Cook’s Utensils.
• Proficiency with one simple or martial ranged weapon.

(If you have Nature or Survival already from a different source, you may choose a different skill.)