Are Gnolls really inherently evil, or are they just raised by savages?

No, gnolls are physically incapable of thinking of doing anything other than pillaging and destroying. They were made by evil gods to do evil deeds, and the evil gods still keep a tight reign on them.

>Points of Light: Stop. No. Don't play this setting.

"Points of Light" isn't a setting. Nentir Vale is a setting designed by the "Points of Light" philosophy and used as an example of it, but Points of Light itself is just 4e's advice for how to design a setting that works well with its rules.

In Faerun, yes.

Yes, but calling it "Points of Light" sounds better than calling it "Nentir Vale", much as how "The Forgotten Realms" sounds better than "Abeir-Toril", or "Dragonlance" sounds better than "Krynn", or "Dark Sun" sounds better than "Athas".

> inherently evil
> savages

I don't understand. Are you trying to put forward a hypothesis that there's a difference between the two?

Not that guy but sure.

Civilised and industrial societies innately comes with evils all of their own.

What is a "Savage"?

It's mostly just a derogatory term for less technologically advanced peoples.

For one thing, civilised societies often promote a sense of superiority that leads to mistreatment of less advanced groups out of hubris; whether this is warranted or not is quite subjective; plenty of people flee from civilisation because they do not find it beneficial or easy to live in.

romans please leave

This question applies to any and all humanoid Monster species.
It's irrelevant: You're eliminating dangerous monsters And any other solution to the problem is outside your grasp.

No.

It really depends on setting, like most stuff of course.

My opinion on the matter, is that unless there are beings that are -truly- made of evil incarnated such as some outsiders, all races have varying degrees of good/evil axys.
In my setting, gnolls are by society and basic instinct 'evil', due their laziness plus propension for violence, and a liking for meat.
This could be corrected with a proper upbringing. Rarely a gnoll in this way will become good, but a lot of them would more likely be neutral. You can be a lazy and strong person without being actively a dick after all.
A good-aligned gnoll, probably is one that has grown in a society with a lot of attention and care, without making him grow bitter and maybe finding him an outlet with some hobby for his more beastly instincts.
So, it would make it so that it would even possible to find a gnoll paladin of Kord, which would get the advantage of both get a comfy stay in towns after helping the townfolks, and get to release his rage in protecting the weak and sports.

He didnt watch the last episode of planet earth

In pre-5e lore? They'd turn out pretty normal - perhaps with some temper issues, gnolls are usually portrayed as being a bit aggressive by nature, but if we can domesticate spotted hyenas in the real world, I can't see why a gnoll couldn't be a productive member of society.

Unless you wanted to use 5e's abysmal "they're demons that look like hyena-men" fluff, and why the hell would you?

On a hopefully semi-relevant topic.. I've actually been trying to engineer 5e stats for playable gnolls (and, by extension, flinds & half-gnolls) from 4e's fluff. Would this be a thread for getting critique on them?

honestly, fuck 5e.

bump

Actually, talking of gnolls and homebrew and setting, I'm trying to iron out some details about gnolls for a setting I'm worldbuilding for; would this be a relevant thread to talk about that?

Might as well. Go ahead.

Ah, the Murder-Hobo's Burden.

>fuck 5e for making the monsters be actual monsters instead of poor misunderstood beasties

Fuck you, 5e Gnolls are great, focused and evocative, you know exactly their place and what to use them for.

Would a Good Aligned female Gnoll be all Tsundere to a guy she liked? Would she be all "Idiot, I didn't buy this because you like it, I just bought it so you don't get too weak to fight!"

If you figure that gnolls are matriarchal in your setting - D&D traditionally portrays them as patriarchal, for some reason. Then yes, probably.

Have the most tasteful fem-gnoll in my private collection; all the others are either naked or wearing "chainmail bikini" type outfits.

Alright. Long story short about the setting is that it used to be an Eberron-esque industrialized high magic world, and then it blew itself to hell, RIFTS style, in a magical world-war between humans, elves and dwarves.

Basic idea I'm sitting on for gnolls is to take my original subraces (Butcher's Brood, Hyena's Soul, and completely fanon "Bouda" - mystic gnoll subrace) and have each subrace actually be a seperate gender. This has been done in D&D before (male/female bariaur got very different abilities in Planescape, for example) and I figured it references the real world spotted hyena pack.

Idea I'm currently sitting on for their origins is that they used to be ordinary hyenas, but during "the Black Dawn", the big world-shattering apocalyptic event, they were scavenging from a slaughter-field and all the raw magic, the dead zombies they ate and the demon blood they drank, it mutated them into a more humanoid form.

They're not evil, but they have basically had to establish a society from scratch, so they've fallen back on old instincts and their newfound affinity for necromancy.

They're strongly pack-orientated, though "tribes" of several packs coming together are beginning to be a thing, and the tradition of bartering/stealing new packmembers from other packs to refresh the lineage is fairly strong. Mostly nomadic, but they're starting to form permanently settled communities.

Nocturnal by nature because, y'know, hyenas hunt by night as the day is generally too hot to do anything.

Cannibals of the "meat is meat" variety. Don't go deliberately hunting sapients, but if they kill you, they'll eat you.

Necromancy is a highly respected magic amongst them. Skeleton laborers form the basis of their working caste; gnolls can and will work hard, but are happy to defer work to others if they can. Witherlings are deeply honored as gnolls giving their all for the safety of the pack.

Matriarchal and matrilinear. Females are the bigger, stronger, more aggressive sex, females are sexual aggressors in courtship, females are the primary warriors. Males are not exactly oppressed, but their culture does have fairly strong perceptions of what a proper gender role is.

Cultural viewpoint is very much "for the good of the pack". Gnolls value their own lives highly - a gnoll that is overpowered will surrender or flee instead of fighting to the death - but for the safety of the pack, they'll do anything.

This also means that "tall poppies", gnolls going against the grain, tend to be extremely driven and with a sort of inferiority complex; they know that this isn't their "best role", so they're determined to prove they can still be vital to the pack in the path they've chosen.

Have an aggressive streak; gnolls talk aggressively, posture a lot, and are big on roughhousing, but there's no real malice to it. It's just how they establish themselves.

This is roughly all I got, beyond some details that aren't really relevant (like, gnoll women like to put on a bit of weight, because in a savannah, it takes a lot of skill to have the food needed to grow thick). Thoughts? Critiques?

So, I mentioned above that I want to homebrew some balanced gnoll stats for 5e, and I could really use help with that. Figured I might as well share what I produced and see how it turns out.

Before anyone asks; no, the Bouda isn't a canon "type" of gnoll, but I figured a sorcerous offshoot to the gnoll species made sense, especially given Pathfinder gave them their own Witch racial archetype called "the Bouda".

Also, quick question; would a feat to let the Bouda become a shapeshifter who can assume the form of a hyena be overpowered?

Gnoll
Ability Score Modifier: +2 Constitution
Size: Medium
Speed: 30 feet
Vision: Darkvision
Filth-Eater's Gullet: A gnoll has Resistance to Poison and Advantage on Constitution checks against Poison and Disease.
Ripping Jaws: A gnoll can choose to Bite as an Unarmed Strike, which causes the attack to inflict d4 Piercing damage. Gnoll monks can use their Martial Arts unarmed damage dice when making a bite attack.
Rampage: When a gnoll reduces a creature to 0 hit points on its turn with a melee attack, it can spend a bonus action to move up to half its speed and make a bite attack.
Ghostly Whispers: A gnoll can imitate the voice of any creature it has heard speaking, so long as it speaks the same language as that creature.
Subrace: Choose between the Butcher’s Brood, Hyena’s Soul or Bouda subraces to determine the rest of your racial traits.

Butcher’s Brood Gnoll
Ability Score Increase: +1 Strength
Blood Frenzy: Once per turn, a Butcher’s Brood Gnoll which has taken damage from an enemy attack can use its Reaction to deliver a bite attack to an enemy in reach.

Hyena’s Soul Gnoll
Ability Score Increase: +1 Wisdom
Far-Roamer: A Hyena’s Soul Gnoll increases its base movement speed to 35 feet.
Bred to Hunt: A Hyena’s Soul Gnoll has Proficiency in Wisdom (Perception) and Wisdom (Survival).

Bouda
Ability Score Modifier: +1 Charisma
Graveyard Prowler: A bouda has Resistance to Necrotic Damage.
Black Magician: A bouda can cast Chill Touch with this trait. At 3rd level, it can cast Arms of Hadar as a 1st level spell with this trait once per long rest. At 5th level, it can cast Enthrall as a 2nd level spell with this trait once per long rest. Charisma is the spellcasting ability score for all spells cast with this trait.

Flind
Ability Score Modifier: +1 Strength, +1 Constitution, +1 Dexterity
Size: Medium
Speed: 30 feet
Vision: Darkvision
Filth-Eater's Gullet: A flind has Resistance to Poison and Advantage on Constitution checks against Disease.
Ripping Jaws: A flind can choose to Bite as an Unarmed Strike. Doing so causes its attack to inflict 1d4 Piercing damage as a basis.
Rampage: When a flind reduces a creature to 0 hit points on its turn with a melee attack, it can take a bonus action to move up to half its speed and make a bite attack.
Powerful Build: A flind is treated as being one size larger for determining its carrying, pushing and pulling capacities.
Bred For War: A flind has proficiency with two martial weapons of its choice.

Half-Gnoll
Ability Score Modifier: +2 Intelligence, +1 Wisdom
Size: Medium
Speed: 30 feet
Vision: Darkvision
Filth-Eater's Gullet: A half-gnoll has Resistance to Poison and Advantage on Constitution checks against Disease.
Ripping Jaws: A half-gnoll can choose to Bite as an Unarmed Strike. Doing so causes its attack to inflict 1d4 Piercing damage as a basis.
Rampage: When a half-gnoll reduces a creature to 0 hit points on its turn with a melee attack, it can take a bonus action to move up to half its speed and make a bite attack.
Runt's Survival: A half-gnoll gains Proficiency in one skill of its choice.
Keep Up: A half-gnoll can add its Proficiency to Constitution checks made to resist Exhaustion.

Gnolls are inherently evil, but they could be raised against their evil tendencies. With a lot of time and patience a gnoll could be raised to be somewhat normal, but he would still be rather brash, mean, and dominating because his gnollish tendencies would still be pretty strong. But gnolls aren't above being somewhat civilized.

If left to their own devices, a gnoll would be evil without a doubt, but you could raise one not to be evil. In some settings, gnolls will work with other species if it benefits them, emphasis on 'some settings'

In 5e terms, gnolls are just savage beasts that give blood to the blood god because they're entire existence revolves around murder.

In Forgotten Realms. Which is objectively the shittiest setting anyway.

Redeemed monsters are shit.

Also, even good settings have irredeemable douchebags.

I don't use Forgotten Realms and I love 5e Gnolls.

>Redeemed monsters are shit.

Thanks for your opinion.

>Also, even good settings have irredeemable douchebags.

Sure, but this is about Gnolls. And it's only in Forgotten Realms specifically that they're demonic monsters.

And you're allowed to. But I don't. I really don't like them. We finally get fluff for Gnolls... And it's super lazy and takes the role Orcs usually take in fantasy setting. Marauding hordes that exist just to destroy.

I mean, seriously? We couldn't get anything better than 'kill kill kill lol did you expect anything interesting'? Also, Goblins are always evil, but orcs aren't? And three different varieties of sociopathic reptiles, woo! Giants and Mind Flayers were the only good parts of that book. And all the new monsters.

I mean, it depends on the setting, but by default, gnolls are literally the spawn of a demon god of slaughter who slaughters so much that hyenas explode into slaughter-monsters because slaughter.

At least in my experience, it is referred to as PoLand, or Nerath. And actually, it ended up getting an almost comical level of development into a massive sprawling setting with a decidedly sword and sorcery feel to it. An absolutely fucking massive setting, with much of the world painted in suggestions and vagueries or a few sentences at most.

Here's one brave man's attempt to catalog it all.
>thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?f=72&t=15210

>Gnolls were created by Fiends sure, but they're still just Half-blooded Fiendish creatures. If they were Full Fiends then sure, but that's not true.

Yeah, but the other half is fucking hyenas. Not that hyenas are evil or anything, they're just critters, but their inherent less-than-friendly nature probably makes it all but impossible for one to turn out an upstanding citizen of the realm.

>but their inherent less-than-friendly nature
The Large Spotted Hyena is a very social animal. I wouldn't say they're any less friendly than lions or tigers.

They do hunt down lion cubs and such, but that's because lions are their primary competition for food and land.

Oh they're social all right, but they're dangerous animals that will gladly eat anything that isn't them that they can take down.

Gnolls tend to have a similar mindset.

Right, doesn't make them unfriendly though. My point was that passing that judgement on an animal that works on pure instinct is a little unfair.

I'm sure hyenas are friendly with those in their pack (clowder maybe since they are feline).

>I wouldn't say they're any less friendly than lions or tigers.

Yeah, and domesticated cats, big and small, can still be mischievous little assholes, who will scratch you for petting them wrong.

Honestly, anything with the mental capacity to make moral judgements will be able to be both good and bad. And anything that isn't capable of making such judgements can be neither good nor evil.

The whole "always good" or "always evil" thing D&D does is retarded.

This

The modern concept of the gnoll comes from d&d where they are literal demon spawn.

You're of course free to make a variation for your own private setting but the whole demon spawn thing is all that separates them from being a generic beast-race.

>The whole "always good" or "always evil" thing D&D does is retarded.
It makes sense in the context of outsiders at least.

But good and evil are objective forces in D&D, not abstract philosophical constructs. It only seems retarded when people try to be oh-so-clever about it by analyzing it using real world notions of morality and ethics as if they still apply.

So, does anyone have any commentary on these posts of mine? I want to use gnolls as a Dark But Not Evil matriarchal society in my setting, but I'm kind of struggling over the mechanics.

Them being objective forces doesn't make it any less stupid that morality is so clear-cut. Declaring every single member of a species evil because of a factor that they can't control is stupid because it takes away all the nuance. There's no room for communication, understanding, or character or setting development. See a gnoll? Kill it. See a baby gnoll, incapable of understanding even basic concepts? Kill it.

A moralistic system where the right thing to do when facing a baby gnoll, or kobold, or goblin is to kill it immediately, and this is an absolute good thing to do, is shallow.

Ya, and magic breaks the laws of thermodynamics! And elves and dragons don't exist either! Wow user, we're so smart, aren't we?

Imagine a Gnoll Paladin.
It'd be like a fuzzy Angry Marine: Armored as much as it can be, while screaming at people for worshiping evil gods.

Or hell, even just minor stuff that's not lawful and/or good.
>HEY!
>Stop littering or I'll see if Smite Evil works on your filthy ass!
>PICK IT UP!
>And don't let me catch you smoking so close to the Magi College again! That shit's liable to explode as is. Doesn't need you helping it along, dumbass.

I can't properly articulate why those rules are fine and the moralistic system is stupid, but you're being deliberately obtuse. Those two things are not on the same level.

"Magic exists" and "There's an entire species of sapient beings who are utterly, irrevocably evil by nature, even the newborn babies, and killing them is the right thing to do because nothing you do can ever encourage them to be good because the Monster Manual lists them as Evil," are two different statements. One makes the world more interesting, one doesn't.

I dunno. Fallen Angels have been a thing since Satan.

I personally despise "Always Evil" shit so i'd make it so.

10/10 concept

>being a generic beast-race.
I remember from a thread earlier this week where some dude fluffed gnolls as originally just hyena beast people until Yeenoghu or some other demon killed that hyena god and ate it. The gnolls got their shit together and killed said demon and ate it as well changing their characteristics based on what part they ate. They weren't evil but the ones who ate the muscles became more violent and so on. It created a clear caste system and gave them reason to be evil without them automatically being so.

>The gnolls got their shit together and killed said demon and ate it

For some reason this bit made me laugh, but then I realized how fitting it is for gnolls.

My favorite thing to do with the demon blood shenanigans was just to make them always hungry. Always. Not capable of eating their own bodyweight or anything, not a hyperfast metabolism (though a bit faster than the norm), but they could literally eat until their stomach explodes and not notice or care until they started dying. Ten seconds after a ten-course meal at which other diners had to be bodily carried away, they'd be asking if anyone was going to finish that. Obesity is an impossibility, due to the grip of demonic hunger on their souls.

The pack structure is what keeps them stable and not killing and eating each other for food: Everyone does their part to feed everyone.

I also like to give them double rows of teeth and the occasional weirder mutation.

I like this. Also the mental image of just straight up running in heavy armor because the provided horse is too skittish to have something that predatory near it.

I mean, they are still hyena people and not just gonna let that good meat rot.

Toss in using the disease and poison immunity to eat undead and end their blight upon the world. Could also fluff removing curses and the like as eating them.

>So your stomach... removes curses from anything you eat?
>Yep
>But that hardly useful as anything that gets in your stomach doesn't get ou-
>Don't make this weird, boy. This is only for feeding myself instead of eating half of the market

I was picturing more of ripping a curse out and then eating it so it doesn't come back.

So, question: gnolls or orcs, which would you prefer as the iconic "evil-leaning but flexible" monstrous humanoid race? Me, I think I prefer gnolls, simply because orcs have become a little too overdone that way.

Hey, we got Warcraft (honorable warriors & shamans shaking off demonic corruption), Eberron (ancient swamp-dwelling aberration-fighting druids), and Wicked Fantasy (maltheists who slew their creator gods and gave up on their traditional "kill all others" ways because they realized it was stupid), for starters.

rock on motherfucker

Is violence itself inherently evil?

Gnolls aren't predisposed to evil, though they have a high potential to be violent, and a low potential to be reasonable.

If one was raised in a Monastery, it would probably be good-hearted, but still aggressive, and more prone to brawling to settle an argument than actual arguing.

>Is violence itself inherently evil?
I'd say no

depends on the setting
In setting described in Volo, yes, they are walking tentacles of horrible evil god.

I really wish we could have some insight on what caused them to make the decision to turn Gnolls into purely evil beings.

>Look, you bastards, the goal is to get the chieftain's daughter out of the camp before they eat her, not cause a tribal revolution
>They're just fucking evil, get with the fireballing or whatever plan you're going with
>Because demons. Shut up and jam or I'll bring back the kobolds.

D&D was made for murderhoboing and those objectively evil monsters and their simplicity is/was necessary. I don't see any point in including cosmic evil and good in my campaigns for those reasons (I'm sure there are interesting ways to do it still though) but it's still part of D&D because "it's a monster, ergo I kill it" is still desired in the game for some reason.

This.
Gygax was a shit DM and so he made a shit morality system to make it easier to DM in his specific style.

That or Arneson just would not fucking stop trying to diplomacy everything.

It's variety.
There are plenty of creatures who have different morals that you can interact with however you want, so it's fine if there's a minority that are just always good/evil/whatever.
If you want a relatable enemy, don't make it a fucking demonic hyena. That's retarded.

>their inherent less-than-friendly nature

They can be pretty friendly actually.

Like obviously not all of them would be, and you certainly wouldn't expect one to act like a pet dog or something, but you'd be surprised.

D&D's forced alignments are retarded to begin with. Somehow werebears are Lawful Good despite bears being loners that are just as vicious as wolves.

Anything that isn't an outright demon, angel, elemental, or what have you really shouldn't have an "Always X" alignment.

>werebears are Lawful Good

The fuck? 1st and 2nd edition werebears were CG, 5e werebears are listed as NG and there's a caveat that says "though most werebears are of good alignment, some are every bit as evil as other lycanthropes."

They were listed as Always Lawful Good in 3rd edition.

To be fair, the only reason it says that in 5E is that it's from the perspective of the Forgotten Realms setting.

You can play non-FR settings with non-evil Gnolls in it using 5E, the game doesn't stop that.

>in 3rd edition

So there's the problem. I've never played that one, 1, 2 and 5 only.

Would fug

I'll even make this easy for the 5E's who are mad gnolls didn't get their own racial block.

Pic related are the regular, pack lord and fang variants of gnoll in the PHB. We notice two distinct trends: A significant STR score and their highest mental stat is WIS in 2/3 of these cases. Even in Volo's Guide, we find that the Flind, Flesh Gnawer, and Hunter have higher WIS, so we can assume the Fangs are an outlier. Similarly, Flesh Gnawers are the only gnoll types who don't have a higher STR than anything else.
Next up we see Rampage and Bite in pretty much every gnoll variant, so we know these are inherent racial qualities. While gnolls with skill bonuses are uncommon, we see Perception, Intimidate and Stealth used, with Perception getting bonuses in two cases (the flind and hunter). We'll rip Keen Senses from the elf PC statblock and put it here to show this common trend. We see gnolls have darvision as well, and as such can stat a PC gnoll in the following way:

>Medium humanoid
>Speed 30 feet
>+2 Str, +1 Wis
>Darkvision
>Keen Senses
>Bite: A gnoll can make a bite attack for 1d4 piercing damage, using STR for the attack and damage rolls. You are proficient with this attack.
>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 a bite attack.

As for languages, we can assume PC gnolls start with Common and Gnoll for obvious reasons.

Now, you might be feeling this is a tad underpowered. I'd recommend a few playtests using a gnoll and a half-orc (its closest PHB cousin) who are otherwise identically built, played out in some fairly basic combat challenges. Personally I see one issue, and that's Rampage not seeing a lot of action.

The easy fix here is to let PC gnolls Rampage on critical hits, getting an extra Bite in there, and allowing the gnoll on a Rampage to forego moving in order to make the Bite part of their regular attack, thus keeping the bonus action for something else if they need it. This would make their most striking mechanic in 5E stand out a tad more while keeping it relatively versatile for melee builds.

>The easy fix here is to let PC gnolls Rampage on critical hits, getting an extra Bite in there,
Proofreading error: I'm not saying give them two Bite attacks here, just that they get to use their "move+bite" option more often.

And his point is that its a predatory animal uplifted by fiends. The fact that we can't hold it to the same standards as civilized humans is exactly his point.
Im personally a fan of "new" Gnolls being always CE, but as time passes they gradually diversify into the full spectrum, like orcs and drow.

Except that gnolls have actually had a tradition of being playable in the Forgotten Realms. In fact, they were one of the new PC races covered in the Unapproachable East sourcebook, which covered Thay, Rashamen and related areas in 3rd edition.

>And it's super lazy and takes the role Orcs usually take in fantasy setting.
Yeah, because orcs have been so goddamned redeemed and misunderstood and tragic backstory'd they don't work for that anymore. And now that we have a new Always Evil race, we decide that one needs to be redeemed to. Next up: Couldn't a Mind Flayer be a good guy too?

If we're talking D&D then they're inherently Evil, as is most Evil stuff except members of the player races because that's how D&D works. However that kind of thing bores me so if I were DM I'd let them be Good.

One thing though, they're demon-spawn crossed with hyenas, they may be Good but they're unlikely to be nice or friendly.

Mind flayers can be good guys if separated for long enough. That's the point, "always evil" or "always X" makes zero fucking sense for any material race when upbringing does have an effect even if basic temperment remains the same. Gnolls will always remain quick to action with simplistic motivations but saying that even when raised completely free of the brutal struggle to survive and taught morality and kindness he'll still turn out CE is stupid. Even a mind flayer can turn good even if he'll be seen as corrupted by the rest of the collective.
Hell, i'm of the opinion that even outsiders can break their alignment, fallen angels have been a thing since forever and the 'evilness' of various beings fluctuates constantly in mythos.

historically they are savages raised in a hunter/gatherer society
having incorporated medieval settings

having a mage found a gnoll child will have troubles with the gnolls original instinct and the arrogances of a mage will equals to having a furry Igor

Possible, but unlikely. Chaotic Good would probably be much more common.

Whats really the difference between chaotic and neutral good. They both want to get the orphans homes, the chaotic dude just says "fuck the popo, we doin this prison break style" and dumps them into rich people's houses and uses orphan's natural charm abilities to keep them there.

I am a OSR guy, so they are inherently chaotic. Even if one was raised as a family member they would revert to the mean.

>equals to having a furry Igor
literally my fetish here. I want a Gnoll-beast as my mage's servant!

I played a LG gnoll fighter, named penitence. She was raised by a favored soul of heronious named mercy. Mercy killed the tribe of her birth to stop their reaving and marauding, but didn't slay the infant penetence, sensing no evil within the pup. Instead she brought the young gnoll up to turn her instincts to hunt and kill upon the wicked. She joined the city watch, helped along by her mothers influence. Mercy never got to see her ward wear the tabard of the elite guard, passing a few months before the honor was bestowed upon her. She served with destinction and honor, only wracking up a few... dozen excessive force complaints.... in her first quarter alone. Still, the streets were safer under her watch despite the insanity that came to plague the capital as an unparalleled crime wave swept over it.