Dungeons & Dragons lore!

Thanks for the tips everyone. I hadn't ment to suggest that the Illithids themselves would be doing much fighting one the attacks on the village. They'd be depending mostly on thralls with a few Illithid commanders until reinforcements arrived. Once that happened they'd fall back and start getting all Viet Cong.

I also thought of a few ways to justify some of the other problems you all pointed out, but I'm a little reluctant to talk about it until I have it completely ironed out.

My new question is that are there ways RAW in 5e to tell if someone has been charmed, dominated, or otherwise had their mind screwed with? If not, what about in earlier editions, or Pathfinder?

Gnolls are among my favourite fantasy-monsters, at least in PC-games like Heroes of Might and Magic. So I started wondering about Gnolls in D&D: Are they ever portrayed like actual hyenas in lore? I'm thinking of things like the females being bigger and more dominant. That's why I'd portray them as a matriarchal tribal group, with all the high-priests of Yeenoghu being female.

In Eberron, which is where most of my expertise lies, female gnolls are maybe a little bigger, but not to a tremendous degree - although they are at least matrilineal when tracking descent.

(Eberron's gnolls are actually pretty cool)

Gnolls are like Kobolds in that lore says they're monsters through and through (seriously the lore for Gnolls is that they're pure evil monsters worshipping an evil god)

The impression I get that they have nothing in common with actual hyenas

5e lore is that gnolls are made from hyenas that ate the kills from a demon/god's rampage across the mortal realm.

You are, of course, free to completely disregard that, because Always Chaotic Evil is an outdated trope that needs to be hanged until dead.

Edit: I personally portrayed Gnolls as basically a tribal society; not inherently evil, and mostly cannon fodder for the real villains, illithids, to stuff demons into.

Edited by ultimatepheer on Mar 4th 2022 at 2:24:46 AM

> Always Chaotic Evil is an outdated trope that needs to be hanged until dead.

and then staked through the heart and buried at the crossroads so it can't rise again

I have gnolls as a creation of mages, ritually injecting hyenas with hobgoblin blood in order to create soldiers for their army. The end result is considered a failure, the gnolls lacked at all the innate discipline of the hobgoblins and rebelled quickly.

This was done at the subtle direction of demon-princess Yeenoghu, who wanted to corrupt the project in order to create an army of slaves upon the material world. She considers it a partial success but mostly a failure.

Today, gnolls are almost all wandering tribes, stalking the edges of civilization, looking for adventure. They crave excitement and thrill and the risk of death. They will make mock war with one another and make alliances with frontier towns to hunt dangerous monsters as their borders.

Some of the tribes worship Yeenoghu or did, until Gruumsh defeated her and took up the mantle of demon-prince in her place. Now these depraved warbands give praise to the Ruiner-Of-Beauty, Lamashtu, a guise of Gruumsh.

Most tribes tend towards gods like Gorum, Tempus, Cayden Cailean, Kord. Chaotic gods, war gods, male gods, in opposite of the more patriarchal hobgoblins' tendency towards lawful war goddesses.

Reading all of the above, I think I'll homebrew gnolls into more of a Chaotic Neutral group, because that would seem more fitting for a group of opportunistic scavengers, if I'll go the route of portraying them as humanoid hyenas. Rather than Always Chaotic Evil, I'd make them like Ogres and Orcs in Warhammer, that they are mostly too amoral and focused on Might Makes Right to actually be evil. I might also give them a supernatural hunger like the Ogres in Warhammer, which would be a good motivator for their wander-lust and why they end up in conflict with others. But I'd tone down the demonic connection and make them more of a tribal society, civilized enough to be mercenaries for other factions and capable of adopting other customs, so that they'd be more violently neutral than inherently evil.

Edited by Mara999 on Mar 5th 2022 at 12:51:27 PM

In a campaign I'm playing in there was a small group of Gnolls that were blessed with higher intelligence and broke off from the main group. Nicer than most, but still a nomadic group mostly concerned with their own survival. They did have a female leader but I'm not sure how intentional that was.

I like 5e well enough mechanically but so much of its core lore just goes for the most generic and uninteresting take it can find on its nonhuman cultures, even overlooking the Unfortunate Implications.

You're not wrong about 5e trying to be as generic as possible. Especially inregards to giving as little lore as Wot C can get away with.

I was looking into what kind of tennents clerics and lay worshippers of different gods would be expected to follow, and imagine my surprise when I can barely find anything of the sort in 5e. So naturally when I find a youtube video of someone going into detail about the specifics of worshipping Elistrea (did I spell that right? The Drow goddess of anti-edge), I assumed it was homebrew stuff. Imagine my surprise when I find out it was fully of stuff from old editions. I get tables are free to change whatever lore they want, but this feels less like giving players freedom to make up religions and more like not giving any info on that stuff because you don't want to put in the effort.

I have a similar problem with how Wot C is handling new races as just +2/+1 to whatever going forward. Don't get me wrong, I love being able to put the stat bonuses wherever I want. My problem is that by not giving a "default" stat bonus it kind of gives me a hard time figuring out what most members of that race tend to be like, and if my character would be considered "normal" by the others. For example, I know that if I were to make a Dwarf with his bonuses in Dex and Cha and prefers a rapier, he's probably going to be seen as a weird one by his fellows. Meanwhile, I can't get much of a feel for the Fairy or Harengon cultures. Would a Harengon barbarian be seen as "normal" by his peers or would he be seen as a savage?

I feel like the problem there is more a failure to flesh out the cultures generally.

Like, I don't have Wild Beyond the Witchlight, so I can't address the Harengon specifically, but, to pick one at semi-random, the 5e PHB chapter on the races contains a whopping three paragraphs on dragonborn culture. Those paragraphs talk about clan honour and loyalty, but "honour" is historically a fairly nebulous concept - just look at the differences between, say, the codes of chivalry and bushido. Are you more likely to find dragonborn living settled existences in cities with clan districts, or is there a prominent nomadic culture, riding horse-sized reptiles through the grasslands, with the clans gathering at important sites for a festival every year or two? (Also, note that neither of these questions can really be answered by just looking at their stats!)

To be fair, TTRPG writing invariably has a tension between too much lore locking off creative ideas and too little putting a heavy load on the GM and players to fill in the gaps themselves, I don't want to downplay that being the case.

Both races in W Bt W gets a full 2 paragraphs each.

And all of that is basically physical description, though I'm not sure if the fairy entry does an adequate job describing that either. It's confusingly vague and also unhelpfully free-form, sort of similar situation to the lack of cultural detail mentioned above. This is only exacerbated by the fact that there doesn't seem to be single picture of a fairy in the entire book.

There's a picture of a Fairy and a Harengon on the 2 pages that talk about them. That's it. And if that's a sample of what we have to look forward to all new races going forward Wot C had better start putting out new material at a much faster rate. Because if they're not going to do quality lore, they had better start cranking up the quantity.

Oof, yeah. That is noticeably insubstantial.

do players have to make a will save if their team members stop believing in them

No, they're just gnomes with wings.

"I'm gonna cast cure wounds. [claps hands] I do believe in fairies!"

That's actually how the 3rd Edition Monster Manual IV describes them, in about the biggest bit of background gnolls got over that edition:

"Other beings generally view gnolls as vicious, brutish and filthy — which they are. But they are not stupid, nor are they as simple as many assume. To underestimate them as enemies is to fall to their cunning strategies. The smartest gnoll leaders actually play up this reputation as to lull opponents into false confidence. Only then do the gnolls strike — with devastating effect.

Like hyenas, gnolls have a matriarchal society. The females grow larger and stronger than males, and the alpha female is the absolute ruler of a tribe for as long as she can defend her rank. She takes for a mate the fittest specimen of the tribe, but they form no lasting relationship. Below the alpha, the other gnolls sort themselves according to the simple rule of might, but the leader of the tribe can elevate or demote any tribe member, regardless of status. The most aggressive males can sometimes hold high rank within the tribe, although they must endure challenges much more frequently than females. Gnolls with the least status, and the old, are relegated to menial positions within the tribe — especially child-rearing. Yet even these humble individuals far outrank slaves, who must endure constant malnourishment and beatings. Gnolls use slaves for cleaning and mending, and for hard labor such as digging or felling trees.

The gnolls' worship of Yeenoghu is closely tied with the phases of the moon and their matriarchal society. Yeenoghu represents the ultimate mate for female gnolls. The new moon is a time for great sacrifices to the Demon Prince, and gnolls increase their attacks during these times to take as many captives as possible. The gnolls bring captured humanoids to a special cave that represents Yeenoghu's den. There, brown-robed and blood-soaked acolytes slaughter the captives while the tribe's leader and her attendant clerics howl for Yeenoghu's favor. A gnoll leader fervently desires Yeenoghu's personal appearance, but the best she can realistically hope for is for him to send a demon. If the tribe lacks a half-fiend leader, or has a weak leader, this demon likely takes command of the tribe and mates with several gnolls to produce half-fiends that will one day rule in its place."

Yay! That is the type of characterization I prefer for D&D gnolls, because it still leaves room for gnolls that don't worship Yeenoghu, or are capable of being non-evil.

Edited by Mara999 on Mar 8th 2022 at 8:33:51 PM

It's more interesting than "kill and eat," certainly.

3E's Races of the Wild had more stuff for gnoll PCs and a claim that "While most of their people remain mired in the cruelty of their demon prince, a few tribes of gnolls seek to pull themselves out of savagery," but the most it had to say about said tribes was that they "have begun to learn the value of personal honor. Some even approach the harsh but ultimately fair codes that tribes of barbaric humans often adopt." Some of said tribes worship Obad-Hai, others have turned away from religion. That's about it.

Squaring that with the MM IV background, it'd be simple to have a strong-willed matriarch decide that Yeenoghu wasn't the most desirable mate, and force changes in her tribe's behavior with the intent of attracting the attention of a better deity. And while this could be just as platonic as other races' love for their deities, I am amused by the thought of a gnoll leading her tribe to assault an evil dragon's lair mainly so she could wrestle it, as part of a bid to get Kord to descend to the mortal plane and...

Huh. If Yeenoghu-worshiping gnolls succeed in achieving their wildest dreams, the result would be a cambion, the son of a demon prince. If gnolls who worshiped an actual deity succeeded this way, there'd be gnoll demigods roaming the Material Plane. Maybe it's a good thing most of them worship a demon prince.

Anyway, another way to have non-evil gnolls would be for the tribe's males to rebel against the demon-worshiping matriarchy, but that'd be taking away one of the main things that makes gnolls interesting (and hyena-like), sort of how like overthrowing the drow matriarchy would render them cave elves with a spider fetish.

So instead of that, they could decide that rather than pandering to an outside source like a god in an attempt to become stronger, gnolls ought to focus on self-improvement (we gotta breed out those -2 modifiers to Intelligence and Charisma!). That could lead to an isolationist society that shuns any interactions with outsiders that might make the gnolls reliant upon them (like trade, or military alliances), and might actually relish small-scale conflicts with their neighbors as a way to keep themselves sharp. And/or a highly competitive society whose members are constantly trying to prove themselves desirable mates through their physical prowess or mental ingenuity. And/or a society of Darwinists whose leadership is actively challenging their people — "okay, you got used to these hot, dry badlands, now we're gonna migrate hundreds of miles and learn how to survive on the tundra" — with the understanding that those who don't survive these trials were obviously too weak to produce good offspring.

Some of RotW's gnoll roleplay notes would go with this: be suspicious of outsiders until they have earned your trust, urge your adventuring companions to go on long overland journeys, only own as much as you and maybe a beast of burden can carry, and especially "It is a sign of weakness to ask for things, so don't do it often."

Something I'm surprised that hasn't come up much in gnoll lore is the hyena's role as a scavenger, no attempt to make gnolls known for utilizing lands or resources that other races write off as useless. But I guess 5E lizardfolk already have the "known for making snacks of sapients and slapping together shields and weapons from their kills" angle locked down. At least it'd be easy to swap gnolls' "Rampage" for lizardfolk's "Cunning Artisan."

On unrelated Gnoll matters:

1. I'm trying to update as much of the Forgotten Realms Novels as possible. I've already added Shandril's Saga, Azure Bonds (a work in progress), The Harpers (ditto), and hoping to also work on the Moonshae Trilogy soon.

2. I've purchased The Adventurers Guide to the Sword Coast, Minsc and Boo's Guide to Villainy, and Ed Greenwood's Elminster Presents the Forgotten Realms (which is a weird title). That is basically all the 5E Forgotten Realms lore except for the main books that I presume I already pretty much get.

3. I'm planning on running a heavily modified Rhime of the Frostmaiden and Descent into Avernus for my P Cs. The former being modified because, well, the P Cs killing Auril and her just going back to the Outer Planes is lame and Descent into Avernus will have Baldur's Gate itself go into Hell. I may also tie it into [i]Siege of Dragsonspear[/i] or have Aribeth show up.

On a more lore-related question: how do you guys use Archdemons and Archdevils?

Because with evil gods, do they not seem redundant?

Are they gods themselves of evil or just essentially, big Planar Bosses stealing souls for their own amusement/power?

Well, in my settings I usually don't have evil gods. In my first one I ended up not touching on religion at all, in the second I only had neutral/good-ish deities (whose existence was debatable in-universe, like in Eberron), and in my current one the only evil deities I have are Tharizdun (who's "dead", basically a super-powerful Vestige that clerics can still draw power from, and whose corpse created the Abyss) and Tiamat (whose true form is also a vestige, buried on the Material Plane - but she also has an Aspect forced to serve the Nine Hells as their general in battle on Acheron against the celestial hosts of the god of war, Tempus). That said, I was planning to have the Dead Three (Bane, Bhaal and Myrkul) and Vecna as demigods in this setting, so they would still be powerful beings capable of great evil.

So yeah, archfiends tend to serve the role of evil gods/demigods for me.

Edited by Kardavnil on Mar 16th 2022 at 7:59:56 AM