Gnoll type enemies

[greypaladin_01]

I am flipping through the various beastiary books but have not found anything that seems similar to gnolls.  Does anyone have suggestions on choice for them or a reskin with minor tweaks?

[L. Marcus]

The Erquigdlit spring to mind.

[greypaladin_01]

Thanks!  That is a great starting point.   I somehow just missed them when flipping through books last night.

[Christopher R Taylor]

They're pretty much just different shaped orcs, really

[greypaladin_01]

Basically I figured I would be needing to just reskin something and the one mentioned above seems a good start.   Just getting used to how samey alot of the monsters look in hero terms.   Just have to make sure to focus on description to make them feel differnet in game

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

The key differences in Hero are going to be abilities (gnoll's ability to track and smell foes, for example) and behavior.  There's not a lot of difference between most of the humanoid monsters in D&D either; HD+1 is not that much change from 1HD, 9 AC vs 8, etc.  You can make up for that with cultural differences, behavior, how they fight, what kind of loot they have, what their lairs are like, and so on.

[Lord Liaden]

D&D creatures usually amount to a package of stats and gimmicks handed to you to make each physically distinctive. Everything else distinctive comes from description. Hero characters, "monster" or otherwise, all start from the same basic template and are embellished as desired, so they appear to be more "samey" because you're seeing the similar frame underlying them.

[Ninja-Bear]

17 hours ago, L. Marcus said:

The Erquigdlit spring to mind.

Beat me to it!

[greypaladin_01]

Yes, that sums up what I am seeing.   I suppose I had gotten more used to D&D 4e / 5e where more mechanical differences are "baked-in" to the monster sheets.    HERO by default anyway is much more just a different paint job on the same chassis.  

 

That is not a bad thing in and of itself, but does limit the variety without more GM work.   But the most important thing is that I am not missing something obvious and now it is just giving this a test run and then going from there. 

[Scott Ruggels]

I've used the  Erquigdlit. Slight reskin as my Lupines. Liited language skils, but otherwise smart, and can track/ hunt.
https://d.furaffinity.net/art/scottruggels/1498836562/1498836562.scottruggels_balphas02.gif

 

[Lord Liaden]

Aside from their versions of the classic D&D PC races and most archetypal monsters, Hero Games' 5E/6E fantasy lines filled in their bestiaries with many analogues to that game's creatures with different names and some distinguishing characteristics (admittedly as much to avoid lawsuits as to make them stand out). Besides Erquigdlit for Gnolls, you can also find Seshurma for Lizardfolk, Pakasa instead of Tabaxi, Vulchine rather than Aarakocra, and the like.

[bluesguy]

I am using gnolls in my campaign.  I am trying to model them like a large pack of dogs.  They have a hierarchy, tend to be nomadic sheepherders and live in the badlands.

[greypaladin_01]

7 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

I've used the  Erquigdlit. Slight reskin as my Lupines. Liited language skils, but otherwise smart, and can track/ hunt.
https://d.furaffinity.net/art/scottruggels/1498836562/1498836562.scottruggels_balphas02.gif

 

 

Tried the link but is giving me a 403 error.  I feel rather forbidden.

Looked at their sheet and might up the bite and something to give them more of a frenzy vibe, but the rest I think is just descrptions and selling it at the table.   

[Khymeria]

Have to agree that most D&D humanoids are pretty similar with a slight difference in physical ability and usually a gimmick. Tracking Normal Smell is enough to separate gnolls from the rest of the pack (I meant to do that). Description and culture will do the most to differentiate from other humanoids. 

[Ninja-Bear]

Speaking of samey, I remember looking at the old Fantasy Hero for fourth and they had Goblin, Hobgoblin, Lesser Orc and Orc. And I thought besides STR, what are really the difference? In one game I used the Hobgoblin stats and named but said in game Hobgoblin means chief and usually they have bigger goblins rule the smaller ones.

[greypaladin_01]

8 minutes ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Speaking of samey, I remember looking at the old Fantasy Hero for fourth and they had Goblin, Hobgoblin, Lesser Orc and Orc. And I thought besides STR, what are really the difference? In one game I used the Hobgoblin stats and named but said in game Hobgoblin means chief and usually they have bigger goblins rule the smaller ones.

 

Near as I could tell looking at the same books is that they lumped them all into types of Orc.  Basically trying to do the various differentiations that are usually ascribed to Tolkien Orcs.   Although at this moment other than orc/goblin,  half-orc (the one in bree) and then Uruk-hai I am having a hard time remembering THAT many different versions.

[Lord Liaden]

I seem to recall assertions in LOTR that Mordor-Orcs were generally bigger and stronger than Orcs from elsewhere.

 

 

10 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Speaking of samey, I remember looking at the old Fantasy Hero for fourth and they had Goblin, Hobgoblin, Lesser Orc and Orc. And I thought besides STR, what are really the difference? In one game I used the Hobgoblin stats and named but said in game Hobgoblin means chief and usually they have bigger goblins rule the smaller ones.

 

The 6E Hero System Bestiary, as well as Monsters, Minions, And Marauders for 5E, include a Hobgoblin character sheet, and indeed, more strength and overall better stats are their primary differences. (The books also say Hobgoblins run faster than goblins due to longer legs.) Both books declare them a hybrid of Orc and Goblin which can breed true with each other, producing a new race. That follows the precedent from The Turakian Age of Gnomes being, in origin, hybrids of Dwarf and Halfling. They're supposed to be nearly as strong as but more tractable than Orcs, hence favored by evil overlords for their armies. I never used them as such in my Turakian Age-based games, because they're never mentioned there and don't seem to be a factor in the world. But I did keep them as the result of individual hybridization, like Half-Elves and Half-Trolls. Sometimes they're battle leaders for their tribes, at other times outcasts from them, depending on their particular tribe's attitude toward half-breeds.

 

OTOH I did declare Ogres to be a race spawned out of the mating of Orc and Troll. While Gnomes got some of the best qualities of both their parent races, Ogres got most of the worst from theirs.

Edited July 31, 2023 by Lord Liaden

[Scott Ruggels]

16 hours ago, greypaladin_01 said:

 

Tried the link but is giving me a 403 error.  I feel rather forbidden.

Looked at their sheet and might up the bite and something to give them more of a frenzy vibe, but the rest I think is just descrptions and selling it at the table.   

Try this:
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/24002078/

 

 

In general, a "Heroic" level game will be "samey" by definition. The non-spell casting heroes will have about the same strength and dex,  and the castes will be around the same Int and dex, and speeds will be 3.  Hero ha always lacked granularity around the low end. Differentiation, then tends to be skills, knowledges and Disads.  For monsters, and High Fantasy heroes, it's the powers that lend the differentiation. in "Hig Fantasy" the differentiation is through powers bestowed upon the heroes and the monsters. Giving the Erquigdlit tracking scent, a bite, and low light gight

 

[Ninja-Bear]

@Lord Liaden, if I understood LotR amd the Hobbit correctly from the novels, Goblins and Orcs are just different names of the same monster. So the Urak-Hai from the LotR would just be one different type. 
 

Fwiw in my sporadic game of Basic Fantasy, I made the Hobgoblins the evil elves. Somewhere I saw that Hob had meaning of elf. 

[Lord Liaden]

Yep, The Hobbit mostly used "goblin" for those creatures, while LOTR used "orc." I think that the former book originally being aimed at children, whereas the trilogy was for adults, may have influenced the name choices, or at least the change.

[GDShore]

Actually, the Hobbit written long after LOTR was meant to ease you into the trilogy. I once knew someone who knew the Great and Mighty Never to be Questioned and of Course Never Ever Wrong Tolkien, her description, she studied under him and although his knowledge was encyclopedic the man himself was rather unimpressive. I had tried to read the "the Trilogy" three times got as far as half way through the first book and threw them into the dustbin. She had me read the Hobbit first, the trilogy made sense after that, according to her the Hobbit was written in plain English stripped of the pedantic overworked linguistics of the author. IT was easier to read the trilogy after the Hobbit. (I was an overly serious pompous ass when younger)

[L. Marcus]

20 minutes ago, GDShore said:

Actually, the Hobbit written long after LOTR was meant to ease you into the trilogy.

The actual what now?

[Christopher R Taylor]

The trilogy was not published until after the Hobbit, but the notes, structure, storyline, characters, plot, and much of the writing was done before he wrote the Hobbit, as I understand it.

[L. Marcus]

4 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

The trilogy was not published until after the Hobbit, but the notes, structure, storyline, characters, plot, and much of the writing was done before he wrote the Hobbit, as I understand it.

Not the trilogy, no, but the world-building that later became The Silmarillion. And the work done up to the point of the Hobbit's publication was a rather different beast from what got published some forty years later.

[Lord Liaden]

The Hobbit was published in 1937, LOTR in three volumes over 1954-55, The Silmarillion posthumously in 1977. The last of those was Tolkien's passion project all his life, but elements from its world kept slipping into Hobbit as he wrote it, and infused Rings.

 

3 hours ago, GDShore said:

I once knew someone who knew the Great and Mighty Never to be Questioned and of Course Never Ever Wrong Tolkien, her description, she studied under him and although his knowledge was encyclopedic the man himself was rather unimpressive. I had tried to read the "the Trilogy" three times got as far as half way through the first book and threw them into the dustbin. She had me read the Hobbit first, the trilogy made sense after that, according to her the Hobbit was written in plain English stripped of the pedantic overworked linguistics of the author. IT was easier to read the trilogy after the Hobbit. (I was an overly serious pompous ass when younger)

 

It sounds like that description could also be applied to that person you knew. 😏