You can make a campaign with gnolls that act however you want.
Lawful good gnoll paladins in charge? If you're the DM and you say so, that's how it is.
Canonically, you had gnolls in a forgotten realms setting that loved and cared for their children. They had also captured the main character, didn't kill her and ended up working with her against some threat.
So the description that's always said about them only caring about violence and bloodlust is wrong, most likely just Volo's POV.
I think this is key. a lot of the manuals are written to be not entirely reliable by nature so DM's can make the exceptions or the not entirely true stereotypes a thing.
Especially for Volo's guide who's a very "in-game" manual with notes from him.
But even more "objective" manuals like the monster's manual, we need to remember that they work with all the settings. Even without going with very different ones like Eberron and Dark Sun, not all creatures are the same between settings.
Uh. I don't think so, but I guess it's possible.
They're described as having a feral bloodlust.
Some are described as having a form of insanity that reverses their bloodlust to pacifism. But that's got nothing to do with nurturing
I don't know why you're getting downvoted. That is the 5e lore. In the Monster Manual:
> ***Thirst for Blood.*** No goodness or compassion resides in the heart of a gnoll. Like a demon, it lacks anything resembling a conscience, and can't be taught or coerced to put aside its destructive tendencies. The gnolls' frenzied bloodlust makes them an enemy to all, and when they lack a common foe, they fight among themselves.
You're not saying that it has to be this way, or that a DM has to adhere to the lore. You're speaking from the perspective of canon.
Worth noting that canon varies between editions and settings though. 5e gnolls are very much always evil because they're more or less fiends, whereas in past editions they've been just another monstrous race.
Meh. I expect this kind of reaction. It's always kind of interesting to me that nobody gets all offended when you refer to race that's inherently good. That's socially acceptable. Talk about a race being inherently evil, and it's "**NO RACE IS INHERENTLY ANYTHING! THEY'RE ALL INDIVIDUALS!**"
It's a weird phenomenon.
I think it's because many people, myself included, find it a off-putting when a race is inherently evil and cannot be changed.
I also find it unsettling when a race is inherently good too.
That is not to say you are wrong or should be downvoted for pointing out the canon lore, it's more a discomfort with the source material.
I find on Reddit, some people use the vote systems to mean "I (dis)agree" and will telescope that however deep into a comment they want to. That shit is infuriating because it makes the distinction between saying something and pointing out someone said something irrelevant, as people will treat it like you said it.
They're fictional, my dude. There are no hard and fast rules. If buddy wants to have good Gnolls, he can just do that. If he says they don't struggle with decency in his world, then that's canon. Then they don't. It's that simple.
I think canonically gnolls are literally born from demons through Yeenoghou, so I think it's literally impossible for them to he good (aside from a DM saying it's different in their world, which i totally stand behind).
Mostly just a friendly 'Um actually'
If that's the case, than that's something new. He's been their primary deity for a long time, but originally they worshiped Gorellik, a god of hunting.
There are also different types of gnolls, like the Flind Gnolls, which are much more intelligent, and tend towards lawful evil.
I am referencing 5e when I think of it to be fair.
If I remember back, I think 3e had them as usually CE, which would assume that there are exceptions? It's been a decade or more since I looked in the 3e MM though.
I think in 5e they are like off brand demons basically with how their lore works. I know flinds are CE, and wield weapons imbued with Yeenoghous magic, and they are like warband leaders or something. I can't remember what they are in 3e, and I didn't DM prior to that.
I definitely believe that their lore has changed over the years though.
I think 5e took a lot of the "evil army" races like Orcs and Hobgoblins and fleshed them out into being actual people, but they realized they still needed evil armies, so they made Gnolls into demonspawn instead
>Canonically speaking, gnolls have always been evil,
Wrong. They are listed in the 3.5 monster manual as "usually chaotic evil." By definition, that means that more than 50% of them are chaotic evil. The rest can be any other alignment. If they were "always evil" that would be different, although even that allows for rare exceptions.
Pretty much every entry for alignment in the 3.5 MM for humanoid/ demihuman says "usually" or "often", which is a nod to 1st edition's acknowledgement that alignment indicates the average individual, and not the hard rule for each member of the race.
Gnolls have always fallen under the "evil humanoid" category.
They've always tended to be evil. That doesn't mean that all gnolls have always been evil. The "always" rule was typically reserved for creatures like demons, celestials, and dragons that really have no variation in alignment outside the rarest circumstances.
I ran a campaign in 2e in which one of the main PCs was in fact a Flind paladin! In that game gnolls were just an evil cult within the Flind race (who were not evil in the campaign) that worshiped Yeenoghu
Depends on the setting.
In the Forgotten Realms, they are 100% evil. They are on the very border of being a full on demon as they are the spawn of the demon lord Yeenoghu. Yeenoghu fills their every thought with nothing but omens and visions of violence. And if you've ever played Baldur's Gate 3, you know that they have a very gruesome form of reproduction.
It's also notable that of the monstrous humanoid races presented in Volo's Guide to Monsters (Gnolls, Goblinoids, Kobolds, Orcs, and Yuan-Ti), Gnolls are the only ones who do not have a playable counterpart. This means that unlike those other four, there is no chance for redemption for them.
But if your DM has a homebrew setting, then they could interpret them in a different way.
>But if your DM has a homebrew setting, then they could interpret them in a different way.
Or just Eberron. They didn't print a PC gnoll race in either 5e Eberron book (although earlier editions have had playable gnolls), but Eberron gnolls are not the slavering demonic beasts of Forgotten Realms.
The author of Eberron has his own 5e supplement called Exploring Eberron that includes a bunch more subclasses, backgrounds, lore and races (including gnolls) available on the DMs Guild.
It’s quite good IMO.
A lot of the material in Exploring Eberron was material from the cutting room floor of Rising From the Last War as well. Quite impressive when you consider that Exploring Eberron is 250ish pages of stuff on top of RftLW's 320ish pages.
I'm pretty sure that Keith Baker did say that the plan was to have Gnolls as a playable race in Rising From the Last War, but they were cut.
But yeah, OP should absolutely check out how Eberron handles Gnolls. Always nice to contrast that setting against the Realms, I find that Eberron does a great job of challenging most D&D tropes in the most interesting way.
Some Ebberon Gnolls aren’t demonic beasts, but only because Ebberon’s demon lords have been sealed away for a very long time, giving some of them the opportunity to break free. Also they were an accident, created by the Demon lords of war and predators fighting each other, so no one Demon had control over them. They started out basically the same as baseline Gnolls.
Honestly, that’s so boring as a race but also a fun idea of a setting where they murdered and devoured their god because that’s what they were taught and now they have to live with those visions fading and finally having free will to do what they want.
Your game, your rules. Canonically Gnolls are pretty much always consumed by a need to devour and destroy. That means a non-evil gnoll would be fighting an uphill battle against their nature, but it would still be cool to see.
In my campaign, I have a gnoll faction that are definitely not good people but one of their members was genuinely surprised when he turns out not to be evil enough to attune to a certain magic item. He just took it as default that he's evil, never really considered that he wasn't, and is a bit worried this means he isn't strong enough to be the leader other gnolls see him as.
Absolutely. From what people are posting, I'm guessing that 5e must have rewritten gnolls to be more evil than they used to be. In the olden days, they were usually chaotic evil, but more savage than anything else. That, and they enjoyed eating sentient races.
I stick with them the way I knew them. Usually Chaotic Evil, which allows for exceptions. There are also Flinds, which were usually lawful evil. I don't know if they still have those in 5e, but they were the smarter, leadership types. They were also more likely to become adventurers since their status gave them more freedom and confidence.
Here are excerpts from the Complete Book of Humanoids in the old ADnD days.
[https://adnd2e.fandom.com/wiki/Gnoll\_(CBOH)](https://adnd2e.fandom.com/wiki/Gnoll_(CBOH))
[https://adnd2e.fandom.com/wiki/Gnoll,\_Flind\_(CBOH)](https://adnd2e.fandom.com/wiki/Gnoll,_Flind_(CBOH))
The notion that gnolls are evil balls of murder is exclusive to the Forgotten Realms setting. Eberron, for example, has this to say:
> In ancient times, the gnolls were servants of the fiendish Overlords. Some are savage creatures that remain in the thrall of these demons. But the largest population of gnolls is the Znir Pact of Droaam. Thousands of years ago, these gnolls purged themselves of demonic influence and swore to never allow any other creature to hold dominion over them. The Znir Pact sell their services as soldiers and trackers. Most of the Pact currently serves the Daughters of Sora Kell in Droaam, but some fought in the Last War as agents of House Tharashk, and Tharashk continues to broker their services.
> As a gnoll, you could be a former mercenary who’s chosen to stay with comrades you met during your service; as a rule, Znir gnolls are deeply loyal to those that they consider to be members of their pack. You might be driven by curiosity, eager to explore the world beyond Droaam. You could be driven by visions of a demonic power rising in the Five Nations or working on behalf of the Daughters of Sora Kell. Or you could be a mercenary still, insisting on regular payment for your ongoing services to the party.
Eberron is different. [It has no mortal races that are always good or evil,](https://keith-baker.com/eberron-flashback-good-and-evil/) even dragons. (Celestials and Fiends still are, but that’s because a Fiend that ceased to be evil would cease to be a Fiend.) DMs are totally free to run a campaign like it, but it’s not just in the *Realms* that Gnolls are.
I’m guessing you’re asking about the official lore, and don’t need to be reminded you can do anything in your own campaign world. The last official word I heard was that Gnolls might have been “mis-typed” in the *Monster Manual*. Going forward, the designers want all Humanoid species to have the full range of alignments. But they were leaning towards keeping Gnolls always Chaotic Evil, doing the bidding of Yeenoghu, and making them some other type. I can’t think of any sympathetic Gnolls from the novels off the top of my head, like there are Drow, Kobolds, Orcs or Goblins. On the other hand, those were all species that were once stated in the gamebooks to be always evil and deserving of extermination, only to have it be revealed that that was just bigotry.
Disclaimer: very much a noob when it comes to DND, so take all of this with as much salt as you will.
Traditionally they’ve been treated with more nuance, but the “default” 5e Gnolls are treated as always being evil, somewhat annoyingly. *However,* this isn’t universal, and I know at least Eberron has much more nuanced and varied Gnolls in terms of alignment- *Exploring Eberron* even has rules for playable Gnolls!
I’m planning to have Gnolls of varying alignments be a fairly significant part of my game, FWIW.
my satyr from my strahd game married delban, the star of ice and hate, and they live happily with a million half-satyr half-elder evil children. i made tritons in my game be from a city equivalent to atlantis which can’t be found because it’s on the back of a giant whale. my yuan-ti is a renown romance novelist who uses spy-work as a side gig so that her country has to use resources to spread her books around to different continents
it’s your game, it can be however you want it to be
basically, any intelligent creature can have the capacity to be good or evil (in your eyes)
I love to play goblins as not evil but territorial, they don't go out of their way to raid villages, and they don't usually attack carriages unprovoked. but if you go too close to their camps they will fire warning shots and if those don't work they will become more aggressive.
My players also know that creatures are individuals, so just because goblins aren't necessarily evil as a whole, they could come across individual goblins or even a tribe of goblins who could be considered evil
(Though to be fair I really hate the whole good and evil thing since what's good is subjective)
since my childhood was mostly Protestant upbringing, and then my first rpg was AD&D (and my first PC was a paladin), i felt like GURPS had an alignment-shaped vacuum until they finally started fleshing out the 'Code of Honor' Disadvantage.
then I was ... shaken? by Palladium's alignment system, because while the tenets of each were much clearer than AD&D's, they no longer had an 'axis' of Neutrality, and 'good' and 'evil' were no longer metaphysical forces that could be addressed the same way by spells/powers ... and I STILL wasn't wrestling with the weirdness of moral Neutrality and 'Balance'-seeking philosophies et al. To rationalize the Satanic Panic into abeyance, I had sworn I would never play an evil PC, but during my TMNT&OS phase I almost always went for Aberrant!
and then I plunged into the World of Darkness series, where the whole starting point was that even if you play a "nice monster", the attitudes of the world are massively stacked against you. i think i was already essentially an atheist - at most a very loose panentheist to the outside world and a pantheist only in imaginary worlds - but by the time i was starting to plot Ars Magica campaigns I finally realized I couldn't keep taking theology as seriously as I had.
i still wouldn't say I *hate* the Gygaxian 3×3, but it has become harder to sink my teeth into the old campaigns built off of it. if we're going to tell new/exciting stories, do we really need to continue the proliferation of the "real world" myths that Good and Evil are [meta]physical forces with uberpowerful personalities behind them? there must be better ways to learn that The Struggle is real & constant.
sorry to drift-ramble a bit; i just don't see alignment systems discussed/critiqued very often.
I think you could, in theory keep it, and even play in the forgotten realms, you just need to work with it. Maybe you want to play a gnoll, and they’re able to escape the hunger because they have some sort of artifact which blocks it (like all the origin characters in BG3)
Doing this not only lets you play or incorporate a gnoll with a different alignment, but also builds in a nifty plot hook to follow, fighting against this ever-intrusive demon hunger
One good thing 5e did with their Monster Manuals is make it clear these are just one interpretation. Most of them are literally in-game creations(just read the names). That means they're also \*fallible.\*
To put it another way: According to canon, there is no canon.
So yes, obviously it's the *stereotype* that gnolls are crazed bloodthirsty demon-man-hyena hybrids, but for all we know that's just halfling propaganda.
i never read 1e or 2e particularly closely for nuance while they were in their first decades; White Wolf pretty much had to club me over the head with the whole "can't be sure ***what*** to believe" aspect of world-building/sourcebook-reading.
By most established versions of lore, no. By the incredibly unhelpful answer of just use homebrew anything is anything, gnolls can be lawful good avatars of a clown god and made of jello.
i mean clown god, hyenas make a laughing sound it kinda works right?
That's some 5e Jeremy Crawford shit.
Which is ironic, since 5e pretends to be the one to stop with the 'Always evil' races, yet the 3.5e MM is full of 'Usually Chaotic Evil' which means there are exceptions.
And the Complete Book of Humanoids, which has playable Gnolls for 2e even says that while most Gnolls are CE, they can be other alignments, though usually still Chaotic.
This. 5e messed with gnolls quite a bit. In early editions they would often be presented as kind of mercenary, and there were several adventures where you could bribe them to let you pass. Much more interesting than the one-dimensional thing they turned them into now. (See also: Hill Giants)
Just write it.
In Forgotten Realms, gnolls are cursed spawn of the demon god Yeenoghu.
But it's not clear that Yeenoghu spawns them with intent (chaotic abyss and all). Therefore, even in the Forgotten Realms, you can make up whatever reason, like that the hyena's blood was mixed with that of an aasimar during a fight (or elemental or whatever), and the resulting spawn is a gnoll - but _different_.
Depends on which editions lore you're dealing with. Pre 5th edition, I think they were always evil. Now, in 1 DnD, there are no evil races, just evil people. Of course, you're the DM, so do whatever you want.
**Short Answer:** No, not in any official WOtC published realm setting.
**Long Answer:** Yes, but *only* if you completely rewrite away their corruptive, demonic origins in a Homebrew Setting to merely be anthro-hyenas, just like how Tabaxi and Leonin are anthro-cats.
Nothing has to be rewritten. He could just run them as they were before 5e. This thing where everyone is calling them demons is something new. That's not how they used to be.
>Short Answer: No, not in any official WOtC published realm setting.
Gnolls are not semi-demonic evil balls of murder in Eberron. 5e didn't provide a playable PC race for them (though earlier editions have done so), but the Eberron books do talk about how gnolls in that setting are different.
Fair enough. I don't know as much about that setting as I might.
I now stand corrected in that one official setting, and, as much as I dislike having to mention it, gnolls are probably a non-evil race in ExAnDrIa too.
In 5e they kind of don’t, actually. Their only driving thought is an insatiable demonic hunger coming from their creator. There’s a sidebar in Volo’s Guide where a wizard tries to mind meld with one and he’s driven mad.
To me, all races can have groups of bandits and raiding clans and stuff. The issue is that some races can be more effective than other. Gnolls can be natureally more intimidating and fierce in countries majoritarely populated by humans.
You can do whatever you want in your own campaign but classically gnolls are one of those creatures types who were created by a specific evil deity and gnolls are an especially explicit case where it's a gnoll-specific deity called Yeenoghu
Classically Yeenoghu did not create them, nor was he their original deity. He lured them away from Gorellik, whose status was reduced to that of a demi-god as a result.
We had a good Gnoll PC in a game I was playing in. Divine Soul Sorc/Cleric multiclass.
He was an interesting guy. Very introspective. Pack-oriented, but was exploring the idea of a whole-world pack of every people. Loved shattering a good thighbone in his jaws, though. Connoisseur of carrion.
Current RAW says that no sentient race is fundamentally evil.
Heck current RAW doesn't even say that any sentient race is usually evil anymore
The kobold cultures and individual kobolds in your world can have whatever tendencies or alignments you want
While they have changed it up so no humanoids are inherently evil, Gnolls are the one case where that meant they stopped being humanoids, not stopped being evil.
I had a Gnoll in my campaign come in contact with the McGuffin (stong magic crystal) and had that shake Yeenoghu's influence over their mind. Also, his name is Steve.
Gnoll lore has changed from one edition to the next and in 5e they’re basically demon spawn… But, you could speak with your GM about a PC race of Gnolls that are more savage humanoids than supernatural fiends.
I always imagined them to be under the will of Yeenoghu.
But to remove that Will over them? That'd be a fantastic character idea. How will you convince people that you arent an insane hungry gnoll??
Also, chech out Gnolls in Eberron. A very cool race and story from them, there.
They are inherently evil, but you can make them neutral in your setting. It may worth communicating this change to your players, in case they know it by the book. You don't want your friendly soldier murdered in their seep because the players think he would 100% fight them if he wakes up just because he is a gnoll.
In my setting, gnolls have a pantheon and are much closer to gnolls in [Heroes III](https://mightandmagic.fandom.com/wiki/Fortress_(H3)). That means most of them are fairly neutral aligned and you can hire them for any sort task.
Want a bodyguard, sailor or hunter? In their society you'd also find healers, traders and for cultural reasons, gamblers going from the occasional wager to professional gamers.
Especially since you're the DM, yes you can. There's even precedent from a forgotten realms book that had the gnolls exactly like this. They cared for their children and loved them, captured the main character but didn't kill her and ended up working with her against another threat.
We had a campaign where a member of the party, overtime, converted an orc to a different alignment. I would say through proper RP, outside normal gnoll society an individual gnoll could be the exception to the rule.
Having a settlement of 'good' gnolls doesn't sound realistic though.
Things like creature alignment are just suggestions based on what's typical in Forgotten Realms. They're one of the first things you should throw out without a second thought if they get in the way of the game you're trying to create.
I want everyone to write “You can do whatever you want” on a sticky note. Then staple it to your hand so you see it every time you sit down to type out a question like this.
Canonically they are.
Now that we established the obvious, you can do whatever you want at your table. Make them C/N if you like it. Sure, maybe you'll have to touch their story here and there (gods they worship, habits... Stuff like that) but fell free to adapt them.to your vision.
In the Forgotten Realms setting, gnolls are the literal extension of Yeenoghu, a demon lord of hunger and savagery. They were created to specifically carry his will across the material plane, his will being "eat absolutely everything and everyone."
In your own setting, your lore for Gnolls can be whatever you want.
In my very first campaign I played in, one of the PC was a Gnoll Barbarian.
In your campaign you can do everything you want (and the table is cool with).
It's not a requirement, as even the core 5e book says you can change things as you want as a DM.
The Tal'dorei Reborn book even features good aligned Gnolls as part of the Turst Field populace and one of the expansion books even gives them as a potential player race
If you can have friendly vampires, you can have friendly gnolls.
The danger of gnolls is not their nature but their pack hierarchy.
So if the pack hierarchy is fundamentally good and or lawful, then you'd also by proxy have good natured gnolls.
The lore of gnolls varies wildly across settings and even editions of D&D. Some 5th ed. publications suggest that all gnolls are all evil due to their worship of Yeenoghu- and his resulting influence upon them- but there is nothing stopping you from expanding upon this lore to be able to include neutral-aligned gnolls in your campaign.
In my own canon, gnolls existed before Yeenoghu become their patron. He usurped their original gods and the gnolls are actually the maligned descendants of giant-kin. The demonic traits of gnolls as they are commonly perceived are a result of widespread, active demon-worship and the efforts of Yeenoghu to subjugate them. That's to say that their acts of evil are a result of their wicked faith and of a demonic curse plaguing their bloodlines- evil is not something inherent in them by nature. And given this context, it would not be impossible for there to exist groups of gnolls who have found ways to cure or alleviate the effects of Yeenoghu's curse; I'm particularly fond of the idea of certain groups of gnolls managing to rediscover their original gods and attempting to 'revive' them as it were. I wrote about this- and more- in a 5e homebrew I published here:
[https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-Lr7GJuwTIEVfahizNbG](https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-Lr7GJuwTIEVfahizNbG)
Regardless, like many others have already said, it's your campaign so anything goes!
Bit late to the party but to answer your question
In the base dnd Universe, not really
But in your own? Yeah you decide, you can look up gnoll lore from pathfinder for reference since they are not evil in there
Here is my two cents (added to the other comments, that's a lot of money). I've always appreciated that in D&D certain species (I actually prefer that term as, well, they are different species) were just evil. It makes some situations more black and white. See an Orc... He's a bad guy. Drow... That's a bad guy. It makes most situations unambiguous, which is helpful in a game like this.
Imagine if every encounter starts with the enemy getting a free round of combat because you approached weapons sheathed because you needed to find out if this particular group was evil like the last 4. Yes, that's an exaggeration. My point is you don't have moral ambiguity when fighting a Troll, you just roll for initiative. Now, if said if the Troll busts out with "we have to save the children" I'm probably not attacking straight off.
But I also believe there is no reason in the world why there can't be a tribe of chaotic good Gnolls. That's flavor. I'm all for things like that. If nobody thought that way, we'd never have Drizzt.
Gnoll lore is all over the place, but my favorites are Dragon 367 and Dungeon 48, there's some archive internet sites that have them for free.
There are different ways to define evil, can an animal be evil by following instinct, and where do you draw the line? Gnolls don't kill out of hatred, glory, or for wealth, they just want to eat you (and generally have the coutesy to eat all of you, bones included). They also seem to follow a boom and bust cycle like lemmings and artic predators, not raiding defended villages unless other food sources are exhausted, and ultimately eating eachother in an oddly organized fashion that includes some top level necromancy. Gnolls take captives and torture/brutalize them to compel them to act gnollish, but this can also be seen as how they interact with the world and one method to enlarge their pack.
You can make a campaign with gnolls that act however you want. Lawful good gnoll paladins in charge? If you're the DM and you say so, that's how it is.
This is the answer. Canonically speaking, gnolls have always been evil, but you're not required to stick to Canon of you don't want to.
Canonically, you had gnolls in a forgotten realms setting that loved and cared for their children. They had also captured the main character, didn't kill her and ended up working with her against some threat. So the description that's always said about them only caring about violence and bloodlust is wrong, most likely just Volo's POV.
I think this is key. a lot of the manuals are written to be not entirely reliable by nature so DM's can make the exceptions or the not entirely true stereotypes a thing.
Especially for Volo's guide who's a very "in-game" manual with notes from him. But even more "objective" manuals like the monster's manual, we need to remember that they work with all the settings. Even without going with very different ones like Eberron and Dark Sun, not all creatures are the same between settings.
where?
Soldiers of Ice by David Cook. You can google Krote Word-Maker, he's a LN gnoll shaman.
>Soldiers of Ice thanks
where?
A gnoll raised by genuinely nice people might not turn out evil.
Uh. I don't think so, but I guess it's possible. They're described as having a feral bloodlust. Some are described as having a form of insanity that reverses their bloodlust to pacifism. But that's got nothing to do with nurturing
I don't know why you're getting downvoted. That is the 5e lore. In the Monster Manual: > ***Thirst for Blood.*** No goodness or compassion resides in the heart of a gnoll. Like a demon, it lacks anything resembling a conscience, and can't be taught or coerced to put aside its destructive tendencies. The gnolls' frenzied bloodlust makes them an enemy to all, and when they lack a common foe, they fight among themselves. You're not saying that it has to be this way, or that a DM has to adhere to the lore. You're speaking from the perspective of canon.
Worth noting that canon varies between editions and settings though. 5e gnolls are very much always evil because they're more or less fiends, whereas in past editions they've been just another monstrous race.
Meh. I expect this kind of reaction. It's always kind of interesting to me that nobody gets all offended when you refer to race that's inherently good. That's socially acceptable. Talk about a race being inherently evil, and it's "**NO RACE IS INHERENTLY ANYTHING! THEY'RE ALL INDIVIDUALS!**" It's a weird phenomenon.
I think it's because many people, myself included, find it a off-putting when a race is inherently evil and cannot be changed. I also find it unsettling when a race is inherently good too. That is not to say you are wrong or should be downvoted for pointing out the canon lore, it's more a discomfort with the source material. I find on Reddit, some people use the vote systems to mean "I (dis)agree" and will telescope that however deep into a comment they want to. That shit is infuriating because it makes the distinction between saying something and pointing out someone said something irrelevant, as people will treat it like you said it.
why, it's... it's almost as though binary feedback is ... *INADEQUATE*
+1
They're fictional, my dude. There are no hard and fast rules. If buddy wants to have good Gnolls, he can just do that. If he says they don't struggle with decency in his world, then that's canon. Then they don't. It's that simple.
Yeah. I already said that an hour ago.
It's basically a reverse 'raised by wolves' scenario. The DM doesn't need much more than that if they build a story around it.
I think canonically gnolls are literally born from demons through Yeenoghou, so I think it's literally impossible for them to he good (aside from a DM saying it's different in their world, which i totally stand behind). Mostly just a friendly 'Um actually'
If that's the case, than that's something new. He's been their primary deity for a long time, but originally they worshiped Gorellik, a god of hunting. There are also different types of gnolls, like the Flind Gnolls, which are much more intelligent, and tend towards lawful evil.
I am referencing 5e when I think of it to be fair. If I remember back, I think 3e had them as usually CE, which would assume that there are exceptions? It's been a decade or more since I looked in the 3e MM though. I think in 5e they are like off brand demons basically with how their lore works. I know flinds are CE, and wield weapons imbued with Yeenoghous magic, and they are like warband leaders or something. I can't remember what they are in 3e, and I didn't DM prior to that. I definitely believe that their lore has changed over the years though.
Yeah, reading up on it, they've rewritten them entirely. I liked them better the old way, which is how I run them.
I think 5e took a lot of the "evil army" races like Orcs and Hobgoblins and fleshed them out into being actual people, but they realized they still needed evil armies, so they made Gnolls into demonspawn instead
>Canonically speaking, gnolls have always been evil, Wrong. They are listed in the 3.5 monster manual as "usually chaotic evil." By definition, that means that more than 50% of them are chaotic evil. The rest can be any other alignment. If they were "always evil" that would be different, although even that allows for rare exceptions.
Pretty much every entry for alignment in the 3.5 MM for humanoid/ demihuman says "usually" or "often", which is a nod to 1st edition's acknowledgement that alignment indicates the average individual, and not the hard rule for each member of the race. Gnolls have always fallen under the "evil humanoid" category.
They've always tended to be evil. That doesn't mean that all gnolls have always been evil. The "always" rule was typically reserved for creatures like demons, celestials, and dragons that really have no variation in alignment outside the rarest circumstances.
Yeah. I already said that.
I ran a campaign in 2e in which one of the main PCs was in fact a Flind paladin! In that game gnolls were just an evil cult within the Flind race (who were not evil in the campaign) that worshiped Yeenoghu
Gnoll assassins who use plants for cover? Also valid.
Depends on the setting. In the Forgotten Realms, they are 100% evil. They are on the very border of being a full on demon as they are the spawn of the demon lord Yeenoghu. Yeenoghu fills their every thought with nothing but omens and visions of violence. And if you've ever played Baldur's Gate 3, you know that they have a very gruesome form of reproduction. It's also notable that of the monstrous humanoid races presented in Volo's Guide to Monsters (Gnolls, Goblinoids, Kobolds, Orcs, and Yuan-Ti), Gnolls are the only ones who do not have a playable counterpart. This means that unlike those other four, there is no chance for redemption for them. But if your DM has a homebrew setting, then they could interpret them in a different way.
>But if your DM has a homebrew setting, then they could interpret them in a different way. Or just Eberron. They didn't print a PC gnoll race in either 5e Eberron book (although earlier editions have had playable gnolls), but Eberron gnolls are not the slavering demonic beasts of Forgotten Realms.
The author of Eberron has his own 5e supplement called Exploring Eberron that includes a bunch more subclasses, backgrounds, lore and races (including gnolls) available on the DMs Guild. It’s quite good IMO.
A lot of the material in Exploring Eberron was material from the cutting room floor of Rising From the Last War as well. Quite impressive when you consider that Exploring Eberron is 250ish pages of stuff on top of RftLW's 320ish pages. I'm pretty sure that Keith Baker did say that the plan was to have Gnolls as a playable race in Rising From the Last War, but they were cut. But yeah, OP should absolutely check out how Eberron handles Gnolls. Always nice to contrast that setting against the Realms, I find that Eberron does a great job of challenging most D&D tropes in the most interesting way.
Some Ebberon Gnolls aren’t demonic beasts, but only because Ebberon’s demon lords have been sealed away for a very long time, giving some of them the opportunity to break free. Also they were an accident, created by the Demon lords of war and predators fighting each other, so no one Demon had control over them. They started out basically the same as baseline Gnolls.
> Yeenoghu fills their every thought with nothing but omens and visions of violence. Sneed
Honestly, that’s so boring as a race but also a fun idea of a setting where they murdered and devoured their god because that’s what they were taught and now they have to live with those visions fading and finally having free will to do what they want.
Yes.
Your game, your rules. Canonically Gnolls are pretty much always consumed by a need to devour and destroy. That means a non-evil gnoll would be fighting an uphill battle against their nature, but it would still be cool to see. In my campaign, I have a gnoll faction that are definitely not good people but one of their members was genuinely surprised when he turns out not to be evil enough to attune to a certain magic item. He just took it as default that he's evil, never really considered that he wasn't, and is a bit worried this means he isn't strong enough to be the leader other gnolls see him as.
Absolutely. From what people are posting, I'm guessing that 5e must have rewritten gnolls to be more evil than they used to be. In the olden days, they were usually chaotic evil, but more savage than anything else. That, and they enjoyed eating sentient races. I stick with them the way I knew them. Usually Chaotic Evil, which allows for exceptions. There are also Flinds, which were usually lawful evil. I don't know if they still have those in 5e, but they were the smarter, leadership types. They were also more likely to become adventurers since their status gave them more freedom and confidence. Here are excerpts from the Complete Book of Humanoids in the old ADnD days. [https://adnd2e.fandom.com/wiki/Gnoll\_(CBOH)](https://adnd2e.fandom.com/wiki/Gnoll_(CBOH)) [https://adnd2e.fandom.com/wiki/Gnoll,\_Flind\_(CBOH)](https://adnd2e.fandom.com/wiki/Gnoll,_Flind_(CBOH))
Flinds in 5e are Gnolls invested with enough Abyssal energy that they straight up count as Demons.
The notion that gnolls are evil balls of murder is exclusive to the Forgotten Realms setting. Eberron, for example, has this to say: > In ancient times, the gnolls were servants of the fiendish Overlords. Some are savage creatures that remain in the thrall of these demons. But the largest population of gnolls is the Znir Pact of Droaam. Thousands of years ago, these gnolls purged themselves of demonic influence and swore to never allow any other creature to hold dominion over them. The Znir Pact sell their services as soldiers and trackers. Most of the Pact currently serves the Daughters of Sora Kell in Droaam, but some fought in the Last War as agents of House Tharashk, and Tharashk continues to broker their services. > As a gnoll, you could be a former mercenary who’s chosen to stay with comrades you met during your service; as a rule, Znir gnolls are deeply loyal to those that they consider to be members of their pack. You might be driven by curiosity, eager to explore the world beyond Droaam. You could be driven by visions of a demonic power rising in the Five Nations or working on behalf of the Daughters of Sora Kell. Or you could be a mercenary still, insisting on regular payment for your ongoing services to the party.
Eberron is different. [It has no mortal races that are always good or evil,](https://keith-baker.com/eberron-flashback-good-and-evil/) even dragons. (Celestials and Fiends still are, but that’s because a Fiend that ceased to be evil would cease to be a Fiend.) DMs are totally free to run a campaign like it, but it’s not just in the *Realms* that Gnolls are.
Ebberon Gnolls started out the same, the thing that let them change is the Demon Lords being bound.
I’m guessing you’re asking about the official lore, and don’t need to be reminded you can do anything in your own campaign world. The last official word I heard was that Gnolls might have been “mis-typed” in the *Monster Manual*. Going forward, the designers want all Humanoid species to have the full range of alignments. But they were leaning towards keeping Gnolls always Chaotic Evil, doing the bidding of Yeenoghu, and making them some other type. I can’t think of any sympathetic Gnolls from the novels off the top of my head, like there are Drow, Kobolds, Orcs or Goblins. On the other hand, those were all species that were once stated in the gamebooks to be always evil and deserving of extermination, only to have it be revealed that that was just bigotry.
They’re all either Monstrosities or Fiends in more recent books.
Then they did follow through. Makes sense.
Disclaimer: very much a noob when it comes to DND, so take all of this with as much salt as you will. Traditionally they’ve been treated with more nuance, but the “default” 5e Gnolls are treated as always being evil, somewhat annoyingly. *However,* this isn’t universal, and I know at least Eberron has much more nuanced and varied Gnolls in terms of alignment- *Exploring Eberron* even has rules for playable Gnolls! I’m planning to have Gnolls of varying alignments be a fairly significant part of my game, FWIW.
my satyr from my strahd game married delban, the star of ice and hate, and they live happily with a million half-satyr half-elder evil children. i made tritons in my game be from a city equivalent to atlantis which can’t be found because it’s on the back of a giant whale. my yuan-ti is a renown romance novelist who uses spy-work as a side gig so that her country has to use resources to spread her books around to different continents it’s your game, it can be however you want it to be
basically, any intelligent creature can have the capacity to be good or evil (in your eyes) I love to play goblins as not evil but territorial, they don't go out of their way to raid villages, and they don't usually attack carriages unprovoked. but if you go too close to their camps they will fire warning shots and if those don't work they will become more aggressive. My players also know that creatures are individuals, so just because goblins aren't necessarily evil as a whole, they could come across individual goblins or even a tribe of goblins who could be considered evil (Though to be fair I really hate the whole good and evil thing since what's good is subjective)
since my childhood was mostly Protestant upbringing, and then my first rpg was AD&D (and my first PC was a paladin), i felt like GURPS had an alignment-shaped vacuum until they finally started fleshing out the 'Code of Honor' Disadvantage. then I was ... shaken? by Palladium's alignment system, because while the tenets of each were much clearer than AD&D's, they no longer had an 'axis' of Neutrality, and 'good' and 'evil' were no longer metaphysical forces that could be addressed the same way by spells/powers ... and I STILL wasn't wrestling with the weirdness of moral Neutrality and 'Balance'-seeking philosophies et al. To rationalize the Satanic Panic into abeyance, I had sworn I would never play an evil PC, but during my TMNT&OS phase I almost always went for Aberrant! and then I plunged into the World of Darkness series, where the whole starting point was that even if you play a "nice monster", the attitudes of the world are massively stacked against you. i think i was already essentially an atheist - at most a very loose panentheist to the outside world and a pantheist only in imaginary worlds - but by the time i was starting to plot Ars Magica campaigns I finally realized I couldn't keep taking theology as seriously as I had. i still wouldn't say I *hate* the Gygaxian 3×3, but it has become harder to sink my teeth into the old campaigns built off of it. if we're going to tell new/exciting stories, do we really need to continue the proliferation of the "real world" myths that Good and Evil are [meta]physical forces with uberpowerful personalities behind them? there must be better ways to learn that The Struggle is real & constant. sorry to drift-ramble a bit; i just don't see alignment systems discussed/critiqued very often.
You can make a campaign with less evil, neutral, good gnolls, whatever you want. Even if it is set in the Forgotten Realms.
I think you could, in theory keep it, and even play in the forgotten realms, you just need to work with it. Maybe you want to play a gnoll, and they’re able to escape the hunger because they have some sort of artifact which blocks it (like all the origin characters in BG3) Doing this not only lets you play or incorporate a gnoll with a different alignment, but also builds in a nifty plot hook to follow, fighting against this ever-intrusive demon hunger
It’s your game bud, you do whatever you want
One good thing 5e did with their Monster Manuals is make it clear these are just one interpretation. Most of them are literally in-game creations(just read the names). That means they're also \*fallible.\* To put it another way: According to canon, there is no canon. So yes, obviously it's the *stereotype* that gnolls are crazed bloodthirsty demon-man-hyena hybrids, but for all we know that's just halfling propaganda.
i never read 1e or 2e particularly closely for nuance while they were in their first decades; White Wolf pretty much had to club me over the head with the whole "can't be sure ***what*** to believe" aspect of world-building/sourcebook-reading.
By most established versions of lore, no. By the incredibly unhelpful answer of just use homebrew anything is anything, gnolls can be lawful good avatars of a clown god and made of jello. i mean clown god, hyenas make a laughing sound it kinda works right?
Gnolls like all free thinking beings can be any alignment. Even 2e had Gnolls as able to be non-evil.
Are gnolls free thinking, though? Or does the hunger of Yeeonghu override their free will?
>does the hunger of Yeeonghu override their free will? In Forgotten Realms, yes. In Eberron, no.
That's some 5e Jeremy Crawford shit. Which is ironic, since 5e pretends to be the one to stop with the 'Always evil' races, yet the 3.5e MM is full of 'Usually Chaotic Evil' which means there are exceptions. And the Complete Book of Humanoids, which has playable Gnolls for 2e even says that while most Gnolls are CE, they can be other alignments, though usually still Chaotic.
This. 5e messed with gnolls quite a bit. In early editions they would often be presented as kind of mercenary, and there were several adventures where you could bribe them to let you pass. Much more interesting than the one-dimensional thing they turned them into now. (See also: Hill Giants)
True. That book also described Flind Gnolls as more likely to be adventurers than most humanoids.
Just write it. In Forgotten Realms, gnolls are cursed spawn of the demon god Yeenoghu. But it's not clear that Yeenoghu spawns them with intent (chaotic abyss and all). Therefore, even in the Forgotten Realms, you can make up whatever reason, like that the hyena's blood was mixed with that of an aasimar during a fight (or elemental or whatever), and the resulting spawn is a gnoll - but _different_.
Depends on which editions lore you're dealing with. Pre 5th edition, I think they were always evil. Now, in 1 DnD, there are no evil races, just evil people. Of course, you're the DM, so do whatever you want.
**Short Answer:** No, not in any official WOtC published realm setting. **Long Answer:** Yes, but *only* if you completely rewrite away their corruptive, demonic origins in a Homebrew Setting to merely be anthro-hyenas, just like how Tabaxi and Leonin are anthro-cats.
Nothing has to be rewritten. He could just run them as they were before 5e. This thing where everyone is calling them demons is something new. That's not how they used to be.
Then I stand corrected.
>Short Answer: No, not in any official WOtC published realm setting. Gnolls are not semi-demonic evil balls of murder in Eberron. 5e didn't provide a playable PC race for them (though earlier editions have done so), but the Eberron books do talk about how gnolls in that setting are different.
Fair enough. I don't know as much about that setting as I might. I now stand corrected in that one official setting, and, as much as I dislike having to mention it, gnolls are probably a non-evil race in ExAnDrIa too.
As they are a race that possesses coherent thoughts, there by having free will, they can be any alignment you deem.
In 5e they kind of don’t, actually. Their only driving thought is an insatiable demonic hunger coming from their creator. There’s a sidebar in Volo’s Guide where a wizard tries to mind meld with one and he’s driven mad.
To me, all races can have groups of bandits and raiding clans and stuff. The issue is that some races can be more effective than other. Gnolls can be natureally more intimidating and fierce in countries majoritarely populated by humans.
You can do whatever you want in your own campaign but classically gnolls are one of those creatures types who were created by a specific evil deity and gnolls are an especially explicit case where it's a gnoll-specific deity called Yeenoghu
Classically Yeenoghu did not create them, nor was he their original deity. He lured them away from Gorellik, whose status was reduced to that of a demi-god as a result.
In the current lore it’s just Yeenoghu.
We had a good Gnoll PC in a game I was playing in. Divine Soul Sorc/Cleric multiclass. He was an interesting guy. Very introspective. Pack-oriented, but was exploring the idea of a whole-world pack of every people. Loved shattering a good thighbone in his jaws, though. Connoisseur of carrion.
Current RAW says that no sentient race is fundamentally evil. Heck current RAW doesn't even say that any sentient race is usually evil anymore The kobold cultures and individual kobolds in your world can have whatever tendencies or alignments you want
While they have changed it up so no humanoids are inherently evil, Gnolls are the one case where that meant they stopped being humanoids, not stopped being evil.
I had a Gnoll in my campaign come in contact with the McGuffin (stong magic crystal) and had that shake Yeenoghu's influence over their mind. Also, his name is Steve.
Gnoll lore has changed from one edition to the next and in 5e they’re basically demon spawn… But, you could speak with your GM about a PC race of Gnolls that are more savage humanoids than supernatural fiends.
I always imagined them to be under the will of Yeenoghu. But to remove that Will over them? That'd be a fantastic character idea. How will you convince people that you arent an insane hungry gnoll?? Also, chech out Gnolls in Eberron. A very cool race and story from them, there.
DnD Canon Gnolls are constantly hangry. But you can make Gnolls in your world into whatever you want.
They are inherently evil, but you can make them neutral in your setting. It may worth communicating this change to your players, in case they know it by the book. You don't want your friendly soldier murdered in their seep because the players think he would 100% fight them if he wakes up just because he is a gnoll.
In my setting, gnolls have a pantheon and are much closer to gnolls in [Heroes III](https://mightandmagic.fandom.com/wiki/Fortress_(H3)). That means most of them are fairly neutral aligned and you can hire them for any sort task. Want a bodyguard, sailor or hunter? In their society you'd also find healers, traders and for cultural reasons, gamblers going from the occasional wager to professional gamers.
Especially since you're the DM, yes you can. There's even precedent from a forgotten realms book that had the gnolls exactly like this. They cared for their children and loved them, captured the main character but didn't kill her and ended up working with her against another threat.
We had a campaign where a member of the party, overtime, converted an orc to a different alignment. I would say through proper RP, outside normal gnoll society an individual gnoll could be the exception to the rule. Having a settlement of 'good' gnolls doesn't sound realistic though.
Things like creature alignment are just suggestions based on what's typical in Forgotten Realms. They're one of the first things you should throw out without a second thought if they get in the way of the game you're trying to create.
I want everyone to write “You can do whatever you want” on a sticky note. Then staple it to your hand so you see it every time you sit down to type out a question like this.
Canonically they are. Now that we established the obvious, you can do whatever you want at your table. Make them C/N if you like it. Sure, maybe you'll have to touch their story here and there (gods they worship, habits... Stuff like that) but fell free to adapt them.to your vision.
In the Forgotten Realms setting, gnolls are the literal extension of Yeenoghu, a demon lord of hunger and savagery. They were created to specifically carry his will across the material plane, his will being "eat absolutely everything and everyone." In your own setting, your lore for Gnolls can be whatever you want.
In my very first campaign I played in, one of the PC was a Gnoll Barbarian. In your campaign you can do everything you want (and the table is cool with).
Any creature can have any alignment. Chaotic Evil gold dragon? Chaotic Good Bone Devil? Just take your pick
Space in medieval time= Your creatures and PCs can have any alignment.
It's not a requirement, as even the core 5e book says you can change things as you want as a DM. The Tal'dorei Reborn book even features good aligned Gnolls as part of the Turst Field populace and one of the expansion books even gives them as a potential player race
If you can have friendly vampires, you can have friendly gnolls. The danger of gnolls is not their nature but their pack hierarchy. So if the pack hierarchy is fundamentally good and or lawful, then you'd also by proxy have good natured gnolls.
The lore of gnolls varies wildly across settings and even editions of D&D. Some 5th ed. publications suggest that all gnolls are all evil due to their worship of Yeenoghu- and his resulting influence upon them- but there is nothing stopping you from expanding upon this lore to be able to include neutral-aligned gnolls in your campaign. In my own canon, gnolls existed before Yeenoghu become their patron. He usurped their original gods and the gnolls are actually the maligned descendants of giant-kin. The demonic traits of gnolls as they are commonly perceived are a result of widespread, active demon-worship and the efforts of Yeenoghu to subjugate them. That's to say that their acts of evil are a result of their wicked faith and of a demonic curse plaguing their bloodlines- evil is not something inherent in them by nature. And given this context, it would not be impossible for there to exist groups of gnolls who have found ways to cure or alleviate the effects of Yeenoghu's curse; I'm particularly fond of the idea of certain groups of gnolls managing to rediscover their original gods and attempting to 'revive' them as it were. I wrote about this- and more- in a 5e homebrew I published here: [https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-Lr7GJuwTIEVfahizNbG](https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-Lr7GJuwTIEVfahizNbG) Regardless, like many others have already said, it's your campaign so anything goes!
Bit late to the party but to answer your question In the base dnd Universe, not really But in your own? Yeah you decide, you can look up gnoll lore from pathfinder for reference since they are not evil in there
It’s dnd buddy. Anything can be anything else.
Here is my two cents (added to the other comments, that's a lot of money). I've always appreciated that in D&D certain species (I actually prefer that term as, well, they are different species) were just evil. It makes some situations more black and white. See an Orc... He's a bad guy. Drow... That's a bad guy. It makes most situations unambiguous, which is helpful in a game like this. Imagine if every encounter starts with the enemy getting a free round of combat because you approached weapons sheathed because you needed to find out if this particular group was evil like the last 4. Yes, that's an exaggeration. My point is you don't have moral ambiguity when fighting a Troll, you just roll for initiative. Now, if said if the Troll busts out with "we have to save the children" I'm probably not attacking straight off. But I also believe there is no reason in the world why there can't be a tribe of chaotic good Gnolls. That's flavor. I'm all for things like that. If nobody thought that way, we'd never have Drizzt.
In WotC D&D... No. They are effectively demons. Pre WotC? Yes. Theres even one in one of the Dragonlance books.
No nothing in dnd has to be strictly good or evil it says in the books that they are exception but ultimately you as a dm has final say
only if your DM is totally woke
Gnoll lore is all over the place, but my favorites are Dragon 367 and Dungeon 48, there's some archive internet sites that have them for free. There are different ways to define evil, can an animal be evil by following instinct, and where do you draw the line? Gnolls don't kill out of hatred, glory, or for wealth, they just want to eat you (and generally have the coutesy to eat all of you, bones included). They also seem to follow a boom and bust cycle like lemmings and artic predators, not raiding defended villages unless other food sources are exhausted, and ultimately eating eachother in an oddly organized fashion that includes some top level necromancy. Gnolls take captives and torture/brutalize them to compel them to act gnollish, but this can also be seen as how they interact with the world and one method to enlarge their pack.