Gnoll army heavy hitter help please

[lantern314]

I'm gearing up to run a war campaign a la "Heroes of Battle" and I would like to have the main enemy be gnolls. I'm having a hard time figuring out who the gnolls play well with to use for the heavy hitters and artillery troops for a gnoll army.
Because of all of the demonic gnolls in the minis game I have thought about just having crazy numbers of demons running around, but that is a little more high fantasy that I had been planning on.
Any advice?

 

[Evilhalfling]

Welcome to the boards Lantern!

Gnolls advance by class level - and are genrally nature based.
If you think of them as defenders of the natural world, striking against civilization then the army could be led by a council of druids. They cound use animals and even treants. There could be enough sympathy of elvish and human druids, to paralize the opposition, until the gnolls have some victories, and start cooking and eating innocent people.

Another option, the demon lord of gnolls also controls ghouls, so there could be large poorly conrolled bands of ghouls following the army. Brutal but dumb giants, or orges would be a good match, and hill giants make good artillery.

I had a great time with Gnoll charrioteers - there is a link at the top of House Rules - with new classes - that can provide full details on the gnoll pargon charoiteer class, but if your using minis this probably won't work for you.

Good Luck!

 

[Thurbane]

A half-troll gnoll barbarian would be pretty brutal!

 

[Rhun]

What about a few half-fiend gnolls running about, perhaps with class levels. Give a couple of them levels in cleric, and those ghouls that Evilhalfling mentioned become a bit more controllable!

 

[Slapzilla]

Druidic Gnolls... cool.... Can't be tracked, great for scouts and the advance guard. Can cast spells, great for self sufficiency. Can shape shift, great for blending in with the woods itself. No need to throw them into the template scrambler to make them both a royal pain, and a memorable villan. Reserve them for the recurring leader types. Adepts and Experts built as trackers for your average vanguard mamber, but led by a Druid. Cool.

 

[Sound of Azure]

Barbarians, Druids, Rangers, and Scouts are all full of win for a nature-based Gnoll war-party.

If you wanted to play up the fiendish aspects, you could add in dragon shamans (with the flavour changed to reflect the individual demon-lords worshipped by each gnoll tribe), sorcerers with the PHB2 fiend-blooded feats, and warlocks (with the Violate Spell-like Ability feat fromt he book of vile darkness).

 

[Hamarul]

I've always envisioned gnolls as, hyena-like scavengers and thugs. If one Gnoll warlord managed to create order amongst the rabble and organize them into a force to be reckoned with, then, through strength in numbers, they would be able to force other monsters to join their cause perhaps.

For artillery, their army could have squads of gnoll ranger/fighters armed with composite longbows (To take advantage of their natural brute force) and perhaps they could have forced/tempted/persuaded a group a giants to their cause, most likely hill giants, who would be the heavy artillery, throwing great rocks at their enemies from long distances.

Other Ideas for heavy artillery would be , crude catapults/trebuchets/ballistas.


For melee heavy hitters, once again you could make use of giant allies, or even cooler, and possibly better, elite gnoll cavalry, riding on wargs or dire wolves. Make them level 4-6 Fighter/Barbarian and arm them with lances or spears and decent armor and they'll be able to pack quite a punch.

 

[Slapzilla]

Are dire bears big enough to load a cupola onto with two or three gnoll archers or would you have to advance it? Hmm... I'm going to have to use that one.