D&D 5E Gnolls: Playable or Not?

[MonsterEnvy]

Goliaths and frost Giants both have unsustainable societies.

With frost Giants, A whole race can't survive on just raiding and hunting, especially one that needs as much food as they must.
Goliaths, I explained the problem with that in the other thread. Their culture is a lazy trope that wouldn't actually be likely to survive the environment they are placed in.

You're also misrepresenting my issue with Lizardfolk. Classy.

I have not read enough about the goliaths to comment on their culture. But Frost Giants are fine. Beasts of burden are useless to them (They are pretty much all smaller and weaker then the giants.) They don't require warmth so they have no need for pelts and other things to keep them warm. (They use that stuff pretty much for decoration.) Added on in D&D there are plenty of big game that can supply them quite a bit of food. Like the Remorhaz. Combined with the fact they can simply take what they want from most settlements.

Also I don't get how I am misrepresenting your issue with Lizardfolk. Cause that was the best understanding I could make of it.

 

[Parmandur]

I guess there are two possible reasons - at least, two possible reasons that are easily intuited as making sense from WotC's point of view.



The first is "We don't think that publishing playable gnolls makes sense commercially". To me that seems an improbable reasons, but maybe they have data from surveys, DDI, etc that shows that gnolls are at the bottom of the pile as far as market demand for a playable version is concerned. (Do more people really want to play kobolds than gnolls? Seems strange to me, but then there's no accounting for taste!)



The second is "We don't think publishing more than X playable races makes sense commercially, and when we chose X from our vast pool of many more than X possibilities, we didn't choose gnolls because of [insert aesthetic reasons, results of coin tosses, etc here]." I think what we have been told is, in effect, this second. And I think people are disagreeing with the aesthetic reason that has been given.



Taking offence is silly, agreed. I think that feeling an offence to one's sensibilities is less silly, because the reason given has an aesthetic dimension, and aesthetic responses implicate sensibility.



That said, it would seem a pretty straightforward matter to adapt 3E or 4e gnolls to 5e, and I would be surprised if many of those who are feeling upset by this decision don't have access to one or the other of those earlier iterations.



There's always been this weird thing where CE is listed as a playable alignment and yet typically CE critters are often seen as not playable in virtue of that. (With drow as something of a long-standing exception.)



I don't really get it. And personally I don't really feel this strong contrast between gnolls and orcs, especially as orcs have been presented since 3E changed them from LE to CE.



But I agree that making up one's own gnoll wouldn't seem to be that much of a challenge.

They did survey us in June last year, about settings and class/race options we wanted to see. Goblins, Aasmir and Thri-Kreen werre "tier 1" for desired player races, and [MENTION=697]mearls[/MENTION] said the following:

"The next most popular tier of races includes catfolk, devas, githyanki, githzerai, gnolls, half-giants, hobgoblins, kender, kobolds, lizardfolk, pixies, and revenants. Personally, I’d love to pick up Mystara’s rakasta as our catfolk race, but all these options have strong legacies to build on. The less-popular races are by no means off the table, but they’re likely at the back of the R&D queue—and might run the risk of other races beyond those addressed in this survey cutting in line ahead of them."

So, Gnollsolls are a desired PC race; however, the primary input was during the Next playtest, when James Wyatt designed the "monster bible" using gamer feedback. And IIRC, which is hard to know since I can't find the Wandering Monsters archive, people wanted Gnolls to double, if not triple, down on the demonic monstrosity angle. And based on the podcast, Gnolls are now not a true breeding race as much as a low level demonic infestation that has warped a hyena, only made by infesting more hyenas. I imagine that they could not reconcile that with being allowed at an AL table.

 

[QuietBrowser]

Part of the problem with "you can just homebrew the stats" is that it fails to address the two dire issues of homebrewing: Successful Balance and The DM's Permission.

I've homebrewed a gnoll PC race - amongst a huge number of others. Let me tell you, even with 5e's drastic changes for ease of homebrewing, making something that is both flavorful AND neither overpowered nor underpowered is not a simple task. It's part of the reason why I keep begging for feedback there... anyway, this issue means that most players prefer official mechanics from WoTC, as these can usually be trusted to be fairly well-balanced, and thus present better likelihood of successfully integrating into campaigns.

The latter issue, however, is perhaps the most important. It's very common for DMs to absolutely hate allowing homebrewed content. Sometimes for the justifiable reason that homebrewed material can vary quite drastically in power and design, and does have a tendency to lean towards the overpowered. Other times for more personal reasons. The point is, DMs who reject homebrew are usually more willing to accept the same race if it was done by the game's official designers, which means an official WoTC gnoll writeup would be more "valid" in the eyes of such DMs.

So, yeah, even though we can homebrew, having an official writeup is still more desireable than homebrewing in the eyes of some players/DMs.

To say nothing of the complaint, however justifiable, that "we shouldn't have to homebrew - gnolls have been chaotic evil in every edition, but they've still been officially playable in every edition; why is now supposed to be the outlier?"

 

[MechaTarrasque]

Given that frost giants were elementals in 4e and didn't have to eat at all, and are clearly magically in 5e, who knows how much they actually have to eat?

For goliaths, I don't recall ever seeing anything to suggest their culture is thriving, and a race walking into the sunset is a common fantasy trope. As long as the long walk doesn't end until the next edition (or afterwards), no reason to get upset.

As for gnolls, I am not opposed to them as a playable race, but I don't think WotC is obligated to make them that way. 5e is the rulings not rules edition, so you are supposed to feel free to make your own. For AL, history has shown that even if some parts of a book are allowed, certain races might not be, so even if gnolls were playable in the book, there is no guarantee that they would be AL eligible.

 

[Parmandur]

So, on Twitter in response to [MENTION=6704184]doctorbadwolf[/MENTION] : [MENTION=697]mearls[/MENTION] : Nothing is stopping you from running gnoll PCs in your game. We have to pick what we put into a book based on lore.… https://t.co/G7r8IjAFfX



I think that the "Wandering Monsters" input is what led to this, as I stat above: people wanted super demonic, irredeemable mutants, not simple humanoid hyenas...

 

[MonsterEnvy]

So, on Twitter in response to @doctorbadwolf : @mearls : Nothing is stopping you from running gnoll PCs in your game. We have to pick what we put into a book based on lore.… https://t.co/G7r8IjAFfX



I think that the "Wandering Monsters" input is what led to this, as I stat above: people wanted super demonic, irredeemable mutants, not simple humanoid hyenas...

He seems overly attached to them and making them a playable race.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Many players want to play a member of a race that has to struggle against a savage nature, others just like the look and style of the gnoll, or think hyena's are rad (and they really are). Whatever the reason, your angry dismissal of our disappointment is pretty weak.

The only "utterly, utterly ridiculous" thing here is your attitude toward other people.

Yeah, well, you know... I also didn't insult Mearls and Co. by saying I wasn't going to buy the book because of "crap writing and lazy world building".

So if that's your attitude towards WotC because they made a flavor decision not to include one particular race (which, funnily enough, is anything BUT lazy world building, since they made a choice about how gnolls exist in the 5E world and then made the logical extension off of that on whether they'd usually be PCs... the anwer in this case being 'No'), I'll happily stand by my "utterly, utterly ridiculous" comment.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I think it is ok to voice your disappointment. But insulting WotC people is not.
Especially unfounded accusations are a no go. I think they really leaned out of the window starting a nearly 2 year open playtest with surveys and previews without knowing if they can make money out of that.

 

[Parmandur]

Latest Tweet from [MENTION=697]mearls[/MENTION] in response to where the Gnolls stand in popularity, seems a better reason " looking at the data I have, gnolls are at the bottom of the second tier - not 0, but behind a lot of options #wotcstaff"

Also, about the historical availability of playable Gnolls fitting in Lore: "not per our default lore - we're trying to make each humanoid race more distinct."

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Lol guys. Criticism isn't insult. And who made any accusations, founded or unfounded?

only people making anything personal here are [MENTION=5857]Monster[/MENTION]evny and [MENTION=7006]DEFCON 1[/MENTION]