The Slayers Guide to Gnolls

[Tuerny]

Originally appeared on www.AtFantasy.com

The Slayer's Guide to Gnolls, the second in Mongoose Publishing's Slayer series, is a sourcebook detailing gnoll society. It is designed to be easily insertable into most campaign settings. It retails at US $7.99.

Presentation
The Slayer's Guide to Gnolls is a thirty-two page, stapled booklet. The front inside cover has an anatomical drawing of a gnoll. The back inside cover has a map and graphical view of the surface of the gnoll laird described in the book. The margins are one inch wide and are illustrated with alternating pictures of weapons hanging or leaning against a wall.


The cover illustration, by Anne Stokes, depicts a single gnoll at the forefront with a variety of gnolls in the background burning a village to the ground. The interior artwork, by Chris Quilliams, Anne Stokes, Nathan Webb, Save Cousens, and Dan Boultwood is composed of a number of pieces detailing posing gnolls and scenes including gnolls. Also included is the hand-drawn map of a gnoll cave complex. It possesses a scale but not a grid and is very well-detailed as to the contents and terrain of the caves.

Overview and Analysis
The Slayer's Guide to Gnolls is divided into twelve sections that are mostly identical to those in the Slayer's Guide to Hobgbolins. They are the Introduction, Gnoll Physiology, Habitat, Gnoll Society, Methods of Warfare, Role-Playing with Gnolls, Scenario Hooks and Ideas, Gnolls as Player Characters, Edendale, Gnoll Reference List, the Open Gaming License, and the d20 License.

The Introduction, once again in a manner similar to the Slayer's Guide to Hobgoblins, details the premise behind the Slayer's Guides. This includes a description of the depiction gnolls have received in previous works, an explanation of the premise behind the Slayer's Guides, and a summary of the contents of the book. On the facing page is a short piece of fiction that serves as an introduction to the potential of gnoll as dangerous foes in the form of a tale by Cephir Al-alladin ibn Kasham bn Neylar formerly of the Band of Iron. This section is good as far as introductions go.

Gnoll Physiology, Habitat, Gnoll Society, and Methods of Warfare all discuss facets of gnoll existence. They are introduced as brutal, savage creatures built with hunting and killing in mind. In most cases they react in a purely instinctive manner, acting immediately rather than considering any potential consequences. They detest any form of physical labor, relying on captured slaves to handle menial work for them. Their society itself is based in a manner similar to wild predators, with families that roam between packs with some freedom and dominant males dominating both families and packs. They do not get along with other races very well, having their views of them colored by the fact they view them to be food just as much as potential allies. Gnolls are not religious on the whole, worshiping a demon lord with acts of brutality and blood rage on the nights of a full and new moon. Some gnolls worship local gods of slaughter, and typically rise to power within their packs. In warfare they hunt in groups, using ill-repaired weapons and armor to lead opponents into startlingly effective ambushes. They enter into open battle rarely, when their packs become so large that they need to sack towns to survive effectively. When defending their lair gnolls are far less effective, usually only defending their own areas and relying on hit and run tactics against invaders. This section is noticeably better, at least flavor-wise, than it was in the previous work. The details of gnoll society and culture were sometimes chilling in their brutality. It provides an effective expansion and explanation of exactly why gnoll culture is how it is, and exactly how gnolls think.

Roleplaying with Gnolls, Scenario Hooks and Ideas, and Gnolls as Player Characters have direct information on using gnolls in a campaign. They primarily stress that gnolls are ruled both by their instincts and their chaotic nature, with each gnoll looking out primarily for themselves, lacking any ability, save when preparing for an ambush, to coordinate anything. The story hooks provide eight different ways to utilize gnolls in a campaign, each of which fits well with the material provided within the book. The advice for using gnolls as player characters matches largely with the advice provided in the Slayer's Guide to Hobgoblins: don't. This advice makes much more sense than that provided in the Slayer's Guide to Hobgoblins. Gnolls are much farther from the typical human mindset than a hobgoblin is, and have the rather large disadvantage of seeing other humanoids as food. The stats provided for gnoll player character's are better balanced than those of the Slayer's Guide to Hobgoblins, though it provides a +2 bonus to Constitution that is not balanced out by a negative ability modifier (They also have a +2 to strength that is balanced with a -2 Intelligence and a -2 Charisma).

Edendale and the Gnoll Reference List provide working examples of how to use gnolls. Statistics of some sample gnolls, and details of a sample cave complex are included. Edendale is a complete and well-developed, providing a history and overview of the complex, its inhabitants, as well as ways to use it in a campaign. The Reference List's sample gnoll NPCs are the worst part of the book. Mongoose completely ignored the rules provided for characters with multiple hit dice changing classes, and forgot that Rangers and Fighters have d10 hit dice.

Conclusion
The Slayer's Guide to Gnolls serves as a useful gaming aid if you are using gnolls as presented in the Monster Manual or are seeking a framework to make your own gnoll culture. It is an improvement over the already good Slayer's Guide to Hobgoblins in all areas save the Gnoll Reference List, which is a definite weakness in the productThe inclusion of a Reference List is a helpful tool, but only if it matches up with the core rules. Overall it is a worthwhile buy for $7.99.

 

[Psion]

Slayer's Guide to Gnolls

The Slayer's Guide to Gnolls is the second product from D20 System publisher Mongoose Publishing and the second in a of a series to books by Mongoose called the Slayer's Guides. Each Slayer's Guide cover a monstrous race featured in the standard D&D set of creatures.

This, the second book of the series, covers gnolls. Gnolls are a race of hyena-headed humanoids in the D&D game. Gnolls are notworhty for their physical prowess, keen senses, and savagery.

A First Look

The Slayers Guide to Gnolls (SGG) is a 32 page full size booklet. The cover is color, and depicts an advancing gnoll against the backdrop of a village being sacked by gnolls.

The interior is black and white. The interior artwork is appropriate, but not necessarily keyed to depict the topic at hand. As with the Slayer's Guide to Hobgoblins (SGH), the most noteworthy interior artwork is that of Chris Quilliams. However, I found some of the art in the book quite unappealing, unlike in the SGH.

As with the previous book, I do have some concerns about the use of space. The margins and the font size seem about average for the industry, and the inside covers are utilized. However, header text was done in a very large font, and the paragraph spacing is rather wide on some pages.

Most surprising, however, is that the book dedicates a whole page to a copy of the D20 System License. This is strange because there is no requirement for D20 System publishers to redistribute the D20 System License with their products, only the Open Game License. I am uncertain whether they did this out of confusion over the requirements or to pad the book.

A Deeper Look

The SGG leads off with an introduction, stating what the book, and the Slayers Guides in general, are all about. The book aptly describes gnolls as "vicious scavengers."

The next section discusses the physiology of gnolls. This includes the physique of gnolls, their senses, and how they use them. The section also the diet, life cycle, and mindset of gnolls. The author describes gnolls as having a very impulsive yet cunning nature, thoroughly selfish yet having some capability to enter into short-lived alliances.

A section is devoted to the habitat of gnolls, including details on regions that they common live in and regions they avoid. This section also discusses the preferred lair of gnolls: underground burrows or stolen accommodations.

The gnoll society section is possibly the most interesting part of the book. It convincingly and creatively describes how malicious chaotic creatures like gnolls relate to one another and to other creatures. Unfortunately, they have a tendency to enslave other intelligent creatures to get some work out of them before consuming them. Slavery is a major bartering chip in the economy of gnolls.

The religion of gnolls is discussed in this section as well. Some attention is paid to how gnoll clerics fit in with gnoll society and discusses the scourge of gnoll druids.

The section entitled methods of warfare is a little weaker than the society section. Though their tactics are covered well enough, the exposition seems a little less creative and more hollow.

The next section covers roleplaying gnolls. It provides tips for how the DM can make the most out of an encounter with a race that is normally reserved for sword fodder. It does fairly well. While it doesn't explain how players can come to effectively interact with these savages, it does give good advice on how to highlight their bestial nature and savage disposition during play. Unfortunately, I feel as if any attempt to truly create interesting gnoll NPCs will be hampered by the book's attitude on which races gnolls should be allowed to take.

The next section, scenario hooks and ideas, are much better than the dismal showing in the SGH. Unlike that book, which leads off with simple ideas like caravan raiders, the SGG leads off with adventures like one in which the players are expected to make a decision on how they should deal with a baby gnoll.

A section is devoted to playing gnolls as player characters. As with the SGH, the section assumes that a vast majority of gnoll PCs will be one of three classes. In the case of the SGG, the classes are fighter, ranger, or cleric. Also like SGH, SGG deviates from the descriptions and abilities of gnolls in the core rules, and seems sort of fuzzy on how monster characters with multiple HD are handled. It mentions "starting characters at second level," yet the description never mentions such things as treating the two levels as "monster levels" or which skills gnolls choose from for those levels.

A few pages are dedicated to Edendale, a sacked village that now houses a gnoll lair. There are decent perspective maps and descriptions, which should be of some value for DMs in need of a quick encounter area involving gnolls.

The last section is a "gnoll reference list" containing stat blocks for a variety of common gnoll characters. Unfortunately, both these stat blocks and the one for the leader in the Edendale section are botched. The section on gnoll PCs had me wondering if the author understood the "monsters as characters rules"; this section convinced me that he did not. At a glance you can tell that the HD are not done correctly.

For example, the "gnoll pack leader" is a 6th level gnoll ranger. However, the first thing you notice is that the gnoll has a hit dice rating of 7d8+14. I'm unsure how he came up with that, but by the MM and DMG, the gnoll with his class, levels, and constitution score should have hit dice of 2d8+4+6d10+12. Even if you read into the section on PC gnolls that they wanted to treat gnolls as 1 HD creatures, the gnoll should still have HD of 6d10+12. I see no reason whatsoever that the hit dice should be reduced to d8.

A glance shows that the challenge rating is wrong too. I haven't done the math, but I would wonder if the skills done by someone with a slippery grasp of the "monsters as characters" rules could be correct.

Conclusions

As a work of exposition on the culture of gnolls, I found that SGG does a much better than the SGH covers hobgoblins. Unfortunately, while the SGH takes some liberties and breaks with conventions (ultimately forgivable), the SGG simply botches the rules related material.

Another problem the SGG shares with the SGH is its reluctance to accept or examine the possibility of more than a few classes in the gnoll society. It does marginally better in that it takes a look at the gnoll druid, but never bothers to touch on those gnoll barbarians, fighters, sorcerers, or wizards that the DMG tells us are out there somewhere.

Fortunately, the book isn't all that expensive, and is rather well laid out and attractive save for some substandard art. It it probably a marginally better buy than the SGH. Its rules material is less functional, but the SGG's focus is the exposition about the race of concern, where it outshines the SGH.

 

[bramadan]

Slayer’s Guide series sets out to give the cultural and ecological details on frequently used but underdeveloped fantasy races from Monster Manual.
In the time when monster collections are probably the most prevalent sort of a d20 sourcebook I find this approach both innovative and useful. While I have nothing against a traditional monster encyclopedia their format, and the pressure to include as many monsters as possible on the least amount of pages, makes the very sparse on anything other then the physical description and combat abilities of the monsters. This approach diminishes from the quality of the campaigns as, in many cases, DM is judging appropriateness of a monster for a given adventure by his challenge rating rather then by the believability and internal logic of the adventure. The result is that the whole classes of monsters just blend into each other and that the great diversity that monster encyclopedias purport to create proves illusory.
Traditionally, one of the principal offenders in this regard have been Gnolls. Orc and Goblin appearances usually have, at least some, story justification, due to their development in fantasy literature. Practically only justification I have ever heard of for including Gnolls in an adventure is their status as 2HD large humanoid – perfect enemy for those parties that “graduated” from Orcs and their ilk. This attitude makes them irrelevant, even a bit comical in the eyes of players and DMs alike and the act of fighting them becomes the XP gathering chore or at best an intermediate step on some mission rather then the heroic adventure of its own.
This book changes all that – it casts Gnolls vividly as the brutal slavers that the players will love to hate. It gives them a distinctive culture and enables the DM to clearly understand in which situations will the Gnolls be a logical inclusion in the adventure. It also helps immensely in deciding on the most likely behaviour of the Gnolls in the non-combat situations.
Finally, one thing that definitely makes this book, and the whole Slayers Guide series truly exceptional in my eyes is the quality of prose and artwork. Each of the books reads largely as a novel and at worst as a good “National Geographic” article making them a very pleasant break from rather dry regular sourcebook text. Art is, to my taste, excellent, in particular the covers and the interior cover illustrations which are unusually informative.
All in all this books are an excellent campaign building supplements, their modularity makes them useful in practically every campaign (except ones that already has well-defined the races in question) and their price makes them some of the best value-for-money d20 products.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Good art, mostly flavor text rather than rules. good price.
Not for everyone, but for a DM looking to perk up an old familiar monster, it's OK.

 

[Simon Collins]

Beware! This review contains major spoilers.

The Slayers Guide To Gnolls is a sourcebook on gnolls. It costs $7.99.

Presentation: This sourcebook is softcover and the page-count is 32. The front cover is a decent picture of a gnoll attacking with a bloodied axe with a backdrop of a burning village. The blurring which occurred from the finish on the Hobgoblins sourcebook is no longer present. The back cover has some basic blurb about the book. The front inside cover is an anatomical drawing of a gnoll whilst the back inside cover shows a map and drawing of Edendale from the book. The first page contains credit and contents, the last two pages contain the OGL and D20 licence. Each page is bordered by a drawing of various weapons which takes up nearly 1 and 1/2 inches of an 8 inch wide page. There is still a fair amount of white space throughout the main text and between paragraphs, though not as bad as in 'Hobgoblins'. The black and white internal artwork is good on the whole, and more related directly to the text than 'Hobgoblins'.

Whats Inside: The book's one page introduction gives an overview of the purpose of the Slayer's Guides and of gnolls. There is also a piece of flavour text. Three pages on Gnoll physiology follow which include sections on sharpened senses, diet, lifecycle and mindset. A page on Habitat deals with gnoll lairs. Six pages on Gnoll Society deal with family and packs, gnoll's slave economy, attitude to other races, and religion (with a section on gnoll clerics and a sidebar on gnoll druids). Four or so pages on Methods of Warfare look at weapons and armour, ambush, open warfare, and the defence of the lair. There follows a page on Role-playing With Gnolls which deals with portraying gnolls as a DM (particularly in combat) and lair design tips. The next two pages give eight short gnoll-orientated adventure ideas. The next page covers Gnolls as PCs with racial traits and some basic advice on running all-gnoll adventures. Five further pages detail a gnoll lair, Edendale, and its ruling pack, led by a full-statted pack leader. The last two pages are a Gnoll Reference List, some basic stats for various Gnolls (pack leader, cleric, young, etc.) and some final flavour text.

The Good: A definite improvement over 'Hobgoblins' with some imaginative ideas (the slave economy section and the information on sharpened senses in particular) and again, the lair of Edendale was well developed and generic enough to drop into most campaign settings.

The Bad: As with 'Hobgoblins', still too lacking in meat for my tastes and again with too much white space and flavour text.

Conclusion: Too bland to get any more than an Average rating for me, but definitely shows improvement compared to 'Hobgoblins'. I would have liked the flavour text and white space devoted to expansion of the adventure ideas or Edendale, which both showed promise.

 

[Ron]

The Slayers Guide to Gnolls is the second Mongoose offering in the Slayers series. It shares with the previous release, focused in the Hobgoblins, the attractive cover and the well-written text. Sadly, it also shares its weakness; the text is short, as the layout is generous with margins and spacing, and contents are superficial. Unlike its predecessor, the interior art is only average. There is some improvement regarding the description of Gnoll's society, however, their description is still stereotyped. Also, there are not good insights in how creating Gnoll's PCs, how to interact Gnoll's NPCs with the PCs, or, despite the name of the book, special techniques to slay them.

I like the idea of race specific books, but Mongoose releases are still weak offerings. Although there is some clearing improvements in content in comparison to the Hobgoblin guide, the Slayers Guide to Gnolls is still too superficial to provide any worthy information to DMs.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Nominated for 3 ENnies!

The second supplement in the acclaimed series from Mongoose Publishing, the Slayer's Guide to Gnolls focuses on a bloodthirsty race, from their brutal and savage society to their lethal tactics of ambush. Ravenous packs of Gnolls are the bane of many adventurers. Inhuman to the extreme, this vicious race delights in acts of cruelty and brutality against the weak, the defenceless and the innocent. This contains everything you need to hunt down and annihilate these evil creatures.