Monster Deep Dive: Gnolls

0:19 Tell some podcast or role players and game masters have level up your game. We are your dungeon masters. Jason Ortiso, I'm Joe McCall and Jim Crocker. And today's episode, we're going to come back to our our deep dives, almost like our a little book reports. I feel like a little elementary school would be like I did my report on hags, I would do I would have done way more book reports school. It feels like something cool. It was something cool. So we might keep calling these deep dives because that's what everyone else calls them. We might change the name of the book reports. I would love your opinions. Hello Adventures Podcast at gmail dot com. Let me know what we should call these things. Do our jobs for us, please, we want to kill you. I wish some would do my job even I'll even I'll accept myself. Someone's got to do my job.

1:06 Y'all's lazy. So Today's that will not kill you, but Knowles will. Today's today's book report slash deep dive. Jim took his favorite monsters is the Knowle, and he's gonna tell us some cool stuff about Knowles. Oh yeah, the Ganol. If you are not familiar with the ganol gno lll with noles. They are hyena like humanoids with long arms, long legs, and they've got a really interesting backstory that makes them just implacable, creepy, scary foes. They're my favorite of the humanoids just because of the nature of how they're created and where they came from. And I'll get into that a little bit as well. But what I did was I took down the five coolest things about Knowles, or at least the thing that I think are the five coolest things about Noles. Then that that kind of boiled down why I think they're such a great creature to use. So, I mean, the first thing that we're going to talk about is the fact that they are. They're humanoids, a regular standard knoll as a challenge rating of one, half, a nol Packlord, which is like a null leader As challenge rating of two, and a null Fang of ye Nahu, who is the kind of like priest did the demon priest mystical character that is associated with noles. They've got a challenge rating of four. So these are good early monsters that you can face that are super scary at the beginning, even just because that they hit

2:39 pretty hard for those low challenge ratings, and they've got some tactics that we talk about that make them really compelling to use in combat and a lot of fun. But one of the other things that I love about them is they're really scary for a new party and they are a great monster to Then when the party has gotten a few levels to go back, you know whatever, like that Noll pack that they couldn't take on, then you can have them go back, and that, like nothing makes a party feel like like they've accomplished something, like they've leveled up. Then if they can go mop the floor with someone that was terrifying to them before. And I feel like noles are, you know, have that in spades. But let me just let me go down the list here of the five coolest things that I came up with for noles. And you know, curious what you guys, If there's any particular memories you have of cool encounters with nools or or things you're interested in, you guys should go ahead and chime in. The First thing I'm going to talk about is their ability called rampage. And the way rampage works is that when a nole reduces a creature to zero hit points with a melee attack. On its turn, the nole can take a bonus action to move up to half its speed and make a bite attack. Now that's pretty cool, but kind of on the face of it, you might think, well, how many times are they going to knock a party member down to zero head points? You know, it might actually happen if you're going up against a party of first or second level or something like that. But there's a

4:12 couple of things to keep in mind here. One is that that ability then strongly encourages you to create interesting encounters where there are civilians or non combatants, or it's happening at a farmhouse and you've got it like the noles are going after the farmer and you got to get between them, because you know that if some nole comes up on this hapless farmer and clamps his jaws around the guy's arm and rips it off, then it gets to move again and attack, and so you can create the situation where you know, civilians and people who might get attacked by the monsters really matter, because the monsters get a buff, they get to do something a little extra, and you're creating a much more interesting tactical situation than just you know, we've got to stand and fight and heal anybody that's close to zero hit points, so the noles don't get that extra buff you want to create that situation. But the other thing that's really cool about that is that the Nooles' basic attack, their bite and their claw both have reach on them. They both have five feet of reach, which is a thing that can be easy to forget sometimes if you are running noles and you're not looking at that closely, you can figure like they're just an orc or whatever, regular standard bite claw something like that. But what that means is they can rampage, run at somebody and not get into your melee range and take a swipe at you or try to take a chomp

5:43 out of you, or like swipe over your shoulder at the soft wizard behind you, right, something like that. And that's one of the things that makes them really scary, is that combination of rampage and those reach attacks that they have. And they all come armed with bows standard as well, so it's not like just staying away from them is going to make sure that you know guarantee that you're safe. But they're pretty versatile, and you can make really really interesting tactical situations with them because of that ability. Because of that that mobility, and the fact that they've got some reach on their basic tacks, their regular attacks that they can make. That's the first thing that I really love about them. There's just tactically very interesting creatures, far more so than just your regular orcs or goblins. Yeah, the ature reaches are actually really interesting. I didn't I never thought about reach as far as as that's a thing people forget, not even so much that forgetting about reach is a thing. I just think of it as a ten foot range. Being able to reach over the tank to be able to hit the DPS behind them.

6:45 That's huge at school. Okay, So yeah, so that's something I guess I didn't realize either. This should have been in our one of our just Fought knowls the other day. Yeah, one of our last episodes Forgotten Mechanics. Oh yeah, his reach. So if a creature has a five foot reach, that means that they can reach beyond somebody that's just in melee range. That's what you're that's what we're saying that it can I'm thinking in terms of the grid. It can reach across one grid to another, yes, somebody standing right right behind them then yeah, that that then means that you got to think a little more carefully about stacking up and how you're arranged and stuff like that. It's yeah, yeah, they're really interesting, Like it makes for very interesting battlefields that way, like I said, And then if you if you're like, well I don't, we don't want to all be packed up. We're going to back up, so then the noles and back.

7:33 We'll just take out our longbows and you know, then wink away or they come with a spear as well, right, I think, Yeah, the standard weapon is a spear and that's got reach. But the fact that if you disarm them, their bite and claw have reach as well, yeah, is really something. It also just means that they look creepy. There are these like gangling yeah exactly. You know, like maybe there's like an extra elbow in there, there's something like that. When their fingers are long and clawed and like, because they're these hyena people, right, and their depiction in the Monster Manual is terrified. It's like a cursed lap. That's what I think. It was scary, supposed to be gross, right, Yeah, they're terrified their hyaenas. The second thing to keep in mind about noles is that they are vicious, horrifying, cannibalistic creatures. The fifth edition Monster Manial version of this talks about how chaotic they are, but this is not a not necessarily a thing that it goes into. But fourth edition D and D made a big deal of the fact that noles are happily cannibalistic, and this is a thing that I like to carry over. So the thing to keep in mind about that rampage ability is if one of their buddies only has two hit points left and they need to get an extra ten feet to get to the wizard, they can take a couple of steps, take a big chop out of their buddy's shoulder. He'll go down. But that means

9:07 you can then get that bonus movement and get on top of one of the adventurers there, and that's so cool. Yeah, yes, that is another thing that I love to do. Fourth edition. I'll talk a little bit of the as a coda the fourth Some of the fourth edition D and D Knolls are are a great thing to look at for inspiration for ways to make you know if you want to kind of house rule your knoles a little bit. And I'm sure that probably some of the other like Toma foes and stuff like that, are the kind of things that are gonna they're gonna have a little more about this sort of thing. We're just kind of sticking mostly to the base minds. If there's a ton in Volo's guide where they get into the thing and like layers, yeah, yeah, sure sure, and that that will well, that only makes them more interesting as far as I'm concerned.

9:50 But that that, keeping in mind that they are cannibals, they will happily eat anything anywhere, including their buddies if it looks like their buddy is too weak to keep them from taking a bite out of them, and that will then also activate that rampage ability. The first time you lay that on some players, they will freak out as they realize that that's a thing that becomes Then it becomes real important to make sure you don't leave one standing around with just one or two hip points. Right, Really, sad I didn't get to use that When I use know exactly more important to make sure that they're going down. Hello, adventurers, just stepping in here to remind you guys that we're actively looking for submissions for our Hello DMS episode that gets reported every month. Send us your burning D and D questions to Helloadventurers podcast at gmail dot com, or send us a voicemail by visiting Helloadventurers podcast dot com slash voice. Don't forget to begin your message with Hello DMS. You can't wait to get your questions and talk about them on the show. Send us your questions today. That's Helloadventurers podcast at gmail dot com. Poorly the voicecoing at Hello Adventurers Podcast talk voice. Now, let's get back to the show.

11:07 Third thing, and this is what I love about this is kind of the most interesting story thing about Knowles is that they've got their own demon prints ye naho y e e n o g h u y naho. Who is this demonic nooll, who's you know whatever, fifteen feet tall and horrifying and like whatever, constantly dripping blood out of its bangs and whatever and stuff like this. You know, that's not something that demon lord is not something obviously that characters, you know, starting characters are going to see anytime soon. But it has been established it is canonical in D and d lore. If you're going to go by what the monster Maniel says, that every living knoll is a direct descendant of that demon Lord. That the way they reproduce is one of those fang of ye Naho Noll demon priests that I talked about.

12:03 If they kill someone, if they kill another humanoid, that humanoid will rise as a Knoll, and that is how they make more noles. And so it is this constant battle between the existing living noles that just want to rend stuff to pieces and eat and consume whatever is there and these priests who are these kind of direct descendants of that demon lord who want to make more Nooles and have to wade into battle themselves to make sure they get some kills in and that it's not just their ravenous flock destroying everything before they even get the chance to do that. But it's got this sort of zombie plague kind of thing where like if you hear there's like an infestation, like if the Nooles have come down out of the mountain and started attacking the villages, you know you have to stop them right away or they're just going to make more and the Horde is going to grow and stuff, and then you'll have a real problem on your hands. And so that kind of almost like infectious nature of that tint of that demon lord that kind of goes through all of them, and also just you know, means that they can be just bug nuts insane, all of them, you know, and not like you think he can't be reasoned with, Like it's not. Noles are not a culture the way that orcs or goblins or cobalts are or something like that. They are literally they're like a locust swarm or something because they're all just the spawns of this

13:35 one demon. And and that makes for a terrifying monsters because they really really, no kidding, cannot be reasonable. Just looked up you know Gou's you know who's stat block to twenty four challenge reading just bad ass from the one legendary act. It jumps up quite a bit, jump up quite a bit layer actions if you're in there is their layer, which I guess you'd have to be, because this is going to be in the layer. So yes, you could find it in Out of the Abyss where in Mordan Caten warning kind of presents monsters of the multiverse. That's where you're going to find you know who. Yeah, that's who himself. There's also the thang of you know who, which is just like that's in the Monster Man. Yeah.

14:26 Yeah, it's almost like a priest or exactly stuff. And I'm finding I'm finding knowles and including thang fang of on the Monsters No dot Com. This is is keith a Mon's stuff that we would champion on the show over and over again for d MS to find monster tactics. So absolutely read that where we'll showing to the show later. Yes, but the fang of you know so you mentioned that knowles are kind of like insane and unpredictable. The things are actually someone intelligent and we'll have a good idea. Good. Yeah, here's what's really interesting about that, which is that a Knowle and no Packlord are medium humanoid parentheses null a null fang of you Nahu is a medium fiend parentheses. Oh, it is literally a demon in the form of a knoll.

15:15 Wow, which is just so. I think that's so cool. I think that's another thing you can kind of blow player's minds with, is like making it clear that oh no, this is not just another knoll. This is actually essentially a low level demon that has taken on this kind of mortal ish form to try to impose its will on this ravenous force of nature so that it perpetuates Ynahu's will on earth. Just I love that about that. I love the chaotic nature of these things too. Of a regular noil. Yeah, yeah, well, I was saying with from keith am on the fangs in particular, do have some intelligence or where they can kind of suss out who is the weakest and will actually kind of like aim their rampage ability and and and use that tactfully. I never consider them using it against their own like Jim said, And that's actually one way that they would use it to able to bounce around from week weekly to weekling right and get like several kills on the turn. I need to go over there, because that ability stacks right. If that if the rampage attack kills something, they get the rampage again. It's a bonus action. It's a bonus action, okay, So the can take a bonus action. So so it would be whatever the normal rules that restrictions still bonus actions. You can take cover a good distance, like you know, you know who to get multiple kills in the turn whether or Okay, so it's not going to be a chained infinite, but still multiple kills on the turn. It's great especially on a low level party

16:45 right loads to mid level. Yes, you can put them in all different kinds of situations. So because these are still these are still frequently still have higher levels encounter these, and they then be a problem because they're impacts a pack. Like to what Jim's saying, it could be you know, maybe it got out of hand and that's when nobody paid any attention to it for months, and they've gone to these, you know, a couple of small villages in the north of whatever wherever you're playing your setting is, and they've a masked mining town or something. They've a mass now like hundreds of of of No, it could be like on the scale of Game of Thrones, right with all the zombies and the Wildling, the marching out of the north.

17:30 Yeah, I mean you really you have right there, right, you have enough to do like an epic epic campaign just even just a smaller pack being used as like almost like the fodder around larger enemy, just just a messive player's action economy. And I'm really upset. I didn't make my campaign more about knowles. You threw us a couple of goals the other day and we got more. We got to drop on them, so we encountered oles the other the other day. I was gonna say this for later, but we we did encounter like a pack of four and we kind of we super got the drop on them. We got a surprise round and we just went ham on them and somebody got a natural twenty stealth roll. I think did I create on them too? I say there was like three crits on a rolled. Somebody rolled to oh to Eldrich blast two net twenties. Yeah, both streams. Yeah, there was just like so to us staying in the scene that that's off. But what number was that, Jim? That was number three? That was number three. Definitely remembering as far as stealth and stuff like ou is that they do have sixty feet of dark vision, so they can just they can straight up see in the dark. So that's that's a thing to keep in mind. The fourth thing I have written down here is and this is a little bit this is something that you can get into in some of those more advanced books, is how cool you can make their layers because they're these hyena like creatures, and so the idea that it's not explicit about this in the Monster Manual, but this is the way I've always played them, which is they can just hunker right down onto all fours and

19:03 scamper around that way. So I kind of like the idea that that they're going to have layers that involve spaces you have to squeeze through and things like that, and they're just going to be very comfortable in places that might be too tight or too like like too difficult to move around in otherwise, and that with these layers and even just out in the open, they're going to move and hunt like hyenas. And it is entirely reasonable for an encounter with a for like an encounter with anole. I'm using air quotes here, which makes for great radio, but for an encounter with a knoll to be the knolls attack, they do a little bit of damage, and then they back off and you can hear them laughing in the forest around you or something like that. You know, you know, like like if they come at you and it's clear that you're going to route them, they'll back they'll back off.

19:56 These are creatures that very much, like you say, are smart enough to know when they can take something on and and when they can't. A regular standard NOL has eight intelligence, which means it's not a genius or anything. But that's regular walking around on the street human intelligence. That's not a feral intelligence. Yeah no, yeah, yeah, no, no no, no, that's that that that's not hyena level intelligence. Right. But you know, if you want to have them have a bunch of packs of hyenas along with them, you can certainly do that too. That's another thing that you can add in that might be interesting. But they can have really cool layers. And I don't want to spend a whole lot of time getting into what some of those options that they have available in more than Kanan's Ultiverse Guide, are you know what I should because like I think of them that as being in Volos, But Volos is the old book. They don't do anymore, right, Volos folded into the other one. Volos basically turned into Monster the Multiverse yet, got it? Okay, So there's a lot of cool stuff in that Monsters of the Multiverse that you can do with Noles and their layers, And you definitely want to take a look at that. That's one of the things I can make very very interesting places that you have to go into. And that kind of goes into number five, which sort of spins off from that idea that in order to create more noles, the fang of y Nahu has to kill them, which is these are an ideal creature to have to set up a time sensitive rescue mission for right you know, the Fang of y Naho says, go out there, rampage through that village,

21:30 eat anyone you want, but bring me back one in ten of the healthy young people or something like that. And so you show up on the scene. The village has been raised. It's carnage everywhere. You know, it's a slaughterhouse. And you don't need a ranger to see. Oh my god, they dragged a dozen people away to the Fang of y Nahoo, who is eventually going to sacrifice them and like chomp their throats out, you know, for the glory of Nahu to turn them into noles themselves. And that lights a fire under the pecs. That is a timed mission. But well you've got to get in there. Well we're a twelve innocentstead but now we've got a nole problem exactly. Yes, do you want knowles, because this is how you get in It's two bad things today. It's funny. I almost as you were describing that. I like envision that if you're familiar with the Stephen King's The Dark Tower series, but in one of the books, there's the whole Wolves of the Cala and like the wolves come and they take like a bunch of kids basically, and then they send them back years later on a train and they're rooted, is what they say. But they're you know, their brains aren't working well anymore. And I almost like, oh, man, that would kind of be cool like in that, like they're smart enough. Maybe the fang of you know who is smart enough to like kind of call this town and like, Okay, we're gonna come. We're gonna take our offering once every year, once every couple of years, and like maybe that's how they send the sends an envoy out and they're like,

23:00 go find somebody that can help us with us, but we have to do it secretively because they're watching it. And you can even do something even creepy. Yeah, And this is something where you can even do something even creepier where like there's one town that knows that the Noles are there and they hole up in the fort, you know, but they draw straws to see who goes out to you know, as a sacrifice to the Nole. You know, they do the lottery or something like that. Yeah, there's all kinds of but because you know that they won't relent until they get there, you know whatever, they're their two score, you know, sacrifices to Naho that the Fang has demanded or something like that. Finding reasons to do a campaign all about noles. Dang it all, guys, new plan. Yeah, and if you have access to it. The final thing I'm going to say is I recommend take a look at the D and D fourth Edition Monster Manual two listing on noles because they just had some cool, cool options for knowles.

24:02 I think I might have that book. Yeah, they have some cool options for the kind of thing that you might you know, see available in some of those expanded Monster books something like you know, like I said, Tomophos or something like that. But like they had the Fang of Ynahu using a weapon that was a club that was just embedded with all the teeth of its victims, like that it had pulled out of the jaws of people that it had killed and turned into nooles, and every time it did, it extracted a tooth and pushed it into this club. And so when it attacks, it's swinging a club impregnated with like bloody cudgel cudgel of bloody teeth exactly a sentence. Yeah, they're from Knowles who died fighting for enough. Yeah.

24:52 And they also had a kind of a sort of a a variant on that rampage ability where they were like noles that were like literally cannibal warriors that would like take bites out of each other and that would like regenerate more hit points than the damage that they did to their buddy, the noll Gorgeer exactly. Yeah. And then the other one was a death pledged knoll that they can fight for another round because they fought with bone devils. I'm sorry, they fight bone claws, and when they dropped to zero hit points, they can keep fighting for another round. Exactly. Yes, Yes, there's just lots of cool stuff. They're they're super scary monsters and and I love that idea. You know, we're and we're talking about nahu As, that demon prints right. That's if you have a long running campaign and you want to just have like just blow the player's minds with having like the shoe drop in no uncertain terms, you know, throw noles at them throughout the kind of low to mid levels and then have them go in half a dozen eight ten levels. But then when they're when they're level up to where they're fighting demon princes and those kind of big critters, you know, who can show up and go, Okay, now you're going to pay for all of my children that you killed back then, because I don't forget that. And that's the kind of thing that you can really blow people's minds with. The you know, because because they're all his descendants, and I like to think that he

26:22 feels it every time, you know, you stick a sword through one of them, he knows that it was you that did it. So but just no super cool, like my favorite humanoid monsters. I like, no matter what campaign I'm running, whatever the situation is. If it's an urban campaign, you know, they live down in the sewers, and you know a big part of past control of the city is identifying where they are and trying to root them out. You know, smoke them out and kill them, you know, and certainly if you're in the wilderness, they're just running around and packs out there and stuff like that. So but but yeah, love them, use them, and then tell us about the creepy ideas that you came up with that that we hadn't even thought of yet. And I actually I found a blog called power score RPG, so I'll include that in the show notes. I'll send us to you. Jay. It's got the whole history of Knowles from first edition Monster Manual through Keep on the border Lands all the way up to our five A. Yeah, it's really neat. So more wise, I find them pretty This is really cool. You'll like we're doing that. We're doing that deep dive as far as I'm concerry. So when when Joe brought us to the Hags episode last month, Jim's eyes lit up. He's like, can I do Knowles, and and j I just I just kind of sat back and let you take the reins. Today.

27:30 This was this was great. I learned a ton. I can't wait to run a noles a Knowles game now. So these these make for fantastic Monster of the Week type of stuff. And my favorite Monster of the Week campaign creator is d M. Dave. I do some word him on Patreon, but he does do free versions of most, if not all, of his Monster of the Week with what he calls Dungeons and Layers of his little mini campaigns. He's rolled me to be one shots, and the Dungeons and Layer series do focus on Monster every time, which is kind of definition of Monster of the Week. He has one called Noel Burrows which can we run at levels? Which can we run at levels three, five, eight, or eleven. There is a free version and I will leave the link to that in the show notes. If you want to go support on Patreon, you can go unlock the rest of the levels. I believe the free version is probably just going to be one of those levels, but the Patreon version does give you all the rest, and different tiers will also give you access to the maps and things like that too. So not only will I leave that in the show notes, but if you are a player of one of my games that was listening to this, don't read it because we're going to run it soon. I might prep that for for next month's the games. I got prepp a new one shot every month now, so that's gonna be that's gonna be very cool. Also, I'm gonna leave notes links to Keith A Man's blog and the monsters know what they're doing, which will include Noel tactics, which I'm also going to have to read if I'm going to do that.

28:48 And we'll leave one of the Joe just mentioned as well, Empower score our pgslots. So yeah, this is this is awesome. Jim, thanks so much for bringing us to the table. Yeah, you're very well, and it is you know, it is, thank you. Laughter. Circling around your campfire and you look out between the trees and there are like some you know, glowing yellow eyes snickering back at you, you'll know what's coming. So if you if you're if you grew up in the Lion King like I did, I'm absolutely gonna play every single one of these as ed Yeah. I was gonna say, can we all do our best nol hyena laugh right now? If you go first joke, I'll either goof of your EDG styles. Oh yeah, you know, like like whenever I when I see hyenas and think of hyenas, I think of Harley Quinn and her couple of pet hyenas you know that hang around with her and the Joker, and that's that's the direction that I go with. So guys, go forth and go bring some nose to your table and it's gonna be awesome. That's gonna wrap it up for Propagate. Propagate propagate for you Nahue children and call us with your best hyena laugh. Sure, God, go ahead, give us your best hia lab Well, we'll play the best wars of the show. That's a Hello Adventures Podcast dot com slash voice. Go ahead and ruin my day and Jill say about Oh God, I'm gonna regret allowing that gets a point of inspiration. Yes, that tell us your favorite Noel encounter Hello Adventures Podcast at gmail dot com or tell us yourself with the along with your best hyena

30:21 laugh at Hello Adventures podcast dot com slash voice. That's gonna wrap it up for today. Thank you so much for listening to you, Hello Adventurers. We are your host Jason Portiso, Jim Crocker and Joe McCall producer, editor, Engineer Jason Portiso. Music by Nick Spurrior, artwork by Kristin Roderick. You can be chat to us with any feedback or suggestions by emailing Hello Adventures podcast at gmail dot com. Allow Adventures is a j PP audio production. Goodbye Adventures