2d4chan - User contributions [en]

D20 Modern

2022-08-15T22:25:39Z

2601:249:8200:5A40:EDD0:94F4:370F:F6AE: /* Spinoffs/Subgames/Settings */

{{Awesome}}
{{DISPLAYTITLE:d20 Modern}}
[[Image:d20Modern.jpg|thumb|200px|Cover art.]]

What do you get when you take [[Dungeons & Dragons]] and put it in the 21st century? d20 Modern.

Back in the good old days of [[3e]] (not 3.5), some brilliant bastard at [[Wizards of the Coast|Wizards]] decided that there was no point in having only one game using the [[d20 System]]. So, they took the D&D rules, replaced the classes, and added guns. The result was '''d20 Modern''', an easy-(enough)-to-play modern RPG (if you don't mind rules skewed toward magic and monsters, as opposed to, you know, REALITY).

Like D&D, Wizards also belched forward a number of accessory books for d20 Modern, which, unlike the D&D supplements, were few in number and many actually worth buying. They still handled guns with shitty attempts at realism, but then every RPG does.

If you look carefully, you'll see some of the ideas from d20 Modern survived into [[D&D 4e]], which some would say is a brief glimpse of win midst the fail, or just more failfuel for the failtrain.

Another nice thing that kept the guns SOMEWHAT realistic, was massive damage threshold. Instead of 50 like in D&D, it was equal to your Con score. This meant a critical hit or good roll from a long gun (usually 2d6 to 2d10 damage) could force you to make a save or instantly go to -1 hit points. If gun damage had been buffed a bit, it could have been a nice alternative to the "Vitality and Wound points" used by [[Star Wars D20]]. This was addressed in Saga Edition with a damage threshold system where damage in excess of the threshold's value caused a penalizing wound, which was relevant with higher damage, more starting HP, lower threshold and easier to increase gun damage.

[[Star Wars d20]] was based on this system. While it solved a few of d20 Modern's issues, it unfortunately compounded many of its problems with problems of its own. Saga Edition adopted more ideas from d20 Modern and actually fixed everything.

== Differences from D&D ==
* [[Action Points]], like 'karma' or 'luck' points in other games. You can use them to either boost the number you rolled on d20, or to use a feat that requires an action point (usually to do something totally awesome). Action points spent do not return until you level up.
* You didn't keep track of how much gold/dollars/nuyen you had; instead, Wealth was a skill check, and getting big wads of cash was a bonus to your Wealth rolls. Purchases had a DC for Wealth checks, and buying something with a higher DC than your Wealth score (which was virtually anything not one use) meant you lost some bonus (because you spent beyond your means). It was horrifically, horrendously, broken. Not in the "overpowered" sense but "they didn't playtest this once".
** Having '''anything''' with a non-trivial cost reduced your wealth bonus by at least 1. A starting character's wealth bonus is (2d4+1 to 4 from starting occupation+1 from having ranks in profession. Typically 7). A Computer (-2d6 because computers cost an absurd amount in this system), a printer/scanner (-2 because these are completely different items), filling out a 4473 form (-1), a shotgun (-1), a decent backpack (-1), and a single set of clothing (-1) will take a character from "middle-class" to impoverished.
** It also has some really fucking bizarre ideas on how restricted everything is legally. Suppressors ($200 tax and a bunch of waiting) are, under the game's rules, harder to get than full auto (The same, but banned since 1986 so all grandfathered examples cost tens of thousands) while sawed off shotguns (Same as suppressors) are flat out impossible to get legally in the game's rules (and black market sawed off shotguns are several times more expensive than normal black market shotguns).
** You couldn't take 10 or take 20 for wealth checks or take average wealth decreases during character creation, meaning you had to make your character with the GM present wasting everyone's time and rendering the OGL nature of the system moot. This was thankfully axed in errata.
** [[Urban Arcana]] offered the option to play a reverse [[Isekai]] character. This gave you extra wealth (2d6+occupation+profession skill bonus) at character generation in exchange for having your bonus go to +0 afterwards ([[What|apparently the several pounds of gold a fantasy character carries is worthless in the modern era]]). This was hilariously easy to cheese since you could bypass the "magic items are rare" thing and buy expensive magic items (indeed, you sorta had too since there's little other fantasy appropriate gear at high enough price you don't get it for free) like a magic jacket that gave you DR10 against non-magic attacks, enough to pretty much nullify all damage for several levels (an attack would need to kill a 1st level character outright to even scratch you). Since wealth increased quickly at level up if it was low, this isn't much of a disadvantage in the long run.
* No alignment system; instead you had an "allegiance." You could have an allegiance to a religion, a nation (patriotism), an organization, a philosophy... and you'd get a +2 circumstance bonus when dealing with people that have the same allegiance.
** In fact, you could have multiple allegiances, although most people were too dumb to take advantage of that fact.
* You had an Occupation, which was like your level 0 class that gave you some class-skills and maybe a bonus feat.
* There were three noticeable tiers for characters: levels 1-7, levels 8-15, and levels 16-20.
* Every class only has 10 levels; you had to take an "advanced" (read: prestige) class or multiclass if you wanted to go higher.
* There are six basic hero classes, one for each of the six base attributes: Strong, Fast and Tough heroes (Str,Dex,Con), and Smart, Dedicated and Charismatic heroes (Int, Wis, Cha). There's no penalty for multiclassing (indeed, it is required by level 11, see above). There were 12 advanced classes, designed as 2 for each basic class, but which could be taken by any character provided appropriate requirements were met by said character. Some splats added additional advanced classes, as well as some 5-level true "prestige" classes.
* Basic classes had no class features but got talents from a class specific list every odd level. Most were just plain old shit and the worst class features ever (You get +1-3 to a couple skills! If you take longer you can lift/bend harder!) but the system would eventually be fixed and made awesome in [[Star Wars D20|Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game Saga Edition]] before being made useful but video game like in [[4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons]].
* No spells/miracles/psi (called "FX abilities") for base classes. Only prestige classes can have them, and refreshingly little of the rulebook is dedicated to listing and describing spells.
** Spellcasting classes are all advanced classes, so you can't enter till level 4, and like all classes only go up to level 10 limiting you to 5th level spells. Theoretically this makes them less powerful, but practically it just means any mage is a [[Gish]] or [[Arcane Trickster]] (especially so on the second since Mage gets loads of skill points even before intelligence bonus) to some degree and they're still the best classes in the game.
* Had several supplements, including d20 Future and d20 Past. d20 Future had rules for playing (you guessed it) in the future and also had several supplements (d20 Apocalypse, d20 Cyberscape and Future Tech). d20 Past, meanwhile, had rules for playing the past. Obviously. The supplements allowed players to engage in updated-for-a-new-generation games that [[Gary Gygax]] had put out, including [[Gamma World]], [[Boot Hill]], [[Star Frontiers]], [[Age of Exploration]], a Zombie-Apocalypse variant, and many, ''many'' others. Suffice to say, these supplements, unlike their counterparts in [[Dungeons and Dragons]], were actually worth buying and checking out.
** d20 Past is a fantastic reference for when things first existed and first became common and even had a bibliography of citations available as a download.
** d20 Future however was utter shit, with horrific balancing both in "useless" (You can play as an android! But your ability scores suck and you lose '''three''' feats for a handful of immunities) and "horrifically overpowered" (There are feats to get ''two'' extra talents, which are better than a feat if you pick halfway intelligently, and you don't even need to have been in the base class.), has horrifically bad ship combat rules, most of the sci-fi gear is just magic gear but not magic, and hilariously includes the (already out of date and poor preforming at time of publishing) OICW as a high-end future weapon.
* Child character are explicitly playable, but it's impossible to complete character creation with one unless their dexterity was high or their strength '''really''' high. Fixed in splat.
* While magic items aren't excepted, ''mastercraft'' ones are trivial to get for someone who can craft, but GM's whims for one who can't, and give the same bonuses. This reinforces the only crafting skill worth a damn being mechanical, as that covers weapons, armors and vehicles.
* Oddly not changed is that you can't coup de grace with a ranged weapon. Reasonable with slings and bows, but the inability to shoot a tied up or unconscious man in the head at point blank is bizzare.

== Spycraft 2.0 ==
Crafty Games made a heavily modified variant of d20 Modern which was based off their previous system. Spycraft 2.0 improves many of d20 Modern's faults (including replacing the clusterfuck wealth system with issued gear as standard). It also assumes the genre is ''not'' Urban Fantasy, which was largely the default in d20 Modern, and focuses on (as you'd guess) James Bond esqe antics. Unfortunately Spycraft 2.0 had two big, crippling faults of its own.

Firstly nobody writing it understood how pointless a +1 or +2 bonus was (it increases the total chance of success by 5% and 10% respectively) and they're ''everywhere'' and treated like they're important. Coming from a system where a feat that gave +2 to two skills was well known to be one of the worst possible options in any moderately normal build, throwing out a bunch of options with +1 and +2 bonuses to skills attached was pretty lame and hard to keep track of.

Secondly all guns have a recoil value that's effectively a minimum strength value. This is quite a reasonable ''idea'' but the values make absolutely no sense and these values seem to be purely based on the weight of the firearm with little understanding of the characteristics of even common cartridges. This means 7.62x39 firearms (which has quite harsh recoil for an intermediate cartridge) tend to have ''less'' recoil than 5.56 (considered the mildest recoiling centerfire rifle cartridge in common use) firearms since their all steel construction weighs more. This is absolutely '''not''' the case in reality. Other crazy standouts being Glocks have insanely high recoil values due to their light weight while most versions of the Desert Eagle have values approaching ''half'' the Glock's. [[Fail|A Glock 22 in .40 S&W has more recoil than a Glock 20 in 10mm]], which is retarded because having less recoil than the Glock 20 is '''literally the entire reason it exists''' ([[-4 Strength|Female FBI agents couldn't handle 10mm]] and .40 S&W was developed purely to have less recoil). Even within the nonsensical system of recoil being primarily determined by weight (rather than cartridge), the scaling isn't consistent across firearms in the slightest.

==Spinoffs/Subgames/Settings==
* [[Urban Arcana]]
* [[d20 Past]]
* [[d20 Future]]
* [[d20 Apocalypse]]
* [[d20 Cyberscape]]
* [[Dark_Matter|Dark*Matter]] was remade for d20 Modern
* [[The Modern Path]] a fan's attempt to update the rules to match [[Pathfinder Roleplaying Game|Pathfinder]]

== See Also ==
* [http://www.12tomidnight.com/d20modernsrd/Home.php d20 Modern System Ref Document] hypertext open-gaming license book of the whole enchilada.

[[Category:Roleplaying]]
[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]]
[[Category:d20 Modern|*]]

The Modern Path

2022-08-15T22:20:26Z

2601:249:8200:5A40:EDD0:94F4:370F:F6AE: Created page with "The Modern Path is an attempt at meshing the D20 Modern rules with the Pathfinder rules. The rules can be found [https://sites.google.com/s..."

The Modern Path is an attempt at meshing the [[D20 Modern]] rules with the [[Pathfinder Roleplaying Game|Pathfinder]] rules. The rules can be found [https://sites.google.com/site/modernherorpg/ here].

Gnoll

2022-06-13T22:30:51Z

2601:249:8200:5A40:EDD0:94F4:370F:F6AE: /* See Also */

[[File:4e Gnoll Warriors.jpg|400px|thumb|right|Something you really don't want to see when adventuring.]]
In order to sate the eternal hunger of [[Adventurer|murderhobos]] for fresh faces to kill and loot from, [[Dungeons & Dragons]] has created many, many different races. The humble Monstrous Humanoids have long made up the bulk of these doomed souls; sapient enough to have plans beyond simply skulking in a hole in the ground and waiting to pounce, yet inhuman enough to be butchered without guilt, they are truly the backbone of the classic hack-and-slash game. Some of these have even surpassed their humble origins, achieving a level of player interest that has sown demands for portrayals beyond sword-fodder roles. [[Kobolds]], [[Goblins]], [[Orcs]], even [[Ogre]]s have all managed to attain a notoriety and a connection with D&Ders that has seen attempts to raise them up from the mud.

And then there are races who haven't been so fortunate. The gnoll is one of them.

Born way back in [[Dungeons_%26_Dragons#Basic_Dungeons_.26_Dragons|Basic Dungeons & Dragons]] - they were actually in the White Box, released back in 1974, gnolls were originally a jokey monster, said to be the result of crossbreeding a [[gnome]] with a [[troll]]. But, come [[Advanced Dungeons & Dragons]], people realized that this was really too stupid for words, so they were instead changed into a hyena-based beast-man race. They were given a rather slap-dash generic evil humanoid lore, with about the most notably things being a profound laziness that leads to a reliance on slavery, and a particular fondness for cannibalism. Because nothing makes your adventurers feel more heroic than kicking the shit out of people who brutally force others to work for them until they drop and then eat them alive.

And we're not joking about the slap-dash efforts. Seriously, look at the difference in the AD&D MM manuals for the [http://www.lomion.de/cmm/gnoll.php Gnoll], [http://www.lomion.de/cmm/orc.php Orc] and [http://www.lomion.de/cmm/sahuagin.php Sahuagin]; the [[Orc]] and [[Sahuagin]] entries are at least twice as long.

Despite all this, gnolls have managed to claw out a niche for themselves in D&D; having been there in every edition, and even in its [[Pathfinder]] spin-off, gnolls don't look to be going anywhere anytime soon. And a few settings, most-notably [[Eberron]] and [[Wicked Fantasy]], have at least ''attempted'' to round them off a little. In particular, Pathfinder has made some attempts to make Gnolls into an Egyptian themed monster, presumably due to the dog head (even though Anubis's head is actually a jackal, not a hyena) and native area of Hyenas while their slaver status allows using the iconic (but now considered historically inaccurate as historians now think the big monuments were built by farmers in the off season) image of a whip cracking Egyptian ordering slaves to build stuff.

Unfortunately, they don't look to getting more mainstream any time soon. The 5e Monster Manual outright says gnolls, unlike other monster races, ''are'' just born bad, due to the demonic influence of their creator Yeenoghu. And authors for 5th edition's "Volo's Guide to Monsters", the 5e analogue to a Monster Manual 2/Complete Book of Humanoids hybrid, felt it necessary to explicitly call out that gnolls will not be a PC race option, due to being "too demonic"... despite the fact that they had a PC writeup in the previous edition, which is where they stole the "Gnolls are direct creations of Yeenoghu" lore from. What makes this quite curious is that Gnolls are the only canine-folk race to go anywhere, despite dog men being [[Wikipedia:Cynocephaly|quite common in real world myth]]. ''Exploring Eberron'' is the only major exception here; Keith Baker flat-out gave them PC stats and an interesting niche.

[[Pathfinder Second Edition]] has challenged this decision by WotC, introducing the "Kholo", an array of non-evil gnollish subraces native to their not-Africa region, the Mwangi Expanse, as playable characters

=Physiology=
As mentioned above, gnolls, pronounced 'Noll' as the G is silent, are hyena-based beast-men, so they resemble humanoid creatures with clawed fingers and the tails, pelts and heads of hyenas. Exactly which aspect of their physiology dominates, the man or the beast, depends on edition and to an extent on setting; their original AD&D art makes them very humanoid, but later editions have made them more feral, with typically hunched back, longer arms, and shorter legs, leading to a more primal, ape-like body-stance. They also have gone from human-like legs to more digitigrade legs, complete with paws in lieu of feet.

In some settings, such as the [[Wicked Fantasy]] setting, it's stated that gnolls can actually move around more quickly and easily on all fours, furthering their "primalness".

Gnolls typically are portrayed with features akin to the spotted hyena, the largest, most aggressive and sociable of hyena species, most notably the pelt coloration. In 3.5's Monster Manual IV, 4e's Playing Gnolls, and Pathfinder's Monster Codex, it's stated that female gnolls are actually larger and more aggressive than males, which is another trait iconic of the spotted hyena.

The Kholo are actually divided into four subraces that visually resemble the four species of hyenas, resulting in Ant Gnolls (Small-sized, based on the Aardwolf), Great Gnolls (obligatory Spotted Hyenas), stripy-colored Sweetbreath Gnolls (based on Striped Hyenas), and brown, shaggy Witch Gnolls (based on the Brown Hyena).

=Gallery=
<center>
<gallery>
Gnoll ODnD.png|The very first depiction of the gnoll, as a rather [[hobgoblin]]-like creature.
Gnoll 1e.jpg|The first depiction of gnolls as the now-standard hyena [[beastfolk]].
Gnoll DM adventures log.png
Gnoll Monster card.jpg|AD&D Monster Card
Gnoll MCV1.jpg
1993 gnoll.jpg|A gnoll done by [[Tony DiTerlizzi]].
Gnoll 3e.jpg|3e
PF Gnoll Pack.jpg
Gnoll Family Photo.jpg
4e Gnoll Raid.png|4e
4e Gnoll Savages.jpg
4e Gnoll Warriors.jpg
Gnoll 5e.png|5e
gnoll B1.png|Pathfinder
Gnoll ARG.png
Gnoll, Ant.png|Ant Gnolls from Pathfinder 2e are Small sized.
Gnoll, Sweetbreath.png|Sweetbreath Gnolls from Pathfinder 2e have mystically aided charisma.
</gallery>
</center>

=Culture=
[[File:4e Gnoll Raid.png|400px|thumb|right|Gnolls doing what gnolls do best.]]
In a word, savage. Gnolls tend to be described as lazy and feral creatures, relying mostly on slavery, banditry and bloody raids to fashion themselves with labor, food and weapons. They're more likely to be described as nocturnal, in recent days, and often their barbarity is tied into their worship of malevolent deities - see Religion below. Cannibalism and scavenging are also huge in their culture, if only because they're both obligate carnivores and shamelessly lazy.

In general, though, they're fairly one-dimensional bad guys, with little characterization beyond basically being bigger, tougher, fuzzier humanoids. About the only exception to their general cookie-cutter evil humanoid fluff is this: despite their propensity towards evil, gnolls are strongly pack-oriented. Whilst they may struggle for position in the pack, to an extent depending on the sourcebook, they always unite together to defend themselves against anyone not in the pack. This doesn't mean all other gnolls are treated as allies however; if you're not directly part of the pack, you're meat, and race has nothing to do with it. Packs sometimes unite to form larger tribes, or rampaging hordes.

In general, character development has tended to pass gnolls by... but not always. Gnolls have actually been playable for a long time, and eventually somebody was bright enough to realize that if this is the case, then a more nuanced depiction is probably in order. This was done in [[Mystara]] first, in the ''Orcs of Thar'' gazetteer. Then came ''[[Champions of Mystara]]'', retconning a whole elf / gnoll mixed society under the Desert of Sind - on par with its other hamfisted retcons.

In 3.5 we got sourcebook "Races of the Wild", which explains that some of the nomadic tribes have turned their backs on their evil nature; these gnolls are described as being akin to the barbaric human tribes of the same regions, with "harsh but fair" moral codes, an extremely strong sense of loyalty ("to name someone your pack-brother is to give them your trust for life"), a love of hunting, a strong sense of curiosity, and a powerful driving wanderlust.

Not a lot of fluff, true, but leaps and bounds better than what they had before. Of course, even before this, the [[Forgotten Realms]] had semi-civilized gnolls who had been integrated into the lands of [[Thay]], where they were basically ''the'' go-to race for personal guards and even the city watch! And this was all the way back in the [[Advanced Dungeons & Dragons]] 1st edition splatbook "Dreams of the Red Wizards".

[[Eberron]], of course, shook things up a lot further. Eberronian gnolls proliferate in the monster kingdom of [[Droaam]], which is dedicated to giving "standard monsters" their own civilization. These gnolls follow the Pact of Znir; a young code of civilization that they collectively agreed to. Casting off their former worship of the [[Lords of Dust]], and cementing their dedication to change by shattering their former clan-totems in a holy gathering spot, the Znir Pact Gnolls make a living for themselves as a culture dedicated to mercenary work; staunchly neutral to the political machinations plaguing the fledgeling nation, and strictly refusing to ever fight each other, the Gnoll Brotherhood essentially forms the primary stabilizing influence of Droaam. In many ways, they're the closest thing that the warlords, clans and tribes of this anarchic domain have to a peacekeeping force, making the gnoll tribes roughly analogous to the Sentinel Marshals maintained by House Deneith. Thanks to their alliances with House Tharashk, Znir gnolls have become increasingly common outside of Droaam as mercenaries, rangers, bounty hunters, wilderness guides and even manual laborers, all of which means that whilst they still make most "humanoids" uneasy, they are accepted in "polite" civilization and becoming increasingly welcome.

But the king of transformations was found, ironically, in 4th edition. Issue #367 of [[Dragon Magazine]] featured the article "Playing Gnolls", which gave them the most nuanced depiction they've ever had. This article is based in [[Nentir Vale]] lore, but the article's author Keith Baker has confirmed it's valid for [[Eberron]] as well outside of the religion section. Describing them as descended from hyenas who had been force-fed fiends by [[Yeenoghu]] to create his own race of worshippers, this article portrays gnolls as a race torn between their demonic and their primal aspects; inclined towards savagery, but capable of choosing good. These non-evil gnolls are still inclined towards a tribalistic and often nomadic existence; their strong hyena instincts give them both powerful pack mentality and a natural love of hunting, and as such they're not exactly drawn to the agrarian lifestyle. These strong bestial aspects heavily color most aspects of gnoll society.

For example, whilst intensely loyal to their kith and kin, and hating to be alone, gnolls are also a hierarchy-driven race who feel driven to assert themselves in order to establish just where they fit into the pecking order. This makes gnolls seems rather aggressive to more "civilized" races, as they consider intimidation to be less an inherently hostile act and more part of the natural flow of social interaction. For example, a gnoll would never make a request when instead a demand or a firm statement is reasonable - "What do you want?" instead of "Can I help you?" This doesn't make them any less strong team players, and they will always set aside thoughts of personal glory in favor of helping their comrades, it just means that they also find it important to establish a clear line of dominance.

Another example of their bestial impulses is that their scavenger's instincts manifest particularly as a love of taking trophies to remember great achievements or worthy foes by. This can be everything from taking direct pieces of a fallen foe (horns, teeth, claws, weapons) to more abstract; a gnoll may carry small strips of cloth used to dab up the blood of worthy kills, so she can sniff the blood and let it remind her of how she won them, or she may take pieces of their armor and attach it to her own.

In the [[Nentir Vale]], gnolls who choose not to run with "the Butcher's Brood" (Yeenoghu's loyalists) usually turn to worshipping the [[Primal Spirits]], but may also chose deities that they find particularly appropriate, such as [[Melora]], [[Kord]], and the [[Raven Queen]]. They're also matrilinear and egalitarian, following the leadership of the strongest gnoll in the clan regardless of their sex - and in many clans, it's the women who grow bigger and stronger than the men. It's implied these aspects even hold true for the demon-worshipping gnolls.

All in all, this 4e article really provided a deep and invested look at gnollish culture, really making them stand out as a race that can be used for PCs, allies and enemies alike.

Like almost all good things in 4e, 5e reset the status quo and returned the Gnolls to their AD&D roots as a "monster race", trying to make them stand out from the other evil humanoids by focusing intensely on their demonic taint. Gnolls are freakish abominations in 5e, originally born from hyenas that mutated by scavenging from the kills of Yeenoghu, they don't even breed on their own in this edition, instead spawning from within flesh-gorged hyenas that accompany their packs. They're so tainted by their demonic lineage that not only are they prone to grotesque mutations, such as sprouting vestigial twins or mushrooms or maggots from their flesh, drooling caustic slime, or possessing black fangs or glowing eyes, but their fiendish presence actually causes supernatural evils to manifest in communities ahead of them. In fact, according to ''Volo's Guide to Monsters'', each and every gnoll has a direct mental link to Yeenoghu's endless hunger, and what little sapience it has revolves entirely around the desperate mad need to feed its progenitor through carnage and consumption. However, in the ''Out of the Abyss'' adventure, there are a few helpful gnoll characters that the player can run into, though for one of them the explanation for why he isn't evil is because he is has a form of madness and will immediately turn evil again if the players cure him.

One of the oddest interpretations of gnoll culture can probably be found in the Dach'youn of [[Wicked Fantasy]], which runs off of Pathfinder rules. These gnolls are a relatively peaceful Stone Age tribal culture with a heavy focus on the collective good. Rarely gathering in groups bigger than a dozen, the dach'youn are led by a pack alpha and beta (usually male and female, respectively, although skill matters more to them than gender). That said, they are matrilinear, tracing descent through the mother - this is because they don't practice monogamy, so a new mother has no way of knowing which of the many males she banged at the last ou'chala (a celebration-based meeting of packs that occurs every 90 days, which is when dach'youn seek sexual partners) actually knocked her up. They are nocturnal, shunning the sun as a cruel and evil god who wants to wipe out all life, and worshipping the six moons of their world as benevolent and caring protective goddesses. Also, they really, really love mud baths, as much for the sheer fun of slopping around in the mud as for the practicality that it keeps them cool and kills parasites that might be infesting their fur.

In Pathfinder 2e, the Kholo of the Mwangi Expanse are an array of non-evil gnollish tribes and clans who are as civilized as anyone else around them. However, their cultural values of pragmatism over honor (so they favor ambushes, tactical feints, and psychological warfare) and ancestor worship through endocannibalism (that is, they eat the dead as a sign of resepct) alienate even their neighbors, so they're not exactly popular even in the Expanse. Kholo typically have an unsentimental, matter-of-fact approach to life, and prioritize results over methods. They are usually loyal and generous to their people and ruthless toward outsiders. Culturally, they tend to be very physically demonstrative, especially with their friends. A typical kholo community, or clan, is made up of 100 to 200 gnolls divided between 10-20 interrelated family groups. They are a matriarchal gerontocracy, being led by a council made up of the oldest females from each family, with one appointed from amongst their ranks to serve as "Chief Elder", the first amongst equals. This council is also guided by a Bonekeeper (usually a [[witch]]), who serves as a voice for the gods and ancestor spirits, and by a Storyteller ([[bard]]), who serves as teacher, sage, historian and general encylopedia of lore. Newborn kholo are given a root name, typically that of a bone, plant, or animal (though never Hyena, as this is considered narcissistic and arrogant). As a gnoll reaches certain milestones in life, they add descriptors to their name. Root names are often passed down through families, while descriptors are chosen to fit the gnoll's personality, usually in raucous ceremonies.

==Gender Roles==
Gnolls have had an erratic, shifting field of lore when it comes to gender roles.

To begin with, in AD&D, they were given the same "abusively patriarchal" fluff as just about every other evil tribal humanoid race ([[orc]]s, [[goblin]]s, etc) - which, as anyone who's read up on hyenas knows, is bollocks; spotted hyenas are ''abusively matriarchal'', the other pack species being more egalitarian. This was impolitely pointed out to the designers by the autists in rec.games.frp.dnd throughout the 1990s.

In 3rd edition, the topic wasn't really mentioned, until the Monster Manual IV presented a far more in-depth approach to gnollish ecology and society. This source stated that gnolls are actually matriarchal, and that the pack is always ruled by an alpha female. Rank is still based on the principle of "might makes right", and males can hold any high rank that isn't absolute ruler, but males will usually face more frequent challenges, and females are physically superior - averaging about half a foot in height and fifty pounds in weight on their menfolk.

4th edition states that gnolls are matrilinear (descent is traced through the mother), but egalitarian; males and females do just about everything the same, and leadership depends on strength rather than what's between their legs. That said, it also notes that in many clans, female gnolls are the larger gender, which gives an inferral that many clans function in an incidental matriarchal fashion by simple "rule of might". In fact, the entry, given its distinctive title of "Gender Issues", reads as follows:
::''The physical build of a female gnoll is almost identical to that of its male counterpart, and in many clans the females are larger than the males. As a rule, it is difficult for a member of another race to tell the gender of a gnoll unless it’s pregnant or actively nursing. Females and males are equally aggressive, and both males and females actively take part in hunting. Although the leader of the clan is typically the strongest gnoll (male or female), lineage is usually traced through the mother. Because of the difficulty involved in identifying the gender of a gnoll, there are folktales based around the idea that gnolls are hermaphrodites or can change their gender; however, neither of these things are true.''

Weirdly, Pathfinder has flip-flopped on the issue, despite changing the gnoll's primary religion from [[Yeenoghu]] to [[Lamashtu]] (largely due to the fact that the former is exclusive intellectual property of WoTC.) In the early sourcebook "Classic Monsters Revisited", gnolls are very much patriarchal; a female gnoll who fails to become either a mother or a cleric of Lamashtu by age 15 is eaten, whilst all a male gnoll has to do to prove worthy of life is to have brought back at least 20 pounds of meat by the age of 12. Whilst sexually desirable (to other gnolls), Lamashtu clerics are also politically inferior to the (male-exclusive) shamans. Then, in the later "Monster Codex", we're told that gnolls are matriarchal, in no small part because their larger stature and greater aggression & cunning gives them an edge in their cutthroat might-makes-right culture; this is see as proof of Lamashtu's blessing of the gnoll race.

This decision to support gnollish matriarchy was reaffirmed with the Lost Omens: Mwangi Expanse [[splatbook]] for 2e. Here, it's stated that the gnoll races of the Expanse, regardless of subrace, all have notably larger females (averaging about a head taller) and a "realistic [[Amazon]]" type matriarchal culture: women are the hunters, warriors and leaders, whilst men are the artisans, caretakers and gatherers. However, either gender can become a bonekeeper or a storyteller, and the book also hedges its bets by noting that adherence to these gender roles varies from clan to clan.

=Religion=
In [[Dungeons & Dragons]], gnolls traditionally worship a [[Demon Prince]] named [[Yeenoghu]], the Beast of Butchery. In the earliest editions, they originally worshiped the god [[Gorellik]], a giant hyena-like lesser member of the [[Giant]]'s pantheon, but not only could he not claim to be their creator,(who is, is never explained) he was such a lazy, disinterested, stupid god that Yeenoghu was able to steal the gnolls away from him and he never even noticed. In 4th and 5th edition, gnolls were directly tied to Yeenoghu and given status as his creations; a fusion of demon and hyena that he engineered in 4e, and hyenas that spontaneously transformed after scavenging from his kills in 5e. This, incidentally, also gives them a religiously motivated hatred for [[minotaur]]s, as ''their'' patron [[Demon Prince]], [[Baphomet]], is a bitter rival of Yeenoghu's.

Some obscure fluff in [[Advanced Dungeons & Dragons]] says that the gnolls once had their own pantheon, but their gods have perished. The only other gnollish deity ever named in D&D history was [[Refnara]] the Moon-Biter, a gnollish lunar goddess with provenance over fear who only made a single appearance; in the adventure “To Bite the Moon” in [[Dungeon Magazine]] #48.

In 3.5's MMIV, it's stated that the gnolls reconcile worshipping a male Demon Prince with their own principles of matriarchal leadership in that the female pack-leaders view Yeenoghu as the ultimate male, the perfect mate for a female gnoll to acquire - IF she can prove herself worthy.

In [[Pathfinder]], gnolls worship [[Lamashtu]], a [[Demon Prince]] turned full-fledged evil goddess of monsters, mutations and misbirths, who they claim literally gave birth to them. Ironically, this leads to them having better relationships with [[minotaur]]s, who also claim to be children of Lamashtu. In [[Pathfinder Second Edition]], the kholo are cemented as the Non-Evil Gnoll Culture by rejecting Lamashtu - called "Old Mother" by the kholo, she is invoked only as a very last resort, and otherwise begged to stay away. Instead, the kholo largely practice ancestor worship, but also revere a small pantheon; [[Calistria]] and [[Shelyn]] are revered as Elder and Younger Sisters, the twin goddesses of power and beauty, whilst [[Nethys]] is revered as The Brother, patron of the bonekeepers.

In [[Wicked Fantasy]], dach'youn fear the sun as a creator god who, alongside his nameless wife, created the world and all life, but then grew angry with them and now wants to destroy the world, having murdered his wife when she tried to stop him. Consequently, they refuse to honor him, instead regarding him as a cruel and merciless monster to be feared. Instead, they worship the moons as a set of six or seven (there's actually only six moons, but many gnolls believe that the "moonless nights" that occur every 85 days are actually guarded by a black moon) goddesses; these Kachta, the sun's daughters, angrily chase him away every night, forestalling his plans to destroy the world each day. The Sister Moons are Cha'ppa (The Swift Red Moon), Hav'ha (The Deadly Silver Moon), Gu'sha (The Wise Blue Moon), Gur'gha (The Enduring Green Moon), Or'gha (The Cunning Yellow Moon), Sh'va (The Lovely Violet Moon) and Vax (The Black Moon).

Perhaps the largest, most complicated and arguably most interesting gnollish religion can be found in [[Midgard]]. Here, whilst the gnolls of the [[Southlands]] can potentially worship any of the deities of that realm, there are a number of faiths particularly associated with gnolls. The largest gnoll faiths are those who have become central to the political power structure of the gnollish "nation" of Dabu: these consist of [[Bastet]], who is regarded as the patron goddess of all gnolls (and this isn't as weird as you'd think; despite their vaguely doggy looks, hyenas are more closely related to ''cats''); Bastet's consort [[Anu-Akma]] (whose connection to [[Anubis]] is the stuff of much debate); the [[Yeenoghu]]-equivalent [[Laughing Nkishi]] (who wants to become a monotheistic patron god to the gnolls, but is facing an uphill struggle against the other faiths of Dabu); The Huntress ([[The Hunter]] envisioned as a female gnoll, because Southland gnolls are matriarchal); and Xeviosah (who is to [[Xevioso]] what the Huntress is to the Hunter). Other popular patron gods for Southlands gnolls include the trickster-god [[Kwansi]], [[Veles]] by its local name of Djyy, the war god [[Takhar]], the [[archdevil]] [[Arbeyach]], and the raider goddess [[Selket]].

=Family Tree=
Though usually ignored, there are a few different branches of the family tree.

'''Flinds''' are the most well-known branch, having appeared in the editions on and off throughout the years. Originally introduced for AD&D 1e as part of the Fiend Folio, Flinds were conceived of as smaller and less imposing, but smarter, gnoll-kin. In this edition, Flinds looked like lions instead of hyenas. They were the more rational and reasonable gnoll-kin, and had a dedicated [[Dragon Magazine]] article, "The Sociology of the Flind", in issue #173. They're mostly remembered for being cannibalistic ("flind" apparently means "eater of gnolls" in the gnoll tongue) and for wielding ''solid-iron nunchuks'' called "flindbars", which gave them the aggravatingly cheap ability to force your PCs to save vs. wands in AD&D to avoid having their weapons yanked out of their hands. When 3rd edition rolled around, flinds didn't reappear until the Monster Manual 3, where their character was reversed - they became bigger, stronger, tougher and even ''nastier'' versions of the common gnoll, although they were still smarter. 4th edition preserved this, although it obscured their return in Dragon #369 as the "Havoc Gnolls". In 5th edition, flinds didn't appear until Volo's Guide to Monsters, where they essentialy became the gnollish equivalent of [[Blackguard]]s; demon-blessed champions of [[Yeenoghu]] specially selected to lead gnollish warbands.

'''Ghuuna''' are a gnollish [[therianthrope]] subspecies introduced in Dragon #89, gifted with the power to turn into hyenadons (or dire hyenas, in more modern interpretations); they could spread this amongst their own race like lycanthropy, but rarely did so, as they revelled in being special. Ghuunas never really caught on.

'''[[Shoosuva]]''' are undead demons born from gnollish souls, who first appeared in Dragon #63 - as part of the very first elaboration on gnollish culture and mentality. They are described as resembling huge, emaciated hyenadons glowing with eerie yellow light, and possess [[ghoul]]-like abilities, such as paralytic attacks. They mostly went ignored afterwards; a 3e translation finally arrived in [[Dungeon Magazine]] #112. Volo's Guide to Monsters saw them promoted to their first ever official splatbook appearance, although with a few tweaks - like the loss of their paralytic attacks in favor of a toxic tail stinger.

The kholo clans of the Mwangi Expanse have the most notable split, being divided into four subraces based on the four species of hyena.
* '''Ant Gnolls''' are based on Aardwolves. These insect-hunting gnolls are often disbelieved by foreigners as actually being gnollkin whatsoever, since they average at only three feet tall!
* '''Great Gnolls''' are the obligatory Spotted Hyena gnollkin. The largest, strongest and most aggressive of the kholo subraces, it's implied that the gnolls of other lands in [[Golarion]] are Great Gnolls who migrated out of the Mwangi Expanse and then lost their way, falling into the clutches of the cult of [[Lamashtu]].
* '''Sweetbreath Gnolls''' are based on the Striped Hyena, and in particular that hyena's association with sexual magics in African folklore (with maybe a dash of the Roman view of hyenas as [[vampire]]s). Aside from their distinct striped fur patterns, they are also distinguished by their mystically imbued sweet-smelling breath, which can enthrall prey.
* '''Witch Gnolls''' are based on the Brown Hyena, and seem to have absorbed the more mystical associations of hyenas, specifically the idea of hyenas imitating voices to lure victims to their doom. They are distinguished by their dark brown, shaggy-furred pelts and their ability to produce "truly uncanny" sounds, most notably by mimicking the voices of others.

=Reproduction=
Given the dearth of details on gnollish culture, and the rather limited focus of what we're told, it should be of no surprise that we don't know much of how gnolls produce the next generation.

In AD&D's Monstrous Manual, we are informed that in a gnoll pack there will be "half as many females as males" and "twice as many gnoll pups as there are adults".

In 3.5's Monster Manual IV, we get some fuller details; female gnolls mate with any male that catches their attention as a worthy specimen (whether the male's thoughts on the matter are taken into account are not stated), but form no lasting bonds. They give birth to litters of 2-4 pups after a 6 month pregnancy, and usually these are then abandoned to the care of wetnurses and slaves in the pack's current creche. Infant gnolls are utterly helpless for the first 8 weeks of their life, doing little but suckle and sleep, but after that two month infancy, begin to drastically grow, putting on muscle and weaning to feed on meat. Still, whilst kept separate from the suckling pups, these youngsters are kept segregated for the first two years of their life; until they hit adolescence at that age, they risk being cannibalized by the adult gnolls.

Pathfinder's "Classic Monsters Revisited" states that gnolls give birth to litters of 3-5 pups, who become "dangerous" by 3 years old and fully grown adults by the age of 8; female gnolls become reproductively mature at any point between the ages of 10 and 18 years.

4e's "Playing Gnolls" mentions only that gnoll pups become aggressive at a very young age - as in, as soon as they can walk, they tend to find tight places where they can viciously fight each other, and that the high infant mortality rate these battles (which are often fought to the death, or just inflict such severe wounds that one or more participants die) inflict is partly why gnolls aren't as common as, say, [[orc]]s.

In 5e, gnolls don't reproduce at all. Their shamans, the Fangs of Yeenoghu, can inflict a demonic taint upon the corpses of sapient beings; hyenas that devour such corpses are transformed into new gnolls. Thus, they are constantly seeking battle in order to replace their own casualties.

=PC Stats=
[[File:Gnoll Archer.jpg|400px|thumb|right|This girl is not feeling like putting up with your shit today.]]
Gnolls have had playable stats in 1e (via The Orcs of Thar, though that may have been during their "gnome-troll" days), AD&D (via the Complete Book of Humanoids), D&D 3e (via the Monster Manual, Races of the Wild, Unapproachable East and Savage Species) and 4e (via [[Dragon Magazine]] #367). Flinds had playable stats in only AD&D (CBoH) and D&D3.5 (MM3).

==BECMI==
<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%"> Click "Expand" to see the statblock.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
::Gnoll Ability Modifiers: +1 Strength, +1 Dexterity, -2 Wisdom
::Gnoll Minimum Strength: 13
::Note: Like all Humanoids from "The Orcs of Thar", a Gnoll has racial ability score caps of 18 in all scores bar [[Intelligence]] and [[Wisdom]], which are capped at 16.
::Note: Like all Humanoids from "The Orcs of Thar", a Gnoll determines its [[Charisma]] score for interacting with [[human]]s and [[demihuman]]s by dividing its Charisma score by 3 (rounding down) and subtacting the result from 9.
::Gnoll Natural Armor Class: 8
::Can become [[Shaman]]s (6th level) and [[Wokani]] (4th level).

{| class=wikitable
!Gnoll's's level || XP Required || Gnoll's hit dice
|-
|Teenager (-1)||-1,000||d8
|-
|0||0||2d8
|-
|1||1,000||3d8
|-
|2||3,000||4d8
|-
|3||7,000||-
|-
|4||15,000||5d8
|-
|5||31,000||6d8
|-
|6||63,000||7d8
|-
|7||129,000||-
|-
|8||259,000||8d8
|-
|9||519,000||+2 Hit Points
|-
|Subsequent||300,000||+2 Hit Points
|}
</div></div>

If the above doesn't tickle your fancy, you can try playing a Gruugrakh Gnoll, a gnoll originating from the land of Graakhalia, a kingdom in the caverns beneath the Plain of Fire. In this land of dangerous creatures, harsh landscapes and deadly plants, which may have its origins with the ancient efforts of the ancestral [[Shadow Elf|Shadow Elves]] to survive the Great Rain of Fire, gnolls have formed a long-term alliance with [[elves]] of the Sheyallia tribe, rising to a strict, honorable level of civilization. In fact, they have advanced so far that they even have developed an innate affinity for magic!

Thus, to play a Gruugrakh Gnoll, use the [[Elf]] class, save for the following changes:

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%"> Click "Expand" to see the statblock.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
* At character creation, gain +1 [[Strength]] and [[Dexterity]], but suffer -2 [[Wisdom]].
* [[Intelligence]] maxes out at 16.
* Requires a minimum [[Strength]] of 13.
* Rolls a 1d8 for hit points instead of the normal elven 1d6.
* Cannot advance past 9th level.
* Natural AC is 8.
</div></div>

Alternatively, you can just use the gnoll stats above, but Gruugrakh gnolls are twice as likely to become spellcasters compared to standard gnolls (1 in 10 vs 1 in 20), so becoming a Shaman, a Wokani, or a dual-classed Shaman-Wokani, is perfectly justified for a PC.

Gruugrakh Gnolls appeared in the box set "Champions of Mystara" for BECMI. Specifically, they're covered in the Explorer's Manual [[splatbook]] that comes with that boxed set.

==AD&D==
;Gnoll
<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%"> Click "Expand" to see the statblock.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
::Ability Score Modifiers: +1 Strength, -1 Dexterity
::Ability Score Minimums and Maximums: Minimum Strength of 6, Minimum Dexterity of 5, Minimum Constitution of 5, Maximum Intelligence of 14, Maximum Wisdom of 16, Maximum Charisma of 14
::Hit Point Modifier: +2 HP at first level
::Natural Armor Class: 10
::Special Disadvantage: Gnolls take damage as Large creatures
::Monstrous Traits: Appearance, Bestial Habits
::Weapon Proficiencies: Battle-Axe, Long Composite Bow, Morningstar, Two-handed Sword, Any Polearm
::Non Weapon Proficiencies: Animal Training (Hyenodon), Close-Quarter Fighting, Hiding, Hunting, Observation, Tracking, Wild Fighting
</div></div>

;Flind
<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%"> Click "Expand" to see the statblock.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
::Ability Score Modifiers: +1 Strength, -1 Charisma
::Ability Score Minimums and Maximums: Minimum Strength of 8, Minimum Dexterity of 6, Minimum Constitution of 6, Maximum Intelligence/Wisdom/Charisma of 16.
::Natural Armor Class: 10
::Special Advantage: When wielding a Flindbar, enemies hit must make a Save vs. Wands; failure means their weapon is entangled and yanked out of their grip.
::Monstrous Traits: Appearance, Bestial Habits
::Weapon Proficiencies: Club, Flindbar, Glaive, Long Bow, Long Sword
::Non Weapon Proficiencies: Animal Lore, Close-Quarter Fighting, Danger Sense, Direction Sense, Endurance, Fortune Telling, Local History, Looting, Hunting, Intimidation, Reading/Writing, Religion, Spellcraft, Weaponsmithing
</div></div>

==3e==
;Gnoll
<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%"> Click "Expand" to see the statblock.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
::Ability Score Modifiers: Strength +4, Constitution +2, Intelligence -2, Charisma -2
::Size: Medium
::Base Land Speed: 30 feet
::Racial Hit Dice: two levels of humanoid, which gives 2D8 HD, BAB +1, Fort +3, Ref +0 and Will +0.
::Racial Skills: 5*(2+Int modifier), class skills are Listen and Spot.
::Racial Feats: 1 feat of choice.
::+1 Natural Armor Bonus
::Darkvision 60 feet
::Favored Class: Ranger
::Level Adjustment: +1 level.
</div></div>

;Flind
<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%"> Click "Expand" to see the statblock.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
::Ability Score Modifiers: +6 Strength, +2 Dexterity, +4 Constitution
::Size: Medium
::Base Land Speed: 30 feet
::Racial Hit Dice: two levels of humanoid, which gives 2D8 HD, BAB +1, Fort +3, Ref +0 and Will +0.
::Racial Skills: 5*(2+Int modifier), class skills are Listen and Spot.
::Racial Feats: 1 feat of choice.
::+2 Natural Armor Bonus
::Darkvision 60 feet
::Weapon Familiarity (Flindbar) - Flindbars are Martial weapons for Flinds, rather than Exotic.
::Flinds receive a +2 racial bonus to Charisma checks made to influence Gnolls.
::Favored Class: Ranger
::Level Adjustment: +2 levels.
</div></div>

==4e==
<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%"> Click "Expand" to see the statblock.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
::Ability Scores: +2 Constitution, +2 Dexterity
::Size: Medium
::Speed: 7 squares
::Vision: Low-light
::Languages: Abyssal, Common
::Skill Bonuses: +2 Intimidate, +2 Perception
::Blood Fury: While you’re bloodied, you gain a +2 bonus to damage rolls. This increases to a +4 bonus at 21st level.
::Pack Attack: You deal an extra 2 damage on melee attacks against an enemy that has two or more of your allies adjacent to it.
::Ferocious Charge: You can use ferocious charge as an encounter power.

Ferocious Charge Gnoll Racial Power
::''You lunge toward the enemy and, with a tirade of curses, unleash the wrath of Yeenoghu upon your hapless foe.''
::Encounter
::Standard Action Personal
::Effect: You charge, and deal an extra 2 damage on a successful attack. Increase the extra damage to 4 at 11th level and 6 at 21st level. If you are bloodied, double the extra damage and gain an equal number of temporary hitpoints.

Heroic Tier Feats
Any feat in the following section is available to a character of any level who meets the prerequisites.

''Butcher’s Lure''
::Prerequisite: Gnoll
::Benefit: You can use ghost sound as an at-will ability and gain a +2 feat bonus to Bluff checks when using ghost sound to mimic specific people or sounds.

''Carrion Eater''
::Prerequisite: Gnoll
::Benefit: You receive a +4 feat bonus to saving throws against poison and Endurance checks made to resist disease.

''Claw Fighter''
::Prerequisite: Gnoll
::Benefit: You possess vicious claws, which you can use as weapons with a +3 proficiency bonus and 1d6 damage. For purpose of powers and feats, you can treat your claws as light blades, and you are considered to have a weapon in each hand. You cannot enchant your claws.

''Gnoll Tracker''
::Prerequisite: Gnoll
::Benefit: You gain a +5 feat bonus to Perception checks made to track and to Insight checks made to penetrate an illusion or disguise. You can use this bonus during a skill challenge if you can convince the DM that scent is relevant to the check.

Paragon Feats
Any feat in the following section is available to a character of 11th level or higher who meets the prerequisites.

''Fierce Charge''
::Prerequisites: 11th level, gnoll, ferocious charge racial power
::Benefit: When you use your ferocious charge power, you can choose to make an at-will melee attack instead of a melee basic attack.

''Swift Bite''
::Prerequisite: 11th level, gnoll
::Benefit: When you bloody a foe, you can choose to deal an extra 1d6 + Strength modifier damage with a bite against the target.

Epic Feats
The feat in the following section is available to a character of 21st level or higher who meets the prerequisites.

''Brutal Charge''
::Prerequisites: 21st level, gnoll, ferocious charge racial power, Fierce Charge
::Benefit: When you use your ferocious charge power, you can choose to make an encounter melee attack power instead of a melee basic attack.
</div></div>

==5e==
While 5e as a whole has abandoned PC friendly concepts for gnolls, the ''Exploring Eberron'' quasi-official supplement to the ''Rising from the Last War'' sourcebook has reintroduced them as a player race, and with a player-friendly culture; both fit the ''Eberron'' setting's overall themes of culture and upbringing mattering more for alignment than race. Eberron Gnolls are still demon-spawn and tend to be evil, but they have more freedom from their hellish creators because they were created by two competing Overlords accidentally, not by one demon prince intentionally, and both of those Overlords are imprisoned and "sleeping" ([[Cthulhu]]-style, so they manage to corrupt people even in their sleep) instead of actively whispering in their ears like Yennogu does in main DnD settings. PC gnolls are supposed to be part of the Zinr Pact - a group of 12 tribes who decided to abandon demon worshiping (or really any religion) and be Lawful Evil to a T, being badass mercenaries known for never betraying their employers unless said employers broke the letter of the contract first. They're so trustworthy and reliable, the nation of Droaam hires a full half of Zinr Pact gnolls themselves as pretty much their police force.

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%"> Click "Expand" to see the statblock.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
::Ability Score Increase: Your Constitution score increases by 1. In addition, either your Strength or Dexterity score increases by 2.
::Age: Young gnolls grow with uncanny speed. A gnoll is capable of fending for itself after only a few months, and is considered an adult at 5 years of age. Gnolls live to be around 30 years old. They remain vigorous until the end; death by old age is marked by a catastrophic decline over a space of a few days. Many believe this unusual lifecycle is tied to the supernatural origins of the gnoll.
::Size: Gnolls are between 7 and 8 feet tall and weigh between 250 to 320 pounds. Your size is Medium.
::Speed: Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
::Darkvision: You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can’t discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.
::Bite: Your teeth are natural weapons, which you can use to make unarmed strikes. If you hit with your bite, you deal piercing damage equal to 1d4 + your Strength modifier, instead of the bludgeoning damage normal for an unarmed strike.
::Hunter’s Senses: You gain proficiency with one of the following skills of your choice: Perception, Stealth or Survival.
::Rampage: On your turn, when you make an unarmed strike using your bite attack or reduce a creature to 0 hit points with an attack, you can use a bonus action to move up to half your speed and make a weapon attack or bite attack.
::Languages: You can speak, read, and write Gnoll, and your choice of either Common or Goblin.
</div></div>

===3rd Party Settings===
;[[Midgard]]
<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%"> Click "Expand" to see the statblock.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
::Ability Score Increase: +2 Strength
::Size: Medium
::Speed: 30 feet
::Darkvision: 60 feet
::Scent: You have Advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks based on smell.
::Bully: You have Disadvantage on saves against being Frightened, but can apply double your Proficiency bonus to Charisma (Intimidation) checks made against creatures obviously smaller and/or weaker than you.
::Live to Fight Another Day: When you take the Disengage action, your base walking speed is increased by +10 feet.
::Gnoll Weapon Training: You have Proficiency with the Spear, Shortbow, Longbow, Light Crossbow and Heavy Crossbow.
::Subrace: Choose the Civilized Gnoll or Savage Gnoll subrace.

''Civilized Gnoll:''
::Ability Score Increase: +1 Constitution
::Obsequious: When interacting with creatures obviously bigger and/or more powerful than you, you may apply double your Proficiency bonus to Charisma (Persuasion) checks.

''Savage Gnoll:''
::Ability Score Increase: +1 Wisdom
::Scavenge: You can apply double your Proficiency bonus when making Wisdom (Survival) checks for the purpose of gathering good and locating water.
</div></div>

==Pathfinder 2e==
<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%"> Click "Expand" to see the statblock.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
'''Gnoll Ancestry'''
::Hit Points: 8
::Size: Medium
::Speed: 30 feet
::Ability Boosts: Strength, Intelligence, Free
::Ability Flaws: Wisdom
::Low-Light Vision
::Bite: You have a Jaws Attack (Brawling, Unarmed) that deals 1d6 Piercing damage.

'''Ant Gnoll Heritage:''' Free Training in Deception. +1 Circumstance bonus to Deception checks made to falsely claim innocence, to Deception DCs against Sense Motive checks made to uncover such lies, and to Initiative checks made by using Deception.

'''Great Gnoll Heritage:''' +2 Hit Points from Ancestry (so +10 total), +1 Circumstance bonus to Athletics checks made to Shove or Trip.

'''Sweetbreath Gnoll Heritage:''' Free Training in Diplomacy. +1 Circumstance Bonus to Make an Impression iof the target can smell your breath. Can take the Heritage Feat ''Breath Like Honey'': You can cast enthrall as a 3rd-level occult innate spell once per day, except the spell has a range of 30 feet and the inhaled trait instead of the auditory trait. Targets don't gain any circumstance bonus for disagreeing with you. Your circumstance bonus to checks to Make an Impression if the target can smell your breath increases to +2.

'''Witch Gnoll Heritage:''' You can cast Ghost Sound as an occult innate spell at will, with a spell level equal to half your level rounded up. +1 Circumstance bonus to Impersonate and Create a Diversion checks made using only your voice. Can take the Heritage Feat ''Distant Cackle'', which lets you cast Ventriloquism once per day as a 1st-level occult innate spell.
</div></div>

===3rd Party Settings===
====Wicked Fantasy====
The neutral-aligned, moon-worshipping gnolls of the [[Wicked Fantasy]] setting use the [[Pathfinder]] rules, and are very, very different beasts to their traditional kin.

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%"> Click "Expand" to see the statblock.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
::+2 Constitution, +2 Charisma
::Medium
::Movement: Dach'youn can either walk on their hindlegs for a base movement speed of 30 feet, or run on all fours for a base movement sped of 40 feet. Four-legged speed can't be used unless the dach'youn has her hands empty.
::Scent (Extraordinary Ability)
::Pack Feats: A dach'youn starts with three Pack category feats, and gains one new Pack feat at 2nd level and every two levels afterwards (4th, 6th, 8th, etc).
::Pack Tactics: When a dach'youn uses a teamwork feat, every member of her pack gains the benefits of it.
::Ways of the Wild: Survival is always a class skill for dach'youn, and they receive a +1 bonus to Survival, Knowledge (Nature) and Wild Empathy checks. This bonus increases by a further +1 at every 5th level (so levels 5, 10, 15, 20).
::Moon Sign: All dach'youn are born under the gaze of one of the Kachta, and this influences them. Pick a specific Moon Sign from the list below; this increases or alters your ability score bonus as indicated and gives you both a Moon Blessing (a special bonus you gain when your moon is full) and a Moon Curse (a special penalty you suffer when your moon is new).
::Scavenger's Meal: Dach'youn gain a +4 racial bonus to Profession (Cooking) checks and can choose to make a Profession (Cooking) check in lieu of a Survival or Knowledge check relating to food.

Cha'ppa
::+2 Dexterity instead of Constitution
::'''Moon Blessing:''' Your bonus to Sense Motive and Perception checks doubles.
::'''Moon Curse:''' You gain no benefits from Morale or Rally bonuses, but penalties still apply.

Gur'gha
::+3 Constitution instead of +2
::'''Moon Blessing:''' You can reroll a failed Fortitude save; the result of this reroll stands, you can't reroll it again.
::'''Moon Curse:''' You cannot make any kind of Knowledge check.

Gu'sha
::+2 Wisdom instead of Charisma
::'''Moon Blessing:''' Once per ally per full moon, you can reroll an ally's failed saving throw using your own bonus; the result of this reroll stands, you can't reroll it again.
::'''Moon Curse:''' Roll a d6 to determine which curse affects you for the duration of Gu'sha's new moon phase; on a 1 you cannot benefit from magical healing, on a 2 you are deaf, on a 3 you cannot use four-legged speed, on a 4 you are mute, on a 5 you lose the benefits of your Scent ability, and on a 6 you are blind.

Hav'ha
::+2 Strength instead of Constitution
::'''Moon Blessing:''' +5 to CMB
::'''Moon Curse:''' You do not gain your Wisdom modifier to any rolls.

Or'gha
::+2 Intelligence instead of Charisma
::'''Moon Blessing:''' In a non-combat situation, your Intelligence modifier is doubled.
::'''Moon Curse:''' Your CMD is 10 and it cannot gain any bonuses.

Sh'va
::+3 Charisma instead of +2
::'''Moon Blessing:''' All creatures with Intelligence 8+ have their default starting attitude towards you increased by two levels.
::'''Moon Curse:''' You gain a 10ft Aura of Untrust; all creatures in this aura automatically notice you and gain +5 to any contested Charisma check against you.

Vax
::+1 to any ability score
::'''Moon Blessing:''' When a hostile creature first makes eye contact with you, it must pass a Will save (DC 10 + your Charisma modifier + 1/2 your level) or flee in terror. This is a fear effect.
::'''Moon Curse:''' All creatures with Intelligence 8+ have their default starting attitude towards you decreased by two levels.
</div></div>

=Monstergirls=
{{Monstergirls}}
[[Image:Gnoll pimp.jpg|200px|thumb|left|It's hard out there for a pimp.]]
[[Image:Gnoll pirate.jpg|200px|thumb|right|Yet it's easier for a pirate.]]
Despite everything, gnolls are a little... embarrassing for /tg/. This, as much as the generally lackluster fluff, is more than likely why the race is rarely focused on, in comparison to, say, [[goblin]]s, [[orc]]s or even [[ogre]]s.

Let's start with the obvious elephant in the room; as a beast-man race, gnolls are like [[furry]] magnets. And unlike [[minotaur]]s or [[sphinx]]es (who have a mythological origin that can be pointed to), or [[kobold]]s (who don't really resemble any real-world animal), the only real difference between gnolls and [[Ironclaw|fantasy-dwelling hyena furries]] is... well, pretty much the whole "demon-worshiping cannibalistic murderous tribal monsters culture" thing. Whenever there's a gnoll thread on /tg/, you can be sure there will be an argument about whether or not they count as furries that eventually gets it locked. Needless to say, confronted with the problem of being unable to flesh out the gnolls without being accused of being furries, most DMs say "fuck it" and try to do something interesting with [[orcs]] instead.

Another major problem is that, as mentioned above, gnolls most visually resemble the spotted hyena. The spotted hyena's brutally matriarchal social structure and female favoring sexual dimorphism (that is, girls are bigger and stronger than guys) easily translates into [[/d/]]-related content, since /d/ is all over Amazon-built [[musclegirl]]s as well as femdom. To say nothing of how the gnollish slavery-focused society easily translated into sex-slavery in the eyes of [[/d/M]]s - but then, they've been doing that shit with orcs and other such races for ages. But there was more to it than that...

See, spotted hyenas are infamous for one particular thing: the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudo-penis pseudo-penis]. Biologists still have no idea what function it serves (seeing as how it doesn't seem to do anything but needlessly complicate reproduction, to the point that something like a quarter of first-time mothers die of a torn and hemorrhaging urethral-genital tract, and their babies can get stuck and suffocate in the tube), but the end result is that female spotted hyenas are essentially real life [[dickgirl]]s. With the popularity of dickgirls on both /d/ and amongst furries, this led to a ''huge'' outburst of gnollish perversity that /tg/ fought hard to stamp out, but which still threatens to, ahem, "rear its ugly head" today.

(Fun fact: Both genders of Spotted Hyenas also often use erection as a sign of submission)

Add in the fact that hyenas in real life do have a lot of mythological/traditional association with perversity - Pliny the Elder reported hyenas were hermaphrodites who changed sexes whenever they wished (which considering the above is actually one of the ''more'' accurate inaccuracies in his writings), striped hyena anuses and vaginas are used for love & lust charms to the extent that "he has the anus of a hyena" is a real-world African saying today to refer to someone who's really good at scoring sex - and... well, let's just say that gnolls can very easily take a starring role in somebody's [[magical realm]] and leave it at that, okay?

Then again, if [[orc]]s, [[goblin]]s and [[kobold]]s can be rescued from the [[Always Chaotic Evil]] niche, why not gnolls? Gnolls are practically tailor-made for an unholy blend of [[furry]], [[amazon]] and/or [[musclegirl]], and "sexy evil girl" fetishism, after all...

<gallery>
Female Gnoll Slaver.jpg
Gnoll Profile (Hyena Princess Njano).jpg
Gnoll Barmaid.jpg
Gnoll Gladiatrix.png
Gnoll Priestess.jpg
Gnoll Watchwoman.jpg
Gnoll-TaintedElf.png|Some find a way to include more "conventional" gnoll MGs in their games.
</gallery>
</center>

=World of Warcraft=
Like pretty much everything else that was part of DnD back in 2003, gnolls are commonly found in WoW. They typically inhabit low-level areas, where players are given quests to slaughter them in large numbers. One of WoW's most famous low-level bosses, Hogger, is a gnoll.

=See Also=
*[[Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition races]]
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=324ViOz4Z2E Gnoll up!]
*[[FAPP]]: A tabletop game made by a gnoll.
*[https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Gnoll Gnolls] are a minor enemy in [[Final Fantasy|Final Fantasy IX]]
<center>

{{D&D1e-Races}}
{{D&D2e-Races}}
{{D&D4e-Races}}
{{Pathfinder-Races}}
[[Category:Furry]][[Category: Monsters]][[Category:Scarred Lands Races]]

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game

2022-06-11T14:21:13Z

2601:249:8200:5A40:EDD0:94F4:370F:F6AE:

{{Game Infobox
|name = Pathfinder Roleplaying Game
|picture = [[File:Pathfinder Logo.jpeg|300px]]
|type = [[RPG]]
|publisher = Paizo
|authors = Jason Buhlman
|year = 2009
}}
For the weeb infantry unit, see [[Pathfinder Team|this page]]

When [[4E|''D&D'' 4th edition]] was announced it was immediately rejected with a lot of [[butthurt|negative feelings]] by a rather large number of [[neckbeards|people]]. Realizing a lot of [[Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition|3]] and 3.5 [[Splatbook|material]] would suddenly become mostly useless and that [[WotC|Wizards]] would be making a significantly different game, [[Paizo|Paizo Publishing]] decided to cash in on the 4th edition naysayers and appeal to the people who wanted to stick to the old edition, but realized it still needed to be fixed.

Thus the '''''Pathfinder Roleplaying Game''''' came about, usually called ''D&D'' 3.75 or 3.PF or ''Mathfinder'' due to the fact that it largely resembles 3.5's [[d20 System|ruleset]] but with various non-drastic updates, fixes and changes. Notably, grappling now more closely resembles something that might almost be called "sense" (gasp!) and [[Half-orcs]] and [[Half-elves]] don't suck anymore. Spellcasters are just as crazy as ever once they've got a few levels in them, while melee classes, generally speaking, got buffed across the board. Not enough to make them outshine the wizards, but take what you can get. This is assuming that your [[DM]] isn't a newfag incapable of compensating.

Noted for the mishmash campaign world (which contains elements [[Blood_Ravens|lifted]] from pretty much everything, ever, from real-world history to crappy pulp Sci-Fi to [[Lord of the Rings|LotR]] with a dash of [[Order of the Stick]] thrown in for good measure) and entire published campaigns called Adventure Paths set in that world. The setting is both good and total shit at the same time, no better than any decent [[gamemaster]] can come up with on their own, and tends to include more annoying politics as time's gone on. As far as the mechanics, it's [[skub|divisive]] to say the least. It doubles down on 3.5 in almost every way (hence why it's often referred to as 3.PF), so if you liked 3.5 for its options and crunch, you'll probably like Pathfinder even more. On the other hand, if you disliked 3.5 for its bloat and poor balance, you'll probably hate Pathfinder.

==Golarion==
[[File:PathfinderExplained.jpg|thumb|300px|right|The campaign setting explained in one handy graphic.]]
{{main|Golarion}}
The main setting of ''Pathfinder'' is the Inner Sea region (basically the equivalent of the Mediterranean sea zone in our world) on a planet called Golarion. Unlike other ''D&D'' settings, many of the cultures and civilizations of the Inner Sea region are in severe decline after the only deity which represents humans in the Great Beyond (the outer planes), Aroden, died a few centuries ago. To add salt to the wound, this caused a series of events which fucked up the world: the formation of a massive supernatural stationary hurricane that annihilated two entire nations and allowed [[pirate]]s to develop their own kingdoms, the obliteration of a noble [[barbarian]] empire by [[Eye of Terror|a tear in the tissue of reality]] opened directly into the [[Abyss]], and most of the prophets and diviners committed mass suicide as an imminent prophesied golden age for mankind suddenly faded into nothing. As if this wasn't enough, the two greatest empires started to collapse in the religious hysteria, Cheliax (the Golarion equivalent of the Holy Roman Empire) suffered a civil war that ultimately put on the throne a noble house with links to the Nine Hells, making worship of the [[devil]] (Rock me Azmodeus!) the official state religion. Taldor (a mix of the Byzantine Empire and the Spanish Empire during the Habsburg era) started to lose territories at the hands of the Keleshite Empire (the "Persian" ethnicity in Golarion), while banks owned by brass dragons turned its culture completely decadent and stagnated by the bureaucracy. As this happened some provinces declared independence from Cheliax, creating two new countries, Andoran (which is like the 13 colonies after winning the Revolutionary War, so basically America (fuck yeah) with swords and sorcery) and Galt (France during The Terror with some elements which remind you of the Soviet Union after the end of the Russian civil war).

If all these political fuck ups are not enough, Golarion is in fact a cage built by the gods for an entity known as Rovagug, basically a massive worm which works like a [[Sphere of Annihilation|black hole]] and represents entropy. It's also connected with the Plateau of Leng and there are cults to the [[Old Ones|Old God]]s (yes, the [[H.P. Lovecraft]] ones, so you can roll a [[Alignment|CE]] [[cleric]] of Nyarlathotep for the evulz). Of course all of this is hidden by the Pathfinder Society (imagine National Geographic meets your standard Adventurers' Guild and then, as [[awesome]] as that sounds, make them [[fail|incompetent]]), one of the many factions and secret societies whose selfish intentions are just helping civilization to sink more into the pile of crap it is mired in instead of helping it come out. The remaining deities and their churches aren't helping either, the veteran gods have already seen an apocalypse obliterate the world once and the new ones are just useless adventurers who can't grasp that they aren't mortals anymore.

Beyond the Inner Sea region there are even more continents and nations, but barely anybody gives a shit about them (including most of Paizo's writers) with the exception of [[Oriental Adventures|Tian Xia]], where [[weeaboo]]ness and [[furries|furfaggotry]] meet. There's also the Darklands (the [[Underdark]] of Golarion), divided into three levels, each more under and darker than the last. And if the planet seems too shitty for you the whole solar system is full of civilizations and monsters to [[Rip and Tear|rip and tear through in your quest for loot]], not to mention the shenanigans you can get into in the other [[plane]]s of the multiverse.

==Notable Changes from 3.5 to PF1E==
An extensive [http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?136890-The-3-5-Pathfinder-Handbook guide] exists walking players through most of these changes, but highlights in core include the following.

The good:
[[File:3.5 thrives.jpg|thumb]]
*Most things that cause experience points to be lost have been axed, as this was deemed a massive pain in the ass to keep track of everyone having different experience totals, particularly once everyone was different level and got different experience rewards. Most of the time this takes the form of replacing XP costs with GP costs, and changing level loss to negative levels.
** [[Familiar]]s no longer eat your experience when they go splat, making them a class ''feature'' instead of a liability.
*Skill system has been changed to make skills less of a pain in the ass for multiclass characters and punish out of class skills less. Many skills have been combined, and two (Concentration and Use Rope) have been axed entirely.
*Feat rate has been increased from the sluggish first level plus every multiple of three. Feats are now given at every odd level. This makes feat taxes less painful and leaves more room for feats that are fun instead of needed or to make a character versatile (Bow users that take enough feats to make them viable melee combatants are now common).
*Identifying items no longer requires the costly identify spell. Instead anyone with detect magic and spellcraft can figure out what an item does.
*Cantrips are now unlimited. Heal/Inflict Minor Wounds have been nerfed to accompany this, only (de)stabilizing characters under 1 hit point.
*Polymorph effects have been nerfed into the ground. Now they modify your physical ability scores instead of replacing them, their duration are much lower, and they're limited in what abilities they give.
*Some of the best spells have been nerfed. Glitterdust now gives a new save every round, divine power no longer replaces your base attack bonus and doesn't stack with divine favor, grease isn't nearly as OP (though remains pretty good) and more.
*Hit die is now tied to base attack bonus with two exceptions. All full BAB bonus classes/hit die have d10 HD (except Barbarian and Dragon, which get to keep their d12), all medium BAB classes/HD have d8, and all low BAB classes/HD have d6.
*Sneak attack now works on almost everything instead of failing against some of the most common monster types.
*Only full caster classes have dead levels, and some of them avoid even that.
*Barbarian and Rogue get a choice of special abilities at every even level. While the ones in core aren't that great, they would be greatly expanded over the system's lifespan and the majority of non-core classes use this design.
*Bard has slightly better casting progression and genuinely good class features.
*Paladins are massively buffed and now viable if you aren't fighting non-evil foes. They have gained actual class features, a good will save, casting that works off charisma (meaning they can dump wisdom since they get charisma to their will save), a Caster Level is level -3 instead of half level, a smite that is no longer shit, and support for less draconian codes. They've actually risen from an iffy [[Tier System|tier 5 to a comfortable tier 4]], as they're now really good at destroying evil things and diplomacy, but struggle to contribute against neutral foes.
*Rangers now have d10 HD (as above), get to wear medium armor, have better casting, a better animal companion, get their abilities faster, and have a wider variety of combat style options.
*Sorcerers are now more than merely nerfed wizards. Still progress spells slower for no reason.
*Wizards are no longer totally locked out of their Opposition schools, they just have a harder time casting from them.
*The core races have all been buffed, except for ''maybe'' Human. Ability score bonuses are now +2 overall instead of a break even, with most races getting a +2 bonus to two ability scores and -2 penalty to a third while others get +2 to their choice of ability score. Other non-Human race abilities are buffed overall.
*Magic weapons with a proper +3 bonuses bypasses damage reduction overcome by silver and cold iron, +4 does the same for adamantine and +5 does it for alignment DR. This reduces the need for martials to keep a golf bag of weaponry and gives an actual reason to have raw plus bonuses, unlike 3e where they were considered useless because Greater Magic Weapon was a thing.
*Everything except proper names of setting details is released under the [[Open Gaming License]].

The bad:
*Maneuvers have been nerfed greatly, killing all the tricks martials had. Now you need to uber specialize to get them functional, as it takes more feats to get the same or less benefit than the 3.5 equivalent and they rely on a busted CMB vs. CMD that never took into account that player characters gain HD slower than monsters.
*A lot of spells that were ignored because they're were just slightly worse than another spell have remained unnerfed, and many game breaking spells weren't touched at all. Most useless spells are still useless.
*Except for Paladin and core only Bard, the fixes aren't extensive enough to raise anyone's tier, and martial caster power disparity is still a big thing. Core only Monk is still terrible for anything other than a dip.
*Power Attack is easier to use, but not as useful. Instead of being able to trade any amount of accuracy for an equal amount of damage, you're locked to a fixed amount dependent on your BAB. The better ratio of the trade for two handed weapons remains untouched and the penalty for using it with light weapons has been removed, so it's still a pretty good feat despite this.
*Intimidate no longer stacks with itself, ridding the system of yet another trick mundane characters could use.

Other/Mixed:
*Since character creation and advancement rules weren't covered by the OGL, the experience chart, wealth by level numbers, and point buy are all different.
*Ability score increasing items are now locked to the belt slot and headband slot. This is good for most classes, since fun items don't have to worry about occupying a slot that may have a mandatory item. Unfortunately it hurts MAD characters even more, as they need to pay even more to boost their ability scores.
*[[Level Adjustment]] no longer exists and there are no rules for playing as monsters. At the same time however all the "enemy" races that were LA +1 for no real reason but what fans deemed "exotic race tax" are now 100% usable as player races. This continued as the system progressed and many "monster" races got mechanical support for player use.
*Bards and Barbarians now work off a number of rounds they can keep their special abilities active instead of a number of uses that last a certain number of rounds. This has many implications that both help and hurt the two classes.

{{Pathfinder-Classes}}

==''Pathfinder Tales''==
The series of novels written for the setting. There are over thirty of them now, with some ''[[Forgotten Realms]]'' authors occasionally writing for Paizo, most notably [[Ed Greenwood]] who <u>made</u> ''Forgotten Realms''. This may be an indicator of how much [[Wizards of the Coast]] messing around with the settings drove people off.

==Adventure Paths==
One of the big draws to the system is the pre-written campaigns Paizo puts out called [[Adventure Path]]s, or APs. Continuing from the ''Shackled City'', ''Age of Worms'' and ''Savage Tide'' adventures Paizo created when running ''[[Dungeon Magazine]]'', each AP is 6 books long and, unlike the Dungeon Magazine adventures which went 1-21, run on average from levels 1 to ~15, though two go all the way to 20. These are detailed on the [[Adventure Path]] page.

==Rage==
''Pathfinder's'' barbarians are champion swimmers, but only when [[rage|raging]].

The ''Pathfinder RPG'' inspires a large amount of nerdrage over its rules, with frequent [[butthurt|bawwing]] over class balance, nonsensical nerfs to [[fighter]]s, buffed [[CoDzilla]] and [[wizard]]s and general [[troll|troll]]age. Any discussion of the differences between ''Pathfinder'' ("3.75" for fanboys) and regular 3.5 is almost guaranteed to produce a flamewar.

==Third Party==
Thanks to almost all rules content being released under the [[Open Gaming License]], a generous compatibility license (a publisher can put a "Pathfinder compatible" logo on the cover and reference the hardcover books by name as long as they don't pretend to be official, sell it non-exclusively on Paizo's site and don't try to make a sequel to the ''[[Book of Erotic Fantasy]]'') and the system's large market scale have given it substantial third party support. The most notable and high quality non-module third party support include Dreamscarred Press (who have remade 3.5 [[Psionics]], [[Incarnum]] and [[Book of Nine Swords]] with the love Wizards of the Coast never gave these systems), Drop Dead Studios ([[Spheres of Power]]), and Legendary Games ([[Epic Levels|Mythic]], but also a good deal of expansion on the less supported parts of Pathfinder). Many third party generic fantasy modules support Pathfinder alongside [[Old School Roleplaying|OSR]] and [[Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition|5E]].

==Second Edition==
Paizo eventually released [[Pathfinder Second Edition|second edition of Pathfinder]] in August of 2019. It made several changes, like both [[goblin]]s and [[alchemist]]s being core choices. Takes a lot of inspiration from both classic and modern roleplaying games, perhaps most surprisingly seeing heavy influence from the good parts of 4e (More on that later). Also, after years of deflecting criticism with "4e, bluh bluh," the devs naturally put in a dig at the infamous 4e Forgotten Realms while listing what they would ''not'' do to Golarion stating all changes would be the passage of time and that every AP happened. The playtest hit August 2nd 2018.

The dig at 4e is hilarious because, as /tg/ has pointed out, many of the mechanics are ''literally'' exactly the same kind of mechanics that 4e did itself.

* [http://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo5lkl9 Announcement on the main Paizo blog.]
* [http://paizo.com/pathfinderplaytest The main page for the playtest.]
* [http://paizo.com/pathfinderplaytest/faq The FAQ for the playtest and 2e in general.]

Also of note is the existence of Corefinder: Essentially third-party publisher Legendary Games' attempt to distill 1E to its basest aspects while also addressing some of the greatest issues with it (essentially doing for Pathfinder 1e what Pathfinder did for D&D 3.5e). As it stands, it's still heavily WIP, but it might yet remain a potent force in the RPG marketplace even after its death.

==Links==
* [http://paizo.com/pathfinder ''Pathfinder''] at Paizo Publishing, for convenience.
* [http://pathfinderwiki.com Pathfinder Wiki], because everything has a wiki these days.
* [http://www.d20pfsrd.com/ Pathfinder SRD]: Without the hassle of getting the books. Also includes plenty of third-party material, chiefly [[Psionics]] and [[Book of Nine Swords|Path of War]]
* [http://www.archivesofnethys.com/Default.aspx Archives of Nethys]: The SRD for the system. Once a great fanmade alternative to the official SRD, Paizo decided they couldn't be bothered to maintain the official one anymore and hired the owner to make it the official one.

[[Category:Roleplaying]]

Dice

2022-06-11T13:52:46Z

2601:249:8200:5A40:EDD0:94F4:370F:F6AE: /* d3 */

[[Image:dice.jpg|thumb|I COULD JUST DIVE INTO THEM!]]
[[Image:Uglydie.jpg|thumb|SO FUCKING UGLY. But he has a fetching [[hat]].]]
[[Dice]] (singular: '''die''') are high-impact polyhedra. In [[role-playing games]] and tabletop [[wargame]]s, they are used as randomizers to inject an element of chance into the game. Non-gamers often only know about the six-sided die (hereafter referred to as the d6) thanks to the ubiquity of games like [[Monopoly]] and [[Yahtzee]]. Which dice are used tends to vary by system. [[Dungeons and Dragons]], for instance, makes use of all types. On the other hand, [[White Wolf]] games and Classic Traveller use only ten- and six-sided dice, respectively. On the other hand, some games don't use dice at all! These tend to be relatively new games like [[Nobilis]] or [[Amber]], or board games that use instead use the abomination known as a spinner (at first a result of war rationing, later used for non-numerical results).

Bear in mind, if you're not familiar with how statistics work, one d12 does not have the same probability distribution as two d6s (same goes for any combination of die). A single die of good quality will have the same percentage chance for any side to roll, whereas using multiple die will result in a probability distribution resembling a bell curve (in the two d6's case, seven will be the most common roll, followed by sixs and eights, then fives and nines, and so on). Keep this in mind when you're doing homebrew rules. Likewise, it's important to remember that dice can't roll 0, so the average is 0.5 higher than half the highest number (3.5 for a d6), not simply half.

If you do not have dice for whatever reason, consider <strike>[[chits]]</strike> getting some fucking dice. Or, since you clearly have a device with an internet connection if you're reading this, use one of the countless virtual dice rollers available online.

Dice are considered by most people to be impartial arbiters of [[statistics|random chance]]. [[Fa/tg/uy]]s (and craps players) know better. Dice are controlled or at least influenced by the unseen force of Dice Mojo. It is believed that Dice Mojo can be influenced by players through manifold rituals, including:

*Placing a die with the desired number upward, that it 'gets used to' that position and tends to return to it.
*Placing a die with the desired number downward, that the die is tricked into thinking it has already made a bad roll and will produce a good outcome on the subsequent roll.
*Rolling a die until a string of good rolls are achieved, tapping into a streak of 'good mojo' or 'rolling out' bad outcomes.
*Various chants, prayers, threats, and curses made toward the die in order to entice or coerce it into [[Natural 20|producing favorable rolls.]]
*Being careful not to drop dice or just roll them to pass the time till next turn, as when rolling a twenty, the critical ratio may be "used up" for the day.
*Building dice towers as tribute to Dice Gods that they may bless one's dice with good Mojo.

The one true method (at least for those without specialized tools) for finding if a die is cursed or lucky dice however is putting it in a cup of very salty water and seeing which side floats to the top. Clear dice are less vulnerable to these imperfections since their see through nature means manufactures can't get away with substantial air pockets.

=Dice on /tg/=
Once upon a time some admin thought that it would be a good idea to give /tg/ a dice rolling mechanism. In practice it's mostly ignored, or it serves similar purpose as "first person to get doubles" threads, although some enterprising fa/tg/uys have found good uses for them, and it used to be that good fun could be had at the expense of newfags that didn't know how to work the die-roller properly. Because your results don't become visible until you post your comment (and yet for some reason, appear on top of it rather than at its bottom), threads utilizing the feature can be a bit bloated. If you give /tg/ a random table to roll on, then each person responding will have to post once to roll, and once again to remark on their results. That said, it works well for things like the [[Template:40k-Faction-Creation-Tables|40k faction generation tables]].

'''TG dice''' is what fa/tg/uys call the strange phenomenon whereby /tg/'s random number generator tends to be anything but. The reason for this is that /tg/'s dice aren't truly random. Like most RNGs it's actually a pseudo-random generator tied to 4chan's server clock. The effect usually isn't that dramatic, but fatguys love to blame it for their shit rolls anyhow.

{{clear}}

=Types of Dice=
==d0==
Nobody knows what a 0-sided dice looks like, and they are useless anyway because they always land on a 42 for some reason.

==d1==
[[Image:Mobius dice.jpg|thumb|100px]]
Rolling this visually elusive die involves armed, digited humanoids gesturing with one arm while extending only a single centralmost digit of its hand and informing the party what's gonna happen. The few one sided dice that exist are either just a ball with the number 1 written on them, or a mobius ring.

It is the damage die for unarmed strikes in 5e, assuming you don't have a feat or class that upgrades them.

==d2==
[[Image:D2.gif|thumb|200px|left|A d2. Careful not to spend it all in one place.]]
[[Image:Actual d2.jpg|thumb|200px|A more literal version that definitevely costs more than the penny you could be using instead, it can double as a less hazardous d4 however]]

A d2 isn't a die - it's a coin.

You flip the fucking thing. Heads count as 1, Tails count as 2.

You can, alternately, roll any other die - counting odds as 1 and evens as 2.

===In Various Works===
d2s are used with disturbing frequency in both CCGs and RPGs. They are used in most two player card games, with the notable exception of [[Yu-Gi-Oh]] using rock paper scissors as the preferred method, to determine who gets the first turn. Since this requires players have a coin to play ''anyways'', most TCGs have some oddball cards that use coin flips for random effects. They rarely show up in serious matches because the vast majority of these would be crap even if you ''could'' ensure the outcome. The [[Pokemon]] TCG bucked the trend of this being unusual and (especially early on) has such effects be common.

The RPG ''Bean!'' is a d2-based game, and it's actually pretty good.

Loaded d2s, known as double sided coins, are extremely popular in fiction. This is probably because they're the easiest die to recognize as/prove is loaded, and the most consistent.

===Also Currency===
The d2 are the only dice you can put in a vending machine and spend for candy. With string and a sufficient dexterity score, you don't even have to "spend" the d2 at all (This only works on 50 year old or so vending machines).
{{clear}}

==d3==
Not much to say about it.
[[Image:D3.jpg|thumb|right|The D3...]]
[[Warhammer 40k]] uses D3's <s>every once in awhile</s> [[Warhammer_40,000/Tactics(8E)| all the time]] - [[Manticore Rocket Launcher|Manticores]], & other cases such as +D3 attacks, 2 + D3 objectives, etc. Most of the time, they don't actually use a D3 - they just roll a [[d6]], at which points three schools of thought engage in a holy war:
* A few subtract 3 from any result that's 4 or higher. So, for example, a 5 becomes a 2.
* The others divide the result by two, rounding up. So, for example, a 5 becomes a 3.
*<strike>Lazy people just assign the value of 1 to the first 2 numbers, and so on. For example, a 4 would be a 2.</strike> This method and the method above will yield the same results.

>rolls d6, getting a 3

>divides by 2, rounding up to get 2

>assigns 1-2 to 1, 3-4 to 2, 5-6 to 3

>2 == 2

>CP rerolls, this time getting a 5

>5/2 rounding up = 3

>assigning values yields 3

>3 == 3

The 40k rulebook explicitly proselytizes the second option, which means the former is [[heresy]]. Other games don't really care as much.

Actual d3s come in two major flavours: The weird triangular nublette things seen to the right, which are largely used by people who think having weird dice makes you interesting, and d6es which had 1, 2 and 3 written on them twice, used by people who like to build things out of dice.

Since you can readily simulate a d3 result easily enough without obtaining extra dice why in the hell would you bother?

<s>Because I have OCD, that’s why!</s> Because collecting is fun, and [[Dungeons & Dragons|DnD]] already has enough math.
{{clear}}

==d4==
[[image:D4.jpg|thumb|right|This fucker will hurt more than any lego.]]
A tetrahedral [[dice|die]] that has the second-sharpest points of any die (only the [[d8]] is sharper), and, appropriately enough, has four sides. Used by Wizards, small weapons, and low-caliber firearms in d20 modern. At least it gets more love than the [[d12]], which probably falls asleep every night in a pool of tears and melted butter.

There are two ways to print the numbers on a D4. On one, the numbers are arranged on the corners of each face, and so the number at the top (it will always be three of the same number) is what you actually rolled. On the other kind, the numbers are arranged in the middle of each side of the face, and so the number on the bottom (again, it will always be three of the same number) tells you what you rolled. Oldfags will insist the "numbers on the bottom" d4 is the one true way, despite the fact that they need the full power of their coke-bottle glasses to see the numbers. [[Skub|Don't argue]] with 'em, just keep using the d4s that you and everyone at the table can read.

===Fucking Caltrops===
Whilst the d4 isn't as sharp as a d8, it has one major bit of natural defense - no matter what way it lands, it will have a point face-up. Because it's the smallest die, care needs to be used - if one escapes its dice-box and into the wild, it will wait, with its [[Bear Lore|natural weapon]] ready, for the exact moment someone walks into its vicinity barefoot to strike, whereupon it will inflict some surprisingly-vicious puncture wounds.

Somewhat related, in D&D Caltrops inflict 1d4 damage. [[Just as planned|Coincidence]]?
{{clear}}

==d6==
''Not the same thing as the [[D6 System]] by [[West End Games]].''

[[Image:Cube_template.gif|thumb|do-it-yourself kit]]
If you don't know what a d6 is, holy shit are you in the wrong place.
Go back to playing [[Monopoly]] in your blissful ignorance that it uses two of them.

A d6 with indented pips and rounded corners has a significantly higher chance of rolling a one than anything else. Do not trust them. Unless you're rolling Morale tests, in which case start praying for a one...now.

Fun Fact: Do you own a regular #2 pencil? If so, congratulations, [[Barrel dice|you have a d6]].

See [[Cubes]] for more details.

===Delta-6===
A die-rolling method for numbers from 0-5 with a particular curve.

Roll two d6, and subtract the smaller from the larger.

The curve looks like this:
{|style="border:1px solid black;" cellspacing=0 cellpadding=3
! roll !! odds % !!  
|-
| 0 || 1/6 16.7% || <tt>######</tt>
|-
| 1 || 5/18 27.8% || <tt>##########</tt>
|-
| 2 || 2/9 22.2% || <tt>########</tt>
|-
| 3 || 1/6 16.7% || <tt>######</tt>
|-
| 4 || 1/9 11.1% || <tt>####</tt>
|-
| 5 || 1/18 5.5% || <tt>##</tt>
|}
{{clear}}

==d7==
[[Image:D7 1.jpg|thumb|left|The bizarre d7. This wasn't even on this page until 2020.]]
[[File:D7 2.jpg|thumb|right|This thing costs £4.95 ($6.38)]]
It exists. Use for whatever reason you could possibly need a d7 for.

In seriousness, there are very limited uses for this die. Maybe you could use it to randomly select a day or some shit. They're also advertised for use in seven-player backgammon games.
{{clear}}

==d8==
The eight-sided die is an octohedron: one of the symmetrical polyhedra known as the "Platonic solids."
[[Image:Buncha_d8s.jpg|thumb|right|A wild herd of d8s]]

Despite being a "Platonic" solid, it looks like two pyramids caught in the beautiful act of reproduction. Long live the dice race.

A d8 was always used for hit points for [[Dungeons & Dragons]] monsters, and in Advanced D&D it was used for those classes that have more hit points but weren't supposed to be as butch as Fighters or Paladins.

Eight-sided dice also have the most variations with weird not-numbers stuff on them, like compass directions, random weather, letters. They're also used as below-bargain-basement minifigs because one point is always off the table, like a big nose, or turret.

When you played Dragon Dice, the d8s were the terrain, which could change under your feet without moving your army, somehow.

James Ernest came up with a game "Dogfight" that uses d8s for their numbers, for being pointy and for turning in circles when you try to roll them like wheels... then he remembered that people put weird shit on d8s and he came up with a new game called "DiceLand," which is a beautiful game.

[[Fantasy Flight Games]] fucking *loves* themselves some d8s. Their games make you wonder if all their parents were killed in a horrible cube-shaped accident.

Also the [[Neon Genesis Evangelion|Fifth Angel]] is a huge floating d8.
{{clear}}

==d10==
[[Image:Ten-sided die.png|right|100px]]

It's a [[die]]. With ten sides. Pretty simple concept.

It's in the shape of a pentagonal trapezohedron. You can stand it on its point and spin it like a top. You should not do this, however, as it is the universal sign of boredom and is considered faux pas in most gaming circles.

The tenth side usually bears only a zero, but you should still read it as "ten" because you want your result to be 1-10, not 0-9.

===Rolling d100 Using Two d10s===
[[Image:D10_bronze_thorns.jpg|thumb|Your d10 dice are not this good-looking. But they are probably easier to read from across the table.]]

[[Dark Heresy|Some Systems]] require you to roll d100s frequently. There's a better way of doing it than rolling a golf ball with 100 sides.

Get out two d10s. Use one die to denote the singles digit and another die to denote the tens digit. Some d10s have two digits per side (see above) to make differentiating your digits easier, but you can roll d100 with any two d10, provided you specify beforehand which die is the tens and which the ones.

Reading it off is simple. Did you roll a '''20''' and a '''4'''? That's a '''24'''. A '''90''' and a '''1'''? '''91'''. A '''00''' and a '''5'''? Just a '''5'''.

The only possibly ambiguous result is two zeroes: a '''00''' and a '''0'''. Obviously you rolled a '''100'''. Why? Because the alternative is a '''0''' which you can never roll with any other die. That, and the system assumes a roll from '''1''' to '''100''', not '''0''' to '''99'''.

Mathematically, each digit is determined in an independent manner. There are exactly 10*10=100 two-digit combinations, all equally likely. You now have a uniform distribution of 100 different results, as desired.
{{clear}}

==d12==
[[Image:D12_Cries.jpg|thumb|right]]
The [[d12]] is the loneliest die. It is used for barbarian hit dice and greataxe damage in [[Dungeons & Dragons]]. The fact that [[Orcs]] (and [[Half-Orcs]]) are both the most common barbarians and the most common wielders of greataxes, it is suspected that Gruumsh is the head of a conspiracy aiming to eliminate the [[d10]] in favor of the [[d12]], in order to "purify" dice sets so that they consist only of true platonic solids.

Observant smar/tg/uys will notice that d12 are the hitdice used for undead and dragons instead of the usual [[d8]]s.

[[d12]] is the highest stats can ordinarily go in [[Savage Worlds]] or [[Ironclaw]]. [[BBEG]]s and [[DMPC]] [[Mary Sues]] can have [[d20]], but it's hella rare.

[[d12]] shows up in [[Cthulhu]]-themed games, like Pokethulhu or [[Cthulhu Dice]], probably because [[d12]] is just as beautiful and graceful as the mighty Cthulhu.

One of the few places where the [[d12]] is not lonely, and is in fact used a great deal, is the [[DragonMech]] campaign setting. Its chief use there is for damage rolls with mech weaponry.

[[Alternity]] was very friendly to the [[d12]], choosing to throw the [[d10]] under the bus instead because it wasn't far enough away from the [[d8]] to work as a difficulty step.

[[Pathfinder Second Edition|Pathfinder 2e]] makes good use of these. Since 2d6 weapons don't exist in this system, more weapons use the d12.

If you’re on a budget, the [[d12]] is your best friend, capable of functioning as a [[d3]], [[d4]], [[d6]], and even a [[d10]] or [[d8]] in a pinch. Not that useful, but it can still come in handy.
{{clear}}

==d16==
[[File:d16.jpg|thumb]]
Used basically just in [[Blood Bowl]] to randomly select a player on a team (which has a max of 16 players). Originally introduced by the [http://www.thenaf.net/the-naf/history/ NAF] in 2013 (when G-Dubs refused to license their block dice anymore), [[GW]] wised up in their 2016 edition of the game and added it to their product line, replacing the old method of drawing a [[chits|chit]] from a cup.
{{clear}}

==d20==
[[Image:Green_d20.jpg|thumb|'''BOW DOWN BEFORE YOUR GOD''']]
Your best friend and worst enemy.

Before [[TSR]]/[[Wizards of the Coast]] tried to trademark "d20", every gamer knew what the fuck an icosahedron is, and why "natural 20" is a gift from God.

'''The Truth About 20-Sided Dice:'''

There are a limited number of “twenties” in any given d20. That is, no matter how many times you roll a d20, you cannot roll another twenty once the supply has run out. These twenties can only be replenished by rolling a corresponding one with the same die. Thus every gamer is duty-bound to protect their supply of good rolls. If a friend rolls a twenty using your die, not only have they stolen your good roll, but they have doomed you to the extra one required to replenish the twenty.

Some players get excited when they roll several twenties in a row, concluding the dice are “hot”. Don’t make this blunder! This is like driving your car for 400 miles without gassing up, and then concluding that your car is a perpetual motion machine. After a few good rolls, pass the die off to an unwitting companion and let them charge it up for you.

Statisticians have known about this behavior for years. They call it “the probability seesaw”. Unlike the bell-shaped curve, in the seesaw system the odds of rolling high or low is directly proportional to what has been rolled in the past. They usually pretend this isn’t true. If a statistician hands you a die insisting that “any given roll has the same odds of rolling a one or a twenty”, it means he’s handing you a depleted die in the hopes of taking advantage of you. Don’t fall for it!

Now the secret is yours. Please put this knowledge to good use*.

<nowiki>*By “good use” I mean, “take advantage of other players”.</nowiki>

{|
|-
|valign=center| The '''[[d20 System]]''' for role playing came later.<br/>
Like eighteen centuries later.<br/>
Don't believe me? Check this out:
|[[Image:2nd_century_Roman_d20.jpg|center|thumb|200px|2nd century Rome, bitches]]
|}
{{clear}}

==d30==
[[Image:D30_olympic.jpg|thumb|right]]

Only ever used for those critical-hit tables when you rolled a natural [[D20|20]].
Or if your DM was rolling damage and felt like being a dick.

But man, would it leave a bruise when your little sister threw it at your head.
{{clear}}

==d34==
[[Image:D34.jpg|thumb|right|[[Extra Heresy|WHY?!]]]]

Yes, they exist. Apparently if you roll 3 of them and subtract 2 from the total, you get a normal distribution from 1-100, assuming that's your idea of a good time.
{{clear}}

==d50==
[[Image:D50_Alan_Davies.jpg|thumb]]
[[Rage|Fifty goddamn sides!!!!]]

For when you want to do 2-100 points of damage with a vaguely normal distribution.

... yeah, I don't know either

It also doubles as a golf ball.
{{clear}}

==d100==
[[File:Zocchihedron2.jpg|300px|thumb|right|Golfball.jpg]]
Take that, d50's!

They're useful when you really want to take 5 minutes to find out if you hit something in [[Dark Heresy]]. In other words, better just use a pair of [[D10]]'s like a normal human being.

Apparently it took about 6 years to make this die. I guess this means that it takes 6 years to put the numbers 1-100 on a fucking golf ball.

===Usage===
It may seem awesome when you see it, but as soon as you get one (and whoever's selling it to you is also aware of how unspeakably lame it is, and will probably even tell you) you will find that it has two major flaws: it takes about a minute to stop fucking rolling around and if you aren't blessed with a perfectly level playing surface you will never find out exactly what you've rolled (and when there are six other numbers right next to the 100 and 1, that's a pretty big problem). Oh, and to top it off, it isn't even very balanced, so it's effectively a loaded die.

On the other hand, if you hate your friends, show up to your next meeting and sweep all the d10s off the table, then drop your d100 right in the middle with a theatrical gesture and watch as everyone is mesmerized by its incessant rolling (see: takes about a minute to stop fucking rolling around). Take this opportunity to pocket the d10s, run away and never come back.

[[FATAL]] seemed to expect you to use this (but then again FATAL expects you to play FATAL so you can't expect much).

Seriously, though, let the cat play with it so they'll keep away from the other dice.
{{clear}}

==d120==
This is the most number of sides that a die can have while being 'mathematically fair die' (that doesn't have the dual problems of rolling forever and being prohibitively hard to read). The d120 stops rolling after a reasonable time (with the condition that this only applies if you don't roll with 'too much force'). It is also a bit tricky to read (but still perfectly possible). The company that sells the die points out that it can act as any of the standard 7 dice (d4, d6, d8, d10, d10 of 10s, d12, and d20). And thanks to the chart they released for free, you don't even have to do the math yourself [http://thedicelab.com/d120tables.html]. Of course for the d100 roll you'll have to roll the d120 twice, roll 2 d120, or use a die other than the d120 (although you could still use the d120, e.g. a d10 and a d120). [http://nerdist.com/this-d120-is-the-largest-mathematically-fair-die-possible/]

==Barrel Dice==
[[Image:Barrel Dice.gif|right|thumb|Do a Barrel Roll!]]
Those weird-ass dice you find on that one dusty shelf behind the counter of your game store. Rather than platonic shapes with numbers on each side, it's a prism shape rounded at the ends, with numbers on the long sides. While not particularly popular, they're an excellent option for [[d4]]s, since they don't feel like the torture of a thousand hells to step on. Supposedly, they roll more evenly without as much bias and are harder to "throw", but the larger ones have the same problem as [[d50]]s. Hell, a barrel d50 would never ever stop rolling.

If you're super poor and can only afford the pencils and paper for your pencil-and-paper RPGs, your can use your pencils as barrel [[d6]]s.

==Crayola Dice==
{{Oldschool}}
[[Image:Crayolad20.JPG|left]]
[[Image:Crayoladice.JPG|thumb|This set actually had a d10. That was pretty weird at the time.]]
Are you old enough to remember when dice didn't have inked or painted numbers? With the old D&D games, you got soft plastic powder blue dice and a soft white and red crayon. In order to see the numbers you had to fill in the etched spots with the wax.

There were no d10's either. The d20 was labeled 0-9 twice (fit 2 digits on a die face? IMPOSSIBLE!) so you colored one half of the numbers white and the other half red. It acted as your D10, and if you needed a d20, you declared one color to be +10 before you rolled.

These dice were made out of pretty soft plastic, and after 25 years, most of mine don't even stop rolling anymore. No more corners.

This has been a bout of nostalgia.

Go away now.
{{clear}}

==Gallery==
<gallery>
premiumdice.jpg|Premium Dice!
premiumdice2.png|Premium Dice cont.
Big_Gay_Purple_d4.png‎|A d4 in the wild, natural weapon readied. As you can see by the notch on the left edge, this one has already claimed a victim.
Caltrop.jpg|Now that's just sick and wrong.
I hope you step on a d4.png
Go_outside_die.jpg|Try and MAKE me go outside. Fuck off, d12.
anna_louge_dice.jpg|Even camwhores know that the d20 is sexy, and each face has an exactly 5% chance of appearing.
DToM.jpg|It is said if not for the trusty D4 the Union would never have one its independance from Britain and the reason no one can beat Russia. As Russia's savage wilds are famous for its saber toothed white furred D4's to defend the motherland.
DiceShamingPoster.png
Gate Keeping Dice.png|There are people who hate dice, those people are wrong.
PennyArcade_papvp2_8.jpg|We're Number One
Tgdice.png
Gameof1s.png
</gallery>

==See Also==
*[[Chits]] - The nega-dice of yesteryear.
*[[Dice pool]]
*[[Exploding die]]
*[[Fudge dice]]
*[[D6 System]]
*[[D20 system]]

==External Links==
[http://www.dicecollector.com/JM/ Dice Collector gallery of all the dice; all of them]

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSQIir5xxWc Lou Zocchi trying to get you to buy his dice.]

[[Category:Game Mechanics]][[Category:Dice]]

Record of Lodoss War

2022-06-04T09:56:37Z

2601:249:8200:5A40:EDD0:94F4:370F:F6AE: Got rid of the Japanese racial commentary

{{cleanup}}
{{stub}}

'''Record of Lodoss War''' was originally (1986) a series of transcripts (or "replays") of a [[D&D]] campaign rewritten as serialized fiction in a magazine. The serialized stories were eventually rewritten into three fantasy novels called "RPG Replay Record of Lodoss War" 1, 2 and 3. They tried to sell the campaign setting to TSR, but TSR refused to come to the bargaining table. After the trilogy, and probably after getting the finger from TSR, the company that was writing & publishing the transcripts decided to write their own RPG rules, which became [[Sword World RPG]].

=== The main characters are each an example of the classes from the 1974 edition original D&D: ===
* '''Parn''', fighter, sorta the main character
* '''Deedlit''', elf, main love-interest chick
:(who was Hiroshi Yamamoto's character, who is a GUY behind that sexy elf chick you nerds have in your spank-banks)
* '''Ghim''', dwarf,
: (main character for Hitoshi Yasuda, who quit playing early because he had better things to do)
* '''Woodchuck''', thief
* '''Etoh''', cleric
* '''Slayn''', magic-user
* ... and there wasn't a halfling.
For what it's worth, the DM for the first campaign was Ryo Mizuno.

...<s> Yes, there was also an [[Anime|animu]] about it, and some comic-book [[Manga|mangoes]], but if someone turns this article all [[weeaboo]] and shit, we will find you and beat you. </s> So, while the anime OAV series has stiff moments or designs that may irritate the veteran neckbeard (the dwarf has pointy ears,) it's still the best animated example of D&D. Which, given that the others were either about a bunch of preteens produced in the Dark Age of Animation or a shit adaptation of a [[Dragonlance|beloved book]], doesn't say much, but one should be able to deduce that the 13 episode OAV is at least decent, and well written/roleplayed.

[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]]
[[Category:Weeaboo]]

Record of Lodoss War

2022-06-04T09:55:44Z

2601:249:8200:5A40:EDD0:94F4:370F:F6AE: I added "(the dwarf has pointy ears)" as an example of things that bother neckbeards, because it bothers me

{{cleanup}}
{{stub}}

'''Record of Lodoss War''' was originally (1986) a series of transcripts (or "replays") of a [[D&D]] campaign rewritten as serialized fiction in a magazine. The serialized stories were eventually rewritten into three fantasy novels called "RPG Replay Record of Lodoss War" 1, 2 and 3. They tried to sell the campaign setting to TSR, but TSR refused to come to the bargaining table. After the trilogy, and probably after getting the finger from TSR, the company that was writing & publishing the transcripts decided to write their own RPG rules, which became [[Sword World RPG]].

=== The main characters are each an example of the classes from the 1974 edition original D&D: ===
* '''Parn''', fighter, sorta the main character
* '''Deedlit''', elf, main love-interest chick
:(who was Hiroshi Yamamoto's character, who is a GUY behind that sexy elf chick you nerds have in your spank-banks)
* '''Ghim''', dwarf,
: (main character for Hitoshi Yasuda, who quit playing early because he had better things to do)
* '''Woodchuck''', thief
* '''Etoh''', cleric
* '''Slayn''', magic-user
* ... and there wasn't a halfling. Maybe because it reminds them of Ainu, and Japs hate Ainu.
For what it's worth, the DM for the first campaign was Ryo Mizuno.

...<s> Yes, there was also an [[Anime|animu]] about it, and some comic-book [[Manga|mangoes]], but if someone turns this article all [[weeaboo]] and shit, we will find you and beat you. </s> So, while the anime OAV series has stiff moments or designs that may irritate the veteran neckbeard (the dwarf has pointy ears,) it's still the best animated example of D&D. Which, given that the others were either about a bunch of preteens produced in the Dark Age of Animation or a shit adaptation of a [[Dragonlance|beloved book]], doesn't say much, but one should be able to deduce that the 13 episode OAV is at least decent, and well written/roleplayed.

[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]]
[[Category:Weeaboo]]