Editing Grung (section)

==A&D Grung==
[[File:Grung MC Greyhawk.jpg|right|300px]]
[[Greyhawk]] Grung are highly territorial, 3ft tall humanoid toads or bullfrogs who inhabit swamps and marshes... no duh, were you expecting them to live in deserts? Whilst they are an intelligent, bipedal, tool-using race, evolution has robbed them of some of their more bestial abilities; grung are incapable of making the prodigious leaps normally associated with frogs, and likewise have lost their ancestral long, prehensile tongues - in stark contrast to their [[bullywug]] counterparts. However, they have gained mouthfuls of razor-sharp fangs, so they're not completely screwed over. That said, they still breathe through their skin, and so they need to keep their slick hides nice and moist. Grung are colored like bullfrogs; dappled green & brown backs, contrasting white or yellow bellies. Their eyes — smaller than those of frogs and toads and protected by bony ridges — are red with black pupils. Males are slightly smaller than females.

One bestial ability that they ''do'' have, which [[bullywug]]s and [[grippli]] lack, is a skin that secretes toxic mucus. By rubbing a bladed weapon on their bodies, it becomes coated in venomous slime, which remains volatile for 10 rounds; victims cut or pieced by such weapons must succeed on a Save vs. Poison or '''die''' in four rounds. The same slime also impregnates their saliva, so a grung bite is also deadly; it's slightly diluted, but not enough to save you (+2 to the saving throw, death in ''six'' rounds). Add in that grung have long realized they can compensate for their small size through ambush tactics, and... yeah, they are ''nasty'' little buggers.

Not helping is that they are stupidly aggressive. Grung villages claim all territory within at least a mile of their tribal settlement as theirs, and will attack any outsider from their tribe that enters this area - when not ambushing members of other races, grung fight constant border clashes amongst their own tribal units. Such is their militant zeal that they will never negotiate; fights are to the death. This may be partially because grung are cannibals, and consume literally anything can catch, including humanoids and grung from other villages.

For obvious reasons, most swamp-dwelling cultures want to get rid of grung as soon as they can. Especially because the presence of a grung village poisons the water around it due to the many toxic toadlings swimming in it; any non-grung drinking the water must roll a successful saving throw vs. poison (with a +3 bonus) or become nauseated for 2d4 rounds. Nauseated creatures fight with penalties of -1 to their attack rolls and +1 to their Armor Class. That said, their poisonous skin protects them from the predatory attentions of most creatures, except those that are themselves immune to venom - such as certain species of giant snake. Grung poison is almost impossible to bottle (as any exposure to air causes it to decompose in ten rounds), so your players shouldn't get any bright ideas about trying to use that nasty sludge for their own uses.

A grung settlement is an untidy collection of crude shelters, sometimes concealed inside large dead trees, with ready access to open water; both for the grung to moisten themselves in, and to house grung eggs, as grung go through the same egg-tadpole-toadlet-toad lifestyle of any frog. Grung tadpoles become grunglets after three months and fully adult grung at the age of nine months. A tribe typically consists of about 10d6+40 adult grung, and another 25% of that number in grunglets.

Weirdly for a savage humanoid race, grung tribes are matriarchal, perhaps because the females are bigger and thusly stronger. War chiefs are all female, and the tribal chieftain is the strongest fighter among the war chiefs. Rising through the ranks is by duels to the death, with the victor getting the title. Each tribe also has a single female [[shaman]] of up to 3rd level. Her spheres are All, Animal, Combat, Healing (reversed spells only), and Plant.

According to the Oerth Journal #8, [[Wastri]] is the official patron god of the grung, which makes way too much sense when you think about it.