Bullywug

Bullywugs are upright, froglike amphibians of swamps, marshes, meres, and similar dank places. Smooth, mottled olive hide gives them a natural AC 6. They range from shorter than a human to about 7 feet tall, with enormous frog faces, wide mouths, bulging eyes, and webbed hands and feet. They wear no clothes but use any weapons, armor, and shields they can get. They have their own language, and brighter individuals speak broken common.

They always attack in numbers and try to surround enemies. Their favored move is a leap that can carry them 15 feet high and 30 feet ahead; a hopping attack gets +1 to hit (not damage) and doubles damage with an impaling weapon. Combined with excellent camouflage, this makes them natural ambushers, imposing -2 on opponents' surprise rolls.

Smarter than frogs, bullywugs live in organized or loosely organized, brutally authoritarian bands that cooperate to hunt and survive. They prefer meat, chiefly fish and whatever game they can take, and are skilled hunters and fishers who build and use snares and nets. Their society is savage. Males rule; females, who with the young make up about half a tribe, exist only to lay eggs and have no standing. Bullywugs respect nothing but their leader and their strange frog god. They are chaotic evil and devoid of higher feelings.

Any community has a leader with 8 hp. A group of 30 or more adds a stronger leader (2 HD, 12+ hp, +1 damage) over five subleaders (8 hp each). Once a community reaches 60 or more, it is ruled by a chieftain (3 HD, 20+ hp, +2 damage) backed by five subchieftains (2 HD, 12+ hp, +1 damage). The dominant male rules until he grows too old, at which point a successor kills and eats him, one of the few times they fight among themselves. Unlike orcs and other chaotic races, they show little individual greed or hunger for power, and infighting is almost unheard of, though cynics say that is because they are too dull to start fights, not because they lack malice.

They need dark, damp homes to keep their skin wet. Most live in the open with loose borders and deal clumsily with intruders, though they kill and eat any they can. They hate their bigger cousins, the advanced bullywugs, and war on them whenever possible. They value coins and gems despite having little use for them, and a hoard may hold the occasional magic item.

Rather than filling a niche, bullywugs damage one. Too dim to manage their food sensibly, they overhunt and overfish an area until it is exhausted, then move on. They loathe humans and attack them immediately, but luckily favor remote country far from people.

A minority of bullywugs are bigger and smarter. These live in abandoned buildings and caves, dispatch hunters and patrols on a regular schedule, and hold defined territories sized to the group. They are well armed, organized, and more aggressive, fighting other bullywugs and monsters alike and raiding beyond their borders for food and loot, with a particular taste for human flesh. Being chaotic evil, they treat every trespasser, bullywugs included, as a threat or a meal. Each 10 advanced bullywugs present give a 10% chance that a 2nd-level shaman is among them.