Gnoll

Picture a big, upright human frame with a hyena's head, coat and features, and you have a gnoll. Their hands are as capable as any person's. Skin is a greenish gray that darkens around the muzzle, and a short mane runs from reddish gray to a dingy yellow. Besides their own tongue, many gnolls pick up the speech of hobgoblins, orcs, trolls or flinds.

Gnolls fight as a mob, trying to bury foes under sheer numbers. A strong leader or a flind can force them to hold a line and fight as a disciplined unit. They rarely bother with traps but like ambushes and attacks on an enemy's flank or rear. Weapons are distributed roughly as follows: pole arms 35%, battle axes 20%, swords 15%, bows 15%, morningstars 15%.

Each score of gnolls answers to a 3 Hit Die leader. A force of 100 or more includes a chieftain with 4 Hit Dice, AC 3 and +3 to damage from sheer strength, guarded by 2d6 elite warriors of 3 Hit Dice each (AC 4, +2 damage). Females fight as well as males, though they are usually more poorly armed and armored.

Gnolls haunt underground warrens and derelict ruins, and on the surface they move mostly at night. The strongest rules through terror. A lair houses 20 to 200 adult males, half that many females, and a crowd of noncombatant pups numbering double the adults, plus at least 1 slave per 10 adults and often far more. Underground a band has a 30% chance of keeping 1-3 trolls as servants and sentries. Surface bands keep guard animals 65% of the time, usually hyenas (4-16, 80%) and otherwise hyaenodons (2-12, 20%).

Alliances with trolls, ogres, bugbears, hobgoblins and orcs happen, but only when both sides are roughly matched. If the balance tips, hunger wins over loyalty and fear alike, and one side ends up eating the other. Gnolls hate goblins, kobolds, giants, humans, demihumans and any form of manual labor.

Any warm-blooded creature is food. Thinking prey is the favorite, because it screams more satisfyingly. A band hunts a region bare before moving on, and game may take several years to recover. A gnoll that somehow dies of old age reaches about 35 years.

Flinds are shorter, broader and more heavily muscled than gnolls, with coarse, grimy fur of mixed red and brown, less sloping foreheads and rounded but still bestial ears. Gnolls hold them in awe. Their great strength gives flinds +1 on attack rolls. Three in four carry clubs (1d6 damage); the rest wield the flindbar, a pair of iron rods joined by chain and whirled at speed, which strikes twice per round for 1d4 each. Any creature struck by a flindbar must save vs. wands; on a failure its weapon is snagged in the chain and yanked away. Flind leaders have 3+3 Hit Dice, Intelligence of at least 13, and Charisma 18 in gnoll eyes (15 to other flinds), and they always fight with flindbars.