Gnoll cleric
| h gnoll cleric (No tile) | |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 10 |
| Attacks |
Bite 1d4, Spell-casting 0d0 clerical |
| Base level | 8 |
| Base experience | 83 |
| Speed | 9 |
| Base AC | 6 |
| Base MR | 30 |
| Alignment | -10 (chaotic) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 2 (Quite rare) |
| Genocidable | Yes |
| Weight | 1200 |
| Nutritional value | 300 |
| Size | Medium |
| Resistances | poison |
| Resistances conveyed | None |
|
A gnoll cleric:
| |
| Reference | EvilHack - monst.c, line 610 |
A gnoll cleric, h, is a type of monster that appears in EvilHack. It is a gnoll that has infravision and can be seen via infravision, and is capable of casting monster spells.
A gnoll cleric has a bite attack and will attempt to cast one clerical monster spell during each of their turns, and possesses poison resistance.
Eating a gnoll cleric corpse or tin can confer telepathy, as with the corpses of other spellcasting monsters.
Generation
Randomly generated gnoll clerics are always created hostile.
A gnoll cleric has a 3⁄4 chance of being generated with armor, and an independent 1⁄5 chance of a cloak.
Strategy
Gnoll clerics can be unexpectedly deadly encounters in the mid-game: their spell list will always include the paralyze, vulnerability and summon insects monster spells, enabling them to make short work of characters that do not have a way to keep them out of melee range or handle swarms of insects such as soldier ants, fire ants and even illness-spreading locusts.
Origin
The gnoll is a creature that appears in various types of fantasy media, and is generally portrayed as a human-hyena hybrid or a form of humanoid hyena. The term originates from 1912 short story collection The Book of Wonder by Lord Dunsany, with one short story titled "How Nuth Would Have Practised His Art upon the Gnoles".
The gnoll of Dungeons & Dragons is introduced in the first boxed set of the game, and gnolls are described in Book 2: Monsters and Treasure as a "cross between Gnomes and Trolls (...perhaps, Lord Sunsany did not really make it all that clear)". These early gnolls were stated to be similar to hobgoblins with +2 morale, while a gnoll king and his bodyguard fought similar to trolls without regenerative power. The 1st Monster Manual for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and all subsequent material describe gnolls as aggressive desert-dwelling nomads that resemble humanoid hyenas, and actively raid and plunder other settlements; it also introduces Yeenoghu, the demon god of gnolls who many of them serve and worship. This portrayal of gnolls is the basis for their appearance in EvilHack.
In spite of their devotion to Yeenoghu, few gnolls that worship him (or any other god in much rarer cases) have any interest in ritual, making actual gnoll shamans and clerics very uncommon and few in number - gnolls that worship Yeenoghu see their brutality as a sign of their devotion, painting the eye of Yeenoghu onto their weapons and armor and howling his name as a war cry in battle.
Encyclopedia entry
We are born and we die.
No one cares, no one remembers,
and it doesn't matter.
This is why we laugh.
[ The Gnoll Credo, by J. Stanton ]
