While discussing some concepts involving gnolls and elves in my current campaign, namely that the elves had waged a war of extermination against various beast races in the past, one of the players suggested he would rather fight a war against rampaging beast men instead of obnoxious elves. So of course he set the theme for the next campaign arc, conveniently involving an invasion plot I had wanted to use anyway, as well as bringing in the characters from a previous campaign who would be sitting right in the path of said invasion.
So . . .
1 - Races
The primary enemies. The current list is:
Equicephs (horses) (MH)
Giff (hippos) (Dragon)
Gnolls (hyenas) (MM)
Ibixians (goats) (MM 3)
Loxo (elephants) (MM 2)
Minotaurs (cows) (MM)
Rhek (rhinos) (BoED)
Are there any I'm missing from that?
I note that gnolls are the only natural carnivores on that list.
2 - Quadruped Races
Naturally the four-legged equivalents should have a say. That list is:
Centaurs (horses) (MM)
Bariaur (goats) (MP)
Hybsil (antelopes) (Monsters of Faerun)
Manotaurs (cows) (Tome of Horrors)
Wemics (lions) (Monsters of Faerun)
Again, am I missing anything from that list?
Once again, only one of these are based on carnivores.
3 - House Rules
Hybsils are fey in Monsters of Faerun, so they would need to be converted to monstrous humanoids.
Gnolls are humanoids, so they would get improved to monstrous humanoids.
My big question is, if I want to adjust the racial HD of these to either a uniform base of 2, how much should I adjust their CR?
What if I wanted to make them all medium-sized (for easier dungeon placement), or large-sized (for more intimidating field presence)? What about medium-sized plus powerful build?
What other tweaks to these races would be more "flavorful"?
Giff, Ibixians, Minotaurs, and Rhek all get powerful charge with a gore or head butt (for the giff), and Loxo have trample, but Equiceph and Gnolls are rather boring. Would trample be reasonable to add to Equicephs and a natural bite for Gnolls without pumping the CR too much?
What other races would be "fun" to add to the list? What sort of rampaging anthropomorphic herbivores would you going Conan on for invading your homeland?
And what about the errant carnivores on that list? Should I keep them? Use them as potential adversaries? Would you ally with insane gnolls to stop from being overrun by bloodthirsty hippo-men?
