# Race: Hobgoblin > [!info] Quick Facts > | | | > |---|---| > | **Rarity** | Uncommon | > | **Perception in Gryth** | Very negative. They are goblinoids, which settles the matter for most people before anything else is considered, and their organisation makes them frightening rather than pitiable. | > | **Guide Section** | Uncommon Races | ## Overview Hobgoblins share the Redlands of [[Continent - Edaria|Edaria]] with the goblins and share almost nothing else with them. Where a goblin scatters, a hobgoblin forms up, and where a goblin serves, a hobgoblin commands. ## The Ones Who Lead Hobgoblins are the leaders of goblinkind. A hobgoblin who wants a warband has one, because the goblins of the surrounding country will attach themselves to any sufficiently convincing authority, and a hobgoblin is built to supply it. They raise those warbands themselves, run them on obligation and reciprocal debt rather than on fear alone, and keep records of both going back generations. They are also, by a wide margin, the cleverest of goblinkind. The capacity is real and not merely a matter of confidence. Hobgoblins think further and more clearly than most goblins manage, and a hobgoblin challenged on a point will answer it properly, in whatever language the challenge arrived in. Travellers who expected grunting have found themselves losing an argument instead, and the experience is reported with some indignation. ## Pride, and Numbers They are proud, and they are aggressive in proportion to how many of them are present. A hobgoblin alone is formidable, measured, and frequently willing to talk. A hundred hobgoblins with their own people watching are something else entirely, because a hobgoblin fights better in front of an audience of hobgoblins than they ever will alone, and the whole of their military culture is built on that fact. ## Drilled, Not Inherited They carry the same thread of Feywild magic the goblins do, taken out of the young Feywild in the elder days along with the rest of goblinkind, and it shows only in how hard they are to charm. Everything else about them is trained. Hobgoblin children are drilled to arms as a matter of course, their communities are organised to a degree that unsettles every neighbour they have ever had, and nothing about a hobgoblin legion happened by accident. > [!warning] A difficult character to play > Hobgoblins are met with open hostility across most of the settled world, and are taken for the vanguard of something worse. Expect refused service, official harassment, and violence that nobody investigates. A player choosing this race is taking on a roleplaying challenge that will shape every settlement the party enters, and should agree that with the rest of the table before session one. ## Hobgoblin Traits **Ability Score Increase.** Your Constitution score increases by 2, and your Intelligence score increases by 1. **Age.** Hobgoblins reach adulthood at 15 and live up to 80 years. **Creature Type.** You are a Humanoid. You are also considered a goblinoid for any prerequisite or effect that requires you to be a goblinoid. **Size.** Your size is Medium. **Speed.** Your walking speed is 30 feet. **Darkvision.** You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You cannot discern colour in darkness, only shades of grey. **Fey Ancestry.** You have advantage on saving throws you make to avoid or end the charmed condition on yourself. **Martial Training.** You are proficient with two martial weapons of your choice and with light armour. **Saving Face.** Hobgoblins are careful not to lose face in front of their own. If you miss with an attack roll or fail an ability check or a saving throw, you can gain a bonus to the roll equal to the number of allies you can see within 30 feet of you, to a maximum bonus of +5. Once you use this trait, you cannot use it again until you finish a short or long rest. **Languages.** You can speak, read, and write Common and Goblin. ## Connections - [[Continent - Edaria]] — The Redlands, shared with the goblins --- ## Gallery ![[Race - Hobgoblin.jpg]] --- *See also: [[Races]]*