Type: Humanoid (Goblinoid)
Environment: Jungle and underground caves
Attack: Claw, morningstar, or greataxe
Special Qualities: Trip attacks, sometimes bleeding attacks.
Organization: Solitary, pair, or in gangs (3-7)
From the personal journal of Azalai Korias, Elven Wizard:
26 Olarune, 998:
We’ve been sent deeper into the gorge, and found that we weren’t the only ones harrying the hobgoblin outpost. From the other side a group of bugbears was attempting to expand into the territory that the hobgoblins held.
Bugbears are larger than hobgoblins and individually more powerful, but their lack of organization meant that the two groups were in a stalemate until our interference. The bugbears dared not assault the hobgoblin outpost, yet the hobgoblins could not spare the manpower to clear the bugbears out.
Their warriors appear to have learned a few tricks from the hobgoblins, and have been known to sweep the legs with their long morningstars. It’s said that another group ran into a bugbear rogue or assassin, but when cornered it shadow jumped away.
I suspect that within a week or two we’ll be asked to deal with their threat once and for all.
Bugbears are taller, stronger, tougher, and more nimble than the typical human. They are the rulers of the goblinoids and most powerful of their kind, and as a result bugbears possess a ferocity that recalls their bear-like facial appearance that gave them their name. In Eberron, many of the more impoverished and lower-ranking bugbears have sharpened their claws, sometimes fitting them with shards of bone or stone. More advanced bugbears, along with their leaders, favor the use of morningstars. Some of those leaders have even mastered the human arts of cleaving and whirling to create area-of-attacks with their morningstars.
A lesser-known group of bugbears, their existence unknown to most of Xen'drik, function as trained killers and assassins. Most of the time, these assassin work exclusively for their own kind, or more powerful creatures that live below. Lately, however, rumors persist that agents of the Emerald Claw have begun to employ these bloodletters as their private mercenary force.