Piglin Brute

Piglin brutes are hostile and much tougher variants of piglins that guard bastion remnants. They spawn with golden axes. Unlike their piglin counterparts, they are always hostile towards the player, even if the player is wearing golden armor.

Spawning
Piglin brutes spawn exclusively in all types of bastion remnants.

Drops
Piglin brutes have a chance of 8.5% of dropping their held item (a with random durability).

Piglin brutes are not found with armor nor equip any type.

Experience
experience points are dropped upon death if killed by a player or tamed wolf.

Behavior
Despite similar appearances to Piglins, the piglin brute exhibits very different characteristics. Piglin brutes are always hostile to the player and are not distracted by gold related items or blocks. The Peaceful difficulty causes them to not attack players.

Unlike piglins, piglin brutes do not retreat from soul fire-related items, zoglins or zombified piglins. Also, unlike piglins, they cannot wear armour unless forced onto them using commands. The only trait they share in common is the hostility towards the wither and the wither skeleton.

Zombification
When in the Overworld or the End, piglin brutes transform into zombified piglins after 15 seconds. Upon transformation, the spawned zombified piglin has the Nausea effect for 10 seconds. The Nausea effect is purely cosmetic and has no impact on their behavior.

Trivia

 * Piglin brutes were created late in 1.16's development, so they were pushed to a minor release as the developers didn't want to add a new feature so close to release.