4e / GSL Konsequences - Kobold style

[Michael Morris]

I've got a new 4e group and I ran them through a plot line that involved cleaning out a kobold lair. One of my own devising and, well, then did things a bit too well maybe. The destroyed every egg in the hatchery, and the dragonborn paladin* lit up about 22 kobold children and toddlers with her breath weapon and the party mopped up the 6 adolecents. All but 2 adults, by stats kobold skirmishers where killed as well as the warren's patron dragon, a young black one (this isn't the dungeon out of the DMG mind you).

I was rather shocked at the thoroughness of the job.

However I have two kobolds with a definite thirst for revenge. So I'm going to restat the two as full NPC rangers. I figure puting them at 2nd level, same as the party.

General tactics - track the party home. The group believes they've accomplished a total wipe so I don't expect them to take too much effort into avoiding being tracked. Further, they didn't move more than 4 hours walk from the lair before camping for end of session so the two can catch up.

Once they reach Osmon they can link up with several spies the dragon in their lair was coordinating with. A larger conspiracy is afoot, but these two are only going to report what occured and then get on with their grisly affair.

Since my players are adults the actions of the kobolds are a bit graphic, so I would advise the squeamish out there to turn back now.










Dragonborn are rare, but not unheard of, and the kobolds intend on using the human village's mistrust of the party's dragonborn to their advantage. The adventure starts with a baby impaled in the town square. The corpse will be burned in a manner similar to the kinds of burns the breath weapon will do. A note will be attached -- "42 eggs, 28 children - this is the first."

Now at this point the party will have already been bragging about their haul so the town elders will throw them out. The only town they know, Alantin, of is 38 miles away beyond the kobold lair they attacked.

Another problem - and the party knows about this - is the parent of the dragon they killed is expected to show up in another 4 days. When she does she will assume the city of Alantin is responsible since as a younger dragon she's had run ins with them before. So if the party heads south for the only place they know of they'll find it in ruins.

This leaves them in the wilderness hundreds of miles from the nearest known safe harbor - with two very, very angry kobolds shadowing them.

Depending on what the party does the kobolds may try any one of the following tactics.

1) The party has no one proficient with movement in the wildreness. If they get themselves lost one of the kobolds could move ahead of the party and give them a false trail to 'follow out' but instead lead them in a pointless loop giving the other kobold time to build a deadfall trap.

2) Unless the party force marches they'll encounter at least one daily sniping trap. These won't be for killing but rather to hamper, harrass and destroy supplies.

3) The kobolds might risk an incursion into the camp to steal or destroy supplies.

4) If the weather turns favorable they may start a forest fire

What the kobolds will not do:

1) Attack directly. They've already seen their whole warren destroyed by the party. They want revenge, not martyrdom. The one exception is if the party is badly mauled in a chance encounter with something - if the kobolds think the party is weakened enough to strike they will.

Any other ideas?

*Alignments work differently in Dusk - none of the 5 alignments gives a rat's ass about the good or evil of an action so long as the precepts of the alignment are upheld. A paladin is charged with upholding the ethos of one alignment and the player is within the ethos of Shunria, or red.

[LostSoul]

They need an ability like this:

Vengeful Strike (immediate reaction, when an allied kobold is reduced to 0 hit points)
The kobold screams, "Not again!" and makes a basic melee attack against an adjacent target.

Then pair them up with a bunch of minions.


Some other ideas:

Have them gather kobolds along the way, until they have a sizeable warparty. The PCs need some way to interact with this; I don't know what that might be.

Have them lead the dragon to the PCs.

Run a skill challenge. Each failure saps the PCs of a healing surge as they are put through the wringer by the kobolds. At the end of it, they face down the kobolds.

[BeauNiddle]

Ummmm, just a quick side question.

You sent your players on a mission to clear out a kobold lair which they did as per your instructions. Now you want to destroy all resources and associations they have and basically make their lives miserable for the next few game days.

Are the players okay with that sort of campaign? Are you okay with the players spending the rest of the campaign deeply mistrustful of all future missions?

I just feel I should ask

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Originally Posted by BeauNiddle

Ummmm, just a quick side question.

You sent your players on a mission to clear out a kobold lair which they did as per your instructions. Now you want to destroy all resources and associations they have and basically make their lives miserable for the next few game days.

Are the players okay with that sort of campaign? Are you okay with the players spending the rest of the campaign deeply mistrustful of all future missions?

I just feel I should ask

Pah, as long as its fun and challenging, everything is fine. I'd expect Micheal might know his players well enough to judge this, but maybe I am wrong?

[Ginnel]

Originally Posted by BeauNiddle

Ummmm, just a quick side question.

You sent your players on a mission to clear out a kobold lair which they did as per your instructions. Now you want to destroy all resources and associations they have and basically make their lives miserable for the next few game days.

Are the players okay with that sort of campaign? Are you okay with the players spending the rest of the campaign deeply mistrustful of all future missions?

I just feel I should ask

Actions give consequences.

Campaigns aren't to be won or lost they are there to participate in, and its not making the players lives miserable its making the characters lives miserable.

Players don't have a choice in missions, their characters do, if next time the characters don't wipe out the nursery is that good or bad? only time will tell. The DM didn't send them out on a mission an NPC did, if the characters don't trust that NPC fine.

If the players don't want to deal with consequences or want to have punishments ever they should state that before the campaign, if the DM is running something like that they should also state this at the start of the campaign, this seems like a solution to most perceived problems to me, clear communication of expectations.

Back on topic, get the Kobolds to scout ahead of the party, put dead animals in water supplies, plant an unsual smelling herb on the parties equipment which attracts a certain kind of animal but is not overly whiffy to the party members.

Its a nice setup, although be prepared for the players getting lucky and butchering the two hate filled kobolds before they get the chance to give any payback.

[BeauNiddle]

I didn't mean any disrespect. It's why I asked it as a side question.

I have no problems with actions having consequences but to me Kobolds are very much the vermin of any D&D setting - they exist to die. Wiping out whole towns and staking babies in the town square is ... an impressive response to what happened.

Were the players all "I love the smell of napalm in the morning, burn the babies" or where they "Hey I've not tried out my new power in the edition and look these kobolds are in a 3*3 burst".

Consequences should be sized relative to the transgression.

[Did the townsfolk celebrate the victory or react in horror at the stories of violence. Do the players know yet that you think they were over the top?]


As to the main question asked I'd view kobolds as cowards. Setting traps on the main road rather than direct ambushes might be more their sort of thing. Can be twisted if other travellers start falling foul of them. Kobolds will also realise they are no match for the adventurers and will seek allies. The obvious one is the Dragon which is due to return (I see some clerics / paladins of Tiamat in the parties future) but what other creatures are in the area.

The ideas of sending wild animals at the party and / or forest fires are good ones.

[Michael Morris]

Well the pov of the town sheriff is "The next time you destroy a kobold lair you bloody fools make sure to kill **all** the kobolds."

I don't run a railroad game - I usually wing it and follow the players around. However NPC's react to what they do. The two surviving kobolds are going to be a pair of thorns in the party's side until the party can countertrack them down and kill them. I've been known to make it very, very difficult to kill such recurring villains. When they do they've actually lept up and danced about it.

[Kraydak]

Originally Posted by Michael Morris

Well the pov of the town sheriff is "The next time you destroy a kobold lair you bloody fools make sure to kill **all** the kobolds."

I don't run a railroad game - I usually wing it and follow the players around. However NPC's react to what they do. The two surviving kobolds are going to be a pair of thorns in the party's side until the party can countertrack them down and kill them. I've been known to make it very, very difficult to kill such recurring villains. When they do they've actually lept up and danced about it.

(1) Boosting the surviving kobolds' power "just because" really sits wrong with me. If two kobold skirmishers want to try and mess with a decent sized settlement, that is fine. They won't get far. If you don't give the kobold's vastly level inappropriate abilities they will get tracked down and summarily executed. *Even* if they somehow manage to survive for a few days and the party starts a trek, tracking groups through the wilderness over long distances without getting noticed is *hard*. Forget about setting traps.

(2) Congratulations on reinforcing the lesson of "kill everyone", including the "good" humans. As a member of the party, if the town was going to (a) be incompetent enough and (b) dickish enough to toss me out I might well opt to sack the place myself. If they can't protect themselves from a few kobolds, they won't be able to hold off the party (see point 1), after all; and being that weak, it isn't like the town will be there next year, anyways. Might as well salvage some supplies for the trek from the doomed settlement, and deny the enemy the opportunity to do the same. Note that once you see the other town destroyed, this argument becomes even stronger. Without any other settlements anywhere nearby, that town is dead.

[Korror]

One thing that you want to be careful of is making the kobolds metagame. As a DM it can be easy to make all NPC plans work out perfectly because of course you know all the factors and every detail of the world. If they want to foul the water supply, it automatically works. If they want to lay traps ahead, it automatically works. There's no plans that they can come up with that the DM will reject. The PCs don't have a direct connection to your imaginion and hence are at a disadvantage in this kind of contest. For example, why do the Kobolds automatically know that this tactic they're using will get the villigers to throw the PCs out rather than hiring the PCs again to protect them against the renewed Kobold? They seem like they're a mechanism to "punish" the PCs for no good reason.

Secondly, I'm wondering why you're "shocked" over the behavior of your PCs in killing the women and children. Putting aside whether or not this was the right course of action, it only occured because you put those kobold women and children there. If you didn't want the PCs to kill them, why include them at all? And why make such a big issue out of it, it's not like the kobolds make a distiction between non-combatents as the baby incidient shows. They'd be upset that the PCs killed off their tribe but not any more or less upset that they killed the hatchlings.

I feel your pain of having to deal with players though, sometimes they can be quite annoying and there's often a great urge to smack them down if only to see them not get their own way for once.

[DogBackward]

Originally Posted by Korror

Secondly, I'm wondering why you're "shocked" over the behavior of your PCs in killing the women and children. Putting aside whether or not this was the right course of action, it only occured because you put those kobold women and children there. If you didn't want the PCs to kill them, why include them at all?

It's called realism (I assume). Where else would the women and children be, if not at the lair? Just because something's there doesn't mean it's automatically meant to be killed, even if it is small and scaly. And it's entirely possible that they were there specifically to see if the PC's would kill them or not.

And why make such a big issue out of it, it's not like the kobolds make a distiction between non-combatents as the baby incidient shows. They'd be upset that the PCs killed off their tribe but not any more or less upset that they killed the hatchlings.

Uh, what? Kobolds are "people", too. The only reason they killed the infant was in direct response to the wanton murder of their own young. And even if they did routinely kill human babies on their own, just because the kobolds don't care about human babies doesn't mean they don't care about their own. Sure, it's a racist view for them to have, but they're bloody kobolds!

Think of it in reverse. Obviously, the PC's (and probably NPC's) don't care about the kobold young, or they wouldn't have killed them. Does that mean that they won't care if someone kills their children? At least not any more than if they killed trained soldiers, by your own reasoning...

[LostSoul]

Originally Posted by Korror

For example, why do the Kobolds automatically know that this tactic they're using will get the villigers to throw the PCs out rather than hiring the PCs again to protect them against the renewed Kobold?

Yeah. It's a good opportunity for a skill challenge, or a bunch of skill checks.

[Ed_Laprade]

Yeah, changing the Skirmishers to full up Rangers doesn't sit well with me either. That says to me that you are 'punishing' the players because they did something unexpected.

Also, what, there's a road from the village to the town/city, but that's it? No other road connecting the town/city to anything else? Yeah, right. Or, worse yet, there aren't any roads (or well travelled trails) at all.

[Starbuck_II]

Originally Posted by Ed_Laprade

Yeah, changing the Skirmishers to full up Rangers doesn't sit well with me either. That says to me that you are 'punishing' the players because they did something unexpected.

Also, what, there's a road from the village to the town/city, but that's it? No other road connecting the town/city to anything else? Yeah, right. Or, worse yet, there aren't any roads (or well travelled trails) at all.

Agreed.

Unless there are news of two kobold causing trouble in the area (getting exp that way) or
dead adventurer bodies (that they ganked):
Kobolds shouldn't "level" up into Rangers.

[PlatinumWarlock]

I disagree with the "punishment" end of the counter-arguments above. Making the kobolds into rangers makes sense to me--it's something that maybe should take a little more time (perhaps a month or two of in-game time, during which the players could "forget about" what they've done).

To me, it seems like the players took their orders absolutely overboard into nonthreatening targets. In game, if I was a kobold, I'd be seeking bloody vengeance too--and in the most sneaky, underhanded way possible.

[Korror]

Originally Posted by DogBackward

It's called realism (I assume). Where else would the women and children be, if not at the lair? Just because something's there doesn't mean it's automatically meant to be killed, even if it is small and scaly. And it's entirely possible that they were there specifically to see if the PC's would kill them or not.

The level of realism is always a DM choice. If the DM wants to play a morally gray game where the PCs have to make choices about baby monsters then it is easy to include the baby kobolds. Conversely if the DM isn't interested in emphasizing that element then the issue can be explained away easily enough: "The females and young withdraw through a secret passage at the first sign of danger" or "Kobolds mature very quickly and both sexes fight invaders of their lair so you've been fighting the entire tribe all along."

Originally Posted by DogBackward

Uh, what? Kobolds are "people", too. The only reason they killed the infant was in direct response to the wanton murder of their own young. And even if they did routinely kill human babies on their own, just because the kobolds don't care about human babies doesn't mean they don't care about their own. Sure, it's a racist view for them to have, but they're bloody kobolds!

Think of it in reverse. Obviously, the PC's (and probably NPC's) don't care about the kobold young, or they wouldn't have killed them. Does that mean that they won't care if someone kills their children? At least not any more than if they killed trained soldiers, by your own reasoning...

Kobold sympathizer!

Looks like I wasn't quite clear before. I didn't mean to imply that the Kobolds had no affection for their young but that they wouldn't expect the PCs to spare the little kobolds when they were prepared to kill little humans. It would be a bit strange if they become specially outraged over the PCs actions when they would do the same thing if they had the chance.

Of course it may be, that there was some kind of unspoken agreement between the kobold tribe and the town that they wouldn't attempt to totally wipe each other out and in that case that real villain of the story is the duplicitous mayor who hires outsiders to backstab his (relatively) peaceful neighbors and then tries to shift the blame on the hired muscle at the first opportunity. Sounds like a good enough excuse for the PCs to sack the town as well in the name of "justice".

[Michael Morris]

Originally Posted by Kraydak

(1) Boosting the surviving kobolds' power "just because" really sits wrong with me.

What level should NPC's be? Answer - whatever level the DM needs them to be to fairly challenge the party. NPC's are not subject to the same rules as PC's. The PC's created this particular pair of villains even if they don't know it yet. That will make their defeat all the more enjoyable when the party does finally accomplish it.

Originally Posted by Kraydak

If two kobold skirmishers want to try and mess with a decent sized settlement, that is fine. They won't get far.

Why? Because the world can take care of itself and the world doesn't really need heroes? Bollocks. The PC's are heroes, a cut above Joe Farmer and John Dirt that run this township. They aren't able to deal with kobold minions effectively, let alone two that by inexplicable twist of fate are a cut above the average kobold (just as the party members are a cut above the average members of their race).

Originally Posted by Kraydak

If you don't give the kobold's vastly level inappropriate abilities they will get tracked down and summarily executed.

Must be a boring campaign you play or run, where the party doesn't *need* to handle anything because the NPC's can handle themselves and the messes the players create.

Originally Posted by Kraydak

*Even* if they somehow manage to survive for a few days and the party starts a trek, tracking groups through the wilderness over long distances without getting noticed is *hard*. Forget about setting traps.

Who said they won't be noticed? And even if they are, can the party keep up and track them down? I'll leave that to the dice.

Originally Posted by Kraydak

(2) Congratulations on reinforcing the lesson of "kill everyone", including the "good" humans. As a member of the party, if the town was going to (a) be incompetent enough and (b) dickish enough to toss me out I might well opt to sack the place myself.

The party could certainly succeed at that. Osmon is small and has no particularly notable NPC's other than the Duke and his men. If they do word will spread - eventually they'll run into something that they can't handle and either be killed by it or hide from it.

Again, this is a superstitious collection of lakefolk. Until the party arrived they'd never seen a dragonborn - they've only rarely seen elves and eldarin. They've never seen a tiefling but halflings are common enough. They don't owe the party anything and if they think that tossing the group outside of the walls of the town will protect their children, they will.

Originally Posted by Kraydak

If they can't protect themselves from a few kobolds, they won't be able to hold off the party (see point 1), after all; and being that weak, it isn't like the town will be there next year, anyways. Might as well salvage some supplies for the trek from the doomed settlement, and deny the enemy the opportunity to do the same. Note that once you see the other town destroyed, this argument becomes even stronger. Without any other settlements anywhere nearby, that town is dead.

Right... As I noted earlier - your campaigns must be extremely boring since the world has no need of heroes and everything can take care of itself.

Originally Posted by Korror

One thing that you want to be careful of is making the kobolds metagame. As a DM it can be easy to make all NPC plans work out perfectly because of course you know all the factors and every detail of the world. If they want to foul the water supply, it automatically works. If they want to lay traps ahead, it automatically works. There's no plans that they can come up with that the DM will reject. The PCs don't have a direct connection to your imaginion and hence are at a disadvantage in this kind of contest. For example, why do the Kobolds automatically know that this tactic they're using will get the villigers to throw the PCs out rather than hiring the PCs again to protect them against the renewed Kobold? They seem like they're a mechanism to "punish" the PCs for no good reason.

Again refer to my first point - NPC's are not subject to the same rules as PC's - they exist to challenge the party and to make the story interesting. The town throwing the group out is perfectly plausible - because of the dragonborn in their number it took the group a long time to build up enough trust in the group to even let this strange creature through the gates. If children start showing up dead that trust is going to break.

Long term the way this gets offset is you let NPC's do things wrong - sometimes disasterously wrong. I've had NPC groups stumble into PC ambushes exactly like the players planned out before. I don't spend too much time worrying about the flaws in their plan or how the NPC's might weasle out of the attack.

Originally Posted by Korror

Secondly, I'm wondering why you're "shocked" over the behavior of your PCs in killing the women and children. Putting aside whether or not this was the right course of action, it only occured because you put those kobold women and children there. If you didn't want the PCs to kill them, why include them at all? And why make such a big issue out of it, it's not like the kobolds make a distiction between non-combatents as the baby incidient shows. They'd be upset that the PCs killed off their tribe but not any more or less upset that they killed the hatchlings.

The reason they were there is because a lair is a home. Kobolds don't come out of monster spawning pots in my world like say, in Gauntlet. And no, kobolds don't make a distinction between combatants and non-combatants. That's part of the reason they are *evil*. By failing to make that distinction the party acted in an evil manner. I don't use the alignment system itself to deal with questions of good or evil, but those questions arise all the same.

Originally Posted by Korror

I feel your pain of having to deal with players though, sometimes they can be quite annoying and there's often a great urge to smack them down if only to see them not get their own way for once.

I'm not annoyed at them though. This should be fun to play out - they've inadvertedly created a couple of memorable NPC's to throw at them, and I'm going to enjoy doing just that.

Originally Posted by DogBackward

It's called realism (I assume). Where else would the women and children be, if not at the lair? Just because something's there doesn't mean it's automatically meant to be killed, even if it is small and scaly. And it's entirely possible that they were there specifically to see if the PC's would kill them or not.

They were there because they are supposed to be there. How the party dealt with them is a moral quandry.

Originally Posted by LostSoul

Yeah. It's a good opportunity for a skill challenge, or a bunch of skill checks.

That it is. What I presented above is a draft of what will occur. It isn't set in stone. I've been DM'ing a long time now and I know that getting attached to one plotline is how you annoy and railroad players. What I've sketched out is what the kobolds intend. Will they succeed? If the **players** do nothing, yes. The onus is on the PC's to stop them. The duty of the DM is to make sure they have a reasonable chance of succeeding, and if they fail that the consquence of failure isn't so disasterous that everyone's fun is ruined.

Originally Posted by Ed_Laprade

Yeah, changing the Skirmishers to full up Rangers doesn't sit well with me either. That says to me that you are 'punishing' the players because they did something unexpected.

Again, what level should NPC's be? Whatever level the DM needs them to be for the role they are to fulfill.

Also, what, there's a road from the village to the town/city, but that's it? No other road connecting the town/city to anything else? Yeah, right. Or, worse yet, there aren't any roads (or well travelled trails) at all.

Osmon is on the mouth of the river Ciondras as it changes from Lake Mystal to Lake Telcasi. As recently as 300 years ago there where numerous villages like it all along the shores of the rivers and lakes. That was before the beginning of the 5th Orgstagal war.

The whole region, Losineris, is pretty much devoid of roads because the quickest way to get anywhere important is by boat. Whatever lies inland has become lost to all but the wisest of sages.

Originally Posted by Starbuck_II

Agreed.

Unless there are news of two kobold causing trouble in the area (getting exp that way) or
dead adventurer bodies (that they ganked):
Kobolds shouldn't "level" up into Rangers.

NPC's don't ever level up though. The most lasting damage 3e has done to the D&D game was instilling this notion that NPC's somehow are obligated to be handled like PC's. That simply isn't the case.

[Filcher]

NPC's don't ever level up though. The most lasting damage 3e has done to the D&D game was instilling this notion that NPC's somehow are obligated to be handled like PC's. That simply isn't the case.

This is the only part I'd handle differently. Why make the kobolds NPCs and not full-fledged "tougher monsters"? Statting out monsters as NPCs is a pain. They accumulate multiple power, running counter to the 4E design ethic of "give 'em 3 or 4 powers and leave it at that." If your kobolds manage to survive for a bit (and I hope they do) their NPC stats could get pretty cumbersome.

[Kraydak]

Originally Posted by Michael Morris

What level should NPC's be? Answer - whatever level the DM needs them to be to fairly challenge the party. NPC's are not subject to the same rules as PC's. The PC's created this particular pair of villains even if they don't know it yet. That will make their defeat all the more enjoyable when the party does finally accomplish it.

If the consequence of killing bad guys is spawning more powerful bad guys... there is no way to achieve anything. Those two kobolds already exist. They are skirmishers. Upgrading them is akin to saying that the PCs can't achieve anything in game unless it fits precisely with the DM's agenda. Not fun.

Why? Because the world can take care of itself and the world doesn't really need heroes? Bollocks. The PC's are heroes, a cut above Joe Farmer and John Dirt that run this township. They aren't able to deal with kobold minions effectively, let alone two that by inexplicable twist of fate are a cut above the average kobold (just as the party members are a cut above the average members of their race).

Well... if you accept that you lost any right to talk about consequences (the consequences of founding a settlement out in the middle of nowhere, without a military, and *then* angering friendly military units... is death) then sure. Of course, once NPCs aren't bound by "consequences" then players have no way to determine what the "consequences" of their actions are...

Must be a boring campaign you play or run, where the party doesn't *need* to handle anything because the NPC's can handle themselves and the messes the players create.

Two kobolds =/= major mess. Two kobolds = random encounter table for safe areas. If you can't face off two kobolds it is all over.

The party could certainly succeed at that. Osmon is small and has no particularly notable NPC's other than the Duke and his men. If they do word will spread - eventually they'll run into something that they can't handle and either be killed by it or hide from it.

So the pitiful survivors of a town that couldn't defend itself from a pair of kobolds somehow WILL survive the trek to civilization to spread the word. Ayup.

Again, this is a superstitious collection of lakefolk. Until the party arrived they'd never seen a dragonborn - they've only rarely seen elves and eldarin. They've never seen a tiefling but halflings are common enough. They don't owe the party anything and if they think that tossing the group outside of the walls of the town will protect their children, they will.

Right... As I noted earlier - your campaigns must be extremely boring since the world has no need of heroes and everything can take care of itself.

There is a big difference between the world being able to defend itself against everything and the world being able to fend of weak attacks. There is a difference between population centers being able to project their power (and, say, defend outlying areas) and population centers being able to defend their town square. If the world doesn't make sense, then talking about "consequences" is meaningless.

Again refer to my first point - NPC's are not subject to the same rules as PC's - they exist to challenge the party and to make the story interesting. The town throwing the group out is perfectly plausible - because of the dragonborn in their number it took the group a long time to build up enough trust in the group to even let this strange creature through the gates. If children start showing up dead that trust is going to break.

Long term the way this gets offset is you let NPC's do things wrong - sometimes disasterously wrong. I've had NPC groups stumble into PC ambushes exactly like the players planned out before. I don't spend too much time worrying about the flaws in their plan or how the NPC's might weasle out of the attack.

If NPCs break the rules enough, then "consequences" becomes "random event generator". Which, admittedly, is better than "killing evil guys spawns more powerful evil guys".

The reason they were there is because a lair is a home. Kobolds don't come out of monster spawning pots in my world like say, in Gauntlet. And no, kobolds don't make a distinction between combatants and non-combatants. That's part of the reason they are *evil*. By failing to make that distinction the party acted in an evil manner. I don't use the alignment system itself to deal with questions of good or evil, but those questions arise all the same.

I'm not annoyed at them though. This should be fun to play out - they've inadvertedly created a couple of memorable NPC's to throw at them, and I'm going to enjoy doing just that.

They were there because they are supposed to be there. How the party dealt with them is a moral quandry.

I must say, this really sounds like you wanting to slap the players around for being barbaric in ways you didn't expect, but not wanting to admit it. That may well not be the case, but from this side of the internet it certainly sounds like it.

Again, what level should NPC's be? Whatever level the DM needs them to be for the role they are to fulfill.

Except that these NPCs have already been on stage. As a DM, the trick is to NOT use an infinite palette, but rather reusing the stuff you already have when possible. Two kobold strikers trying to break into a walled town to wreak vengeance (and getting cut down, probably severely injuring a townsperson) might be interesting. *That* would be setting consistent consequences that might make the party think.

NPC's don't ever level up though. The most lasting damage 3e has done to the D&D game was instilling this notion that NPC's somehow are obligated to be handled like PC's. That simply isn't the case.

The fewer rules NPCs follow, the less the term "consequences" means because the ability of the players to predict the outcome of events drops.

Bleh, if I had more time I would tighten up this post, I'm clearly repeating myself. Sorry about that.

[Michael Morris]

Classes and levels are abstractions. The characters do not know anything about the kobolds that got away. Hell, they don't even know they got away (yet). That's all I'm going to say further on the matter - you sound like the victim of one too many adversarial DM vs. Players games which is unfortunate. I cannot cast my actions in a light that will be favorable through the rose colored glasses you view the game from.

[Otterscrubber]

Originally Posted by BeauNiddle

Ummmm, just a quick side question.

You sent your players on a mission to clear out a kobold lair which they did as per your instructions. Now you want to destroy all resources and associations they have and basically make their lives miserable for the next few game days.

Are the players okay with that sort of campaign? Are you okay with the players spending the rest of the campaign deeply mistrustful of all future missions?

I just feel I should ask

They deserve what they get for allowing 2 to live

Just kidding, seriously this does seem a bit harsh. I find it hard to believe the village they were staying at kicked the PCs out after some kobolds killed one of their own. If the kobolds manage to defeat the heroes, they have a nice village they can intimidate for the rest of their lives it looks like.