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I don't know if this fad has passed, or if it existed prior or since the end of the 3e era, but help me out here...what exactly is the appeal? In terms of their in-game/rp situation, they're cannon fodder. The lowest of the low. They're like high school jock wanna-bes; they think they have a claim to fame because they're scaly like dragons, but even the dragons use them as trainable maggots. In terms of their mechanical situation...well in earlier editions they're blatantly inferior to literally everyone else. In 4e they're roughly balanced with other PC races, but still...meh.
Please, help me understand. I just don't get it.
TS
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for my group it started in 2e...we just had this underdog thing...
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Remathilis
Planescape
It should be given special award to Die Vecna, Die: a module that manages to trash no less than THREE different settings (Greyhawk, Ravenloft, Planescape) in the course of one module.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Remathilis
Those of you who fretted that monsters have too many hp and fights take too long: meet the barbarian. The ULTIMATE "Lets speed this combat up, I need to whiz" class!
-They have memorable and fun characters, such as Deekin and Meepo.
-They are the underdog who manages to win
-They have humorous personalities and mannerisms
-They have especially from the video-games created a very concrete image for themselves, even down to a "voice" (I am willing to bet most people if they tried to talk like a Kobold would try to do something similar)
-Their cute
Last edited by Fallen Seraph; 8th January 2009 at 06:44 AM..
Well, there's only been one kobold pc imc that I recall: Federico.
In my halfling campaign, Federico was the clan's dog. They'd adopted him as a young child after the halfling clan defeated (i.e. slew) the kobolds that were Feddie's family, and Mama Flapjacks, the halfling matron, took him in.
Federico was awesome. He was a sorcerer/bard/jester (homebrewed prc). He only had 1st level spells until he was like 8th level or something. He started off with a 1 Str score, and often had to have the halfling barbarian carry him when things got rough, like a thirty degree slope.
The entire group loved him. He was played for laughs and as a fun member of the party whose contributions were strange but awesome. The player did a great job rping him, and he was always a team player. Great character, never annoying once. We played that group for, oh, five years?
"Besides, the longer I sit here and deal with you, the longer you keep me off the streets where I'd be doing things like making puppies cry, devouring the souls of the weak and all sorts of icky things I do so well if I put myself to it."
I just made a quicklist in Youtube of stuff recommended in this thread, and random things with interesting names that I'm not familiar with that were linked from them.
Added 14 songs by groups named in the thread, plus one or two others (I especially like the name Arch Enemy for a band...)
Races of dragon introduced a lot of options which made them viable as PCs. It is like the designer was practically begging you to play one when he decided that venerable dragonwrought kobolds would get +3 to all their mental stats, without the corresponding physical stat penalties. That and the dragon type opens up a lot of possibilities with alter self/polymorph.
Identify as SLAs without having to use material components, and free sorc spellcasting? Yes please.
IME, it's definitely the "underdog" thing. Same deal for goblins. People either have fun with the inferiority or take it a a power gaming challenge to make a broken Kobold fighter.
In one case, a fellow player used the races of the dragon rules to play a dragonblooded Kobold Sorcerer and in turn got GREAT usage out of Alter Self... His size also helped. I was a wood elf ranger and the party melee guy. He'd go into combat on my shoulder and use wings of cover to save my ass. I'd let him treat me as a mount and duck behind me for cover, not to mention I could use "cure x wounds" items if he got hurt. It was a beautiful partnership.
My online gaming group, Torch of Spirit (Contains all information for the current game I'm co-DMing as well as lots of houserules I'm using or considering for the future. Feel free to check it out.)
Kobolds are excellent trapmakers, and in one 3.0 campaign my DM played them as the greatest trapmakers in the world. So they kept beating us in humiliating ways over and over and over...
Like the one-way exit portal they had discovered deep within some cave. Realizing that a reasonable amount of adventurer traffic came out of this portal, they built a structure around it. A structure they could seal off and fill with water...
I don't think any PC ever died, but we always felt we were lucky to be alive. The end result was a party of 20th level PCs that would run away at the slightest mention of Kobolds.
Years later that attitude is still present within the group. In a rotating-DM Eberron game, one player from the 3.0 game, when it was his turn to DM, decided to never again be a victim of Kobold violence, and on his first session had a ritual backfire and make every single kobold on Khorvaire dumb as a rock. Cathartic payback if I ever saw it...
Anyway, Kobolds have been a popular PC race choice for us every since that first 3.0 campaign.
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You do realize what it looks like he's holding in his hand, don't you? Freud would find its size very revealing indeed....
__________________ All role playing advice is given without knowledge of you and your group. Only you and your group knows what is fun for you. What you are doing is not badwrongfun. My advice is offered based on what I think might be fun for you to try.
"Art is the demonstration that the ordinary is extraordinary." - Amedee Ozenfant, Foundations of Modern Art
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Because you don't always want to be the obnoxious half-orc barbarian that everyone always plays. Sometimes it's fun to make a character that ISN'T the stupidly rampant stereotype for a hero or anti-hero.
One of my characters was a kobold rogue/trapsmith. Optimal? God, no. Probably one of the most un-optimal characters I've ever made. But I had more fun with that character then I would ever have with a half-orc barbarian who smolders with generic rage, no matter how "optimal." Sure, lots of players have bigger numbers on their sheet, but I was smiling and laughing a lot more then they were. That makes me the winner.
Really, I think the real question is, why wouldn't anyone want to play a kobold? And why would anyone want to play an elf?
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__________________ All role playing advice is given without knowledge of you and your group. Only you and your group knows what is fun for you. What you are doing is not badwrongfun. My advice is offered based on what I think might be fun for you to try.
"Art is the demonstration that the ordinary is extraordinary." - Amedee Ozenfant, Foundations of Modern Art
"I already have a place where I can get little recognition for my accomplishments, advance at a very slow pace, and have to work hard to eke out minimum rewards for my efforts. It's called work." - toberane.
Because some people like playing the oddball races.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ProfessorCirno
I think the real question is, why wouldn't anyone want to play a kobold? And why would anyone want to play an elf?
And there's your answer. Why play a kobold as a PC? Because you can.
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