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Although the story is entertaining, I really don’t think the “regular kobolds, with 1-4 hp” could have been that deadly to the PCs (6th-12th level). Yes, I can see how they would not be a cake walk, with the honeycombed level and many murder holes, but really, it seems that the Players in the game were more bad at adventuring (and planning) than the kobolds were good at ambushing.
Can someone explain to me why this set up was such a terrible thing for the PCs. Especially since the PCs ostensibly knew what was coming.
And/or, for fun:
Say you are a party of AD&D1 adventurers about to pass through Tucker’s Kobolds’ territory. How do you get through with a minimum of trouble?
Assume a “standard” AD&D1 party of six level 9 PCs:
one fighter
one paladin
one cleric
one thief
one magic-user
one fighter/magic-user (level 8/8)
I agree that a prepared party of 9th level characters should prevail fairly handily against "Tucker's Kobolds".
Heavily armored PCs will be almost unhittable by kobolds, and if fighter-types get into melee they will slay many kobolds per round (they get one attack per level against the < 1 HD kobolds).
If kobolds won't come to melee, the spellcasters can have their fun. Place the fighter types around the MUs to protect them, and have both cast protection from normal missiles ahead of time to avoid spell interruption. Then cast cloudkill , which will seep into those small openings and murder holes. Another trick is to cast minor globe of invulnerability and then throw fireballs out of it. The flames will expand into a huge volume, reaching into the kobolds' tunnels and frying quite a lot of them. Passwall will allow the fighters to get past murder holes and slaughter the kobolds.
The cleric should have a find traps running to avoid any nasty surprises. The paladin's detect evil "radar" tells the party roughly where the kobolds are hiding, and the thief can be sent in (with an invisibilty spell and an infravision spell if he's human) ahead to scout out the situation and turn the tables on ambushers.
Last edited by Corathon; 8th January 2009 at 11:18 PM..
Reason: correct grammar, typo
Tucker's kobolds is a tired idea that won't quit. It's even had a boxed set and dungeon magazine adventures devoted to it. It hasn't been novel or clever for quite some time, and IMO needs to be put to bed. Even Pun-Pun and 4E's tough kobolds reference it.
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I disagree with rounser. I concede the idea is not exactly new, and that it has been examined and picked apart many times. However, like anything else in D&D, as long as the players at the table get something worthwhile from it, its worth considering.
The basic idea behind Tuckers Kobolds is to try to kill the PC's without relying on any of the normal means which put them well beyond the Kobolds in tactical terms. The article made a point of several things.
- The Kobolds stayed well out of melee using murder holes and constrictive corridors.
- The Kobolds would break line of sight by using smoke screens and obstructions
- The Kobolds would get around high AC by using traps to inflict damage.
What you have to keep in mind is that this is not a the PC's vs Kobolds in normal combat. This is more akin to being placed in a very difficult skill challenge like situation where the PC's have to use realtime problem solving instead of skill rolls. How do you kill Kobolds that you cannot establish line of sight with? How do you avoid burning to death when the oil soaked corridors are set on fire? How do you avoid suffocation from the smoke? How do you keep your very weak pack mules alive, or do you just abandon them and much of your equipment?
More to the point, Tuckers Kobolds can be seen as a challenge to the DM. Is it possible to challenge a reasonably high level party without simply using bigger monsters at them? Its not about the monsters. Its about creating a dungeon that is very dangerous without putting Spheres of Annihilation in dark doorways or relying on save or die effects.
I agree that a prepared party of 9th level characters should prevail fairly handily against "Tucker's Kobolds".
Heavily armored PCs will be almost unhittable by kobolds, and if fighter-types get into melee they will slay many kobolds per round (they get one attack per level against the < 1 HD kobolds).
If kobolds won't come to melee, the spellcasters can have their fun. Place the fighter types around the MUs to protect them, and have both cast protection from normal missiles ahead of time to avoid spell interruption. Then cast cloudkill , which will seep into those small openings and murder holes. Another trick is to cast minor globe of invulnerability and then throw fireballs out of it. The flames will expand into a huge volume, reaching into the kobolds' tunnels and frying quite a lot of them. Passwall will allow the fighters to get past murder holes and slaughter the kobolds.
The cleric should have a find traps running to avoid any nasty surprises. The paladin's detect evil "radar" tells the party roughly where the kobolds are hiding, and the thief can be sent in (with an invisibilty spell and an infravision spell if he's human) ahead to scout out the situation and turn the tables on ambushers.
Ballistas are deadly in corridors and Protection from Normal Missiles will only slow them down. Cloudkill always sinks so it can't get into murder holes, passwall can only get to so many and iron bars embedded in the walls is an old trick to avoid that one. Fireball might be a bit of a problem but doesn't cover provide bonuses to reflex saves? Find Traps still requires a search check and eventually the cleric will fail a big one. If the kolbolds are everywhere then detect evil is useless. And flour on the floor or tripwires will catch that invisible thief.
You're essentially asking why the US didn't win Vietnam, if you'll excuse the analogy that will get me rightly and justly yelled at. The whole point behind Tucker's Kobolds is that they used highly inventive and non-conventional means of fighting. Fireball wouldn't work because, back then, a fireball filled up as much space as it was supposed to - throw it in an enclosed area, it bursts out of the enclosed area and onto you.
Remember, the traps weren't the simple wall-falls-on-you variety. Does Detect Traps work to find grease under your feet for future lighting? Does it detect burning roadblocks the kobolds are going to manually throw down at you?
The other thing to remember about Tucker's Kobolds is that it wasn't limited to kobolds. Kobolds were used to demonstrate how even the weakest race in the game could bring terror to higher levels if used intelligently. You're falling prey to a thought process a lot of people do when discussing games - you're armchairing it. Very few parties plan out their exact tactics right before a battle, because very few parties know exactly what they're up against. They ready their cloudkill spells and run in, only to find the kobolds have put grates in the floor in key areas to make it sink down. They start throwing fireballs only to notice afterwards the trail of oil leading to their feet. That was the threat of Tucker's Kobolds - they were unconventional, so you couldn't plan around them.
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Plus, all it takes to defeat fire ball is a second kobold with a readied action to slide a plate over the murder holes or arrow slits. Fireball hits obstruction, party set on fire.
I've done a Tucker's kobolds thing (Hero Snare, for those of you who know of it) and the key was the small corridors. Like you have to get down on your knees and push your shield in front of you small. The best block on line of sight is the fighter's big ass in front of you. They also flat out refused to let the party sleep, banging on pots and pans, then doing suicide missions that targeted the sleepers. The fact that kobolds have dark vision and most parties have to light torches meant that they knew where you were at all times.
My favorite trap though? You opened a trap door in the ceiling, convinced you had found access to their commando warrens, only to get a face full of green slime.
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"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.
Yeah. Tucker's Kobolds are great, but they justified some pretty bad "I know my PCs, so I'll make an encounter using monsters acting 'intelligently' that will counteract all of their powers".
For example, if the PCs use Cloudkill a lot, the grates in the floor trick would be a counteract. It's sort of like saying "hey, I've seen you do this trick a million times before, so these NPCs will be designed specifically to stop you, even though that's not very realistic".
The other time it can be cheesy is when the PCs fight your kobolds, and you develop random stops to their powers. "What, cloudkill? No, they, uh... have grates in the floor so the cloudkill doesn't work?".
That being said, it can be a lot of fun to throw an encounter at the PCs like Tucker's Kobolds - especially in 1e, where you were not entirely sure which PCs would be thrown at you (many players had multiple PCs, back in the day...). You think of counters to typical problems, and see how fast your PCs can think on their feet.
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It doesn't take that. I am sure you could survey 1000 gaming groups and find that most people would Cloudkill a bunch of kobolds first thing. Some gamers are intelligent, innovative people. Some just find the best combos of feats and spells (or powers) and spam them.
The premise here is that an intelligently-run monster group is vastly more dangerous than it's hit dice would suggest. Kobolds are a great example because people assume that they're worthless monsters, fit only to give some 1st level PCs some XP. They're jokes. Except when you take the time to make them not jokes.
You may be used to PCs wading into a group of monsters and laying waste to them because the PCs behave like they've been trained by the SAS and the monsters just sit there and take it. The idea here is that you have a group of monsters that don't just sit there and take it. It's not a matter of them magically knowing and exploiting the PC's weakspots and holes in their defenses, it's about playing a monster intelligently and competantly so it doesn't matter what those defenses are. People talk about how 1E forced PCs to be better players and all that rot, well stuff like that forces them to prove it once in a while.
Your 9th level wizard with cloudkill has to get that spell off first. All it takes is a couple kobolds with a wire noose that drops from the ceiling and your wizard is helpless and unable to cast spells while they jab a couple 1E save-or-die poisoned spears in him. Cloudkill? They see it kill a couple kobolds and then they pull back to higher tunnels, letting the heavier-than-air cloudkill pool into the lowest room they have. If this has been used on them before, then they also rig a trapdoor in that room so that when you pass under it two levels down it opens and the party chokes to death on it's own cloudkill.
The premise here is that an intelligently-run monster group is vastly more dangerous than it's hit dice would suggest. Kobolds are a great example because people assume that they're worthless monsters, fit only to give some 1st level PCs some XP.
Right. It's not about kobolds particularly, or about the detailed set of tactics they were using in the article. If you know what tactics your opponent is going to use, you can devise counter-tactics to thwart them. The fun part is, when you know the enemy you are about to face is going to use clever and original tactics of some sort, but you don't know exactly what. That forces you to think on your feet and find clever counter-tactics in the heat of battle.
And yes, that is the fun part. As long as it's your character and not you having to do it.
What's boring is when the PCs and the monsters both use the same 'stand toe-to-toe and make full attacks every round' tactics. Pretty soon, you get some combined RPG/computer nerd with a spreadsheet working out the expected DPS and saying, "OK, I've figured out that we'll defeat this enemy after 4.6 rounds of fighting, taking 21.4 points of damage each. So lets skip all this rolling, mark off three cure serious wounds spells and two cure moderates, get our XP, and move on to the next encounter." (And before anyone takes offense, that geek is reasonably likely to be me. )
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Your 9th level wizard with cloudkill has to get that spell off first. All it takes is a couple kobolds with a wire noose that drops from the ceiling and your wizard is helpless and unable to cast spells while they jab a couple 1E save-or-die poisoned spears in him.
It's been a long time since I played 1E, but wasn't a spell lost if you took damage that round? I played with that rule but I'm not sure if it was a house rule or not.
Quote:
Originally Posted by WayneLigon
Cloudkill? They see it kill a couple kobolds and then they pull back to higher tunnels, letting the heavier-than-air cloudkill pool into the lowest room they have. If this has been used on them before, then they also rig a trapdoor in that room so that when you pass under it two levels down it opens and the party chokes to death on it's own cloudkill.
What about Cloudkill + Gust of Wind? (Assuming you had those spells, of course - though it might be worth it to seek out a sage and ask him where you could find one.)
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While it is certainly possible to use a low HD humanoid and challenge players, the specific problem I've always had with 'Tucker's Kobold's' type situations is that almost invariably they end up resolving to 'the DM judges the kobolds by different standards than he would judge the players'. Invariably, in 1st edition and 2nd edition desciptions of 'Tucker's Kobold's' type challenges, there are always special rules created to give the kobolds some advantage.
And even when there aren't, the kobolds still have less tangible but certainly important advantages that are the result of being run by the DM. For example, 'Tucker's Kobolds' never have command and control problems. They always know where the PC's are and are always able to perfectly coordinate their actions. They never waste time or delay anything else because they are never short of information. Not only do they act as if they were part of a telepathic hive mind, but they effectively have omniscence.
Likewise, any 'off stage' kobold more or less has the ability to teleport once it gets more than a round or two from the players. They never fail to be able to perfectly predict the player's actions and move without fail to cut off the players. They are always able to swarm to the player's positions whenever any kobolds remain alive. They are always on hand whenever they need to be.
Additionally, they have perfect knowledge of the player's capabilities. They know exactly what to prepare for. Whenever they are on hand, they always have exactly the right tools prepared to counter the PC's plans.
Additionally, they have infinite resources to make those preperations. They can purchase or make any counter they desire, and if these defenses are trashed they have an infinite amount of labor and raw materials to repair the damage.
The sort of DM's that got off on 'Tucker's Kobolds' scenarios seem particularly prone to this sort of thing, often without even being consciously aware that they are doing it. It's even shown up in published scenarios. For example, the goblins in 'Axe of the Dwarvish Lords' basically had all the above problems in spades, and the 'special rules' they used for mass archer fire, opening doors, and so forth were simply DM cheating because the same things would never be allowed for low level PC's.
Still, it's not hard to come up with scenarios where the HD of the monster has little or no impact on the threat posed by the attack.
1) Ranged touch attacks: Ranged attacks are good in general, because they neutralize a certain portion of the PC's attacks. At sufficient range, the throw a PC needs to hit approaches 20, which turns missile exchanges in to a shear battle of numbers. Ranged touch attacks are even better, because they neutralize a good portion of the PC's #1 advantage - superior armor class. If you add to that grenade like weapons, so that there is a good chance you'll 'hit' even if you miss, you get into a situation where it doesn't matter what the THAC0 of the attacker is all that much. Burning oil is the perfect weapon for low HD monsters.
Never mind that a typical 'Tucker's Kobold' tribe will in a single session burn oil worth several times the total value of goods that a kobold tribe is supposed to own, and never mind that whatever the source is of all this wealth it probably won't be made available to the PC's no matter what.
2) Poison: Poison is another big neutralizer, because it neutralizes another one of the PC's biggest advantages - superior hit points. Each hit becomes threatening, regardless of the PC's remaining hit points and potentially vast healing resources.
3) Ballistic Weapons: If I'm blindly lobbing ordinance over an opaque wall, it basically doesn't matter that I don't have particularly good aim. The chances that I hit are entirely based on luck at that point, and in all likelihood any return fire you make will be similarly handicapped. Moreover, since most spells rely on line of sight, I've just neutralized another one of the PC's biggest advantages.
4) Highly Favorable Terrain: I have 90% cover, am located 20' up a wall on the other side of a concealed pit, and you are fighting on an uneven stone floor covered with hot pig fat and liberally sprinkled with caltrops. Additionally, I've strung lengths of sharpened piano wire about the room at various heights.
5) Abusing 'tame' monsters: So, I just threw a nest of hornets into the middle of the room. Swarms are great. And, I'm not just lobbing rocks over the wall, I'm lobbing clay pots containing green slime/yellow mold/rot grubs. And, the concealed pit contains a black pudding. And the tribe has well trained giant weasels/hell hounds they can unleash for their kennels.
6) Traps: Naturally, a whole tribe of kobolds manages to safely live in quarters that are more lethally trapped than Acerak's tomb without ever having accidents.
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I remember Tucker's Kobolds.
Remember that these critters had access to an arsenal of items to help them, had a whole webwork of tunnels to crawl through, and they were extremely competent guerilla fighters. They also were endlessly patient, completely ruthless, set a new precedent in ruthlessness, and there were a lot of them.
I would wager them against even a large, competent party of 7th and 8th level characters.
In 3rd edition, they could have challenged a large 9th or 10th level party, even if the kobolds were only 1st level, due to the large number of classes (and all the spell-using classes) available to them.
If the kobolds were higher level, they could have challenged parties with levels in their teens.
*Tucker's Kobold's* would have been 10th level or even higher, in 3E.
In this case, they could have taken on a large party where party levels were 20th or higher.
Remember the overwhelming power of Instant Kill Poison, a common favorite of monsters in 1E and 2E. (A round lasted one minute, long enough for the poison to take effect and incapacitate totally.)
Poison was a Save or Die affair, and your chances weren't real good of making the Save unless you were high level (not even if you were a dwarf.)
Tucker's Kobolds had no qualm about using poison ... or monsters they found (like Carrion Crawls or Green Slime) or other nasty things (like improvised traps, pit traps, collapsing ceilings, oil slicks, and even crude explosives or explosive gasses.)
Tucker's Kobolds never made morale checks, never lost their will to fight, would never stop (the Terminator would have liked them.)
The party they attacked, was psychologically overwhelmed by the attack, the endless attack that kept on coming, first taking their animals, then their hirelings, then their henchmen, then finally them, one by one.
Tucker's Kobolds, aren't something any character I ever ran would want to run into. The only exceptions being a human paladin of mine named Osilovar, who would have blown his great horn and fought the glorious fight, and my Haldendreeva elven girl Trillirra, who would have fought them tooth and nail, killing (and eating) them one by one.
I'd rather have an enemy army of kender (armed with high powered magic) to deal with, than Tucker's Kobolds.
I think Raistlin would agree with me (and even Mordenkainen and Elminster, too.)
Tucker's Kobolds could have completely messed up the drow city of Menzoberranzan, and I don't say THAT lightly!
However, like anything else in D&D, as long as the players at the table get something worthwhile from it, its worth considering.
It's like a very tired in-joke (gsnort, you guys got owned by kobolds, gsnort!) combined with an undeserved egoboo that the DM or designer can pat themselves on the back for for being so clever...oblivious to the idea that they can use anything to cheat the players, and almost always win, so long as they invent special case rules and use unlimited resources, DM knowledge, hiveminds etc. as has been mentioned in this thread.
In short, the idea should be a dead duck, and it would be long forgotten but for the above two DM bennies (in-joke and egoboo). As a result it's an undead duck, which IMO is desperately in need of a good long drink from the holy water firehose.
If you must do it, at least use jermlaine, who actually have an affinity for traps.
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Last edited by rounser; 9th January 2009 at 08:34 AM..
Dragon Mountain had a lot of this as well, with kobolds throwing essentially endless amounts of save-or-die poisoned darts at you. Even back then I felt something weird was going on. We weren't actually fighting a nest of kobolds. We were facing a constant barrage of pain that happened to have some kobold-y flavortext. They might've been humans or halflings or orcs and it wouldn't have mattered.
Tucker's Kobolds is an idea that should be dead and left in the past. It sets out to prove that even weak opponents are dangerous if played intelligently. But instead it proves that monsters are irrelevant if you're willing to cheat enough damage onto the PCs.
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I avoid silly stuff like kobolds having anti-Cloudkill tactics, or readied actions that beat an exploding fireball (WTF?!).
I do use constricted tunnels and the kind of thing you'll see in any medieval castle. One of my favourites was a 3'x3' tunnel with a 4' drop at the end into a chamber. The monsters (quaggoths) easily slaughtered the poor PCs who kept trying to crawl through into the room. I also gave a 22nd level 2e Wizard a very tough time in an orc lair, the orcs numbered several hundred (a full "30-300" 1e/2e style orc encounter) and had some Winter Wolves, plus they made good use of deadfall traps, chain-drapes and the like. Nothing specifically aimed at 20th level Wizards mind you, but intelligent tactics vs generic flying and invisible foes.
The worst Tucker-inspired cheese I ever saw was a Dungeon magazine module where the kobold tribe was armed with dozens and dozens of globes from Necklaces of Fireballs. I wanted to strangle the author.
Caveat: Any bad DM can ruin any type of encounter, and thus a bad DM does not invalidate the encounter so described. So YMMV, 'kay?
Suffice it to say, that when I ran Hero's Snare there was a reason the kobolds were so tenacious, the PCs eventually got access to the surveillance and movement tunnels (by squeezing) and thus figured out how they knew so much, they got breathers that simulated regrouping on the kobold end, they had a defined number of kobolds and resources, they had a source for those resources (mining and trade), they had a reason for having an alchemist and there was a separate "living quarters" warren that was trap-free.
__________________ 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.
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"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.
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