How would you defend your subterranean kingdom?

Let's say you're a Goblin King ruling your Undermountain Kingdom. How would you defend it?

According to the Monster Manual, a Goblin Tribe comprises:

• 40-400 1st-level Warriors
• One 3rd-level Sergeant per 20 adults
• One or two Lieutenants of 4th or 5th level
• One Leader of 6th to 8th level
• 10-24 Worgs
• 2-4 Dire Wolves

With those resources and some good ol' Goblin "malicious ingenuity" -- but not much else -- how would you, as Goblin King, set up your Kingdom to make for easy raids on nearby highways and villages and easy defense against Men from Above?

First, I would ensure that there were multiple exits from my underground domain, some secret, all guarded. Second, I would have a series of "buffer caverns" close to the surface, with lookouts posted. If an enemy force invades, the lookout collapses the cavern on their heads (via a pre-rigged trap) and retreats to sound the alarm. Even if the cavern collapse doesn't kill the intruders, it will block that passage and give the goblins time to prepare their defenses, or escape if the invaders are too powerful. Also, the buffer caverns can be staging points for raids down the mountainside.

If there are natural obstructions underground, such as small tunnels, underground rivers, or gaping chasms, I would turn those into choke points. Make the goblin warrens have four or five foot ceilings, meaning that the denizens and their wargs manuever fine, but anything Medium-sized (tall) and up is hampered by the low roof, providing negative circumstance modifiers to their attacks, and potentially making it impossible to use weapons of Large or greater size. Bridges across underground rivers and chasms can be guarded by archers, with or without poisoned arrows (depending on the toughness of the PCs), and those archers can use the bridges themselves as traps - when the PCs charge across, have them cut the ropes and fall back.

Wargs won't be much help as mounts indoors, but murder holes will be deadly. You can make the PCs fight for every foot they gain. Depending on the level of difficulty you're shooting for, the murder holes can protect goblins who are prepared to lob alchemist's fire, tanglefoot bags, poisoned arrows, burning pitch, tar, or oil, scalding water, etc. The goblins in the holes will have 9/10th cover, making it nearly impossible to strike them back directly.

If you want to be *really* nasty, have the goblins send skirmish forces after the PCs every few hours, eliminating any opportunity the PCs have to rest and recoup spells.

Finally, don't overlook magic. Goblin clerics, wizards, or even NPC adepts can be threatening, especially if they appear at the back of a goblin horde during a pitched battle. I'd shoot for spells that buff their champions and hinder the PCs. A great tactic is to have them cast silence on a goblin champion or chief before he wades into combat, making it hard for the party to heal wounded fighters.

Hope that helps.

No lights. The second you see lights in your tunnels you should assume the presence of humans.

Archers.

Traps.

Here is how a typical trap should be laid out.

.G
.A
X
.A
.G

A is an Archer
X is a trap
G is a grunt

When someone trips a trap (or goes to disarm it) the archers should fire (from behind the grunts) . The grunts serve to protect the archers. As soon as one of them takes a melee hit, all should retreat. The archers should be trained to fire on spellcasters first.

Raiding:

I would divide a raiding party into three groups. The first two groups make a two-prong attack on a settlement. The third stays back. The leaders of each of the first two prongs have a horn. The horns have different notes. If one prong of the raid takes casualties the leader of the raid sounds his horn and the third group comes in to reinforce that prong. If the raid is going badly, sound retreat.

Just my two cents.

One thing I used once that worked decently well went as follows.

You have a long corridor. I mean really long. Like 2-300 feet long. Every so many feet put a small hidden room that's nearly impossible to find. Now, when your PCs come marching down this corridor (Make sure it's dark btw) have some Goblin Archers fire a shot at them from say 60ft away and then dive into the room and shut the door silently. The party will charge forth into the corridor right. Well, behind the archers was another set of archers that fires then dives into the room. Now, do this all along the length of the corridor and you've got some pretty beat up pcs. If you want to be really evil, start over once they get to the end.

Lasers.

Big freaking lasers


Paragon

As a goblin, I would absolutely know that you can't rely on "secret" entrances or doors of any sort. The fricking elves that walk past them will probably auto-detect them, and then there's that 1st level spell "Detect Secret Doors" that I would be WELL aware of. Remember that goblins are just as smart and just as "wise" as humans are.

This means setting up "secret" entrances, complete with "hard to find" footprints/tracks (avoid being too obvious) that lead to nassssty nassssty traps.

ForceUser's "buffer caverns" idea -- in which the goblins can collapse caverns to slow and/or trap the nasty invaders -- is key.

I'd have my shamans (though I'd make them full clerics, frankly -- why should goblins have to rely on an NPC class?) use their Create Water spells (or hell, just grab some buckets) to set up passages that are water-filled up to their knees. Anything, including invisible creatures, splooshing through them is going to make a sound. And water is a great way to hide traps like tripwires and such.

I also want to concur with the idea of having many passages being only 5' tall -- hell, make them only 4' tall. Captives can be dragged through pretty easily, but medium-sized adventurers (that aren't dwarves) will be screwed.

Finally, I'd make sure all of my clerics memorized Command(x2) . And all of them that were 3rd level + had Hold Person (x2) .

ballistas at the ends of long corridors, perhaps hidden with illusions or behind cover. uneven floors and low ceilings should lower the PCs movement rate allowing the the ballista to get off a couple of shots. Use webs(either spells or natural) and other forms of entanglement to slow them even further. And don't forget the occaisonal gelatinous cube!! Give the goblins mostly leather armors and spears and throw in a few rust monsters.

Traps, dead end passage ways, ways to get behind your foes.

Some traps I would use would be gas filled areas that can be shot into and set off.

Other things would be murder holes, where you can spear someone from behind a wall, drop things like scorpions onto your foes.

Alarms, simple pots, pans, fish hooks and string.

Well, for Raiding Parties, I would say about 10-20 regular goblins (1st level warriors), with the Mounted Combat feat, riding on Worgs. Then have another 10 or so goblins riding Wargs, but the catch is, they're archers with either Point Blank Shot or Weapon Focus Shortbow. They dismount and start shooting arrows. They are led by a Sargeant (3rd level warrior), with the Mounted Combat and either Spirited Charge, or Expertise. Their healing is provided by a !st level Goblin cleric with the Trickery and one other domain of choice.

And don't forget Fluffy, the Dire Wolf at maximum HD advancement.

And forget filling the hallways with water, fill them with oil, stored in holding tanks delved into the side walls of the tunnel. Open up a sluice-gate, and oil comes flooding in. When pesky adventurers come in, have the watchgoblin throw a torch in. Fresh roasted adventurers make for tasty wolf treats.

First concern would be architecture. The kingdom would be riddled with maze like tunnels filled with traps, dead ends, and so forth.

Second concern would be information. The best warriors under my command will serve as scouts, giving me a constant stream of information.

Third concern is to launch aggressive ambushes and raids. Never let the enemy rest in my kingdom and only fight in straight battle when I have overwhelming forces.

that help?