Gez
First Post
A little note, goblins are not chaotic evil. Well, they can be, but usually, they are Neutral
Evil; with Hobgoblins as the lawful branch of goblinkin, and bugbears as the chaotic one.
Some goblins would be spellcasters. Sorcerers, clerics, adepts, psions (if you use them, see
the Blue Goblins, who -- by the way -- are smarter and wiser than most other humanoids; and I tend to always have a Blue Council has leader of my most successfull and wealthy goblin tribes). Even the occasional goblin wizard, maybe. Mind you, when you're lazy, but you can rely on spells, digging miles and miles of tunnels is not that hard. Someone mentionned using Transmute Stone to Flesh, which also has the advantage of feeding the tribe. But other spells may be used (Transmute Rock to Mud, or Soften Earth and Stone, for example). Inversely, transmute Mud to Rock can allow to avoid needing timber (which usually do not grow underground). In a more evil way, Flesh to Stone can provide with nice solid support and a good punishment for the rebellious goblin or any intruder.
Also, domesticated beasts like ankhegs can help greatly in digging. Look at their freaking
burrowing speed !
Don't forget that goblins can be spellcasters too, and not all spellcasting requires extremely
expensive and complicated training. If you're a lucky goblin king, you could even get hold of
some magical items that can purely and simply suppress the need for ventilation in some pieces
(see the wondrous items in the DMG).
Sure, airtight doors and piece of fine clockwork mechanism are the domain of dwarves and
gnomes. But the water-filled U-passages are a cheap alternative to airtight doors, and adding
portcullis at both ends of the underwater part is not beyond goblin means. Simple, nasty, and
lethal to mobs and low-level parties.
Otherwise, goblins would make great use of luring intruders into a neighbor's domain. The
supreme cowardly fighting technique consist of making other people fight for you. An
adventuring party, out to root out some goblin tribe, who fall in the middle of a dragon
lair/drow trading hub/illithid city/orc training field, or, more perversely, myconid hippy
meeting (with all those hallucinogenic spores floating in the air) may forget completely the
goblins and flee if they don't want to be roasted/branded as slave/mindwiped/butchered by axe
and spear, or, in the myconid case, doomed to sit with a silly smile, lauging inanely until
they starve to death.
If your neighbors become a problem (say the drow or mind-flayers want slaves, or the orcs
wants more territories), use the same tactic, and lead them to an other neighbor. Loss should
be minimal, and you should be able to simply dodge most of the assault troops.
Of course, if your citie's precise location is known, that may not work. Secrecy is your ally.
To ensure your base's position stays a mystery, do not dig robust tunnels. Dig frail ones.
Periodically open new ones and let the older collapse. As I said, digging is not a problem in
fantasy, unless you deny goblins the right to wield magic AND to tame digging beasties. The
constant shifting of the accessway to your kingdom will complicate the task for all
longer-lived intruders, who will probably have scouts and advisors who will remember obsolete
path and be delayed by all sorts of dead-ends, new intersections, and new perils.
Also, not all passageway should be guarded and heavily trapped. Just make the other less
convenient. For example, the vertical shaft thing could be used in the tunnel toward the most
dangerous foe, but if you need to get your worgs and wolves in, you will make them pass
through another passage. Who care if that passage involves a 2-day trip because of all its
twist and turns ? You'll probably won't need to get your worgs up and down everyday, otherwise
you would more simply split them into two packs, have one in the goblin city, and the other in
a temporary surface camp somewhere.
Another cheap trap idea: An access tunnel (natural, or dug) with stalactites (fake if you had
to dig the tunnel) cut and shaped so they won't bother a goblin running stooped, but will
occasionnally hurt someone taller. If you attach horizontal pikes on them, that will not
necessarily be a deadly trap, but that will force pursuers to move carefully, i.e. slowly.
The idea is not to have every corridors worked as such (that would be a pain in the arse), but
simply to lure intruders into these tunnels, for example by having a hit'n'fade strike team
flee by such a tunnel. Even better, you could have some goblin "gardeners" growing
subterranean assassin vine (see MM pages 20-21) in the ceiling of some tunnels, cutting them
precautionnously so that they can't reach a goblin, but could aim for the neck of a human,
elf, dwarf, or orc (kobolds, gnomes and halflings are another problem -- by the way, gnomes
make horrible slaves, with their Ghost Sound ventriloquism trick used to lure the taskmaster
away while rats to which they have talked (rats are burrowing mammals) chew their rope and
they escape; better use kobolds, more efficient miners, easier to frighten and coerce, and who
don't need firelight and thus risk firedamp explosion).
Finally, latest cheap trick (but that may hurt the pride of a goblin king): make yourself the
vassals of something more powerful. A red dragon, a drow city... Have your city be on the
other side of that liege's location relative to your usual victim. Advantage: retaliation
strike force, out to assault your goblin tribe, will get a nasty surprise. Flaw of the
technique: you will have to pay for safe passage through your liege's lair, and that will cut
much of your plunder; meaning you probably can't afford a failure in your pillaging raid.
Of course, retreat and flight is always an option. Better exiled than dead.
I recognise that IMC, goblins, although they are not bronzed gods, are less stupid than usual. Mainly the fact that the goblins who really matter are ruled by councils of goblins with +2 Int, +4 Wis racial bonus, and innate psychic powers (funny note: my Elminster equivalent in the role of "the sage who knows pretty much everything about anything" is a true-neutral "Blue" seer/psionic loremaster, leader of an international spy network, heheheh). Also, although the majority of them are NE, the biggest minority of alignment is LE.
Evil; with Hobgoblins as the lawful branch of goblinkin, and bugbears as the chaotic one.
Some goblins would be spellcasters. Sorcerers, clerics, adepts, psions (if you use them, see
the Blue Goblins, who -- by the way -- are smarter and wiser than most other humanoids; and I tend to always have a Blue Council has leader of my most successfull and wealthy goblin tribes). Even the occasional goblin wizard, maybe. Mind you, when you're lazy, but you can rely on spells, digging miles and miles of tunnels is not that hard. Someone mentionned using Transmute Stone to Flesh, which also has the advantage of feeding the tribe. But other spells may be used (Transmute Rock to Mud, or Soften Earth and Stone, for example). Inversely, transmute Mud to Rock can allow to avoid needing timber (which usually do not grow underground). In a more evil way, Flesh to Stone can provide with nice solid support and a good punishment for the rebellious goblin or any intruder.
Also, domesticated beasts like ankhegs can help greatly in digging. Look at their freaking
burrowing speed !
Don't forget that goblins can be spellcasters too, and not all spellcasting requires extremely
expensive and complicated training. If you're a lucky goblin king, you could even get hold of
some magical items that can purely and simply suppress the need for ventilation in some pieces
(see the wondrous items in the DMG).
Sure, airtight doors and piece of fine clockwork mechanism are the domain of dwarves and
gnomes. But the water-filled U-passages are a cheap alternative to airtight doors, and adding
portcullis at both ends of the underwater part is not beyond goblin means. Simple, nasty, and
lethal to mobs and low-level parties.
Otherwise, goblins would make great use of luring intruders into a neighbor's domain. The
supreme cowardly fighting technique consist of making other people fight for you. An
adventuring party, out to root out some goblin tribe, who fall in the middle of a dragon
lair/drow trading hub/illithid city/orc training field, or, more perversely, myconid hippy
meeting (with all those hallucinogenic spores floating in the air) may forget completely the
goblins and flee if they don't want to be roasted/branded as slave/mindwiped/butchered by axe
and spear, or, in the myconid case, doomed to sit with a silly smile, lauging inanely until
they starve to death.
If your neighbors become a problem (say the drow or mind-flayers want slaves, or the orcs
wants more territories), use the same tactic, and lead them to an other neighbor. Loss should
be minimal, and you should be able to simply dodge most of the assault troops.
Of course, if your citie's precise location is known, that may not work. Secrecy is your ally.
To ensure your base's position stays a mystery, do not dig robust tunnels. Dig frail ones.
Periodically open new ones and let the older collapse. As I said, digging is not a problem in
fantasy, unless you deny goblins the right to wield magic AND to tame digging beasties. The
constant shifting of the accessway to your kingdom will complicate the task for all
longer-lived intruders, who will probably have scouts and advisors who will remember obsolete
path and be delayed by all sorts of dead-ends, new intersections, and new perils.
Also, not all passageway should be guarded and heavily trapped. Just make the other less
convenient. For example, the vertical shaft thing could be used in the tunnel toward the most
dangerous foe, but if you need to get your worgs and wolves in, you will make them pass
through another passage. Who care if that passage involves a 2-day trip because of all its
twist and turns ? You'll probably won't need to get your worgs up and down everyday, otherwise
you would more simply split them into two packs, have one in the goblin city, and the other in
a temporary surface camp somewhere.
Another cheap trap idea: An access tunnel (natural, or dug) with stalactites (fake if you had
to dig the tunnel) cut and shaped so they won't bother a goblin running stooped, but will
occasionnally hurt someone taller. If you attach horizontal pikes on them, that will not
necessarily be a deadly trap, but that will force pursuers to move carefully, i.e. slowly.
The idea is not to have every corridors worked as such (that would be a pain in the arse), but
simply to lure intruders into these tunnels, for example by having a hit'n'fade strike team
flee by such a tunnel. Even better, you could have some goblin "gardeners" growing
subterranean assassin vine (see MM pages 20-21) in the ceiling of some tunnels, cutting them
precautionnously so that they can't reach a goblin, but could aim for the neck of a human,
elf, dwarf, or orc (kobolds, gnomes and halflings are another problem -- by the way, gnomes
make horrible slaves, with their Ghost Sound ventriloquism trick used to lure the taskmaster
away while rats to which they have talked (rats are burrowing mammals) chew their rope and
they escape; better use kobolds, more efficient miners, easier to frighten and coerce, and who
don't need firelight and thus risk firedamp explosion).
Finally, latest cheap trick (but that may hurt the pride of a goblin king): make yourself the
vassals of something more powerful. A red dragon, a drow city... Have your city be on the
other side of that liege's location relative to your usual victim. Advantage: retaliation
strike force, out to assault your goblin tribe, will get a nasty surprise. Flaw of the
technique: you will have to pay for safe passage through your liege's lair, and that will cut
much of your plunder; meaning you probably can't afford a failure in your pillaging raid.
Of course, retreat and flight is always an option. Better exiled than dead.
I recognise that IMC, goblins, although they are not bronzed gods, are less stupid than usual. Mainly the fact that the goblins who really matter are ruled by councils of goblins with +2 Int, +4 Wis racial bonus, and innate psychic powers (funny note: my Elminster equivalent in the role of "the sage who knows pretty much everything about anything" is a true-neutral "Blue" seer/psionic loremaster, leader of an international spy network, heheheh). Also, although the majority of them are NE, the biggest minority of alignment is LE.
