Kobold Small-unit tactics

[Bohemian Ear-Spork]

One of the "big three" D&D settings lacks social clubs that require you to be able to cast 9th level spells before you can be a member, and it's called the high magic one?

It's the one with the magic train, and the magical airships, and the magical mile-high towers, and the magical robots.

It's also my favorite D&D setting, by a long chalk, and I'd cheerfully run another Eberron game if I could do it proper justice.

But what I meant by "high magic" is that it's a setting where magic is integrated into everyday life, and spellcasters are very common. The setting of this camapign is very much the opposite. Magic of any sort is rare.

 

[haakon1]

If they run, they are VC. If they do not run, they are well-disciplined VC.

Kobolds should fight like VC (Viet Cong), sneaky and expert guerrilla fighters.

Traps: Classic VC traps are:
- Punji stakes (small pit with spikes, often infectious) designed to wound feet. Caltrops do this in D&D terms.
- Deadfall traps -- spiked log that swings around, etc.
- Mines and IED's, especially grenade without a pin, in an American c-ration can with a trip wire. I think you could use alchemists fire on a string for this.

VC tactics:
- Don't show yourself or attack until the enemy is overcommitted/too deep in the dungeon.
- Hide a lot.
- Attack from secret locations, like spider holes (camouflaged pits that you pop up from), camouflaged bunkers, and of course narrow dirt tunnels that are for only Small characters, have lots of blind turns, and are full of traps including the old snake you can let out of a cage.
- Hit and run attacks. Ambushes. Snipers. Concentrate all fire on one opponent. Kill someone, then leave.
- Mortar attacks at night to keep the enemy from being rested. Simulate this by hit and run attacks at night on the PC's position. The idea is just to keep the PC's from getting enough sleep -- especially effective on spellcasters.
- Major attacks should be at night, since kobolds have darkvision. Charlie owns the night.
- "Grab the enemy by the belt". Against an enemy with air support/artillery support/superior area effect magic, you need to get really close, so that area effect attacks either are called off, or hurt the enemy too. Kobolds should get in close. Grappling is good -- multiple kobold grapplers after the arcane spellcaster, for instance.


Of course, if you do all this, your PC's should be afraid, very afraid. Bwahahahaha!

RECON Mission Director/D&D Dungeon Master

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

- "Grab the enemy by the belt". Against an enemy with air support/artillery support/superior area effect magic, you need to get really close, so that area effect attacks either are called off, or hurt the enemy too. Kobolds should get in close. Grappling is good -- multiple kobold grapplers after the arcane spellcaster, for instance.

Hmmm, the DMG2 mob template applied to level 1 kobold warriors ...

Oh, and kobold warriors are a bad idea, IMO. Making the front line fighters level 1 rogues makes a lot more sense to me, and works well with ambushes and trap use.

 

[frankthedm]

RECON Mission Director/D&D Dungeon Master, Your team leader is reporting for duty.

 

[Delta]

The bulk of the unit is made up of first level warriors, armed with a light crossbow, longspear, and shortsword. Typically, they will take cover (if possible) and concentrate crossbow fire on a single target, as directed by the unit's leader. In melee, they break into three groups of four (along with the rest of the unit), with half of each group using the spears and the other half swords...

Any tactics to suggest? Or avoid?

The short story is: I've tried this stuff and it simply doesn't work. Once PCs get to mid-levels (even 5th or 6th) the way D&D is set up, those 1st level kobolds just can't hit their AC. So it doesn't matter if they have cover, a 3rd level leader, poisoned weapons, etc.

 

[Simm]

The short story is: I've tried this stuff and it simply doesn't work. Once PCs get to mid-levels (even 5th or 6th) the way D&D is set up, those 1st level kobolds just can't hit their AC. So it doesn't matter if they have cover, a 3rd level leader, poisoned weapons, etc.

The answer depends on how you play it. A trap is still a trap and the party can't pass every reflex save. I've always liked using contact poison so you don't need to deal damage to affect the party. I recently put the party up against a group of kobolds who used bull rush, maybe they don't often suceed but when the party has a pit trap behind them it can be dangerous. When in doubt remember Tucker's kobolds.

 

[Storyteller01]

<<<snip>>> Keep in mind that the kobolds will not be sitting in their lair building traps; they're going to be on the city streets, actively patrolling and looking for trouble-makers.

If you're in city based areas, how much do the leaders care for their constitueunts? How well do they deal with fire? How much wood and combustibles are in the area?

Some ideas: if the characters are hold up in a building, throw in smudgepots (think smoke bombs). If there's too many flammables around it may cause fires, but that might work for the kobolds.

Since they have support and funds, lots of tangle foot bags. No need to be very accurate, both the forest and the city provide anchor points, and the players don't die immediately. Crossbows can be modified to launch them, may be with a -2 to hit and half the range.

Traps may or may not be the way to go. They catch attackers off guard, but they slow down patrols that have to avoid them. Anyone who can follow the partols without being found will also know how to avoid them.

We house ruled it, but a 3rd party source has a weapon called an iron breaker. Exotic, but it lobs 1 lb shot with a range increment of 100 (it's classed asa thrown weapon). Some of your koblods can use it to lob ceramic other other easily breakable containers holding nasty surprises (tangle foot, alchemist fire, some slimes, caltrops, etc).

 

[kigmatzomat]

Anyone running kobolds in numbers should look up Roman legion tactics. These guys would march thirty miles and then build a fort as part of the nightly camp ritual. We're talking 6-8 tall wooden pallisades, 5' deep trenches in rings, outward-facing spikes to prevent charges, earth mounded against the inside of the pallisades so archers could fire out, etc, etc. Tools used: axes, crude shovels and muscle. They did this pretty much each and every night they were on field ops and were not stopping at an existing fortification.

Rapid construction of fortifications allow you to be strategically offensive but tactically defensive. You goad a foe into attacking your fort because you built that fort in his backyard. The d20 equivalent is to make simple traps (pits, spikes, etc) that the troops know about and avoid as part of standard ops when retreating. Non-flying opponents are taken out of combat by falling into a 10' pit.

Certain Roman tactics don't translate to d20; the pilum was a javelin that was intended to imbed in the target's shield and make it useless as well as making the target clumsy from this 3' shaft getting in everyone's way. Great way to either break up a charging force or to put a shield wall out of position prior to a charge. Instead the charge-breaker weapon should be nets, bolos, and anything else that entangles.

Large units should take advantage of the benefits of low-level magic. Bardic songs and bless are great unit buffs, as is magic weapon on 50 javelins/stones/bolts.

Grenade-like weapons (vials of oil, acid, etc) should be brought out when high-AC opponents appear. I prefer to use standard oil rather than alchemists fire due to the cost. In that case you sling your oil at your foe at range and follow up with fire-arrows or a very small number of alchemist fire flasks used to ignite the targets soaked with regular oil. If need be you create a line of oil behind the front line, retreat as a unit, then ignite the line once the enemy has stepped into it.


The other trick is to rotate troops. They only get 1 attack/round so use the move action to shift injured troops to the rear where they switch to ranged/reach weapons. The goal is to keep as many pointy-things facing the enemy as possible. Remember that two CLWs will almost completely heal a near-death kobold so they can recover far faster than leveled foes.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The other trick is to rotate troops. They only get 1 attack/round so use the move action to shift injured troops to the rear where they switch to ranged/reach weapons. The goal is to keep as many pointy-things facing the enemy as possible.

I like that a lot.

 

[Fishbone]

Dangit, Haakon1 beat me to it. Kobolds are basically VC with scales.
Here is one thing I want to say, though. Kobolds should almost always start with 4 warrior levels as the base. That leaves them as a CR 1 creature with 4 HD. That also means that they have a good reason for having a lot of wealth. Pooled resources. Rogue 1 is cool and all but +4 to attack, better saves, another feat, and 3 times the HP(6-7 versus 18). They also qualify for martial prestige classes a lot quicker.
If you give them a level of Fighter on top of that they are only CR 2(4 NPC levels -3 for base CR, +1 from the Fighter level) and with ranged attacks they will be +4 from Dexterity(15+1+2 Racial), +4 from Warrior levels, +1 from small size, +1 from masterwork weapons. +10 attack before flanking, higher ground, feats, etc. With bows they could be pretty scary considering that they are such a low CR you can use a real boatload of them and with things like Point Blank Shot, Rapid Shot and the like they could be quite the handful. Or put Rogue 1 on for the skilled hit and runners. That should really scare the players. They're getting mobbed by lowly kobolds and not one shotting them. The kobolds attack them two or even three times. They'd have nearly 30 HP if you ran them like this!