Alternatives to Fury of the Small for Goblins?

[Kobold Avenger]

In most D&D campaigns where Goblins are vengeful little creatures because they're often the butt of jokes from larger races, Fury of the Small might be an appropriate ability. It's certainly the case for FR and most of the other settings too. It might be different for Eberron, though Goblins in that are the commoners and lowest rung in Dhakaani society so that still might be valid for them. But I feel that Fury of the Small might not be representative of all Goblins in all campaigns.

For example if Goblins were more of the unreliable inventors and mechanics archetype what should they get in place of that?

 

[Burnside]

If your goblins are more like that, I would suggest giving them rock gnome's "Artificer" and "Tinker's Lore" racial abilities instead of "Fury of the Small".

 

[Oofta]

In a lot of games, goblins are evil versions of tinker gnomes, so I agree with [MENTION=6910340]Burnside[/MENTION].

I do this a lot in my own world and make sure that goblins have special thematic weapons. For example, one goblin would throw a pot of honey (I was going for a bit of humor. With PCs going honey, WTF?) followed up by a second pot full of stinging insects attracted to the honey. The goblins of course were flying overhead on camouflaged gliders.

In any case, the mechanical bits don't always matter as much as what you envision their culture to be like. Don't get too tied to following prescribed abilities. Think of what kind of scenes you want to use your goblins to enact and then figure out a reasonable way to implement.

For example, want a tougher "goblin" based encounter? Have a goblin invent a mech based on some construct, with the lead goblin chortling about how he's turned the tables and is tired of always being picked on. Have fun with it and make him the goblin version of Tony Stark.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Mainly in regards to Goblin PCs, I've found it strange that Fury of the Small is something that even all City Goblins from ghettos in Human cities would get. I could see that many of them would in fact be vengeful of the type of discrimination or bullying they might get especially from Humans, Hobgoblins, Orcs and other bigger races. But what of the ones that live in some more accepting mixed societies, does that translate into a short burst of primal rage over something that was never in their lives?

I could certainly see some of them having the Tinker Gnome ability instead to go with the inventor archetype.

Another Goblin archetype I can think of is the merchant type of Goblin where they're sort of like greedy or unscrupulous fey merchants.