Mishihari Lord said:
House rules, buddy. SOP back in the day. There weren't any rules for nets, and I wanted nets, so I made some up.
Sure. I've no problem with house rules. But, my point is simply that you are an example of what I'm talking about. These particular house rules had a purpose. You created a special item, a 'wire net', that had the properties you needed in order to make your kobolds competitive against the PCs. It wasn't like throwing a chain link fence or a fishing basket at someone. It was effective - actually I would say highly effective. It gave you a touch attack. It was difficult to evade and it stole actions from the target.
Okay, this one wasn't RAW, but there weren't any rules for this in the RAW. I would hardly count this as "cheating," since it applied the same to everyone.
It sounds like a net would be almost an autokill employed against a BBEG. Touch attack to 'paralyze' an opponent for 1d4 rounds no save? Yeah, I'll do that. I'd want a whole bag of holding full of such things.
No, but so what? This is fantasy, and since when is creativity discouraged?
Creativity has nothing to do with it. Pushing campfires around with broomsticks as a weapon is creative. But it is creativity applied toward the purpose of creating special rules designed to even things up between high level opponents and weak ones and darn any sort of common sense that might get in the way of that. I have no doubt that Tucker was a creative DM who created a memorable campaign. That is a given. I'm not even saying he was a bad DM. I'm saying that it is very easy to fall into the trap of thinking that this is cunning and clever, when all it really is is a special application of DM fiat.
Yes, frequently. That was part of the fun.
Good. I commend you. I can't imagine how the little suckers managed to threaten a high level party, since a simple fear spell would probably wipe out not only every kobold in the area of effect, but probably a good many hiding behind things and corners, and cloudkill would take out large swaths of a lair, and things like sleep and magic missile are autokills against whole kobold teams. But then again, touch attacks to paralyze a PC for 1d4 rounds with no save. Right.
One of the things that bothers me about all this 'flaming oil = tactics' and 'using nets = tactics' is that well, it isn't tactics. It's technology. It might as well be magic spells. The other thing that bothers me is that flaming oil is far more effective employed against kobolds than it is employed against PC's.
Good.
They were pretty brave though. I think I rationalized by saying that their LE alignment made them fanatically devoted to the defense of their tribe and territory.
Of course.
Honestly, I don't see what your problem is. You suggested a bunch of tactics only slightly different than the ones used by Tucker's kobolds that look like they should give a similar chance of success.
There are several major differences that you aren't seeing. For example, my suggestions don't require the kobold tribe to have any more resources than is typical for kobolds. They don't need light crossbows. They don't need flaming oil - a single bottle of which by the rules would be a significant portion of the treasure of an entire tribe. They don't need any special expensive weapons or armor or equipment or things that they could not reasonably manufacture themselves. I also don't need any special rules other than those typically used for things like traps in published scenarios. No nets. No lassos. And incidently, if you want to bend the limitations of the rules in your favor, a horde of lasso wielding kobolds would have done the trick pretty well too. But if I had done that, I couldn't have really pretended that I was doing anything but bending the limitations in the rules, because in the real world, armies don't employ lassos as uber-weapons.
Now, I could put in a kobold tribe that manufactured plate mail and its own flaming oil, and that might be interesting. They could have an iron and coal mine, and refining flaming oil from nearby tar pits, and be generally technologically sophisticated. They could have a very profitable trade system and have an obvious means of significant economic support. But giving them these extra resources is a far different thing than making them clever, cunning, or 'mean'. It is a far different thing from saying that these are ordinary kobolds. I might as well have given them extra hit dice or superior attributes or some other thing, because mechanically its going to amount to the same thing. I could also equip them with Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifles, and employ far more realistic rules than anything that involved 'wire nets', but hopefully you can see that this isn't the same thing as tactics or cunning either.
The other thing is that as I pointed out, kobolds need a 20 to hit AC 1. In my experience, AC 1 is not that hard to come by for high level parties. Yet, our description of Tucker's kobolds makes a big deal about ordinary attacks from kobolds. Why, when a 10th level fighter ought to be able to absorb 300 or so attacks even without healing? Since when should that worry a high level party. My suspicion is that like your nets, Tucker was playing fast and loose with AC. Otherwise, kobold attacks are less effective than bee stings against most high level parties. There should be a couple hundred dead kobolds before such attacks would even be worrying us otherwise, unless those 'flaming crossbow bolts' had some touch attack component, or unless the kobolds were getting a huge bonus to hit from 'narrow corridor bonus' or like Skip's goblins in AotDL, had special rules for mass volley fire that ignored AC.
