Dragon Mountain 4th Edition

[Heselbine]

If you're already fed up with kobolds in 4e, stop reading now. If, however, you love the little dragony types, and you remember the classic second edition boxed set 'Dragon Mountain' you might be thinking about converting it to 4e.

I've been giving this a little thought. Bearing in mind that the point of Dragon Mountain is to fight the biggest baddest dragon possible, it looks to me like the end-point is a 30th-level campaign-closer. However, how do you reconcile that with fighting loads of kobolds? Kobolds are not going to get anywhere near 30th-level 4e characters. So, either:

a) You beef up all the kobolds (not very satisfactory);
b) You invent some new rules to make the kobolds more dangerous (not very consistent);
c) You don't run the biggest baddest dragon possible; or
d) Something else I haven't thought of.

The one that appeals to me at present is c) - maybe run it with a younger dragon which has a chance to escape, or which has a parent who gets involved later in the campaign?

Anyone got any ideas?

 

[NSTR]

I had considered running Dragon Mountain in 4e as well. IIRC, the issues you are describing are the same as they were in 2nd edition so very little change is needed. IIRC, they had some slightly new rules for kobolds grappling PC's enmasse so that they could take their stuff. Also the kobolds had acquired powerful magic items to use against the PCs and sometimes using the PCs magic items against them. Lastly, they used hit and run tactics, so they never wanted to get in a straight up fight with the PCs.

I do not think anything really changed with editions. In 2e kobolds were weak and they still are in 4e. Dragon Mountain had ways of dealing with that.

 

[Boarstorm]

b) You invent some new rules to make the kobolds more dangerous (not very consistent);

I think it's quite consistent with the module, actually, seeing as how (as NSTR points out), the original Dragon Mountain had a variety of module specific rules to make the little buggers dangerous for a high-level party.

I mean, as I recall there was the kobold grappling thing and the nixing of iterative attacks against the little buggers.

Seems like there was something else, but I can't recall what.

Personally, I think the minion rules work really really well for the feel of Dragon Mountain. I'd say create appropriate level minion kobolds (on the low-side of the scale -- something where they'd have to roll, say, 15 or higher to hit the average party member) in order to recreate the feel of wading mostly harmlessly through a horde of little yapping bast... err... bad guys.

 

[SSquirrel]

3 of us ran 2 12th level characters apiece thru DM back in the 2nd ed days. They beat up my wild mage and took his Wand of Wonder. That wand was fairly roleld by the DM but he refused to givei tt o me. Then he rolled it AGAIN and the otehr 2 guys demanded he give it to me Worked well the 3 or 4 tiems I got to sue it before they listened to the activation word, mauled me and took the wand. Lousy dragon wannabes DM is lots of fun. You could be surrounded by 8 or 16 kobolds at a time in 2E, it was vicious even w/them all at low level.