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Message: <blockquote data-quote="exile" data-source="post: 1888647" data-attributes="member: 20068">In the game I am running, goblins constituted the principle foes of the first half of the first story arc. As the party was made up of first-level characters, I did not power up the individual gobins (I did power up a leader type, giving him some ranger and rogue levels; I also included one shaman and one cleric), but the party was quite large (9 PCs, plus 4-9 NPCs at any given time), so I did not feel bad about using large numbers of goblins, powering up their leaders, and using some sneaky tactics.The first encounter the party had with the goblins was with the leader and shaman mentioned above, 8 standard goblins (from the MM, but armed with short bows and spears instead of morning stars and javelins); I then mounted all of the goblins on wolves (not worgs, not dire wolves, plain wolves). I played it as a pretty straight cavalry charge.It was a difficult encounter in terms of using up party resources (spells and action points), but not particularly morbid or mortal.When the party next encountered the goblins, this time at their lair, they faced a foe which fought differently than the goblin wolf riders mentioned above (I was trying to distinguish different factions within the tribe via different strategies/tactics). These goblins made use of alarms, sentries, traps (particularly pit traps), and the natural darkness of their lair. Rather than rush out to meet the PCs, they waited patiently, luring the PCs into rooms where they had positional advantage, only to retreat deeper into the cave system if anything went slightly against them.One trick that worked well was to have a relatively small group of goblin archers advance and fire on the party, when the party pursued, the goblin archers fled deeper into the caves. Unfortuantly the room they fled into had a shallow area in the center of the floor where a contingent of spear-wielders were waiting. The spear-goblins charged up a out of the shallow, much to the chagrin of the PCs.I also stuck a bugbear in as the new king of the goblin tribe; he had recently usurped the throne of the wolf-riding ranger/rogue, relegating him to master of hounds. The bugbear packed some much needed punch (too much in fact-as I had to play him as less intelligent than he was to spare party lives- fortunately, I was able to play him off as just being arrogant to the point of taunting the PCs). After watching him crush a few of the dwarven warrior NPCs, the party was fairly scared for their collective lives.I also used the goblin encounters to interject some moral ambiguity. When the bugbear was hurting, he fled deeper into the caves to take cover behind the goblin women and children, calling on them to offer their lives to protect his own. I loved watching the good-hearted female drow in the party squirm as she was forced to cut her way through goblin women and children. Further complicating things was the presence of a young human girl (sorcerer) who had taken up with the goblins after the people of her village had turned against and burned her mother and their home.Just a few specific thoughts on how I've used some of the ideas described thus far in this thread. Does anyone else have any specific information on how their non-boring goblin encounters have gone? I really like the idea of goblins spoiling food and laming horses (non-magically) and think that I shall have to use that when the PCs meet the lone survivor of the goblin massacre (and his goblin death squad) later in the game.Chad</blockquote>

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