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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5834913" data-attributes="member: 4937">That's just the thing; they really can't.  These are creatures of average intelligence and crude trap making, craft, and mining skills (+2 bonus according to 3rd edition, for example).  Sure, they can settle and prepare a defensible position, as I've briefly begun to outline above, but the above isn't really a good defense against PC's above 3rd or 4th level in either 1st or 3rd edition.  By 6th level, the above defenses are getting a bit iffy.If you hold the kobolds to the same standards you would hold the players, you'll realize that they lack the wealth and skills to do much more than about CR 3 traps.  Anything more elaborate than a simple covered spiked pit trap is really beyond them.  There is a reason that 3e capped out ordinary traps at CR 10; it's not that its impossible to design traps that are more than CR 10, but its that traps have to be really good to threaten players if the DM isn't making them work by fiat.The kobolds can rely on stealth, but unless like Tucker's kobolds they all move silently and hide like 15th level thieves, the PC's will be more stealthy and more alert.  They'll eventually catch on and start out ambushing thier tormentors unless you just rule that kobolds are teleporting in from the kobold dream world and are impossible to ambush.  At some point CR 3 traps with 20 search DC's and CR 1/4 creatures just stop being dangerous even in combination.  The math stops working; it takes to much effort to injure a PC, the PC can recover too quickly, and it takes too little effort for the PC to kill the kobold.  See Tucker's Kobolds 'intelligence' is really nothing of the sort.  It's Tucker using his own omniscence as the DM to retroactively 'prepare' for the PC's, and his own omnipotence as the DM to by fiat rule in the kobolds favor.  I encourage you to read Skip's 'Axe of the Dwarven Lords' (a good read in any event) to see documentation of how 'Tucker's Kobolds' really work.  It's going to be very hard for anyone to escape from that designing this sort of scenario.  I just now threw out some stats for this excercise because I realized that I was making some things work significantly more effectively than standard traps and attacks of the type and I'm the one making this argument.  It's hard as a DM to be fair in this case because your motives are less than pure; your gamist desire to make a challenge is at war with the implied simulationist requirements that you threaten the players with 'merely kobolds'. Your players are going to have no problem if you try to beat them with flanking and aid other.  Melee is a bad idea.  Players just wade through the big masses of kobolds it takes to do that, and the narrow confines of the dungeon just work against the kobolds.  You'd be better off having the whole tribe of 400 meet the PC's on the open Moor, and simply rolling 400 ranged attacks each round.  You'll be losing them 50-60 to an encounter if you go to melee.  Do the math; it doesn't work.  Heck, even kobolds behind arrow slits are marginal at 6th level.You want cruelty and mean though?  Have the kobolds seal off a smallish area with large blocks, start shoveling coal in through holes in the ceiling until they've got a ton or three in there (say 100 cubic feet), then have them throw in a few bottles of burning oil and then shovel some more coal.  Low level PC's don't have the resources to tunnel quickly, so you'll have a death trap.  The kobolds can just arrange to have the fire last longer than the PC's can, eventually turning the place into an oven (death comes more quickly if the PC's don't arrange to pile the coal up to one side and use 'create water' to get it wet, but yeah, that's PC's for you).  I'd suggest finding a copy of Dungeon #18 and reading Tallow's Deep for a primer on this sort of design.  It don't suggest you copy it in all cases, but it's a good introduction and it does at least try to make the encounters varied and is creative.As for the PC's beating higher level foes, that isn't (usually) the result of intelligence and planning.  That's usually the result of usually having (as a party) more hit points, more actions per turn, and more abilities than any single foe that they face.  A PC party is the ultimate 'solo monster'.</blockquote>

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