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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5835794" data-attributes="member: 4937">I can't really address this fully because the 3e math on spot/hide are broken when the hiding occurs at range (it's linear growth in difficulty rather than the logrithmic it should be to simulate real space), and as far as I know neither 4e nor Pathfinder has fixed the problem.   Exploiting the spot/hide rules as a DM is something you can choose to do, but if you do you have to accept that the PC's do a far better job at it than most NPC's and will out exploit kobolds quite easily.   Ignoring however the broken math on range, the turn based nature of D&D combat, the binary nature of feats, and the ablative nature of hit point, renders this an ineffective tactic for low level foes in D&D.  For mid-level foes, yeah, you can do this very effectively, but with 1st level commoner and warrior kobolds this is too sophisticated of a tactic to work.First, you'll note my default corridor I described above was 5' wide, 20' high, and equipped with essentially murder holes, so I agree that this moves in the right direction.   However, assuming that the kobolds are equipped with conventional weapons as well, then a murder hole is just a arrow loop in the ceiling and differs only by flavor.Let's examine though the optimal terrain design for the 'attack from improved cover' tactic, just to help get a handle on what I'm talking about.   If we really want to pull this off, we use a large corridor rather than a small one to maximize the number of attacks that the kobolds can focus on the party in a single round.   So instead of a small confined corridor that reduces the ability of the kobolds (or the PC's) to concentrate fire, we instead have say a 35' wide corridor with a 30' high ceiling an is 100' long.   With the exception of the door at either end of the corridor, every 5'x5' section lining the corridor has an arrow loop in it.   The floor of the corridor consists of a single 1'  wide catwalk down the middle of the corridor, which is flanked on either side by drop to a moat containing something unpleasant (spiked pit, ice cold deep water, acid, boiling mud, swarms of snakes, whatever).   This is the best case that the kobolds can manage with direct attacks.   Why?  Because all the kobolds have improved cover (+8 to AC) which negates most of a midlevel PC parties ranged attack advantage, and from the catwalk each PC without 5 ranks in balance is flat footed.  (Any narrower of a catwalk would be unrealistic on the grounds that kobolds couldn't make use of it themselves on a daily basis, and otherwise the players would go around just as the kobolds themselves would.)   Once the party has advanced into the room, the kobolds from this position can attack with the 66 kobold archers stationed in front and back of the party, the 6 kobolds firing down on the party from directly above them, and the roughly 120 kobold archers than can see the party from positions along the walls.   This lets the DM throw about 172 d20's on the first round of combat, ensuring on average 8-9 hits.   More if you are generous with murder hole lines of fire.This is a far far better situation for the kobolds than 'duck and cover' and 'hit and run' tactics.  It is actually a murderous death trap if the party blunders into this room without a plan and you can seal the exits.There are a couple problems here.   The first is that it takes between half and all the tribe to man all the combat stations in this room, so assuming that the tribe can bring in all of its sentries, scouts, and gaurds from every other area, it now has left much or all of the rest of its defenses unnamed.   If the PC's retreat or fail to enter the room, the whole system of defense is now in disarray and must be put back.   If the PC's get to this room by surprise, it will probably be initially lightly defended.  And the PC's are unlikely to just walk into such an obvious trap anyway, and will be able to prepare defenses against such a straight forward problem.  The second is that since the kobolds are now massed, they are also now more vulnerable to PC's magical counter measures.  It's essentially like having your whole battalion in parade formation in a combat zone - one well placed 155mm artillery shell is going to ruin everyone's day.   If the PC's have a means of hurting kobolds, now is the time to use it (as just one example, wall of fire adjacent to one wall facing outward will fry 25-30kobolds even with improved evasion from the cover). Remember, the kobolds advantage is in numbers.  If you want to use the kobolds in a direct attack, you must maximize that advantage.   However, I'm not at all convinced that direct exchanges of fire of this sort are the best approach.</blockquote>

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