How could Kobolds defend their lair? Part 3 of game session posted.

[zenld]

DireKobolds.

And I love the rest of the ideas as well. Swarms of missile weapons was my first response. Those little crossbows may not do alot of damage individually, but when several hundred are fired at you over the course of a minute or two, especially if they are poisoned or disease-ridden, it guarantees a great deal of damage. And I like the idea of embarrassing them by running them off with normal kobolds. "So what drove you out of the cave? Kobolds?" Snicker, snicker. "Wow, ya gotta watch out for those little brutes."

I love this game!

zen

 

[Ruined]

Here's an encounter I recall from years and years ago. We were moving through low tunnels after the little beasties. Ahead, we heard 'click, click, click, KA-CHUNK', repeated once or twice, but it was too far out of our range to see. Someone barely figured out what the sounds was before it was too late.

A ballista. Somehow, the kobolds had pulled or redone a ballista inside of their tunnels. Maybe not the full-on Roman version, but they could have a table set up with heavy crossbows set to fire at a great distance. And its far away enough for them to run after the assault, or even if they get blasted by fireball, that takes out some of the party's firepower.

 

[NCSUCodeMonkey]

Ugh. I remember that module. It is interesting in its own right, but it is hardly what I'd hold up as a "right way to use kobolds to take on a high level party". Maybe "a way to flex killer DM muscles", but nothing even remotely good DMing.

Why? Because the module doesn't actually rely on the kobolds to screw with the party. It uses a whole slew of special rules. Combat rules are changed. The mountain is made of special walls that block Divinations and Teleports and resist 90% of the effects of Stone Shape or Passwall. A large part of the design of Dragon Mountain is an exercise in petty DMing and breaking rules.

That said, there are a lot of cool ideas in the module as far as tactics go. The small passages. The traps. The swarms. The creative use of darkvision and how to screw with people who have to use lights.

Yeah, it's been awhile and I had forgotten about most of that. But like I said...most annoying adventure I've ever played So all of that just fits right in there.

 

[The Freak]

Cool ideas so far. Keep them coming.

Kobolds are master trapmakers, right? So they should have a HUGE amount of traps in their lair. Unfortunetly, I'm having trouble coming up with ideas on how to break away from "you step on a pressure plate and an arrow flies at you". So what could a bunch of trapmakers with 30 years fortify create?

 

[BrooklynKnight]

Since when is makeup a class? lol

 

[Shallown]

As someone pointed out they are small creatures and trip lines above thier hieght works well bt don't forget ... small also means light so pit traps along retreat routes is useful.

Also think of all the alchemy stuff that is nasty. alchemist fire, tangle foot all these can be used in traps without upping the Kobolds power with magic. Makes for some nasty traps.

Also Nets and mancatchers are nasty. Not becuase the kobolds with their size and strength can grapple long but when you throw a load of them at characters someone is getting nailed and if you burn time to get out then you allow more kobolds to get in position.

Give them a level or two of rogue. With so many flanks are easy and that extra 1d6 adds up.

Aid another is one of the keys to mass small bad guys. That +2 adds up quick with flanking and such. Also tripping is useful if you can pull it off. Once prone swarming becomes a useful tactic.

Also with enough kobolds harrasing the spell casters is easy then have some ready attacks to stop that spell casting.

Just a few ideas mainly focus on annoying the players until they make the mistakes and leave openings. It is easy with Kobolds when they attack and run away after getting slaughtered to manipulate the players into making boobooies which is the favored Kobold tactic.

Later

 

[Magius del Cotto]

A couple different trap ideas (one of which is a nasty idea that my brother came up with):
Double-Activation traps. They don't go off when the heroes head in, but on the way out (assuming they take the same path - try to make sure they do), they get pelted with arrow traps, acid traps, falling ceilings, and all sorts of other nastiness.
Drop their guard: Either leave the entrance empty or pur in some low-power traps to lure the party into thinking it's safe. A little ways in, the nasty stuff starts hitting them, and they start using up their stuff fast.
Dissappearing Ceiling: This is one my brother came up with. Make the ceiling out of a material that dissappears when Dispell Magic is cast on it. I don't remember what the material was, but it's out there, somewhere. In the middle of the room (preferably on the ceiling), there's a rune of Dispel Magic. They set the trap off, they're caught in a cave-in, and trapped. They dispel the rune, they're caught in a cave in, and trapped.
False Entrances: Any good cave-dwelling intelligent being would make sure there were a few extra entrances to throw the enemy off track. They'd all be trapped with random nastiness, and unless they disarm all the traps or walk right in, they'll have no way of knowing which way to go.

Besides those tips, there's all sorts of traps that can be set up: Trip-wires, falling ceilings, axes, arrows, acid, fire, poison, etc. If you throw some magic in (they're kobolds; there would have been several sorcerors in the time they've been there), you can have stuff like polymorph traps (watch as the party scurries around as dayglo green rats trying to avoid the Kobolds stomping on them), walls of force (used to divide and conquer), and a couple other weird things.
That's all I've got right now.
Magius out.

 

[d20Dwarf]

Well, I would tell you to use my paragon kobold, but the rant is too old so it's no longer on the FFG Website. Ah well, you can do it too if you have the ELH.

 

[Ao the Overkitty]

Oh yes. something else. Fake traps. Leave false, obvious traps around to draw attention away from the real ones.

For example, an entryway with LOTS of tripwires crisscrossing across the floor. Have them all lead out of the entryway via a hole. They don't actually connect to anything, but they won't know that. The rogue will be busy disabling all of these 'traps' and think he did a real good job of it, too. So, when he waves in the rest of the party, they set off the real traps (for us, this was the metal garotte wire at human neck height connected to a log which was suppossed to swing down smash the person who triggered it). [Almost got us, but we'd been hit repeatedly with kobolds over the levels and knew to look for more].

Rotten boards (if in a cave, cover with dirt). Medium sized creature steps on the board, which breaks under their weight. Only one foot drops maybe a foot. The trick is the person steps down on some caltrops or a tanglefoot bag or the like.

30ft pit with a couple of Dire Weasels at the bottom (Fiendish template optional).

 

[Ferret]

Large hole should do it.