Kobold Skirmisher

[Sitara]

Well they do. Monsters have ability scores, and skills. What more do you need mechanically to play them out of combat?

 

[Lurks-no-More]

As these are kobold skirmishers, I expect there to be other sorts of kobolds as well... some of which may well be both smarter and more frail.

(Also, hasn't WotC said, time and time again, that there will be rules for using at least the most common humanoids - drow, gnomes, goblinoids, orcs, kobolds and such - as PCs in the Monster Manual?)

 

[Rykion]

You really don't want to be surrounded by them either, do you? 8 kobolds, each attacking at +13 and doing 1d8 + 1d6? That's gotta hurt no matter how many hit points you have!

There is also a +2 to hit for combat advantage from flanking the target. Looks like 8 kobolds surrounding one target might equal +15 to hit for a kobold skirmisher.

 

[TwoSix]

I'm not talking about monsters-as-PCs...that ship has sailed, for better or worse (mostly worse). Rather, despite the deeply held belief at WOTC that monsters spawn into existence at the beginning of a combat and vanish forever at the end of it, in actual play, just ain't so. They often end up tagging along with the PCs as yakky prisoners, unwilling allies, unexpected love interests, sullen captives looking for a chance to escape, and so on. Sometimes they even become true friends. The mechanics need to support the monster outside the span of a single encounter, of they're...well, I won't say "useless", but "a lot less useful than they should be".

They run fine without healing surges, they're just more fragile than a PC is. They can only get into 1 or 2 combats without being at real risk of getting killed. Doesn't seem unbelievable.

 

[Lizard]

They run fine without healing surges, they're just more fragile than a PC is. They can only get into 1 or 2 combats without being at real risk of getting killed. Doesn't seem unbelievable.

I guess I have a problem with:
Paladin:"I use Lay On Hands to heal that idiot kobold torchbearer. Again."
DM:"Doesn't work, he has no Surges."

Maybe this is an edge case which doesn't come up much. If it's the only situation where there's something "missing" from monsters which makes PC/NPC interaction problematic, I can probably live with it. If it's one case of many...

(It wouldn't surprise me if there's something like 'monsters have 1 surge per three levels' or the like...)

(This issue also applies to non-combat NPCs. Can the village priest heal? Can the PC cleric save the dying bartender?)

 

[Voss]

The kobold also serves to highlight the "points of light" generic setting of 4e. When your most basic monsters are as strong as these, the world needs heroes. Joe commoner and warrior are just not good enough, you need men and women of extraordinary skill and valor to hold the line against the night.

I'm not sure thats true, actually. If the bog standard kobold (traditionally the bottom of the monster totem pole) is this tough, I fully expect the generic human commoner to be in roughly the same area. Otherwise this little guy and two of his friends are wiping out entire settlements, and the break in versimilitude is disturbing and huge- there isn't any reason why all the commoners are dead, since the handful of heroes can't be everywhere. Team Monster wins! But really, I don't think anyone is going down to one attack anymore. Take the pigfarmer DDM mini. He's pretty buff. I expect most commoners will be in the 15-20 hit point range, attacking at around +3 or 4, for d8ish. Crappy, but in numbers...

With this example, I expect a house cat to have 12 hp, +3 attack for d4+2 damage.

I find it slightly disturbing that its almost impossible to one shot these guys. The paladin, warlock, cleric, fighter and ranger can do it with their daily powers, but only just, roll high on damage or crit. (The ranger needs to have it as his hunter's quarry). But using a daily just to drop a kobold seems sad and pathetic. It looks like HP's really outstripped damage at first level.

 

[Flynn]

Remember that we are looking at this outside the context of a complete understanding of the game. I'm curious as to how the kobold looks once we have a full understanding of how things scale from 1st to 30th. June should be interesting.

With Regards,
Flynn

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I guess I have a problem with:
Paladin:"I use Lay On Hands to heal that idiot kobold torchbearer. Again."
DM:"Doesn't work, he has no Surges."

Maybe this is an edge case which doesn't come up much.

This one doesn't come at all, apparently. Lay on Hands makes the Paladin expend one of his Surges to heal someone else.
Other healing powers seem to exist that are not triggered of healing surges (though off-hand I can only remember the Paladins self-healing attack power).

Not all healing is limited to healing surges. But the most powerful and generally useful is.

 

[Voss]

Uh, any example of healing not limited to healing surges? I haven't seen any mentioned. The sample characters certainly don't have any access to it.

 

[frankthedm]

Paladins heal the helpless, clerics only heal those usefull to their god.