Konsequences - Kobold style

[LostSoul]

For example, why do the Kobolds automatically know that this tactic they're using will get the villigers to throw the PCs out rather than hiring the PCs again to protect them against the renewed Kobold?

Yeah. It's a good opportunity for a skill challenge, or a bunch of skill checks.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

Yeah, changing the Skirmishers to full up Rangers doesn't sit well with me either. That says to me that you are 'punishing' the players because they did something unexpected.

Also, what, there's a road from the village to the town/city, but that's it? No other road connecting the town/city to anything else? Yeah, right. Or, worse yet, there aren't any roads (or well travelled trails) at all.

 

[Starbuck_II]

Yeah, changing the Skirmishers to full up Rangers doesn't sit well with me either. That says to me that you are 'punishing' the players because they did something unexpected.

Also, what, there's a road from the village to the town/city, but that's it? No other road connecting the town/city to anything else? Yeah, right. Or, worse yet, there aren't any roads (or well travelled trails) at all.

Agreed.

Unless there are news of two kobold causing trouble in the area (getting exp that way) or
dead adventurer bodies (that they ganked):
Kobolds shouldn't "level" up into Rangers.

 

[PlatinumWarlock]

I disagree with the "punishment" end of the counter-arguments above. Making the kobolds into rangers makes sense to me--it's something that maybe should take a little more time (perhaps a month or two of in-game time, during which the players could "forget about" what they've done).

To me, it seems like the players took their orders absolutely overboard into nonthreatening targets. In game, if I was a kobold, I'd be seeking bloody vengeance too--and in the most sneaky, underhanded way possible.

 

[Korror]

It's called realism (I assume). Where else would the women and children be, if not at the lair? Just because something's there doesn't mean it's automatically meant to be killed, even if it is small and scaly. And it's entirely possible that they were there specifically to see if the PC's would kill them or not.

The level of realism is always a DM choice. If the DM wants to play a morally gray game where the PCs have to make choices about baby monsters then it is easy to include the baby kobolds. Conversely if the DM isn't interested in emphasizing that element then the issue can be explained away easily enough: "The females and young withdraw through a secret passage at the first sign of danger" or "Kobolds mature very quickly and both sexes fight invaders of their lair so you've been fighting the entire tribe all along."

Uh, what? Kobolds are "people", too. The only reason they killed the infant was in direct response to the wanton murder of their own young. And even if they did routinely kill human babies on their own, just because the kobolds don't care about human babies doesn't mean they don't care about their own. Sure, it's a racist view for them to have, but they're bloody kobolds!

Think of it in reverse. Obviously, the PC's (and probably NPC's) don't care about the kobold young, or they wouldn't have killed them. Does that mean that they won't care if someone kills their children? At least not any more than if they killed trained soldiers, by your own reasoning...

Kobold sympathizer!

Looks like I wasn't quite clear before. I didn't mean to imply that the Kobolds had no affection for their young but that they wouldn't expect the PCs to spare the little kobolds when they were prepared to kill little humans. It would be a bit strange if they become specially outraged over the PCs actions when they would do the same thing if they had the chance.

Of course it may be, that there was some kind of unspoken agreement between the kobold tribe and the town that they wouldn't attempt to totally wipe each other out and in that case that real villain of the story is the duplicitous mayor who hires outsiders to backstab his (relatively) peaceful neighbors and then tries to shift the blame on the hired muscle at the first opportunity. Sounds like a good enough excuse for the PCs to sack the town as well in the name of "justice".

 

[Michael Morris]

(1) Boosting the surviving kobolds' power "just because" really sits wrong with me.

What level should NPC's be? Answer - whatever level the DM needs them to be to fairly challenge the party. NPC's are not subject to the same rules as PC's. The PC's created this particular pair of villains even if they don't know it yet. That will make their defeat all the more enjoyable when the party does finally accomplish it.

If two kobold skirmishers want to try and mess with a decent sized settlement, that is fine. They won't get far.

Why? Because the world can take care of itself and the world doesn't really need heroes? Bollocks. The PC's are heroes, a cut above Joe Farmer and John Dirt that run this township. They aren't able to deal with kobold minions effectively, let alone two that by inexplicable twist of fate are a cut above the average kobold (just as the party members are a cut above the average members of their race).

If you don't give the kobold's vastly level inappropriate abilities they will get tracked down and summarily executed.

Must be a boring campaign you play or run, where the party doesn't *need* to handle anything because the NPC's can handle themselves and the messes the players create.

*Even* if they somehow manage to survive for a few days and the party starts a trek, tracking groups through the wilderness over long distances without getting noticed is *hard*. Forget about setting traps.

Who said they won't be noticed? And even if they are, can the party keep up and track them down? I'll leave that to the dice.

(2) Congratulations on reinforcing the lesson of "kill everyone", including the "good" humans. As a member of the party, if the town was going to (a) be incompetent enough and (b) dickish enough to toss me out I might well opt to sack the place myself.

The party could certainly succeed at that. Osmon is small and has no particularly notable NPC's other than the Duke and his men. If they do word will spread - eventually they'll run into something that they can't handle and either be killed by it or hide from it.

Again, this is a superstitious collection of lakefolk. Until the party arrived they'd never seen a dragonborn - they've only rarely seen elves and eldarin. They've never seen a tiefling but halflings are common enough. They don't owe the party anything and if they think that tossing the group outside of the walls of the town will protect their children, they will.

If they can't protect themselves from a few kobolds, they won't be able to hold off the party (see point 1), after all; and being that weak, it isn't like the town will be there next year, anyways. Might as well salvage some supplies for the trek from the doomed settlement, and deny the enemy the opportunity to do the same. Note that once you see the other town destroyed, this argument becomes even stronger. Without any other settlements anywhere nearby, that town is dead.

Right... As I noted earlier - your campaigns must be extremely boring since the world has no need of heroes and everything can take care of itself.

One thing that you want to be careful of is making the kobolds metagame. As a DM it can be easy to make all NPC plans work out perfectly because of course you know all the factors and every detail of the world. If they want to foul the water supply, it automatically works. If they want to lay traps ahead, it automatically works. There's no plans that they can come up with that the DM will reject. The PCs don't have a direct connection to your imaginion and hence are at a disadvantage in this kind of contest. For example, why do the Kobolds automatically know that this tactic they're using will get the villigers to throw the PCs out rather than hiring the PCs again to protect them against the renewed Kobold? They seem like they're a mechanism to "punish" the PCs for no good reason.

Again refer to my first point - NPC's are not subject to the same rules as PC's - they exist to challenge the party and to make the story interesting. The town throwing the group out is perfectly plausible - because of the dragonborn in their number it took the group a long time to build up enough trust in the group to even let this strange creature through the gates. If children start showing up dead that trust is going to break.

Long term the way this gets offset is you let NPC's do things wrong - sometimes disasterously wrong. I've had NPC groups stumble into PC ambushes exactly like the players planned out before. I don't spend too much time worrying about the flaws in their plan or how the NPC's might weasle out of the attack.

Secondly, I'm wondering why you're "shocked" over the behavior of your PCs in killing the women and children. Putting aside whether or not this was the right course of action, it only occured because you put those kobold women and children there. If you didn't want the PCs to kill them, why include them at all? And why make such a big issue out of it, it's not like the kobolds make a distiction between non-combatents as the baby incidient shows. They'd be upset that the PCs killed off their tribe but not any more or less upset that they killed the hatchlings.

The reason they were there is because a lair is a home. Kobolds don't come out of monster spawning pots in my world like say, in Gauntlet. And no, kobolds don't make a distinction between combatants and non-combatants. That's part of the reason they are *evil*. By failing to make that distinction the party acted in an evil manner. I don't use the alignment system itself to deal with questions of good or evil, but those questions arise all the same.

I feel your pain of having to deal with players though, sometimes they can be quite annoying and there's often a great urge to smack them down if only to see them not get their own way for once.

I'm not annoyed at them though. This should be fun to play out - they've inadvertedly created a couple of memorable NPC's to throw at them, and I'm going to enjoy doing just that.

It's called realism (I assume). Where else would the women and children be, if not at the lair? Just because something's there doesn't mean it's automatically meant to be killed, even if it is small and scaly. And it's entirely possible that they were there specifically to see if the PC's would kill them or not.

They were there because they are supposed to be there. How the party dealt with them is a moral quandry.

Yeah. It's a good opportunity for a skill challenge, or a bunch of skill checks.

That it is. What I presented above is a draft of what will occur. It isn't set in stone. I've been DM'ing a long time now and I know that getting attached to one plotline is how you annoy and railroad players. What I've sketched out is what the kobolds intend. Will they succeed? If the **players** do nothing, yes. The onus is on the PC's to stop them. The duty of the DM is to make sure they have a reasonable chance of succeeding, and if they fail that the consquence of failure isn't so disasterous that everyone's fun is ruined.

Yeah, changing the Skirmishers to full up Rangers doesn't sit well with me either. That says to me that you are 'punishing' the players because they did something unexpected.

Again, what level should NPC's be? Whatever level the DM needs them to be for the role they are to fulfill.

Also, what, there's a road from the village to the town/city, but that's it? No other road connecting the town/city to anything else? Yeah, right. Or, worse yet, there aren't any roads (or well travelled trails) at all.

Osmon is on the mouth of the river Ciondras as it changes from Lake Mystal to Lake Telcasi. As recently as 300 years ago there where numerous villages like it all along the shores of the rivers and lakes. That was before the beginning of the 5th Orgstagal war.

The whole region, Losineris, is pretty much devoid of roads because the quickest way to get anywhere important is by boat. Whatever lies inland has become lost to all but the wisest of sages.

Agreed.

Unless there are news of two kobold causing trouble in the area (getting exp that way) or
dead adventurer bodies (that they ganked):
Kobolds shouldn't "level" up into Rangers.

NPC's don't ever level up though. The most lasting damage 3e has done to the D&D game was instilling this notion that NPC's somehow are obligated to be handled like PC's. That simply isn't the case.

 

[Filcher]

NPC's don't ever level up though. The most lasting damage 3e has done to the D&D game was instilling this notion that NPC's somehow are obligated to be handled like PC's. That simply isn't the case.

This is the only part I'd handle differently. Why make the kobolds NPCs and not full-fledged "tougher monsters"? Statting out monsters as NPCs is a pain. They accumulate multiple power, running counter to the 4E design ethic of "give 'em 3 or 4 powers and leave it at that." If your kobolds manage to survive for a bit (and I hope they do) their NPC stats could get pretty cumbersome.

 

[Kraydak]

What level should NPC's be? Answer - whatever level the DM needs them to be to fairly challenge the party. NPC's are not subject to the same rules as PC's. The PC's created this particular pair of villains even if they don't know it yet. That will make their defeat all the more enjoyable when the party does finally accomplish it.

If the consequence of killing bad guys is spawning more powerful bad guys... there is no way to achieve anything. Those two kobolds already exist. They are skirmishers. Upgrading them is akin to saying that the PCs can't achieve anything in game unless it fits precisely with the DM's agenda. Not fun.

Why? Because the world can take care of itself and the world doesn't really need heroes? Bollocks. The PC's are heroes, a cut above Joe Farmer and John Dirt that run this township. They aren't able to deal with kobold minions effectively, let alone two that by inexplicable twist of fate are a cut above the average kobold (just as the party members are a cut above the average members of their race).

Well... if you accept that you lost any right to talk about consequences (the consequences of founding a settlement out in the middle of nowhere, without a military, and *then* angering friendly military units... is death) then sure. Of course, once NPCs aren't bound by "consequences" then players have no way to determine what the "consequences" of their actions are...

Must be a boring campaign you play or run, where the party doesn't *need* to handle anything because the NPC's can handle themselves and the messes the players create.

Two kobolds =/= major mess. Two kobolds = random encounter table for safe areas. If you can't face off two kobolds it is all over.

The party could certainly succeed at that. Osmon is small and has no particularly notable NPC's other than the Duke and his men. If they do word will spread - eventually they'll run into something that they can't handle and either be killed by it or hide from it.

So the pitiful survivors of a town that couldn't defend itself from a pair of kobolds somehow WILL survive the trek to civilization to spread the word. Ayup.

Again, this is a superstitious collection of lakefolk. Until the party arrived they'd never seen a dragonborn - they've only rarely seen elves and eldarin. They've never seen a tiefling but halflings are common enough. They don't owe the party anything and if they think that tossing the group outside of the walls of the town will protect their children, they will.

Right... As I noted earlier - your campaigns must be extremely boring since the world has no need of heroes and everything can take care of itself.

There is a big difference between the world being able to defend itself against everything and the world being able to fend of weak attacks. There is a difference between population centers being able to project their power (and, say, defend outlying areas) and population centers being able to defend their town square. If the world doesn't make sense, then talking about "consequences" is meaningless.

Again refer to my first point - NPC's are not subject to the same rules as PC's - they exist to challenge the party and to make the story interesting. The town throwing the group out is perfectly plausible - because of the dragonborn in their number it took the group a long time to build up enough trust in the group to even let this strange creature through the gates. If children start showing up dead that trust is going to break.

Long term the way this gets offset is you let NPC's do things wrong - sometimes disasterously wrong. I've had NPC groups stumble into PC ambushes exactly like the players planned out before. I don't spend too much time worrying about the flaws in their plan or how the NPC's might weasle out of the attack.

If NPCs break the rules enough, then "consequences" becomes "random event generator". Which, admittedly, is better than "killing evil guys spawns more powerful evil guys".

The reason they were there is because a lair is a home. Kobolds don't come out of monster spawning pots in my world like say, in Gauntlet. And no, kobolds don't make a distinction between combatants and non-combatants. That's part of the reason they are *evil*. By failing to make that distinction the party acted in an evil manner. I don't use the alignment system itself to deal with questions of good or evil, but those questions arise all the same.

I'm not annoyed at them though. This should be fun to play out - they've inadvertedly created a couple of memorable NPC's to throw at them, and I'm going to enjoy doing just that.

They were there because they are supposed to be there. How the party dealt with them is a moral quandry.

I must say, this really sounds like you wanting to slap the players around for being barbaric in ways you didn't expect, but not wanting to admit it. That may well not be the case, but from this side of the internet it certainly sounds like it.

Again, what level should NPC's be? Whatever level the DM needs them to be for the role they are to fulfill.

Except that these NPCs have already been on stage. As a DM, the trick is to NOT use an infinite palette, but rather reusing the stuff you already have when possible. Two kobold strikers trying to break into a walled town to wreak vengeance (and getting cut down, probably severely injuring a townsperson) might be interesting. *That* would be setting consistent consequences that might make the party think.

NPC's don't ever level up though. The most lasting damage 3e has done to the D&D game was instilling this notion that NPC's somehow are obligated to be handled like PC's. That simply isn't the case.

The fewer rules NPCs follow, the less the term "consequences" means because the ability of the players to predict the outcome of events drops.

Bleh, if I had more time I would tighten up this post, I'm clearly repeating myself. Sorry about that.

 

[Michael Morris]

Classes and levels are abstractions. The characters do not know anything about the kobolds that got away. Hell, they don't even know they got away (yet). That's all I'm going to say further on the matter - you sound like the victim of one too many adversarial DM vs. Players games which is unfortunate. I cannot cast my actions in a light that will be favorable through the rose colored glasses you view the game from.

 

[Otterscrubber]

Ummmm, just a quick side question.

You sent your players on a mission to clear out a kobold lair which they did as per your instructions. Now you want to destroy all resources and associations they have and basically make their lives miserable for the next few game days.

Are the players okay with that sort of campaign? Are you okay with the players spending the rest of the campaign deeply mistrustful of all future missions?

I just feel I should ask

They deserve what they get for allowing 2 to live

Just kidding, seriously this does seem a bit harsh. I find it hard to believe the village they were staying at kicked the PCs out after some kobolds killed one of their own. If the kobolds manage to defeat the heroes, they have a nice village they can intimidate for the rest of their lives it looks like.