So how did kobolds go from being dog-men to having dragon blood?

[Particle_Man]

In fact, humans are the combination of an evil wizard combining a chimpanzee with a naked mole rat. Elves are chimpanzees combined with hairless cats, and Dwarves are chimpanzees combined with Karl Marx.

...and gnomes are chimpanzees combined with Groucho Marx.

 

[Krug]

Ahhh, Dekkin, one of the best npc:s/henchies ever created.
He´s a terrible bard that winds up in Waterdeep during bad times when strange things starts to happen in Halasters Undermountain...
He arrives about the same time as you, when you arrive to the realms after a long sojourn on the Plane of Shadows.
I´m talking about Hordes of the Underdark, one of the expansions to Neverwinter Nights.
Deekin is a most loyal friend, a king of one liners and -as time passes- a pretty powerful bard/ red dragon disciple ( if you want him to walk that path ). To hear him sing " I´m gonna live forever.." with his raspy voice is worth the money alone. Great stuff!

Asmo

Even gets his own adventure here: http://nwn.bioware.com/underdark/deekin_bigadventure.html

 

[demiurge1138]

The kobolds have always been described as reptilian, but were illustrated with dog-like heads. The first really reptilian-looking kobold was DiTelrizzi's in the Monstrous Manual for 2e (oddly, the book in which kobolds are described as the most doglike). And that design was kept in 3e.

Perhaps as the sorcerous nature of kobolds manifested, the dragon blood reduced their mammalian features?

Demiurge out.

 

[Doctor Futurity]

In fact, humans are the combination of an evil wizard combining a chimpanzee with a naked mole rat. Elves are chimpanzees combined with hairless cats, and Dwarves are chimpanzees combined with Karl Marx.

Ha! Strop, you're killing me! Hoo hooo......!

Personally, I like the AU method of Kobold madness: Mojh get to spawn them like giant living zits that hatch in to personal servants. IIRC, each Mojh only gets to spawn one kobold, which means that the AU world of Diamond Throne could never have more kobolds than there are Mojh.....unless, in a perverse irony, the kobolds themselves can mate and have offspring, unlike their mutated creators who are all genderess and sterile.

Oddly, as long as I've played AD&D and 3E, I've always assumed kobolds were dog-like, but in a strange twist, in my home campaign, the kobolds were fearful dragon-worshippers who desired the power of the dragons, and one particularly memorable kobold NPC in my campaign eventually achieved a wish spell, for which he asked to polymorph at will in to a gold dragon. So, well....there you go. Ity's probably something of a jungian archetype that kobolds must have draconic/reptillian connections.

 

[Wycen]

In the old Monster Manual for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, commonly refered to as 1E, the text for kobolds stated they laid eggs. I'm pretty sure.

 

[Chimera]

In the old Monster Manual for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, commonly refered to as 1E, the text for kobolds stated they laid eggs. I'm pretty sure.

Yup, just looked it up. 30-300 eggs in a lair.

mmmmm......Kobold Egg Omlets

 

[ephemeron]

The funniest thing I saw in my research was the entry on Gnolls in the D&D Rules Cyclopaedia: “…Gnolls are rumoured to be the result of a magical combination of gnome and troll by an evil magic user…” – Don’t remember having heard that one before!

Then there was the thoul -- a combination of ghoul, hobgoblin, and troll, created by a wizard so powerful that a mere typographical error on his part spawned them.

 

[ephemeron]

In the old Monster Manual for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, commonly refered to as 1E, the text for kobolds stated they laid eggs. I'm pretty sure.

Oh, wow -- I completely missed that! And the PC's in my 1e campaign just cleaned out a kobold lair last session, too. I'll have to tell them to reimagine some things.

 

[MerakSpielman]

I've always had them lay eggs. And bark, yip, and whine.