Tucker's Kobolds -- really that tough a challenge?

[Celebrim]

Good points, my friend, good points! I understand your criticisms of the *Tucker's Kobolds* much clearer now after reading your extensive critique. You know I'm *Old School* too. I agree generally with your critique--though I have to say also, that it seems to me that if a DM is going to challenge high-level PC's, *and* avoid simply using the endless treadmill of ever-stronger monsters--that some good creativity and improvisation of lower-level creatures, or monsters long-thought of as more *mundane* may be quite useful, as well as entertaining, true?

Sure. Like I said, I agree with the point of the article just as much as I shudder at the example. In my experience, in 1st edition somewhere between 9th and 12th level - depending on how free the DM has been with the magic items, a large experienced party acquires the ability to take down almost anything in the MM and quickly in a straight up fight. In open battle, a large party of 12th level characters is literally the equal to an entire army. A few thousand kobolds wouldn't present an excessive challenge.

And it's not that I don't think you can challenge 12th level characters with 'only kobolds'. You can, you just have to put them in situations were hit points and armor class and THAC0 don't matter. You use traps, seige weapons, ballistic fire, grenade-like weapons, etc. and you try to never have a kobold actually in line of sight.

Which is the problem with Moore's example. In Moore's example, of 'Tucker's Kobolds', there is very little evidence from the text that the kobolds were relying on anything but the most basic of traps (setting oil soaked straw on fire) and there is plenty of evidence that they were in line of sight and exchanging attacks with the party. It's not a situation where the kobolds are lobbing flaming oil over stone walls, or dropping it down chutes, or luring the party into pit traps: the described situation is primarily one of hurled javelins and axes and volleys of arrows and bolts. That situation doesn't ring true to me as a player and DM with about 15 years of experience with 1st edition.

What does ring true to me is that the party leader says, "Oh no, it's them! Run!", not because he thinks its futile to fight kobolds, but because he's come to learn that it is futile to fight the DM's PC. The party leader is just accepting the abuse as a matter of course, knowing that if he tries to fight the kobolds nothing will work out right and the DM will just go to greater and greater lengths to make the kobolds 'impressive'. The party leader is metagaming. The best way to deal with 'Tucker's Kobolds' is to pay homage to Tucker's fearsomeness, but to not give Tucker much of a chance to use them and instead move on to monsters Tucker has less of his ego invested in.

What do you think of the "Axe of the Dwarvish Lords", anyways? (I guess I never did pick that one up!)

I think it could have been a wonderful adventure, and that it is filled with alot of good ideas and written by someone that understands 1st edition well enough to know how to abuse it, but....

Most of the uber-Dungeon is taken up with 'Skip's Goblins', which are 'Tucker's Kobolds' on steroids. Not only are the kobolds given enormous amounts of one shot magical items including literally hundreds of explosives and hundreds potions of heroism, but scores of one shot 'rings of spell storing' like devices that grant the goblins various protections. They are also placed in highly deadly a trap filled environment (with 4' ceilings). But not only that, they are expressedly immune to all of their own traps. So, for example, all the doors in the environment are very difficult to open, but all the goblins know special tricks that allow them to be opened immediately. The goblins automatically avoid all the traps. The environment is liberally salted with rot grubs, that never attack the goblins. Plus, additionally, the goblins have special rules for mass volley fire that lets them make nasty area attacks with regular bows. Essentially, any group of goblin archers can cast fire ball - with no fire resistance. It kinda sorta makes sense for say 20 goblins working together if you don't think about it too hard (a bunch of arrows is bound to hit something right?), but if you think about it at all you immediately realize that per the rules two archers who don't aim at the target and instead fire in the general direction are far more dangerous than four or eight archers that take aim. The rules are screwy, ill-thought out, and just designed to screw with the players, because of course they can never take advantage of all these special rules for goblins working in formation. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Trust me, I'm vastly understating the problem.

However, as an aside to the *Endless Supply* problem that you note with *Tucker's Kobolds*--as well as some of the tactics--what if the DM were to say, well, the Kobolds are allied with *Sauron* and since Sauron wants to gain their absolute loyalty, has impressed them with the abundant supply of all manner of tools, equipment, oil, poisons, and so on? In addition, perhaps some master Assassins and a few *Black Wizards*, etc, etc, spent some time in the past training the kobold tribe?

Well, sure, but even Sauron has a limited supply of this stuff. Why not supply actual humans with it? Or gnolls? Or bugbears? Why spend a couple hundred gold peices on each kobolds equipment? Why kobolds?

But ok, suppose they do have a powerful patron or some similar situation where money is no object. Maybe they luckily acquired a whole dragon's hoard from an unwary party of adventurers out of spells and down to their last hit point, and then they dug in suffiicently before any one knew what was going on to keep the goblins, orcs, derro, and drow from taking the ill-gotten gains from them. Or, even more to the point, suppose you want to challenge your PC's with kobolds?

I'm fine with that. I just think that the skilled DM is showing off how much he can do with so little, not just in terms of the size of the monster, but in the resources that that monster has. I always want to be careful to seem like I'm extrapolating for the kobolds what's reasonable for them to have, and not what I want to give them to make them seem special. I'd really only be able to answer the implicit question, 'What do you think is reasonable?', by actually answering in detail.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I just read the 'tuckers kobolds' bit, and the following exchange made me raise my eyebrows a little:

I recall we had a 12th-level magic user with us, and we asked him to throw a spell or something. "Blast 'em!" we yelled as we ran. "Fireball 'em! Get those little @#+$%*&!!"

"What, in these narrow corridors? " he yelled back. "You want I should burn us all up instead of them?"

Surely doing 12d6 damage to the whole party (half on a save, with a fairly good chance)would probably leave everyone hurt but otherwise OK, while it would "in these narrow corridors" toast all the kobolds completely, whether they save or not.

However, in that kind of set-up the DM seems reasonably likely to give them all hand-wavium shields that they hide behind and take no damage from the fireball, but there you go.

Cheers

 

[Plane Sailing]

This is the sort of thing that annoyed a lot of people about D&D up until 3E: monsters in 1E very frequently have mundane-origin (meaning, it's not a magical ability or supernatural effect, bbut something that anyone could reasonably expect to do given some dedication and training) special abilities that PCs can never learn. Ever. I think all elves except PC elves can do the split-move-and-fire thing as well.

Ironically, 4e has gone back to this methodology.

I was running some troglodytes last Sunday, and the trog javelin thrower can pin you to the wall with his javelins. A mundane ability that you can't duplicate no matter how much you might want to (nor can anyone else for that matter). The same is true of many humanoid enemy abilities.

plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose!

 

[LostSoul]

Ironically, 4e has gone back to this methodology.

I was running some troglodytes last Sunday, and the trog javelin thrower can pin you to the wall with his javelins. A mundane ability that you can't duplicate no matter how much you might want to (nor can anyone else for that matter). The same is true of many humanoid enemy abilities.

I really wish they included something about ad-hoc rulings for applying effects on the fly.

 

[timbannock]

Many Powers actually perform very similar effects, and there's also the legendary page 42 of the DMG, which does in fact talk about conditions as well as DCs and damage.

 

[Hella_Tellah]

...there's also the legendary page 42 of the DMG, which does in fact talk about conditions as well as DCs and damage.

No it doesn't. It deals only with DCs and expressions of damage--there is not one example of a condition on the whole page. The closest it gets to talking about conditions is pushing an ogre 1 square, or perhaps granting a +2 or -2 modifier. If you can find a way to stretch that page to give guidelines for pinning opponents to a wall, you're a better reader than I am. Me? I'd ignore that page and tell the player he can attempt it at a -4 penalty to hit.

 

[Dausuul]

Surely doing 12d6 damage to the whole party (half on a save, with a fairly good chance)would probably leave everyone hurt but otherwise OK, while it would "in these narrow corridors" toast all the kobolds completely, whether they save or not.

Hmm... well, let's see. This is a 12th-level party, in 1E. Thanks to the wonders of OSRIC...

Cleric: 9d6+6 hp (average 37.5), save on 11 or better
Fighter: 9d8+9 hp (average 49.5), save on 10 or better
Thief: 10d6+4 hp (average 39), save on 11 or better
Magic-User: 11d4+1 hp (average 28.5), save on 8 or better

Some characters might have a Con bonus, giving them 1 or even 2 extra hit points per die, but remember this is 1E; you need a 15 or better to get any Con bonus at all, there are no +Con items, your stats don't improve with level, and 4d6 drop lowest is considered a generous option for rolling stats. I'd expect most of the PCs to have 14 or less.

Compare the above to an average 42 points of damage from a 12d6 fireball, or 21 on a successful save. Only the fighter has enough hit points to survive a failed save. If he rolled well on damage and/or poorly on hit points, the M-U could well kill himself even on a successful save. And that's if everybody starts at full hit points. If they've already taken some hits from the kobolds, even the fighter might not make it.

Of course, every single hireling, henchman, and donkey would be incinerated. And to add insult to gruesome searing agonizing injury, 1E fireballs can destroy items too. Any PC who fails the save is likely to lose several magic items (in addition to potentially, y'know, dying).

Meanwhile, unless the corridors are really tiny, it's unlikely the blast would fill the whole dungeon level, and besides, all it takes is a door or two and the kobolds behind 'em survive. Then the PCs have to face those kobolds while beat to crap, probably down at least one party member and maybe two, without any of their animals or retainers, and with a good chunk of their magic items gone.

Not to mention that the party was trying to get past the kobolds to fight more stuff down below.

 

[Edena_of_Neith]

Back then, an experienced party need not have even fired a Fireball. They could do the same thing with Spectral Force.
Here's how this is constructed:

(long ago)

Illusionist Master: Master Apprentice, stand still! (illusionist does)
Wizard: (fires weak, 5d6 fireball at apprentice, no attempt at save.)
Cleric: (heal on apprentice, before his soul can leave his body. Heals the insanity caused by the shock, as well.)
Illusionist Master: You can now reproduce the exact effects of being hit by a Fireball (poor illusionists ...)

(recently)

Illusionist to Party: On my signal, I will throw the illusionary Fireball. We will practice this now, with weak (5d6) fireballs, until all of you are immune, can will to disbelieve.
Party (some groaning) : Ok
Party: (practices, some instantly saving and immune, others hurt but surviving the weak fireball effect, until they also are immune.)
Party - eventually: Ready!

Illusionist: Ok. When I give the prearranged signal, you know to forcibly disbelieve.
Party: Got it.

(now)

DM: 10 kobolds appear, hand crossbows and poisoned bolts ready!
Illusionist: Spectral Force ... Fireball!
The whole party, shouting: She's throwing a Fireball! GET DOWN!
Illusionist: BURN, KOBOLDS!

DM: (rules no save is even allowed for the kobolds ... there is no justifiable reason to expect anything but a real fireball ... they are all killed, killed by their belief a fireball killed them.)

DM: (the hallway fills with illusory smoke and the smell of charred kobolds, who appear to be burning. The party alone can see through this, because the illusion had no effect on them.) The 10 kobolds that appear behind you, crossbows and bolts in hand, cannot see for the smoke. They do not break morale, but look confused, frightened, and do not fire.)

The Illusionist: (had only fired a 5d6 fireball illusion, still has 7 dice of damage to inflict, she being 12th level.) FIREBALL!
The party: GET DOWN!
DM: (10 more fried kobolds, the entire hallway a charnal wreckage of smoking bodies, superheated stone, smoke, and smell. The party seem injured to anyone watching, but are still up amidst the disaster.)

DM: 10 more kobolds appear, looking very frightened and wondering what to do.
Illusionist: (still with 2d6 to cast) Magic Missile! (It requires 5 dice to simulate a fireball)
Rest of Party: We attack! Arrows, axe/sword, charge, spells, wands, conjured monsters!

One little Spectral Force ... and just one simple application of it.

If the rest of the kobolds somehow figure out this is an illusion, a REAL Fireball can be cast ... and the kobolds, trying to disbelieve an illusion, stand there not evading and receive NO saving throw against it.

Who needs high level spells, when you are trying to dust thousands of kobolds?
If nothing else, throw that 2nd level cleric spell that involves the chest (I have forgotten the name ... Frisky Chest?) and charge the kobolds. That chest, loaded with hundreds of pounds of metal, should act as a very effective juggernaut against such small creatures.)

If the little beasts are going to try to use *poison* against the party, the kind that requires a save or death this round, then it's Lassé Faire. It's time to Teach a Lesson on those who would contemplate to use poison against the valiant Party!

 

[Edena_of_Neith]

This works in 3rd Edition as well.
All you need do is House Rule that Spectral Force (and the 2E rules governing it's maximum allowed hit dice of inflictable damage, or allowable hit dice of conjurable monsters) is a 3rd Edition spell of ... 3rd level, as it was in 2E.

The kobolds are even more vulnerable in this scenario. Will, Fortitude and Reflex Saves are more difficult to make, even though the kobolds are classed now.

Of course, if the *kobolds* have practiced this stunt, with their *own* Spectral Force, that's another matter.

However, since such a stunt would be popular, an experienced 12th level party would be expecting it, and everyone in the party would receive a Will Save to disbelieve.
Since hit points are greater in 3E, the party is more likely to survive. Then they can throw something devastating in return.
What would that be?

How about a Battlerager or Frenzied Berserker, or just a very angry barbarian (who did not appreciate that illusionist stunt!) right in their midst?
Power Attack + Great Cleave + Bastard Sword = a lot of dead kobolds.
Spiked Chain + Whirlwind Attack = a lot of dead kobolds.
Conjure Fire Elemental = a lot of dead kobolds (good luck disbelieving *that*.)

 

[Edena_of_Neith]

It can get nastier than I have said.

(long ago)

Master Illusionist: My apprentice, you have done well. Now, experience the ultimate power of the undead!
Death Master: (commands his spectre to drain 2 levels from the illusionist.)
Evil Cleric: (throws Restoration twice on the illusionist, who will be expected to repay for the service eventually ... or the spectre will make a return visit, and this time it will not be stopped.)
Master Illusionist: You have done well, my apprentice. Now, you can simulate sucking the very life out of any living thing!

(now)

Illusionist of 12th level: Spectral Force of a spectre, and it attacks.
Cleric in party: (brandishes unholy symbol) By the Power of Bane, I summon the Wrath of the Tyrant upon you!
Rest of party: (appears to cringe, to shy away in terror)
The Illusionist: (brandishes her fist on high) Come forth, Cursed One, and may the Bitterness of Untold Centuries be Unleashed upon All. Kill, and do not stop, do not stop, until they are ALL devoured!
The Kobolds: RUN. (No reason to disbelieve, no save allowed.)

(but the spectre has a move of 48, and it can attack from the rear ... they can feel it's cold, even without seeing it. It catches and kills them all. Believing it can kill them through level drain, that belief kills them.)

(the spectre sticks around, bowing to it's 'mistress' and it's 'master', ready to kill again. Those poisoned bolts are useless against it, as the kobolds know very well. But no more kobolds appear ... they will revolt against Tucker, before being ordered to fight a spectre. They do not wish to be killed and join it in Unlife!)