FREQUENCY: Uncommon

FREQUENCY: Uncommon ([Dungeon Level I])

FREQUENCY: Uncommon ([Cold Wilderness Forest])
FREQUENCY: Very rare ([Cold Wilderness Mountains], [Cold Wilderness Hills], [Cold Wilderness Swamp])

FREQUENCY: Uncommon ([Temperate Wilderness Forest])
FREQUENCY: Very rare ([Temperate Wilderness Mountains], [Temperate Wilderness Hills], [Temperate Wilderness Swamp])

FREQUENCY: Uncommon ([Tropical Wilderness Forest])
FREQUENCY: Very rare ([Tropical Wilderness Mountains], [Tropical Wilderness Hills], [Tropical Wilderness Swamp])

NO. APPEARING: 40-400
ARMOR CLASS: 7 (6)
MOVE: 6"
HIT DICE: 1-4 HP
% IN LAIR: 40% (120 Kobolds: ancient forest, TPL30:5th, REF3.43)
TREASURE TYPE: Individuals [J], [O], [Q] (X5) in lair
NO. OF ATTACKS: 1 <note>
DAMAGE/ATTACK: 1-4 (1-6) or by weapon <incl. oil> ~ 20n
SPECIAL ATTACKS: Nil
SPECIAL DEFENSES: Nil
STRENGTH: 9 (d25: 4)
INTELLIGENCE: Average - low
ALIGNMENT: Lawful evil
SIZE: S (3'tall)
LEVEL/X.P. VALUE: 5 + 1
DEITY: Kurtulmak

SAVES: 16, 17, 18, 20, 19
MORALE: 53%

The society of these creatures is tribal with war bands based on gens.
The stronger tribes rule weaker ones.
Kobolds are usually found in dank, dark places such as dismal overgrown forests || subterranean settings.
They hate bright sunlight, not being able to see well in it, but their night vision is excellent, and they have infra-red vision which operates well up to 60'.
If they are in bright sunlight they have a lesser chance to fight well (-1 from dice rolls to hit opponents).

For every 40 kobolds encountered there will be a leader and 2 guards who are equal to goblins, each having 4 hit points, armor class 6, and doing 1-6 points of damage.
<>

If 200 or more kobolds are encountered in
their lair there will be the following additional creatures there: 5-20
guards (as bodyguards above), females equal to 50% of the total number,
young equal to 10% of the total number, and 30-300 eggs. There will
always be a chief and his bodyguard in the kobold lair. It is also probable
(65%) that there will be from 2-5 wild boars (70%) or 1-4 giant weasels
(30%) in a kobold lair; the animals will serve as guards.

A force of kobolds is typically equipped as follows:
 

01-05	short sword and javelin	5%
06-15	short sword && spear	10%
16-25	short sword	10%
26-45	axe <hand axe>	20%
46-75	spiked wooden club <equiv. to morning star>	30%
76-90	javelins (2-3)	15%
91-00	spear	10%

<18 kobolds, example Arms & Armor>

Chief && guard types always have the best available weapons.
All kobold shields are of wood or wickerwork.

Kobolds hate most other life, delighting in killing and torture.
They particularly hate such creatures as brownies, pixies, sprites and gnomes.
They war continually with the latter, and will attack them on sight.

In addition to the tongues of lawful evil and kobolds, these monsters can
usually (75%) speak goblin and orcish.

Description: The hide of kobolds runs from very dark rusty brawn to a rusty black.
They have no hair.
Their eyes are reddish and their small horns are tan to white.
They favor red or orange garb.
Kobolds live for up to 135 years.

Tribal Spell Casters : Shamen (C5 maximum) OR witch doctors (C5 / MU2 maximum). Not recommended for random encounters.

Young kobolds (kobold cubs): AC 10; MV 6”;
HD 1/3; hp 1 each; #AT 0; D nil (A4)

This month's editorial is about
Tucker's kobolds. We get letters on
occasion asking for advice on creating
high-level AD&D® game adventures,
and Tucker's kobolds seem to
fit the bill.

Many high-level characters have
little to do because they?re not challenged.
They yawn at tarrasques
and must be forcibly kept awake
when a lich appears. The DMs
involved don?t know what to do, so
they stop dealing with the problem
and the characters go into Character
Limbo. Getting to high level is hard,
but doing anything once you get
there is worse.

One of the key problems in adventure
design lies in creating opponents
who can challenge powerful
characters. Singular monsters like
tarrasques and liches are easy to
gang up on; the party can concentrate
its firepower on the target
until the target falls down dead and
wiggles its little feet in the air.
Designing monsters more powerful
than a tarrasque is self-defeating; if
the group kills your super-monster,
what will you do next ? send in its
mother? That didn?t work on
Beowulf, and it probably won?t work
here.

Worse yet, singular supermonsters
rarely have to think. They
just use their trusty, predictable
claw/claw/bite. This shouldn?t be the
measure of a campaign. These
games fall apart because there?s no
challenge to them, no mental stimulation
? no danger.

In all the games that I?ve seen, the
worst, most horrible, most awfulbeyond-
comparison opponents ever
seen were often weaker than the
characters who fought them. They
were simply well-armed and intelligent
beings who were played by the
DM to be utterly ruthless and clever.
Tucker?s kobolds were like that.

Tucker ran an incredibly dangerous
dungeon in the days I was stationed
at Ft. Bragg, N.C. This
dungeon had corridors that changed
all of your donkeys into huge flaming
demons or dropped the whole
party into acid baths, but the
demons were wienies compared to
the kobolds on Level One. These
kobolds were just regular kobolds,
with 1-4 hp and all that, but they
were mean. When I say they were
mean, I mean they were bad, Jim.
They graduated magna cum laude
from the Sauron Institute for the
Criminally Vicious.

When I joined the gaming group,
some of the PCs had already met
Tucker?s kobolds, and they were not
eager to repeat the experience. The
party leader went over the penciled
map of the dungeon and tried to
find ways to avoid the little critters,
but it was not possible. The group
resigned itself to making a run for it
through Level One to get to the
elevators, where we could go down
to Level Ten and fight ?okay? monsters
like huge flaming demons.

It didn?t work. The kobolds caught
us about 60? into the dungeon and
locked the door behind us and
barred it. Then they set the corridor
on fire, while we were still in it.

?NOOOOOO!!!? screamed the party
leader. ?It?s THEM! Run!!!?

Thus encouraged, our party
scrambled down a side passage, only
to be ambushed by more kobolds
firing with light crossbows through
murder holes in the walls and ceilings.
Kobolds with metal armor and
shields flung Molotov cocktails at us
from the other sides of huge piles of
flaming debris, which other kobolds
pushed ahead of their formation
using long metal poles like broomsticks.
There was no mistake about
it. These kobolds were bad.

We turned to our group leader for
advice.

?AAAAAAGH!!!? he cried, hands
clasped over his face to shut out the
tactical situation.

We abandoned most of our carried
items and donkeys to speed our
flight toward the elevators, but we
were cut off by kobold snipers who
could split-move and fire, ducking
back behind stones and corners
after launching steel-tipped bolts
and arrows, javelins, hand axes, and
more flaming oil bottles. We ran into
an unexplored section of Level One,
taking damage all the time. It was
then we discovered that these
kobolds had honeycombed the first
level with small tunnels to speed
their movements. Kobold commandos
were everywhere. All of our
hirelings died. Most of our henchmen
followed. We were next.

I recall we had a 12th-level magicuser
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??

Our panicked flight suddenly took
us to a dead-end corridor, where a
giant air shaft dropped straight
down into unspeakable darkness,
far past Level Ten. Here we hastily
pounded spikes into the floors and
walls, flung ropes over the ledge,
and climbed straight down into that
unspeakable darkness, because
anything we met down there was
sure to be better than those kobolds.

We escaped, met some huge flaming
demons on Level Ten, and even
managed to kill one after about an
hour of combat and the lives of half
the group. We felt pretty good ?
but the group leader could not be
cheered up.

?We still have to go out the way
we came in,? he said as he gloomily
prepared to divide up the treasure.

Tucker?s kobolds were the worst
things we could imagine. They ate
all our donkeys and took our treasure
and did everything they could
to make us miserable, but they had
style and brains and tenacity and
courage. We respected them and
loved them, sort of, because they
were never boring.

If kobolds could do this to a group
of PCs from 6th to 12th level, picture
what a few orcs and some lowlevel
NPCs could do to a 12th-16th
level group, or a gang of mid-level
NPCs and monsters to groups of up
to 20th level. Then give it a try.
Sometimes, it?s the little things ?
used well ? that count.

1. LETTERS
Dear Dragon,
I really like kobolds! Ever since I first saw
their picture in a friend's Monster Manual, I've
been drawn to them. Later, when I accidentally
bought the Dungeon Masters Guide instead of
the Players Handbook, I came across a picture
of a green dragon attacking a poor band of
kobolds, and I?ve pitied them ever since. It's
weird why I like kobolds, but when the Monstrous
Compendium came out, I found a redeeming
statement in it that said perhaps
kobolds were evil because they were always
beaten up by the bigger races. Anyway, I'm now
a DM for an after-school group, and I plan to
raise the kobold race to new levels. Strangely,
even though it?s not been a conscious thing, I
never seem to have played a gnome character in
my life.

Tristan De Buysscher
Holly Springs NC
(Dragon #171)

I did a double-take at the editorial in issue
#127 because I've met those kobolds before! It
was in our gaming club at Middlebury College in
Vermont in 1983.  Our encounter was in the
wilderness; there were seven 5th- to 7th-level
PCs and about 60 kobolds -- the first rank with
flaming oil bombs, the second rank with pikes,
and the third rank with short bows and many arrows.

We had a name for the kobold's secret of
success: organization.

We had a solution for those kobolds: escape
and evasion.

And this was in a world where the PCs were
mostly of chaotic-greedy alignment, and where
PC interrogation techniques were compared
favorably with those of demons.  We were a
tough bunch of mean, nasty midlevel characters
and probably could have handled those kobolds
on even terms; problem was, they were too
smart for that and engaged us only on their
terms -- all part of organization and being
"utterly ruthless and clever."

To say the least, we got clever real fast.  If we
saw traces of kobolds, we went the other way.

With respect to the editor's suggestion of little
things taking on big PCs, I'm
eternally grateful our DM never chose to use
elves!  Can you imagine it?  Long bows galore,
their "invisibility in forsts" ability, several low-level
fighter/magic-users -- we wouldn't have
been just wounded and scared, we would've
been dead, in short order!

Our advice: Avoid smart, organized opponents
like the plague, unless you can ambush them!

Mike Montesano
Buffalo NY
(Dragon #132)
 

This letter is about the editorial in issue #127
("Tucker's kobolds").  When I first read it, I
laughed.  But then I though back to that epic
debate years ago in the "Forum" about whether
or not a red dragon could kill an ultrapowerful
party of 25th-level D&D game characters with
every magical item there is.  And I realized that,
however improbably, every DM has his pet PC-slaughterer.
(Mine happens to be Orcus.) On the
other hand, as a player I dislike being killed off.
So, for any hapless characters out there who
graduated summa cum laude from the Smaug
Institute for  the Terminally Unprepared, I offer
this guide for surviving kobold attacks.

First of all, don't let them trap you in any one
area.  A lightning bolt works admirably for
opening doors that have been locked and barred,
as well as eliminating any kobolds who
get in the way.  (As long as the door isn't made of
stone thicker than a foot, there is no danger to
your party.)

Avoid being fried. If the corridor you are
walking down is coated with oil, expect sombody
to light it.  A simple cloudburst spell will
wash it away and prevent any left-over oil from
being ignited.  Even better is a protection from fire
scroll.

Bestow protection from normal missiles on a
few of your best characters to automatically
stop anything smaller than a javelin of piercing.
Obstruct the kobolds in any way possible; webs,
stinking clouds, or magic walls of any sort are
useful in that respect.  If they hide behind huge
piles of debris, give the piles a shove!  (I have yet
to see debris that can be moved by a few
kobolds but not by a 12th-level telekinesis spell.)

Of course, the simplest solution is just to kill
the kobolds.  While fireball's are obviously too
dangerous, spells such as cone of cold, chain
lightning, Otiluke's freezing sphere, shout, and
others are virtually assured death, as kobolds
have negligible saving throws.  (Some of these
spells might backfire, but only if they are misued.)
And there's always good old magic missile,
which will afford no saving throw and no
chance of missing.  Cloudkill will quickly fill all
the small honeycombed tunnels, and it gives
kobolds no chance of survival either.  I pity the
metal-armed kobolds caught in a transmute
rock to mud!  If your magic-user is particularly
advanced, he may be able to toss a death spell,
which can slay whole legions of the creatures,
again with  no chance of escape.

I hate to belabor the point, but if I sent my
players up against killer kobolds, they would
just massacre the kobolds and ask for Orcus.
And if normal, 8-INT kobolds can have
that much style and brains and tenacity and
courage, I'd to see Tucker's demons.

Craig Flescher
East Falmouth MA
(Dragon #132)

Zudrak wrote:
Col_Pladoh wrote:

...

To put it into game terms:
There's a reason kobolds and other goblinoids seek out commoners and not adventurers, right?
 

Indeed, the population of border areas is likely better able to defend themselves than are those not used to criminal incursions, doubly so if the population is denied weapons for self-defence.
After wll, the Watch cannot be everywhere.

Cheers,
Gary

Yes indeed, even a kobold leader can be quite a challenge for a low-level PC, and en mass a well-organized band of the little humanoids can wipe out the careless adventuring party 

Cheers,
Gary
 
 

Quote:
Originally Posted by Henry
...And to answer my burning question... scaly, or hairy?
Heh...
 

I thought of kobolds as humanoid, but with green complexion due to their forest habitat and skin that was rough and scaly even though they were mammalian.

What your kobolds have in the way of skin texture can be quite different 

cheers,
Gary
 

Quote:
Originally Posted by mythusmage
I figured some kobolds had algae growing in their fur.

Well...

In the dark, damp forests, that could well be moss, as is seen on the backs of sole old snapping turtles

Heh,
Gary
 

Quote:
Originally Posted by Gray Mouser
Heh, OK, last question for the night

With all the talk about Kobalds recently, I got to wondering if you specifically visualized them as dog-like. The picture in the monster manual appears that way, but I don't recall it being specified as such. The kobalds in The Keep on the Borderlands, however, are referred to as "dog-men", and I seem to remember an Erol Otus picture in a module where they appear somewhat canine (although I can't recall the module off hand). Anyway, was the dog-like appearance something you thought of or simply the result of the Monster Manual artist's (DCS, wasn't it?) imagination?

Gray Mouser
 

It was indeed Dave sutherland that decided to give the kobolds a dog-like visage, likely because I had described gnolls as hyena-like.
I had actually originally envisaged them as more impish ot countenence, but I went along with the depiction, as it made no difference to the game's play.

Kobolds in the Lejendary Adventure game are very different, and very potent as either Avatars or non-avatars opposing the player team.

Cheers,
Gary
 

Right about the kobolds.
they are Germanic forest and mine "spirits," that is goblinesque creatures.
 

Quote:
Originally Posted by Frank Mentzer
This has certainly been asked before, but...

In AD&D, why are kobolds "giant class"?

F

How amusing....

All giants are humanoids, and as such they are kin to the smallest of the specias, the kobolds, goblins, hobgoblins, gnolls, bugbears, ogres, and so on up the line

Later mate!
Gary

I would not use minus HPs for kobolds, rather d4.
That allows them better attack capacity while maintaining them as relatively fragile opponents.

Quote:
Originally Posted by JMac5892
Thanks -- yep, I'm not thinking of these as hard rules, but rather guidelines to keep in mind as I consider each monster individually.

As for kobolds (and goblins), treating them as 1 HD monsters for attack purposes will give them a whole new dimension... 

Yes.

And as we are in agreement here you too must be a gaming genius! 

Cheerio,
Gary
 

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