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I love Kobolds. No, seriously, I really do. I love the fluff of them, I like the way they look and the whole personality. I love the cult of the dragon that seems to be their "thing." They are sneaky little devils, and in 4e they are quick little guys (and gals,) jumping all over the battlefield much to the annoyance of the party. In summary, they are a great low-level threat.
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| This is not what I mean by Kobold-love! |
One of the great things that 4e D&D has going for it is that you have so many monster options and monster variables. In the compendium alone, just by searching for the term "Kobold," there are 31 official Kobolds. (This is of course not counting the many more variants that I myself have made! I love Kobolds, remember?!) But while having all of these Kobold variants is awesome, it does present us with a similar dilemma that can be found in power and feat selection on the player side of the screen. We have monster bloat, folks, plain and simple.
So, ask yourself this, "Why would Blob be creating more Kobolds then?!" It's a good and valid question. One thing that I love about previous editions was this: you want a Kobold in your game? Here are 3 to choose from, get to it. Sure this is an over-simplification, but it's true in a sense, too. So I've tried to distill this concept into 1 level-1 Kobold Minion. This minion is versatile and can be used to fill any basic Kobold role as needed.
The premise is this: why have 4 different types of Kobold when you can just have one that you can adjust on the fly before any encounter? While I am presenting a simple version that is a Minion, there is no reason that this couldn't apply to a standard Kobold, or even monster.
The DC Kobold (or Dungeon Crawlin' Kobold) has a plethora of power selections at the outset. This is slightly confusing and misleading, but prior to combat choose which of these Standard Action powers the Kobold will use. They can only use that power as a basic attack, the others are off limits. This basically makes it so that one Kobold, prior to combat, can be decided on the fly by a DM to cover the role of a Fighter, Thief, Mage, or Priest for the little Kobold adventuring/guard party.
Not only that, but I like my Kobolds (and monsters in general) to be a little hearty, so these Kobold Minions can take 2 hits before dying instead of 1. Not only do you mess with preconceived notions a little bit by meta-gaming players, but it makes a battle last a little bit longer and create a little bit more of a challenge with only Minions. For XP purposes, I would count then as level 2 Minions.
Check out the DC Kobolds below:
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| Click to Enlarge!! |
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I would love some feedback for how this works in other groups. I've never actually codified this before, but I have used something similar quite successfully in the past with my group. I really imagine these being the bread and butter (and other similarly built monsters) of a dungeon-crawl type setting or game.
Sorry for the short post today, but I have some more plans for the near future.
Until next time,
-blob
You can follow me on Twitter @Sorcerer_Blob or via the hash-tag #legend4ry. You can also find my blog and others at the Fourthcore Hub and at the RPG Blog Alliance.
I hate monster bloat as well; they kind of set themselves up for that when they came up with the idea of roles. Over time the bloat was inevitable bc they were trying to make one like one ranged Goblin, one "tough" Goblin, and Goblin with decent AC, one Goblin that does magic, etc. That is part of the reason why I like working with the types such as Minion, Solo, etc, but not Skirmisher, Soldier, and the rest.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I think this is a really interesting idea. I like how you used the stat block, where you just pick a basic attack. It saves space and I think that this could be used in cool ways. You can fit so many monsters on one card, that you could have a "Monster Card" for each monster type, such as Kobolds, Ogres, etc. Or you could have like a reaaaaaaaallllly short one page adventure that has like 10 monsters on one statblock! I personally think the DM should roll for their power randomly.
Looking forward to seeing more of these. Cool idea Blob!
Like I said, I love the options, but I feel like there are too many!
DeleteBut yes, I think monsters can be simplified down quite a ways. Especially if you are wanting to run a serious dungeon crawl-esque game. You don't have time for a million stat blocks, so why not just condense it down to one universal block?
I plan on putting my money where my mouth is and doing a level 1 standard array stat block for some Kobolds here soon. I'll be sure to post it.