OT: Narf has gone looney and wants to GM.(Edited2)

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Oh, the demonic snakes we can handle.

I just ran accross a variety of kobold on the internet I don't ever want to meet. *Shudder*

Should I change the name of the thread?

[Jack Simth]

Yeah, it's the teleporting demons with nifty stunning attacks that get dicy...... and those are Core. Had fun with the power suits, too - party completely re-geared their defenses in response.

If you like. Makes no real difference to me.

Ah, Tucker's Kobolds? Yeah. That's mean DM tricks. It's actually kinda easy to set up a situation that's nasty if you have complete control over the "battle" location and infinite time to prepare beforehand... you know, if you're the DM. Mostly, though, neigh-unwinnable situations such as that aren't fun.

Of course, a sufficiently high level party can take down Tucker's Kobolds. Teleportation gets the party away to safety (the idea with Tucker's Kobolds mostly precludes anything stopping teleportation). Energy Resistence all around makes those flasks of alchemist's fire, or the burning oil, go fizz. The Fireball spell has a clause which indicates it may very well be useable for bypassing line-of-effect issues and going back through some of those murder holes. With Polymorph, you turn someone into a Dire badger (unless the walls are "solid rock") to tunnel into an area the Kobolds haven't prepared / don't expect; all those well-placed murder holes are quite useless when nobody's on the other side (a Druid-4 could potentially have one as an Animal Companion, a Druid-3 can get one for a few rounds from Summon Nature's Ally II, and a Wiz/Cleric 5 could get a Celestial Dire Badger from Summon Monster III). After 17th, the Wizard Shapechanges into a beholder... for the Disintigrate at will. Not for hitting the kobolds, but to change the terrain. Open up those tunnels, one 10 foot cube a round. Jason can reach through walls. There's actually a lot of different counters. The only problem is that most of them need to be prepped in advance..... but then, some of the counters are stand-by spells, useful for lots of different things.

But those kind of risks for the treasure and XP you're officially supposed to get from a few dozen cr 1/3rd to 2 critters is kinda.... blech.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Tucker's Kobolds are basically a counter for parties that don't use tactics.

Using tactics, the're doable. Counter-seige techniques could work (Advance your own flaming barricades, stuff flaming, smokey debris in the arrow slits, hirelings in a turtle formation)...

Thing is, I think most roleplayers don't really want to bother too much with tactics - Too much like work. And that includes me.

Still, a one-shot scenario to take on Tucker's Kobolds could be fun.

[Jack Simth]

Well, a normal party can arrange to pass reasonably safely through Tucker's Kobold territory... but hurting a significant number of Tucker's Kobolds is difficult.

They're in tunnels too small for your entire party (how many parties are made entirly of Small creatures?).

They're in tunnels that fold back on themselves in ways only Tucker's Kobolds know about... and oh yeah, there's carefully concealed murder holes between them, so at any moment, a kobold can drop, say, a flask of lit oil on top of you. Or just the oil. Or flood a tunnel floor with oil, and drop a tindertwig on top of it.

You find a way to attack them, they retreat. Every time. It's the first thing they do when they find out you have a way to strike back. It's their strategy. One thing doesn't work, they try another. They have dozens. Arrow slits with flaps on their side. You approach, they close the flaps (alternately, they fire at you in three kobold teams: the first readies an action to close the hatch after the archer fires through; the second readies an action to fire through the hatch after it opens; the third opens the hatch - open, fire, close - all on the same initiative - oh yeah, and the hatch is sized so the kobolds, with their small selves and their slight build, can just barely get a mediocre shot off - so they deny line of effect for spellcasting even while "open" and still grant the kobolds cover. Oh, and they communicate, and have a watcher - you're on one side of the room, it's the covers on the other side that are open; the ones on that side have largish rocks laid against them, and are latched/barred from the other side). Rooms that cave in when a kobold watching from another room pulls on a particular rope (cave in rules are nasty). Rooms that seal up, air-tight, so you suffocate over the course of a few hours. Slides coated in grease, that end in pits, with pet gelatenous cubes at the bottom. They harry you constantly - you can't rest or stop to prepare spell slots left blank (unless you pull one of the tricks, or a variation on it, listed earlier).

Now, resist energy will take care of the various fire-based tricks... except using up the air in the room. Protection from Arrows will take care of the shots for a time. Very, very little will deal with a cave in. Almost nothing deals with the small sized tunnels. Oh yeah, this is done by 10 CR 1/3 kobolds, 5 CR 1/2 kobolds, and 1 CR 1 kobold. They had several months to prepare. Officially, that's an encounter level of 6. And it's done in such a way that officially, a 1st level party of four gets 513 xp each. As does a 6th level party of four. And they have a pretty good chance of taking down an 8th or 10th level party (a 10th level party of four would officially get 0 xp; an 8th level party of four would officially get 50 xp each).

Sure, it's realistic guerrila tactics... but it's also mean, unbalancing, DM tricks.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

And once your counter-siege halfling units have taken the entrance, you smoke them out.

Counter-siege techniques will work for invading the place, too.

Hire all halflings, fortify every room you take, slowly shut them out of their place. Most expensive technique - turns it into a resource/people endurance contest.

Or, to pull a Salvatore, find an underground build-up of explosive gas, pipe it into the Kobold tunnels (Dwarven miners should be able to do both) and light the place up.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Also, I've had late nights the last few days, so I'm going to be a bit late getting to bed. And thus, probably a bit late getting up.

(Er, again. Sorry in advance. I just sleep late saturday.)

[NullAshton]

Though if our party does encounter those kobolds, Kibin will probally just be able to talk it out.

So... is D&D today going to be late, or something?

[Jack Simth]

Sorry, by "spot of trouble" I meant "unlikely to be able to at all". Sorry for the confusion.

Ah, and I see I didn't tell the server not to turn on. Fun.

[NullAshton]

[Violist]

Game tomorrow?

If there is, I'll need to miss an hour or so at some point - friend's computer is having 'fun' and has quite a bit of weekend work that needs doing.