What games do you use kobolds in?

>>94593727
I used kobolds in my most recent campaign, where they were paranoid, isolationist little jerks. The party was gnomeless though, so violence was avoided.

>>94593743
Sounds fun! What system did you use? If I may ask.

>>94593971
5e. It's my last 5e game, as I've soured on the system for mechanical reasons. I've since started 3.5 and quite enjoyed it.

>>94593979
I see. What do you like about kobolds in 5e over 3e?

>>94594007
>5e
Pack Tactics is awesome
>3.5
Damn near everything in Races of the Dragon is awesome, but I especially like Sticky Floor. Great spell.

>>94593685
Love these little lizards.

I also find it super funny that D&D gnomes have almost no fanbase to speak of and people seem to adore the "band of bumbling reptilian goofball gremlins" image of kobolds that has grown up over the years. Kobolds have decidedly won the rivalry on the internet.

Being cute animal people helps, of course, but I think as far as the old 'goblinoids' typing goes, kobolds somewhat benefitted from a reputation as (often clumsy) trappers first and foremost - they weren't coming to overrun your towns like goblins or orcs, generally. If you encountered them they were often on the defensive (as in, you're encountering them and their traps because you've entered a place they're already living in), even in earlier editions.

Hard not to feel for the little guy with a handful of HP trying to protect his home with a live scorpion tied loosely to a stick.

>>94594960
>people seem to adore the "band of bumbling reptilian goofball gremlins" image of kobolds
>Being cute animal people helps, of course, but I think as far as the old 'goblinoids' typing goes, kobolds somewhat benefitted from a reputation as (often clumsy) trappers first and foremost
And don't forget the shit ton of porn...mostly the porn really.

>>94595085
A shocking amount of porn one would say.
Then again not that shocking, they are natural subs.

Kobolds make the best pets for an adventuring party.
My last group adopted one halfway through a white dragon lair. Sure it was stabby at first, but he calmed down.

>>94594075
Nice. I mainly play 1e so I play them as more burrowy, trappy goblins. Cannon fodder in larger armies.

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>>94595085
>>94595125
Nowadays, cutebolds and horny-bolds (and their sizeable overlap) are part of the community's impression of them, but this (picrel) little stinker is from the 2e Monstrous Manual from 1993.

The "band of bumbling reptilian goofball gremlins" image seems to have, strangely enough, developed concurrent to the "strategic and cooperative defensive minds punching well above their weight" image that became a mainstay after the popularity of the Tucker's Kobolds story (which was published in 1988). Tucker's Kobolds, by the way, are, in the story itself, still effectively just defending their home from violent intruders.

The porn comes much after a shift from "just cave goblins" to "I like these little lizard dudes, they're fun" that happened in TTRPG culture quite a lot earlier than people seem to think. Nowadays we have nogames morons trying to retroactively blame everything they think is 'soft' on their modern bugbears when they just didn't experience the shift at all - the loudest whining about 'changing sensibilities' on stuff like kobolds comes from people who never fucking played, then or now.

The second to last paragraph of the Tucker's Kobolds story, about adventurers getting traumatized by sheer lethal, organized gremlinry, is this:

>"Tucker's kobolds were the worst thing we could imagine. They ate all our donkeys and took all 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."
- Roger E. Moore, 1988

So no, it's not a "porn corrupted their evil monster image" moral panic thing. People have been fond of kobolds even while fighting them at their most dangerous in TTRPGs for a LONG time. Lone goblin? Gut on sight. Lone kobold? >>94595253 "DM, can I keep him? I promise to feed him and take care of him myself!"

Lone gnome? Believe it or not, also gut on sight.

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>>94597777
Understandable.

>>94597777
Makes an odd amount of sense. Kobolds were always respected compared to other monsters.

>>94594960
D&D gnomes seem kind of bland imo unless I'm missing something. I love pathfinder gnomes though.

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>>94597777
holy quads. But really, have you red Kobold lore? How they live? Half of what they do is fucking. No wonder they are horny freaks. I don't even think its the internets doing honestly.
>>94593685
On paper 1v1 any goblin mogs a Kobold. In practice a village having a Goblin problem is, well, a problem. However a Village having a Kobold problem is an existential crisis.
I rarely use Kobolds in my games as enemies tho. They take too much space. I like to run them as these organized-chaos kind of crafty dudes with siege engines and stuff. But my players don't really react to it. If Im using lizards I usually stick with Dragonborn, who in my world are basically sons and daughters of a singular dragon and serve as its janissaries, doing its bidding. In theory they are elite troops, They would subjugate Kobolds but I never really run anything like that even tho it exists in my world. Somehow (I blame the party) evey game, reguardless of system, ends in a big battle or a lot of friendlies vs lots of enemies, talking liek 20+ on both sides. And thats just not runable and becomes a slog. But the thing is, my players, unlike me aren't war gamers and don't want to play a wargame for big battles. And if Kobolds are to show up, theres going to be a lot of them.

>>94600003
Whenever the early lore of a TTRPG setting has "they'll outbreed us all" as a reason to fear the monster, and the timeline of said game progresses through the editions (like it does in D&D), the narrative is kind of forced to walk back previous edition claims to keep the world from actually being overrun in the interim.

I tend to rationalize it away in my settings, if it comes up, as: "People thought kobolds could lay a fertilized egg every day and grow to adulthood in a week in an attempt to explain hordes of sudden kobolds, when the kobolds were actually just reaching the surface from already well-established underground populations, and people thought the scout groups were reproducing when reinforcements came in." It's a lot more logistically tenable than early edition lore, which both struggles to make sensible claims about population dynamics while also giving it a weird amount of detail.

Cave dwelling offers a way to explain their populations and a seeming population explosion, and a scenario where most of the kobold population is between the surface and the Upperdark, not really competing with the surface for resources. Also explains the common surface attitude towards kobolds - a kobold community moving onto the surface is likely either being pushed out of their home by something worse in the Upperdark and thus are starving (in a world that doesn't really have anything like humanitarian aid, especially not for kobolds), or are a group of kobolds who actually DO want to conquer the surface.

It's unlikely to be a good first impression on the village nearest the cave system they're using in either case.

>Somehow (I blame the party) evey game, reguardless of system, ends in a big battle or a lot of friendlies vs lots of enemies
Well, if you are the one putting enemies there, and the one allowing a huge number of friendlies... I hope you saying that you blame the party is sarcastic self-awareness.

Maybe try more isolated encounters?

>>94600003
>yuan-ti
Oh hey, nice. They're my favorite mid-level monster category.

>>94593685
this pic singlehandedly pulled me out of a suicidal mental spiral just now

>>94600794
damn, i'm happy to hear that

>>94600744
Races of the Dragon gives 6 year generations with two weeks internal gestation, 10% rate of twins, and age penalties hitting at 60. The one time D&D put numbers to it, the capability to be LUDICROUSLY explosive breeders by Humanoid standards was included, and is something made use of. But because you don't have to go very far up to get to things mulching dozens if not hundreds of 1st-3rd level mooks and food supplies for primarily subterranean societies are a clusterfuck, most of the settings can soak the expanding surpluses without issue.

>>94600794
Such is the power of Kobolds.

really though, you alright anon?

>>94593685
When did kobolds go from being dogs to being lizards?

>>94601295
3e

>>94593685
Are kobolds and Skaven basically the same thing? Rat and reptile differences aside.

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One of the wildest things I learned was that DND Kobolds could live over 100 years but of course, most die very early.

>>94601295
They finished settling into reptilians in 3e, but they've always been described as having scaly skin and the dog factor Japan hyperfocused on was weird re-emphasis in translation from the snout description.

>>94601337
It's decently likely they're LITERALLY the Warhammer version of Kobolds using a different name for IP reasons, like the Beastmen being almost exactly Glorantha's Broo.

>>94601337
kobolds generally won't have as much infighting/betrayal as skaven

>>94601337
are skaven considered pathetic? I'm not well versed in warhammer lore, but in dnd lore the universal trend is that kobolds are the bottom of the barrel, even making goblins look like tough guys by comparison.

Weak, cowardly, and the size of a toddler, kobolds only survive through teamwork, booby traps, and a willingness to submit to slavery in exchange for protection from their draconic overlords

>>94601389
>>94601391
True
>>94601423
Sounds like the Skaven and their submission to the Council of 13

>>94601423
>are skaven considered pathetic?
individually? very much so. but there's never just one

What are your world's kobolds like?
In mine, they believe that if they're brave enough and become strong enough and gather enough treasure, they'll become real actual dragons.

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>>94593685
I miss playing my ripped gigachadlet Kobold PC so much bros...Kobolds are so fun!

>>94601423
You're pretty clearly not versed in D&D lore lmao

>>94601644
He sounds hot.

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>>94601657
wat..

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Personally I think furred kobolds are cuter than scaly kobolds.

>>94601695
Porque no los dos?

>>94601838
This guy knows what's up.
Have different subspecies ranging from only scales to mostly just fur and everything in between.

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>>94602451
hyper-adaptive kobolds that evolve to suit their environments sounds neat. Perhaps long ago it was a trait used to serve the biggest dragon, whether it was a mountainous red dragon or an ocean dwelling blue dragon.

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>>94593685
TOTAL KOBOLD DEATH.

Kill kobolds. Behead kobolds. Roundhouse kick a kobold into the concrete. Slam dunk a kobold into the trashcan. Crucify filthy kobolds. Defecate in a kobold’s food. Launch kobolds into the sun. Stir fry kobolds in a wok. Toss kobolds into active volcanoes. Urinate into a kobold’s gas tank. Judo throw kobolds into a wood chipper. Twist kobolds’ heads off. Report kobolds to the Wizards’ Council. Karate chop kobolds in half. Curb stomp pregnant non-human kobolds. Trap kobolds in quicksand. Crush kobolds in the trash compactor. Liquefy kobolds in a vat of acid. Eat kobolds. Dissect kobolds. Exterminate kobolds in the gas chamber. Stomp kobold skulls with steel toed boots. Cremate kobolds in the oven. Lobotomize kobolds. Mandatory abortions for kobolds. Grind kobold fetuses in the garbage disposal. Drown kobolds in fried chicken grease. Vaporize kobolds with anti-matter. Kick old kobolds down the stairs. Feed kobolds to alligators. Slice kobolds with a katana.

>>94604052
Fantasies of violence will not compensate for your lack of vertical dimension, gnome.

>>94601695
Cute.

>>94602451
Do they engage in kobold racism?

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>>94604290

>>94600794
Glad to hear it. Remember there’s always fun things to see and do in the world.
Also seek help. I mean that out of genuine concern, not to insult or denigrate. If you’ve actually, seriously been in a suicidal mental spiral then you actually, seriously need to talk to a medical professional.

>>94599814
They are the lowest CR "humanoid-like." Basically the weakest thing capable of some amount of reasoning, community, and civilization building in D&D is a kobold. Put another way, they're the weakest thing that you could have a conversation with.

In 5e the poor little guys have a CR of 1/8, the same as a Giant Rat (with the same HP pool). Kobolds have a WIS score of 8, and Giant Rats... WIS 10.

WIS in 5e is often more like "perception," but somehow 5e kobolds still hold their reputation for cautious preparation despite being WIS 8 and creative traps despite being INT 8, 2 whole points below the common goblin at INT 10.

5e mental stats for monsters are kind of a mess in general IMO.

TL;DR: Kobolds are always the underdog, and people respect underdogs who can still upset expected outcomes, especially if it's through ingenuity.

>>94604894
>Different Anon Here
In my setting they do. Because they were created by a weird dog dragon scratching itself during a nap. They hate each other because each group claims to be made closer to their god's image.

>>94601423
>are skaven considered pathetic?
Most people in the Warhammer fantasy world don't even know that Skaven exist, the ones who do seem to understand the gravity of the threat they pose, because where there's one there's a thousand and even that one is likely to be carrying all kinds of horrific and contagious diseases even if he isn't a devoted acolyte of Nurgle who spreads them deliberately.

The term that seems to be the most frequently applied to Skaven is "loathsome". They're evil, disgusting, and nothing good will ever come from having one around, that seems to be the consensus among people who are aware of them

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>>94603638
This is basically what the new PF kobolds are - they lay their eggs in places near powerful magic and what hatches has absorbed and is influenced by that magic. I think it's cool.

Now if only PF2E art didn't make them so top heavy and turn their heads into huge, neckless, shoulderless stumps.

I get what Wayne Reynolds was trying to do in picrel to make distinctive "Golarion Kobolds," but I despise PF2E kobold art. Thankfully I don't see it unseating the cutebold proportions seen in stuff like >>94593685 that people bring into PF and D&D all the time when they want to play as kobolds. Not many people want to play explicitly as hideous triangle-faced lumps that will fall over from a slight breeze and have random protruding teeth.

You can tell by the fan/character art - dominated by cutebolds and stuff like >>94601644. He might have a pointy face, but at least he's still got fucking shoulders and isn't just a pointy tube with legs and an overinflated "head."

>>94606231
They're not good analogues to kobolds. In D&D they'd be more like goblins. Kobolds just don't have the crippling infighting issues skaven do.

In some ways this can make them more terrifying ("omg [x] is the scariest thing in all of fiction" is just GW fanwank, relax). There's no "rat-race" to hobble large-scale kobold ambition - they can and will meticulously prepare for confrontation before starting, and confront enemies as a cooperating group. They try to stay hidden until absolutely necessary out of inherent cautiousness, but you can still pull off some terrifying skaven-like events in the vein of "this town was here until suddenly it wasn't, overrun by kobolds and collapsed into the ground."

However with kobolds it's unlikely said collapse is a prelude to total surface invasion - if they succeed, they'll probably just stay in the collapsed ruin picking it over and making it home. There were probably gnomes living there anyway.

>>94601522
That's adorable and I may be stealing it.

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>>94593685
When I run kobolds I steal a bit from the kuo-toa and their god making, where whatever enough kobolds worship becomes a dragon.
The kobolds always remember the current stage of transformation as how the subject of their worship has always been, and said subjects find themselves feeling that growing into a dragon is right and natural. A big rock that came to be such an icon may not think much past that, but sapient icons often find a new ambition to further their power by growing the tribe and spreading their cult.
I recently ran a hexcrawl campaign where an early kobold encounter got resolved with some quick diplomacy and things went off the rails from there. The party were soon wary allies of the tribe, exploring the forested hills around an old mine turned kobold warren. When a bulette threatened the tribe, the kobolds turned to the party for aid. Not only slaying the bulette but healing wounded kobolds and helping to rebuild the damage, the party made a big impression. And some kobold set up a small shrine to give thanks.
The rest of the campaign was about their slow evolution into dragons, claiming territory and conquering rivals to expand the tribe until they came into conflict with several neighboring kingdoms, only ending up at war with one before everyone agreed to settle on some new alliances and the campaign came to an end.

Kobold girls: with tits or without?

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It would be cool to have a setting where both Eastern and Western Kobolds exist

>>94606811
With, they're draconic and dragons aren't reptiles. However tits are not the primary sexual attribute kobolds look for in a mate. The main attribute is a thick tail.

>>94606811
Tits but like c cup at max.

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>>94606515
>They're not good analogues to kobolds. In D&D they'd be more like goblins. Kobolds just don't have the crippling infighting issues skaven do.
Skaven are pretty unique among fantasy races and IMO what makes them one of the more compelling factions in Warhammer fantasy. They reproduce and die in overwhelming numbers, but they're too clever and treacherous for their own good and spend more time fighting and backstabbing each other than they do with the surface races. When one of them does manage to unite a vast swarm, they become a major threat that requires military intervention. The reason why barely any body even knows they exist is because when Skaven overrun a city, they tend to leave very few survivors. They don't even leave bodies because the starving Skaven eat them.

Despite being individually cowardly and disposable, they don't really have any analogue to DnD. You don't really see them roving around in smallish packs except as advanced scouts for a much larger horde. Some settings show goblins capable of commerce and treaties with other races, but Skaven are never shown entering into those kind of relationships with other races, where basically everybody detests the Skaven and the feeling is pretty much mutual

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I have a 1K children of the flame kobold army for OPR. Not pictured is the tinkerhulk, and that they all have halberds not swords, as I had exactly enough points to get it and push it to 1K. I wasn't going to reprint and paint 20 kobolds after doing exactly that.
Led of course by 3 wyrmblood dudes. The crazy one riding the rocket is actually the leader

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Missing tinkerhulk, although I forgot about my 75% painted kobold paratroopers that are also in the list.
I love kobolds.

>>94607125
I missed the "of the flame part" and thought you had 1k children in you kobold army.
Its on brand at least

>>94602451
I had two types of kobold in my setting, Both identical statwise.
The local population of them are the scaled lizard type, and a newer population that stowed away on merchant ships from the east that are furred cannid type.
They are both small and the name of their species was a coincidence. They hate each other and call the other "kobald" instead. When they meet they usually fight
>>94606815

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>>94600744
>sarcastic self-awareness
Obvy, Its a problem I had untill recently. I have changed my DMing ways. Most encounters now are against more specialized "parties" of enemies. Meaning they have some combinations of the basic roles in a team Tank, Healer, Support, Caster, DPS, Leader, AoE, Trapper etc... So instead of 3 players fighting like 8 Bandits they would fight only 4. But those 4 would know what they are doing.
Heavily Armored knight w/ Long Sword, flanked by the band Leader armed with a short sword and lite crossbow, who is the one barking orders and encouraging the rest. Bit behind, off to the side, a longbow men and behind them the party medic, there to chuck potions and keep them in the fight.
This created more dynamic and interesting battles. Alternatively if they have to clear out a cave or some similar task that will have them fight 50 plus enemies, I isolate the encounters just as you suggested. Each room will have a small chunk, of the total number of monsters. Sometimes a couple more would enter the field of battle/room as the battle goes on, as reinforcements. But in the end its just a bunch of rooms connected to each other and each one has a chunk of enemies inside. Its pretty much a dungeon at that point but what ever.
I had issues with early quests where its like "Save our village from the goblin raid" And like 30 goblins would show up in an open field and it would be a total slog. Now I would for a smaller goblin Band of more powerful and specialized foes for our players to battle. I try to keep the number of mobs equal to the number of players. I increase it or decrease it based on how though the mobs are.

>>94607369
That's so fucking cool man, only thing I would have done differently is have them have a common ancestor somewhere down the evolution line so that they both are true kobolds.

>>94601695
I hate how cute this things are. Thank fuck they don't exist, you wouldn't be able to pull me out of them

>>94607042
>no one knew because no survivors
This is pretty standard, edgy GW fare. Being a race of disorganized backstabbers unless united under a leader is pretty standard fantasy fare that long predates Skaven - what do you think the hobgoblin/goblin relationship is supposed to represent? Better accounting?

GW fans tend to vastly overestimate how unique to GW franchises anything in their lore is - most of it is pilfered pastiche from other places. Even the "primary threat to the world is from being overrun by x" idea is something people have suggested about D&D goblins. And there are settings where goblins are never shown to have treaties or commerce with anyone.

Warhammer (fantasy et. al.) fans don't tend to like parallels like this because the thing being paralleled basically always predates the GW thing. See: numerous cries of "but 40K (especially IoM) totally doesn't have half its foundational setting cribbed clumsily from Dune!!!" when it very much does.

If there's anything truly unique to Skaven here, it's most likely the fact they loathe other Skaven as much as everyone else loathes them. The thing that's 'unique' is, in typical GW fashion, a preexisting flaw from a preexisting concept plonked into their setting and cranked past eleven because they're allergic to anything that looks too reasonable to be grimdark.

If you like Skaven, cool. If you think Skaven are somehow uniquely creative... unfortunately you probably just saw the concept from GW first and primacy bias made you think it was derivative when you saw it elsewhere. It's unlikely to the point of comedy that the first place it showed up was something from GW, or that some theme from a GW setting isn't found elsewhere.

>>94607619
Off... you mean off of them, right?

>>94610841
He said what he said and he meant what he meant

>>94607683
That's just your opinion, and everyone is entitled to one. I don't really care who does a concept "first", I care who puts the freshest spin on a classic and timeless idea, and in my opinion what makes the Skaven fresh is that they aren't only depicted as gangly mooks whose only purpose in life is to look pathetic as the player-character mows them down like genocide is going out of style, they're treated as a viable faction that has their own share of victories and defeats, their own motivations and strategies that actually do pan out sometimes, but its always their character flaws who cause these plans to come crashing down. They're not monolithic, they have a decadent morass of bitterly competing cultures, you can have two Skaven players in your group and it's totally legit lore-wise why their armies would fight. This makes them well rounded and flavorful while never losing track that these are supposed to be an evil race who sold their souls to the dark powers for short term gains.

You may not have a taste for the grimdark but some of us consider it a flavor that's fun to sip from time to time. For some of us, part of the fun of fantasy is being able to explore emotions that you know better than to indulge in your persona life, which is why we like reading about bad people doing horrible things to other bad people. I also enjoyed the War of the Spider Queen novels for remembering that dark elves are supposed to be evil, subterranean backstabbers

I was playing DnD and slaughtering goblins long before I ever heard of Warhammer, and was still playing DnD and slaughtering goblins after I realized that I prefer hobbies which don't compel me to squander all my disposable income on little bits of pewter and plastic. I still thought the Skaven was one of their more memorable factions, and it makes me understand why a similar fandom grew up around Kobolds where they may be evil little shits but at least they have a sense of style

>>94613273
There's no need to get defensive - I didn't say anything about grimdark being bad. All I did was describe the changes GW makes to concepts taken from elsewhere to fit them into the grimdark mold; reasonability takes a hit, unfortunately, because grimdark settings can't abide achievable positive solutions to major in-setting problems.

>they're treated as a viable faction that has their own share of victories and defeats, their own motivations and strategies that actually do pan out sometimes,
This happens with goblins, any time they successfully invade a place. Planning is generally from hobgoblins, but those are still goblinoids, and they are a 'viable' faction - there are places literally under their control in most settings.
>but its always their character flaws who cause these plans to come crashing down
Goblin success is self-defeating in EXACTLY the same ways as skaven success - either collapsing to infighting once the unifying enemy is dealt with, or collapsing to starvation because the area has had its resources ruthlessly and carelessly extracted.
>They're not monolithic, they have a decadent morass of bitterly competing cultures, you can have two Skaven players in your group and it's totally legit lore-wise why their armies would fight.
Goblin tribes are effectively analogous to skaven clans, and war with each other plenty.

It's not about being first, it's about the claim that
>>94607042
>Skaven are pretty unique among fantasy races
Which is... not really true. Goblins are a closer analogue than you seem to want to believe. Maglubiyet in D&D even has a hold on goblinoid souls - the "only unified by an evil god" thing isn't even a difference.

If we're using gameplay over lore, skaven and goblins are BOTH hordes of fodder - another non-difference.

Just because none of the campaigns you've had in D&D evidently explored the many ways skaven are quite like D&D goblins doesn't mean there aren't many ways skaven are quite a lot like D&D goblins.

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Hello My Children, I have returned.

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>>94613716
No, you're stretching. Most of the time goblins are depicted like this: disposable mooks with equipment that's just barely worth looting and no real character. They're just the random gang of evildoers plaguing the village that needs your low level adventurers to help clean out of the nearby cave. But then it turns out they were just disposable mooks for a much cooler villain that your adventurers will need to confront later on in the module

It's only the exceptions that explore the concept of goblins as being little evil tinkerers or fantasy-jews or whatever, some people make their goblins into coombait. But none of them capture the sheer disgusting twisted loathsomeness of skaven and the depth of their culture where each faction is more vile and twisted than the last. I don't understand why you feel like the two are in some kind of competition with each other, and can't be enjoyed for their own merits

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>>94614015
I want you to really look at picrel and tell me honestly that skaven wouldn't do THE EXACT SAME THING.

>depicted like this: disposable mooks with equipment that's just barely worth looting
Like most skaven? Did you think his sword and shield just congealed from the earth alongside the goblin? Are you playing a TTRPG or an MMO?
>and no real character
This is on the DM, not the MM or the splatbooks. A rollplayer campaign using goblins like MMO mobs would just as happily use skaven the same way if the setting were Warhammer - gameplay like that doesn't equip you to discuss the narrative details either way.
>then it turns out they were just disposable mooks
I see the problem you're having - you aren't conceptualizing D&D settings as anything but what was going on at your tables. The fact many DMs don't do anything with details given in the MM or the DMG or splatbooks doesn't cause them to cease to be.

Goblin tribes are in the splatbooks and mentioned in adventures from some of the earliest D&D stuff. If your campaign's goblins are interchangeable with a pack of MMO giant rats, that's a choice the DM is making, not a portrayal given by the official setting.

>But none of them capture the sheer disgusting twisted loathsomeness of skaven and the depth of their culture
Skaven are not that complicated, anon. They're disgusting rat clans as opposed to disgusting goblinoid tribes. Put your thesaurus away and stop wanking to the immense narrative depth of a swarm of diseased ratmen.

Alright, I'll concede that skaven being so diseased is something they don't share with goblins.

>you feel like the two are in some kind of competition
I am saying they fill a very similar narrative niche. Why would you think me listing a bunch of similarities makes it a competition?

I don't even like goblins for fuck's sake - I'd prefer using skaven, given the choice.

GW fanwank is really something else.

Do kobolds in your settings hate goblins? Is it just resource competition, or something more?

I have a largely unused background detail in one of my settings where kobolds have difficulty telling goblins and gnomes apart. They're constantly fighting goblins while earnestly believing that they are in fact in an endless war with green gnomes.
>inb4 what about gnome tech
Obviously the green gnomes are just not as good at stealing inventions. This is, of course, reinforced with kobold folklore wherein green gnomes become less green the more things they steal, probably stolen from a poor kobold who was foolishly kind to a green gnome (and naturally was killed and erased from history by the vile gnome, ensuring the gnome kept all the credit for stolen kobold inventions).
The goblins are green with envy because they haven't stolen enough (especially from kobolds) yet, you see. The fact this addition to the folklore was likely taken from a human turn of phrase is clearly a gnomish lie.
>inb4 what about other goblinoids
If a green gnome never gets the chance to steal, obviously their body eventually metamorphoses into these larger monstrosities. One reason kobolds want to kill gnomes on sight is a fear that a gnome may still have the capability to become a large gnomish monstrosity, like a "hobgnomelin."
Kobold ecological science is not exactly robust, but they do their scaly best.

I say "largely unused" because I put way too much detail into a kobold/goblin conflict that barely showed up in like two encounters in two quests, to a sum total depth of "oh, these kobolds call goblins gnomes as an insult, neat" from the perspective of the players. The campaign I ran in that setting was... about pirates. I don't know why that's the place I chose to add autistic details about kobolds to, but that's the one it was.
Maybe I'll reuse it sometime in a more appropriate campaign for it.

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>>94614259
>I want you to really look at picrel and tell me honestly that skaven wouldn't do THE EXACT SAME THING.
It looks like some sort of ogre with an armored dude and a catapult on his back. Fairly typical fantasy shlock. Nothing at all like Skaven flavor except maybe certain achetypical overlaps but it totally lacks the aesthetics, they're just drab, boring designs with no sense of style

>Like most skaven?
The mooks are only there to soften you up for the real Skaven threats: the Ninja Grandmaster who could assassinate your High Lord, the Engineer who runs you over with a giant Rat wheel, the plague monks who infects your army with supernatural diseases, and that's just scratching the surface of their lore

>GW fanwank is really something else.
The only one fanwanking here is you, posting that long winded diatribe just because you can't get over somebody liking something that you don't like

>>94615256
>anon literally says he'd prefer skaven
>ratboy over here has twisted his own panties into a knot trying to defend his precious rodents from... nothing
>vague "but they're like, so deep and nuanced" every post
>deep down a "skaven have to be better than goblins" rathole he dug all by himself
>the anon he's seething at, again, literally called skaven preferable to goblins
>RATBOY MUST REMAIN SEETHING
>THE FILTHY RODENT MUST BE HONORED AS SPECIAL AND UNIQUE
>dying on this hill by fucking suicide

anon

this is a thread about kobolds

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>>94606815
Where do warcraft kobolds go on this spectrum?

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>>94615636
Into the trash along with the rest of warcraft designs and lore

>>94615432
That's a little harsh, anon.

Maybe I should still mention the fact "the mooks are only there to soften you up for the real ... threats" is both a) something he complained about goblins for doing earlier and b) something that goblins also do...

...but my heart's just not in it. Let him live his little rat fantasy, I'm here for more cutebold and cutebold antics like >>94615757. Excellent.

>>94615636
Too rat-like. Might even have legitmitely started as skaven given the fact WoW was originally supposed to be a licensed Warhammer Fantasy game.

But enough about rats, I think.

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>>94615636

>>94615636
Bretty gud/10. Kept it simply kept it quirky.

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>>94615636
Heard you talking shit about my little bro.
I don't like Warcraft either

>>94618886
meant for >>94615757
I'm retarded.

Could there be a type of kobold that are basically robots, or is that inappropriate?

>>94619682
I see it as perfectly reasonable for a line of robots to be referred to as "kobolds" for being made almost entirely of cobalt compound reliant systems. Because cobalt is used in temperature, corrosion, and wear resistant superalloys, permanent magnets, and batteries. And most of it is extracted from copper refinement, so there's your conductor for wiring.

>>94593685
Anybody got that synapsid kobold pic that floats around?

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>>94620187

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>>94620471

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>>94620482

>>94620482
That ones really good, but it’s none of these. It had a spear and I think it was standing on a skeleton or at least a skull.

>>94619791
>the periodic table has an element named after kobolds
>humanity as a whole doesn't even get that honor
perhaps this timeline is not all bad

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>>94620873
This one maybe?

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>>94623141

>>94625198
Ooh, I really like this one. Almost dwarf-like proportions, lots of "tinkerer" character in the design - to the point where I could easily see his angry expression being because somebody carelessly set off a trap he'd just reset.

I think the hands might be a *bit* too dwarf-like, but gloves and claws are really difficult to put together without something silly like fingerless gloves.

>>94625407
I can imagine a team of Kobold minions scurrying around in the walls of their bosses dark castle, doing general maintenance in the places only they're small enough to reach.

They've always struck me as a trustworthy bunch. Loyal. If you gave that job to goblins, they would strip all the wiring and crush your magic crystals to cut fantasy meth.

>>94625941
B male, C female

>>94625483
I've seen a few DMs have like a community of kobolds 'hired' to manage/defend city sewers, rather than as the bog-standard infestation. In most TTRPG settings there's a lot of stuff way worse than kobolds that could infest a sewer system, so it'd probably be justifiable to pay to have a permanent presence there who can actually tolerate the smell. And since kobolds are generally good miners, they can expand the sewers themselves if that's needed, including building their own sewer-adjacent lodging.

Most settings do have them as pretty trustworthy, and pretty community-focused, even in their more "ontologically evil race" incarnations. Kind of have to stick together and cooperate when you're the weakest little guys around. They're also usually pretty deferential - depends on the setting, but often if you get them to start working for you they tend to both stay that way and kind of revere you for it.

Maintenance minions for the BBEG is a natural fit. Depending on your BBEG's personality you could have the BBEG be more fond of the kobolds than of other minions, seeing them like pets. Some of the "small dog person" theming can show up even in more reptilian kobolds through their behavior towards superiors.

Now I'm imagining a BBEG becoming filled with personal anger and loathing towards the party after they somehow kill a bunch of the maintenance kobolds.

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>>94593685
Fuck kobolds and fuck all of you.

>>94628137
correct
you SHOULD fuck the kobolds

>>94625483
>>94628125
>Maintenance minions for the BBEG is a natural fit.

This also plays into the mythological roots of Kobolds being a "household spirit."

>>94628137
>Fuck kobolds
I think I will.
>Fuck all of you
I mean, if you're offering...

>>94625941
i feel like the artist accidentally swapped the snouts of C and D if this was a progression from "less cartoony to more cartoony"

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>>94593685
>how it started
(picrel)
>how it's going

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>>94606815
return to TRADITION. Bring back lizard-dogs.

>>94632964
>ratty tail
>doggy snout
>scaly skin

So as it turns out all three later interpretations are founded well in the roots of D&D.

>>94634522
it took me ages to realize that pointy thing coming out of his jaw is supposed to be a wing

>>94599827
D&D gnomes got slapped with that tinkerer nonsense that both Dwarves and to a lesser extent Kobolds also have and every attempt to make them look different from Hafllings fails

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>>94593685
>>94597777
>>94600744
I always liked the idea of kobolds' origins being descended from dragons. Like any unfertilized dragon eggs hatch something like 10-15 kobolds each. So you get kobolds popping up around dragons.
I'd have it so that kobolds reproducing on their own is slower than from dragon eggs (longer gestation times), that way having a ton of kobolds showing up somewhere all at once is a bad sign, as kobolds have less reason to reproduce on their on their own unless their dragon parent dies or goes away. And it gives them more incentive to be stealthy and remain unseen if they lose the idea of their dragon potentially backing them up.

>>94637885
That's interesting, and I kind of like the idea. It's also extremely similar to draconians (multiple individuals from a single dragon egg).

As an aside, it's very amusing to me that the crop of the image from the Gnomes and Halflings book implies the entire lifespan of a Breachgnome is a single day of slaughtering ogres, like some sort of ogre-murdering mayfly. At least they're not killing kobolds.

>>94638366
Very trustworthy. He pulls off the getup in a way no r/Atheism user ever could.

I have never once seen art of a dragon with an army of kobolds
For creatures so intrinsically connected why are they always kept so seperate? Kobolds are always either in search of a dragon master, or in a mine far away from their supposed master, or just completely seperate from any dragon at all, ignoring their entire reason for existence, why is it like this?

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>>94628137
It's just an unflattering angle. He looks fine.

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>>94640766
Fanart and official stuff about kobolds is unlikely to feature dragons because the dragon will take up the attention most of the time. Kobolds - especially cute ones - are also going to compete with a dragon you're trying to portray. Take pic related - it's very strongly implied to be kobolds stealing for a dragon's hoard IIRC, but the point of it is to show you the kobolds.

Seeing a jolly gang of kobolds like this is sort of incompatible with a the sort of "looming, dangerous, intimidating presence" atmosphere a lot of dragon art for RPGs tries to go for.

I'm pretty sure I've seen dragon art with kobolds as small background details, but some quick searching didn't find any. You're right, it's probably less common than it should be.

>>94641899
ok but why would it be impossible for them to straighten up and act appropriately when their literal god is in the room

>>94642105
I mean... what's 'proper' to "small lizard worship big wing lizard?" They're probably just excited their god is in the room and they're too insignificant and/or helpful for the dragon to care that they're having a party while adding to the hoard.

Or they're just snacks to the dragon and the dragon eats the ones in the room whenever it wakes up.

Or they always leave the room to man traps/defend when intruders show up.

I can't think of that many ways to get them to stay in the room and "be serious" when an adventuring party is in the lair - even a dragon actively using them as forces is probably sending them to slow down the adventuring party before they even get to the main room.

Well, besides the dragon letting the party in and having kobolds standing as guards, I guess. Or the dragons and kobolds alike being friendly enough with the party that nobody present is seen as a threat to anyone else. There are probably other ways.

>>94642396
Anon they're literally just lizard goblins, has the perception of kobolds truly been so warped it's impossible for you to imagine them looking or acting in any way serious or threatening, even if it's just posturing with artistic embellishment

>>94642456
I was responding to >>94640766 first, I thought you were talking about when the dragon is there, too. It... really is kinda hard for me to imagine the kobolds being intimidating compared to the dragon in the room.

>>94642456
>>94642472
However I want to clarify that the kobolds being absolutely serious and threatening elsewhere (such as in the parts of the lair before the dragon) is absolutely something I could easily see being done.

You could have the kobold worship of the dragon be a more organized religion. Maybe some rituals and even a priesthood or something. Have the lair mined out to look like the interior of a huge cathedral, with inset panels of glowing rocks instead of stained glass windows. I quite like the idea.

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Still can't believe cutebolds are effectively in D&D official art now.
I mean, I'm not complaining.

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pathfinder kobolds: yea or nay?

>>94647072
Not a fan of the weird thick triangel head. I wouldn't keep this thing as a sex pet. I'd actually just kill it if it attacked me.

>>94647475
So you're saying it's good

>>94647072
Nah, not wife material.

>>94647502
I mean, I guess. If you're entering kobold warrens only with the intent to kill them.

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Are goblins okay?
I haven't started the Kobolds yet, but they're next.

>>94647552
neat. wanna see what you make

>>94647072
Lore? Cool. Design? Eugh.

>>94615636
The only good Kobolds.
Cute lizards are shit. There are many better lizard/draconic races.
Dogmen are even worse.

These kobolds are pretty unique and cool looking.

>>94637885
I used this once in a Council of Wyrms style 'You're all fucking dragons' game..
It was a great way to give the PCs some free servants Well, the one lone female, who traded her kobolds to the males like they were 3rd world housekeepers in Saudi Arabia

>>94628125
>city comes under siege
>attackers manage to tunnel into the sewer system
>they think they've almost won the siege
>wait, why are the walls speaking draconic

>>94615636
I actually like them too. Warcraft didnt do alot with them, but they are not bad.

>>94651320
I despise them because I hate "u no take candle" spam and that's pretty much as deep as WoW kobolds get.

Most of the details about them as a species are just jokes about how obsessed they are with candles.

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>>94647072
I'm not super into the new design.

>>94647552
Cute.

>>94647552
lovely

>>94652571
This is one of the less bad ones for me, though I still prefer the D&D head shape. More conducive to stuff like >>94645182.

>>94636489
I like the kobold tinkerer angle, because it fits with the theme of being too weak physically to be a threat that way alone - tool use for defense is just a necessity. With the necessity of cooperation, it's easy to justify kobolds being surprisingly industrious. One thing we don't really see explored often AFAIK is kobold/dwarf relations - could be nice to have some dwarf/kobold alliances.

In D&D, you have the angle that the 'draconic' script - which was probably invented by kobolds and later adopted by dragons - is likely related to dwarven runes, which you could use to suggest an old alliance between the two at some point.

Gnomes baffle me a bit - you already have dwarves, you already have halflings, why do you you need a third entire race of shrunken apes? At least halflings are (usually) different enough from dwarves to justify their existence.

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>>94647552
we shall accept them for the holidays at least

>>94647072
>>94652571
i've only ever seen people who like it in pathfinder fan communities, but there's a lot of toxic positivity in pathfinder fan communities, so it's hard to judge real sentiment from them. a lot of them seem to believe that if paizo does something differently, it must be better than dnd.
if it was an ip thing, there were probably better ways to differentiate pathfinder kobolds that didn't make them quite so ugly.

>>94599827
DnD Gnomes got a barfy deal, really. They should've been half-pint Elves, more fey and less tinker.

Now DnD Gnomes are always the "funny" one... I'd rather adventure with a a whole herd of rainbow Tieflings than ONE Gnome.

Never played a Kobold. I have a couple in mind, just never fit the party/campaign well enough.

>>94606515
That's a neat design. You can just imagine that thing slinking through a tight tunnel like a pissed off tiny monitor lizard.

Gonna have to look at PFs art more, I guess.

>>94628137
lol

>>94647072
I like how ugly and stupid looking PF2e kobolds are, but I wouldn't want that to be the default. 3E kobolds are peak.

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>>94660704
except monitor lizards are generally not that big-headed. it's more like a blue tongued skink except its eyes are too small and a bit too far forward, and the skull size+shape just doesn't work very well for a bipedal creature that needs to face forward and not perpetually stare at the ceiling, and also doesn't balance well with bipedal shoulders (look at how close to the ground the front legs attach to the torso). you can't just tilt this little guy on his hind legs, break his neck forwards, squash his snout, glue horns to the back, and call it a kobold.
>>94662605
i can get behind a variety in general. some cool ideas about including the dog kind ITT, but i dislike those somewhat because it's just a translation mistake that went way too far.

> wah wah wah its bad because i dont want to fuck it pragraph paragraph

>>94665374
>implying people wouldn't fuck the Paizo kobolds

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>>94664545
>but i dislike those somewhat because it's just a translation mistake that went way too far.
its literally not. Orginal kobolds were far more on the dog side than the lizard side. They were tiny dog men who just happened to be scaled.
3e basically just scrapped that aspect (probably because gnolls already filled that canineesque role in monstrous humanoids) and 5e brought it back a little bit by giving them dog noses.

>>94665939
to continue their "yapping" language is literally supposed to be reminiscent of the barking of small dogs.

>>94665939
>they have scaly rust-brown skin and no hair
what the hell kinda dogs you lookin at

>>94666144
the same place you see lizards that look like dogs.

>>94647072
Give them bigger, more expressive eyes
Good enough for me

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Currently have two kobolds, one in DnD5e other is planned for Starfinder.
In 5e he is actually an old kobold, 60+, who is a personal scribe for a dragon. A glorified walking audio-to-book journal and main servant. Dragon got her magic crystal stolen by wizard and sent him and bunch of other bolds to retrieve it. Right now, he is magically impersonating local town gnome (lol) wizard, helping player characters to retrieve it. I told my players that I just wanted to have a GM PC to tag along for fun, mostly behaving like a old quirky gnome with attitude, so they don't really suspect a thing even when I try to give signals something is up. After decades of serving he is a bit of a wizard and wishes to ran away to write his own story. Got bunch of outcomes planned depending on PCs finding out his intentions, deciding to accept him or kill, retrieve the crystal for the dragon or Waterdeep officials etc.
Starfinder one I'm still brainstorming. Lore wise kobolds are rather comedic. They were nowhere to be found for a while after Golarion disappearance. And then sort of appeared everywhere, doing jobs and living in places like they were always there. Basically gaslighting everyone in their existence. Plus have increased magic affinity now, so some go full autism trying to become dragons.
Based on that my planned NPC kobold is temporal anomaly, an accidental time traveler. Because of some experiment or just bad luck, he is glitching out in time, randomly disappearing, intuitively manipulating events like healing wounds by "reversing" them, stuff like that. He is a generic dumb bold otherwise and doesn't realize what is happening to him. Main feature will be that he'll never die for real, appearing back, even if he falls into black hole or eaten by monster. Wonder if players will abuse poor infinite dispensable kobold in gameplay.

>>94665939
>deliberately boxing in "dog-like men" when it wouldn't be necessary if there was a comma between "evil" and "dog"
>there's no comma, thus "evil" and "dog" are, together, the phrase "evil dog," which is just a pejorative way to refer to minions of something evil - not literally describing them as dogs
>which is exactly where later editions went because D&D clearly wasn't clear enough at first, despite the visual description being right after and clearly NOT a dog
Are furries always this desperate? They've already got lycanthropes and gnolls.

>>94669017
The first character sounds great and super interesting, and now even I want to know if he'll give his old dragon her gem back - or if she'll possibly be coming after him/the party if he takes too long or gives it to the Waterdeep officials (could go a lot of ways with that, too, depending on her personality - e.g. "how dare you neglect your duty and betray my trust, perish immediately" or "how dare these adventurers kidnap my favorite servant, return him (and the gem) immediately" while ignoring any suggestion that he followed their antics willingly; dammit, anon, you're making me want to steal this character concept and use it myself). You've got so many good potential hooks to work with here, wherever you want to take the story in response to events.

All that said...
> I told my players that I just wanted to have a GM PC to tag along for fun
...IMO, you shouldn't have done that OOC. They don't suspect a thing because you just straight up lied to them as their GM about your OOC motives for doing something. You should have just added the GMPC or not bothered to say why you wanted to do it and let them guess. You may need to come clean about your OOC motives eventually unless you want them to ignore your hints, because, well... they're not suspecting the character likely because they as players trust YOU.

The second character... sounds horrendous. As soon as you said "he is glitching out in time" my interest dropped through the floor. I despise characters like this, because (especially if the character is "too dumb" to realize) they're basically walking deus ex machinas that pop in and out of the plot as needed - they're not really characters at all, they're GM tools with in-setting bodies and names. "Intuitively manipulating events" my ass.

I have NEVER seen a character like this used well. I'm not sure it's even possible.

I hope you haven't started using him yet because he reeks of "embodied GM fiat" in the exact way the absolute worst GMPCs do.

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>>94666144
>>94667636
Gentlemen, please. The science is settled - lizards ARE dogs.

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>>94670459
>You may need to come clean about your OOC motives eventually
That's a fair warning. I did explicitly say to the players that the gnome character has a side quest personal story, if they ever want to dive into that. Currently players know that this local gnome wizard is the one who posted quest for helping him find the evil guy with a crystal. What they don't know is that while they were traveling to the location, gnome tried to get the crystal by himself and got killed. The kobold scribe simply took an opportunity to get some help, meeting them in now empty gnome's house.
So later on, if PCs don't scrutinize the "gnome's" quirks enough, there are multiple hooks that has increased chance of deception being revealed. Such as finding the original gnome body, other kobolds who aren't in on the ploy interfering with scribes plans or straight up having illusion disenchanted by multiple powerful forces that can show up later, when the situation escalates too much. And, of course, if PCs are nice enough to the kobold along the journey they could befriend him properly, with power of friendship, so he'll reveal himself as a sign of trust.

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>>94670459
>Starfinder kobold
Ah, should have given more context to that. Overall I agree and share your distaste for time travel shenanigans, they tend to get out of control easily. Thx for harsh outside feedback, I'll need to present him better, so my players won't come to the same conclusion as you did.
I'm using a Precog, Memory Echoes Anchor class from Starfinder (rules are free on Archives of Nethys website) as a base, so all the "time healing" is just spells with flavor. Something like Divination Wizard. Character isn't even close to finished, yet alone implemented, no worries.
Wanted to insert space dragon corporate overlord in a story somehow and the little guy going to be a hook. Generic naïve clueless kobold got experimented on by dragon in an effort to make even more free kobold minions. It was a partial success, this kobold is essentially infinite, but the respawn time and location is seemingly random. After dragon "accidentally" killed him again poor thing respawned in PC's ship while it was docked. Dragon wants to get his property back and figure out how to replicate the success. Selling kobolds to other dragons sounds like a lucrative business. PCs will need to figure out what to do with the bold: Should they help him, give/sell to dragon, send him to scientists, find a way to exploit his infinite lives somehow, etc. Also, he will be much more of a support companion NPCs, mostly used for dark comedy. I want to test the class and Small sized creatures too. No suggestions and unreasonable big saves from me. If players abuse him too much, it'll take longer and longer to respawn, until eventually he stops appearing near and try and avoid them in future.

>>94673424
incredible smug aura in the second pic

The first campaign I ran was Kobold themed. Was meant to be a bit of a goofy one where the players were these half feral Kobolds sent out to find treasure for their dragon master. The players played their characters pretty well and each had their own defined personality.
But I kinda wrote myself into a corner plot wise with them killing every npc I tried to introduce. I kept having to slap dash and half ass things when they killed or burned/smashed/threw away every lead to some treasure.

For a first time dm, it taught me some valuable lessons and I gained some good experience from it.

>>94674436
That sounds more reasonable, and reading through more of the Starfinder Precog stuff, it does seem to at least fit better than I thought. To tell you the truth I'd checked out of the character even before I'd gotten to the infinite lives bit (personal preference, but I don't like using time travel for this, the few times I've used infinite lives characters; for one thing, if he dies, he's not time traveling, his corpse is), because of the "randomly disappearing" bit.

Maybe it's a stress response thing, where it happens if he's afraid he's about to die? Could play with that for humor too, where he thinks he's about to die more often than he really is, and how long is partly random, partly determined by how afraid he was, etc.

Regardless, he's going to be hard to make engaging for the players, I feel - about as hard as an NPC in a fantasy setting who randomly teleports to a demiplane for hours at a time during the campaign. That randomness feels like the primary problem, but I'm not one of your players, so it may be fine for them.

I'm still a bit staggered by the whiplash from the first kobold to the second. Sorry if I sounded too hostile, you just went from making me go "ooh I love this character" to setting off bad GMPC alarm bells one after another. I'm only frustrated because the first character proves you can do much better than what the Starfinder kobold sounded like it was going to turn into - but again, I'm not one of your players, so if they like it and you like it, more power to you.

>>94678088
>they killed or burned/smashed/threw away every lead to some treasure.
This is why one should always keep their kobolds attended and on a leash. Just don't forget to walk them >>94673424

>>94670192
>scaleys resort to such desperate cope as "dog doesn't mean dog"
the image isn't from a third party source. Are you going to say that it literally isn't a dog that is scaled?

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>>94670192
>>which is exactly where later editions went because D&D clearly wasn't clear enough at first, despite the visual description being right after and clearly NOT a dog
correct, they are clearly rat-like creatures.

>>94681116
>no scorpion stick
unacceptable

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>>94681116
But anon, we already have enormous rodents.

>>94680545
Looking back at my og post it does go from "Reasonable character with potential" to barely though out "teleports behind you" lol. Thanks for reading and feedback regardless!
Good reminder that even if the concept seems to work on paper, and indeed I manage to pull it off well in game, the presentation and first impression are incredibly important for positive reception. It's an uphill battle to convince someone to change their mind, which can distract me and the players.
This actually reminded me of one of my players, who strongly dislikes any sort of vampire, almost ruining the game for himself trying to antagonize one of the minor inconsequential vampire villains. Just the mere thought of that NPC existing pulled him out of the RP and he metagamed interactions. As a DM it's my responsibility to catch such disruptions in time imo. If it means cutting out "the best idea ever", then so be it.

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>>94687998
No worries, man. I don't have a thing about vampires, but I can see the comparison lol. Good on you for taking my criticism on the chin, not super common around these parts. Sounds like your players are in good hands.

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>>94658586
christmas truce is over, back to the trenches

>>94693525
Scared 'bold

>>94665939
>Orginal kobolds
The Basic Set isn't original D&D. Further, while it was published by TSR, it was written by an outside freelancer (John Eric Holmes), not Dave Arneson, Gary Gygax, or any of the other originals.

Kobolds first appeared in the original D&D Box Set's Book 2: Monsters and Treasure in 1974, where all that's said about them is:
>"Treat these monsters as if they were Goblins except that they will take from 1 - 3 hits (roll a six-sided die with a 1 or 3 equalling 1 hit, a 3 or 4 equalling 2 hits, etc.)."

The next TSR, actually-Gygax published appearance of them is in 1977's Monster Manual. where there is no mention of them being doglike and their description simply describes them as hairless and horned (which is hardly evocative of a dog).

Then we get the 2e Monstrous Compendium, which describes them as having scales and doesn't give them any doglike physical traits (though it does describe them as smelling like damp dogs and sounding like dogs yapping). But kobolds being reptilian was already firmly established by 1989 when that released.

>>94693557
I think the scared one is a goblin.

>>94697844
there are dead ones on the ground in the back, too

>>94693676
Dude. I would love if you could provide some pic-sources for those.

>>94631674
C unfortunately emphasizes the cartoonish roundness in the nose, but the idea seems to be more reducing the snout more and more. You can see both cheeks from this angle in D, but not in C.

Ive made a 3 kobold in a trenchcoat race for a recent game in DnD 5e with un unexperienced DM.
Instead of telling them upfront I was doing that I told them I played a dragonborn variant and just waited and looked if the players would figure it out themselves without the roll-perception-to-find-out bullshit. Some of them didnt.
Their name was Degorissnopli (Dego,Ris,Snopli), though they found out when Dego passed away. Dego and Snopli are male, while Ris is female.
I did this beacuse I do not like the one I found online with "you have 3 attacks, but if you are attacked you must roll DC 15 Athletics or fall over". Instead Ive used the normal kobold (darkvision, pack tactics, sunlight sensitivity) and added to that the livepoints and death saves are devided beetween all kobolds. All kobolds share a class and level but any of the 3 can use the action/bonus action. When getting healed the player decides what kobold gets healed/damaged as long as the kobolds are within 5 ft.
So if you have a total of 21 HP every kobold has 7. If 1 kobold takes 8 damage, they get a single deathsave, not 3. If they take 14+ damage they are immediatly dead. In this case the remaining 2 kobolds stay at their current HP, however their HP maximum increases to 10 and 11 (total of 21) with both still having 7 current HP.

>>94647072
I'm not fond of "our Elves are different" type stuff. There is a general consensus on how these things are supposed to look, which came about through not only iterations by the companies themselves, but by players and the larger Fantasy community. Making some random lizard dude and saying "this is a kobold" just doesn't really work in that context. It's like making a short Orc and saying these are the Dwarves in your setting. Everyone know it's not supposed to look like that.

>>94702538
I wasn't aware PF kobolds differed from regular kobolds all that much beyond the lack of dog noses.
The dog noses look like shit on reptiles by the way.

>>94702583
>I wasn't aware PF kobolds differed from regular kobolds all that much beyond the lack of dog noses.
PF kobolds are still the same lizardy pseudo dragony things 3e turned them into. PF2e slightly altered their looks to be more in line with PF dragons, that spade head shape and gangly limbs on a serpenty body, and with the Remaster expanded their lore to minions of not just dragons but all kinds of other powerful magical monsters and artifacts.

Theyre still kobolds as D&D envisioned them but now PF specific.

>>94703693
PF2e remaster dragons and kobolds are both kind of a mess. Very haphazard/slapdash attempt to replace the entire dragon lineup because of the OGL drama, and it shows - they have almost no depth at all, like the most soulless of homebrew monsters. I'd argue the remaster kobolds don't have less or more depth, but they're made broader and arguably less well-characterized by the changes, so they can feel shallower because they're casting such a gargantuan net. A bit soulless, basically.

The remaster kobolds just being generic "magic sponges" as eggs and taking on the magical properties of whatever was nearby before they hatched also breaks the lore justification for their similar appearances to PF dragons. There's no explicit "lizardy pseudo dragony things" flavor to them anymore (to get that you have to have their eggs be near a dragon), as now there's no lineage/genetic reason they look like PF dragons in the first place.

I know people love to shove Paizo's dick down their throat whenever discussing TTRPGs (especially when droning on about how much they "hate D&D") but I've been thoroughly unimpressed by the way Paizo handled their dragons and their kobolds in the remaster, as well as a lot of the "panic dumping OGL stuff" decisions. I'm not saying they weren't justified, for the record - I'm saying they shouldn't have rushed to replace these things in a panic.

Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but Paizo's fluff has always felt a little soulless to me - like they need everything to be vague and nebulous and infinitely flexible so GMs can fill in the blanks. I'd much prefer that Paizo fill in blanks and GMs just write over what Paizo filled in to their preference, instead of the GMs doing all of Paizo's worldbuilding and fluff writing for them.

>>94704973
>There's no explicit "lizardy pseudo dragony things" flavor to them anymore
Quite literally wrong. They are still reptilian in appearance and stay reptilian despite whatever magical loci they hatch near. All that happens is a varied appearance, like devilish horns and red scales for hatching near a devil's prison. Or having a fey-like appearance for something from the First World.

If you look at their heritages, all of them are still related to dragons but can be other things. An elementheart kobold could be from being near a particularly elemental focused dragon, or a genie, or a literal elemental. Same with spellhorns, strongjaws, tunnelfloods, or venomtails, as these are all related to dragons in some way but also other powerful monsters.

Did you even fucking read the description of remaster kobolds?

As for the dragons, what exactly are you expecting for a monster entry in a core rulebook? Entire treatises on their physiolgy, psychology, and living habits that tie them explicitly to various regions with full write ups of where they live? From a core book featuring several dozen other monsters? They have the same style of write ups from PF1e, 3e, 4e, 2e, and a bunch of other editions and systems do. You dont like them because they are new and not the same retreaded bullshit of D&D.

As for soulless fluff, 5e is far and away the worst in this regard. Paizo actually cares about their shit, keeping a tight line between setting specific and vague enough to drop in homebrew worlds. And your complaint is utterly nonsensical and reads like a copypasta aimed at WotC with Paizo substituted in.

>>94705325
>They are still reptilian in appearance and stay reptilian
Did you miss the fact I was talking about the "dragony" bit? I thought that it being the only thing I mentioned was sufficient to explain that I wasn't focusing on the lizard thing (I was just quoting it as a whole description).

>If you look at their heritages, all of them are still related to dragons but can be other things.
That's just a holdover. The only reason they're all related to dragons is that Paizo didn't really add any new non-dragon heritages.

>what exactly are you expecting for a monster entry in a core rulebook
You do know the 5e 2014 MM spends nearly 40 entire pages on dragons, despite there only being 10 of them + 3 variants, right? Each of the chromatics and metallics gets at least 3 pages and 3 statblocks to itself... including sections about living habits and psychology for each.

They're important creatures for a fantasy TTRPG to get right, and Paizo's feel like "well we still need dragons so toss a few '[keyword] dragons' in."

>for soulless fluff, 5e is far and away the worst
For most things, yes, but not for dragons.

>Paizo's careful balance between specificity and vagueness
It's just vague, especially in the remaster. 5e's got plenty of, "I didn't think about how the fuck this works besides the name," but supplements and adventures and older D&D fluff have helped fill that in. Golarion has had a sizeable chunk of its fluff foundations ripped out and replaced (in some instances) with cardboard cutouts the GM is expected to color in.

I don't understand why Paizo fans refuse to acknowledge how flimsy much of the OGL replacement fluff is, besides the usual "it's good because it's not D&D" contrarianism.

If you're comparing 5.5e or recent 5e fluff to Paizo, then I'd probably agree with you, but even 5.5e's got D&D history to pull fluff from and PF no longer does. Maybe in time Paizo will fill some of that in, but right now their dragons are about as deep as a placeholder.

>>94705325
>>94706747 (cont.)
I want Paizo's dragons to be recognizable, because I want PF to succeed... but the new ones aren't recognizable. The new ones haven't really had much of an impact even in Pathfinder fan communities over the last year or so. It feels like something fans are more interested in coping about than actually using in their campaigns.

I'm not saying everyone who likes PF does this... I am saying that sort of thing happens a lot in online discussions whenever PF is mentioned.

Stuff like recognizability is intangible but important for a TTRPG if it wants to sell itself. Even ignoring the importance for marketing and having recognizable creatures (ceding all OGL content makes all of it recognizable to D&D specifically, despite the SRD 5.1 now being CC-BY) you're not just competing with D&D if you go too vague without a recognizable, coherent setting. You start edging into GURPS territory.

That's not a fight your TTRPG wins.

Now, working in Paizo's favor here, as always, is WotC being retarded. It's always been the most brilliant part of the Pathfinder business model, and is possibly one of the most reliable bets one can make about anything. WotC has recently almost explicitly abandoned making D&D a coherent setting, so Paizo is already winning the race before the gun fires because WotC has, as usual, tied its own shoes together and started hopping backwards from the starting line.

TL;DR: Post-OGL PF replacement fluff is currently rather threadbare. It hasn't had long to find its footing, but it doesn't seem to be moving that way as quickly as I'd like it to.

As for kobolds... I want to see Paizo actually put some effort into non-draconic kobolds before I judge the new fluff, but I never liked the shovelhead design much (I typically prefer to use the more common art for them; not only is it cuter - and kobolds SHOULD be cute - there's almost no fanart of the PF kobold design, and I don't want to use the same images every time).

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Asking for a buddy here, but said buddy wants to know where this particular depiction of Kobolds originates from: aka: Sauce? (along with what publication and year, other then it's from japan)

'side from that, there IS that one little indie game that was released just a bit ago with Kobolds as a playable race... ...what was it again?
Atlyss?

>>94707417 (cont)
Fer additional Context, said buddy is trying to do some research on why and when Kobolds were portrayed as dog-men in Japan. So far he's narrowed down potential reasons being Wizardy's Japanese NES release, and also the Lodoss OVA.

>>94707417
Yeah, Atlyss has kobolds. Goblins too, and maybe some others?

In my game kobolds are dragons cursed by the gods or well their descendants but in them still exist a seed of hope and those who "achieve greatness" can break the curse and turn back into dragons. Or so the legends say (The legends are true).

https://youtu.be/QsLN542nvGg?si=BwN5vZgwxoIhYW0S

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I had art made for a PF2e kobold animist. Trying to play off the remastered lore, I decided to make him a fey kobold who channels fey spirits as his apparitions. I agree with the ranting guy that Paizo shovelhead kobolds are ugly so I went for a more traditional look.

>>94708774
now that's a face you can trust around shiny objects

>>94707417
ok, sauce has been kinda discovered. the Wizardry Adventure gamebook that was only out in japan.

>>94709922
So now we've got to figure out: did they think those scales were curly hair, or did they draw curly hair that looked like scales?

>>94651320
They fleshed them out a bit in War Within. Still only boils down to Disney/Pixaresque 2deep4me "Candle keeps Darkness away." A soft allusion to them as allies against the Void, or whatever the games current realityending threat of the week is.
I miss when the conflicts were more grounded, though in hindsight that doesn't mean much since their stories always were capeshit in essence.

>>94654443
>Gnomes baffle me a bit - you already have dwarves, you already have halflings, why do you you need a third entire race of shrunken apes? At least halflings are (usually) different enough from dwarves to justify their existence.

The way I do it is Gnomes are earth elementals with mushroom heads that live in the Elemetal plane of Earth and keep to themselves
They've got beef with the gem stealing races, Dwarves and Kobolds so they practiced enough illusion magic to hide their gems and themselves. Actively paranoid race that also act as guards for the Earth Elementals, specifically the ones who eat gems

>>94593685
I like thier equiptment and expressions. that saber with a Ka-Bar tip is neat.

>>94606231
the people who know of them still see them as pathetic. at least on the individual level. its just that there are so many of them that they are a legit threat.

Any dwarf or elf or tilean would call skaven pathetic, its just that thier legitamently threat is more prominent.

>>94693787
I like this grizzled kobold king.

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>>94693787

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>>94710924
might as well just call them something else at that point. like toads.

>>94593727
Koboldball.
They are the ball, not the players.

>>94593685
What system?

>>94602451
No.

>>94712805
Mummy: The Resurrection

>>94599814
no they weren't

>>94712821
Why do people hate world of darkness so much?

Why do yo lie about having a group of friends that you play games with?

>>94693787
>>94712477
now wait just a minute
that little cartoon doodle's still got his right eye
i smell a fraudster

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>>94713492
Clearly, Lord King has commisioned an acting troupe to immortalize his grand tale and the poor little guy playing him just wasn't fully in costume yet.

>>94713769
hope that actor gets his pay docked.

>>94593685
I ran a pathfinder 1E game for my guys during Chrismas a few years back. They could play any character they wanted to play. One player even chose to play a copper dragon. I ran them through Keep on the Borderlands and the Caves of Chaos. I took the Kobold craftmanship in that module to the redline. So the Kobolds at the top of an inclined passage roll a large bolder Indiana Jones style down at the party. The Copper Dragon steps up to absorb the bolder hit with his damage resistance. The look on his face when the paper mache bolder breaks open to release a Hellwasp swarm and he took 2 points of damage past his DR. The pastelike jewelry they found as treasure was fun also.

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>>94713492
Stolen valor.

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>>94713792
Depends on the King's mood probably

>>94654443
>Gnomes baffle me a bit - you already have dwarves, you already have halflings, why do you you need a third entire race of shrunken apes? At least halflings are (usually) different enough from dwarves to justify their existence.

speaking as a gnome fan, gnomes are so different from dwarves and halflings it baffles me that anyone can compare them

see, the thing about gnomes is that they're oddballs. that's literally their defining trait. They're earth elementals characterized by their unpredictability and creativity. nature spirits at the forefront of ecocidal technology. Sure, they look like humans at first glance, but the only consistent rule about their biology is "whatever is funniest".

the simple fact is, gnomes are the comic relief race. that is something halflings and dwarves will never be

>>94714195
>all this to say that they're actually just goblins with degrees
how unfortunate for you

in all seriousness, finding
>"i'm the oddball, look at me, so quirky and random, like i'm super smart but also pay attention to how special i am or i might (by random accident, of course) literally set off a bomb"
an appealing trait for an entire race is pretty much what i'd expect from a gnome fan

in general fantasy TTRPG fandom the 'comic relief race' is... >>94707955 ...kobolds, pretty organically. it's a race with the narrative flexibility and depth to do ludicrous slapstick, compelling drama, AND compelling horror. which is depth you want in good comedy. it shouldn't be explicit, 'these are the humor bois,' especially when being funny is the player's responsibility
case in point:
>>94712477
to
>>94713769
...is the kind of self-subversive humor you can only get if you have the depth to do the first image AND the flexibility to have the second still fit
gnomes just aren't broad enough in scope to be that funny; you have to find what they are inherently funny... because that's as deep as the humor goes. unpredictability for its own sake isn't actually enough for humor

from what i've seen, the longer one's been at it, generally the less they seem to like gnomes. not totally sure why, but a pretty clear frontrunner explanation is that the kind of player who gravitates towards gnomes isn't the kind who can actually pull off genuinely funny characters a lot of the time, and seeing 'lol so randumb quirky not-goblin #10' grates on people when it's more often flubbed than not

>>94715034
gnomeanon here. I don't disagree with anything you said. Kobolds are funnier, cuter, and more capable of being complex, serious characters while still maintaining their silly side. I hate that. I wish gnomes could be that cool

the simple fact is, I'm into gnomes not because I want to like them, or because I enjoy liking them, but because I can't help it. I relate to them too goddamn much

>>94715055
>>94715034
Gnomes speak to my masculine urge to disappear into the forest and live my best life there.
Though I'm playing them more like some sort of garden dwarf, which fittingly, when translated verbatim back into my native tongue, means garden gnome.

>>94712827
certainly not in-setting most of the time, but they've been something more than just the fodder they were originally intended to be for longer than they haven't been at this point (the transition is arguably early 1990s in earnest; they've been less like mindless monster fodder than goblins usually are for over 30 years at least). having them just be a goblin reskin is downright subversive these days (even if it's boring). it's not what people expect from them.

>>94714195
>gnomes are so different from dwarves and halflings it baffles me that anyone can compare them
I think the problem is expectations born of stupidity.
Take for instance how gnomes are tinkerers and craftsman and how dwarves are also craftsman. If youre not terribly bright, youll confuse the two, especially if youre not smart enough to remember that dwarves are deeply conservative and inflexible. So naturally they think dwarves are also tinkerers and innovators, making technology and metalwork of the future, when instead they are still making swords from 500 years ago with techniques honed by hundreds of years of making the same style of sword. A gnome works on fine small things, while the dwarf is banging on with his hammer.

To an idiot a dwarf subsumes the gnomes role, when the dwarf is meant to be the ultimate old-time blacksmith.

To an idiot, a short person is a short person, and so a halfling is the same thing as a gnome (and also a dwarf). They cant understand the halfling's nonmagical nature is in contrast to the gnome's fey powers. And in some settings, the proportions of each are very different, with halflings being almost literally small humans and gnomes being gangly weird almost humans, with too big eyes and mouths, strange colors, off proportions, and other markers of inhumanity. But since theyre idiots all they see is short people.

This doesn't even get into the differences in outlook and society, all things ignored by idiots and the stupid. A gnome village is a hidden thing protected by illusions, safe from wandering eyes out to kill the smallfolk. Meanwhile, halfing villages are in many ways simply human villages built at half size. But none of this matters to the moron who only sees a short person.

>>94717776
>this much jealous seethe
very in character for a gnome
>not even creative with the name calling
very shameful for a gnome

>dwarves are deeply conservative and inflexible
sometimes, though it's often a resistance to change rather than outright refusal - they value reliability, gnomes usually don't
this is sometimes even explicitly a source of envy that gnomes have towards dwarves
>they are still making swords from 500 years ago
well this bit is just wrong in most settings. they may use old processes, but dwarven stuff is generally somewhat artisanal - there's often a subtheme in a setting's dwarven culture for making and highly valuing bespoke, made-to-order, personalized objects
works of art that function as very effective, reliable tools, basically
and there's basically never an implication that dwarven tech is behind - sometimes even suggesting the opposite, with a "how the fuck did they make that" sort of reaction from other races

>the differences in outlook and society
depends on the setting but gnome society is generally not very deep. when broader gnome society is described it gets sidelined often because narratives gravitate towards the 'loner outcast tinkerer' archetype more strongly than the 'team of cooperating tinkerers' one. the latter is a hassle to avoid turning the setting into science fantasy, so they usually have a "secret culture" that isn't really expounded on besides using it to keep tech advancements narratively contained. secretive cultures aren't very memorable because they give you... well, little to remember
the mindset of a gnome - chaotic, independent, impulsive, prone to fleeting but all-consuming obsessions, and severely overvaluing the chance of success versus the cost or risk (gnomes are basically an entire race of people with ADHD) - isn't really all that great for a cohesive society or culture
"it's totally there, just invisible" was only ever a lampshade

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I fucking love small person on tiny person violence.

Any fantasy books with gnomes btw?
Actually, don't think I ever read anything meaningful with kobolds in the main role too. Dragons and monster races always get the short end of the stick desu

Kobolds are for miscegenation

>>94724120
now i prefer the thinner kobold designs like >>94724107, but as far as non-standard designs go i quite like this one - provided he is shorter than a dwarf or halfling

>>94724212
It doesn't really fit with their scrappy vibe, but logically you should get big fat kobolds for the same reasons you get big fat raccoons.

>>94724260
i'm imagining a fat chieftain who lazes around the warren wearing various mismatched powerful items his tribe has collected because he thinks it makes him look more important

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I think kobolds fit surprisingly well into sci-fi settings.

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>>94701245
I mean I named the specific books. You can find most of them by just googling "[Title] pdf". But here you go.

>>94730857
Even though this seems like kind of a fusion of PF kobolds (which I dislike) and D&D kobolds, I quite like this design. I'd prefer a bit less of a "theropod dinosaur neck curve" with that hump behind the head, but overall it looks quite good.

>>94599827
3.5 had Whisper Gnomes being one of the strongest races in the game, and Eberron giving them some niches like intrigue + signature foods + Elemental Binding (which is totally a traditional gnome magic and not something they stole from a tribe of drow)

>>94637885
>>94638445

3.x lore is that kobolds are the first of the dragonspawn - humanoid/animalistic creatures that hatch in clutches from a dragon egg blessed by Tiamat, which can then breed true.
And that the dragonborn were created by Bahamut as their exact opposite - draconic creatures created when a humanoid willingly enters a dragon egg, and whom are all sterile. My dumb headcanon is that lizardfolk who undergo the ritual remain fertile, and 4e-style dragonborn are their descendants

>>94728085
>in space no one can hear you ralph after firing an unbalanced railgun
Somehow, kobolds manage to retain their bumbling ways even in outer space.

>>94734115
They are doing - as in every setting they appear in - their best.

>>94733920
I don't recall 3.5 Dragonborn lore being that detailed about their ecology - did WotC really introduce a society of sterile beings and act like that was sustainable somehow? How the fuck does a humanoid 'enter' a dragon egg in the first place?

>>94738118
>I don't recall 3.5 Dragonborn lore being that detailed about their ecology
They weren't. And the person is wrong on both accounts.
Hes confused the draconians for kobolds, and made up a head canon that is incredibly stupid and at odds of how the template works.

3.5 dragonborn have no connection to 4e dragonborn beyond name. Not looks, not origins, not powers, nothing but the name and a vague connection to dragons.

Kobolds in 3.5 have a mythic origin, as recounted in Races of the Dragon. They originate from the blood spilled by the first of dragonkind when they severed a limb to create life and lost their immortality. The first kobolds emerged ready to be guided, bright red eyes staring at their newly mortal progenitors.

This is also the book that gave us the origins of Kurtulmak as a former mortal kobold who built the greatest and most ingenious mine ever and Garl Gittergold, gnome god, being a jealous little bitch who massacred and destroyed that mine. Funny thing about Kurtulmak's name, it literally Turkish for "to be saved/freed".

>>94594960
were gnomes even part of the rivalry? I always thought that Goblins were the main competitors to Kobolds.
And anyways, Gnomes suffer from a lack of solid identity. Like, are they dwarves in red caps or copyright friendly Hobbits? Do they have a magic focus? A tech focus? Are they serious or manic?

>>94738747
>were gnomes even part of the rivalry? I always thought that Goblins were the main competitors to Kobolds.
Have you tried playing D&D?

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not really a kobold, but looks about right
and in my setting they ride wyverns (that are basically pterodactyls) and zezirs

>>94725375
Now I'm imagining kobolds adorning their chiefs in all manner of cool looking junk because it makes the whole tribe look better in front of the other kobolds

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>>94734115
I have some old metal skinks I've been wanting to use in a CSM army, possibly make them crew a tank. Just little alien lizards bumbling their way around a tank. Manning guns and getting stuck in hatches.

>>94739238
i don't think it'd stop at chiefs. they'd get first dibs and have the shiniest decorations of course, but i bet the rest would still all be wearing various kindergarten-level arts and crafts accessories made of string, twigs, and cool looking rocks they found

accidentally make too many accessories for one kobold to wear? the excess goes in the clan's 'hoard' for the clan to attract and/or LARP as a dragon. piles of little bracelets and necklaces and weird looking objects haphazardly strung together

does it attract dragons? probably not, but they've got the spirit

>>94739277
I recommend trying to cut one in half that is posed more in motion and having its legs and tail attached to an open hatch to really sell the "stuck in a hatch" vibe.

>>94745534
I have one or two plastic ones which are easier to cut for bits.

>>94632964
I mean, the real tradition is a malicious mining spirit that makes miners ill. Because it's cobalt. And it out-gases toxic fumes. But they didn't know that so it was a sort of evil spirit in the mines.

But we should all be able to agree that they ought to be blue.

>>94740587
Except that one dragon master of a clan of kobolds that hoards macaroni art and misshapen clay pots and still attends every "concert" they put on despite being horrifically out of tune.

>>94738559
>and Garl Gittergold, gnome god, being a jealous little bitch who massacred and destroyed that mine
Gn*mes truly do live up to the "shortstack elves" stereotype, don't they.

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>>94750309
>he doesn't know about cobalt carbonate
>also, see the cobalt chloride hexahydrate (dark reddish purple to pink)
>there are green cobalt salts too

I bet the gnomes are seething that they don't get an element named after them. It's technically German for "goblin," so goblins can be happy there's an element they share with kobolds.

Gnomes don't get an element in part because... they're literally just from Paracelsus renaming the German kobolds and making them weird little dirt dudes (possibly conflating/mixing them with dwarves) in the early mid-1500s, after cobalt already had its name.

Gnomes don't really have much true folk history - what history they do have IRL is, genuinely, stuff stolen or misapplied from folkloric kobolds/goblins and dwarves and dumped into the alchemical theories of Paracelsianism.

For this reason, I've always preferred to have gnomes be the actual historical abusers of kobolds, taking the place in the civilized world that should rightfully have belonged to kobolds - or could have even been shared by both, if the gnomes hadn't been jealous assholes.

>>94750358
NTA but it is just more historically appropriate for Garl Glittergold to be a horrid, thieving, backstabbing, history-rewriting liar than for Kurtulmak to have been the one in the wrong there. Gnomes didn't even exist until well after kobolds were associated with mines (the mine kobold really was different from the wild goblin; even in earlier folklore kobolds could also be helpful household spirits as long as you didn't offend them) - and gnomes literally stole the formerly kobold red pointy hat. Having Kurtulmak's incredible mine mocked and destroyed by a gnome god while the gnomes get all the respect kobolds should've gotten is just perfect for the real world historical context.

It's also hilarious that half the reason people even remember Garl Glittergold exists is because of Kurtulmak, who shows up basically never.

>>94710468
I like the fact that "The Darkness" is literally some kind of supernatural predator that is attracted to the Kobolds. Being around a Kobold can even summon it if you don't make sure you have a source of light on hand. It's a cool fantasy concept. They are still mostly candle jokes, like the other anon said, but I do find them personally pretty endearing. It helps that they honestly come across like how you expect mice people to act.

>I miss when the conflicts were more grounded, though in hindsight that doesn't mean much since their stories always were capeshit in essence.
I think Wrath accidentally ruined Warcraft and basically made them unwilling to tell different kind of stories. Look at Cataclysm, the main villain there was a cult yet they never actually operate like one. The only one that kind of sort off tried to get away from that was MoP, but even that one kind of gave up at the end.

>>94752724
Yeah after wrath the main story writing went to shit mostly.
Some good here and there, but mostly crap.
I think Legion was the last good idea, going to a different world and bringing the fight elsewhere. That felt right, like, why cant they just keep doing that?
Say, the factions decide the legion / void is such a reoccurring threat we use draenei tech to go into space and explore different worlds / planes?
It keeps the classic themes of exploration, foreign locations, new creatures, but also makes sense lore wise.

>>94750610
Garl "little bitch" Glittergold.
The most ungrateful of his kind. When the noble kobold found the first gnomes as they formed from gemstones did they abandon them? NO! They took then under their wing and sought to teach them as the dragons once did their own kind. But the heart of a gnome is black indeed, for they saw the kobolds labor of love as oppression and rebelled against their kind hearted masters.
But one day.. this wrong shall be corrected.

>>94753056
Nah, see, I'd go more the route that gnomish origins are actually from the Feywild - trickster spirits that somehow stole the essence of what kobolds were originally created to be. Perhaps some trickster spirit fey were so jealous of kobold ingenuity that they literally stole it from them and imprisoned their god, which is in keeping with the sort of 'playful' (see: inhumane and/or immensely destructive) nonsense that former denizens of the Feywild get up to in the Forgotten Realms. By now, the Forgotten Folk have largely forgotten their own origin - they weren't forgotten by history; they weren't even a part of it until well after kobolds existed.

The idea of kobolds enslaving any group of people is kinda incompatible with both the folklore and the characterization of kobolds in D&D. They want your shinies and/or your rapid exit from their underground homes... not your fucking labor.

I've always given that story a bit of side-eye. Even in the most explicitly pro-Gnome version it's clearly not the kobolds enslaving gnomes... it's the kobolds' dragon masters enslaving gnomes, kobolds, and urds, with urds at the top of the caste order of dragons' slaves and gnomes being at the bottom by default because they were the newest (and the only of the three not created by dragons).

TL;DR: Just know that "gnomes were enslaved by kobolds" comes from a single paragraph in a single excerpt of a book written by an elf in Myth Drannor (page 9 of The Grand History of the Realms), and the original author's source is literally, unironically "it came to me in a dream" (since he believes Sehanine Moonbow has given him a 'vision' of the past).

An aside - elves in Forgotten Realms are literally Feywild colonizers of the Prime Material Plane, and a lot of the stuff elves say about the Time of Dragons is explicitly to justify the Dracorage Mythal (see: inhumane and/or immensely destructive). They are also canonically revisionist and secretive with their history.

>>94739277
>picrel
Do you have any more kitbashes like that? How did you go about making that one? I want more please.

>>94756591
It's just some old model I was goofing around with ages ago. Mix of SM and CSM terminator bits. The metal skinks are from the old metal stegadon kit and held on by blutac.

>>94756630
It is a very good thing to have made.

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>>94756641
I do like bashing kits and posing models.

have people here seen the previewed 5.5e kobolds from the 2025 MM? i heard there were some preview images floating around somewhere

>>94623141
I always liked this depiction of kobolds being humanoid basal synapsids. Wish more people depicted kobolds like that. I find most don't mix mammalian and reptilian traits just right. I consider this illustration the definitive "kobold" imo. At least for my own setting/games.

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>>94760791
Tedrick has also done this piece, more 5e style, but still workable as a synapsid. In fact, most 'reptilian' kobold designs are entirely workable as synapsids. Especially since the traditional pair of backwards-pointing horns in reptilian 'bolds is usually roughly near where the supratemporal fenestra (the upper pair of holes in the skull of a diapsid) would be in many archosaurs - kind of a bad place for horn attachments on a diapsid.

Less obvious but important for kobold taxonomy using real world rules (so feel free to disregard my rambling, but I enjoy this kind of autism) is their spine - it bends up and down, not side to side like a lizard or a basal synapsid. This would make them not just synapsids, but likely much, much closer to mammals, as that vertical spinal motion is something that develops with therapsids - some basal mammals still have relatively sprawling gaits and side-to-side spinal articulation, both of which are largely incompatible with bipedalism.

Now, the mammaliaform gait also makes lizardfolk (and potentially dragons as well) likely synapsids (and possibly even mammals)... but fantasy taxonomy is, as one might guess, a fraught field.

Also, scaled synapsids existed, and were the prevalent mode for a very long time. The only fossil evidence for furred synapsids prior to the Jurassic is a specific interpretation of some synapsid coprolites from the Late Permian - we only know unequivocally that mammalian ancestors had fur by the Jurassic, IIRC. Thus, there's no need for synapsid kobolds to be furred. The earliest synapsids certainly weren't furred - but the evolution of fur has been extremely difficult to nail down in general.

>>94752724
>I like the fact that "The Darkness" is literally some kind of supernatural predator that is attracted to the Kobolds. Being around a Kobold can even summon it if you don't make sure you have a source of light on hand. It's a cool fantasy concept. They are still mostly candle jokes, like the other anon said, but I do find them personally pretty endearing. It helps that they honestly come across like how you expect mice people to act.

I didn’t want anyone to feel belittled for liking them. It’s just my jaded perspective. In a vacuum, they’re a pretty interesting concept, and personally, I’ve also enjoyed their folklore. My issue, though, and the reason I can’t really connect with them (or with most of the factions), is that they all want to be endearing, and at a certain point, I find that grating.
Dragonflight really soured this for me, as I felt overexposed to likeable quirky characters.
To go on a tangent, I would’ve been fine with gay centaurs, but they felt so whitewashed and kind of hamfisted (if that makes sense?). They’re just this annoyingly lovey-dovey couple in your friend group. There’s no real point to the subplot other than to show that gay people exist. Considering WoW's sweaty, predominantly male player base, they could’ve instead explored how brotherhood and camaraderie can develop into something deeper than intended or even wanted. Even if the characters given culture is in-lore accepting or ambivalent toward same-sex relationships.
That would’ve at least helped some closeted fags deal with those feelings while showing the straights that such experiences are normal when they happen, and how they are not scary just confusing. Bromance indeed. The screechers would've screeched anyway though.

>>94757563
It's in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=631RoA6T3Xk&t=368s

5.5e kobolds are now officially dragons as of the 2025 MM.

I don't really like the "scale mange" look in the art much, though. Easy enough to ignore.

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>>94757563
>>94769136
Here it is as an image (screencap from a different video).

>>94601337
Kobolds are like easy mode Skaven, or I guess less aggressive skaven. They're good at making traps but they're not full on "Create a literal rocket" level, nor are they in ridiculous swarm numbers.

Granted, they are a lot less backstab-happy.

>>94765690
>I didn’t want anyone to feel belittled for liking them.
As >>94652373, (holy shit this thread is nearly a month old), I would absolutely belittle people for arguing that the candle jokes had become deep and meaningful with edgier lore. It's very... WoW worldbuilding/writing, if you catch my drift.

I never really felt gripped enough by WoW writing to care much about the setting, regardless of how they handle their gay horse men. It always felt like a bit of a "pile of ideas we think are neat and add to occasionally" to me.

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So what seperates kobolds from other expendable mook races like goblins and gnolls besides basic flavoring?