So a goblin town

[CIDE]

Alright, in a Pathfinder game out party stumbled upon a Hobgoblin/Goblin settlement. Or I should say we found a trail to it and the Gnome Alchemist yelled out alerted them to our presence. Prior to reaching us however the Druid attempted an intimidation check in Draconic as IC (in character) he didn't know what languages they may speak.

Long story short that whole thing lead to the Hobgoblins/Goblins believing the Druid to be their deity with the Ninaj (the goblin speaking translator) his demi-god/messenger/wtfever.

After a great deal of deliberation on what to do the good-aligned characters won out over the neutrals (not sure if there are any evils there). So, we're going to spend a week (minimum) to stick around and civilize the Hobgobs/goblins.

The DM out of character suggested not going too far as that would breach the delusion that has them under our control anyway. My character however would be all about spreading the love and knowledge (Neutral Good Oracle with no Patron Deity). Overall, to give them everything to enhance their lives but doing so without relying on the expense of other people such as through pillaging. Which, due to their seclusion they weren't really doing anyway.

One character's teaching them common. Another building simple tools such as a block and tackle, pulleys, etc. Another farming. List goes on.

So, any suggestions on how my Oracle could go completely over board? Divine Magic casting even if my own isn't learned, etc? The problem is 1: The DM advised against it even if that's what my character would do 2: The other players are against it 3: The hobgobs and goblins have mental stats that are too low to cast.

[Callin]

Teach them "totems and fetishes" that they can create to gain favor in the mundane tasks they do. Superstition has to be built upon.

[CIDE]

Any method in particular to do that? 'cause as far as I know that's only linked to the Barbar class in pathfinder.

Edit:
They already had a lot of detailed sculptures built to their deity. Who, the Druid somehow convinced them that he was their deity in a new form. But prior to that it was all about dragons.

[Jergmo]

Goblins tend to live in atrociously unsanitary conditions. They build around caverns and have homes referred to as "warrens". Does a warren sound like a pleasing place to live to you? (It's not)

Essentially, at least from what I've been led to understand, due to their primitive society, short lifespan (max of 30 years) and extremely high birth rate (short gestation period, twins and triplets common), they need a place to put all of those babies and they can't pay as much attention to them.

This leads to a great deal of young goblins tended to in dank, smelly caves full of refuse, leading to outbreaks of filth fever and other common diseases. Goblin matrons are often pregnant and are left to take care of masses of infants and toddlers without the aid of their fathers, and most don't know who their blood relatives are. This opens up possibilities of extensive inbreeding if the population dwindles too much after a series of hunts or raids from competing tribes.

Several key things to teach in order to uplift the goblins.
1. Basic sanitation. Help them to clean up their homes, and teach them basic washing techniques to prevent the spread of disease.
2. Basic agriculture. They could easily learn to cultivate edible fungus and mushrooms, both in their cavern homes and outside in the forest. This doesn't completely fix the food problem, but it assuages it.
3. Population control; goblins love to breed! There are many simple methods of birth control that have been used for thousands of years. Additionally, help to keep the goblins separated by blood ties. Much easier with a neat and tidy cave.
4. Construction. Hide tents and wooden fences.

Additionally with cultivation of plants, they could begin to learn basic alchemy, which would do wonders for increasing the overall health of your goblin tribe. Population control is absolutely critical, though, or they will expand beyond your reach. Then, you're going to have to conquer surrounding tribes or watch your people starve.

For reference: This makes an average goblin a full adult at 6 years of age, reach middle age at 15, old at 22, and venerable at 30. +2d8 years if they're really healthy.

[CIDE]

Goblins tend to live in atrociously unsanitary conditions. They build around caverns and have homes referred to as "warrens". Does a warren sound like a pleasing place to live to you? (It's not)



This particular settlement is a collection of huts built in the woods surrounding a temple to their "dragon god". It's a few hundred yards away from clean flowing water. While they aren't exactly sanitary (feces is still used for...things in this village) they've kept the area COMPARATIVELY clean as to not desecrate the area that belongs to their god.



This leads to a great deal of young goblins tended to in dank, smelly caves full of refuse, leading to outbreaks of filth fever and other common diseases. Goblin matrons are often pregnant and are left to take care of masses of infants and toddlers without the aid of their fathers, and most don't know who their blood relatives are. This opens up possibilities of extensive inbreeding if the population dwindles too much after a series of hunts or raids from competing tribes.


As odd as it sounds this tribe seems to have very little interaction with nearby civilization or any competing tribes. While they are comparatively violent and were ready to assault the party before Draconic was spoken they also have not attempted to raid a nearby village that they may potentially be able to take if they so wanted. There's no gold or loot around, etc.

It's already an oddity village.



1. Basic sanitation. Help them to clean up their homes, and teach them basic washing techniques to prevent the spread of disease.


My character in particular was already going to go this route. That and basic mending/healing. Bandages, washing wounds, etc, etc. Even with the oddities mentioned above they are still rather unsanitary.





2. Basic agriculture. They could easily learn to cultivate edible fungus and mushrooms, both in their cavern homes and outside in the forest. This doesn't completely fix the food problem, but it assuages it.



The Druid (and possibly one or two others) is already working on teaching the goblins the basics on this, dealing with the animals, etc.



3. Population control; goblins love to breed! There are many simple methods of birth control that have been used for thousands of years. Additionally, help to keep the goblins separated by blood ties. Much easier with a neat and tidy cave.



Yeah, definitely. This is something I hadn't thought of either.



4. Construction. Hide tents and wooden fences.


The characters with Knowledge (Engineering) (and some others) are already working on this aspect. They do have very basic huts, tents, etc.



Additionally with cultivation of plants, they could begin to learn basic alchemy, which would do wonders for increasing the overall health of your goblin tribe. Population control is absolutely critical, though, or they will expand beyond your reach. Then, you're going to have to conquer surrounding tribes or watch your people starve.


This part in particular I would need help from other characters. Not sure how they'd take to it In Character either. But I hadn't thought of the alchemy either. I do have it as a skill but my ranks are...blegh.



For reference: This makes an average goblin a full adult at 6 years of age, reach middle age at 15, old at 22, and venerable at 30. +2d8 years if they're really healthy.

Going off of Pathfinder Goblins are adults at 12. Intuitive at 1d4, self taught at 1d6, and trained at 2d6. So among starting ages they're already at 24 at the upper limit.

The Hobgoblins are a little better off at 15 +1d4+1d6+2d6 giving them a max starting age of 27. Which coincides with human ages in Pathfinder.

[CaladanMoonblad]

It is probably best to tie everything to their religion that you see as a "social good."

The Dragon God loves a clean hob/goblin, so use water and soap once a day to wash off the filth and grime of sin.

The Dragon God rewards the hob/goblin who shares resources with their neighbors.

The Dragon God smiles upon a hob/goblin who helps neighbors with their work.

Etc. etc.

For the most part, human beings have remained the same basic intelligence (brain size) for the last 180,000+ years (when we started to lose our body fur, based on the divergence of lice and pubic lice). It is only with the advent of agriculture and writing in the last 8,000-10,000 years that human beings really started wreaking havoc with our environment and our population has exploded from less than a million to 6.6 billion (most of our population boom came after sanitation and modern farming allowed us to increase crop yields such that one farmer can provide for 100 other people).

There are consequences to helping a culture that has such a high reproduction rate; only when resources are readily abundant do populations tend to taper off after 2 or 3 generations (see the Boomers post WWII and the declining size of the American and European family in the past 50 years). Perhaps the best thing would have been, to take a cue from Star Trek's Prime Directive?

Your "one week workshop on civilization" will not have a huge lasting effect; most workshops don't unless it is a specific skill or task that participants are trying to get a handle on (like buying Adderall instead of Ritalin).

[Coidzor]

Hmm. Aren't Pathfinder goblins supposed to be insane?

I thought that was the justification for making them Kill On Sight. :smallconfused:

If you've found a group that isn't, well, hm.

Custom setting or in Golarion? If you're in Golarion, where in Golarion are you? Truly helping them would require a significant investment of time and campaign attention (tying yourself to them as your home base or taking them with you to someplace where you can provide protection and support) and would also have to account for relations with others beyond their tribe, such as nearby civlized settlements, how to interact with other goblinoid tribes, orcs, that sort of thing.

[CIDE]

Snip

I won't touch on the first part about the whole evolution bit. Just mention that the area they're in is a very lush forest land that on its own was already keeping their village well fed already. Their population is still below a hundred right now but they're doing alright. So cultivating the land, domesticating nearby wild life (deer, boar, etc all confirmed) or using the nearby river (which I may suggest we dam to give them that) would be relatively easy and fruitful.

They're only a "one day's travel" on foot walking from a small port village with decent amount of traffic too if the social stigmas (something my character specifically will be working on) can overcome.


Hmm. Aren't Pathfinder goblins supposed to be insane?

I thought that was the justification for making them Kill On Sight. :smallconfused:

If you've found a group that isn't, well, hm.

Custom setting or in Golarion? If you're in Golarion, where in Golarion are you? Truly helping them would require a significant investment of time and campaign attention (tying yourself to them as your home base or taking them with you to someplace where you can provide protection and support) and would also have to account for relations with others beyond their tribe, such as nearby civlized settlements, how to interact with other goblinoid tribes, orcs, that sort of thing.


Custom world. And these gobs/hobgobs aren't insane. Just kind of stupid. As for interactions we are new the land and only know--both in character and out-- of a single establishment in the area. We're up this way specifically to explore as a job someone sent us on with the Bard mapping as we go.

[White_Drake]

I saw the title and I thought this: teach them the value of song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogTDa-vG2MQ).

[Coidzor]

I won't touch on the first part about the whole evolution bit. Just mention that the area they're in is a very lush forest land that on its own was already keeping their village well fed already. Their population is still below a hundred right now but they're doing alright. So cultivating the land, domesticating nearby wild life (deer, boar, etc all confirmed) or using the nearby river (which I may suggest we dam to give them that) would be relatively easy and fruitful.

They're only a "one day's travel" on foot walking from a small port village with decent amount of traffic too if the social stigmas (something my character specifically will be working on) can overcome.

Custom world. And these gobs/hobgobs aren't insane. Just kind of stupid. As for interactions we are new the land and only know--both in character and out-- of a single establishment in the area. We're up this way specifically to explore as a job someone sent us on with the Bard mapping as we go.


So you're sort of in the wilderness on the fringes of known lands... Is the port town part of some kind of colonization effort? Hm.

You may run into some problems with domesticating deer and you may just want to import some already domesticated pigs rather than domesticating boar... unless you want to make them into boar riders anyway, in which case, you should totally do that and also see if there are any giant tree-lizards or geckoes you can get tamed and made into a breeding population to enable 3D settlements in the woods facilitated by climbing mounts and such. Or just to please your goal of making an ewok village.

Oh, and night soil can still be useful as long as proper composting is followed with it, IIRC. Granted, I don't know if you guys have the knowledges specific to that IC.

Oh, and you might want to look into why they've got damaged mental stats. Some kind of radiation or posion in their food supply? A drug they're all using? Part of the temple they're actually secretly in thrall to? Some kind of mineral deficiency (like iodine deficiency, say?) Gobs and Hobs by default are as intelligent or wise as humans. Hobs as charismatic with Gobs seeming to have a -2 to Charisma, though I can't confirm the racial adjustments to Goblins in Pathfinder for certain.

[CIDE]

I like the idea on the boar riders. Not sure about the geckos. But considering boar was the main coarse of a feast-like meal they DEFINITELY have those around.

As for their mental stats the DM is just using their Bestiary figures. For a Goblin it's a 10 Int, 9 Wis, 6 Cha. For a hobgoblin it's 10 Int, 12 Wis, 8 Cha. So the Hobgoblins could at least start using something wis based. The issue there is that being an Oracle my stuff isn't really transferable via teaching going with the fluff text and it's Cha based.

Though, I could mention the small excerpt of text to the DM if he wanted to choose it for the Hobgob Engineer that gets an increase of Int to 18+ to see if he'd go with that. There were a few Hobgobs in particular that were smarter than the rest.

[Blackhawk748]

Boar riders are win, you should probably teach the Hobgoblins to do that, and teach the goblins to be bowmen, and i agree that you should teach them that song, it could be their war march :smallcool:

[Chilingsworth]

Boar riders are win, you should probably teach the Hobgoblins to do that, and teach the goblins to be bowmen, and i agree that you should teach them that song, it could be their war march :smallcool:

Naw, this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdXQJS3Yv0Y) could be, though! :smalltongue:

[Blackhawk748]

even better, tech them to play bagpipes and they just auto win