Kurt Kurageous
2016-03-18, 09:11 PM
As inspired by the thread that should have been titled, "Six Things to Find in a Kobold's Purse (besides 1d4 copper)"
I want us to make a list of practical and realistic Kobold traps.
Forget the legend of Tucker. Those were Children of Kurtulmak. They came from money somehow, relatives of Wyle Coyote, perhaps. But what's a poor kobold band to do?
Please add ideas!
I started with an incomplete list of things that kobolds have and have a lot of for use to build traps:
1. Eggshells.
2. A working knowledge of the newtonian physics needed to build traps that use weight and balance as triggers.
3. Kobold bones, kobold skin, kobold teeth, kobold blood.
4. Really stupid kobolds for use as triggers of suicide bombs.
5. Access to dragon waste.
6. Adventurer discards that they cannot use for their designed purpose (great swords?).
7. Rocks, sand, clay, and water.
8. Herbalism unique to kobold physiology.
9. Basic plant lore.
10. Advanced mining lore, including the use of pulleys, carts on rails, water management via water screws and/or wood/stone conduits. This implies rough carpentry skill, die-casting/ironworking for tools, and the ability to process and refine iron ore.
11. A much lower to the ground point of view, making falling objects seem more powerful than they are to medium creatures.
12. The ability to extract and perhaps distill the poisons of scorpions, giant centipedes, and spiders.
13. Very good fine motor skills required to craft highly reliable but not terribly imaginative trigger mechanisms.
14. A lot of time, maybe.
15. Darkvision.
Things that came to mind when I looked at the list:
1. Empty or stuffed eggs as bait for a trap designed to catch food.
2. Eggs painted with bright vegetable dyes for a trap designed to attract sentient threats.
3. Lots of falling rock traps. Everywhere.
4. Dead end hallways with rock-falls trapping prey in them. A means of delivering poison in the form of dragon or kobold waste made to look like Gnomish food and poisoned water.
5. Many, many Indy Jones Rolling Boulder Juniors.
6. Small shallow holes big enough for a foot to go down and get stuck in. Spikes in the hole keep the foot/leg in place until they can be bent away. The hole is a den for giant centipedes.
7. Minor improvements to crossbows, repurposed as traps. I doubt a kobold community would waste a crossbow in a trap, though. Probably get used as a mini-ballistae.
8. Water-timed and weighted mechanisms.
9. Unstable/undermined rooms.
10. Billow-powered blowguns firing poisoned darts.
11. Hunting/trapping mechanisms. Maybe not bear-traps (steel), but something smaller.
12. Traps might be harder to detect using darkvision only, easier with normal light.
13. Caltrops.
14. Controlled flooding that brings out a mass of giant centipedes from their holes.
I am hoping that this will prompt your ideas, and you will add them in reply.
I want us to make a list of practical and realistic Kobold traps.
Forget the legend of Tucker. Those were Children of Kurtulmak. They came from money somehow, relatives of Wyle Coyote, perhaps. But what's a poor kobold band to do?
Please add ideas!
I started with an incomplete list of things that kobolds have and have a lot of for use to build traps:
1. Eggshells.
2. A working knowledge of the newtonian physics needed to build traps that use weight and balance as triggers.
3. Kobold bones, kobold skin, kobold teeth, kobold blood.
4. Really stupid kobolds for use as triggers of suicide bombs.
5. Access to dragon waste.
6. Adventurer discards that they cannot use for their designed purpose (great swords?).
7. Rocks, sand, clay, and water.
8. Herbalism unique to kobold physiology.
9. Basic plant lore.
10. Advanced mining lore, including the use of pulleys, carts on rails, water management via water screws and/or wood/stone conduits. This implies rough carpentry skill, die-casting/ironworking for tools, and the ability to process and refine iron ore.
11. A much lower to the ground point of view, making falling objects seem more powerful than they are to medium creatures.
12. The ability to extract and perhaps distill the poisons of scorpions, giant centipedes, and spiders.
13. Very good fine motor skills required to craft highly reliable but not terribly imaginative trigger mechanisms.
14. A lot of time, maybe.
15. Darkvision.
Things that came to mind when I looked at the list:
1. Empty or stuffed eggs as bait for a trap designed to catch food.
2. Eggs painted with bright vegetable dyes for a trap designed to attract sentient threats.
3. Lots of falling rock traps. Everywhere.
4. Dead end hallways with rock-falls trapping prey in them. A means of delivering poison in the form of dragon or kobold waste made to look like Gnomish food and poisoned water.
5. Many, many Indy Jones Rolling Boulder Juniors.
6. Small shallow holes big enough for a foot to go down and get stuck in. Spikes in the hole keep the foot/leg in place until they can be bent away. The hole is a den for giant centipedes.
7. Minor improvements to crossbows, repurposed as traps. I doubt a kobold community would waste a crossbow in a trap, though. Probably get used as a mini-ballistae.
8. Water-timed and weighted mechanisms.
9. Unstable/undermined rooms.
10. Billow-powered blowguns firing poisoned darts.
11. Hunting/trapping mechanisms. Maybe not bear-traps (steel), but something smaller.
12. Traps might be harder to detect using darkvision only, easier with normal light.
13. Caltrops.
14. Controlled flooding that brings out a mass of giant centipedes from their holes.
I am hoping that this will prompt your ideas, and you will add them in reply.