How many kobolds...

[MintyThe1st]

should each age category of dragon have?

Is unending waves of kobolds unreasonable?

In it's lair, and outside it's lair.

[Deeds]

How many kobolds should each age category? That depends. Can the ecosystem support the appetite of a dragon and a tribe of kobolds? Dragons will likely prize humanoids as food and for their treasure while Kobolds can technically live off plants and animals. "Endless kobolds" would need magic to support their numbers. Here's a video of 20,000 soldiers vs a chicken (your PCs) as an example of "endless kobolds:" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJbwPcdsLLc

Quick synopsis by age category:

Any age category: Kobold tribes revering the evil dragon deity Tiamat could care for a young dragon - even eggs
Wyrmling: As above, but keep in mind that a 3 month year old dragon isn't calling the shots except in a small band of kobolds (4-8 in an encounter)
Young and Juvenile: A warband of kobolds isn't out of the question. The dragon still isn't likely to be able to muscle around an entire tribe without consequences. 40 - 400 kobolds is a lot of kobolds
Young Adult+ - Easily 40-400 kobolds i.e. a tribe. Kobolds can build traps around the lair and steal valuables to appease their dragon lord.


As an aside, my local bank has never offered to let me gaze upon the tens of thousands of dollars I assume are held in their vaults. Frankly, that's just common sense and good buisness. Any reasonable evil dragon would keep their hoard inaccessible to the kobolds. A dragon might let the kobolds live near or even guard it's cave but why tempt them with your treasures while you hunt for dire caribou 12 miles away?

[OldTrees1]

Joke answer:

5 ^ Age Cateogry

[Deeds]

Joke answer:

5 ^ Age Cateogry
Neat, a Great Wyrm could have 244,140,625 Kobolds under their command.

[MintyThe1st]

Joke answer:

5 ^ Age Cateogry

oh my god that gets out of hand very quickly, lol

as a joke rebuttal: I'd see 2^age being reasonable, that dosn't end in literally millions of kobolds,

[OldTrees1]

oh my god that gets out of hand very quickly, lol

as a joke rebuttal: I'd see 2^age being reasonable, that dosn't end in literally millions of kobolds,

2^12 is merely 4000 (4096). That seems a bit low for an epic god.

3 ^ Age Category will cap out around 0.5 Million.

[Pleh]

should each age category of dragon have?

Is unending waves of kobolds unreasonable?

In it's lair, and outside it's lair.

There is no right or wrong answer. Dragons don't need to have any Kobolds at all. Unending Waves of Kobolds certainly should be reserved for a boss fight of some kind, but remember that when you're talking about "endless" quantities, you're now worried about rate more than quantity.

Technically, if the Dragon gained 1 Kobold every two weeks, that's technically endless, but at a rate that makes it not seem very endless.

In Physics, we call this Flux: the rate at which a quantity flows through a particular space.

244,140,625 Kobolds seems like a lot, but not so much if you fight them one at a time and have time to rest in between.

So when talking about "unending waves" it's more important to talk about how many are in each wave rather than how many waves is appropriate.

Even a limitless number of kobolds still exceeds our critical mass of Kobolds: that is to say, only so many Kobolds can effectively attack the party at any given time. There are only 8 adjacent squares next to each character, unless you go into three dimensions and add another 9 above and/or below. That's per party member being attacked and assuming the kobolds have some way to get above or below (preferably with Flight and Burrow). Then you can have just about any number attacking at ranged (though the party certainly qualifies for soft cover at that point), but remember that even if you fill literally every unoccupied space on the map with kobolds, and even if the fight is happening on an open field with effectively limitless space, we're still limited by the range increments of the range weapons.

At this point, we also get into the problem of OoC combat logistics. Exactly how many dice do you need to roll for this attack at this point?

And can any one of the Kobolds even hit the PCs' AC without scoring a Critical?

At that point, it would probably be advisable to just use the Swarm rules and say players are each automatically hit once every round they are being swarmed.

Setting all that silliness aside, more than likely, you are thinking of having just enough Kobolds to harass each party member. Then another group the same size spawns a couple rounds after the last wave was defeated.

I think at this point, the Age Category of the Dragon is a moot point. Probably best to use this tactic rather when the Players are finding the Dragon too easy instead of based on its age.

[MintyThe1st]

I like the idea of swarm damage, i'm sure an average of 3 damage each round will be perfectly manageable for my players.

They kinda got themselves in a war with a dragon king, so they're up against his personal army, they have an army of their own to fight back with (Leadership, thrallherd, plus their town is full of battle ready orcs and monstrous races), but i imagine ~100 new kobolds every couple of rounds would cause just the right amount of trouble, plus there's not just kobolds in that army either.

[Pleh]

When talking about armies against armies, that's like a swarm against a swarm. I'd think that a lot of the swarm effects would counteract each other somewhat.

But either way, one important rule of using swarms on your party is to make sure your heroes have the ability to step out of the swarm's effect. Even a seemingly manageable amount of damage every round can be a huge pain if they have no option to adapt a different strategy to compensate.

On the other hand, try to make sure they don't have so much freedom that they can effectively ignore the swarm, either. The Kobolds are a harassing force. They shouldn't be party killers or something that can be safely ignored. Just an obstacle to hinder the party's more primary goals.

[Nibbens]

should each age category of dragon have?

Is unending waves of kobolds unreasonable?

In it's lair, and outside it's lair.

1) Smarter people than I should answer that. My thought would be "as much as you need to make the situation have the right level of challenge."

2) Maybe.

3) In terms of internal guard / external guard - I'd say that depend of the size of the lair. I'd usually have say maybe 5-15% of a particular dragon's resources outside its lair to deter would-be adventurers. The remaining 95-85% would be inside the dragons lair.

The outside would contain light skirmishers, and scouts. Basically someone with a crap-ton of movement speed or some way of alerting the inside of danger outside... Although, any dragon worth his stuff would have the alarm spell. So theoretically, it could be reasonable that a dragon could have all 100% within the lair. Although, this would also depend on a dragons attitude, wisdom, personality, etc.