Kobold Build Ideas

[Wildarm]

Brainstorming for possible character ideas for a monstrous campaign. Race options are basically the bad guys from Volos. We'll be rolling for stats so I figure with good rolls I can make a kobold work.

Assuming starting stats of 19-20 Dex / 16 secondary / 14 tertiary I had a few ideas. Some possibilities:

Sharpshooter Archer Build

Revised Ranger - Hunter Conclave - Horde Breaker - Humanoids and Celestials as favored enemies
Multi into Fighter/Rogue after level 6

Basic idea is to pickup Sharpshooter at level 4 and have a good chance of landing those hits due to Pack Tactics on Kobold. This campaign is going to be against the good guys so I'm concerned that the sunlight sensitivity will make it difficult for a ranged attacker to be effective as both I and the target need to be out of direct sunlight. Would appreciate feedback from anyone who has played a ranged kobold.

Flying Monk Build

Urd Wings Feat at level 4 to gain flight(and hopefully max dex). At 5th level, Flying Kobold Drunken Master Monk could rain down 2 Spear attacks and 2 Unarmed attacks with advantage on an engaged foe and then dash back into the air. Feel like the Level 6 features of Drunken Master would be wasted on a flying Kobold though. Perhaps another path is better? Not seeing any obvious synergy. Could expect 20 Dex/16 Wis at level 8. Suggestions?

[DarkKnightJin]

I have 2 ideas for Kobold that I wanna try/play sometime. Eldritch Knight (preferably heavy armor, but medium or light could work too), or just lean into the stereotype and go with Rogue. Most likely Thief archetype.
For the Monk idea.. I love the idea of a flying Sun Soul Monk, just to have strafing runs, pretty much.

[Great Dragon]

Wildarm:
Ranger looks ok.
Suggestion: Monster Hunter with Mage Slayer (?) for anti-spell and anti-teleport.

Flying Kobold.
Suggestion: Rogue for Bonus Action Disengaging for flying away with no AoO.

Both Ranged versions would need to wait for allies to get into melee for Pack Tactics to kick in.

@DarkKnightJin:
Flying Sun Soul Monk would be lots of fun!!

[Wildarm]

Rogue for BA disengage would be OKish. Drunken master accomplishes the same though. I guess if I went for another subclass it would be an OK dip.

Sun Soul while fun does pretty typical damage unless you spend Ki:

1-4: 2x1d4+5 = 15 avg
5-10: 3x1d6+5 = 25.5 avg

Burn a Ki point to get a damage spike. I think I'd need to add in some sort of DPS boost to make it worth while. Dip Warlock for Hex perhaps?

[CTurbo]

Three ideas



1. Kobold UA Revised Beastmaster Ranger with a Wolf companion. You ride your wolf and you both have full time advantage on all attacks. At level 4 you take Mounted Combat and your wolf would be really really hard to kill. At level 8 you take Duel Wielder and then you can use a lance in each hand for some 1d12 attacks. if you can sneak in 5 levels of Fighter, the second attack from Fighter would stack with the Beastmaster's Coordinated Attack so you would have 3 attacks and your wolf would have 2 every round. Of course you NEED some pretty good stat rolls to pull this off.

2. Kobold Conquest Paladin. Think about the awesome roleplay implications with a little 2-3ft tall dragon striking fear in the hearts of it's enemies. Even more hilarious when combined with it's Grovel, Cower, and Beg feature lol. I'd probably use a whip lol

3. Kobold Long Death Monk. First of all you could go completely unarmed and unarmored which is great, but this is another subclass with a great fear feature, but this time you would even scare your friends. Good stuff lol

[Yakmala]

If you can find a DM to run your Kobold through Waterdeep Dragon Heist and you can figure out a way to get it off of Jarlaxle Baenre (who is not likely to want to part with it), you can get yourself the Knave's Eye Patch, one of the only non-homebrew items that cancels out the penalties of sunlight sensitivity. Then your mighty Kobold will be free to operate in any environment without disadvantage.

[Wildarm]

Three ideas



1. Kobold UA Revised Beastmaster Ranger with a Wolf companion. You ride your wolf and you both have full time advantage on all attacks. At level 4 you take Mounted Combat and your wolf would be really really hard to kill. At level 8 you take Duel Wielder and then you can use a lance in each hand for some 1d12 attacks. if you can sneak in 5 levels of Fighter, the second attack from Fighter would stack with the Beastmaster's Coordinated Attack so you would have 3 attacks and your wolf would have 2 every round. Of course you NEED some pretty good stat rolls to pull this off.

2. Kobold Conquest Paladin. Think about the awesome roleplay implications with a little 2-3ft tall dragon striking fear in the hearts of it's enemies. Even more hilarious when combined with it's Grovel, Cower, and Beg feature lol. I'd probably use a whip lol

3. Kobold Long Death Monk. First of all you could go completely unarmed and unarmored which is great, but this is another subclass with a great fear feature, but this time you would even scare your friends. Good stuff lol

Thanks for the suggestions.

Conquest Pally would be a bit wonky on a Kobold but entertaining AF to RP. I picture this Dr. Jeckle/Mr Hyde personality with the channel divinity and grovel options.

Beast RR would be cool. Almost a bit OP when you factor it that the beast also gets the favored enemy bonuses

Not sure about long death monk. Hard to kill but I like the mobility of Drunken Master more.

[Snowbluff]

I'm playing a paladin8(Vengeance, for the haste spell basically)/Rogue3 (arcane Trickster) in AL now. Her name is Marianne and she has a holy avenger (I rebuilt her from a dude who got one from a drop). My stats are bad but having the familiar in my square gives advantage on attacks, and smite and sneak attack a good playload if I crit.

Probably a legit build would be Champion5/Arcane TricksterX and getting familiar + Haste and just going nuts for crits.

[TheUser]

Kobold Moon Druid is amazing.

You only retain "benefits" according to wildshape. So you keep pack tactics but lose sunlight sensitivity. With such easy advantage on a moon druid it becomes a really attractive option.

Your wisdom takes a hit but if you lean hard knto wildshape feats (sentinel, resillient con), you get some really good mileage out of the class.

[Quoz]

The kobold Don Quixote: Hexblade/Lore Bard. Always bragging about his great and glorious achievements.

Use Hexblade to use a lance with Cha, get medium armor, and solid ranged options. Snag find steed and spirit guardians at Bard 6 to be a walking radiant fireball.

Good AC, the best weapon damage a small character can have, a huge range of utility options from invocations, inspiration, and bard spell list. Also can have a ton of personality switching from the overconfident party face to cowering and groveling to give your party an opening.

[Wildarm]

Thanks for the suggestions folks.

Regarding lances, how do you deal with the attacks at disadvantage for enemies within 5'? Assume Pact tactics from mount cancels it out? Feel like I'd end up getting "stuck" against an engaged melee opponent. Mount uses it's action and movement to disengage all the time and move back 5'?

Other idea I had last night:

Mad Sky Bomber
Kobold Artificer 5+
Urd Wings at level 4

Flying artillerist character. This campaign is likely to have army battles so this may be another interesting option

Assume I can get firearm proficiency in as mentioned in the Optional Rule: Firearm Proficiency. I see this little guy flying above the field armed with a boomstick(+1 musket /w Arcane Weapon(Thunder)). Cackling madly with each shot, his attack at level 5 would be: 2 Attacks @ +9 To Hit - 1d12+1d6+6 = 32 damage on average. Bonus action to have a force turret on the ground blast for 2d8 more force damage. Main problem I see with this is once again, sunlight sensitivity. Targeting engaged foes would at least mitigate that. Also need to check with the DM to see if loading property on the musket could be ignored via the Arcane Armament. I find it a fundamental flaw in the design of this class to be honest. You effectively need to take Crossbow Expert(or equivalent) to use the extra attack feature of the class unless you can get proficiency from a non-loading ranged weapon such as a longbow.

Defense wise, I'd be able to have blink or blur active on myself and a free hand available to cast shield to dodge an arrow storm.

The real potential I see is to spend gold and downtime on wands to create an arsenal of magic to rain down from the sky. I'm expecting to be fighting armies in this campaign so this could be a solid option. All usable in full sunlight without penalty too. Wand Prices and craft times below are after Artillerist Discount and XgtE crafting rules.

Wand of Magic Missiles: 2 per week - 100gp
Each wand regains 4.5 charges on average. Burning 6 charges per use gives a base attack of 21 automatic force damage. Potentially not as good as your main attack but they are cheap and reliable. A pile of these in your bag of holding to hand out to underlings would also be handy.

Wand of Fireball: 2.5 weeks - 1000gp
Solid AOEs and regains enough charges each day to use it pretty much every fight

Wand of Lightning: 2.5 weeks - 1000gp
For fire resistant foes or formations where a line would be better

Wand of Binding: 2.5 weeks - 1000gp
DC17 Hold Monster(5 charges) or Hold Person(2 charges) - Strong but worth the attunement slot at perhaps 1 use per day?

Crafting the 3 rare wands would take 3000gp and 7.5 weeks. Probably quite doable by 6th level and really increases my daily resources by something like 8 3rd level spell slots and a 5th level slot. Uses up all my attunement slots though.

Any other comments, suggestions or ideas?

[Quoz]

Lance is mostly useful for hit and run, you make your attacks from 10 feet out and then don't provoke since you never enter the creature's reach. Any enemy next to an ally grants advantage, even if you're not adjacent yourself. If you've got the ASI for it spell sniper and booming blade can force some real no-win situations.

In sunlight, all of your rolls will be flat since one instance of pack tactics will offset all sources of disadvantage, so go nuts.

[Wildarm]

Lance is mostly useful for hit and run, you make your attacks from 10 feet out and then don't provoke since you never enter the creature's reach. Any enemy next to an ally grants advantage, even if you're not adjacent yourself. If you've got the ASI for it spell sniper and booming blade can force some real no-win situations.

In sunlight, all of your rolls will be flat since one instance of pack tactics will offset all sources of disadvantage, so go nuts.

Hmmm Just brushing up on mounted rules(what a hot mess). I'd have to be using the mount as a controlled mount and the DM would need to rule that I can mix the actions on our turn to do hit and run and still get my full attack routine correct? Mount Move, Character Attack Action, Mount Disengage.

An independent mount would have to end it's turn adjacent to an enemy for me to get a full attack routine in. It would not be able to separate it's move and disengage action. It would get to attack though instead. Just no hit and run. Am I mistaken on any of the above?

TBH I'm not seeing a huge advantage of a mounted approach other than flavor versus a sharpshooter build. That can do the same at range and gets the advantages of the sharpshooter feat. Lances get a bigger base damage dice(d12 vs d6) but lots of complications it seems.

[Snowbluff]

Just a reminder, if you can get a hold of a Knave's eyepatch, you can ignore your own sunlight sensitivity. :smallcool:

[Wildarm]

Just a reminder, if you can get a hold of a Knave's eyepatch, you can ignore your own sunlight sensitivity. :smallcool:

Well this will be a homebrew campaign but I can always drop hints to the DM that I'd be looking for one or looking at making one. It's Rare so expensive but not outrageously so. Requires attunement which is a bit of a bummer.

[Snowbluff]

Well this will be a homebrew campaign but I can always drop hints to the DM that I'd be looking for one or looking at making one. It's Rare so expensive but not outrageously so. Requires attunement which is a bit of a bummer.

Well it does let you shut out some effects and also give advantage on perception (and +5 to the passive perception), so it’s a pretty alright item.

[MagneticKitty]

I played a revised ranger beast master kobold. Mounted combat melee combatant who rides a wolf. Make sure your dm will eventually give you an emblem of claws for magic attacks on your wolf or like a +1 collar at some point or your wolf will eventually be useless.

Dex paladin kobold rapier and shield, you can use find steed and find greater steed for mounted combat and spell sharing. Add magic initiate wizard for booming blade, some flavor cantrip and find familiar or long strider // or magic initiate Warlock for eldritch blast. You could also use a short bow.

Arcane archer or battlemaster archer with wings would be fun.. But you can't really long bow well with a small race. I would use winged tiefling (can still be evil) for this build instead.