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View Full Version : DM Help Need help with Tucker's kobolds



Lvl 2 Expert
2020-05-10, 03:52 PM
Hello playgrounders,

I don't think any of my players ever come here, but if you're from the Netherlands and are involved with a game set in a future version of the area you live in you should probably stop reading.

I'm running a "while everyone is in quarantaine let's play a game" RPG in a homebrew system. (I chose to homebrew because I wanted to keep it super simple because I wasn't sure how complex I could make it for a new group over a voice channel and also because I wanted to GM a little seat of the pants style, be able to go with the flow and the fun stuff they come up with. Now the system is growing a little more complex with every session, hopefully until we reach some sort of optimum, but that's besides the point of this thread.)

Anyway, two sessions ago I introduced a version of Tucker's kobolds (https://media.wizards.com/2014/downloads/dnd/TuckersKobolds.pdf). Tucker the kobold king lives in the sewers below the city. In this initial session a club got attacked by two kobolds who took cover in the DJ booth after which the PC's went on an epic quest to learn more about different ways to attack (see: growing a little more complex with every session) and this week the PC's went down into the sewers to find an object important to the kobolds so they can lure them out of hiding. So far the kobolds have been kind of underwhelming in combat. They are one hit point wonders (in a world where most PC's have roughly 3 of those per encounter) with rubbish stats, and at least so far they don't attack in the hugest of numbers, because they're supposed to be scary because of their good tactics. This scariness doesn't fully materialize so far. This is at least partly because 1 hit point wonders are inherently hard to balance, just a few lucky rolls and half your force is gone. But it's probably also partly because I'm just not thinking mean and outside the box enough. So now I'm looking for your help.

Next week king Tucker's kobolds have to attack the PC's who are waiting for them on top of the highest of a cluster of office towers, while all nearby sewer exit points have been blocked by big boulders. The PC's are setting up a bunch of stuff on the roof to throw down. Their ultimate backup plan is to jump on a train leaving the vicinity (my players for some reason love using the train ever since I had them stalk some suspicious robots on one.) They have this next week and a few extra players to come up with more stuff for their defense, I might for example expect them to send a ransom note or something to the kobolds to lure them out at a specific time when they'll be ready for them. If you were me, what kind of weapons, tactics, distractions etc would you have the kobolds use to make them as scary as possible and bring them as close to success as possible with the least amount of total power? Assume no system limitations, I'll worry about those for all of us. The setting is a science-fiction/superhero/Saturday morning cartoon(/action movie/swashbuckling) kitchen sink, where simple magic is explicitly a thing (I have a fire mage, an earth bender and an electric mutant in the group), so most lines of thought are open. The only big limitation on the kobold's tactics is that I still want to have a big battle in some shape or form. If the kobolds pulled off a brilliant counter-heist that would be very clever, but not a lot of fun to play after the anticipation of a big battle.

Thanks in advance!

Evoker
2020-05-10, 05:57 PM
Off the top of my head: after the PC's tell the kobolds that they stole their important shiny thing, the kobolds decided to steal some important shiny thing of one or more PCs? Without knowledge of what the PCs are/hold important I can't be specific, but the kobolds could try to use that to maneuver themselves into a more advantageous position, because tucker's kobolds are scary because of where they are, moreso than what they are. Having to approach in the open just isn't going to work out for them, and they should realize that, and work around it somehow. In the absence of that, large sheets of sturdy metal, supported by wheeled poles make for good improvised siege towers to get up to the building. Once the kobolds get into the office building, they could start climbing around the elevator shafts, weakening floors, and similar tactics to even the scores somewhat.

kitanas
2020-05-10, 06:19 PM
So, if I am a Tucker's kobold and I am trying to retrieve a Shiny from a bunch of people who are dug in on top of a building, my first reaction is to drop the building. That way, rather then facing an enemy in ground of his choosing, I can instead deliver him to ground of my choosing, which I can have surrounded by sharpshooters in the best cover I can find/make. If for whatever reason dropping the building is not an option(for instance, if the ratio of "how durable is the Shiny"/"how important is the Shiny" is a bad one) then I would disable the fire suppression system and set fire to the building instead. Same general idea, less destructive to the Shiny. Anything to get them out of their prepared position. If I know they like to use trains to exfiltrate, then I am going to set up some mechanism to derail their escape train.

More generally, if I am a Tucker's kobold, and a PC gets a clean shot at me, I have screwed up somewhere. I will harass you, attack you indirectly. Lead you into a trap. Take a potshot and run away. An 'encounter' with tucker's kobolds should not feel like a fight. It should feel like sticking yourself face-first into a meat grinder until you give up and run away.

Phhase
2020-05-10, 11:53 PM
I'm just not thinking mean and outside the box enough. So now I'm looking for your help.

Speak of the devil, and he shall appear. Time for some scheming :smallamused:!

An 'encounter' with tucker's kobolds should not feel like a fight. It should feel like sticking yourself face-first into a meat grinder until you give up and run away.
First of all, this^. Tucker's Kobolds are less a creature, and more a terrain feature. Or a state or mind. While Kobolds aren't super intelligent, they're savants of trap design and paranoia. If one of the kobolds is making a basic melee attack on a player, something is wrong. It is said that if you fill a Huge bottle with kobolds, add water and shake, you get a green dragon, the master of schemes.

Now! Onto the issue at hand. What I've gathered is this: The PCs are at the top of a skyscraper, nearby sewer exits are blocked, and they have gathered things to throw down onto the encroaching attackers. The PCs also have an established love of train getaways. I will assume that the building is mostly unoccupied. They may think they've secured an unreachable roost, but in truth, they've merely backed themselves into a corner...

(Sidenote: why did they put themselves in a place that the earthbender can't access dirt? Can he create it out of thin air? Because if he uses the building's concrete, that puts the structural integrity at significant risk)

Opening Gambit: 99 Kobold Balloons
It's an easy assumption to make that the PCs are going to be throwing things down from the high ground. But they're also rather far away. So as an opener, salvos of kobold-shaped balloons equipped with fake wings (to add to the deception) are released. From all the way up on the roof, the PCs won't be able to tell for certain if the oncoming force is real or fake, and will burn some of their resources attacking the balloons. Once they realize that they're not attacking real kobolds, they'll have a chuckle and stop wasting resources on the balloons.

Which is where the true danger becomes apparent. Because the core power of Tucker's Kobolds is in getting the enemy to play their game.

If the PCs allow the balloons to float up to their level, the timed shrapnel charges in the balloons begin to explode, showering them with pain. Bonus points for poisoning the shrapnel. The beauty of it is that if the players pop the balloons on the way up, the kobolds just catch the bombs, reset the timers, and send them back up on another balloon.

The kobolds will send up let's say, three such waves. The final wave is loaded with smoke bombs, cutting off the PC's view of the ground below, if not outright completely blinding them.

Extra Points: the first wave is smoke bomb balloons instead, making further waves harder to defend against. Also consider toxic smoke or flashbangs if you truly have no mercy.

Whatever method you choose, this should give the kobolds plenty of room to maneuver and set up further attacks while the players are distracted by the balloons.

Main Assault Angles

Angle 1: Operation Toilet Snake
You stated that the players closed off sewer exits with boulders, presumably to make approaches and escapes harder for the kobolds. Assuming this means manholes and drains, then, infact, the opposite is true. They have made things much harder. For you see, they can see kobolds when they're milling in the streets below. They would have been better served if they had blockaded any pipes leading into nearby buildings.

After all, if they can't have the streets, they'll be boiling out of vent ducts, steam tunnels, water mains, even cut gas or oil lines. Perhaps even out of the toilets themselves, if you're truly evil.

This means that the kobolds won't be entering the streets at all, they'll be entering buildings directly, and possibly from multiple different points on different floors.

Once inside a building, the pipes will give the kobolds a fast transit system that the players will not be able to follow them into. Not only that, but you said this was an office building, right? Office building have those drop ceilings, yeah? You'd best bet the kobolds will be ALL over that crawlspace, popping out panels to shoot or throw things, dropping things, and then scampering away. And it goes without saying that one of the first things the kobolds do is CUT THE ELEVATORS. For extra evil points, rig the stairs with tripwires. No running in the halls!

Eventually the players will get pissed and try and figure out a way to flush the kobolds out (pun intended). But if they try an obvious solution, like before, they will be playing right into your hands.

See, the kobold kommandos that enter the building are equipped with breathing apparatus and leather scuba armor (since they entered through water/gas pipes). They have also ruptured some of the pipes, soaking much of the building's interior in water. If the electrical mutant tries to shock the pipes, not only will the kommandos take minimal damage owing to their insulating armor, but the electricity will travel through the water into any PC unfortunate enough to be touching the ground. If they try to use the fire mutant's ability to smoke the kobolds out, not only will their breathing apparatus protect them, but the kobolds will plug up any outside vents and then turn on the ventilation, filling up the floor with the PC's own smoke. Wetting everything also has the advantage of making it hard for the fire mutant to set things alight.

But WAIT! There's MORE! Not only do the kobolds infest the substructure of the building like termites (a VERY apt comparison, actually), but there are easy ways to take the attack to the next level as the PCs desperately try to descend the building. Observe: Operation Aquarium and Operation Ignition!

Operation Aquarium is simple. The Kobolds cover up all of the big wraparound office windows on a floor, block all the lower exits, and turn on the taps until the entire floor is flooded top to bottom. Before the players even enter the floor, they have to disable all of the lights, either by blowing the circuit of finding a fusebox, since they electrify the water. This has the additional effect of making the floor entirely lightless, since the lights are off and the windows are blocked. Good thing kobolds have darkvision!

Remember though: the moment the PCs play into the hands of the kobolds, they put themselves at great risk. Their first instinct will be to capture some kobold breathing apparatuses, either by killing kommandos, or because some kommandos conveniently "dropped" their breathing equipment earlier while fleeing. While the breathing equipment works just fine for the PCs, entering the water-flooded floor is an extremely bad idea. Not only does it place significant limits on the lightning and fire mutants' powers, shockwaves travel much more easily through water. So if the players create too much of a ruckus fighting the kobold frogmen hiding in the flooded floor, the outer windows may break, causing all the water to drain out into the open air...and potentially taking everyone with it.

Too evil? Consider this: the solution is as simple as not playing the kobold's game. Break a window on the floor above, peek out, and break a window on the floor below, draining the flooded level safely. Just be careful that kobold kommandos don't sneak up and shove you out the window while you're leaning.

Operation Ignition is crueler, and much tenser. As the players descend, the floors begin to get drier, and the fire mutant and the lightning mutant get to FINALLY blow off some steam. Then the kobolds shut the door to the floor above behind them, and block it. The players slowly begin to smell rotten eggs. A gas leak. Hopefully the fire and lightning mutant remember why it would be a bad idea to use their powers again. And hopefully, they have some way to breathe, as soon, the air will be unbreathable. Did I mention it would be a very bad idea to run? You wouldn't want to step on one of the mines the kobolds have set, potentially blowing everything to hell...

If the players dilly-dally for too long, moving slowly, disarming all the traps, etc, they find the lower exit is also sealed. By the time they get that far though, they run into a new problem: the gas is still broken open. And since the floor is sealed, the pressure builds and builds bit by bit until all of the floor's windows are blown outward as the gas escapes. Sounds great, right? Wrong. Depending on how evil you want to be, you could give the PCs the bends from the sudden pressure change (even bigger change the higher up they are). Not lethal, but very painful and debilitating.

The solution? Open/break a window. Or turn on the ventilation. Just be careful, there might be a trap on the thermostat...

But Phhase, you ask, if the balloon assault has stopped, and the kobolds aren't coming onto the roof from below, why would the players want to descend? Well...


Angle 2: Tucker's Angels

If the players remain on the roof, they're in for a nasty fight. There are other skyscrapers nearby, right? Perfect. Once the volley of smoke balloons hits, kobold hang-gliders launch from neighboring roofs. Once the smoke begins to clear a bit, they begin to fly out of the sun at the PCs, harrying them with bombing runs, ranged attacks, and other such attacks. You can use anything, but if you want to be truly evil, you can throw chaff bombs. They don't do any damage, but the fine metallic particulate in the air will catch the lightning mutant's bolts, potentially harming other PCs. Double points if the chaff is a flammable metal like aluminum, meaning any fire or lightning causes a dust explosion.

What's that? Weather's cloudy? Excellent! Perfect cover for the hang-gliders. Not only that, but if the hang-gliders destroy the lightning rod on the PC's building, it opens up a very unique opportunity....(see Finale options).

Other than that, keep up the bombardment. Drop bombs, have snipers or mortars on nearby buildings, deploy V-1 Buzz Bombs or more balloons, set the entire roof on fire, have fun! Hell, you could have kobold paratroopers that harpoon the PCs and try to drag them off the edge. Your players are sitting ducks, honestly.

But once again, playing Tucker's Kobolds' zero-sum game is a mistake. Because every attack is only a prelude to buy time for the Grand Finale.


Grand Finale Options

Option 1: Square Peg, Round Hole

Use this option if the players have descended into the building.

Now, I respect the hell out of the idea of just knocking the tower over. But doing that is actually pretty hard. And reenacting 9/11 is just too messy and flashy to be Tucker's Kobold style. Instead, they simply turn everything up to 11. Tucker's Kobolds want to fight you on their turf, right? They infiltrated the tower, and made it into their terrain. But soon, the tower will truly belong fully to the kobolds...

While the PCs have been fighting tooth and nail descending the tower, the kobolds have been busy beneath the ground. As the PCs see the ground floor approaching, they should begin to feel tremors beneath their feet. As they watch the ground outside rise out of view, they realize too late that all the while, the kobolds have been turning the entire tower into one huge elevator...last stop, bottom of the building-sized sinkhole they've dug beneath the tower! The fall shouldn't be hard enough to paste the players, but it should be enough to shatter every window in the entire tower. And since the walls of the sinkhole are covered in kobold tunnels, they now have free access to any level from any angle, and the risk of falling is nil.

Imagine the despair on your player's faces when they realize that all that effort they spent descending the tower has been reversed...and that they now they have to fight their way back UP through every floor they thought they'd left behind! Truly a masterwork of evil.


Option 2: Tucker's Storm of Vengeance

Remember when I said that destroying the lightning rod on top of the tower opened up an interesting option? Yeah. Prepare yourself.

One way or another, if the players choose to remain on the roof, trying to swat kobolds and assorted bombs out of the sky, the weather should slowly change to cloudy. Whether this requires weather magic, or you're content to DM fiat it as the kobolds reading the weather forecast, when the clouds occlude the sun overhead, this final gambit of the kobolds takes effect.

Firstly, the occlusion of the sun mean that the kobolds no longer suffer from Sunlight Sensetivity, which is huge. It means that aimed attacks (like guns, or crossbows, or whatever) are suddenly much more deadly (and is the reason the Kobolds were mostly using AOE attacks before).

Second, the bombing runs and other attacks should let up or at least lighten for a time. The players may interpret this as a breather, but in reality, it's the point of no return/the "GTFO" cue. You can help get this feeling across by describing the dimming light, the sudden silence, and the faint, far away sound of church bells ringing noon.

Third, you should be able to more or less check these items off of this list:

> The roof exit has been sealed, either from bombardment, or stealthily from below. If you really want to be cruel, instead of collapsing the stairs, have the bombers or infiltrators throw big gobs of expanding foam into the area. It's tough, a good insulator, not flammable, and can't be earthbent, after all.

> The lightning rod has been disabled.

> The railing/lip on the edge of the roof has been destroyed or heavily damaged by rising balloon bombs, or falling ordinance.

As the PCs take a breather and wait for the other shoe to drop, they hear the rhythmic thumpthumpthumpthump of mortars on distant roofs firing. They also see the shadows of hang-gliders circling in the clouds above.

But no bombs fall. Instead, a smattering of fine white powder falls from the sky. It does not affect the players at all. When the clouds overhead begin to darken and churn, and wind begins to blow, the full extent of the kobold's plan starts to reveal itself.

It isn't an attack. The kobolds are firing salt to seed the clouds for rain. They're brewing a storm.

Soon, the wind is howling, and thunder crackles. Fun fact: in anything greater than a moderate wind, skyscrapers -especially the roof- sway like trees! And at this elevation, the storm winds are strong indeed.

Bit by bit, the storm makes the PCs more and more vulnerable:

The rising howl of the wind pushes the PCs to and fro, makes the ground buck and heave, and steals the words out of their mouths.

The rain begins to fall. The ground becomes slippery and dangerous, making it that much easier to be swept over the damaged railings. As the rain intensifies, visibility and light become worse and worse, flames begin to struggle, and the surface of the roof becomes quite conductive....

Long heralded, bolts of white-hot lightning begin to strike the tallest object - the lightning-rodless roof. They're not likely to hit the PCs directly, but simply being close will mean some energy flows through the puddles, to say nothing of the blinding flash and deafening thunder.

At this point, the PCs may think that staying low and holding onto something solid will save them. This is a fallacy. Because the storm itself is not the attack. As the lightning begins to crash, and the light and visibility is waning, the kobold's final attack commences. From below, above, and all around, kobold kommandos begin floating and gliding over to the roof. As they land, they each let go of a balloon, which, if the players have sharp eyes, can be seen to have a thin wire trailing back to the kobold attached. The kobolds attack the players en masse with barbed daggers and crossbows that fire barbed iron bolts. Each weapon also trails a wire back to the kobold it came from. If the players don't tear the weapons out of themselves or sever the wires, when the balloon attached to the kobold on the other end of the wire reaches the clouds above, it forms a direct conduit between nature's fury and the insides of the connected player. There's no way to dodge that.

Bonus Evil: If the lightning mutant throws a lightning bolt at a kobold, he also shocks anyone the kobold is connected to.

Now, is that climactic as **** or what!? A rooftop battle against the directed fury of the elements, beset by enemies on all sides!


So, uh, with all that bull coming down on the players full force, how the hell are they gonna survive? Glad you asked. First, ramp things up slowly. That way, the players at once won't feel like it's unfair or unwinnable, and has the bonus of helping rope them into playing the kobolds' game. Because once again, the biggest mistake the players can make is playing the same game that the kobolds are. There are thus two-ish paths to take:


The players batten down for a long, grueling fight, and take things methodically, yet brutally. They take advantage of every opportunity, and do their best to unravel every combat puzzle. They roll with every punch, and at the end of it all, are able to withstand the worst through sheer resourcefulness and grit. Just.


Do the players have parachutes/a method of safe descent? Tsk. Amateurs. If you're having a rooftop fight, that's the first contingency you'll want. Fortunately, Tucker's Kobolds are no amateurs. Every kobold at every stage of the attack has its own little kobold-sized parachute in case it falls. All that needs to happen is for the players to win the game of whack-a-mole enough times to gather enough intact chutes for every person. Depending on how mean you're feeling, you could require each player to have more than one parachute, since they are so small. Of course, the kobolds aren't going to just let the players descend in peace. They'll send up more balloons, send down the gliders, anything to get the players falling. If the chutes do take damage, you can let the players land in a broken tower window. That way, they survive, are rewarded for ingenuity by making a big shortcut, and don't circumvent all the content. They can even repeat this if they find more chutes!

Once the players reach the ground, they have two options. Run and hide, or attack. Since the sewer exits were blocked, the kobolds aren't guarding them. If the players open one back up, they can make a devastating attack on the kobolds from the one angle they didn't expect. Since the lion's share of kobolds are working their way upward into the tower, an attack from behind forces them to reverse course, funneling them through a 1-way bottleneck into the waiting players.



So. Whatcha think? Did I miss something important?

Telok
2020-05-11, 12:54 AM
The kobolds break a few gas lines under the blocked sewer entrances.

The kobolds steal a police car and some dead bodies or department store mannikins. Put the dummies in the police car. Drive it up to the building and set it on fire.

Then they call the police and report heavily armed terrorists on the roof trying to blow up the building.

The shiney thing will be easier to steal from the police evidence room than from dangerous adventurers.

Alcore
2020-05-11, 10:50 AM
this week the PC's went down into the sewers to find an object important to the kobolds so they can lure them out of hiding. So far the kobolds have been kind of underwhelming in combat.This "variant" is an utter failure if they actually got the shiny and brushed the adventure under the rug already...


They are one hit point wonders [1] (in a world where most PC's have roughly 3 of those per encounter) with rubbish stats [2], and at least so far they don't attack in the hugest of numbers [3], because they're supposed to be scary because of their good tactics [4].

1. if they are getting hit or allow something to attack then something is wrong with them.

2. irrelevant.

3. Why are they attacking (out in the open) at all!?

4. Nothing has given the impression of good Kobold tactics. Perhaps you should of made them orcs.



Next week king Tucker's kobolds have to attack the PC's who are waiting for them on top of the highest of a cluster of office towers, while all nearby sewer exit points have been blocked by big boulders.Okay... I am big bad Kobold chief. I must get shiny. What must i do?

I know(?) where the PCs are...

I know that sewer entrances are blocked by boulders. Which is fine; those entrances which presumably lead to an open kill zone were always irrelevant. Do I have the time to do what Kobolds are actually good at? (digging) and If I do would I need to dig or would tunnels have already been dug (its an office building, what business might I have with the normal occupants?) for some reason?

Keep a few stealthy trained kobolds in adjacent buildings to watch the PCs and radio me if they bug out. (otherwise keeping radio silence unless something important happens. Unless my communications are secure or believe them to be.)


The PC's are setting up a bunch of stuff on the roof to throw down. Morons... like I would send good tribesmen to their deaths out in the open. a really heavy truck would be all I need to pound a hole into the building if forced to enter above ground. just need one or two at the wheel (which have some cover from above, firing angle sounds steep/impossible for a clear arrow/bullet.) while the rest hunker down inside the deeper sections safe from anything short of man sized boulders.


Their ultimate backup plan is to jump on a train leaving the vicinityI know that!?

Sweet!

derail it. just send ten of my troops to one section and radio them once the battle begins have them send the ten minutes (or less) required to dismantle enough to run the train aground. Once they are done they make a beeline to the train station and set explosives when the train comes in (not before; they are to leave the PCs alone at all costs or they know their method of travel is bugged).

once train runs aground with PCs detonate one at a time. Keep the fire on their butts but to preserve the shiny. Make them panic and run into traps or leave valuables behind that we don't care about. definitely don't let them think.

set up traps and ambush locations on either side of the train's location. Make them regret taking shiny... however they managed it the first time...



They have this next week and a few extra players to come up with more stuff for their defense, I might for example expect them to send a ransom note or something to the kobolds to lure them out at a specific time when they'll be ready for them.stupid question but...

next week as in next week or are they sitting on the shiny for a week atop the building?

Ransom? Good; gives breathing room and time to plot and entrap.



The only big limitation on the kobold's tactics is that I still want to have a big battle in some shape or form.That is the worst thing for Kobolds (Especially any Kobolds based, even lightly, on the Tucker variety). If I didn't need shiny so much I wouldn't pursue. In fact the simple fact that big people managed to go through a trap infested dungeon means heads will roll at the poor execution of my defenses...

Lvl 2 Expert
2020-05-11, 01:02 PM
Ooh, there's a lot to unpack here! Thank you all for the many, many suggestions! Some of them are a little out there, like throwing salt in the air to cause a windstorm, but then again the game is pretty out there, so that's a pretty good read of the briefing. The kobold shaped balloons actually sound like something I could have reasonably come up with, which makes them a good deception, because after the reveal they get a sense that they should have been expecting it. Kobold hanggliders are kind of similar in that regard, that could have been a thing from maybe the '87 Ninja Turtles or Gargoyles, two big sources of inspiration for the setting. I don't have any rules in place for flying, but I feel in this particular case that's mostly a positive.

I like all the ideas for inside the building crawling around in the duct work. I wasn't really considering that yet (to be fair, I posted this about an hour after they even decided they'd be on a building), since the players chose this place as an alternative to non-existent large cliffs, their backup plan is to jump from building to building action movie style. (Last time one of them tried that an NPC had to drive him to the hospital, so they made sure these buildings are closer together.) But that could make it even better if I do manage to chase them inside, the kobolds could have had some flavor of free reign in there because the inside was never a big part of their plan. Derailing the train could work for chasing them inside. (Or I could use several of the indoors traps on their escape train, because a fight on a moving sabotaged train heading for a big derailing is fun as well, assuming they don't just jump off and let the thing crash into a residential area, which they might.) I'm definitely going to try to use the "it smells like gas" thing, I love the combination of putting them on a timer, taking away part of their powers and providing no premade solution. The earth bender is probably going to try and just break the walls, but if I hit them when in the center of the tower and am careful to describe the buildings as being steel and glass it might take him a few tries to find a way to make that work.

Setting fire to the building would be a good option for in they like staying there too much while I think it's time to move on to the train scene or for other reasons want them flushed out of an entrenched position. Dropping the whole building into the ground might be even better though. Mmh, good thing I have three buildings to work with. I might get to use them both. The metal kobold siege tower sound totally awesome as well, though maybe a bit vulnerable to semi-creative applications of earth, fire and electricity. Then again, it's a pretty relaxed for fun game, they are allowed to get a win every now and then, even if it's against the spirit of the source material. Just not too many wins preferably.

I also really like the idea of the kobolds making it look like the PC's are terrorists or something and setting some trigger happy black ops guys on them. My players have been itching to use the new power attack rule which lets them knock/drag enemies out of cover, but they need something with several hit points and the presence of mind to use cover to do that. Secret police types would be perfect. It also gives them a chance to use their social stat, and those have generally been some of the best parts of these games. At the same time it shouldn't take too much away from the encounter being about the kobolds, so I'm going to look into balancing my requirements on this one. If I do use it it should go somewhere early in the assault. Maybe have a few cop guys there as newly converted allies to the PC's when part 2 goes down so they can die messily and show the kobolds' lethality. That could work...


Perhaps you should of made them orcs.

Or street sharks led by Fin Diesel, but I used that one already.

(Also: I did indeed mean next out of game week, not next in game week. In gave them a nice long rest equivalent to prepare and feel secure, but a week would be a bit too much story wise.)





Thanks guys, I can really use that. I've been too busy thinking about the details of the system to properly do this bigger picture stuff. If half of this works out when I run it I'm going to have to step up my game to keep them happy in future sessions.

Tvtyrant
2020-05-11, 01:53 PM
Honestly in the Tucker Kobold tradition I would have them set the building on fire after calling the cops about a hostage situation. The cops demand the party surrender their weapons as they escape; if they agree the Kobolds steal the shiney from the police later and if the party fights through the kobolds tail them and continuously call the cops on them so they can't escape. Now the whole city is attacking them, escalating to them being killed or fleeing.

kyoryu
2020-05-11, 02:32 PM
Next week king Tucker's kobolds have to attack the PC's who are waiting for them on top of the highest of a cluster of office towers, while all nearby sewer exit points have been blocked by big boulders.

Stop right there.

No Tucker's Kobold is going to do that, unless plans have all gone horribly horribly wrong.

See, you've gotta think like a kobold here. All the Bigs are big and dumb and oafish and stupid and not clever at all. They don't know all the twisty ways and can't get in them even if they could. Being smart like a kobold means you have layers and layers and layers of traps and you don't ever stand and fight. You hit, and you RUN.

So if I'm a kobold looking at this, I'm not attacking that building. No way, no how. The Bigs want me to do that, what, do they think I'm dumb like a Big? Nope! Not me!

Now, the Bigs have the shiny. Sure. And I want the shiny. But the shiny isn't good at alllll in that tower. And at some point, the Bigs have to leave, and I'll be waiting. They'll have to go down the tower, right? So we'll set those up allll nice and ready for them with lots of kobold goodness. Except they could fly away? We can't have that, so let's set up some things to take down airplanes and helicopters so they can't get away.

Stupid Bigs.

Even if they can get an an airplane, they have to land! So we'll figure out where they can land, and make sure that has lots of happy kobolds waiting to take the shiny from them. Or maybe we can hack stuff and figure out where they're going. I'm sure we can. They're Bigs, and Bigs are stupid.

D&D_Fan
2020-05-11, 02:54 PM
Easy:
Have they party chase a lone kobold into a narrow alley, then two groups of kobolds flank the party from both sides of the alley. Pretty straightforward.

Medium:
Set up a hostage situation, then when the party is in the right spot, they trap the party on all sides, and attack them out of immediate range:
The party is lured into a dead end alley, and block of the entrance, before shooting them from above.

Hard:
Have small party of kobolds lure party into a secret area (abandoned warehouse, etc.) Have a good trap set up to nearly kill party then finish them off:
The trap could be something like drop a big heavy cannon or something better on them. Then a mob of kobolds jump out and stab/shoot them while they're down.

Fatal:
Just have the kobolds push the party onto a false floor leading to a 200 foot deep pit with spikes at the bottom for extra damage. If the party survives. they can't get up realistically, and after a few minutes, the kobolds start filling the pit up with rocks and dirt.

Best:
Combine multiple situations. This will give this will party a real challenge.

Angelmaker
2020-05-12, 04:47 AM
this week the PC's went down into the sewers to find an object important to the kobolds so they can lure them out of hiding.

Isnīt this already where Tuckerīs Kobolds wouldīve failed? Because Tuckerīs Kobolds wouldīve sat tight on top of that thing like Mother hen on her eggs.

Lvl 2 Expert
2020-05-12, 04:50 AM
I'm not a very good kobold, and I don't have a way to undo the last two sessions. Just imagine I said "king Plork's small crocodile creatures" if that helps.

kyoryu
2020-05-12, 10:08 AM
I'm not a very good kobold, and I don't have a way to undo the last two sessions. Just imagine I said "king Plork's small crocodile creatures" if that helps.

That's why you're asking for help... the only point in looking at the last two sessions is "what other, more kobold-y things could have been done?"

Bigs are dumb. (Tucker's) Kobolds are clever. Kobolds will always use preparation and cleverness and never engage in direct confrontation unless absolutely forced too. They will use environmental advantage, extreme levels of cover, traps, and everything else they can to avoid a fair fight. Not just "attacking from cover", but "attacking through a narrow slit effectively providing total cover, and abandoning that position if it's actually attacked". Not "there's some traps", but "pouring boiling oil on their heads from places that they can't get hit at, after a lookout tells them".

They should never fight fair. They should never fight anywhere near fair. That's for Bigs, and kobolds aren't Bigs. Kobolds are clever. If they're in a place where a Big can hurt them? They've already screwed up.

Tvtyrant
2020-05-12, 11:27 AM
I'm not a very good kobold, and I don't have a way to undo the last two sessions. Just imagine I said "king Plork's small crocodile creatures" if that helps.

I still think burning the building down is the correct move. Even if they don't get the police to do the fighting, the Kobolds aren't assaulting anything. Having the surrounding buildings rigged with explosives and traps so the party can't flee into them from their own building while getting hit by snipers peeping out of manhole covers seems more their kind of thing.

kyoryu
2020-05-12, 11:42 AM
I still think burning the building down is the correct move. Even if they don't get the police to do the fighting, the Kobolds aren't assaulting anything. Having the surrounding buildings rigged with explosives and traps so the party can't flee into them from their own building while getting hit by snipers peeping out of manhole covers seems more their kind of thing.

Yup.

Kobold: "They're in the building? What, do they think we're going to attack them there? We're not dumb! They're stuck there, we're not going there, why should we? I mean, they've probably got the whole thing trapped and prepared.... wow, these Bigs are almost clever! Hrm. We don't want to wait forever.... well, they can't stay there if the building's on fire!"

Lvl 2 Expert
2020-05-24, 04:00 PM
I may have over-, under- or sidewaysestimated my players. They set up a bunch of defenses based on the kobolds trying to walk up to the buildings, go between them through a giant electrified net and find an entrance from there while being bombarded by catapults. When they didn't see any kobolds coming but instead noticed the starting fire in the highest building they decided this was the kobold's problem, because their crystal was on top, but as the fire grew bigger they still decided to relocate both themselves and the crystal to another roof. They called the fire department (did you know they let a talking dog man the phone lines there?) to put out the fire and while the building came down with a thundering roar a big stone wall they erected to try and prevent the fire from spreading saved the other two buildings from collapsing. Some flames had jumped across, and they could only be arsed to put those out in one of the two remaining towers while the other one was saved by the fire department again. I'm too nice for them.

Phase 2 then started by them smelling gas coming from a door on top of the now highest remaining tower. (My initial plan was to lure them inside to put out the initial fire and then release the gas, still in the first tower. But I run this kind of loose game with few rules because I want to be able to improvise.) When they smelled the gas they decided to evacuate from the scene completely. This is when they got their only sort of look at the kobolds for the night when they got shot at with crossbows from a first passing train, and of course decided to then jump onto the next one passing. They got a whiff of the terrorist angle (but haven't realized it yet) when the firefighters refused to pick them up from the roof with their helicopter for unclear reasons. The siege tower, the flying kobolds or the kobold sappers collapsing a tower outright never made it to the scene. They never even got near a place where they could attempt to find out how the kobolds entered (I'm thinking big open holes into the sewer where the ground floor toilets used to be).

They haven't really been hurt a lot yet or used up a lot of their power reserved, between the Monty Hallness of the setting, their decent and pretty funny ideas (if you're disappointed by the size of your DIY parachutes just use your "I have lots of money" power to land in a big stack of bills) and passable rolls when it mattered, not to mention their refusal to try and handle anything dangerous to instead stand by and run away a lot. But they lost all of their preparations for the siege and are now on a moving vehicle that could be laden with enemies, about to derail, have a big red flashing light on it in some counter-terrorism situation room or worse, with little idea of where they're trying to go and even if they did have a good idea a split in the track upcoming, right after the central station they're about to pass. I'm thinking they're not going to stop there for some sabotage related reasons. Plus they left one of the three towers collapsed in ruins while the second one will probably loudly explode behind them. I can work with that for the next session.


Thanks again for the advice. I don't get the impression that it feels like a horror movie yet (:smallbiggrin:), but given the style this game has developed this was pretty close to the potential the session had. Plus they had some good fun drawing on the map. Lots of fire and firefighting related sound effects. And I have stuff left I can throw at them when the adventure continues. Still not quite the original Tucker's kobolds experience (but that's on me, it was more of a reference anyway, this campaign is build on references), but I'd say it was more memorable than last session. Last session felt like a pretty standard dungeon crawl. And while that's not really a bad thing, dungeon crawls are a classic for a reason, this session had personality.

Alcore
2020-05-24, 04:34 PM
I'm glad much fun was had :D


As another had said;

Tucker's kobolds is a state of mind. To me it is building a whole group of encounters off of the culture of the creatures instead of them waiting in a room.

Lvl 2 Expert
2020-07-06, 05:58 AM
After some scheduling issues the battle was finished today. It started with an explosion threatening to derail their train, which they managed to solve with some good quick thinking. (Turns out one of the characters had eaten two parachutists about half a year ago, who knew?) Then the secret police types turned into a good encounter by basically not being a fight. Taking potshots from afar whenever the PC's do something is fun. (I might need some sort range qualifier in version 2 of this system.) They hijacked a helicopter out of the air and decided on following the train ahead of them (kobolds had shot at them from that train, so that actually probably made the most sense out of any decision on their or mine part of the evening, what made less sense was that they managed to be the cause of this train derailing after them stopping the previous one so well.) Meanwhile behind them the city started shaking. Sure, king Tucker showing up as a crowned kaiju was probably a little out of character for the Tucker's kobolds concept, but it made a logical step up on the difficulty scale made possible only by the more koboldy actions coming before it, not to mention making for a suitably epic end of the storyline, so I'll take it. I'm happy that it took among other things an electrically souped up tractor jumping ramps, a trip to a laboratory specialized in explosions, an engineering degree that couldn't decide who it belonged to and only existed in the first place because one of the players started drawing it, a rocket made from an office building, electrolysis inside the king's bloodstream and a long and hard fought lightsaber enabled climb up to his face to blow much of the royal head off.

I figured this thread deserved the inclusion of that happy ending.