hit and run battles. Timing

[Aurich]

I have red about Tucker's Kobolds and I think I have a grasp on what tactics they use.

One thing I couldn't find though, was what timing Tucker used for the battles.

Meaning, was it one continuous battle or a lot of few round/short battles.

Does someone know that?

On a broader scope, how would one best organise such battles. Ones where the enemy comes in or ambushes the party, lob a javelin or 2, and then scram, to just do it again.

would it be a constant battle mode timing, where everyone takes actions according to the initiative order, or just roll for initiative, a round or 2 of fighting and then they bolt to do it again a bit later?

[Skrum]

There's been plenty of times where I've kept the players in initiative even if there were no hostile opponents around to accurately track the passage of time. E.g., if they have to fight some bad guys and get to the basement before the bomb goes off, tracking round to round movement is appropriate.

Probably do something similar for TKs. It'll be good for the players to have "off" rounds to heal themselves, move faster, etc.

[Zhorn]

Things like this it would have been nice to have an official set of crawl-time rules to transition between.
Give players a common point of reference for timing between turns and events

such as;
6 sec rounds < combat
1 min rounds < nearby hostiles, locations are known , ambush time scale (TK, hit'n'run, 1 room over, etc),
10 min rounds < dungeon crawling, hostile locations unknown / stealthing, wandering monsters
1 hour rounds < wilderness crawling, a failed encounter rolls means it is safe enough for a short rest
4 hour rounds < civilized travel
etc

So in the case combat breaking for the tucker's kobolds, players know they have a minute before the next wave attempts to do something

Successfully get away/hide, you can count on 10 min before the next encounter roll

Get out of the dungeon, or find a secure/hidden location, 1 hour between encounter rolls

Make it back to the road / out of the 'wilderness' 4 hours between encounter rolls

[Martin Greywolf]

Meaning, was it one continuous battle or a lot of few round/short battles.

Does someone know that?

Tucker's Kobolds pre-date 5e, and as a result, they use even more simulationist rules where combat rounds do have a mapping to real time. So, in theory, it's all one battle, you have a dungeon mapped out and you solve the kobolds disengaging into tunnels by having them actually go there via movement speed, then handle them regrouping by, again, using their movement speed and your map and so on.

This is a good way to drive yourself insane. But it is how you would have to run a battle like Tucker's kobolds without resorting to DM fiat or houserules.


On a broader scope, how would one best organise such battles. Ones where the enemy comes in or ambushes the party, lob a javelin or 2, and then scram, to just do it again.

It all comes down to you having to come up with rules for the enemy disengaging. And those rules will either be tailored to your scenario, or will have to be fairly complex.

Taking the primordial hit and run soldiers, the horse archers, they disengage by their superior running speed. In context of pre-modern battles, once you are more than 400 meters (top range of a sling, a good hundred meters more than what a bow would get you) away from your opponent, that opponent cannot do anything to you, so provided you can maintain that distance, battle ends.

However, that only applies on a flat plain. If you are in a forest, or there are buildings involved, that distance can be a lot shorter. An angry enemy can stand within ten meters of you, but that will do him absolutely no good if those ten meters are filled with a castle wall between the two of you. This, however, is how you get edge cases. If there is a crossbowman hiding behind the ramparts, he is beyond the besieger's ability to hurt (no, not even with catapults, they can't damage the walls) - until he pops out to take potshots at them. Whether you run this as a proper combat with readied actions, or you start a new combat every time he pops out is up to you, I suppose.

And DnD complicates this further still. Because your party can very well have tools to make those disengagement conditions change - a teleport will let you catch up to horse archers, turning into a cat will let you follow the kobolds into their small tunnels as will familiars and so on.

My suggestion? Institute a soft rule that enemy has disengaged when they are beyond the party's ability and willingness to reach and pursue and when it happens and stop the combat then. Once that happens, have a rough idea of how long a kobold would need to run from point A to point B (add up the distance and divide by dashing speed) - you don't even need exact numbers, just a decent idea, and you're set.

[Kurt Kurageous]

To turn 5e Kobold's into the Legendary Tucker's Kobolds...

Delete Pack Tactics and add the goblin's Nimble Escape.

This makes disengaging easy. TKs were not experts in coming out in the open and fighting with numbers. They sucked at that. They were diggers of small tunnels and makers of even smaller openings through which they rained (reigned?) down needless HP losses without risk of significant losses given minimal exposure of the few kobolds involved in each ambush.

[Thunderous Mojo]

It is incredibly entertaining to me, that the Tucker’s Kobolds editorial penned by Roger Moore, still influences players today.

Goblins are 5E’s “Tucker’s Kobolds”.

A Tucker’s Kobolds style Gauntlet, can be organizationally handled many different ways. In terms of timing, 5e default rules handle a long running, hit and run battle fairly well.

Establish an Initiative order, and stick to it. If you want to simplify the situation, just let the opposition go first, and then the PCs, (or vis versa).

Opposition forces manning murder holes, or arrow slits can be presumed to have Readied attack actions, and can fire at the first PC they see.

Larger events, (say rolling flaming barrels of pitch down the hallway towards the PCs), can be scripted to trigger on a certain Initiative Count on a particular round, e.g. “On Round 3, on Initiative Count 15, snakes are released into area C from hidden trapdoors in the ceiling”.

In essence, one could design the Encounter, similarly to a Complex Trap.

Expect, the PCs to Zig a few times, when you figured the PCs would Zag instead….…Don’t, panic! The value of preparation, (I find), is preparation facilitates improvisation.

[Demonslayer666]

I would run it as a series of short combats. The kobolds ambush, maybe attack for a couple of rounds from safety, and retreat ending combat when they are all out of sight (not reachable).

Staying in combat eats up a lot of time that could be narrated over. I could see that getting very tedious.