Give the Goblins a break

[hayzee]

I just read oots start of darkness again and was wanting to petition all good hearted DMs to give the goblinoid races a break and maybe send their players a an adventure to kill some evil humans or dwarves (it is actually possible for those races to be bad sometimes). Anyway I wanted to know what your least favourite phb race is so that i can send my group off to kill one of their villages.

[Skjaldbakka]

I didn't realize how Evil Xykon was until I read SoD.

[The Professor]

You leave dwarves alone. They live in strict, militaristic and regimented societies, and they will bring the hammer of Moradin down.

[hayzee]

So did Miko.

[Icewalker]

Yeah, use some dark cults or the like. Conspiracies are funderful!

If I'm going to use a generic monstrous humanoid mini-society, I generally use gnolls. Not sure why.

[The Professor]

So did Miko.

Psh. Unstable as water.

Dark Cults? Conspiracies? I generally use humans and half-elves for that.

I use goblins and kobolds when I'm a jerk. Traps and sneak attack galore to be had. They don't seem to take penalties to mental stats, and so long as there are a few elders in a tribe, they all thrive as well mentally as other, 'civilized' humanoids in my games.

None of the 'Grak kills you!' and charge you with his primitive stone dagger shenanigans.

[TheOOB]

Hmm, I tend to use humans more then any other creature as my foes. In any case, most races such as kobolds, goblins, and orcs I rarely portray as purely evil monsters that exist as fodder for an adventurer's sword. I usually portray them as coming from a different cultures that are considered evil or dangerous by human standards, but may be good and honorable by their own standards.

Heck, in the campaign I'm creating right now I decided to assign a real world culture to each race to help me flesh them out and form their role in the world. Humans are primarily greco/roman(more greek then roman, but the line is blurred, especially since humans exist to some extent or another in all the other races cultures). Dwarves are nordic, orcs are celtic, goblinnoids are middle eastern(hobgoblins are persian in paticular), halflings are wanderers and gypsies, and elves are east asian(mainly because I wanted an element of trade with the orient and I wanted the elves to be rare and unusual instead in the setting). So this way when the players encounter another race they have a historical viewpoint to work from.

[Lord Tataraus]

Have you looked into the Goblin Defense Fund?

[Yami]

Elves. I mean, those things seem to breed like rabbits. We got soooo many variants and sub-races that a little cleansing needs get underway or we'll be drowning in this froofy pointy-eared things.

I myself love goblins, so I tend to send them against the party at first, that they might fear the goblin ninja.

[AslanCross]

I don't use goblins, but I do use hobgoblins. For the most part they've been "they're better warriors than you" and even "they have better arcane casters than you." They're gearing up for a large invasion of the kingdom the PCs are based in, so there'll be no raiding of innocent villages here. Of course, they're not moving alone. They're accompanied by a whole bunch of evil humans, fire giants, and a blue dragon.

[mabriss lethe]

None of the 'Grak kills you!' and charge you with his primitive stone dagger shenanigans.

I created a goblin variant that has my players absolutely frightened. They seem primitive, mostly stone tools with some cold-hammering of softer metals. What makes them scary is that each individual has a special, near magical bond with any tool that he crafts for himself. So those simple stone tools suddenly become very dangerous weapons. (scaling with both hit dice and enhanced with further feats) Nearly all of them also spend a feat for a homebrew that lets them subtract their wisdom modifier from the bonus to attack that any foe has specifically for goblinoids.

Never underestimate a goblin...

Now, to get back on topic.... elves.. definitely elves.

[Behold_the_Void]

A friend of mine seems to always genocide drow whenever he makes a homebrew world.

[Fuzzy_Juan]

I say kill some humans...and not just any humans...you need to kill 'Good' humans...there are so few evil humans, and not too many actual neutral ones...they just give the whole race a goodly tilt that just sickens me...they are supposed to be Neutral as a race, not Neutral good...as such, some of the excess good humans just plain need to die.

[Satyr]

When I use Goblinoids, they are normally the victims of human expansionism and ouzt for revenge; I really hate settings were ugly humanoids are automatically evil and humans are automatically good.
Because nothing prooves your goodness and your devotion for the good Because like a small genocide or two.

[Nerd-o-rama]

I tend to favor humans and other "PC" races in my games, which seem to usually be the violent side of normal politics. Non-plot-related encounters tend to be with actual predators like jungle cats or ankhegs or something, rather than just oddly-colored humanoids (and I do have a particular fondness for goblins, and would give no objection to them being played as player characters).

In fact, I don't think I've had a single villain group that wasn't primarily human or "close enough" (half-elf, elf, changeling, maybe a dwarf somewhere...), and this is only partly due to playing premade modules. Although the campaign I took over did technically start with A Dark and Stormy Knight, which features goblin mooks and a Bugzombie boss.

Actually, I did use a trio of not-very-talkative harpy mercenaries as mooks last time. But harpies aren't nearly as overused as orcs, kobolds, and goblinoids.

[shadow_archmagi]

Elves. Always fight elves. Immortality+No natural predators other than possibly orcs who really fail to kill them anyway=Overpopulation.

You have to kill them, or they'll overpopulate and die out in droves! Its the merciful thing to do!

[AslanCross]

Elves. Always fight elves. Immortality+No natural predators other than possibly orcs who really fail to kill them anyway=Overpopulation.

You have to kill them, or they'll overpopulate and die out in droves! Its the merciful thing to do!

Of course you're kidding, but elves have very low birth rates according to Races of the Wild.

[Baxbart]

I say wipe 'em out... just to be on the safe side.

[Tempest Fennac]

My approach would be to have an Eberron-like set-up where creatures are equally likely to be of any alignment while ignoring the listed alignments. (This would be much more realistic the the standard system). Something else you could do is only use the Law-Chaos axis for determining what most of the cultures are like (eg: have Lupin and Hobgoblin societies, as well as most of the members of the society, as Lawful, while having Elf and Gnoll societies as Chaotic). I know that some societies could be seen as evil (eg: Ocearnia in 1984), but you could just have the leaders as Evil while having the ordinary people in such a society as Hopeless Neutral.

[Xuincherguixe]

Might be an interesting campaign setting if there were none of the "mook" races.

So, you'd have to be killing humans/dwarves/elves.

The Good races need to fight with each other more often :P

[Saph]

You're saying we should stop killing goblins in our adventures?

I'm shocked. Shocked and dismayed. To be killed and looted by low-level adventurers is the reason for goblinoid existence. You racial environmentalist types just never see the big picture. If goblins are displaced from their position as the primary low-level D&D antagonist, who's going to ensure they get parts in adventure modules? Oh, sure, you probably think the charities will do it, but they're not made of money, you know, and there are so many neglected monsters out there that don't get enough recognition as it is.

You need to pay proper attention to the ecosystem. Goblin supply is linked to goblin deaths. As long as goblins are getting killed, there'll always be more goblins. However, as soon as goblins stop getting killed, they'll vanish. Really, it's simple. :P

- Saph

[Yami]

Here here!

Unless of course, you have goblin Pc's (Which I have a fondness for.) But I should point out that it's also not so hard to allow the players to meet a party of goblins under friendlier circumstances.

But as I often DM, and few if any of my players ever even consider the race before they find something more suited to thier style. Well, there's little else to do but inflict upon them the Burning Twilight clan. A few class levels and a bit of tacticry and I've give the goblins some much needed respect in the eyes of my players.

In one campaign they actually hired on a goblin warrior as a hireling since he was so much trouble to fight.

[Morty]

I recently noticed one funny thing: elves and dwarves are "usually good", yet noone blinks when they see an evil dwarf or elf. Goblins, kobolds and drow are "usually evil", bu good or neutral goblin or drow are looked upon with shock and sometimes treated as Drizzt clones. Orcs are often CE, which means there are less evil orcs than evil goblins, but orcs are usually 100% evil as well.
Of course, goblinoids and orcs do need a break.

[Tyger]

I threw out racial alignments completely in my newest campaign. Of course, in this one, any living and sentient creature is automatically assumed to be a citizen of the empire, and randomly killing them is murder. :)

[Zenos]

I like sending hordes of lvl 1 elven warriors at the PC's, just because I dislike the "elite army" thing about them.

[Worira]

“The concept of a fair fight is meaningless in their society. They favor ambushes, overwhelming odds, dirty tricks, and any other edge they can devise . . . goblins have a poor grasp of strategy and are cowardly by nature, tending to flee the field if a battle turns against them.”

Indeed. Cowardly swine, attacking from the bushes, fleeing when the battle turns against them. For shame. Clearly, a “poor grasp of strategy.” Nothing like elves . . .

From the 3E Monster Manual:

“Elves are cautious warriors . . . maximizing their advantage by using ambushes, snipers, and camouflage. They prefer to fire from cover and retreat before they are found, repeating this maneuver until all of their enemies are dead.”

Heh. Now I want to run a raid on a goblin warren, and at the end say "Okay, everyone change their alignment to Evil."

[Emperor Demonking]

That quote is brilliant.

Sendd the after halflings. The only ones you'd be remotely surprised about are half-elves (too boring), gnomes (done too many times) and halflings.

[Artanis]

I'm gonna go with Elves as well, not just because they're a stereotypically "good" race, but because there's "evil" subraces of them. I mean, if you come across an evil human or dwarf, it's an evil human or dwarf, but an evil elf is usually a Drow or some other sort of "dark elf". So having the "good" elves - high, wood, etc. - be the bad guys would be an even bigger departure from the norm than it would with evil humans or whatnot.

[kamikasei]

A friend of mine seems to always genocide drow whenever he makes a homebrew world.

It's not really genocide if you make them un-be. There'd have to have been drow once, and an historical genocide that wiped them out. Which would a) be needlessly complicated, and b) paint the race what done it as Heroes of Everything.

[Lord Tataraus]

When I use Goblinoids, they are normally the victims of human expansionism and ouzt for revenge; I really hate settings were ugly humanoids are automatically evil and humans are automatically good.
Because nothing prooves your goodness and your devotion for the good Because like a small genocide or two.

Wow, one of my settings has it the other way around. The humans have the smallest population while the goblins basically own half the world in their empire.