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This is the best analysis i've seen of Strahd 😮 👏👏👏👏👏👏

Kobolds aren't cowardly, they just understand the value of a strategic retreat.

level one: like goblins but smart formations level two: ...and they use traps too level three: literally just cheesed and tpk'd

if you like this video it is likely you will enjoy Kobolds in Pathfinder 2e

Having seen some actual plays now, Daggerheart really impresses me. Initially I thought it would be sort of rules light with a focus on rp, but it's nothing like I expected. The mechanics are well-designed, smooth, and easy enough to understand for anyone new to rpg's or just to DH. The no initiative system works very well; the mechanics enable the DM to take actions whenever it fits. And the character depth, within what is indeed a simpler system than D&D, is meaty enough to inspire without drowning in "drama." And I really like the use of cards for ease of reference and efficiency (it's not a card game, thank the gods). Along with DC20, Shadowdark, and now Nimble, this looks like one of the most promising rpg's to come along in a while. (And yes, I'm a big CR fan, but I'm an rpg fan first, and if their game sucked, I'd say so.) It's a good time for gamers. Roll on!

Even if you can't add Industrialize level of traps, you should consider the following: Goblin are War Bands, While Kobold is a Hoplite-like units.

In my game setting, I generally consider Kobolds to be a mix of their different inspirations. A small but clever and tenacious dragonkin that, while distantly related dragons and have draconic features, also have more beast-like traits that have developed over the years. Usually those of that resemble canines, rodents, mustelids, or civets. They are scavenging tricksters by nature, but also develop a strong sense of loyalty to their comrades. And their small frames pack a bizarrely strong punch. Now imagine a group of the little shits...

Tucker's kobolds have left a rather big impression on me, so i always correlate kobolds with traps and fortifications

Posting this before fully watching. To further muddy the waters of what a kobold is… I did some research into this topic myself, and some olde english texts suggested that the kobold was a kind of house sprite that resembled a candle.

As proud as a dragon at the height of a hobbit with the ingenuity of a gnome, twice the strategist of a goblin, because in most worldbuilds, they are durable as wet one-ply toilet paper

Kobolds are diminutive faerie folk, akin to knockers, brownies, boggarts etc. Homogenised D&D can go stick it with their silly anthropomorphic zootopia approach. I'm surprised 5e players aren't running around in furry suits, like that bloke in The Shining.

"You, no take candle!"

Kobolds are one of my favorite monsters for low level interactions, and I frequently set them up as a community to be interacted with, rather than a specified antagonist. The one characteristic I've kind of rationalized for them is enthusiasm combined with a short attention span. They live underground, tunneling, which is exceedingly hard work. But they done build grand cities, like dwarves. So i figured a sort of spontaneous enthusiasm must account for their willingness to do hard work. The short attention span means they're always changing focus, instead of remaining on a single task. This accounts for the fact that they dont accomplish much. I include the normal array of other attributes, excepting that i never build them as physically strong. In roleplay, all of their responses are more extreme than warranted. When they're suspicious, they'll accuse you of insane conspiracies. Then they're angry, they're sadistic and vicious. But... When they're happy it's time for a festival. When they're curious... it's time for an adventure.

🤔 . . . Now I’m thinking of Kobolds as some sort of elitist SWAT team or SpecOps unit, especially in a WW2 setting/scenario. As for what they look like, if I could think of some sort of paleontological origin, it’d be the ancestors of mammals, primarily by the arrangement of their teeth, but they’re still reptilian in every other way, thus making them similar yet different to a group of ‘dragons’ who also share that same/similar layout of teeth & such…

D&D player since 1984 here. They are indistinguishable because Gary Gygax and his buddies were just winging it and making up random stuff with no cohesion, so there's too many low-level mooks in the books. In my campaigns I just... don't use them, as goblins already fill the role.

For Kobolds in specific I suggest you leave D&D for background and focus in a still unfinished computer game named Ravager (assuming we are among adults). The best thing D&D did to make the race interesting, and distinct, was to marry it with dragons. Anytime you step on the head of a kobold you should have reason to ask yourself if that kobold and his band are an independent enterprise, or part of a larger structure. If they have the choice to work for a dragon they will do that. And any kind of dragon can take insult if you step on the heads of those little cousins who are working for him. Specially if you do that by no good reason. Don't you take as an insult when someone step on the heads of your weak cousins? Of course you do. Specially when your cousins are indeed working for you by the time when they are stepped on.

I just straight up removed kobolds from my games. Instead my players have to contend with cannibal roachfolk and geomantic molerat-people.

Why keep playing d&d when wotc and hasbro don’t care about employees nor customers, and seem to hate dms?

Kobold is just German for Goblin, coming from the same Greek root, but like a lot of realworld mythical creatures they were forever changed in pop culture by the popularity of dungeons and dragons. It's like how movies changed the common view of vampires, who don't disintegrate in sunlight in any old myths, and werewolves, who have nothing to do with the full moon in folklore.

I seem to remember kobolds in 2nd edition’s “book of huminoids” as a playable race. I grew up with 2nd editions and Baldur’s gate 1 and 2, so I’m much more familiar with the rat dog kobolds. Kobolds as draconic has always been extremely weird to me. All this means that when I hear kobold, I think of the rat-dog men, cruel, clever, cooperative. Jealous and backstabby internally, but presenting a united front to outsiders which is uncommonly strong among the villainous races.

I see kobolds like the minions from the Overlord games.

Between being introduced to Kobolds in the 2e MM and codified by World of Warcraft, I always picture and play Kobolds as lil' rat guys.

I like Palladium Fantasy description of Kobolds,

Kobolds , goblins and orcs being the same in the original version makes sense since original dnd is based on Tolkien. He invented the term orc which was a sinonim for goblin . And goblin and kobold are the english and german version of the same creature , originally descended from a pre christian greek mythology/legend/folk tales.

1:30 good day *snort snort* i am pig

I don’t play d&d, but like how you focus on details for adventure in the shadowfell, and will definitely incorporate. Very, very nice vid.

To me, the best way to go about doing a kobold encounter is to make them look weak and very coward. However only the weak part is true, and only applies when they have lower numbers. Their plan? clever and full of trickery, draw player into a overconfidence and get them to overstep, that is when Kobold start the shenanigans, with a mix of Viet Cong guerrilla tactics with (if player are smart enough to get around the traps) a well organize formation combat that appear chaotic, so opponents have a hard time readying it. Even better if said kobolds have resources to build stuff, some contraptions that just keep getting better and better in a quite trial and error style, but with a element of brilliance, that is learning from the pass success and failure and even using crude theories. now, What if a kobold is picked alone and does not have much on the way of ruining? well, like a angry cat you do not wanna get close, as they will bite slash and overall be very aggressive and fast, making picking one up a bad idea. overall, Kolbods are to dragons what a house cat is to a tiger, yet they worked together to improve their colony and use their intellect to build contraptions and machinery making up for they weakness and even automate stuff.

Despite what is in this video, in the latest games, kobolds and goblins end up filling the same niche, that of weak, small, nasty, subterranean humanoids with a disposition for ambushes and traps and an annoying photophobia. In my settings, I tend to either use only one of the two races, since having both is kinda redundant, or merge them in a single race with hobgoblins and bugbears. In the latter case, they are basically separate castes within the same social race, based on the basic typology of characters in any fantasy game: goblins are the roguish scout/scavenger kind, hobgoblins are the warriors, bugbears are the shamans, while kobolds are the sorcerers and enchanters. Since they have a somewhat nomadic clannish/tribal stone-age or bronze-age society, they can be used in a far greater number of ways. And they do not need light sensitivity either. They can be made more or less evil and mischievous as needed too, so to change the spectrum of possible interactions with the player characters. The castes can also explain whatever difference in appearance I would imagine, mainly due to interbreeding between a limited number of individuals or by selective reproduction.

My kobolds are still evil scaly humanoid chihuahuas -- they are also still chaotic, and often worship Loki as an inspiration for tricks and traps. Of course, this is because I still play editions where that (except for the religion) was the official description. If I were to include them in an original game of my own creation, however, I would probably turn them back into something closer to evil gnomes, at least for their physical appearance, though possibly making them cobalt blue in color.

In this cases, Kobold is no longer an identity but rather a niche and affinity thats includes Goblin and Orc

I also suspect the reason for the split in the depiction of kobolds is that during the 1980s D&D was actually two different games: Advanced (1st then 2nd editions that eventually continued on which is what your video focused on) and Basic (B/X then BECMI). I think in the default setting for Basic (Mystara/The Known World) kobolds, goblins, and orc all had a common ancestry of a race beast men created by an Entropic immortal to serve her: so pig men orcs, dog like kobolds, degenerate hodge-podge genetic grab bag goblins. Maybe I'm half remembering.

I really dislike 3e's interpretation of the Kobold as a tiny lizard man/dragonborn critter. A rat/dog/goblinoid makes far more sense given their niche. Something that's part dragon shouldn't be the weakest of low-level monsters. Also, Kobolds have been playable since the 2e Book of Humanoids.

It's weird that they'd be considered cowardly, given their beliefs. Goblins are cowardly because death means a one-way trip to Maglubiyet's army and an eternity of torment and suffering. Kobolds, on the other hand, believe in a very direct form of reincarnation; you die, you pop back out of the next egg in the nest. So long as the nest is safe, a Kobold with strong faith will see themselves as functionally immortal. So, in reality, kobolds should be comically fearless.

I both love and hate that Dungeon Meshi's Kobolds are basically dogs.

Kobolds tend to change designs based on what RPG franchise they’re in 1. Dungeons and Dragons-Lizard 2. World of Warcraft-Rat 3. Sword Art Online-Dog 4. Delicious in Dungeons-Dog 5. Sacred 2-Goblin 6. Kingdoms of Amalur-Dog 7. Critical Role-Lizard

Kobolds could teach the world the strategy of Defense in Depth, love kobolds and their scrappy nature not seen in their stat sheet

For some reason I remember a GM who had us run through a joke campaign. The idea was that we were stuck having to deal with the Kobold wars... Were the different versions of Kobolds were at war at one another from the rat, dog, and lizard varieties all fighting one another to see which version got to claim the true title of Kobold.

I'm excited by kobolds because they are, above all, funny little guys

Confuse yourself and look up Germany's most popular kobold 'Pumuckl'

Any bad reputation D&D kobalds have, they inflicted on themselves. May not still be canon, but in older times, they essentially put all their idiots and screw ups into what could be called suicide units, and would send them out on doomed attacks on invaders so they'd go back to report how easy it was, only to encounter the real traps and stuff deeper in.

I tend to run Kobolds like a group of human fighters against giants. Clerics, Alchemist assistance, kobold gear should be lovingly crafted, these brave members of the tribe are the first line of defence for a race that knows they need every advantage. Make the front line fighters, they should be soldiers trained for this precise sacrifice. That idea should inform your decision to retreat and how they deal with defeat. Tend to run goblins as anything from evil children to despotic barbarians depending on culture and player level. Goblins tend to run more to the Evil Wizard arcatype, even when they do have clerics, they rarely dish heals or competently buff the group. Even the standard fighters of the group act like rogues. Militarily Goblins should feel like a group of street toughs trying to get while the getting is good. each is in it for themselves, sure they support, but if leaving another member of the group to die improves their chances even a little they will let him die. I honestly have a harder time with Orcs, are Orcs just another barbarian race? Making one in four a barbarian rager would significantly impact their feel I think, but could your table survive? Personally, I blame WarCraft, I played so much of the orc campaign, before I ever read The Lord of the Rings.

Kuro is the ultimate kobold. lol

The example you gave from 2e was a poor one. That piece of art from the AD&D second edition monsters compendium, drawn by Tony Di’Terlizzi, Suffers from him, taking too much artistic license with it. I think he was going for something that had a face like a Chihuahua with horns. Very few other depictions of Kobolds in 2e look like that. Most of them have faces more like pugs or bulldogs. One example of this would be in the complete book of humanoids, the first place in 2e at least that kobolds Our present us playable characters. One other thing, I’m surprised you’ve lost over in the history of kobolds Is there association with cobalt mining and the illness the cobalt minor suffered from exposure to that element. Those poisonings were blamed on the spirits of the mines, the kobolds.

You say wrong, I say doggy

World of Warcraft has arguably the most iconic and distinct depiction of kobolds tbh. They're always found in mines, keep their candles close, they have actual lore relating to the old gods, their voices are iconic. The world doesn't need need more dragonkin and it certainly doesn't need more dog people (werewolves and gnolls and beastmen aren't sufficient??) but little vaguely naked-mole-rat-like miner people stand out.

The problem with kobolds is that goblins, elves, fairies, sprites, some minor gods, and kobolds are essentially the same creatures sharing the same origins, but diverging over time. It’s the opposite problem of the current dnd halflings and gnomes where they have evolved to the point where a lot of people can’t really distinguish them from one another and their differences have started to feel superficial.

I'm running a Ravenloft campaign, and I created a domain which is populated largely by kobolds and other draconic creatures. Its Dark Lord is even a former kobold who is cursed to reincarnate as a random dragon monster every so often.

dragons mighty! kobold is dragon! kobold mighty!

The description of the playable Kobold race from 5e Volo's guide does say that kobolds being cowardly and weak is a misconception. And their 2 main race feats do show their cunning by having pack tactics and being able to use "cower, grovel and beg" to distract enemies so that others have an easier time to attack them

Good use of the DunMeshi reference.