Mike Mearls Games
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Apprentice Tier Kobolds
🕑 Added 2025-02-20 14:00:12 +0000 UTCToday I have a set of kobolds you can use with Odyssey. I built them using the spreadsheet from last week. I also wanted to use kobolds as an opportunity to show off my design approach for humanoids.
Dungeon Dwellers
I love dungeons, and I wanted each humanoid type to have a clear reason to hang around dungeons. For kobolds, they love to pick off adventurers or monsters - preferably while they are low on hit points - in order to steal their magic items. The puny kobolds keep to the upper levels or keep near the entrance, where it is safer and they are more likely to catch adventurers retreat back to town.
Culture and Divinity
I love the idea of each deity having a close relationship to the creatures it creates. In this case, the kobold god is a conniving, cowardly jerk. Who else would create undersized, puny, runts? I liked the idea of a god terrified of their own followers, to the point that they sabotage their own creation. The kobold god Uthnok labors under the fear of a prophecy that a kobold will one day replace them. Hidden away in his lair and reliant on his followers for all information about the world, he alternates between cultivating the most promising kobolds into useful agents and sending them to their doom on ill-considered expeditions or by fomenting accusations of heresy against them.
I also hope that this sets up the potential for some interesting roleplay with kobolds, as the players must navigate their weird local traditions in belief.
My goal is to create an inspiring core story that lets you use kobolds as irredeemable bastards fit only for slaying, weirdo cultists that the players can interact with, or something in between. I like to design narrative elements that can fit what the DM and players want out of the game.
Let me know how this looks!
Comments
MrStitch
I just saw it too. Great stuff!
Forest Green
d20fanclub
Have you done an ogre mage yet? I was just reading this the other day ("Monster Makeover: Ogre Mage", an article you wrote in 07): https://web.archive.org/web/20161031220119/http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dd/20060721a I thought some of its insights still seem really sharp, like switching from cone of cold to lightning bolt so that it can thread the spell area through its ogre minions. One thing still irked me, just like the oni/ogre mages of 4e and 5e—it's not really a mage at all, it still only has one attack spell.... Thinking of it as an elite to pair with ogre troopers creates a lot of cool possibilities though. Something like a swift benign transposition could double as a way to help ogre minions get into melee range of enemies and a way to escape behind its ogre minions when threatened. Very random, sorry. Not even sure if you'd remember that article, I just came across it recently while prepping for the ogre mage fight in WPM.
