Think of a weak enemy from any RPG system. Weak enough that your party could tear through it like tissue paper in their first encounter. Got one? Good.Now make it so badass that when your party sees it, they will almost always nope the fuck out of there.
>>43700995
Rule #1: Give it a fancy name. They won't fear some basic shit.
Flumphs.
Their touch turns magic items mundane. Irrevocably mundane. Items touched by a clumpy have to be melted down and recast just so they're possible to enchant.
This is kind of a thing in my setting. Not flumphs, but still.
>>43700995
> I will now Introduce you to Tucker's Kobolds.
From Dragon 127, pg. 3
Tucker's kobolds
This month's editorial is about Tucker's kobolds. We get letters on occasion asking for advice on creating high-level AD&D® game adventures, and Tucker's kobolds seem to fit the bill.
Many high-level characters have little to do because they're not challenged. They yawn at tarrasques and must be forcibly kept awake when a lich appears. The DMs involved don't know what to do, so they stop dealing with the problem and the characters go into Character Limbo. Getting to high level is hard, but doing anything once you get there is worse.
One of the key problems in adventure design lies in creating opponents who can challenge powerful characters. Singular monsters like tarrasques and liches are easy to gang up on; the party can concentrate its firepower on the target until the target falls down dead and wiggles its little feet in the air. Designing monsters more powerful than a tarrasque is self-defeating; if the group kills your super-monster, what will you do next—send in its mother? That didn't work on Beowulf, and it probably won't work here.
Worse yet, singular supermonsters rarely have to think. They just use their trusty, predictable claw/claw/bite. This shouldn't be the measure of a campaign. These games fall apart because there's no challenge to them, no mental stimulation - no danger.
In all the games that I've seen, the worst, most horrible, most awful beyond-comparison opponents ever seen were often weaker than the characters who fought them. They were simply well-armed and intelligent beings who were played by the DM to be utterly ruthless and clever. Tucker's kobolds were like that.
> Continuing...
>>43701080
Tucker ran an incredibly dangerous dungeon in the days I was stationed at Ft. Bragg, N.C. This dungeon had corridors that changed all of your donkeys into huge flaming demons or dropped the whole party into acid baths, but the demons were wienies compared to the kobolds on Level One. These kobolds were just regular kobolds, with 1-4 hp and all that, but they were mean. When I say they were mean, I mean they were bad, Jim. They graduated magna cum laude from the Sauron Institute for the Criminally Vicious.
When I joined the gaming group, some of the PCs had already met Tucker's kobolds, and they were not eager to repeat the experience. The party leader went over the penciled map of the dungeon and tried to find ways to avoid the little critters, but it was not possible. The group resigned itself to making a run for it through Level One to get to the elevators, where we could go down to Level Ten and fight "okay" monsters like huge flaming demons.
It didn't work. The kobolds caught us about 60' into the dungeon and locked the door behind us and barred it. Then they set the corridor on fire, while we were still in it.
"NOOOOOO!!!" screamed the party leader. "It's THEM! Run!!!"
Thus encouraged, our party scrambled down a side passage, only to be ambushed by more kobolds firing with light crossbows through murder holes in the walls and ceilings. Kobolds with metal armor and shields flung Molotov cocktails at us from the other sides of huge piles of flaming debris, which other kobolds pushed ahead of their formation using long metal poles like broomsticks. There was no mistake about it. These kobolds were bad.
We turned to our group leader for advice.
"AAAAAAGH!!!" he cried, hands clasped over his face to shut out the tactical situation.
> Continuing...
>>43701102
We abandoned most of our carried items and donkeys to speed our flight toward the elevators, but we were cut off by kobold snipers who could split-move and fire, ducking back behind stones and corners after launching steel-tipped bolts and arrows, javelins, hand axes, and more flaming oil bottles. We ran into an unexplored section of Level One, taking damage all the time. It was then we discovered that these kobolds had honeycombed the first level with small tunnels to speed their movements. Kobold commandos were everywhere. All of our hirelings died. Most of our henchmen followed. We were next.
I recall we had a 12th-level magic user with us, and we asked him to throw a spell or something. "Blast 'em!" we yelled as we ran. "Fireball 'em! Get those little @#+$%*&!!"
"What, in these narrow corridors? " he yelled back. "You want I should burn us all up instead of them?"
Our panicked flight suddenly took us to a dead-end corridor, where a giant air shaft dropped straight down into unspeakable darkness, far past Level Ten. Here we hastily pounded spikes into the floors and walls, flung ropes over the ledge, and climbed straight down into that unspeakable darkness, because anything we met down there was sure to be better than those kobolds.
>>43701111
We escaped, met some huge flaming demons on Level Ten, and even managed to kill one after about an hour of combat and the lives of half the group. We felt pretty good — but the group leader could not be cheered up.
"We still have to go out the way we came in," he said as he gloomily prepared to divide up the treasure.
Tucker's kobolds were the worst things we could imagine. They ate all our donkeys and took our treasure and did everything they could to make us miserable, but they had style and brains and tenacity and courage. We respected them and loved them, sort of, because they were never boring.
If kobolds could do this to a group of PCs from 6th to 12th level, picture what a few orcs and some low level NPCs could do to a 12th-16th level group, or a gang of mid-level NPCs and monsters to groups of up to 20th level. Then give it a try. Sometimes, it's the little things "used well" that count.
> End
>>43700995
Leeches
>every time you wade into swampwater, get a leech
>Long rests can end with waking up with several leeches on you
>Leeches ignore DR and deal 1 damage every X rounds, no save
>Healing does not remove them, nor cure disease spells.
>Buffs affect them too
>Can only be removed by first removing your armor and pulling them off
But the terror is not the leeches, but that every enemy takes advantage of them to get you to walk into puddles. They pepper you with low HIT moves to encourage high AC and cover. Noxious mushrooms release their gasses when lit on fire, and the water is too impure for cold to freeze them fast enough.
Rat
See the first quest in The Bard's Tale.Make it REALLY REALLY big
The goblin hero god, Pel, Who Bit the Sun.
To understand the significance of Pel I must first explain how goblinoids work in the setting, and how their lives are full of pain. Unlike most species, human included, they do not have an immortal soul. When a goblin dies he simply ceases to exist. This has caused fear, envy, anger, and a terrible existential dread over the entirety of goblinoids. Religions have been created and snuffed out, and a rememberance culture created. A hobgoblin willing to go to war is much more significant than a man, because they know that dying is the end for them. Empires have been built in stark defiance, an attempt to make others as lowly as them.
This remembrance culture, in the military, takes the form of records and totems and each unit has, having each member who has ever died whilst in the unit inscribed on it. Before a battle they will shout the names of each of them, so as to ensure they are not forgotten.
Very occasionally a goblinoid will leave a trace on the world, a tangible existence that goes beyond death. It isn't intelligent, can't rightfully be referred to as a god by most understanding, but they are there none the less. One of them is the story of Pel, the goblin who dreamed of eating the sun.
>>43701458
Not much is known any longer about Pel, as he is old enough to have slipped past all living memory and from history into myth. What is known however is that Pel is the reason the world now has eclipses, and Pel's name adorns the Elorin Third's memory totems, the second name on it after the founder. It is also the first name on the Elorin Fifths, the army he founded.
These two forces were caught together one, some hundred years ago. Them and others were caught, with no supplies, and cornered by a human military. In the dead of night they knew the attack would be coming that morning, so in the darkness they began to shout. The names of each who had died. Going farther and farther back. Then, in the morning, just as the sun was coming up and the humans began to charge, Pel's name was said, and Pel answered. The battlefield was thrown into sudden darkness, sending the human army into disarray, and giving the goblinoids time to not only run, but butcher the human cavalry on the way out.
Pel himself is a being I have run as an encounter, and a temple built in his honor by ancient goblins a dungeon. It actually leads you to what is called a Burning Truth, something that is not meant to be known by mortals. One can only get to it if they answer Pel's riddle correctly, and the only ones who can do that are true goblinoids.
How does that sound?
>>43700995
Zombies... does just whipping out one of the scarier varieties of walking corpses like vampires or Frankenstein's monsters count?
>>43701473
Awesome idea, boyski.
>>43700995
Done and done.
>>43700995
Hovering butler droids.
My players still fear and loathe butlers, liquid soap, and swimming pools.
>>43701035
>clumpy
Ah, the woes of autocorrect.
>>43702189
I must hear this story.
>>43702544
> It's 23 ABY. My players are young adult Jedi, not yet Knights but old enough and worldly enough to be entrusted with missions, after the Shadow Academy attack on the Jedi Praxeum.
>> This is Star Wars, in case you didn't get that already.
> My players are sent to Coruscant to investigate the undercity, reports of a lightsaber battle in the undercity.
> The group arrives to find a few Shadow Academy students cut apart, a few days old, and someone's been making a funeral pyre for them, out of whatever trash they could find. It's been slow going, because...
>> The person who schooled the Shadow Academy noobs was Mace motherfucking Windu, 90+ years old and literally one-handed.
> My players lose their shit, their characters pass knowledge checks to recognize him, shit loss proceeds IC.
> Mace doesn't want to fly to Yavin IV with them. He's resigned himself to living his last days as a hermit in the rust, but there is something he needs to do before he dies, that he was never able to do himself.
>> My players thus find themselves on a mission from Mace Windu to break into an old safehouse once owned by Palpatine in a nice upscale arcology block that dates from before the Trade Federation Invasion of Naboo.
>> Palps had used it up until the Declaration of the New Order, and went there once to drop off some stuff he felt he would no longer need.
>> Including a Sith Urn-type thing containing the spirits of Sassee Tiin and the other Jedi who got chumped in that fight.
(cont.)
>>43702625
> They explore the place. Thanks to some puppy-dog-eyed begging, they convince Mace to get a shower and a fresh set of clothes and come with them. Also with them is a teenaged former Shadow Academy student who turned coat in mid-battle once one of the players realized she didn't want to be fighting them and was ordered to hold the line against them by way of a blaster pointed at her back. Her name is Arc.
> The players enter, find the skeleton of a fucking Tarentatek, dead since just before the Battle of Endor. It was killed by Darth fucking Vader.
> Next room: Tunkata Sith Hound droids and a Rakatan War Droid. The players and Mace take these down easily, but Mace's heart goes boingo, and they sit him down on a couch with Arc to watch, proceeding further in.
> Head into a home fitness area, containing a large swimming pool, several walk-in showers and a sauna area.
> Hovering Butler Droids approach, ask if they can take the players' cloaks.
>> Players say no thank you, we're not going for a swim.
>> Very good, sirs.
(Cont.)
>>43702647
> Suddenly: A torrent of liquid hand soap begins spraying from the fire suppression system. Onto the slick tile floor. Everyone that has to resist gravity without the aid of repulsorlifts now must make checks just to remain standing, harder checks to move, and very hard checks to move far.
> Butlers have extendo-arms that let them make unarmed melee attacks beyond lightsaber range.
> They also have Improved Trip and Bantha Rush feats.
> Butlers proceed to try tripping everybody off their feet and pushing them into the pool.
> Butlers begin making progress, slow, but progress, as the players desperately try to find a way to stay on their feet and not get bantha-rushed back, knocked down, and especially into the pool.
> Eventually one player is forced into the water.
>> At this point, in the original trap design, RELEASE_the_KRAKEN.jpg
>> But that creature's long-dead since it's been like, 40 years.
>> So backup trap engages.
> Liquid nitrogen begins pouring from the ceiling, threatening to freeze anyone treading water in place, and freeze anyone under the water's surface under a cap of ice.
> Through heroic effort (read: they finally got a string of dice luck, decided to start spending Force Points, and start using Force Powers, respectively,) players disable/destroy some of the droids.
> One droid left.
> One of my players used Move Object to force it into the pool.
> The Iron Knight goes into Iron Man flight, flies over the swimming pool, takes a satchel charge (provided by Kyle Katarn,) out of his chassis, sets it to < 1 round detonation, drops it.
> Droid parts, water, and ice fountain up against the ceiling as depth charge goes off.
> My players now hate butlers, liquid soap, swimming pools, and the Benny Hill theme.
> They also had to stop Arc, who filmed the whole thing, from uploading it to Space YouTube. She was unable to help them because she was laughing so hard. So was Mace.
>>43700995
>Level 20 Flumph Berserker Barbarian of Khorne.
>>43701122
>>43701111
>>43701102
>>43701080
So the only thing that makes Tucker's Kobold's scary is that the GM didn't just have them fling themselves at the PCs like every other GM would normally do?
>skeletons
>>43707143
That's a good use for a spoiler.
>>43707068
One of my players described that room as "a deathtrap whose construction Palpatine outsourced to the Joker."
>>43707143
AND NOW THE TRUE TEST--
Reynauld's resolve is tested...
>>43700995
>weak enemy
Slime
>badass
You are actually walking on him.
>>43707095
Pretty much. They fought like PCs, not monsters.
