How does /tg/ like their kobolds? Do you like them as dragon worshipping fanatics, or enslaved groups used for the most menial of menial tasks. Are they smart enough socially to expand beyond basic cultures or do you like them in more sprawling underground cities?
An alternate question. What roles do lizardmen and similar creatures play in your games. I personally use them for the ancient pre-human race that has been there since the dawn of time and the truly old jungle tribes might ride or tame dinosaurs and similar creatures.
Do any of these scaled creatures have any relation to dragons typically in your games, and what sort of relationship do they have with other races?
>>44088182
>How do I like my Kobolds
Not really a fan of the race.
>What roles do lizardmen and similar creatures play in your games?
Generally fodder for when I need to pad out encounters in swamps or rivers.
I'm writing up a new campaign, though. And in it, I'm going to give them a more prominent role, and give them a caste-based society. A society that has Dragonborn, Lizardfolk, and Kobolds in it.
I just need to figure out how to incorporate Nagas into it.
>>44088182
I like them as diverse. There have been, or perhaps currently are, kobold-dominated kingdoms with respectable magic and technological levels.
At the same time, there are also kobolds who are slaves to dragons and dwarven lands who toil in mines with little knowledge of science or magic.
Same as humans really. You've got primitives with no metalwork who serve in a dark cult serving their demonic master, and polytheistic artisans in the center of commerce and technology creating works of art. You can really go to either extreme and it works.
Species doesn't equal culture after all. They're linked, and heavily influenced. But there's no monoculture across a species.
The "stereotypical" kobold lives apart from humans in a kobold warren though. Practical technological levels approximately the same as humans, but they lack trade links or theoretical underpinnings. So you get complicated traps and impressive subterranean architecture for the materials available, but things like their magic is largely sorcery and instinct-driven.
Same again for lizardfolk basically, except they're marshland and swamp dwellers rather than warrens. More martial. more nature magic than arcane or draconic.
>>44088242
Nagas being magically superior to many other ancient races like them usually ruled over and built vast societies. In the pathfinder settings they even magically created their own race of lizardmen to be their slave race.
You might be able to put them as some sort of higher level aristocratic group.
>>44088266
I suppose the OP mostly meant how do you typically enjoy your kobolds in your campaign in general. In my mind, most of them are on the lower end of the advance spectrum, while they are still very intelligent craftsmen and tinkerers, they just dont bother building their cultures too much, so they end up with fanciful works of clockwork and the like, while still being run by a chieftan or their dragon patron.
>>44088294
I haven't touched any pathfinder material, but sounds interesting.
Since my campaign takes place place many years after a world-shattering cataclysm, I could remove the bulk of dragons in my setting, and make Nagas the aristocratic ruling class.
>>44088309
You could also imagine them as just below dragons, or similar to the other very powerful more serpentine monsters. Since they are powerful magically, any dragon would recognize that trait and like them more, typically.
The nagaji, the race the nagas created, are actually quite cool in their own way.
>>44088308
>clockwork
...why haven't I made a clockwork kobold warren yet again? It's so obvious.
>>44088182
I like them as layed out in races of the dragon for 3e
at its most basic they need 2 things to be at least acceptable though
trap skills
dragon worship
hate gnomes (or at least the gnomish gods I don't mind tolerance of the occasional heretical gnome)
one of my favourite things about the races of the dragon kobolds is that a large part of why people consider them so small a threat is because they want it that way but that's not vital like the above 3 things are.
>>44088323
I'm going to put in a system where Dragon scales are imbued with magic, and transplanted on the various reptilian races, to enhance their powers.
If I remove dragons though, I could enforce a feeling of degeneration in the setting. Or make dragons look more like serpents.
>>44088266
Here is another question. Seeing as in general, kobolds collect underground materials such as metals and stones and gems as their livelyhood, how do you see them interacting with other groups that do similar? Such as orcs, drow, and other underground races or more industrial groups?
This is of course assuming they have their own groups and are not simply part of a bigger multiracial kingdom or the like.
>>44088351
There generally are serpentine dragons as well as the general western type, such as the imperial dragons, or my favorite, the shen.
Been tempted to refluff kobolds into something resembling pic related,
>>44088413
Salamanders?
>>44088356
Headcanoning with wild abandon here.
Drow generally dwell deeper than kobolds, so there's little interaction. On the whole, they keep a cautious distance from each other. They don't have much the other wants. Deep kobold clans may adopt some drow features in their culture. Spider pets, art influence, particularly sadistic traps.
Dwarves, enemies. Can span from business rivals to outright warfare.There's some bad blood there. Kobolds tend to strip mine and leave, dwarves use every bit of the rock. The more friendly ones will trade where appropriate. If one has a tin mine and the other a copper mine, and they want bronze... yeah it just makes sense.
Fuck gnomes.
I like my kobolds adorableand sexy.
That being said, I always think of them being underdogs. They're looked down upon and treated as second class citizens, and slaves more often than not, but they're frightfully optimistic, and they're capable of incredible things.
Lizardmen/dragonborn, on the other hand, are a fierce and proud race, but can be prone to letting it go to their heads, with frightening results.
>>44088445
Salamanders with priests that officiate ritual combat, using the skin colors of the victor and the defeated to make prophecies related to the domains of the gods each color represents.
>>44088182
Just like my issue of King and Country. Strong, soft and thoroughly absorbent
>>44088472
Generally makes sense on the whole. Something I read in a book with info on old 3.5 and pathfinder style dwarf culture is they view kobolds and the like as wastes of resources, and often beat them off any valuable materials if they meet in the mines. Generally kobolds selling or trading what they mine to the less savory races such as orcs, goblins, gnolls, and the like. If they interact with a dragon, acting under it's command when dealing with others beyond.
In my D&D setting they live somewhat hardscrabble lives in the highest reaches of the Everdark (it's really hard to come up with a good alternative name for the Underdark ok?).
There are distinct populations, with an almost religious schism between them, in the more southerly reaches they're dragon worshippers, and if a tribe isn't serving one, they're looking for one to serve, and thus migratory.
More to the north they worship a pantheon of cthonic deities; this group has given rise to the bloodlines with an especially strong natural understanding of and inclination to traps. This group only migrates if they're threatened.
Both groups get by with subsistence farming of fungal crops. Being slender but hardy they also make good miners, and some tribes make a good living off of ore, metal, or gems they sell to both surface and deeper dwellers. They both resort to banditry as needed. The migratory groups of the dragon worshipers sometimes sell their services as mercenaries; the trapkeeners sell their devices or services as trap makers or springers.
Dragons don't have much interest in enslaving the trapkenner kind, especially when they can just find some dragon worshippers. Too much effort, not appealing enough to their vanity.
Pretty much every culture has their own origin story of course. The dune living lizard folk believe that they were dropped to this land (a sort of pan-dimensional prison plane) as punishment for a misdeed done in the true world. The marsh dwelling ones believe that they're the direct children of the Great Mother, and that other races are basically mutations of her cast-off pieces of body (humans are born from the liquids from her nicitating membranes; goblins and orcs were scale tics, etc). The jungle dwelling ones believe that all thinking races were born of fruit from the world tree, but that many have forgotten their assigned and proper place to drop seeds.
>>44088532
why not just call it the underdark then.
This whole thread has got me thinking. I've had these notes and stuff for a lower power kobold themed campaign but I have not been able to find a stable enough group to actually it. If any interest maybe I can actually set it up.
>>44088554
Can webefriendthem?
>>44088559
You misunderstand anon, you are the kobold.
>>44088566
Would it be on Rolld20/Skype?
>>44088566
Oh, neat.
Can webefriendother beastly races?
>>44088578
Yeah, if anyone is interested drop a line at sandy.dragonheart on skype.
>>44088532
Your setting seems interesting at first glance. Where do more powerful creatures like dragons, demons, and the like stand about?
>>44088532
>it's really hard to come up with a good alternative name for the Underdark ok?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZzgAjjuqZM
>>44088597
>oh hey this could be interesting..
>same DM from last time
>>44088532
They're all varying degrees of wrong, of course.
Whatever they're origin, they're physically very adapted to their environments, which makes them typically more successful there specifically than the humans and elves with whom they occasionally fight for space, but less able to expand beyond their natural habitat. Like many more bestial races, they tend to be very culturally hidebound, with less of a creative spark and willingness to invent or try new things or new points of view. They've eventually take to using new technology when they get it, but mostly don't go looking for it.
For serpent people I ended up making my own (pretty vaguely inspired by yuan-ti), and calling them naga (I removed or combined the existing naga creatures with these ones). They're a diverse group of serpent people, many with natural magical powers, particularly mental manipulation and shapeshifting. The highest castes can be nearly immortal, and with great age and natural ability can practically become demi-gods. They can come as humanoid with serpent features, serpents with the heads of humans, "snake centaurs", etc. They're one of the oldest races, born of the mother of monsters, slavers from the before times before they were dealt their great defeat and mostly went into hiding.
>>44088638
Hey man, to be fair we never even got enough people to do it. I literally got a post from one person.
>>44088663
I appreciate the shapeshifting aspect. In modern games and lores many people no longer include the shape shifting effects that many serpent based monsters had in the past stories and games. Or I suppose if they do, they glean over it.
>>44088548
I just really didn't like that name. I went through quite a number inspired by underworlds and caves and Earth names from a bunch of cultures, but none of them quite seemed to capture the right feeling, until I decided on Everdark, without even realizing I'd basically come full circle and had a name that almost sounded exactly the same.
>>44088663
I should type faster.
Anyways, dragonkin are believed to be either the result of strange magic (ala Dragon Lance), or the actual much diluted true breeding offspring of dragons.
Dragon worshipping kobolds of course believe that they're the creations of the dragon gods; though there's schisms over whether they're sort of younger siblings, which is mad hubris say the ones who believe they're fashioned from shed scales.
I'm sure there are tribes of lizardfolk here and there that decided to worship or otherwise pay fealty to a local dragon; and naga sometimes cut deals with them, but otherwise no direct connection.
>>44088761
Do dragonborn fit in anywhere? you know, the humanoids who volunteer to change into draconic shape as a path to enlightenment or what have you.
>>44088733
Thanks. I also really liked how that mythology kind of "rhymed" with lizard people conspiracies, which is exactly the kind of shit the naga pull in my setting: supplant key political figures with disguising magic in order to some day recreate their grand world spanning empire. Of course, they'd be much more successful if there weren't a dozen "kingdoms" (the largest is like 500 people maybe) constantly sabotaging each other on the main continent alone.
>>44088597
I'm glad it sounds interesting. I spent a lot of time with the various monster manuals open trying to plot out a continent with a sort of real feeling distribution and interaction between different races and creatures and their preferred ecologies.
As for dragons, they're almost universally considered a very old and primal race. The most standard shared religious belief set contains powerful dragon gods.
As for how they work, they can be very individualistic, even among one color. Some prefer to bully or manipulate other races into doing part of the work for them, others are too solitary to accept even worshipful admiration. But whatever type they all set up a lair, get food, and get treasure in whatever manner appeals to them.
Outsiders like demons are generally restricted in how they interact with the Mundus, but they constantly seek influence there, as the real world has a kind of energy they lack outside of it. Demons and angels are powerful, but need that represented by sacrifice or worship to function.
Kobolds definitely don't get involved in any of that mess.
Lizardfolk tend to a more shamanistic kind of interaction with the religious side of things, honoring and communing with spirits of their ancestors, earthly spirits, or those of the primal realm.
Nagas are very practiced demonologists; and their arrogance and cruelty seems them make many disastrous deals with them.
>>44088761
>>44088865
I tend to use dragonborn and dragonkin interchangeably.
Aside from that there's just the dragon-blooded sorcerer and prestige classes related to it (dragon disciple?). I haven't assigned any particular political importance to them in general.
In my setting, kobolds are a created race. They were made by Wizards and the various Sorcerers to be their servants and assistants, and about half of them are the result of conjuring. The other half are born naturally from freed or escaped slavelings. They either hate or love their original master.
They are small and not usually capable of much on their own, however their nature of sticking strongly to one figure and putting them above all else (leading to worship, which only gets worse the more the leader encourages it), they make excellent apprentices and squires.
Also; they come in three castes. Slavelings are the fast and sneaky class, the most common. Then there are fat and large ones called Brutelings who are good at fighting, and finally Queerlings are the tallest and very skinny, tending to have the ability to do magic and sometimes have weird magical powers or mutations as well. These castes are more organic then they first appear and are genetic to some extent.
>>44088182
In my magitek setting, Kobolds are both a subspecies of the Lizardmen and, just like their very bulky and powerful cousins, are descendants of the now extinct Draconian race.
Their culture, just like their Lizardmen cousins, resembles a mixture of South American ones, but also put emphasis on Necromancy to communicate with their ancestors.
They come in a multitude of color combinations, and even some of them in each generation are born with feathers (like the feathered dinosaurs), with draconic elements like with their Lizardmen cousins, or in extremely rare cases they are born with both.
They are eternally fighting against psychotic pygmy gnomes.
>>44088980
After playing WoW before ever playing trpgs, I always think of dragonkin as an umbrella term for all draconic beings. Dragons, dragonborn, kobolds, half-dragons, maybe wyverns drakes and sea serpents depending on setting would all be dragonkin.
>>44088182
In my fantasy quest setting on tgchan, there's no kobolds, but the Llyskan comes close. They are the most numerous of the six known races, and they are usually known as crafty and determined little buggers. Although they do lay eggs, they have to bury or plant them in soil for some time before they hatch. This, and the fact that their magic users tend to gravitate towards the domain of plants and nature in general, might suggest they may be part plant. As for their society, they have a tendency to either be competitive or cooperative. The world of Tharsia has seen Llyskan kingdoms that aggressively expanded, as well as helpful tribes living on the plains, as well as a varying amount of Llyskans in the other races' cities. And yeah, they're almost everywhere.
>>44088182
/tg/ still just wants to fuck kobolds, OP. Stop asking.
>How does /tg/ like their kobolds?
I don't. They never exist in my settings.
As for lizardmen, they're usually like strong as fuck swamp/cave dwellers that lack intelligence.
No relation to dragon. Basically crocodiles shaped like men in appearance and behaviour.
>>44088182
>How does /tg/ like their kobolds?
Bent over, tail raised.
Bandits and caravaneers in the Mojave and much of Mexico who trade and steal the valuble alien metal found in the nation's of California and Deseret
>>44091947
MODS
>>44091984
Do you have autism newfriend? I don't think you know how to behave on a forum.
https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+behave+on+a+public+message+board
>Kobolds
Fearful, grovelling half-savages who continually aspire to more, but are always trying to take shitty shortcuts to get there. Easily controlled by more powerful people, eternally looked down upon. Sometimes they do break out of their funk, and never stop being pleased with themselves over doing so.
>Lizardfolk & others
Usually full savage assholes who sit at the edges of civilisation. Sometimes they build pyramids. Likes: Blood sacrifice, evil gods, treasure. Dislikes: Adventurerers.
>>44091984
Hey, I removed the genitalia, I don't save porn
>>44092001
>Not knowing the MODS meme
>Being this new
>Pretending to be an oldfag
>>44092177
I think you should take yourself back to /b/
>How does /tg/ like their kobolds?
Depends On the Setting (TM)
>An alternate question. What roles do lizardmen and similar creatures play in your games
They're the least industrious and technologically advanced of the three sentient species in my setting, humans being the middle ground and birdfolk being the most advanced. They're also the least violent, which makes the other races underestimate their ability to defend themselves in their native lands equatiorial lands. I dislike monocultures so their tribes/kingdoms differ a decent bit. None of them live below ground though because that's silly.
In my setting, Kobold are basically in an arms race against Gnomes. While Gnomes have black powder weapons, Kobold avoid such things and have instead come up with some automatic crossbows designed to go toe to toe with guns in tunnel combat. Some worship dragons, others don't, and one city managed to lay a now-legendary trap generations ago and imprison a Dragon, in their eyes proving themselves superior.
The entire race is Tucker's Kobold's in a dungeon punk world with guns and magic motorbikes.
>>44093414
native equatorial lands*
As for fighting: In a pitched battle they'd get rekt by humans and birdmen alike, but being great climbers, having excellent night vision and being able to regulate their metabolism they're incredible at guerilla warfare and ambushes.
Fuckable, submissive, sexy.
Serious answer, though, "surprisingly clever." Because of their lower strength and size, they prefer to lead enemies through traps while staying hidden. If they submit to a more powerful creature (usually dragon or other intelligent, scaled being), their traps and constructs often reflect their opinion of the leader. Unpopular masters may find their lair protected by traps that appear well-crafted and sturdy, and perhaps they are, but they can be circumvented or they frequently repeat. Those that kobolds admire may have their lair filled with trapped dead ends (some of which might lead through several rooms), paired traps with the trigger of the other being disarmed, and generally whatever they can do to make sure that invaders are as weak as possible before they reach the kobolds' masters.
That said, they're pretty much fucked if caught in a direct confrontation.
>>44088182
Scales or GTFO.
Canine kobolds are shit and only ever existed by mistake. The author was only describing their skull shape.
>>44088182
exclusively as powerful retards
>A farmer had a kobold who was always up to mischief. And no matter what the farmer did, he could not get rid of him. At last the farmer was advised to burn down the barn, since the kobold had his home there. First, the farmer carted all the straw out of the barn. Then, after carrying out the last load, he locked the spirit inside and set the barn afire.
>When the whole barn was burning, the farmer glanced around - and here was the kobold sitting on the back of the cart, saying again and again,
> "It's about time we got out of there!
> It's about time we got out of there!"
>The farmer understood that he had been ill advised, returned to the house and could not get rid of his kobold.
>>44094104
It sounds more like the farmer was the retarded one here. Why wouldn't you expect it to figure out what you're doing and hide in the straw you're carrying out or something?
Do you ever put a distinction on the intelligence of your dragon type creatures? In a typical dnd setting dragons are hyper intelligent powerful creatures, while other dragon-ish creatures are usually more bestial, similar to dinosaurs in mentality.
Do you prefer anything like that? Often times in shows and popular culture now it retains things of dragons being simple minded.
>>44091030
Interesting sort of setting. Is it post apocalyptic?
>>44088182
Just a bit curvy
>>44096966
Yep.
