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Latest Dragon Feature is up
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Introducing a feature new to the pages of Dragon: Creature Incarnations! This recurring feature will take monsters you know and love from D&D and offer up new varieties for use in your game. Our goal is to make encounters with existing monsters as varied and interesting as we can. In this, our first installment, we present kobolds! Check out the kobold chieftain, rat master, and vermin handler, along with several other new kobolds that can be used to fill out your burgeoning kobold lair.
The kobold’s shifty ability might not seem too useful at first, but after running a few games you should start to notice its utility. Shifting twice in one round is a powerful tool, especially in close quarters. In addition, keep in mind that shifting as a minor action is essentially a +1 bonus to speed. A kobold can move up to its full speed and then shift into an attack position.
I liked it especially Kobold Rat Master...
Great article! Mearls' qualities as monster designer truly impresses me. The "Kobold Victory Chart" is hillarious!
Holy crap! If they keep this quality up, I'm subscribing for sure!
This article was great (I kinda regret showing it to my DM before I read it now ...)
Great article! Mearls' qualities as monster designer truly impresses me. The "Kobold Victory Chart" is hillarious!
I agree! I Can't wait to use this! This would be a cool feature for a lot of the monsters that have got the short end of the stick int he past (Goblins, Kobolds, etc.)
I am not impressed.
To me, this article looks like a page of the Miniature rules, it's just about tactics and moves. No spirit.
Despite the recent change of presentation of Dragon and Dungeon magazines, i am not satisfied by the contents.
I don't see real improvement from the poor and sporadic postings before 4th Edition release.
I miss even more the creativity and quality of the previous paper versions.
A shame. So far, in my opinion, the DDI production is clumsy, sloppy and not attracting.
If i subscribe to the DDI, that won't be for the magazines...
Agreed. These are kobolds a DM can love and players learn to hate. Its too bad Keep on the Shadowfell didn't use them in this manner...
I agree. While I like some of the crazy kobalds they give in KotSf, these are better. When I run Keep later this month, I'm gonna be secretly replacing the normal kobald's with these crazy kobalds.
Let's see if my players can tell the difference.
Seldriss - read Wolves of Maldeen - it's good stuff.
Very good stuff. I particularly liked the victory chart and the ratmaster. I was already getting pretty tired of kobold encounters from running prerelease games and KotS but now I am tempted to rearrange the lair entirely into a bigger complex with traps and some of these funky kobolds.
Is it just me or is there no 'backfire' to the wild mages powers other than maybe the explosion on death? Maybe I'll just have the spell effect an ally/self on a natural below 5.
I am not impressed.
To me, this article looks like a page of the Miniature rules, it's just about tactics and moves. No spirit.
Well, I think it's because the feature is supposed to talk about tactics and moves:
Introducing a feature new to the pages of Dragon: Creature Incarnations! This recurring feature will take monsters you know and love from D&D and offer up new varieties for use in your game. Our goal is to make encounters with existing monsters as varied and interesting as we can.
For role-playing information about monsters, there is the "Ecology" feature. Maybe the "Roll vs. Role" upcoming article about goblins will be more role-playing oriented?
Holy crap! If they keep this quality up, I'm subscribing for sure!
This article was great (I kinda regret showing it to my DM before I read it now ...)
Yeah, I guess I'll have to subscribe as well: they've turned out some consistently great stuff this month.
I had a question about the Kobold Horde. It's a swarm, but it still only counts as a small creature? So does this mean that it's a whole bunch of kobolds all mashed into one square? Or does the swarm type automatically make them take up a larger space?
Looking in the 4e MM I can see most swarms are usually one size larger than their individual creatures, or in some cases 2 sizes larger.
So I would probably change the size of the Kobold Horde to at least Medium, if not Large.
I think the aura damage of a swarm is meant to represent the area it is effecting so in this case it cane change size from 1 square to 3x3 squares in terms of where it is but in terms of movement, targeting it is occupying 1 square. This makes more sense with rats than kobolds imo, I might make a kobold swarm a large creature and bump it up a couple levels.
I think the aura damage of a swarm is meant to represent the area it is effecting so in this case it cane change size from 1 square to 3x3 squares in terms of where it is but in terms of movement, targeting it is occupying 1 square. This makes more sense with rats than kobolds imo, I might make a kobold swarm a large creature and bump it up a couple levels.
Well, this entry doesn't have an aura (which all other swarms DO have). They do however have a burst attack, which I guess is basically the same thing. Since the burst has a recharge roll, and potentially knocks multiple targets prone, I guess it works just as well. This just goes to show you that reading 4E monster stats requires us DM's to kinda shift our perspective as to how attacks work and how the effects are portrayed to the characters.
The Kobold Wild Mage would provide an interesting basis for a Wild Mage class with either power source Elemental or Arcane.
I love the idea of this a lot more than the actual first article. There's cool stuff here, but really what I'm hoping for is that someday they go and revisit some of the cool monsters in the 4e Monster Manual who are iconic and cool but with such inflated levels that starting parties will never be able to touch the weakest iteration of them.
Yeah, yeah. I'm fine (I guess) with the idea that there's some monsters you're "not supposed" to fight until much later in the game. Thing is I'm not talking about mind flayers or chromatic dragons here. I'm talking about displacer beasts and kuo-toas and otyughs. I mean it would be nice with all the talk about monsters being useful across the breadth of a groups roleplaying career, if they brought the entry level for a lot of them down far enough that they can have a place in low level adventure design. Some of them are just so cool and perfect for certain situations. It'd be great to have a lowish level version of them.
Not that I'm asking for a level one Terrasque here or anything. Let the big uber stuff stay that way. It'd just be nice to finally be able to take a break from hacking rats and skeletons.
I love the idea of this a lot more than the actual first article. There's cool stuff here, but really what I'm hoping for is that someday they go and revisit some of the cool monsters in the 4e Monster Manual who are iconic and cool but with such inflated levels that starting parties will never be able to touch the weakest iteration of them.
Yeah, yeah. I'm fine (I guess) with the idea that there's some monsters you're "not supposed" to fight until much later in the game. Thing is I'm not talking about mind flayers or chromatic dragons here. I'm talking about displacer beasts and kuo-toas and otyughs. I mean it would be nice with all the talk about monsters being useful across the breadth of a groups roleplaying career, if they brought the entry level for a lot of them down far enough that they can have a place in low level adventure design. Some of them are just so cool and perfect for certain situations. It'd be great to have a lowish level version of them.
Not that I'm asking for a level one Terrasque here or anything. Let the big uber stuff stay that way. It'd just be nice to finally be able to take a break from hacking rats and skeletons.
I'm sure you'll get your wish by Monster Manual VI if not before.
I love the idea of this a lot more than the actual first article. There's cool stuff here, but really what I'm hoping for is that someday they go and revisit some of the cool monsters in the 4e Monster Manual who are iconic and cool but with such inflated levels that starting parties will never be able to touch the weakest iteration of them.
Yeah, yeah. I'm fine (I guess) with the idea that there's some monsters you're "not supposed" to fight until much later in the game. Thing is I'm not talking about mind flayers or chromatic dragons here. I'm talking about displacer beasts and kuo-toas and otyughs. I mean it would be nice with all the talk about monsters being useful across the breadth of a groups roleplaying career, if they brought the entry level for a lot of them down far enough that they can have a place in low level adventure design. Some of them are just so cool and perfect for certain situations. It'd be great to have a lowish level version of them.
Not that I'm asking for a level one Terrasque here or anything. Let the big uber stuff stay that way. It'd just be nice to finally be able to take a break from hacking rats and skeletons.
Also, remember that the 4E monster advancement rules allow you to reduce the monster's level instead of increasing it (by up to -5). So you may have a level 4 Displacer Beast, a level 7 Kuo Toa, and a level 2 Otyugh.
I loved this one, even with a skimming it was very very nice. A cool take on kobolds, adding a few more low level versions, and an explain of thier racial. All in all, a very solid, very useful, article.
My group was running the beginning of KotS and were about to go after some kobolds so I rewrote a section to try out some of these guys and add in some traps and tricks.
The spiker ended up being played badly by me, I forgot to use the minor repeatedly and he whiffed on his push move every time.
The final fight was the wild mage, the champ and a bunch of minions which I also played kinda poorly in that I forgot to use the champs team abilities before the minions all got aoe-d.
The ratmaster though.. I kinda had to pull some punches going against 3 1st level pcs with 1 NPC kobold piker who was helping them out. They whiffed on a few daily powers and when you have ongoing 5 damage from one attack and the 5 damage from the aura when you have 20 some hp to start with you go down fast and will die from the aura fast if you don't get help. Reading his block I wondered why he would ever use his power that removed his other at will but in practice I used it just to stop killing the pcs so bad and ratcheted his hp down some when it was obvious a TPK was coming.
One thing is for sure, it was disgusting.
The ratmaster though.. I kinda had to pull some punches going against 3 1st level pcs with 1 NPC kobold piker who was helping them out. They whiffed on a few daily powers and when you have ongoing 5 damage from one attack and the 5 damage from the aura when you have 20 some hp to start with you go down fast and will die from the aura fast if you don't get help. Reading his block I wondered why he would ever use his power that removed his other at will but in practice I used it just to stop killing the pcs so bad and ratcheted his hp down some when it was obvious a TPK was coming.
One thing is for sure, it was disgusting.
Ummmm, you are aware that the ratmaster is a 4th level elite monster right? Putting him up against 1st level PC's WITH lots of other kobolds is probably why you almost had a TPK. Remember that an elite monster counts as 2 standard monsters, so your group of 1st level PC's was actually fighting 2 4th level monsters in that fight, plus whatever else you threw at them at the same time.
Ummmm, you are aware that the ratmaster is a 4th level elite monster right? Putting him up against 1st level PC's WITH lots of other kobolds is probably why you almost had a TPK. Remember that an elite monster counts as 2 standard monsters, so your group of 1st level PC's was actually fighting 2 4th level monsters in that fight, plus whatever else you threw at them at the same time.
He was solo so the xp budget should have been ok with their 2nd level npc helping out but a 'hard' encounter due to the level discrepancy. I think the main problem was the pally was trying to be the tank and was also the healer, If they had a cleric it would have been less of a problem. Also they missed every saving throw and missed with all their daily powers except for 1.
The Kobold Wild Mage would provide an interesting basis for a Wild Mage class with either power source Elemental or Arcane.
In one of the designer's blogs, they mentioned the forthcoming sorcerer class as having some wild mage flavor. I am intrigued to see that one.
As for the article, I liked it. More importantly, I think it is going to be a great feature as it will likely expand on many, many monsters.