I'm toying with the idea of a single goblin tribe being decimated and reconstructed over the course of a level 1-X campaign. The tribe would almost be like a reoccurring character, except different in each incarnation.
But what are the rates at which an entire goblin tribe might spawn from 2-3 surviving goblins? And how much might they diverge from their nature, given the guidance of bugbears, or a wizard, or whomever?
I'm ok doing this as a custom, hombrew setting. But I think it'd be neat of I could pull off something like this in standard Golarion.
The game has not really ever explaned where the different foblinoids come from other thsn lamashtuu. However if they have a goddess like her you don't need to explain anything. On golarion at least her followers are quite capable of doing just about anything to birth new monsters even have men give birth.
I'm toying with the idea of a single goblin tribe being decimated and reconstructed over the course of a level 1-X campaign. The tribe would almost be like a reoccurring character, except different in each incarnation.
But what are the rates at which an entire goblin tribe might spawn from 2-3 surviving goblins? And how much might they diverge from their nature, given the guidance of bugbears, or a wizard, or whomever?
I'm ok doing this as a custom, hombrew setting. But I think it'd be neat of I could pull off something like this in standard Golarion.
Well. According to the base rules a goblin reaches adulthood in 12 years and is middle aged by 20, so in theory that is the period where they would likely have children. So even though they have short generations, it would seem that unless the campaign had long off time periods, it would be hard for the tribe to respawn from just the few goblins. The main question would be how many children they have and how often. I'd tend to presume quite a few and possibly also multiples, given their short and often quickly truncated lifespans, just to keep up the population.
For some reason, I am reminded of a comedian... who did this routine about rabbits.
Two rabbits were chased into a haystack by a fox. One turns to the other and asks, "Shall we run for it or just stay here and outnumber him?"
The other rabbit thinks about it for a bit, then replies, "Don't be silly. We're brothers!"
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You would need about seven to ten survivors if I remember my anthropology class correctly. That wouldn't be hard, as goblins do tend to try to run away when things suddenly go horrifically bad, which they do often,
Those survivors could then find another tribe or start one of their own. They probably reach the ability to reproduce at age 8 or 9, but aren't considered adults until 12. So unless you are dealing with longer periods of time you want to go with the group reforming and recruiting. Plenty of goblins find themselves tribeless for a variety of reasons, and tend to find each other easily.
You could have the survivors be showing up in different tribes as each one is defeated. After a while no tribe wants them because they are bad luck. They try to form their own and probably fail hilariously.
As for evolution, who knows. They certainly are in a spot where natural selection is rampant.