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Though I think in part that has to do with Paizo's tendency to just ignore the impact magic should have on their setting whenever it's inconvenient.
Well, one of the key problems with relying on casters is sheet numbers.
Since hobgoblins are naturally hardy and agile, it is easy to pump out moderate to fantastic melee troops.
But casters? Throwing out sorcerers and witches (bloodlines and patrons are rarely reliable for numbers), you would have to rely upon wizards. It takes a college education to make a wizard (and only a small subset of hobgoblins have enough int to make it worth trying)... and they might get taken out by a random arrow in their first battle.
Elves can pull widespread use of wizards since they live long enough that their studies of magic can occur between the ages of 'first pimple' and 'voting age'.
Wizards make great adenturers and small, reclusive guilds (where you only need a few rare talents out of the entire kingdom), but there are rarely enough of them to field proper armies. At best, you might get a couple of artilliary squads with one wizard and a bunch of body guards.
Overall, alchemists are a better deal. Even a level 1 alchemist can at least produce various alchemical items that the regular troops can use, like alchemist's fire. Add on top of that mutagens and bombs, and they can cover a lot of the same niches as wizards while being far more survivable.
Heck... early level wizards just generally suck. They only get quadratic at higher levels. Until then, the 6 levels alchemists deal with only lags a little. For a hobgoblin general trying to get the best grunts... I wouldn't risk having a bunch of dainty primadonas that might simply try to overthrow you once their expensive training is done.
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In addition to Lemeres' fine point, Hobgoblins would also have access to some of the best archers around. Sure, they wouldn't be as fantastic long-range as Elves due to the lack of Perception bonuses, but they could withstand the arduous Longbow training better and thus become proficient faster, while being a lot more resistant to opposing arrows. This goes for siege engine training too. A well-trained and quickly-trained section of archers who can shoot all day without tiring could easily account for a couple of lifetime-of-training Wizards (assuming that they're below warp-reality-on-whim level) on the other side, and Hobgoblins would be much more resilient melee combatants against any but the most well-trained Elven Duellists or Kensai.
They would also, and this is key, make EXCELLENT Barbarians and Untouchable/Id Bloodragers. Just how many options do those guys have for ruining a mage's day? Hobgoblins do seem like a pretty... Superstitious lot.
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I prefer to flavor my Dwarves as more German/Germanic in nature. Less drunk Scotsman and more Volkswagen engineer
{. . .}
I didn't think Dwarves were into cheating on tests . . . .
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Dex is also the modifier for the Ride skill so Hobs could have artillery AND cavalry down and they really aren't too bad at infantry either.
I once ran a homebrew campaign where a polymorphed green dragon started his own lineage of hobgoblin sorcerers to wreak havoc on the elven nation. Wyvern-mounted hobgoblin blasters were fun ; )
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Overall... an army is often not measured by its best troops, but its worst troops- the weak links.
For hobgoblins... their worst troops are still more agile and hardy than the worst humans. And that counts for a lot.
If you have 1 strong (optimized) guy, and 99 weaklings... then you have little protection at the places that the one 'best' guy doesn't have the time to reach. But if your 'worst' is at least 'fairly decent', then they can hold out long enough for the 'best' to show up.
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^That depends upon how many worst troops you have -- if your army is 50% best and 50% worst, that is a lot better than being 1% best and 99% worst -- the former army is going to win handily in the overwhelming majority of cases.
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^That depends upon how many worst troops you have -- if your army is 50% best and 50% worst, that is a lot better than being 1% best and 99% worst -- the former army is going to win handily in the overwhelming majority of cases.
Yeah, the size of the 'worst' is also a valid measure. If you have a tiny, at least vaguely usable 'worst', then you are doing better than the army with a large number of garbage and a few elites.
Having fewer weak links, and making even the 'weak' links closer to acceptable is for the best. The less weakness there is to exploit, the better you are as an army.
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What always bugged me was the hobgoblin's hatred for arcane magic. With such a militaristic focus it always seemed weird that they'd shun just how powerful fielding spellcasters in their army would be. Even just Bards would be a huge force multiplier for their troops. That they don't seems at best unwise and at worst outright suicidal when they'd be facing an enemy that doesn't have their same hesitance.
Given their advantages (a net +2 stats over most PC races, save for Aasimar), and their nature (organized, ruthless, expansionist), and their lack of the standard 'breeds slower than humans' drawback tacked onto elves and dwarves, if hobgoblins *did* embrace arcane magic, with all their methodical efficiency, it's entirely possible we'd all be speaking Klingon Hobgoblin right now...
It might be more 'realistic' for the setting not being dominated by powerful hobgoblin empires (sort of like how the Kingdoms of Kalamar has a few large and in-charge hobgoblin empires) if there's something major and crippling (such as a dislike of arcane magic) holding them back and giving races like humans (and elves and dwarves) an advantage.
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It takes a college education to make a wizard (and only a small subset of hobgoblins have enough int to make it worth trying)...The alchemists you mention in the next paragraph have the same training and stat requirements though (and so do the clerics KC brought up, albeit with a different stat).
and they can cover a lot of the same niches as wizards while being far more survivable.It's 2 health at level 1, 3 health at level 2 and 4 health at level 3. It's nice, but I'm not sure "far more" is the correct phrasing.
Alchemists do not have the same training requirements as Wizards. They need training, sure, but they do not need to learn as much esoteric nonsense and they don't need to train their brains into genius level just to utilise their primary ability. They can get by on personal one-on-one training in the wilderness, and it's so easy to have an alchemist that was trained by a master of wild alchemy rather than a big academy.
Their health doesn't make them more survivable; their access to mutagens and self-buffs does. Sure, Wizards can focus on self-buffing, but then they're restricting their ability to blast things, which is what you want out of your personal Weapon of Mass Destruction. Alchemists can be very decent at self-buffing, bomb-chucking and even party-buffing without really restricting themselves too much. They can switch between genius pseudo-caster and buff damage-monger with a single gulp.
If they completely eschew bombs in order to focus on their mutagens, they can go Vivisectionist Beastform (which seems very Hobgoblin to me), getting Natural Sneak Attacks all over the place... on a race with a Stealth bonus. You also now have an entire battalion of awakened Dire Badgers please and thank you.
If they want to focus on bombs, then they can just chuck down a Dex Mutagen then infuse their arrows with two splash weapons and two bombs, then shoot their Alchemist's Fire Tangleburn Immolation Explosive Arrow across the battlefield once every six seconds for a good while until they run out of bombs and start just being a unit of amazing alchemical archers. (Grenadiers with access to a Hybridization Funnel who've asked their Priest to enchant their Bow with Conductive and have the Explosive Missile and Fire Brand discoveries. It sounds complicated, but it's sooo very effective and obvious for any army to have, especially if you add some Alchemical Accelerant to those bombs.)
They can also be the unit's Doc, dispensing healing through explosions, which is really the only Goblinoid way to dispense healing.
Alchemists would be the single most versatile set of troops that any caster-eschewing army could hope to have, and they're incredibly survivable to boot as well as being able to be more wilderness-y than academy-y if you want. Plus you can have your regular Fighter troops be part-time alchemists; they have the training time to spare.
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While alchemists have similar requirements, they can have wide spreading effects, even if they just stay home.
Alchemical weapons are easy to use, and don't require specialized UMD checks like scrolls and such. They also have brew potion by default. Heck, they could even get 'free potions' if they are level 2 and get the infusion discovery.
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But how about alchemists? They love them some fire and smoke, and alchemists are sufficiently separated from normal casters to be acceptable.
Not just acceptable, Lemeres, but admired! According to the latest info from the Ironfang Invasion AP, hobgoblin alchemists are held in high regard as shock troops, and they tend to get their own units to work with, especially in sieges, where good grenadiers come in very handy.
Another type of troop they mention includes "beastmasters," hobgoblins able to train animals like boars and stuff to serve as shock troops, making hobgoblin rangers and Druids hot commodities for any hobgoblin armies.
The new look is goofy as f*%!, though.
I really dislike the Monster Codex/Iron Fang look for Hobgoblins. The ARG guide look was great. They were distinctive and noticeably goblinoid...basically goblins on steroids
The new look just makes them look like off color orcs (or really ugly drow...or even some ghouls). I'd be okay with it if Orcs were goblinoids, or hobgoblins were orcs...but...bleh. I would much prefer something more creative.
OK, sommebody mentioned the Ironfang AP, you say you don't like it, so what's up with it?
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Alchemists do not have the same training requirements as Wizards.Check again. Alchemists are in the same age/training category as wizards.
Ahh, I didn't realise you were speaking that specifically. Yes, Wizards and Alchemists require exactly the same time to train.
What I thought you meant was more generally. Alchemists require much less strenuous investment into a single ability, being able to have a more all-round education. They don't all need to be geniuses, unlike Wizards. Intelligent, yes, but not genius. They don't even need to worry about upping their DCs if they're going Vivisectionist.
Additionally, their fluffy requirements are much less restricted. Wizards usually need big academies or a strict master/apprentice dynamic, cut off from the world in a process that must be incredibly costly. Alchemists, on the other hand, could learn in a more practical way, and end up crafting many useful alchemical items as they go. They can already craft everything they need to equip an army at level 1 if they take the time and have enough of them, while Wizards most certainly cannot contribute in such a fashion until later levels.
Alchemists pay for their educations right away and could realistically be easier mass-produced since far more Hobgoblins start with an Int of 12+ (their minimum to be able to produce all of their extracts as they progress) than start with an Int of 15+ (a Wizard's minimum); this only becomes more extreme if your Alchemists and Wizards want to care about DCs, which some Alchemists don't need to do.
Wizards, on the other hand, would be rarer to find, harder to find teachers for and much less rewarding to society unless they got into the higher levels, which is less likely on a chassis that's so fragile early-on. Alchemists are so much more consistently resilient early-on between their armour proficiencies, Mutagens and self-healing.
For Hobgoblins specifically, Alchemists make far more sense to train from a resources and usefulness standpoint. They breed at a good rate, don't have an Int bonus and need to outfit massive dex-focused armies with appropriate inexpensive weapons. They make good buffers, crafters, versatile skill-masters, front-line troops, spies, medics and siege experts.
Heck, they can easily make very good leaders too. Just pop down an Extract of Eagle's Splendour, a Charisma Cognatogen and spice up some Perform(Oratory) with your alchemical Stage Magic trait (I suggest some fireworks) and you're good to go!
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In my campaign, the Hobgoblins worshipped Moloch as their patron-deity since his portfolio matched their culture to a T. They were a hideous army of diabolists, slaver, and conquerers who made sacrifices to Moloch in iron bulls and integrated devils into their armies. Clerics, inquisitors, warpriests, and antipaladins of Moloch served in positions of authority. Goblins were their underclass, and were more loose worshipers of Moloch due to their NE alignment being within one step of Moloch's LE; plus they liked the whole fire and violence aspects of his domains. Bugbears were essentially hired mercenaries.
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I really like that!
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In my campaign, the Hobgoblins worshipped Moloch as their patron-deity since his portfolio matched their culture to a T. They were a hideous army of diabolists, slaver, and conquerers who made sacrifices to Moloch in iron bulls and integrated devils into their armies. Clerics, inquisitors, warpriests, and antipaladins of Moloch served in positions of authority. Goblins were their underclass, and were more loose worshipers of Moloch due to their NE alignment being within one step of Moloch's LE; plus they liked the whole fire and violence aspects of his domains. Bugbears were essentially hired mercenaries.
Ooooo, that's cool!
(It occurs to me that Alchemists fit the slaver idea too... well, Interrogators at least. Ok I really don't mean to harp on about Alchemist Hobgoblins too much; but they're a proper amazing class with heaps of versatility so when they fit a story niche this well I just have to point it out. For the record, they'd make much better Kineticists than they would Alchemists, but of course you can't plan around wild elemental forces like you can hard science.)
OK, sommebody mentioned the Ironfang AP, you say you don't like it, so what's up with it?The new look is goofy as f*%!, though.
I really dislike the Monster Codex/Iron Fang look for Hobgoblins. The ARG guide look was great. They were distinctive and noticeably goblinoid...basically goblins on steroids
The new look just makes them look like off color orcs (or really ugly drow...or even some ghouls). I'd be okay with it if Orcs were goblinoids, or hobgoblins were orcs...but...bleh. I would much prefer something more creative.
Your misreading my quote. I like the AP, I just don't like the look of the hobgoblins. They look way to similar to orcs for my taste, and for that matter even converge a bit on drow and ghouls in certain ways.
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Alchemists do not have the same training requirements as Wizards.Check again. Alchemists are in the same age/training category as wizards.Ahh, I didn't realise you were speaking that specifically. Yes, Wizards and Alchemists require exactly the same time to train.
What I thought you meant was more generally. Alchemists require much less strenuous investment into a single ability, being able to have a more all-round education. They don't all need to be geniuses, unlike Wizards. Intelligent, yes, but not genius. They don't even need to worry about upping their DCs if they're going Vivisectionist.
Additionally, their fluffy requirements are much less restricted. Wizards usually need big academies or a strict master/apprentice dynamic, cut off from the world in a process that must be incredibly costly. Alchemists, on the other hand, could learn in a more practical way, and end up crafting many useful alchemical items as they go. They can already craft everything they need to equip an army at level 1 if they take the time and have enough of them, while Wizards most certainly cannot contribute in such a fashion until later levels.
Alchemists pay for their educations right away and could realistically be easier mass-produced since far more Hobgoblins start with an Int of 12+ (their minimum to be able to produce all of their extracts as they progress) than start with an Int of 15+ (a Wizard's minimum); this only becomes more extreme if your Alchemists and Wizards want to care about DCs, which some Alchemists don't need to do.
Wizards, on the other hand, would be rarer to find, harder to find teachers for and much less rewarding to society unless they got into the higher levels, which is less likely on a chassis that's so fragile early-on. Alchemists are so much more consistently resilient early-on between their armour proficiencies, Mutagens and self-healing.
For Hobgoblins specifically, Alchemists make far more sense to train from a resources...
Wow I've never thought this way about the mechanics and how they relate to flavour anymore. That means that for races without an int bonus only heroic people can be wizards, or at least will eventually have to stop progressing. Even heroic orcs couldn't be high level wizards. Only PCs. I'm definitely taking this information and analyzing it against all races and classes for world building.
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In the world my sister and I are working on, our hobgoblins are basically the Spanish Inquisition, right down to the snappy red uniforms—just this roving army of inquisitors looking for pieces of their crippled god.
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In the world my sister and I are working on, our hobgoblins are basically the Spanish Inquisition, right down to the snappy red uniforms—just this roving army of inquisitors looking for pieces of their crippled god.
Wow. I did not expect that.
;)
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Additionally, their fluffy requirements are much less restricted. Wizards usually need big academies or a strict master/apprentice dynamic, cut off from the world in a process that must be incredibly costly. Alchemists, on the other hand, could learn in a more practical way, and end up crafting many useful alchemical items as they go.Ff that's how you envision it for your world that's fine, but it seems weird to me to argue that the seven years an alchemist spends at school is somehow less than the seven years a wizard spends training.
That's not to say alchemists don't have advantages and aren't arguably better for what we're talking about, but arguing that one is harder to train than the other when their mechanical requirements are essentially identical.
Time-wise, it's exactly the same, but Wizards are dependant on their Schools, which indicates a lot of heavily institutionalised learning. In comparison, Alchemists have a lot more versatility in what they can do, which indicates a much looser, personal learning experience. Less intensive, less specialised, and less expensive for the ruling body. Also less powerful than Wizards, but as I said above you can have more of them given the more reasonable stat requirements.
Now, you also mention that Wizards don't actually need high Intelligence at low levels, but my response to that is that a low-Int Wizard won't be doing anything on a battlefield if everyone has a good chance to beat her DCs. Alchemists, on the other hand, can be incredibly potent combatants even if their bomb DCs are low (direct hits don't even get a save), and they can create static-DC poisons and alchemical weapons as needed. Sure, they won't be getting as much Int-to-damage, but at low levels that doesn't really matter given that they can be Explosive Missile Grenadiers chucking out Str-to-damage with their composite longbows along with the alchemy damage.
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Wow I've never thought this way about the mechanics and how they relate to flavour anymore. That means that for races without an int bonus only heroic people can be wizards, or at least will eventually have to stop progressing. Even heroic orcs couldn't be high level wizards. Only PCs. I'm definitely taking this information and analyzing it against all races and classes for world building.
Ooo, please share your results!
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The new look is goofy as f*%!, though.
I really dislike the Monster Codex/Iron Fang look for Hobgoblins. The ARG guide look was great. They were distinctive and noticeably goblinoid...basically goblins on steroids
The new look just makes them look like off color orcs (or really ugly drow...or even some ghouls). I'd be okay with it if Orcs were goblinoids, or hobgoblins were orcs...but...bleh. I would much prefer something more creative.
Either way, it's better than the one in the Bestiary...
(Good art, but really hard to accept as a hobgoblin, especially after more-or-less falling in love with the art in the 3.5's MM...)
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Yea, I still use 3.5's art as "official" in my game.
As for alchemists vs. wizards, well, there's goblin-specific alchemist archetypes. You'd think that to make the most of your goblin underlings, an alchemy school would be worth it. The goblins as bomb throwers, and the hobgoblins (and bugbears?) for the mutagens.
And low-level alchemists are much more versatile, anyways.
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Yea, I still use 3.5's art as "official" in my game.
As for alchemists vs. wizards, well, there's goblin-specific alchemist archetypes. You'd think that to make the most of your goblin underlings, an alchemy school would be worth it. The goblins as bomb throwers, and the hobgoblins (and bugbears?) for the mutagens.
And low-level alchemists are much more versatile, anyways.
Not just archetypes; they get the best bombs!
Well, they get the explodiest bombs...
THEY GET THE BEST BOMBS.
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The Ironfang look kicks ass. I hated the "old" Pathfinder hobgoblins—just goofy gray-skinned musclemen. This is a huge improvement.
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I wish I had $$$ to get myself the ironfang AP, I'm thinking of going agin on the powerful side of the screen...
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Now I just need a few stone giants to throw goblin grenades at the PCs...
But how are you going to turn the goblins into grenades?
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Now I just need a few stone giants to throw goblin grenades at the PCs...But how are you going to turn the goblins into grenades?
... That's a trick question, right?
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Does Golarion detail what's the approximate level distribution of NPCs?
Because if goblinoids aren't expected to reach high levels, as it has already been said, the lack of arcane casters doesn't really hurt much, though of course bards are handy to any army. Hobgoblins and goblins even have decent archetypes and favored class bonuses for alchemists, which are much more versatile at low levels.
The closest I could find was for hire spellcasting:
Not every town or village has a spellcaster of sufficient level to cast any spell. In general, you must travel to a small town (or larger settlement) to be reasonably assured of finding a spellcaster capable of casting 1st-level spells, a large town for 2nd-level spells, a small city for 3rd- or 4th-level spells, a large city for 5th- or 6th-level spells, and a metropolis for 7th- or 8th-level spells. Even a metropolis isn't guaranteed to have a local spellcaster able to cast 9th-level spells.
Plus from the bestiary for hobgoblins:
Organization gang (4–9), warband (10–24), or tribe (25+ plus 50% noncombatants, 1 sergeant of 3rd level per 20 adults, 1 or 2 lieutenants of 4th or 5th level, 1 leader of 6th–8th level, 6–12 leopards, and 1–4 ogres or 1–2 trolls)
A tribe starting at 25 doesn't make for a big city. By ultimate campaign rules, that's a hamlet at best. To find someone able to cast fireball, you'd typically need a small city of over 5000 citizens, way larger than a typical tribe. Sure, there's no actual cap on how large a tribe can be, but if you take the leader at lvl 8 and double down to 2 lieutenants of lvl 5, and 4 3rd level sergeants, for 80 warriors, plus a few monsters and 90 non combatants, that still just yields you a village, which even in normal PC race settlements isn't big enough to yield casters.
Shunning arcane casters is perfectly legitimate when your population never reaches a high enough level to do anything good. And by the time they can be useful, they risk usurping command. :P
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Just... let them do what comes naturally.Now I just need a few stone giants to throw goblin grenades at the PCs...But how are you going to turn the goblins into grenades?
I am just worried about the misfire chance where they blow up early while in your hand.