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Never liked the change to moving Kobolds from little dragon guys to ambient magic sponges. (Didn't we just get Surki for that?) It's another in a long line of making options more flexible at the cost of a concrete identity. I'm rarely a fan, but whatever. I was mostly planning on looking the other way as much as possible and playing my Kobolds largely as before.
Finally got a chance to delve into my PC2 this morning.
Kobolds can no longer gain a permanent fly speed.
They still get access to the garbage Winglets feat at level 5, which is a prereq for the Fly once per turn style feat that is so popular in the flight feat chain they get at level 9 (which the flight capable ancestries get 4 level earlier).
And that's it.
There's no third feat granting access to an actual fly speed, so Kobolds are limited to 1 fly action per round forever.
Arguably, access is somewhat easier because there's no heritage requirement, but this change is terrible.
3 ancestry feats, imo, was already a steeper cost than 2 ancestry feats and a heritage. But now we can't even choose to make that inefficient trade.
Oh, and as a fun kicker: A remaster Kobold can't even use the old 3rd feat, since Hatchling Flight (the prereq to Wyrmling Flight) got renamed to Winglet Flight. Gotta make sure everyone knows that Kobolds aren't dragons. We've got a shiny new selling point versatile heritage for that.
I usually try not to be this rage posty, but it feels like mechanically and thematically my favorite ancestry is no longer what it was, and that's extremely frustrating to me.
I don't have PC2 yet.
Also, I don't mean to invalidate or contradict your frustrations. I fully support your right to speak your mind on the matter.
Kobolds can no longer gain a permanent fly speed.
They still get access to the garbage Winglets feat at level 5, which is a prereq for the Fly once per turn style feat that is so popular in the flight feat chain they get at level 9 (which the flight capable ancestries get 4 level earlier).
And that's it.There's no third feat granting access to an actual fly speed, so Kobolds are limited to 1 fly action per round forever.
I do find this interesting though. That is a really clever way to mechanically represent clumsy flight.
Normally what I see is a full fly speed. Either permanent at higher levels or 1/day for about 1 to 10 minutes at mid levels. Sometimes rechargeable on a focus spell.
But having a 1/round Fly action available means that you can stay in the air for multiple rounds at-will. Really nice in exploration mode and terrain traversal. And still somewhat useful in combat.
But you couldn't Fly for two or three actions in order to move faster than the single action allows. It also means that you couldn't Arrest a Fall or do other similar things that require a permanent Fly speed.
Getting a 9th level feat to let you do something other Ancestries do with a 1st or 5th level feat stings something fierce though, especially when it requires a 5th level feat prerequisite to boot (and lets be honest, Winglets is an absolutely horrendous Ancestry feat, especially for 5th level).
There should just be a Kobold heritage that gives you a benefit similar to the Skyborn Tengu/Awakened Flying Animal, and then Winglet Flight at 5th. It'd still sting if you wanted a flying Kobold (doubly so because you can just take Dragonblood and pick up Dragon's Flight/True Dragon Flight and be way better for the same number of feats right now) but it'd be better than what we have.
But having a 1/round Fly action available means that you can stay in the air for multiple rounds at-will. Really nice in exploration mode and terrain traversal. And still somewhat useful in combat.
You can't though, because the feat specifically says if you don't end your move on solid ground at the end of your movement you fall (like all of the same type of "temporary flight speed" feats)
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It seems like to make what a Kobold used to be, you're now making a Dragonblooded Kobold. That gets you back the flight (earlier and for fewer feats) and also gets you the breath weapon.
I really don't like this decision either since kobold flavor was really cool and its worse now, but that is how you get back what it used to be.
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I really don't like this decision either since kobold flavor was really cool and its worse now, but that is how you get back what it used to be.
My current Age of Ashes character is a Kobold Thaumaturge worshiper of Apsu, whose overridding goal is to better understand the lineage between Dragons and Kobolds. So the divorcing the two hurts.
It probably won't much affect the actual game, but the meta knowledge of the remaster change will probably have an affect on me while playing.|
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I don't have PC2 yet.
Also, I don't mean to invalidate or contradict your frustrations. I fully support your right to speak your mind on the matter.
Kobolds can no longer gain a permanent fly speed.
They still get access to the garbage Winglets feat at level 5, which is a prereq for the Fly once per turn style feat that is so popular in the flight feat chain they get at level 9 (which the flight capable ancestries get 4 level earlier).
And that's it.There's no third feat granting access to an actual fly speed, so Kobolds are limited to 1 fly action per round forever.
I do find this interesting though. That is a really clever way to mechanically represent clumsy flight.
Normally what I see is a full fly speed. Either permanent at higher levels or 1/day for about 1 to 10 minutes at mid levels. Sometimes rechargeable on a focus spell.
But having a 1/round Fly action available means that you can stay in the air for multiple rounds at-will. Really nice in exploration mode and terrain traversal. And still somewhat useful in combat.
But you couldn't Fly for two or three actions in order to move faster than the single action allows. It also means that you couldn't Arrest a Fall or do other similar things that require a permanent Fly speed.
I appreciate the validation.
The once per round fly speed style feat seems to be somewhat standard in PC2. Both Stormborn Tengu and Dragonblood VH have access to a functionally equivalent feat at level 5, with a 9th level feat for a full fly speed.
Strix and Sprites received errata to their feats to get access to a similar feat at 1st level (w/ a 15 ft fly speed) with subsequent 5th and 9th level feats granting a 25 ft once per round fly and permanent fly speed, respectively.
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The lore change is, like so many things, an OGL casualty - direct at least some of your ire towards Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro's attempted greed.
Being printed in the same book as Dragonblooded does seem like an elegant way to ease the pain.
This comment isnt directed toward the mechanics side of things but on the lore side.
As an example of some of the freedom we now have with kobolds look at the idea I asked for help refining in this thread. Because of the lore changes I chose to use kobolds for this encounter.
Go to Any Ideas for Kobold Traps.
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This comment isnt directed toward the mechanics side of things but on the lore side.
As an example of some of the freedom we now have with kobolds look at the idea I asked for help refining in this thread. Because of the lore changes I chose to use kobolds for this encounter.Go to Any Ideas for Kobold Traps.
Genuinely, I am glad that some people prefer the increased flexibility over their previously less flexible, albeit more defined, lore niche.
I will just never be among those people. Perhaps if they had always been that way in PF2 I'd feel otherwise, but not much use in speculating about how things might have been different.| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Feats from the ancestry guide have not been removed, they're just in a different book. Kobolds can still get the final feat in the winglets line. Getting flight 8 levels after everyone else is awful, though. The decision to take only the first two wing feats from the Ancestry Guide and leaving the capstone out to take the place of some old feats Dragonblood stole is also weird.
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Paizo had to make the change for legal reasons. It's entirely reasonable to go to a GM and ask to play Kobold Classic- and even to ask if it's okay to run draconic kobold lore in general.
Gnolls got some lore updates that make them much more well-rounded, but sometimes I'm actually interested in playing an evil lazy jerk. I've occasionally pulled in Gnoll Classic elements,and the GM has been fine with it. Getting the new kholo lore means I'm not limited to that, though - playing a decent hyena-person doesn't necessitate a Drizzt-esque explanation of breaking away from society.
While I'm someone who is happy to not have kobolds tied to dragons exclusively (tempered by having core dragons I actually enjoy now), I can certainly understand the frustration. So, some ways I'd approach it:
- Just use the classic lore and feats. You're probably the only kobold at the table, and generally that means getting to set the tone of the ancestry.
- Consider the setting to be a little further along- kobolds have generally either forgotten about their distant draconic ancestry, or reached acceptance. Draconic kobolds are exceptional, rather than commonplace.
- Keep the character (s) the same, but let the setting change around them. A dragonblooded kobold Thaumaturge proclaiming that kobolds are descendants of the mighty dragons could just be tricking reality into giving them draconic features. It could be a conspirator dragon plot. It could be a conspirator dragonblooded kobold plot.
- Recontextualize the elements you like to be more personal to your character. Maybe they were a dragon who ticked off Nethys or someone, and got turned into a kobold. Instead of "we used to be dragons", play "I used to be a dragon".
- Best of both worlds. When you run, and with a generous GM,treat dragonblood feats as kobold feats naturally. Just get a big expansion to the options.
I'm not going to let the new lore stop me from playing a conspirator dragon kobold Thaumaturge or Alchemist with some kind of shapeshifting, or a mirage dragon kobold with a Vaporous Pipe.
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I kinda think it might be good for the setting if large communities of dragon-blooded Kobolds were just a common thing all over, like half orcs and half elves. Like the lore based mistake was assuming this was just inherently what kobolds were, because the dragon-blooded versatile heritage was just so common.
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I'm also a bit disappointed by how kobolds got off. I know you can make a nephilim kobold, or dragonblood kobold, or whatnot.
But I'm missing some "bridging" here. Maybe if there had been almost no kobold heritages at all and a giant sign saying "try looking at these versatile heritages, 90% of kobolds have a versatile heritage".
But that's still not that satisfying - I don't feel like kobolds get a really distinctive thing with those heritages either.
Maybe it would have been interesting to actually make special kobold heritages that embody a special version of existing versatile heritages? So a devil-bound kobold heritage for example, that was a bit like a nephilim heritage but fine-tuned for kobolds. So instead of redundant low-light/darkvision, you get something else. But after that, you do get access to the nephilim feat list.
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I'm also a bit disappointed by how kobolds got off. I know you can make a nephilim kobold, or dragonblood kobold, or whatnot.
But I'm missing some "bridging" here. Maybe if there had been almost no kobold heritages at all and a giant sign saying "try looking at these versatile heritages, 90% of kobolds have a versatile heritage".
But that's still not that satisfying - I don't feel like kobolds get a really distinctive thing with those heritages either.
Maybe it would have been interesting to actually make special kobold heritages that embody a special version of existing versatile heritages? So a devil-bound kobold heritage for example, that was a bit like a nephilim heritage but fine-tuned for kobolds. So instead of redundant low-light/darkvision, you get something else. But after that, you do get access to the nephilim feat list.
Way I see it, it is the other way around.
The OGL other game is the common origin of many draconic options for characters that were kept in PF1/PF2 until the OGL-debacle.
So, you had Kobold ancestry and Dragon Disciple who already were pretty similar in many ways and people clamoring for more of the same draconic flavor for medium ancestries for example.
It seems to me that the obvious way to go about this was to create the draconic theme mechanic that would bundle all this and make it as widely available as possible in PF2 hence versatile heritage.
But that left the beloved Kobold Ancestry without a distinctive flavor. So Paizo went for the magical energy sponge idea that helped keep the existing Kobold NPCs around with no need for a retcon, while at the same time opening possibilities for other kind of Kobolds.
Which definitely makes Paizo Kobolds different from the other game's creature.
I think this departure will end up being a very good thing, if unsettling at first.
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But that left the beloved Kobold Ancestry without a distinctive flavor. So Paizo went for the magical energy sponge idea that helped keep the existing Kobold NPCs around with no need for a retcon, while at the same time opening possibilities for other kind of Kobolds.
Which definitely makes Paizo Kobolds different from the other game's creature.
I think this departure will end up being a very good thing, if unsettling at first.
I think this would sit better with me if the Surki didn't give me a similar vibe, released one book prior.
Or if they leaned into it way harder with their new heritages and feats.
Oh, and as a fun kicker: A remaster Kobold can't even use the old 3rd feat, since Hatchling Flight (the prereq to Wyrmling Flight) got renamed to Winglet Flight. Gotta make sure everyone knows that Kobolds aren't dragons. We've got a shiny newselling pointversatile heritage for that.
Nobody believed me when I said Paizo has a history of making existing options worse in order to better prop up and sell the new content. They called me crazy. Laughed at me. Demanded that I cite sources and provide evidence.
Soon they will all see the truths I have held as self evident for themselves! Muhahahahaha!!!
;P
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For the record, since I've been on this tirade for a while and now I've been vindicated at last: I didn't like the kobold dragon stuff at all. It was funny as a little in-universe rumor with a thin scrap of truth to it, but 3.5 Greyhawk handled the idea best and it should have stayed in 3.5 Greyhawk. Kobolds flying around and breathing fire and arguing about scale colors? I didn't like it. The fixation on bloodlines and genetics and lineage superiority always felt yucky and weird and made playing a properly arrogant kobold feel incredibly awkward, and making them actually descended from dragons completely missed what I saw as the point of the rumor: That nobody actually believed kobolds about it. Kobolds were the scrappy underdogs, and with very few exceptions, no kobold could really find a way to prove they were technically Tiamat's brood. Making kobolds explicitly draconic as their main Thing totally changed that. It made kobolds much less dynamic.
But this new change? Oh my gosh! It's sparked so many new ideas for me, and if people are really still feeling bearish on the change, I may have to write those ideas up, because I don't think people are appreciating how much this has expanded the Kobold Tribe Meta. Gone are the days of "pick your scale color, that scale of dragon is your boss now". You can have tribes of Primal kobold bramble-weavers serving a dryad, or Arcane kobolds camping in an archmage's wine cellar, or weirdo mutant kobold bandits in the Mana Wastes, or maybe a bunch of Occult kobold Sentinels trying to keep the Inmost Blot at bay. It's a brand new day, and a wonderful time to be a kobold fan.
For the old dragon-kobold lovers, there's Dragonblood, and I'm really glad of that. But as someone who has, I think, developed a fairly solid brand of loving kobolds and everything associated with them, I must cruelly and fun-hatingly say to the removal of the dragon flavor, good riddance.
How about Shoony?
We have Dog Kholo. I don't think we'll ever get an update on them.
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Oh, and as a fun kicker: A remaster Kobold can't even use the old 3rd feat, since Hatchling Flight (the prereq to Wyrmling Flight) got renamed to Winglet Flight. Gotta make sure everyone knows that Kobolds aren't dragons. We've got a shiny newselling pointversatile heritage for that.Nobody believed me when I said Paizo has a history of making existing options worse in order to better prop up and sell the new content. They called me crazy. Laughed at me. Demanded that I cite sources and provide evidence.
Soon they will all see the truths I have held as self evident for themselves! Muhahahahaha!!!
;P
... also, wait, aren't kobolds and the dragonblood heritage in the same book?? Not sure what they're "propping up" there.
EDIT: Unrelated, but for what it's worth, I will miss their Draconic Sycophant feat. I hope there's a version that just lets them focus a creature type of their choice instead. It was a really fun feat! It recognized the fun element of "you are playing an ancestry of minions* whose survival strategy for eons has been to latch onto the biggest, baddest monster in the area and keep on its good side".
making them actually descended from dragons completely missed what I saw as the point of the rumor: That nobody actually believed kobolds about it.
It was always my understanding that this was true - that kobolds were not actually descended from dragons in any way whatsoever.
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The fixation on bloodlines and genetics and lineage superiority always felt yucky and weird and made playing a properly arrogant kobold feel incredibly awkward, and making them actually descended from dragons completely missed what I saw as the point of the rumor: That nobody actually believed kobolds about it. Kobolds were the scrappy underdogs, and with very few exceptions, no kobold could really find a way to prove they were technically Tiamat's brood. Making kobolds explicitly draconic as their main Thing totally changed that. It made kobolds much less dynamic.
This is precisely the relationship my AoA kobold has with our party. He is convinced about the truth of the Kobold draconic heritage, but nobody else is. They actively call him "lizard" to his face, despite frequent insistence otherwise.
That's largely why his overarching goal is to try and prove a link between Dragons and Kobolds, because nobody takes them seriously.And I fully expect Tik will ultimately fail in his goal, but maybe he can get people to take him seriously, if not his species.
(Doesn't help that the other Kobolds we've encountered have been wholly incompetent at best and [loveably] moronic at worst)
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The fixation on bloodlines and genetics and lineage superiority always felt yucky and weird
I think you make a really good point here. Paizo is moving away from races, genetics, and all this blood related stuff.
And i am too.I am actively disappointed when a fêted new fantasy book comes with racial superiority stuff.
(rise of the ranger, had to stop reading...)
Kobolds can be awesome on their own, no need for dragon ancestors.
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making them actually descended from dragons completely missed what I saw as the point of the rumor: That nobody actually believed kobolds about it.It was always my understanding that this was true - that kobolds were not actually descended from dragons in any way whatsoever.
See, it's complicated. I'm not an expert, and I might have some details wrong in places, but I'm pretty sure I have a good sense of the trajectory. So, uh, tangent.
Only they were! Sort of. As written in Dragon magazine's Ecology of the Kobold, long ago, Tiamat was attacked by a bunch of nasty egg-thieving adventurers. Although she drove them off, she was badly hurt, and many of her eggs had been rendered stillborn. In desperation, she used her magic to revive one of the eggs, causing a sort of almost-dragon god called Kurtulmak to hatch. Kurtulmak quickly surmised the situation and decided to fortify his mother's lair so this could never happen again, and needing help, used his own magic to hatch the remaining stillborn eggs into thousands of tiny versions of himself. This is why kobolds are so proud of their trapmaking--they were created to defend their goddess, and defend her they did. So, kobolds are basically dragons' siblings, in a sense, or at least very distant cousins. They came from the same source. It's a really fun little twist on what the kobolds believe.
Anyways, the dragon thing was never really the main point of kobolds. The point was they were underdogs, with 1/4 CR (the lowest in the game for a humanoid creature--even goblins had 1/3) and only 4 hit points. It made them look kind of pathetic, and that's what turned out to really resonate. Being underdogs was part of the appeal.
See, like, kobolds looked like losers, but that just made it really fun to give them wins. The story of Tucker's Kobolds, love it or hate it, embedded this idea of "yeah, kobolds are small and weak, but they're scary when they've had the chance to fortify an area", and the infamous Pun-Pun build (an "infinite wishes" glitch to rival the painter wizard) was a delightful subversion, a kobold becoming basically omnipotent. The most famous (non-video game) kobold was arguably Meepo, a lowly dragon-tender whose rise to greatness involved a visit to Earth and the acquisition of a magical pump-action shotgun. The Kobold Quarterly magazine branded itself deliberately as a plucky upstart with that name. The Midgard campaign setting came out, and suddenly kobolds were kind of badass, Zobeck's scrappy ghettoized minority inventing half of the city's wonders, always pushed around but very dangerous to push too far. Oh, and once Pathfinder rebranded goblins, Pathfinder kobolds were able to firmly establish their monopoly on "clever little jerks who work as a team to bring you down".
The strongest flavor of kobolds was always that they were small and vulnerable and yet always had the potential to surprise you. Also, like, the design was just too adorable not to love.
Anyways, as things progressed, the dragon flavor started to take hold more and more. This had started in 3.5, for what it's worth, with winged kobolds and breath weapon feats. The idea had been introduced that while most kobolds just kind of had mottled scales, some rare kobolds had much more obvious lineage, with vivid chromatic scales and the powers to match. It almost felt like an attempt at throwing them a bone--"okay, see, they aren't total losers, they really are kind of dragony!" This is my presumptive editorial, but it almost gave the impression that some people couldn't really see the appeal of kobolds as-is, so they tried to just give kobolds Dragon Powers to "fix" them.
PF2 Premaster rolls around, and now the dragon stuff is made 100% canon outright. Every kobold officially picks a scale color, kobold options offer wings and breath weapons and energy resistances, we have leaned all the way into the draconic bloodline theme. This is around where I started to realize I really didn't like the whole idea. It just felt like it had gone from a quirky little joke (with maybe a grain of truth) to a steady loss of thematic identity. There was nothing clever or scrappy or underdog-y about zooming through the air and breathing fire. People would boast about how cool and badass kobolds finally were, and I was like... weren't they cool and badass already? If not, what have we been doing here?
EDIT: To be clear, PF2 also had tons of great content for kobolds and 100% gave you the tools to play the kinds of kobolds I'm talking about here. PF2 did not ruin kobolds. It just specifically leaned in much more heavily to the dragon stuff on top of the good stuff, and made it harder to avoid engaging with the dragon stuff even if it wasn't your thing.
Anyways, yeah, I really like this change! I think it puts kobolds on the right path. It gives a GM reasons to include kobolds in way more adventures, instead of just dragon-themed ones, and it gives kobolds as an ancestry an enormous amount of versatility while deepening their theming as "the minion* ancestry"--they don't just follow dragons around as a weird family loyalty thing, they follow big scary monsters around because it's part of how they reproduce! Heck, service to those big scary monsters isn't even really required, is it? Just the easiest option. Gives a lot of neat prompts.
And if a kobold's story is about his determination to prove that kobolds deserve to be treated with respect "because they're descended from dragons", maybe the conclusion of that arc always needed to be removing the quoted part of that goal entirely. Because like we're saying here, maybe kobolds on their own were always enough.
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I think you make a really good point here. Paizo is moving away from races, genetics, and all this blood related stuff.
now it's sorcerer's turn /hj
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I don't really have much of a stake in any of this, but I just wanted to say, I really appreciate your passion about kobolds - it always brings me joy to see people excited about stuff that other people overlook a lot.
Keep on being awesome.
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I don't really have much of a stake in any of this, but I just wanted to say, I really appreciate your passion about kobolds - it always brings me joy to see people excited about stuff that other people overlook a lot.
Keep on being awesome.
Same. I lost ALL interest after their new look made them look like salamanders [and not the cool kind of salamander], but it's great someone loves them.
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I'm actually not huge on the art redesign, although obviously they couldn't just keep the WotC-owned version. I have a whole diatribe about major ancestries needing to be visually, emotionally dynamic and viable for multiple kinds of stories that we won't get into here.
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Okay, maybe a little bit. If a PC of the ancestry would mostly just provoke confused laughter from you trying to put them into certain kinds of stories, the design isn't versatile, and that's not really ideal. It's all well and good for the Rare conrasu to float about on the sidelines being totally weird and (at a glance) emotionally unexpressive, but for an Uncommon or even Common ancestry, you really want that versatility. Can this ancestry work for a comedic story? A dramatic one? Can I play a goblin or kobold PC in a serious romance arc, or will it just seem like I'm doing a joke? Is this shoony's adorable little pug face going to be able to convey the complex emotional range needed for running through The Hook Mountain Massacre?
The new kobold design is charming enough, and I like it better than PF1's or 5e's versions, but I just don't know if I want to play one of those gals. Like the goblin, it kind of feels like a strictly comedic design more often than not.
Like, personally, I think Paizo should have just been brave and drawn kobolds like the furries do, but nobody asks me about these things.
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I should say, though, I mostly just headcanon away art I don't like? I try to avoid groups that really tightly police the art styles of characters, and that helps a lot. I have a whole headcanon that goblin faces as we think of them are more like a krenshar-style "war-face", and that they normally look a little bit more approachable and expressive and gnome-like--albeit with big ears and large mouths and shark teeth. Lots of goblins shave their heads because hair makes the war-face itchy, but some almost never enter the war-face at all. If I ever get really bothered by the kobold thing, I'll probably figure out a headcanon like that, but for now I mostly just ignore the new art. It's charming, but it's not my thing.
I appreciate the positivity in your responses, by the way. It's nice to share our differing feelings about the change without it being an argument.
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As someone who joined in at the 3.5 Era, I was happy to accept the "kobolds were born from the blood shed by the first dragons" and they they weren't technically dragons, but with the right feats could do a pretty good job emulating them. I liked it when PF made their vague dragon connection more explicit, but as KC says, that does come with some weird baggage. All the same, even as one who started right as the kobolds-are-dragons trend was kicking off, I actually adore the boss monster minion development. It feels like a natural extension of their love for serving draconian overlords but let's them show up in any circumstance, regardless whether the boss monster is actually a dryad or a lone giant or something. The little guys love teaming up with something much bigger and know how to make themselves useful about it.
I did notice that this is really similar to the surki, but in my head I wrote it off as "similar but different". The surki don't do the boss monster thing, the kobolds don't do the generation dig thing. That they both metamorph with magic (one subtly, the other dramatically) isn't necessarily weirder than that both dwarves and orcs have the "came from underground" thing.
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I can't really tell the difference between the old kobolds and the new kobolds, personally.
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I like the big heads.
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I'm surprised that they didn't redesigned kobolds according to Germanic folklore, making them similar to "evil-looking gnomes".
If it was the case, then kobolds being linked to anything else other than dragons would make sense.
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I've always be down for the street sharks look. That wedge shaped head is as iconic to me as golarion goblins and skittermanders now
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I've always be down for the street sharks look. That wedge shaped head is as iconic to me as golarion goblins and skittermanders now
Part of my problem is precisely this connection.
Losing the dragon stuff is fine but like, stubby limbed short mnonstery humanoid with big heads that are often used comedically is already very trodden territory for Paizo, and kobolds had a problem of sometimes feeling too similar to goblins even before the update.
Goblins and Kobolds are nothing alike though in presentation and culture and how they’re represented as NPCs and (from personal experience) how they’re played.
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I've always be down for the street sharks look. That wedge shaped head is as iconic to me as golarion goblins and skittermanders nowPart of my problem is precisely this connection.
Losing the dragon stuff is fine but like, stubby limbed short mnonstery humanoid with big heads that are often used comedically is already very trodden territory for Paizo, and kobolds had a problem of sometimes feeling too similar to goblins even before the update.
And a big issue I have with 90% of leshies in art :(
Putting all seriousness aside, I do think the "pattern" of differentiation by head enlargement is funny. In PF3, the Tolkien Estate is finally going to come for halflings, and Paizo's going to do a redesign where halflings get enormous mouths and tiny doll eyes. Gotta get a-head somehow.
I've always be down for the street sharks look. That wedge shaped head is as iconic to me as golarion goblins and skittermanders now
SHARK?... I can't say I get that. All i see is newt/salamander.
I've always be down for the street sharks look. That wedge shaped head is as iconic to me as golarion goblins and skittermanders nowPart of my problem is precisely this connection.
Losing the dragon stuff is fine but like, stubby limbed short mnonstery humanoid with big heads that are often used comedically is already very trodden territory for Paizo, and kobolds had a problem of sometimes feeling too similar to goblins even before the update.
Well, it's got to differentiate them from Awakened Animal [Lizard] now, so big head and comical can do it. Actually, most of the Ancestries in PF2 have to do this: Catfolk, Kholo, Lizardfolk, Ratfolk, Tengu and Tripkee have to try to be different from Awakened cats, hyenas, lizards, rats, birds and frogs. SO many animal-humanoids now.
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Have to say, this thread is definitely making me think again about making kobolds. I'd kinda drifted away from it because the dragonblood goodies don't really require kobolds, but I'm seeing the fun in kobolds too now.
I do think their mechanics are a bit bereft. It doesn't feel like they got enough interesting new high concept stuff back for all the stuff that was taken to the dragonbloods.
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Yeah, I literally started working on a PFI thing yesterday because of all this talk. It might wind up being the first thing I actually publish for PFI at this rate.
I do actually think the new kobold visual design works a little better for story role variety. I played a black-scaled diabolist detective kobold that worked pretty well. He had golden jewelry hanging between his horns, and managed to be decently stately. The party also had a Mengkare simp draconic kobold, and the contrast between them was part of the fun.
As far as a serious romantic subplot goes, the new lore means that securing a sufficient source of magical power to raise a healthy family (whether through patron, location, or minor artifact) can be a motivation for adventuring. Or perhaps getting another kobold out from a callous patron they feel they can't leave. If you're only picturing a kobold craning their neck to look up at a human twice their size, yeah, that's a little harder to play seriously.
One thing I've noticed across a few fellow players' kobold characters is kobolds trying to do something for other kobolds to improve their situation. That's something that can be played seriously without much difficulty.
Yeah, I literally started working on a PFI thing yesterday because of all this talk. It might wind up being the first thing I actually publish for PFI at this rate.
I always enjoy hearing folks' kobold thoughts, and especially a passionate fan's! I've got my own thoughts and headcanons I've built up over the years as well.
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As far as a serious romantic subplot goes, the new lore means that securing a sufficient source of magical power to raise a healthy family (whether through patron, location, or minor artifact) can be a motivation for adventuring. Or perhaps getting another kobold out from a callous patron they feel they can't leave. If you're only picturing a kobold craning their neck to look up at a human twice their size, yeah, that's a little harder to play seriously.
One thing I've noticed across a few fellow players' kobold characters is kobolds trying to do something for other kobolds to improve their situation. That's something that can be played seriously without much difficulty.
Keep in mind I'm primarily talking about the visual design here! The lore is great for it, I have no issues with the lore, but when it comes to the art, romantic leads usually have faces we can relate to. Smiles and frowns and sneers require expressive mouths and eyes, shrugs and headtilts require necks and shoulders, smooches usually require lips. I definitely think the new kobold design can manage an alien kind of serpentine dignity (I agree with the first part of your post), but I feel like if my kobold rogue got in a will-they-won't-they with the elven cleric, the main distraction from the character dynamics wouldn't be height differences, it would be the rogue's absurd appearance.
And obviously, you can still go for it. You can do a "beauty isn't skin-deep" story, you can very consciously refuse to acknowledge the "I'm a shaaark" of it all, but those responses still kind of force you to acknowledge how much "space" the distinct design "takes up" in any character arc. Character visuals have mass and volume. They occupy their own slots in the inventory of a story. Sometimes an ancestry design overshadows the actual character, especially the weirder it gets--most conrasu characters are very, very defined by being conrasus.
I think it's telling that so many kobold PCs have stories about being kobolds, isn't it? Like, I think it would happen regardless--the kobold appeal is very much about the Kobold Struggle--but it sure is the easiest kind of character to play with that kind of design.
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I can tell you I would not care to give headpats to an evil looking gnome.I'm surprised that they didn't redesigned kobolds according to Germanic folklore, making them similar to "evil-looking gnomes".
If it was the case, then kobolds being linked to anything else other than dragons would make sense.
I absolutely would but in an extremely condescending manner.