{kjd-imc} Kobold Komandos: Princessessss
Keith Davies
This isn't *really* a KJD-IMC, but I'm marking it such to make it
easier for me to find later.
I'm posting this on behalf of a friend of mine, who was the DM for
this session and swears it's all true.
Enjoy.
Keith
Princessesssss
This particular anecdote is called "Princessesssss" locally (spoken
in a particularly squeaky reptilian voice), because role playing
Princess-obsessed kobolds for what became eight hours straight
really gets to a guy after a while.
We ended up with a party of Kobolds when the group was exploring the
concept of Level Adjustment, a D&D thing that fills the same niche
as paying points to play a kewl race (only you pay character
levels). One player was flipping idly through the Monster Manual
hoping for inspiration when he stopped and asked if Kobolds get
*bonus* levels. The DM quickly ruled "no", but everyone was so
tickled by the idea of Kobolds with class levels that suddenly we
had a party of four kobolds.
Kobolds with class levels are dangerous things.
We ended up with a Rogue trap smith, a Ranger specializing in
anti-elf warfare, a Sorcerer with a charisma high enough he had the
whole party thinking he was half-dragon, and the Barbarian, called
Humanslayer. He had the kobold equivalent of an 18 strength and had
stolen a dwarven waraxe from somewhere; the ax weighed twenty
pounds, Humanslayer barely reached forty. He fought by getting
*very* angry, and then struggling to get the ax spinning around in
circles. After that he just focused on keeping it moving (in
circles) and let everyone else worry about where he was going.
The kobolds are acting as troubleshooters for a very very very big
black dragon, and are informed that a unicorn has moved into the
Boss' territory; it's killing honest goblins, reclaiming blightland
for woods, and curing the rampant malaria and swamp-fever the dragon
was using to drive out the pesky humans. This Just Won't Do, and the
PCs get dispatched to put a stop to it.
From here we have the famous brainstorming session, in which they
determine the following:
a) unicorns are hard to find, because they run fast.
b) unicorns are attracted to virgins for some unexplainable reason.
c) virgins are hard to find, possibly because unicorns run fast and are
attracted to virgins.
d) princesses are supposed to be virgins (at least, princesses locked in
towers should be).
e) princesses are easy to find, because they are locked in towers, and
therefore can't run very far.
The obvious solution is not to find the unicorn, but to find the
nearest princess. This has the added benefit that princesses rarely
weigh 1500+ pounds and even more rarely have six foot spears grafted
to their foreheads.
The Kobolts go overland, leaving a swathe of kobold-scaled
destruction in their wake, until they find a castle. They're not
very clear on who lives in the castle, other than a lot of humans,
but there's a tower on it, and towers are the natural habitat of
princesses. Of course, towers and castles and the like are
challenging to get into, so we end up with another brainstorming
session.
This time they think in a relatively straight line, and come up with
a plan that castle invaders have used for generations. It works a
little better when the invaders are small and overpowered for their
size, however.
The sorcerer enchants the trap smith, giving him a supernatural
boost to climbing skill. The trap smith then swims across the moat
in the dead of night and clings to the castle wall like a
particularly damp spider. He climbs up the wall and through the
opening of the nearest guarde-a-robe. For the viewers at home,
guarde-a-robes are the 13th century equivalent of luxury indoor
plumbing: it's an outhouse in a castle, using a chute in the wall to
take the waste away and dump it outside where the nobles don't have
to worry about it.
Guarde-a-robe shafts are narrow, stinky, slippery, steep, and
usually equipped with downward-projecting spikes to prevent just
this kind of thing. Kobolds, on the other hand, are narrow, stinky,
slippery, and good climbers (especially when enchanted). The trap
smith makes it up the shaft no problem, "back stabs" the poor guy
who was using it at the time, and then sends a rope back down for
the others.
The invasion of Castle Princess had begun!
The Kobold Komandos made straight for the tower, filling every human
encountered with a volley of quarrels and "hiding" the bodies behind
tapestries and under chairs. This was essentially a dungeon-crawl
with the serial numbers filed off and all the orks replaced with
poorly trained humans. There was a beautiful assault on the tower,
in which Humanslayer had Spider-Climb cast on him and did his
blender-of-doom routine at human-head-height along the wall and
(eventually) ceiling.
The last thing Fred the Guard ever saw was an upside down kobold
with a battle-ax.
At the top of the tower they find a 10x10 room with a human female
in a dress and a pointy hat. Finally presented with something that
could be a princess, an immediate debate broke out over whether she
was, in fact, a princess, and how could they be sure?
Kobold 1: Princesses are pretty, right?
Kobolds 2, 3, and 4 nod.
Kobold 1: So if she's pretty, she's a princess, right?
Kobolds 2, 3, and 4 nod.
Kobold 1: anyone know what a pretty human looks like?
Kobolds 2, 3, and 4 shrug.
The consensus was that she was probably pretty enough, and besides
she was locked in a tower so there was no way a unicorn could have
gotten at her. They promptly /charmed/ her until she thought
blood-spattered kobolds were nice, trustworthy people.
Another brainstorming session was called to figure out how to get
her out of the castle. Various plans were raised and rejected
(including stuffing her down the guarde-a-robe, sectioning her for
easy transport in bags, and just tossing her over the ramparts into
the moat and fishing her out later). They eventually settled on the
charmed girl sneaking out dressed as a servant and the kobolds going
out by way of the guarde-a-robe. The GM let the plan work, desperate
to get the kobolds out of the castle and back on track with the
unicorn.
What do a gang of kobolds do with "irresistible" bait and a known
target? Bait a trap, of course! They managed to press-gang a bunch
of regular, class-level-less kobolds into digging a big, ring-shaped
pit, filling it with pungi spikes, and covering it over. They then
tied the girl to a stake on the island in the pit, and ordered her
to sing "real pretty like" to get the unicorn to show up sooner.
This led to an impromptu Kobold sing-along that is best left to the
imagination.
The unicorn eventually showed up to rescue the princess, and this is
where the flaw in their information was revealed: as decades of
fantasy art shows us, some unicorns have wings. It flew in and
landed next to the princess, bypassing the pit entirely. The kobolds
- forced to fight it directly - pounce. Or rather, Humanslayer
pounces, and everyone else fires his or her crossbows. The unicorn
retreats to the air with Humanslayer hanging off a hind leg, trying
to swing an ax that really is far too big to use in one hand.
And rolls a critical hit, fatally wounding the unicorn.
Try and picture the scene: the players are jumping up and down and
congratulating Humanslayer's player on his good fortune and
ridiculously overpowered combat character, when the GM points out
that Humanslayer was hanging off the unicorns leg and ergo was
underneath the unicorn.
About 40' above ground level.
Over a 10' deep, spiky pit of doom.
And he just scored an instant kill.
Humanslayer crashed through the covered pit with a unicorn on top of
him, right onto the envenomed stakes.
The GM got to use the falling damage rules, the falling object
rules, the spiked pit rules, the massive damage rules, and the
disease rules, all because a PC successfully killed the "end-boss"
for the session.
Humanslayer survived the experience, although he needed urgent
medical attention, and was a bit shy about spiked pits for a while
afterward. The party delivered a dead unicorn to the Boss, and for
extra effort marks, delivered a Princess as well. The PCs got a
token payment and the right not to be eaten.
--
Keith Davies "Trying to sway him from his current kook-
keith....@kjdavies.org rant with facts is like trying to create
keith....@gmail.com a vacuum in a room by pushing the air
http://www.kjdavies.org/ out with your hands." -- Matt Frisch
Dirk Collins
> We ended up with a party of Kobolds when the group was exploring the
> concept of Level Adjustment, a D&D thing that fills the same niche
> as paying points to play a kewl race (only you pay character
> levels). One player was flipping idly through the Monster Manual
> hoping for inspiration when he stopped and asked if Kobolds get
> *bonus* levels. The DM quickly ruled "no", but everyone was so
> tickled by the idea of Kobolds with class levels that suddenly we
> had a party of four kobolds.
Obviously, the DM didn't have a copy of Savage Species, otherwise
he would have reluctantly ruled yes.
> Kobolds with class levels are dangerous things.
All critters with class levels are dangerous, That's the beauty of
Savage Species... It lets the DM design encounters where the
critters not only have their MM Stats, but an opportunity to
advance comparably with PC's. It definitely makes encounters
interesting when the players meet what they think is a known foe,
only to find a foe with innovative skills, abilities, feats, and
special abilities.
> From here we have the famous brainstorming session, in which the
> kobold PCs determine the following:
Well Done. Did the Castle inhabitants ever come looking for the
Princess?
Re,
Dirk
Dirk Collins
> We ended up with a party of Kobolds when the group was exploring the
> concept of Level Adjustment, a D&D thing that fills the same niche
> as paying points to play a kewl race (only you pay character
> levels). One player was flipping idly through the Monster Manual
> hoping for inspiration when he stopped and asked if Kobolds get
> *bonus* levels. The DM quickly ruled "no", but everyone was so
> tickled by the idea of Kobolds with class levels that suddenly we
> had a party of four kobolds.
>
> Kobolds with class levels are dangerous things.
Savage Species also allows players to play monsters with class
levels as PCs, and even has design templates for designing new
monster classes. Another good investment for DMs looking to expand
the horizons of their game.
Re,
Dirk
Chipacabra
news:vI3rf.10038$Dd2....@newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net:
> Keith Davies wrote:
>
>> We ended up with a party of Kobolds when the group was exploring
>> the concept of Level Adjustment, a D&D thing that fills the same
>> niche as paying points to play a kewl race (only you pay character
>> levels). One player was flipping idly through the Monster Manual
>> hoping for inspiration when he stopped and asked if Kobolds get
>> *bonus* levels. The DM quickly ruled "no", but everyone was so
>> tickled by the idea of Kobolds with class levels that suddenly we
>> had a party of four kobolds.
>
> Obviously, the DM didn't have a copy of Savage Species, otherwise
> he would have reluctantly ruled yes.
... Oh, really? Where, in your copy of Savage Species, does it say ANY
species, let alone kobolds, get bonus levels for being wimpy?
Keith Davies
> Keith Davies wrote:
>
>> We ended up with a party of Kobolds when the group was exploring the
>> concept of Level Adjustment, a D&D thing that fills the same niche
>> as paying points to play a kewl race (only you pay character
>> levels). One player was flipping idly through the Monster Manual
>> hoping for inspiration when he stopped and asked if Kobolds get
>> *bonus* levels. The DM quickly ruled "no", but everyone was so
>> tickled by the idea of Kobolds with class levels that suddenly we
>> had a party of four kobolds.
>
> Obviously, the DM didn't have a copy of Savage Species, otherwise
> he would have reluctantly ruled yes.
This was just after 3.0 came out. SS was still a ways off.
>> Humanslayer survived the experience, although he needed urgent
>> medical attention, and was a bit shy about spiked pits for a while
>> afterward. The party delivered a dead unicorn to the Boss, and for
>> extra effort marks, delivered a Princess as well. The PCs got a
>> token payment and the right not to be eaten.
>
> Well Done. Did the Castle inhabitants ever come looking for the
> Princess?
Not that I'm aware. I got the impression speaking with her that this
was more or less a one-off, to play with the idea. I don't know that
the kobolds ever ventured forth again.
She hadn't expected it to go this way (though she tells me she should
have expected they'd pursue the virgin angle, the players being the
pervs they are). She hadn't planned a castle raid or anything, and
all her prep was toward the *expected* encounters: the flying unicorn,
various woodsy things protecting the unicorn, and so on.
For seat of the pants DMing, I think she did a pretty good job.
Keith
Chipacabra
$Dd2....@newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net:
No, the RAW allow players to play monsters with class levels as PCs.
Savage Species fluffs that out a bit more, but primarily it allows you to
play monsters as PCs BEFORE they get class levels, such as starting an
ogre at level 1 and fleshing it out with ogre levels until it's earned
all its Hit Dice and Level Adjustment before moving on to class levels.
Symbol
"Dirk Collins" <dirk.c...@Earthlink.Net> wrote in message
news:wL3rf.10041$Dd2....@newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net...
> Keith Davies wrote:
>
> > We ended up with a party of Kobolds when the group was exploring the
> > concept of Level Adjustment, a D&D thing that fills the same niche
> > as paying points to play a kewl race (only you pay character
> > levels). One player was flipping idly through the Monster Manual
> > hoping for inspiration when he stopped and asked if Kobolds get
> > *bonus* levels. The DM quickly ruled "no", but everyone was so
> > tickled by the idea of Kobolds with class levels that suddenly we
> > had a party of four kobolds.
> >
> > Kobolds with class levels are dangerous things.
>
> Savage Species also allows players to play monsters with class
> levels as PCs
Shut up kook.
tussock
> The PCs got a token payment and the right not to be eaten.
<applause>
You know, I've been thinking I use kobolds too much, then you go
and remind me why I use kobolds so much.
Back stab. Yikes.
--
tussock
Kobold at work, ssssorry in advance.