Kobolds have been a staple in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dungeons & Dragons since the very beginning, appearing consistently since 1st Edition. While the description of them has changed, from dog- or rat-like subhumans to mi♍niature descendants of dragons, they've had a few traits stay consistent: kobolds are small, cunning, and xenophobic, and usually live in subterranean lairs with their tribe. With a challenge rating of a measly 1/8, they're among the ওweakest monsters in the game.

But their strength lies in their numbers... and in their lair. Kobolds aren't the smartest humanoids, but they're clever and expert trapmakers. As a result, a kobold lair is both a home for their tribe and a deathtrap for uninvited guests. But many DMs fail to make kobold lairs engaging, treating them as just another dungeon. So here are some ways to make a kobold lair a unique challeng🌃e for your players.

Where Are Kobold Lairs?

Kobold lairs are most often imagined as a series of caves and tunnels carved into a mountain, but these scrappy survivors can be found almost anywhere. If a new tribe is lucky enough to find a dungeon or ruin to move into, it can be retrofitted for it💧s own needs, adding new traps and tunnels.

Kobold tribes have also been known to turn the sewers of major cities into their lairs, giving them access to urban goods in exchange🧜 for managing the population's waste.

Some kobold tribes have even formed above-ground lai♕rs in areas such as particularly dark forests, where they can use dense unde🦋rgrowth to form the tunnels and passages that offer so much protection.

Make The Lair A Living Space

Kobolds can spend almost their entire lives inside their lair, saf♔e from the ravages of the big, scary world outside. As such, treat the lair li♊ke an underground village: The lair should include workshops, farms, homes, storehouses, and a fair population of kobolds of all roles. Of course, everything needs to be modified for a subterranean environment, but it should be a self-sustaining environment that kobolds would die to protect.

Farms

Plants need sunlight, but mushrooms and other fungi can grow without it and provide nutrition for the tribe. Kobold lairs are likely to include multiple mushroom farms, similar to how leafcutter ants maintain fungus farms in their nests. Fertilizer foꦅr these farms can be scavenged plant matter from the surface or the unusable portions of those who fell victim to the various traps in the lair.

Storage

Before the invention of refrigerators, food was stored in root cellars, underground rooms that stayed cool to keep potatoes and other starchy vegetables fresh. Kobolds are likely to do the same thing, storing food for emergencies or when food is scarce. Load the room up with dried mushrooms, some potatoes and other tubers, and jerky of dubious origin. After all, ಌkobolds are known to eat humanoids and ev🔯en each other.

Homes

Kobolds live in communal areas, not individual or family homes, so the lair should include several larger chambers with room for at least a dozen kobolds to sleep in comfortably. These should have some kind of toilets nearby, most likely a deep-pit system, which may connect to the mushroom farms if you really want to g♌ross out your players. Sleeping chambers can also serve as hatcheries, or the hatchery can be a separate area.

Shrine

Kobolds revere Kurtulmak, and many lairs include a shrine to the deity. These shrines tend to be relatively simple, but usually feature an idol and either a basin or carved altar for kobolds to make offerings. Metal ore and raw gems are popular offerings, and adventurers looting the shrine are likely to further infuriate the tribe.

Some tribes are lucky enough to serve a dragon, who fulfills the role of both their leader and their guardian. In these situations, the shrine is probably either absent or smaller and less important to the tribe, who will instead showe♕r the dragon with gifts and praise.

Mines

Kobolds claim to have invented both mining and sorcery, with sorcery specifically invented by Ku𒉰rtulmak in order to divine the location of precious metals and gems. This tradition, and the need to expand the lair as the tribe grows, means th🌄at many kobolds are employed as miners, excavating new tunnels and chambers deeper in the lair. They may be seeking treasure or simply opening a new sleeping chamber.

Workshops

Unlike dwarves and gnomes, kobolds aren't known for fine craftsmanship. Generally, they prefer functiღon to form but put great effort into making jewelry from the raw metal and gems that thౠey mine. This jewelry is the only adornment that most kobolds value, and they guard it jealously.

The other craft that kobolds practice to perfection is trapmaking. This is considered high art for them, and their tunnels are always lined with whatever clever pitfalls they can throw together with scavenged materials.

Tunnels

Kobolds are small creatures, described as being between two- and two-and-a-half feet tall and weighing in at around 35 pounds, which puts them a little over knee-high. This puts them at the lower end of the small category, about half the height of other small races such as gnomes, and they have no reason to make their tunnels big enough for larger creatures unless they make larger tunnels specifically for the larger races. A medium-size🌜d adventurer is likely to need to crawl through kobold tunnels, and the ones where they could stand will be heavily trapped.

The Player's Handbook sets combat m🍸odifiers for tight spaces. Any creature can squeeze through a space one size smaller than it (so a medium human can squeeze through a small kobold tunnel), but that creature has disadvantage on attack rolls and Dexterity savesꦐ. Plus, attack rolls against that creature have advantage!

The lair should also have one or more escape tunnels, with both the entrance and exit hidden, and sections inside tight enough for kobolds themselves to struggle through, ensuring that larger creatures cannot follow.

Stables

Kobolds have been known to domesticate some animals, including bats, dire rats, and large lizards. While some ওof these are raised as livestock for food, giant weasels are often bred and trained as mounts. The history🐓 of giant weasel domestication is so well-established that a few kobolds are born as natural wereweasels.

No official stat block exists for wereweasels, despite being referenced in some primary sources. There are several homebrew vers𒁃ions available online, though!

Traps And Tricks

Kobolds are famous for their traps, and with good reason: Trapmaking is considered to be the highest form of art among kobolds, and while the🐭ir traps may seem shoddy at first glance, they're often ingeniously built from whatever scraps and salvage the tribe has available and should be built into the lair to such an extent that the lair itself, rather than the residents, are a threat to an adventuring party.

Collapsing Ceilings

Every chamber should have multiple entrances, which means that every tunnel is expendable. Most tunnels should be collapsible to stop intruders. Collapse tunnels on one end to prevent a party from entering a chamber or both ends to trap them. Or collapse the entire tunnel, which the Dungeon Ma♔ster's Guide's Improvised Damage Table recommends as 4d10 damage, enough to kill a first-level Barbarian or pin him if he manages toౠ survive.

Crates & Barrels

The low ceilings of kobold tunnels don't leave much room for falling objects, but your kobolds could always plan ahead and dig some shafts straight up and use them to drop objects on intruders. A dropped crate might only do 1d10 damage if it lands on a gnome, but if that crate contains a Swarm of Spiders, they've suddenly got a monster to deal with in tight quarters💮. Clever kobolds might also ai🌸m to drop a barrel of oil onto whichever party member is holding a lit torch.

Pit Traps

Kobolds are both small and light, so it would be rudimentary for them to line their tunnel with pit traps that require more weight to trigger. A collapsing floor over a pit filled with sharpened sticks or green slime will cause immediate regret, while one 🧔filled with flammable oil will create tension as a kobold approaches with a lit torch.

Get creative with traps. Use an Indiana Jones rolling boulder to force🍃 intruders into a kill chamber, or hide a bear trap ওin some mud and connect it to a pulley so that whoever steps on it is pulled up a shaft where their party can't help them.

Fight Strategically

Kobolds are well aware of their own frailty and will not attack directly unless their target is weakened or outnumbered. They will flee when the tide turns against them. This habit of fleeing is an opportunity to lead opponents into traps or ambushes, but more importantly, kobolds have home-field advantage in their lair.

Kobold tunnels can twist and turn, allowing members of the tribe to lose pursuers by ducking into side passages or secret tunnels that loop around behind. The tight passages can also make it nearly impossible for larger opponents to fight back effectively, allowing the kobolds to whittle them down with slings, spears, and spells from around corners and behind cover.

Kobolds should nevꦯer fight unless they have a huge advantage or they're trapped. Don't set up a fair fight!

Kobolds are also light enough that traps based on weight can be designed so that they can pass safely while larger intruders trigger them. Pits with thin boards covering them, or caltrops hidden in sand that kobolds can safely walk over are excellent examples, as are swinging log traps (blunt or sharpened!) set high enough to safely pass over🅺 their heads while hitting taller humanoids in the torso.

Given an easy way or a har൲d way, most adventurers will choose the easy way. Clever kobolds will excavate larger tunnels for invaders to use, and trap them to the gills, ꧅luring unaware adventurers into a kill-zone.

Finally, don't forget that kobolds have Darkvision, and so only need minimal light. This could be provided by bioluminescent fungi cultivated on the tunnel walls or torches and candles that can be quickly extinguished to engulf intruders in pitch darkness, where the koಞbolds have an enormous advantage.

To get a feel for how terrifying these encounters can be, look up the classic story Tucker's Kobolds, published in Dragon Magazine #127.

A well-run kobold encounter can be not only challenging, but memorable. If you design it💞 right and play smart, your players will dread facing even the smallest dragons in their home dungeons.