Expand Kobolds?

[Lord Fell]

Idea:

Where characters normally encounter Mughash, the Kobold Lord, start spawning Kobold Chieftains. These Kobolds would be fairly tough, and accompanied by a retinue of lesser kobolds.

Add:
Kobold Backstabbers; "clear" kobolds with assassin like abilities.
Kobold Ambushers; "invisible" kobolds, with better assassin-like abilities.
A higher (lower depth) version of Mughash.

By assassin-like abilities, I mean such things as shoot arrow, phase door, strike for poison, strike for drain, create traps.

[Derakon]

Mm, something about making kobolds that are a credible threat past 400' or so offends me. Like yeeks, kobolds should be one of those sets of monsters that the player rapidly outgrows, to demonstrate to them that they're getting more powerful. "Ha! Early on I had to flee from a small kobold, but I just beat their king!"

Not only that, but the early game actually has a good variety of enemies to face. What we really need is more mid- and late-game monsters. I've been thinking about creating some new entries for monster.txt; I have ideas, but they need to be balanced.

Also, trap emplacement is a nasty spell early on, because a) players have a very limited facility to detect traps, and b) traps are comparatively more lethal.

[buzzkill]

Play FA. There's nothing like getting ambushed in the plains by a group of kobold dart-throwers. They rank right up there with gangs of petty-dwarf mages in my book.

[Lord Fell]

I'm still playing my first vaguely successful game in Angband since I've returned... it looks to me that (unless he was out of level) Mughash shows up long before we regularly see groups of orcs, or orc leaders with retinues.

I think that adding Kobold chiefs at the level Mughash usually shows up at, and then pushing him down about 200 feet will smooth the transition from single orcs to groups of orcs. I envision that players would kill Mughash around the time they are starting to encounter the weakest of the unique Orc chiefs.

Adding assassin-type kobolds always made sense to me; that's always been kobold's schtick. Because they are small and weak, they need to rely on stealth and guile. Create Traps might be too ugly a spell for them to use, but that was just an example...

[Tiburon Silverflame]

Heck, just make kobold mages, with a huge propensity to pop Magic Missile or Stinking Cloud. The whole point of kobolds is, one or two is trivial...even for a very low-level character. They're wimps. Their strength is in numbers. BUT, with weenie critters, their combat stats are too pathetic...so 20 kobold archers still tends to be a very low-level threat because they just can't hit enough. What makes the lesser hounds so scary the first few times is, they have auto-hit attacks in their breath weapon. It's the auto-hit that means that, even if the damage per critter is fairly, low, it can add up...and make the mob a credible threat. So give Mugash a buncha kobold mages, as his 'elite guard.'

[Derakon]

Now that I could get behind. Basically one step up from the kobold shaman.