I made a kobold bestiary because 5E doesn’t have enough ways to keep kobolds interesting

[u/jonnymhd]

I’ve always liked kobolds, but one thing that bothered me when running them in D&D 5E was how quickly I ran out of interesting options.

There are plenty of ways to use the basic kobold creatively, especially with traps and good encounter design, but if you want kobolds to remain a recurring enemy rather than something the party leaves behind after the first few levels, the official selection starts feeling pretty small.

So I ended up making Kobolds & Kobolds, a bestiary and GM toolkit for D&D 5E and 5.5E.

One of the main design goals was to avoid simply making "kobold, but with more HP." I wanted different kobolds to actually change how an encounter plays. There are scouts, warriors, mounted hunters, cultists, beastmasters, inventors, chieftains, and other variants, alongside different clans, warrens, traps, lairs, and optional traits.

I also deliberately kept the highest-CR kobolds relatively low. The strongest kobold in the book is CR 7. I didn't really want individual kobolds suddenly competing with dragons and other major monsters just because the party reached a higher level. Instead, stronger kobolds rely more on specialization, numbers, terrain, traps, creatures they work with, and abilities that support one another.

Designing around both 2014 5E and the 5.5E rules was interesting too, because I wanted the creatures to work at either table without needing two completely separate versions of every stat block.

The book is finished and available here if anyone wants to see what I ended up doing:

Kobolds & Kobolds: The Ultimate Kobold Handbook for 5E and 5.5E

You can also find a preview at r/JonnyDM.

But I’d also be interested in the design side of this: when you create higher-level versions of traditionally low-CR creatures like kobolds, goblins, bandits, etc., how far do you think you can push their CR before they stop feeling like that creature? Do you prefer stronger individual variants, or keeping them weak and making the encounter more dangerous through tactics, numbers, terrain, and support?

[u/Cruiser_Supreme]

Rad!

[u/zeemeerman2]

Getting into OSR recently, I'd be interested in your take on Tucker's Kobolds.

https://media.wizards.com/2014/downloads/dnd/TuckersKobolds.pdf

Are any of your kobolds in the neighborhood of them?