How to Play Goblins!

I absolutely love goblins; they are one of the most fun, chaotic, and surprisingly endearing creatures you can play in a tabletop roleplaying game. If you are a Game Master, running an encounter with goblins may be one of your first experiences with Dungeons and Dragons or Pathfinder. Most people consider them perfect little enemies for lower-level play. Throughout the years, Ive written a small adventure book called The Burning Goblins, drawn and iterated on 4 different attempts at goblins tokens, and have played a goblin numerous times as a player! 

A classic Dungeons & Dragons Goblin

Unfortunately, while I think goblins are great, the standard stat blocks and their presentation in many game systems are relatively tame and limited. I’m certainly not the first to believe this is a problem, though, as this issue prevails across many types of creatures. It would be so much better if people had a few more types of goblins to play with; different types lead to more exciting encounters and more memorable games!

So today, I will talk about goblins in depth and how you might want to use them in your games, but talking about goblins is one thing; having tangible creatures you can use is even better! To that end, alongside this article is a small Foundry Virtual Tabletop adventure, ready to install and use with 10 goblin variations for Dungeons & Dragons for my Patrons!

The file can be grabbed here

What are Goblins?

Goblins are small, chaotic, and dangerous. They are vaguely humanoid creatures with (typically) greenish skin that some people consider monsters of pure evil. Others view them more favorably, and believe while they may be chaotic, they can choose their own paths and self-determination just like Humanity and play them as adventures and heroes. 

A Teleporting Treasure Goblin

For the most part, though, goblins are used as enemies that must be defeated, often for a good reason, as goblin motivations revolve around creating chaos and surviving against all odds, leading to destruction and death wherever they set up their lairs and homes. They are also tenacious little survivors who run and hide when confronted with force and attack only when they are desperate or think they have an overwhelming advantage; when goblins succeed, they are exuberant and joyful, in twisted and malicious ways, dancing around and singing little songs.

Goblins are typically led by the strongest among them; only a strong, brutal will is enough to vaguely control a goblin tribe for long. Small groups of goblins may be led by a Goblin Boss, but larger, more established tribes are often led by Goblin Kings with Goblin Warlocks and many other goblin types serving under them. Politics among the tribe, however, is constantly shifting, and when conflicts break out as they always do, the winner of a fight takes charge, and power fluctuates often daily.

Goblin Lairs 

Goblins can often be found in lairs, but a goblin lair can be much more than a hole in the ground, with spikes sticking out of the floor. Goblins will make their homes just about anywhere, and they will create a lair just as easily within an abandoned warehouse in the middle of a city or a treetop-covered hive surrounded by rope bridges or even perhaps a floating ramshackle river barge. 

A Goblin King!

Regardless of where a goblin lair has been made in your world, they all tend to follow similar patterns. Alarms are common, and attacking a goblin lair head-on may result in the entire tribe being alerted to the presence of intruders! They will have plenty of small, perfectly sized tunnels or walkthroughs that human-sized creatures can't navigate, allowing them to flee or circle around and surprise their enemies. Traps can be found almost everywhere, and it's essential that you move through a goblin lair slowly and carefully check your surroundings! There are rooms for sleeping and food storage but also rooms for trap making, refuse pits where they dump bodies or uhh.. relieve themselves, and small throne rooms where they engage in goblin politics and listen to orders in front of their leaders. In rare cases, you may also find goblin shrines where they worship local deities, which are lodestones for concentrated magical forces.

A Goblin Warlock.

Overall, goblin lairs should feel claustrophobic, dark (all goblins have darkvision), and dangerous. Some lairs will even be suffused with toxins or deadly gases, and the environment becomes a fatal danger to a party. Even for mid-level adventures, the challenge isn't just defeating the goblins in a single encounter but trying to clear an entire group or tribe of goblins from their own lairs. Unfortunately, for a party of adventurers, this is where the goblins have an advantage in both numbers and tactics, and the goblins will often wait until the environment or their traps have weakened a party before amusing them in the dark!

Goblin Traps

Goblin traps are often small and poorly made, but they make up for the lack in craftsmanship in quantity and ingenuity. Forget spikes in the ground with a net of leaves covering the top (though those certainly exist). Goblins delight in making unusual and cruel traps that are made in many ways to defend their lairs and confuse each other!

• Rusty spikes, spring-loaded and sharp, remain hidden behind thin coverings or mud upon mud-covered walls.

• Wooden logs stacked in piles above ceiling holes with tripwires across the floor.

• A chest with a spring-loaded vial of acid within. 

• Nets and ropes across deep shafts are designed to give way if something too heavy attempts to cross. 

• Explosive charge mines are carefully placed in refuse rooms to cover the activation triggers. 

  
  

And don't forget, even if a goblin trap has gone off, and the initiative starts with goblins jumping out at the party, that doesn't mean that more traps can't be used as the party attempts to move around the combat area! This pushes a low-level encounter with goblins into the mid-level range and makes things extremely challenging! 

A Forest Goblin with a spear

Goblin Tactics

Goblin Tactics are not both simple and complex. In many ways, a single goblin will not seem like a threat. They don't hit very hard, nor are they very resilient, with low hit points and armor. They don't tend to have any special abilities or features that make them interesting, and from a distance, they could be interpreted as boring..

However, what they lack in individual strength, they more than makeup for in numbers and tactics. Playing goblins as a Game Master is all about using pack tactics, clever, hit and run, or guerrilla-style attacks where a combat encounter and initiative may last for only a few rounds before the goblins scatter. Ranged attacks from bows, crossbows or blowguns to whittle down an adventurer's HP before disappearing into a tunnel. 

Goblins are clever, not intelligent as such, but smart and cunning, and they know the difference between a shield-bearing fighter with chain mail armor and a cloth-wearing cleric or wizard. As a Game Master, you should always play goblins as if they have identified the weakest links and justice targets in a player party to attack. 

When it comes to damage, an average goblin would likely flee from combat after a single hit, and even before the combat, goblins plan ambushes from the dark, likely only attacking if they feel they have an edge. It's all about wearing the party down, and unless the party is well prepared, the goblin's superior numbers mean that it's a war of attrition and not a battle of strength.

The Adventuring Goblin Ratchet with his trusty pickaxe!

Combined, these tactics can be a perilous combination and something that a new party at level 1 cannot overcome. Remember, it is perfectly okay, and I would say even encourage the party to underestimate a goblin lair, group, or tribe and need to retreat. 

Roleplaying Goblins

Always play into the idea that goblins love to cause chaos but are ultimately cowardly unless their leaders are urging them on.

Even the leaders, Goblin Bosses, and Kings will run if they see they are about to be killed by adventurers. Under almost every circumstance, goblins will not throw their lives away, and it might be the perfect excuse to allow the party to fail because too many goblins escaped and ended up founding another tribe later on. 

They are excitable and often speak to each other in higher-pitched screeching voices in their language. Goblin voices are one of the few things that give goblins away when trying to hide. 

The wandering Goblin Gobo with his magical rope and pack of adventuring items!

Goblin Variations

As I said at the start of this article, goblin variations add fun and complexity to encounters. There are 10 types in the small Foundry Virtual Tabletop adventure Ive created alongside this article. Each one is designed to add extra interest and flexibility, and you could create entire little adventure campaigns around it. Ive included two NPC types of goblins as well, Ratchet and Gobo, that would serve as individual goblins that would be encountered as more neutral or friendly characters in a campaign!

• Goblin King

• Pyro Goblin

• Gobo

• Warlock Goblin

• Treasure Goblin

• Assassin Goblin

• Forest Goblin

• Alchemist Goblin

• Ratchet

Use these types wisely and incorporate them into the pack tactics and hit-and-run style encounters I discussed above! Go forth and play goblins with a gleam in your eye and a certain amount of glee to try and shank your party members in the dark ahaha!

And finally, don't forget, if you want to create your own goblins types and variations. Check out my Patreon post, grab the Token Creator pack 1 for free, and make your own using parts!

~ Caeora

https://www.patreon.com/posts/token-creator-1-114108033