Thursday 28 July 2016

Random Table - Goblins!!!

Artwork from the Pathfinder SRD
Goblins are a staple of every low-level adventurer's murder-diet. But they can get a little stale after a while. So, here's a random table to help determine exactly what kind of goblins are inhabiting your next dungeon...


Roll 1d10The Goblins Are Actually...
1Backwoods little cavemen. Their weapons are crafted from bone, any armour is leather and bone, and they train various dire and prehistoric animals as guard animals and attack beasts. Their chief rides an odd rat-sabertooth hybrid (stats as a sabertooth/lion with a disease bite)
2Masters of alchemy, in a trailer-park meth lab kind of way. They sling alchemical bombs and weapons, some have been modified by their masters (stats as anything else, like Ogres, Otyugh etc. visually horribly mutated goblin-beasts), plenty of drugs as loot. Some even have weapons of crystallized poison (one-use, does damage and make a Save vs Poison at a -4 penalty).
3More than a little fey-tainted. They aspire to be more than their nature, but instead find themselves organised into grotesque mockeries of the Fey Courts, wearing mismatched clothes robbed from well-to do Halflings and Gnomes, and fighting with rusted rapiers and Elven weapons. Their speech patterns are filled with weirdly flowery prose mixed with base insults and filth.
4Ruled over by a Demon-descended goblin, head and shoulders taller than the others, with a cruel smile, all the immunities and one special ability from its parent demon. His followers paint their faces with blood, sacrifice captives, and worship him as a God. May have some least demons in his service as well.
5Infected with spores from a weird fungus in the dungeon. At night they are placid - you could even just walk right past them. But during the day, they wander the dungeon aimlessly, until the find a source of light brighter than ambient - then they suicidally rush it, hoping to infect more organisms until someone carries their spores outside of the dungeon to be carried away on the winds to another dungeon. More advanced infectees sprout hideous growths and have blind, lifeless eyes.
6Have become strangely well-adapted to their dungeon environment - pale and hairless, bulbous blank eyes, lanky limbs with claws and oddly sticky hands - stats as Kobolds, plus perfect darkvision, permanent Spider Climb, and a severe aversion to light (they flee from light, and if forced to fight fight at -3 to all rolls). They go out of their way to remove or extinguish torches.
7Cargo cultists who worship ancient Dwarven machines within their dungeon. Many wear brass armour and jewelery, and any with standing in the tribe (lieutenants, the chieftain) have Dwarven weapons (+1 damage), and may have constructed the ever-feared Goblin Tank from inexpertly-welded shields and scraps.
8Brutal little cannibals. They wear demi-human skin-masks, carry cleavers and rusty kitchen tools, and don't kill their victims, instead capturing them to keep them fresh. There is a 25% chance that any given goblin is afflicted with a prion disease from eating brains (permanent berserker state, foaming, unable to tell friend from foe). Their areas always smell of cooking pork, and their loot often contains some pretty tasty jerky. 
9Oddly in touch with nature. They only use wooden weapons, wear leather armour, and their senior members (lieutenants,etc) have the abilities of a Ranger of their HD. The Chieftain has abilities as a Druid of her HD. Their areas are full of Assassin Vines and Shriekers which don't react to the goblins, and many animals (both regular and Dire) wander with them.
10Seem pretty nice. They're converts to the local religion, they trade with the locals, and are well-groomed and respectable. This is a front - they're all thralls of a powerful psionic creature, who uses them to allow him to trade for valuable components for a great machine it's building, to allow it to control hundreds of beings at a time.

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