Kobold

Version 0.21: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

This page is about the player species. For the monster, see Kobold (monster).

Kobolds are small, ugly creatures with few redeeming features. They are not the sort of people you would want to spend much time with, unless you happened to be a Kobold yourself. They tend to be more agile and weaker than Halflings, and are slightly more talented at using most types of magic, particularly necromancy. They are competent in combat, especially with short blades, maces or crossbows, and are also very adept at using magical devices. They often live as scavengers, surviving on carrion (which they can eat even when not hungry), but are carnivorous and can only eat meat. Kobolds advance in levels as quickly as Humans. Like Halflings, Kobolds cannot wield large weapons.

Innate Abilities

• Carnivorous: Kobolds gain more sustenance from meat chunks and can eat chunks until engorged.
• Kobolds are small creatures, unable to wield bardiches, battleaxes, dire flails, executioner's axes, glaives, great maces, great swords, halberds, longbows, scythes, triple swords, giant clubs, giant spiked clubs, and javelins. One-handed weapons like magical staves, broad axes, tridents, demon tridents and double swords are two-handed weapons to them.

They have more difficulty with bucklers and kite shields and are incapable of wearing tower shields.

Kobolds have a base Strength of 5, Intelligence of 9 and Dexterity of 10 (before Background modifiers).

Preferred Backgrounds

• Warriors: Hunter
• Zealots: Berserker
• Warrior-mages: Arcane Marksman, Enchanter
• Mages: Conjurer, Summoner

Level Bonuses

• +1 to a random stat every 5th level.
• 20% less HP than average.
• Average MP.
• +3 magic resistance per level.

Starting Skills and Equipment

Kobolds receive the skills and equipment listed for their background, with the following exceptions:

• Javelins are replaced with boomerangs.

Difficulty of Play

Kobolds are a straightforward race to play because of their excellent aptitudes in many skills and their size bonus to EV. They have good magic aptitudes overall and advance quickly in experience, and they can eat meat chunks at any time, not just when hungry. This makes eating less of a hassle, which is usually just a convenience, although it can be leveraged to strong effect with certain abilities, such as repeatable berserking, as offered by Trog or via an evocable source of berserk (e.g., amulet of rage). Their excellent aptitude for evocations makes them good artificers.

Skill aptitudes

The higher the value, the better the aptitude.

Skill	Aptitude	Skill	Aptitude	Skill	Aptitude
Attack		Miscellaneous		Magic
Fighting	1	Armour	-2	Spellcasting	0
		Dodging	2
Maces & Flails	-1	Shields	-2	Conjurations	0
Axes	-2	Stealth	4	Hexes	0
Polearms	-2			Summonings	0
Staves	-1	Invocations	1	Necromancy	0
Unarmed Combat	0	Evocations	2	Translocations	0
Throwing	1	Shapeshifting	-1	Alchemy	0
				Fire Magic	0
Short Blades	3			Ice Magic	0
Long Blades	-2			Air Magic	0
Ranged Weapons	3	Experience	1	Earth Magic	0

Trivia

Kobolds were originally creatures from Germanic mythology, but they are well known to gamers due to appearing as low-level monsters in Dungeons & Dragons and as creatures in Nethack.

History

• Prior to 0.21 and the merging of rations, the carnivorous mutation had three levels.
• Kobolds' aptitudes were rebalanced in 0.19. Prior to this change: Axes was -1, Maces & Flails was 0, Throwing was +3, Slings was +2, Bows was -1, Spellcasting was -1, Conjurations was -1, and Transmutations was -1, and Evocations was +3. Kobold base stats were also changed.
• Prior to 0.15, kobolds had 2 ranks of Saprovore and would recover from sickness faster than normal.