   Many high-level characters have little to do because they're not
challenged.  They yawn at tarrasques and must be forcibly kept awake when a
lich appears.  The DMs involved don't know what to do, so they stop dealing
with the problem and the characters go into Character Limbo.  Getting to high
level is hard, but doing anything once you get there is worse.
   One of the key problems in adventure design lies in creating opponents who
can challenge powerful characters.  Singular monsters like tarrasques and
liches are easy to gang up on; the party can concentrate its firepower on the
target until the target falls down dead and wiggles its little feet in the
air.  Designing monsters more powerful than a tarrasque is self defeating; if
the group kills your super-monster, what will you do next - send in its
mother?  That didn't work on Beowulf, and it probably won't work here.
   Worse yet, singular super-monsters rarely have to think. They jsut use
their trusty, predictable claw/claw/bite.  This shouldn't be the measure of a
campaign. These games fall apart because there's no challenge to them, no
mental stimulation - no danger.
   In all the games that I've seen, the worst, most horrible, most awful-
beyond-comarison opponents ever seen were often _weaker_ than the characters
who fought them.  They were simply well-armed and intelligent beings who were
played by the DM to be utterly ruthless and clever.  Tucker's kobolds were
like that.
   Tucker ran an incredibly dangerous dungeon in the days I was stationed at
Ft. Bragg, N.C.  This dungeon had corridors that changed all of your donkeys
into huge flaming demons or dropped the whole party into acid baths, but the
demons were wienies compared to the kobolds on Level One. These kobolds were
just regular kobolds, with 1-4 hp and all that, but they were mean.  When I
say they were mean, I mean they were bad, Jim.  They graduated magna cum
laude from the Sauron Institute for the Criminally Vicious.
   When I joined the gaming group, some of the PCs had already met Tucker's
kobolds, and they were not eager to repeat the experience.  The party leader
went over the penciled map of the dungeon and tried to find ways to avoid the
little critters, but it was not possible.  The group resigned itself to
making a run for it through Level One to get to the elevators, where we could
go down to Level Ten and fight "okay" monsters like huge flaming demons.
   It didn't work.  The kobolds caught us about 60' into the dungeon and
locked the door behind us and barred it. Then they set the corridor on fire,
while we were still in it.
   "NOOOOOO!!!" screamed the party leader.  "It's THEM!  Run!!!"
   Thus encouraged, our party scrambled down a side passage, only to be
ambushed by more kobolds firing with light crossbows through murder holes in
the walls and ceilings. Kobolds with metal armor and shields flung Molotov
cocktails at us from the other sides of huge piles of flaming debris, which
other kobolds pushed ahead of their formation using long metal poles like
broomsticks.  There was no mistake about it.  These kobolds were _bad_.
   We turned to our group leader for advice.
   "AAAAAAGH" he cried, hands clasped over his face to shut out the tactical
situation.
   We abandoned most of our carried items and donkeys to speed our flight
toward the elevators, but we were cut off by kobold snipers who could split-
move and fire, ducking back behind stones and corners after launching steel-
tipped bolts and arrows, javelins, hand axes, and more flaming oil bottles.
We ran into an unexplored section of Level One, taking damage all the time.
It was then we discovered that these kobolds had honeycombed the first level
with small tunnels to speed their movements.  Kobold commandos were
everywhere.  All of our hirelings died. Most of our henchmen followed. We
were next.
   I recall we had a 12th-level magic-user with us, and we asked him to throw
a spell or something.  "Blast 'em!" we yelled as we ran.  "Fireball 'em!  Get
those little @#+$%*%&!!"
   "What, in these narrow corridors?" he yelled back.  "You want I should
burn us all up instead of them?"
   Our panicked flight suddenly took us to a dead-end corridor, where a giant
air shaft dropped straight down into unspeakable darkness, far past Level
Ten.  Here we hastily pounded spikes into the floors and walls, fling ropes
over the ledge, and climbed straight down into that unspeakable darkness,
because anything we met down there was sure to be better than those kobolds.
   We escaped, met some huge flaming demons on Level Ten, and even managed to
kill one after about an hour of combat and the lives of half the group.  We
felt pretty good - but the group leader could not be cheered up.
   "We still have to go out the way we came in," he said as he gloomily
prepared to divide up the treasure.
   Tucker's kobolds were the worst things we could imagine.  They ate all our
donkeys and took our treasure and did everything they could to make us
miserable, but they had style and brains and tenacity and courage.  We
respected them and loved them, sort of, because they were never boring.
   If kobolds could do this to a group of PCs from 6th to 12th level, picture
what a few orcs and some low-level NPCs could do to a 12th-16th level group,
or a gang of mid-level NPCs and monsters to groups of up to 20th level. Then
give it a try. Sometimes, its the little things - used well - that count.

                                                    Roger E. Moore
                                                      -Dragon #127

