Goblin

It’s not a long stretch to say that goblins made Paizo.  The goblins that kicked off the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path showed Paizo’s flair for reinventing and reinvigorating the classics, making a familiar race feel new without feeling foreign.  (That trick, as I’m discovering every day I try to write this blog, is not easy).  The rewrite was a masterstroke pure and simple…and for a community already feeling jittery about the impending 4^th Edition, it made the Pathfinder magazine/book hybrid (now Pathfinder Adventure Path) a life preserver.

So what will your goblins be?  The Gremlins-esque dog-slicing, horse-fearing, fire-setting vandals laid out in the Pathfinder books?  The grunts of Krynn’s evil armies?  The toad-faced backstabbers of Mystara’s Broken Lands?  They’re your monsters; go nuts.  (They might even be PCs!)  If you’re feeling stuck, here are a few more ideas…

The goblins of Vrin are a stunted, shriveled race, toiling beneath their human masters in the sewers and boilers rooms of great stone cities that used to be theirs.  In caverns far below that, however, their priests still rule, still perform blood sacrifices, and still pray to strange dark powers for their redemptions.  Their prayers are answered twice over: a pack of barghests arrive in the summoning pentacles, and the first generation of hobgoblins is born…

The Silk Road to Far Lu-Shong is a dangerous one.  The wolf-riding goblins of the steppes are numerous, and while most are simple warriors, some develop into fierce barbarians and rangers.  They are also deeply in touch with the spirit world, with their summoners commanding eidolons of surprising power.

On land, goblins are a nuisance.  Aboard ship they are a threat—able to climb ratlines with ease, hide in tiny bolt-holes, and demolish a ship’s stores with their ravenous appetites.  In space, they can be downright lethal, as a surprising number of them can hide in the crevasses of almost any asteroid with an atmosphere, and their mutinous exploits are notorious for fouling or consuming a voidship’s air envelope.

—Classic Monsters Revisited 16–21 & Pathfinder Bestiary 156

After the reader reaction to yesterday’s post, I realize I should have just called my blog The Daily Gnoll 11 months ago and saved myself a lot of typing.  Thanks for the reblogs!

Backlog alert: Took care of some azatas.  Bralani and brijidine entries are up.