As I rework the rules for kobold Krew. I find myself trying to fix things I think could have been better. One of those areas is combat. I never really liked the idea of anything just being a pile of hit points to be chipped away. After reading an article by Clayton Notestone called the 1 hp dragon, it inspired me to rethink how combat checks are handled. 

Similar to games like Vasan, the Witcher, or Zelda. A monster must  be killed in a specific way and the challenge for the kobolds is to figure out the locks and keys to solve the puzzle.

So each monster will have hidden information that will need to be uncovered by the kobolds to be defeated. Some monsters might have weakness that the players will need to quest to find. I almost want each threat to be an end game BBEG for the party. So for example I have been starting with a creature called a BrambleBlight. 

A gigantic creature made of brambles that grows around an arcane item that had been discarded in the woods.

Attributes:

• Spiked hide - a thick outer skin of sharp brambles that grow quickly and protect the arcane core.
• Arcane core - hidden somewhere in the body, usually glows faintly.

So a story arc to defeat this blight might be

1. They talk to some folks in the tavern and find some folks who had been attacked by the monster at night while down by the water. They mwntion an eerie glow in the monster’s left shoulder, but scared it off with a torch they lit.

2. The kobolds visit the lore keeper and find out the only way to kill a bramble blight is by removing the arcane item from its body.

3. While investigating a kobold runs into town having seen the beast standing in the water. It seems to be watering itself.

3. The party knows they need to get through the brambles and the monster being afraid of fire they are hoping that fire can help them get through to the item. They also grab some copper spears to knock the item loose once it’s burned away.

4. They know it keeps coming back to water itself so they plan to ambush the monster that night before it gets to the water. And keep it in place by surrounding it with their torches.

I like this more puzzle design idea and you can see where mini quests can come from. The other idea I like is by removing HP it makes adventures easier to be used across many different games.