Due to natural selection, kobolds are becoming cuter

...

>that skeleton patting the necromancer's head

This will never not be one of my favorites.

>Headpats
Weebshit scum

>pat pat

kkkkk

>necromancer patted
This is some Tim & Eric shit... can't deny it's entertaining tho

>Humans have a tendency to kill the ugly kobolds
>They leave the cute ones alone
>All of the ugly kobolds die
>All of the cute kobolds reproduce
>All of the cute kobolds have cute babies, or if they don't they get killed.

The premise of this thread is retarded but this isn't exactly rocket science bro.

Damage reduction.

I hear your mom's in need of a smiting, and I'm gonna give her one.

This. Part of the adaptations that wolves underwent that permitted them to coexist with humans as "dogs" was that they got cute. When Russian scientists attempted to breed a domesticatable fox, one side effect was that they became cute along the way.
Kobolds that successfully charm neighboring human settlements into tolerating them will be able to carve out a niche for themselves where they don't get murderhobo'd.

It'd be easier to charm us into not killing them by not stealing our shit or devouring our young than it would to become cute.

That, too, but if they're not cute murderhobos will still genocide them just to steal their shit. Even if it's not very good shit.
Faced with the average party of PCs, any random sophont is either charming, helpful, or the victim of a random stabbing.

How important that is depends on how common murderhobos are. It's entirely possible that being poorly-roleplayed marionettes of detached extradimensional forces is a problem unique to the band of focus characters.

Got the rest?

Your average tabletop setting is CRAWLING with them. You can't swing a dead cat in the Forgotten Realms without hitting a party of adventurers, for instance -- hell there are even gods in FR who are just jumped-up PCs.
Mystara, Greyhawk, Golarion, Eberron, Glorantha, they've all got enough adventureres that they're a significant force to be faced.

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Domesticated kobold subspecies. That's what cutebolds are. They could only exist that way. Given that a kobold is much smarter than a wolf and much more similar to people, I wouldn't be surprised if they exist.

kobolds are a blight

Sauce?

Kobolds now look like that what do?

'stealing our shit' becomes flexible when they're cute.

Cats steal our shit all the time.

>hell there are even gods in FR who are just jumped-up PCs.

This is probably one of my least favorite Fantasy tropes. There's just something incredibly insufferable about a setting that crawls up its own ass with meta observations.

I mean, "adventurer" is a real life description of real life people, which a lot of people in Fantasy seem to forget. They were the people who kickstarted archeology, among other things. You get shit like people going to the Silk Road, and unearthing treasures in buried cities in the Taklamakan desert. And Taklamakan apparently means "if you walk in, you don't walk out". Either that or "place of ruins".

For all intents and purposes, the PC's are pretty unique to their respective worlds, or very rare, at least. It logically follows from making a profession of going into dangerous places and unearthing things that have been lost for thousands of years. Or just going to dangerous places for the sheer hell of it, like polar explorers, who were also described as adventurers. Of course, they also got status and wealth for their trouble, which was always the end goal.

call them gerbolds, i guess

I'd accept it. Neoteny is definitely a feature that can be selected for, and has been in the breeding of dog and cat breeds.
Interesting to think of how it comes about in kobolds though; presumably it's ones who live in close proximity to humans who are less likely to be murderhobo'd if they "don't look like a monster"

>natural selection

All my keks