>Same DEX bonus as elves
>Same CON bonus as dwarves, 6'6 tall
>Just as intelligent and creative as humans, skilled with alchemy and explosives
>Breed and come of age much faster
>Organized, Lawful Evil
They seem to have every advantage compared to shitty mudhut dwellers like orcs or ogres.
LA +1 is pretty shitty.
>Why haven't hobgoblins conquered D&D?
Because everybody else is teaming up against them.
>>Just +1 HP LE Orcs in AD&D
>>A +1 LA in 3.5
>>Stupid culturally required gimped spellcasters in 5E
Now logically they would e the most threatening humanoid in the game being the strongest most organized and numerous but not much more than that
Pathfinder gives them a cultural weakness to even them out a bit, though still a much greater threat than the other hostile humanoids.
>As a race, hobgoblins have the ability to build lasting settlements and a stable culture—they simply believe it's easier and more efficient to force those weaker than themselves to tend to their needs. Viewing themselves as superior to all other humanoids (including other goblinoids), hobgoblins take members of other races as slaves; they treat such slaves cruelly and regard them as having less value than even a bent and rusted blade. Captured enemy combatants are only rarely forced to serve in a hobgoblin army, as hobgoblins prefer the loyalty of their own kind. Hobgoblins also find it easier to take cultural innovations that they find useful from subjugated races than to create their own, for why make something new when it's already there?
They are LE, as smart as humans and breed like rats, there is no good argument that they wouldn't be a major force in the world imo.
Also they fundamentally hate magic, so that's part of the reason as well. Sure having ten fighters is fine, but having two casters will most likely out class them
They have plenty of clerics at least. and they love alchemy when it involves explosions and fire.
Some in-depth info if you're interested OP. Some of the advanced hobs are incredibly dangerous.
They're basically Chinese of the setting, and them establishing hegemony over other cultures is just a matter of time.
I knew just from seeing this picture in the 2E manual hobbos were not something to be treated lightly. This guy is fully trained to fuck your asshole.
Same reason the civilized races haven't cleansed the monsters out yet, there are just too many of them and they get in the way of building any stable society bigger than a village
Why haven't sauhagin conquered the world yet?
>>same strenght as orcs
>>same dextery as elves
>>same constitution as dwarves
>>same intelligence as a mediocre npc wizard
>>same wisdom as an aasimar
>>mutations
>>sane non degenerate LE society with high birth rates
>>free rage when they're hurt
>>friends with sharks
They should just invent a "air breathing" spell, build loada of cheap Magic items with It And rape the surface forever.
Too busy fighting sea hobgoblins.
They did conquer the world.
In Eberron.
The "Ancient Empire" there is a Hobgoblin one.
I fuckin' love Hobgoblins and their whole Mortal Kombat bootleg Asia meets The Water Margin style and aesthetic, but i think that they're looked over so often because both Orcs and Goblins are more iconic and easily recognizable as a violent and destructive hoarde of evil, while for the more organized and regimented bad guys there're Drow and Necromancers instead.
Still, i'd love to see some kind of adventure book about dealing with a full on legion of Hobgoblins, involving both espionage and open warfare against their pro soldiers.
It'll be great to read and imagine what it'd be like to get to be the player in it...
They have shit Magic
There's such a thing as being too good; that is to say, you are such an obvious threat that other forces who might otherwise oppose each other instead team up to deal with you.
Their aggression works against them, as well. They made themselves an obvious threat real early, but as good as they are in comparison to elves and dwarves, they're not so good that they can take on elves and dwarves both at the same time, nevermind once humans and the other races come into the mix.
So they were defeated and scattered, ending up in a bunch of disparate, disunited tribes each with their own leaders, too small to be a real threat anymore - particularly since they still have that aggression. Once they get large they start conquering; once they start conquering they basically put up a big red flag with the words "CHALLENGING ENCOUNTER - GOOD FOR XP!" to all nearby adventurers.
I'm not afraid of a hobgoblin horde, because it'll break like all the others do sooner or later. What I'd be worried about seeing is a hobgoblin ambassador.
>I'm not afraid of a hobgoblin legion
fixd
>Still, i'd love to see some kind of adventure book about dealing with a full on legion of Hobgoblins
It was called Red Hand of Doom, and it was the best distinct module (that is, not just a rehash of an earlier one) that 3.5 put out. It needs some tweaks to make it run perfectly (what module doesn't?), but it's eminently customizable to your needs.
Plus the entire thing is full of little designer's notes about why they went with this thing or that thing, and how to deal with things if your players do something non-obvious.
Their asides can actually sometimes get amusingly snarky, too. Like, there's an early fight that the PC's can and should avoid because if they don't, they're 6th level characters facing down an advance force of hundreds of hobgoblins. If the players are winning the fight, you should toss in more of the horde's resources, like the ogres, minotaurs, hill giants, manticores, and even a dragon or two. If the players are STILL winning, "you might not be running this adventure for the appropriate character levels".
Because they are too centered around their own assholes the every single being in existence hates them, making them a prime target to sic other evil races against.
>Six foot six, bigger than orogs
>Tough +2 Con
>No STR bonus
Why haven't dragons conquered D&D?
I mean, they're fucking dragons.
Well, the PCs ideally.
Too low in number/low birth rate/most don't live long enough to be big deals.
How do you know they haven't?
Depending on elves, some of them take like 50 years to reach maturity and are shit anyway due to -2 con. There is no real reason that elves would amount to anything in-game.
Lots of in-fighting
Because D&D has no internal logic, all high level characters are dumb fucks, all races are incompetent, and the writers are ineloquent fuckwits.
Because they're evil and bound by status quo.
Same reason why a sufficiently determined beholder doesn't disintegrate the world piece by piece.
And they got wrecked by the Daelkyr for similar hubris to most hobgoblin societies.
It's nice to see a setting actually establish that hobgoblins ever actually did something, and I've wanted to a run a Darguun campaign forever. No one likes playing "ugly" races though.
It sounds like someone needs some Preparation H.