How the fuck are Kobolds draconic creatures? I thought they were alligator dog things...

How the fuck are Kobolds draconic creatures? I thought they were alligator dog things? How could anything as pathetic as a Kobold have any relation to the magnificent dragons? And how does that even work in official D&D lore? I thought we were looking at more of a creationism origin for things like dragons. Also, tangentially related but why do lizardfolk speak and write Draconic if the lore spends so much time stressing that dragons aren't lizards? Why the fuck would they even be able to read?

The whole kobold evolution business is kind of silly. It's one of those things where an unpopular creature slowly became popular, and got increasingly influenced by that popularity.

It's the sort of thing like in a Shonen Jump manga, they have character polls, and after each one you see relatively obscure characters who placed high in the polls get more screen time, and in order to justify them getting more screen time they get stronger and have more powers so that they can keep up.

So, kobolds were just notGoblins, then slowly developed their identity into lizards, and then jumped the shark by going from dragon-worshippers to dragon descended.

As far as how the lore explains why kobolds are so weak but part dragon, their creator god, Kurtulmak, is a vassal of Tiamat, but failed her and was punished and weakened for this. Kobolds share this punishment, and so they do their best to appease dragons and Tiamat in hopes of restoring their gods to Tiamat's favor.

>So, kobolds were just notGoblins

Only in 2e when they became the little bug-eyed goblin-looking guys which are stage 2 in your pic.

I see nothing wrong with this. I don't understand how anyone could complain that a trash mob-tier monster got expanded to the extent Kobolds have.

When dragons are very powerful, long lived, can breed with anything as they do, they're gonna experiment with all kinds of weird things.

Probably not helped that everything from their bone marrow to their damn morning eyegunk has more magic in it that most mortal wizards possess in their whole bodies and their sheer presence alone can cause mutations and environmental changes in some editions.

Expanded is fine. But, they seem to be being pushed further and further towards being "cool", and less and less towards being little folk who are absolutely pathetic and despicable but make up for it with pure viciousness.

I mean, look at this guy. He looks like a total bro, like you could totally hang out and have drinks with him.

Throw in that Japan completely whiffing the translations meaning and thought dog faced = dog headed, turning their kobolds into strait dog people.

theyre dragons in the same way that a chihuahua is a wolf

I kinda like the idea dog kobolds as a weird subrace.

And, in the distant past, long before D&D got their hands on them, they were just silly little German gnomish sprites.

To be fair, that's happened with pretty much every D&D monster.

gartenzwerge?

>in order to justify them getting more screen time they get stronger and have more powers so that they can keep up

suits have zero sense of taste or propriety

the only reason people liked kobolds at all was because they were clumsy, stupid little shits

I always imagined Kobolds were basically what happened when you crossed the concept of a Dragonborn with a goblinoid race.
Like, the scale of blood purity goes:

Full Dragon
Half-Dragon
Dragonborn
Dragonblood Sorceror
"I'm one-sixteenth dragon on my grandmother's side"
Kobold

I've had an encounter concept for a while of a horde of kobolds commanded by a half-dragon that managed to convince the horde that more gold = more dragon powers.
He's a half dragon because of his jewelry, dragons are dragons because of their hoards, and if the kobolds steal enough shinies for him, he'll share his hoard and they'll ALL be dragons!

And then one of the kobolds gets a wishing ring and wishes that he was rich enough to be a dragon, and accidentally rewrites reality to make it work that way.

I doubt suits have any clue what a kobold is or if it even exists. It's just a matter of authors listening to the public and allowing themselves to get influenced a little more than they should.

It's like a chef preparing a meal overhearing that his guests liked his saltier dishes. Rather than preparing the meal with just the right amount of salt, he'll end up adding just a little too much, and then find out that the guests liked the dishes as is, and that adding more salt in no way improved them.

Let's be fair, this isn't something a large amount of people have a problem with. Kobold changes over time are less "this dish needs more salt" and more "this dish's garnish is fine".

>Kobolds
The way kobolds tell it, they're related to dragons in that they are also children of Tiamat; an army of thieves invaded her lair and tried to steal her eggs. She killed them all, but only by caving in her lair. She hatched one half-addled egg and from it came Kurtulmak, a pale imitation of a godly dragon, but still powerful enough to set to work repairing the lair. Whenever he came across one of her addled eggs, he used his own power to make it hatch and produce swarms of lesser imitations of himself - the first kobolds.

Basically, if you believe their creation myth, kobolds are divinely reanimated stillborn dragon fetuses, alive enough to procreate, but barely able to grow beyond that.

>Lizardfolk speaking Draconic
Because lizardfolk are usually portrayed as being one of the oldest humanoid races, and Draconic is the oldest language in the D&D lexicon - Dragons are basically dinosaurs who evolved to the point they gained sorcerous powers.

That pug-faced goblin look literally only appeared in ONE adventure module.

>That pug-faced goblin look literally only appeared in ONE adventure module.

It was also in the Capcom arcade games.

DID SOMEBODY SAY MUTATIONS AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGES

I like that WarmaHordes dragons are essentially living radiological disasters that spew mutagenic blight everywhere even in death.

>How the fuck are Kobolds draconic creatures?
They're not. Everyone knows kobolds are magnetic dogs who eat rocks.

Underrated post.

They eat Rock hard things, yes.

That is NOT how you hold a sling. Bro status revoked.

Gesundheit.

Man...i should get into warmahordes...atleast nick some of their eldritch shit for my c'tan and necrons.

>see a group of lizard kobolds wearing dog masks

Fuckin weaboos.

I'm my games I use smarty kobolds in place of gnomes.
Fuck gnomes.

Anyway kobolds end up accidentally become a running gag to poke fun of trendy shit.
The PCs once wanered into an underdark villiage of lost souls, there was a kobold shanty town and they met the Kobold Geng Boss sitting outside the guard shack vaping on a pipe and flicking a spinner. The Dragonborn Paladin came up to him and asked for directions, so he said "Show me yer tits first".

Before they were silly they were like gremlins, they collapsed mines and stole ore as it was being smelt and left ash behind.

And not even for all of 2e. By the release of Baldur's Gate, they were shown to be lizard-like, hopping around and with little horns and tails.

I love some of DiTerlizzi's monster designs, but that kobold is awful.

Modern kobolds have a better lizardfolk design than lizardfolk

That's cuz they got dragon instead of lizard designs.

>It's the sort of thing like in a Shonen Jump manga, they have character polls, and after each one you see relatively obscure characters who placed high in the polls get more screen time, and in order to justify them getting more screen time they get stronger and have more powers so that they can keep up.
Was Bleach the absolute worst offender of this?

Incorrect. The scorpion on a string cracked me up as a kid.

They should have been the dragonborn, then. Dragonborn look like shit.