Image credit: Sean Izaakse
Goblins are very often the first foes PCs encounter when they are learning their 1st-level ropes. Goblins are easy to fit into many types of settings, they serve well beneath any number of villanous masters, and they are easy to scale up and down to adjust the challenge for your PCs well into middle levels.
Here’s a free goblin generator for 5e Dungeons & Dragons and for the Low Fantasy Gaming system to make the creation of customizable bands of orcs easy and fun!
Customize Your Party of Goblins
Veteran players (and given the popularity of role-playing games these days, even newbies) are familiar with goblins, but that isn’t a problem as long as you bring them to life. Goblins are endlessly reusable.
- Backstory: The Maker’s Forge Foe Generator will create a backstory for your goblins that you can adjust as needed to fit into the PC’s current situation. Where did this group of goblins come from? What do they want? And most importantly: how does what the goblins want conflict with what the PCs want?
- A name and vivid description: each goblin should have a goblin-esque name that can be revealed during trade, negotiation, threats, or capture. And goblins come in such a wide variety of shapes and descriptions that every goblin should be described as such. Vivid description is the lifeblood of the roleplaying game. What sets this goblin apart from her fellows? Separate from the group itself, what does this goblin want? And what is it prepared to do to get it?
- Weapons and hit points: goblins use whatever weapons they can get their hands on, sometimes just sticks and rocks. And not all goblins have the same hit points, so when when one jumps out of the shadows at you, you can never be sure what it will require to take it down.
- War boss: every group of goblins has a leader, and most have an older, fatter, wiser veteran that has clawed her way through ruthlessness and subterfuge. Some groups are even led by their larger cousins, the bugbears. What does this warboss want? How does she treat those that follow her?
- Hexers, bugbear heavies, and rats: goblin bands come in all varieties. Sometimes they include stealthy bugbear ambushers, curse-casting hexers, and often giant rats that love to feed on the leftovers of the goblins’ skirmishes.
- Loot: should the PCs win the day, what gear and valuables might the goblins be carrying? What small hints of further adventure might be lurking among their possessions?
Foe Generator for 5e D&D and Low Fantasy Gaming
So what are you waiting for? Go use the Maker’s Forge Goblin Generator to get a jump-start on a party of goblins. It does all the grunt work for you: stats, names, short descriptions, weapons, and HP for each goblin, even the loot they’re carrying should your PCs defeat them. All that’s left for you to do is to bring the goblins’ goals into sharp conflict with the PCs and let the sparks fly!