I think the traps and murderholes were the most important factor of Tucker's Kobolds. They'd never stand and fight someone thrice their size and would constantly run in and out of tunnels far too small for medium sized creatures to follow... and sending in a halfling is just asking for the halfling to be flanked from 3+ directions and stabbed or just sent into a pitfall trap.
For D&D 5E, Volo's Guide to Monsters is a treasure trove of information on Kobolds and provides examples of traps they might use and also introduces some new options with the Kobold dragonshield, inventor, and scale sorcerer variants to help balance out all the buffs/abilities that 5E characters get.
Kobolds love traps, have them use flaming or poisoned arrows. Have the kobolds use a smoke bomb to back off after a savage 1-2 turns or when the first kobold dies. NEVER let the party rest, any time they try to rest have them attacked by an arrow down a hall. The idea is the kobolds WANT the PCs to chase them into more traps. Kobolds don't need to go for a kill each time they engage, they can whittle the PCs down in engagement after engagement while they're pushed deeper into the tunnels or in circles.
In the GURPS scenario, give the kobolds ST 12 crossbows with a goat's foot for 1d+3 imp which will pierce a mail shirt with anything but a 1. Next, make sure they aim for 3 seconds for a +7 to hit. Finally, he may not notice the kobolds for the initial volley and won't get a defense (or may get one at -4 if you are generous) without Danger Sense or a very good sense check. Sir Rodger would have a tough time surviving the initial volley. The kobold's won't be able to shoot again unless they have more preloaded crossbows, but they won't need them.
Ouch - that would hurt bad. (I did give Sir Roger the benefit of the doubt that his perception and Combat Reflexes gave him active defenses when he saw the murder holes)
I actually had a really fun dungeon I built with Kobolds in mind as well. The plot behind the dungeon was that the leader had made a deal with a devil because a rift to the abyss had begun to open in the neglected part of the cave. Only minor demons (the ones that look like a blob and are only like... I think CR 2 or 3... Maybe 1.) were coming out of the pit. I took the soul coins from Descent into Avernus and gave one to each Kobold commander as a way for them to get an emergency heal if possible, but a large number of the Kobolds were suspicious of the coins, so the chief had the commanders hold the eggs, young and a portion of the warren as hostages while the rest were trained with siege tactics against the demons. With that, the dungeon had two major paths the players could pick: A: A rather large, open-looking chamber with barricades, traps and other such threats or... B: An unlit cavern that took advantage of the Kobolds darkvision to allow them the chance to shoot arrows at incoming adventurers that were holding torches. Making use of the mass attacks rules, my players realized quickly that both ways were dangerous because now the Kobolds knew they were coming and had formed Phalanxes to cut off the party's progress. My players had to retreat and we sadly never finished the dungeon, but it was a really fun setup that I'd love to use again.
Great video. Also a big fan of your adventures. Maybe it's in another video, but I was curious to learn more about how you run your simulations. I was thinking that for GURPS in particular, being able to test out some different scenarios would be helpful when building balanced/survivable combat encounters.
I basically write a (very primitive) script where I roll attacks, defenses, damage, HT rolls etc. It doesn't really take into account any maneuvering, hit locations, or tactics. So it's a pretty brute force simulation.
The goblin raiding party, that’s my version of Tucker’s kobolds. It consists of 4 goblins, 3 wolves and a goblin rogue 3 leader. I created the encounter for 3e originally, so it works best in that or Pathfinder 1st edition. The goblins won’t attack if they don’t have surprise. They’ll run away in the first round if the players are aware of them. They’ll do it over and over again until they catch the players unaware. If they get a surprise round, the two unmounted goblins will fire short bows at horses first if any are present, to prevent the PCs being able to outrun the goblins. The two regular mounted goblins will use spears and their wolves to attack any unmounted or unarmored PCs, preferring to kill the horses and injure the PCs. The leader will focus his attacks on any pc with a staff and robes, trying to down that character as quickly as possible. If the leader manages to get the wizard on the ground with his wolf’s trip attack in the surprise round, he’ll use the first regular round for a second sneak attack on the mage while his wolf will go for a second bite & trip. The two mounted goblins will move to where the two archers are, attacking anyone between them and the archers as they ride by. The archers will fire a second round of arrows at the horses, or anyone with a missile weapon. In the second regular round, the leader will break off and ride to escape. If he was lucky in the previous two rounds, the mage has already suffered a bite (1d6), sneak attack (1d6+2d6), a second bite (1d6) and a second sneak attack (1d6+2d6), which is more than needed to kill a 5th level mage. The two riders pick up the two archers and break off combat to escape. Their goal was to kill anything that looked like a spellcaster and any horses, so the PCs are on foot for the next ambush when the PCs camp for the night. The goblins have an average Stealth +12 or so, which means the PCs likely won’t notice them sneaking into their camp. The four regular goblins will try getting the sleeping PCs while the leader sneaks up on the sentry. The goal is to catch the bulk of the party sleeping and seriously wound whoever is guarding, so they will attack and then leg it away as fast as possible again. If they’re caught before the attack, they’ll grab backpacks and weapons before fleeing, to weaken the party for the next night. They will repeat the late night attacks as often as it takes to kill all the PCs before they can get somewhere safe to camp behind locked doors or city walls. This is a goblin mounted scouting party. If the PCs manage to escape, the scouting party will send someone to fetch a raiding party, consisting of three other scouting parties and the raid leader’s party of three regular goblins, five wolves, a level 1-3 spellcaster and a rogue 3/fighter 1 raid leader. And that’s not even fighting on their home turf. If you attack them on their home turf, they have traps and greater numbers. Just this encounter is a TPK at 5th level. I have never seen PCs beat this encounter in the 30 or so years since I wrote it. Dragons don’t scare my players as much as goblins do.
Kobolds are now The Green Arrow and use specialty arrows - poison arrows do significantly more damage and causing extra effects like paralysis, disadvantage on attack, or confusion. Best arrow is the sovereign glue arrow. A 5ft patch of ground instantly bonds to the floor/wall/whatever characters are holding. now players are barefoot as they chase the kobolds gaining disadvantage against the broken glass, rusty nails, and bullet ant swarms they have to wade through.
I survived Tucker's Kobolds. They never attacked in person. They would not survive. They never let you hear them before the opened fire, it was their home/back yard. They would fire and retreat. Their leaders did not lead from the front. They alternated fire. First line fire and duck back. Second line fire and duck back. First line fire, duck back. As the party advanced, the Kobolds would fall back to second and third lines. Fallback positions. Fire traps, spick traps, and other tricks. Your scenario fails because they never fought in person. They also learned from the players. Anytime players came up with a new tactic, they would adapt. Getting through was not impossible, but getting through with all one's hit points was a challenge. Again. They never, NEVER, attacked in person.
I love the idea of Tucker's Kobolds and am completely disheartened by how easily they got thrashed by a single level 5 fighter. What about some of these ideas? - Give the archers some poison ammunition, similar to Drow Poison Bolts but maybe a little weaker. The fighter is proficient in CON saving throws, but the poison only has to work once. The poison status will give Sir Roger disadvantage on attack rolls. You can play around with the duration so that Sir Roger isn't poisoned for a ridiculous amount of time, but it should be long enough for him think twice about just focusing on cutting down the Kobolds engaged in melee with him and to ignore the archers. - An elite force defending an area would absolutely use traps to their advantage. You could include some hidden traps built into the floor or wall, like spike traps, or you could have things like bear traps if you dont want to have "installed" traps in the room (Bonus points if you have the Kobolds put bear traps down on the floor, and then flood a corridor with muddy water that comes up to the PC's shins, therefor hiding the traps!)
Love both of these ideas, and it’s clear the original kobolds used a lot of scenery and traps to their advantage, with descriptions of kobolds herding the PCs into pitfalls. Some poison cloud molotovs would also be devious weapons here.
@@1ShotJC Yes, I love the acid pools and pitfalls, but Im not sure how to help the kobolds corral the PCs into those... And really, I am also not a huge fan of hidden traps in general, unless there is some sort of puzzle to them. I know I suggested the bear traps under the muddy water, but it was the only thing I could think of to help level the playing field.
I think an amazing adventure for 5e could be created. You could have an ancient Red Dragon who has a lair and a cult of hundreds of Kobolds who worship the monster! They can have all the tactics and advantages that Tucker's Kobolds usually have including tunnels that they fit in, arrow slits, burning items, flasks of oil, crossbows, armor. They can have an entire mountain full of traps and even if you get past many of them into the deep caverns in the cave, you get flying Kobolds who love ranged attacks and dropping things on players. They also get to push players off cliffs and destroy the bridges and ropes players need to cross the caverns. The Red Dragon can have more powerful servants as well and they are really mainly a distraction from the real threat - the nearly never ending army of Kobolds!
5e kobolds have pack tacticts - they already get advantage. Also I'd make small-sized corridors (speed/2, disadvantage on attacks & dex saving throws; attacks have advantage on you) Then I'd start using common sense rules: You can't swing a sword in such a small corridor. Sir Roger will need to halfsword (use it as improvised two-handed weapon. 1d8, no proficiency modifier; but still the +1 magic & strength bonus), or switch to a smaller piercing weapon.
Yes good point about the pack tactics, though that advantage doesn’t help too much. But I like your idea of tight tunnels (which likely come with more murder holes).
This is interesting, and you could make some really cool ideas for fighting in enclosed spaces, but I would be really careful about springing these rules onto your players if you are DMing at the table. This system should be talked about before hand and everyone should agree and be aware of them, since there is nothing in the PHB about it. By the way, the PHB does actually have rules about fighting underwater, and weapons like daggers, spears, and shortswords can attack as normal, while everything else has disadvantage. You could do something like that.
Since you didn’t show a map or describe specific flow of actions the fighter takes, I’m curious what was factored in these simulations. Like did you just have the fighter and a few dozen kobolds trade blows in an empty arena (or run some code calculating which side runs out first) or did you account for elements from the story? Such as the fact that most kobolds are shooting and hiding out of reach of his weapon (until he finds maybe a secret door to their tunnels), they employ multiple traps like the hallway fire, those that do expose themselves wear armor and shields or blockade some paths with flaming barricades, etc? Even a lone 5th edition fighter would probably succumb if he’s spending his actions for multiple rounds just dashing and dodging through corridors, while his armor doesn’t help in saving throws vs traps.
The simulation didn't handle movement or any real tactics. It was brute force from the moment the combat started, and likely not at all how a "real" fight would go. It just assumed the fighter was holding off a small pack of kobolds as long as possible to help his friends escape. Even though it was pretty simple, it did make for an interesting baseline to compare game systems, since they all used that exact same scenario.
did the 5e kobolds get cover, and use hit and run tactics with things like disengage, hide, and keeping to mostly ranged attacks. I'd imagine Molotovs are essentially alchemists fire, if the target is hit with it they essentially taking extra attacks each turn unless they use their action to extinguish it, while a kobold or two runs in for an attack on a target possibly disadvantaged by being on fire, then disengages and retreats behind cover. hit the target from murder holes, and another alchemists fire the second the first is extinguished.
I don't know about BX, but in AD&D 1st edition (and I think original D&D), a fighter could make a number of attacks equal to their level against monsters with less than one hit die. So Sir Roger might take the little kobolds out even faster than in 5e.
You are right - that was definitely in AD&D and from what I can tell maybe OD&D. Definitely gives him a boost versus any of those kobolds who get too close!
how to beat these kobolds easly in 5e (saying this wighou even watching the video)... 1: use cloudkill... it takes a huge area, it is a constitution saving throw and cases enough damage to kill a kobold even with minimum damage, the cloud mooves away from you 10 feeet each turn so as you walk it is going to kill the kobolds in the way, it is a 20 feet area, so even if the kobolds are hiding in holes all you have to do is get in front of the hole and the kobolds will die before they can run away... "ooooh, but your party also gonna take damage from the cloud!" yeah... so? 5d8... lets say you rolled 6 in each dice, that is abode avare for a d8, everybody is taking 30 damage... for a party that have 5th level spells, their life is gonna be higher than that and the cleric can use mass cure wounds to keep everybody on their feet... eventuly all kobolds are dead... 2: ok, you think that cloudkill is a bit too massive? fine... deagon's breath and posion... is a cone area of damage... kobold entered a hole? spit inside the hole... there, problem solved as well... but you most likely gonna take more damage than option one because you wont be able to kill as many kobolds in a single turn.
Its not the Kobolds in 5E you would have to worry about to make this work, any good DM can make this work in 5e, the problem is that 5e caters to individuals who suffer from a child like mentality of utter self importance, narcissism and risk avoidance. 5E seems literally to be made for the week minded masses.
Tucker's Kobolds are what happens when your DM plays the enemies like they're the Viet Cong. And players who face these enemies learn *WHY* the USA lost to the Viet Cong.
I think the traps and murderholes were the most important factor of Tucker's Kobolds. They'd never stand and fight someone thrice their size and would constantly run in and out of tunnels far too small for medium sized creatures to follow... and sending in a halfling is just asking for the halfling to be flanked from 3+ directions and stabbed or just sent into a pitfall trap.
For D&D 5E, Volo's Guide to Monsters is a treasure trove of information on Kobolds and provides examples of traps they might use and also introduces some new options with the Kobold dragonshield, inventor, and scale sorcerer variants to help balance out all the buffs/abilities that 5E characters get.
I fully support giving 5E kobolds an upgrade -- I'll check this out!
Kobolds love traps, have them use flaming or poisoned arrows. Have the kobolds use a smoke bomb to back off after a savage 1-2 turns or when the first kobold dies. NEVER let the party rest, any time they try to rest have them attacked by an arrow down a hall. The idea is the kobolds WANT the PCs to chase them into more traps. Kobolds don't need to go for a kill each time they engage, they can whittle the PCs down in engagement after engagement while they're pushed deeper into the tunnels or in circles.
You sir, have obvious and scary expertise with kobolds. I salute you.
@@1ShotJC I love kobolds
In the GURPS scenario, give the kobolds ST 12 crossbows with a goat's foot for 1d+3 imp which will pierce a mail shirt with anything but a 1. Next, make sure they aim for 3 seconds for a +7 to hit. Finally, he may not notice the kobolds for the initial volley and won't get a defense (or may get one at -4 if you are generous) without Danger Sense or a very good sense check. Sir Rodger would have a tough time surviving the initial volley.
The kobold's won't be able to shoot again unless they have more preloaded crossbows, but they won't need them.
Ouch - that would hurt bad. (I did give Sir Roger the benefit of the doubt that his perception and Combat Reflexes gave him active defenses when he saw the murder holes)
@@1ShotJC You did have to make the scenario possible to survive after all.
I actually had a really fun dungeon I built with Kobolds in mind as well.
The plot behind the dungeon was that the leader had made a deal with a devil because a rift to the abyss had begun to open in the neglected part of the cave. Only minor demons (the ones that look like a blob and are only like... I think CR 2 or 3... Maybe 1.) were coming out of the pit. I took the soul coins from Descent into Avernus and gave one to each Kobold commander as a way for them to get an emergency heal if possible, but a large number of the Kobolds were suspicious of the coins, so the chief had the commanders hold the eggs, young and a portion of the warren as hostages while the rest were trained with siege tactics against the demons.
With that, the dungeon had two major paths the players could pick:
A: A rather large, open-looking chamber with barricades, traps and other such threats or...
B: An unlit cavern that took advantage of the Kobolds darkvision to allow them the chance to shoot arrows at incoming adventurers that were holding torches. Making use of the mass attacks rules, my players realized quickly that both ways were dangerous because now the Kobolds knew they were coming and had formed Phalanxes to cut off the party's progress.
My players had to retreat and we sadly never finished the dungeon, but it was a really fun setup that I'd love to use again.
Kobolds making deals with devils? Now that sounds like a true horror fantasy adventure...
Great video. Also a big fan of your adventures. Maybe it's in another video, but I was curious to learn more about how you run your simulations. I was thinking that for GURPS in particular, being able to test out some different scenarios would be helpful when building balanced/survivable combat encounters.
I basically write a (very primitive) script where I roll attacks, defenses, damage, HT rolls etc. It doesn't really take into account any maneuvering, hit locations, or tactics. So it's a pretty brute force simulation.
The goblin raiding party, that’s my version of Tucker’s kobolds.
It consists of 4 goblins, 3 wolves and a goblin rogue 3 leader. I created the encounter for 3e originally, so it works best in that or Pathfinder 1st edition.
The goblins won’t attack if they don’t have surprise. They’ll run away in the first round if the players are aware of them. They’ll do it over and over again until they catch the players unaware.
If they get a surprise round, the two unmounted goblins will fire short bows at horses first if any are present, to prevent the PCs being able to outrun the goblins. The two regular mounted goblins will use spears and their wolves to attack any unmounted or unarmored PCs, preferring to kill the horses and injure the PCs. The leader will focus his attacks on any pc with a staff and robes, trying to down that character as quickly as possible.
If the leader manages to get the wizard on the ground with his wolf’s trip attack in the surprise round, he’ll use the first regular round for a second sneak attack on the mage while his wolf will go for a second bite & trip. The two mounted goblins will move to where the two archers are, attacking anyone between them and the archers as they ride by. The archers will fire a second round of arrows at the horses, or anyone with a missile weapon.
In the second regular round, the leader will break off and ride to escape. If he was lucky in the previous two rounds, the mage has already suffered a bite (1d6), sneak attack (1d6+2d6), a second bite (1d6) and a second sneak attack (1d6+2d6), which is more than needed to kill a 5th level mage. The two riders pick up the two archers and break off combat to escape. Their goal was to kill anything that looked like a spellcaster and any horses, so the PCs are on foot for the next ambush when the PCs camp for the night.
The goblins have an average Stealth +12 or so, which means the PCs likely won’t notice them sneaking into their camp. The four regular goblins will try getting the sleeping PCs while the leader sneaks up on the sentry. The goal is to catch the bulk of the party sleeping and seriously wound whoever is guarding, so they will attack and then leg it away as fast as possible again. If they’re caught before the attack, they’ll grab backpacks and weapons before fleeing, to weaken the party for the next night.
They will repeat the late night attacks as often as it takes to kill all the PCs before they can get somewhere safe to camp behind locked doors or city walls.
This is a goblin mounted scouting party. If the PCs manage to escape, the scouting party will send someone to fetch a raiding party, consisting of three other scouting parties and the raid leader’s party of three regular goblins, five wolves, a level 1-3 spellcaster and a rogue 3/fighter 1 raid leader.
And that’s not even fighting on their home turf. If you attack them on their home turf, they have traps and greater numbers.
Just this encounter is a TPK at 5th level. I have never seen PCs beat this encounter in the 30 or so years since I wrote it. Dragons don’t scare my players as much as goblins do.
Truly terrifying.... Especially going for the PCs' horses first!
Kobolds are now The Green Arrow and use specialty arrows - poison arrows do significantly more damage and causing extra effects like paralysis, disadvantage on attack, or confusion. Best arrow is the sovereign glue arrow. A 5ft patch of ground instantly bonds to the floor/wall/whatever characters are holding. now players are barefoot as they chase the kobolds gaining disadvantage against the broken glass, rusty nails, and bullet ant swarms they have to wade through.
I survived Tucker's Kobolds. They never attacked in person. They would not survive. They never let you hear them before the opened fire, it was their home/back yard. They would fire and retreat. Their leaders did not lead from the front. They alternated fire. First line fire and duck back. Second line fire and duck back. First line fire, duck back. As the party advanced, the Kobolds would fall back to second and third lines. Fallback positions. Fire traps, spick traps, and other tricks. Your scenario fails because they never fought in person. They also learned from the players. Anytime players came up with a new tactic, they would adapt. Getting through was not impossible, but getting through with all one's hit points was a challenge. Again. They never, NEVER, attacked in person.
Always happy to see a scenario of mine fall when faced by the REAL thing! I'm chilled just reading your tale of terror, my friend....
Where ddid you find the art piece at 04:52?
Created it with Midjourney actually
I love the idea of Tucker's Kobolds and am completely disheartened by how easily they got thrashed by a single level 5 fighter. What about some of these ideas?
- Give the archers some poison ammunition, similar to Drow Poison Bolts but maybe a little weaker. The fighter is proficient in CON saving throws, but the poison only has to work once. The poison status will give Sir Roger disadvantage on attack rolls. You can play around with the duration so that Sir Roger isn't poisoned for a ridiculous amount of time, but it should be long enough for him think twice about just focusing on cutting down the Kobolds engaged in melee with him and to ignore the archers.
- An elite force defending an area would absolutely use traps to their advantage. You could include some hidden traps built into the floor or wall, like spike traps, or you could have things like bear traps if you dont want to have "installed" traps in the room (Bonus points if you have the Kobolds put bear traps down on the floor, and then flood a corridor with muddy water that comes up to the PC's shins, therefor hiding the traps!)
Love both of these ideas, and it’s clear the original kobolds used a lot of scenery and traps to their advantage, with descriptions of kobolds herding the PCs into pitfalls. Some poison cloud molotovs would also be devious weapons here.
@@1ShotJC Yes, I love the acid pools and pitfalls, but Im not sure how to help the kobolds corral the PCs into those...
And really, I am also not a huge fan of hidden traps in general, unless there is some sort of puzzle to them. I know I suggested the bear traps under the muddy water, but it was the only thing I could think of to help level the playing field.
I think an amazing adventure for 5e could be created.
You could have an ancient Red Dragon who has a lair and a cult of hundreds of Kobolds who worship the monster! They can have all the tactics and advantages that Tucker's Kobolds usually have including tunnels that they fit in, arrow slits, burning items, flasks of oil, crossbows, armor.
They can have an entire mountain full of traps and even if you get past many of them into the deep caverns in the cave, you get flying Kobolds who love ranged attacks and dropping things on players. They also get to push players off cliffs and destroy the bridges and ropes players need to cross the caverns.
The Red Dragon can have more powerful servants as well and they are really mainly a distraction from the real threat - the nearly never ending army of Kobolds!
5e kobolds have pack tacticts - they already get advantage.
Also I'd make small-sized corridors (speed/2, disadvantage on attacks & dex saving throws; attacks have advantage on you)
Then I'd start using common sense rules: You can't swing a sword in such a small corridor. Sir Roger will need to halfsword (use it as improvised two-handed weapon. 1d8, no proficiency modifier; but still the +1 magic & strength bonus), or switch to a smaller piercing weapon.
Yes good point about the pack tactics, though that advantage doesn’t help too much. But I like your idea of tight tunnels (which likely come with more murder holes).
You don't have to improvise halfswording. It's already cooked into the rules - longswords have the "versatile" keyword.
@@1ShotJC This is when enlarge/reduce comes into its own.
Why would a fighter not inherently know how to half-sword?
This is interesting, and you could make some really cool ideas for fighting in enclosed spaces, but I would be really careful about springing these rules onto your players if you are DMing at the table. This system should be talked about before hand and everyone should agree and be aware of them, since there is nothing in the PHB about it. By the way, the PHB does actually have rules about fighting underwater, and weapons like daggers, spears, and shortswords can attack as normal, while everything else has disadvantage. You could do something like that.
Since you didn’t show a map or describe specific flow of actions the fighter takes, I’m curious what was factored in these simulations. Like did you just have the fighter and a few dozen kobolds trade blows in an empty arena (or run some code calculating which side runs out first) or did you account for elements from the story?
Such as the fact that most kobolds are shooting and hiding out of reach of his weapon (until he finds maybe a secret door to their tunnels), they employ multiple traps like the hallway fire, those that do expose themselves wear armor and shields or blockade some paths with flaming barricades, etc?
Even a lone 5th edition fighter would probably succumb if he’s spending his actions for multiple rounds just dashing and dodging through corridors, while his armor doesn’t help in saving throws vs traps.
The simulation didn't handle movement or any real tactics. It was brute force from the moment the combat started, and likely not at all how a "real" fight would go. It just assumed the fighter was holding off a small pack of kobolds as long as possible to help his friends escape. Even though it was pretty simple, it did make for an interesting baseline to compare game systems, since they all used that exact same scenario.
did the 5e kobolds get cover, and use hit and run tactics with things like disengage, hide, and keeping to mostly ranged attacks. I'd imagine Molotovs are essentially alchemists fire, if the target is hit with it they essentially taking extra attacks each turn unless they use their action to extinguish it, while a kobold or two runs in for an attack on a target possibly disadvantaged by being on fire, then disengages and retreats behind cover. hit the target from murder holes, and another alchemists fire the second the first is extinguished.
Your kobolds are much brighter than my drooling simulated ones!
This is fantastic!
I don't know about BX, but in AD&D 1st edition (and I think original D&D), a fighter could make a number of attacks equal to their level against monsters with less than one hit die. So Sir Roger might take the little kobolds out even faster than in 5e.
You are right - that was definitely in AD&D and from what I can tell maybe OD&D. Definitely gives him a boost versus any of those kobolds who get too close!
Wow! This went bad for the 5E-Kobolds.
I still feel bad for them
how to beat these kobolds easly in 5e (saying this wighou even watching the video)...
1: use cloudkill... it takes a huge area, it is a constitution saving throw and cases enough damage to kill a kobold even with minimum damage, the cloud mooves away from you 10 feeet each turn so as you walk it is going to kill the kobolds in the way, it is a 20 feet area, so even if the kobolds are hiding in holes all you have to do is get in front of the hole and the kobolds will die before they can run away...
"ooooh, but your party also gonna take damage from the cloud!" yeah... so? 5d8... lets say you rolled 6 in each dice, that is abode avare for a d8, everybody is taking 30 damage... for a party that have 5th level spells, their life is gonna be higher than that and the cleric can use mass cure wounds to keep everybody on their feet... eventuly all kobolds are dead...
2: ok, you think that cloudkill is a bit too massive? fine... deagon's breath and posion... is a cone area of damage... kobold entered a hole? spit inside the hole... there, problem solved as well... but you most likely gonna take more damage than option one because you wont be able to kill as many kobolds in a single turn.
Cloudkill was definitely one of my favorite spells.
Its not the Kobolds in 5E you would have to worry about to make this work, any good DM can make this work in 5e, the problem is that 5e caters to individuals who suffer from a child like mentality of utter self importance, narcissism and risk avoidance. 5E seems literally to be made for the week minded masses.
Tucker's Kobolds are what happens when your DM plays the enemies like they're the Viet Cong. And players who face these enemies learn *WHY* the USA lost to the Viet Cong.