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Goblin

2020-06-05T23:13:18Z

2605:E000:141B:DE0:45EC:F6BA:D402:A189: /* Monstergirl Depictions */

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[[File:Path Gob Rat.PNG|thumb|right|300px|Brushy brushy.]]
'''Goblins''' are mythological creatures of unclear origin and contradicting descriptions. They are small humanoids of a mischievous nature, possibly belonging to the fey family (along with creatures such as redcaps, brownies, leprechauns, kobolds, etc).

The origin of the word "Goblin" can be traced back to the British "Gobelinus" which was the name of a demon that once caused trouble in Normandy. It has been theorized the term began with [[Kobold]], which was a German Fey spirit whose origins can be traced to one of a variety of earlier myths based in Paganism from various other culture. Kobolds also gave their name to cobalt, due to the fact that new advances in mining in Germany during the middle ages allowed access to large amounts of cobalt ore, although the mining was very dangerous and they had no idea how to smelt the metal so as a result the numerous mine collapses as well as the "theft of the ore, with only poison and ash left behind" were blamed on Kobolds. Either way, Goblin myths often involve mischief, mining, and chemistry.

In modern fantasy, the term "Goblin" has been very much determined by the Tolkienian use of the word - as in a species of humanoids in service to evil, with the "Orcs" being another word for the same thing, with Tolkien claiming the etymology for that word being an old English term for demon. Goblin appearance has been further shaped by both video- and boardgames, as well as various artists. They are universally smaller than humans, although the exact size varies, and often have large pointy ears (larger and more animalistic than elf ears) and either long, crooked and pointed noses or orc-esque noseless features.

The typical goblin stereotype is that of a savage warrior and raider that attacks villages and ambushes unwary travelers; being one-dimensionally evil, they can be (and are) killed without remorse in large numbers (unless you read Eberron, G:LTTE, or Terry Pratchett's Snuff). Another Goblin stereotype is that they are a race of unusually technologically advanced and ludicrously smart and cunning race on par if not better than [[Dwarves]] such as creating fantasy machine guns or an entire robot army such as those in Warcraft or Dungeon Siege. They act and move in smaller groups as they don't pose a large threat by themselves, and are commonly the first combat encounter for a young adventurer. Goblins tend to live in caves and gang up with orcs and similar races, to whom they are sometimes described as belonging to the same family or species. Their intelligence is usually fairly low, although among dumber and larger brutes will be the clever ones doing the "skilled" work while the bigger ones shout orders.

Because of the comedy potential, players have always liked being goblins, and they were one of the three most-popular races requested for an add-on to 5e as of a recent survey.

[[Goblinoid]]s include a vast array of species in D&D, ranging from obscurities like the stone-skinned [[Norker]]s and the "they heal when you hit them, die if you heal them" [[Nilbog]]s to mainstays like the more organized [[Hobgoblin]]s and the big, scary, pseudo-[[orcs]] called [[Bugbear]]s.

==In /tg/ Media==
In the [[Iron Kingdoms]] and [[Magic: The Gathering]] (sometimes), goblins have a penchant for technology and love to tinker with machinery (especially steampunk contraptions and the like), somewhat propagating the "mad scientist" archetype.

In [[Kings of War]] goblins are still a source of evil comic relief. They're often suggested to have been created by the [[Celestians (Kings of War)|Celestian]] Garkhan the Black after he finished creating the orcs with "whatever was left," although where exactly they came from is a mystery. They're still engineers as in many settings, but they tend to be very short-term thinking and don't like to test things before they use them.

In [[Eberron]], goblins are quite a bit different than their usual portrayal, described in the d&d section below

In [[Pathfinder]], they're stupid little freaks with all manner of strange quirks (good singing voices, fear horses and writing, like fire and pickles), sort of a cross between Gremlins and a baby-eating Stitch. They are also very funny and (somewhat) lovable, and even have their own comic series. Surprisingly, despite being described as naturally inclined towards a mixture of [[Chaotic Stupid]] (easily distractable to the point of stopping combat ''mid-swing'' to chase a frog or pick their nose) and [[Stupid Evil]] (love of torturing anything smaller than them) behaviors, they have no mental penalties. Pathfinder also has a goblin variant called the Monkey Goblin, which is even ''stupider'' than regular goblins, but much stronger and more agile, using a rat-like prehensile tail to aid it in a life in the trees.

In [[Malifaux]], they're noseless hillbillies with very few womanfolk called Gremlins complete with straw hats, jug bands, blunderbusses, and lots of pigs. Also come in an Asian variant.

==Tolkien Goblins==
Tolkien was not consistent on the relationship between goblins and orcs. Initially he said that "orc" was merely the halfling word for goblin. Later works said that goblins were a subtype of orc. Later still works treated goblins and orcs like completely separate creatures, so take your pick.

Goblins and Orcs are given different backstories from Tolkien, although the most prominent one is they are the twisted forms of Elves tortured and beat into submission by Morgoth and Sauron. Other origins are being an Asian group of Elves stolen from their people and bred as slaves by Morgoth and Sauron, just being animals uplifted by M&S, fallen Maiar, men who were corrupted rather than Elves (or a mix of the two, with some interbreeding with humans as another possibility), or slimy rocks transformed by Morgoth's magic into living beings. Regardless, almost all were the backbone of Sauron's armies who have heavily industrialized and produce only ugly things that cause sickness (perhaps as a metaphor for wartime industry).

There are hints that not all Goblins and Orcs were evil, as a few passages indicate no race was wholly united for or against Morgoth; there are independent groups of Goblins in The Hobbit, and a few lines given indicate that Orcs will go to great lengths to avenge their fallen leaders, while in his notes he considered them a race capable of free-choice and thus not the "Always Chaotic Evil" that many modern works paint them to be.

<gallery>
Image:Tolkien Goblins.JPG|The most accepted origin of Goblins in the Middle Earth setting.
</gallery>

==Warhammer==
In early [[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]], Goblins were merely a shorter variety of Orcs, which were greenskinned evil humanoids who sometimes bred with humans. In fact, Warhammer Fantasy was the very first depiction of Goblins and Orcs as green skinned, something that has since become a staple of the races in pop culture.

With the creation of [[Warhammer 40,000]], the Goblins became [[Grots]], also called Gretchin, who like the [[Orks]] were actually a type of fungus ape. Between their legs is only two bulging spore-sacs which burst upon death and grow into new Grots/Orks in the ground.

After 40k had massive success, this was ported back into Warhammer Fantasy and Goblins along with the Orcs became fungus men. [[Skub|some oldschool Warhammer fans have rejected this, and the term "Orcgina" can make many on /tg/ go into flashbacks about the arguments inspired between the oldfags and newfags on the subject.]]

In both settings, Goblins/Grots are smaller greenskins who are extremely vicious but extremely cowardly and refuse to attack something unless they outnumber it ten to one (preferably more). Against nonthreatening foes however they enjoy torturing them, and POWs are subjected to horribly slow deaths to the chittering amusement of the tiny greenskins.

In Warhammer Fantasy Goblins are independent of Orcs, many living in their own tribes. A few even have their own gods, like the [[Forest Goblins]] who worship the [[Spider-god]]. Despite this, many Goblins also join groups with Orcs either to bully the Orcs into doing the manual labor, or where they are bullied into doing the manual labor. While only the [[Black Orc]]s are capable of actually producing new goods or learning technical knowledge among the larger greenskins, Goblins produce many things from giant flying ships to chariots. Of particular note is the Night Goblins, master chemists who's biology is bizarre and alien in its fungus nature even to other greenskins. Apart from all this, the main distinction between Goblins and 40k Grots is that Goblins aren't all weak, subservient slaves - Goblins individually ''are'' pretty weedy, but they do try and deck themselves out in armor and whatnot and can even take over Orc tribes, if a cunning or vicious enough Boss arrives. Most often this will be a Shaman (for his tricks and ability to scheme) or a Night Goblin Warboss (for being fucking insane), but even a normal Goblin Warboss can be a significant threat.

In 40k, Grots have almost no freedom and are only found alongside their bigger kin. They're not the strongest, quickest, meanest, or anything-est compared to the Orks, except for being better shots and more kunnin', to the point of generally being brighter (though that's not saying much). In most cases they are at best assistants, at worst slaves and moving targets. The only exception is the [[Gretchin Revolutionary Committee]], although that...ended badly. They fare a little bitter in Mek-controlled settlements where their technological know-how and small size are in more demand. They may even be allowed to make their own tanks - small and scrappy, but dangerous at least

In both Warhammers all greenskins speak in a British Cockney accent, with heavy Chav mixed in for variation. Goblins were renamed to Grots in [[Age of Sigmar]].

<gallery>
Image:Bad Moon Goblins.png|Warhammer Fantasy Goblins of today.
Image:Goblin Airship.JPG|Warboss Beater Pan(ic)!
Image:Gretchinmob.jpg|Grots.
</gallery>

{{Template:Playable Factions in Warhammer: Age of Sigmar}}

==D&D Goblins==
[[Dungeons & Dragons]] did not do anything particularly innovative with goblins. Instead, they are fairly close(ish) to their Tolkien roots - or, rather, to the simplified version of Tolkien's goblins; small, hateful, savage creatures that infest the unwanted corners of the world, constantly squabbling amongst themselves for power and occasionally spilling out to raid and terrorize the neighboring civilized lands when their numbers build up enough. Whilst Tolkien's goblins were actually quite inventive and adept at building things, since they were a combination of the two peoples that Tolkien most disliked (the Central soldiers he'd fought in WW1, and the industrialists he believed were destroying the countryside), D&D's goblins lack that trait due to [[Medieval Stasis]] - they're not as primitive as [[lizardfolk]], but are basically just tribal scavengers, in a stark contrast to goblins in other settings being the "chaotic and/or evil tinker race".

In fact, when you scratch the surface, D&D goblins may tap into the same "evil mook" basis as Tolkien's goblins, but actually are deliberately taken in different ways. Whilst originally D&D [[orc]]s & goblins are implied to have often worked together, and even interbreed, by the time of [[Planescape]] the two were actually bitter enemies - the two races share the same "heaven" of [[Acheron]], where they constantly war in an attempt to drive the other race to extinction. This even persisted into 3rd edition, when the orcs' changed racial alignment of Chaotic Evil meant they shouldn't have been going to Acheron in the first place. This stands in stark contrast both to Tolkien (who initially said that "orc" and "goblin" were words in two different languages for the same race) and to other popular settings, such as [[Warhammer Fantasy]] & [[Warcraft]], where goblins tend to be a strong racial ally to orcs.

Some sourcebooks, usually setting dependent, present a more nuanced portrayal of them and give them a deeper culture than that, but for the most part, D&D goblins are your standard generic cannon fodder evil mook race.
However, just like the [[orc]]s, goblins have a ''long'' history of being a potential PC race in [[Dungeons & Dragons]] - they've been playable in literally every single edition, with multiple incarnations in 3rd edition. The usual idea is to play them up as "spunky little troublemakers" - either a braver analogue to the [[halfling]] or a less annoying version of the [[gnome]]. And, for what it's worth, goblin PCs are actually generally quite liked. In fact, goblins were one of the player races most requested for a formal update into 5th edition PC races. Given the second season of [[Critical Role]] features a goblin PC as a main character, in the form of Nott (a self-loathing female who wants to become a [[halfling]]), and the fact that [[Pathfinder]] goblins have such an fandom that Pathfinder 2e promotes them to a corebook race, many are expecting 6e to feature playable goblins in the PHB, just like how 4e added the [[tiefling]] and the [[dragonborn]].

The biggest exception to goblins being generic evil baddies in d&d is the Eberron
setting, where they're given a nuanced portrayal, with a deep and sophisticated culture. In [[Eberron]], "goblin" is used to refer to bugbears, hobgoblins, and goblins. They are the descendants of the once mighty continent spanning Empire of Dhakaan that collapsed because of an invasion by the Daelkyr, masters of the plane of madness. The invasion was eventually beaten back by an alliance between the empire and the orc tribes called the Gatekeepers (badass men-in-black style druids who protect the world from lovecraftian horrors), but the empire fell afterwards. They're not the savages that you can kill guilt free in every other setting.
In the current day they are split up into three broad cultural groups (and a few splinter groups) - the smallest of the big three are The Heirs of Dhakaan, or Dhakaani, which are the badass super disciplined remanents of the empire who preserved their way of life after the empire collapsed by hiding underground or in secluded mountains and would like to bring goblins back to their previous heights. The various goblin races are all equal under the Dhakaani and share a eusocial bond like ants. They specialize in different tasks - the hobgoblins are administrators and soldiers (females are usually bards), goblins are workers, scouts and spies, and the bugbears are shock troopers and heavy laborers - but if you're better at a job outside your cultural role, the empire doesn't waste talent and puts you in that job.
Then you have the Ghaal'Dar, who made up the bulk of the descendants of the collapsed empire and had to deal with the fallout. Their culture degenerated into petty barbarian tribes with a might-makes-right mentality, their eusocial bond destroyed by the daelkyr. They are usually ruled by hobgoblins due to their superior ability to organize vs the other two subspecies. However, during the conflict known as The Last War they united and stole a chunk of land from the human kingdoms that they named Darguun. It's their "new goblin Homeland" and they're starting to rebuild their culture from there, but nobody thinks it will last. It's ruled by an alliance of clans with the leader, Lhesh Haruuc maintaining a delicate balance of power between them to maintain stability. He's tried to institute the rule of law and has been mostly successful, but a few clans (mostly in desolate areas where they can get away with it) only pay lip service. The country has been a success so far and their culture is slowly clawing it's way out of the dumps, but many are worried that when Haruuc dies it will all fall apart, so he is desperately looking for a competent successor.
The last major cultural group are the city goblins. They're the descendents of Ghaal'Dar goblinoids who weren't killed or fled when the humans conquered the continent, and were enslaved for a few thousand years. They're mostly lower g goblins, and were released from slavery about a thousand years before the current time. They're considered tax paying citizens and have all the rights (on paper) of human or Demi human citizens of the countries they live in. However, they tend to be poor and live as second class citizens in many places due to racism and lack of opportunities. The majority of them are loyal to their country of birth and consider themselves regular citizens, and they often dislike the Ghaal'Dar for commiting war crimes during the Last War and giving goblins a bad name. Most of the ones who were sympathetic to Ghaal'Dar moved to Darguun.
Goblins (like 99% of races in this setting) are not naturally evil in Eberron, they have the same range of alignments as every other sentient race. For cultural reasons they do tend towards being lawful neutral, but only slightly.

As a somewhat curious aside, D&D goblins are yellow (mostly) compared to the more usual goblin color of green. These even survived after the popularization of green Goblins in many other fantasy settings, most prominently the aforementioned Warhammer Fantasy and Warcraft. A few settings sometimes portray them as shades of grey, or the previously mentioned colors with a grey tint. They're even portrayed as red in some artwork.

The D&D goblin has a ''huge'' family tree, to the point they even coined their own racial name; "[[goblinoid]]". The two most prominent goblin-kin are the [[bugbear]]s - large, hairy, brutish goblins that, arguably, are D&D's attempt to maintain the orcy archetype without making orcs & goblins officially related - and the [[hobgoblin]]s, who are literally Tolkien's uruk-hai.

===Basic Stats===
Goblin PCs first appeared, alongside many other "classic humanoids", as PCs in the Known World Gazetteer #10: The Orcs of Thar. Under the Basic system, they had the following crunch:

::Goblin Ability Modifiers: -3 Strength, +1 Dexterity, +1 Constitution
::Note: Like all Humanoids from "The Orcs of Thar", a Goblin has racial ability score caps of 18 in all scores bar [[Intelligence]] and [[Wisdom]], which are capped at 16.
::Note: Like all Humanoids from "The Orcs of Thar", a Goblin determines its [[Charisma]] score for interacting with [[human]]s and [[demihuman]]s by dividing its Charisma score by 3 (rounding down) and subtacting the result from 9.
::Goblin Natural Armor Class: 8
::Can become a [[Shaman]] (8th level) and a [[Wokani]] (6th level)

{| class=wikitable
!Goblin's's level || XP Required || Goblin's hit dice
|-
|0||0||d8-1
|-
|1||800||2d8-2
|-
|2||1,600||3d8-3
|-
|3||3,200||-
|-
|4||6,400||4d8-4
|-
|5||13,000||5d8-5
|-
|6||26,000||6d8-5
|-
|7||55,000||-
|-
|8||110,000||7d8-5
|-
|9||220,000||+2 Hit Points
|-
|Subsequent||160,000||+2 Hit Points
|}

===AD&D Stats===
Having appeared in Orcs of Thar, naturally, goblins went on to appear in [[The Complete Book of|The Complete Book of Humanoids]]:

::Ability Score Modifiers: -1 Strength, -1 Charisma
::Ability Score Range: Strength 4/15, Dexterity 4/17, Constitution 5/16, Intelligence 3/18, Wisdom 3/18, Charisma 3/12
::Class Restrictions: [[Fighter]] 10, [[Cleric]] 9, Shaman 7, Witch Doctor 7, [[Thief]] 12
::Infravision 60 feet
::Can detect new or unusual constructions in an underground area with a 25% chance of success (1-2 on a d8).
::Goblin shamans have access to the Spheres of Divination, Reversed Healing, Protection and Reversed Sun.
::-1 Penalty to their attack rolls when in bright sunshine
::Monstrous Traits: Appearance (-2 to to reaction rolls), Bestial Habits (-2 to reaction rolls)
::Weapon Proficiencies: Axe, Military Pick, Morning Star Sling, Short Sword, Spear
::Nonweapon Proficiencies: Alertness, Animal Handling, Animal Training (Worg), Begging, Chanting, Close-Quarter Fighting, Fast-Talking, Fortune Telling, Hiding, Hunting, Information Gathering, Looting, Mining, Religion, Riding (Worg), Set Snares

===3e Stats===
In 3rd edition, goblins appeared as an NPC race in the [[Monster Manual]] and were made fully playable in [[Forgotten Realms: Races of Faerun]]. They were reprinted without change in a few books after that.

::-2 Strenth, +2 Dexterity, -2 Charisma
::Small
::Humanoid ([[Goblinoid]])
::Base speed 30 feet
::Darkvision 60 feet
::+4 racial bonus on Move Silently and Ride checks
::[[Favored Class]]: [[Rogue]]

====Pathfinder====
Of course the [[Pathfinder]] ruleset included Goblins, and tweaked them up a bit from their third edition version by giving them more dexterity. By Paizo's own reckoning, this puts their overall Race Points (RP) on a par with the other PC races, so should be a viable option for players, even if it is a bit uninspired.

::-2 Strength, +4 Dexterity, -2 Charisma
::Small
::Humanoid ([[Goblinoid]])
::Base speed 30 feet
::Darkvision 60 feet
::+4 racial bonus on Move Silently and Ride checks

Pathfinder did considerably more to support Goblins as a usable race, for both players and DMs. An entire splatbook was dedicated to their place in Golarion, while they were also included in the Advanced Race Guide and had additional options in the Monster Codex, allowing for a respectable variety in race trait customisations, giving them things like bite attacks, perceptions boosts, weapon familiarity, among others; the ability to create a medium-sized goblin who is not a [[Hobgoblin]]; a bunch of racial feats; and a handful of dedicated class archetypes, including [[Alchemist]]s with [[Awesome|flying mount companions]].

===4e Stats===
Like in 3e, the goblin appeared as a PC class in the [[Monster Manual]] for 4th edition. However, like all such races in 4e, its statblok there was...serviceable, but underwhelming. However, one of the last sourcebooks of that edition to be published, "The Dungeon Survival Handbook", brought them back as an official race, and boy were they beefy!

::+2 Dexterity, +2 Wisdom OR +2 Charisma
::Small
::Speed 6 squares
::Low-light vision
::+2 Bluff, +2 Stealth
::Goblin Reflexes: +1 to Reflex defense.
::Racial Power - Goblin Tactics: At will, as an immediate reaction to being missed by an enemy melee attack, you can shift 1 square.

The biggest boost that the DSHb gave, besides the flexible mental ability score boost, was a selection of racial feats and racial utility powers, both of which really strengthened the goblin's mechanics and thematics.

''Goblin Racial Feats:''
* Ankle Biter: +1 feat bonus per tier to damage rolls vs. creatures larger than you, +1d6 damage on critical hits against creatures larger than you.
* Desperate Goblin Tactics: When bloodied, Goblin Tactics lets you shift 3 squares.
* Goblin Feint: When you use Goblin Tactics, you gain Combat Advantage against the triggering enemy until the end of your next turn.
* Shadowcreeper: Requires [[Assassin]] class. When you use Goblin Tactics, you shift 2 squares and gain Partial Concealment until the end of your next turn.
* Sneaky Stabber: Requires [[Rogue]] class. When you deal Sneak Attack damage to an adjacent foe, reroll any damage rolls of 1 until you get a result higher than 1.
* Wrist Biter: When you use Goblin Tactics, the triggering enemy takes 1d4 damage per your character's tier before you shift.

''Goblin Racial Utility Powers:''
* Fast Filch: At-will. When adjacent to a creature granting combat advantage, as a minor action, you can make a Thievery check to pick its pocket or perform sleight of hand. Level 2.
* Leg Up: Encounter. When adjacent to a creature, as a move action, you can jump your speed horizontally or up to 10 feet vertically. Level 2.
* Little Green Lie: Encounter. If you fail a Bluff, Diplomacy or Intimidate check, you can re-roll the check as a free action. If it was a Diplomacy or Intimidate check, you can use your Bluff modifier instead. Level 2.
* Living Shield: Encounter. If you are hit by an enemy melee or ranged attack whilst adjacent to an ally, as an immediate interrupt, you can shift 1 square and transfer the hit to that ally. Level 6.
* Unwitting Guardian: Encounter. When adjacent to a Medium or larger creature, as a move action, you can can shift 1 square to enter the target's space, occupying it until the end of your next turn and being hidden from all creatures except the target. Level 6.
* Down and Through: Encounter. As a move action, choose a Medium or larger enemy adjacent to you and shift up to 5 squares to a different square adjacent to that creature; you can move through its space during this shift. Level 10.

===5e Stats===
Finally, goblins appeared as a PC race in 5th edition's Volo's Guide to Monsters. Like their fellow [[goblinoid]]s, the [[kobold]], the [[orc]] and the [[Yuan-ti]], they were officially described as "unbalanced", which has earned a lot of fan flak, as this is literally an open invitation for more close-minded DMs to refuse goblin PCs - goblin fans are still hoping that WotC will eventually put out a splatbook with a "more official" and/or balanced version of goblin PC stats. Ironically, they were better off than the poor kobold.

Hopes of a reboot were shattered when the Guildmaster's Guide to [[Ravnica]] came out in November 2018; whilst earlier [[Plane Shift]] articles had presented an alternative goblin statblock, the GGR simply reprinted the Volo's Guide stats below.

::+2 Dexterity, +1 Constitution
::Small
::Speed 30 feet
::Darkvision 60 feet
::Fury of the Small: Once per short or long rest, when you inflict damage with an attack or spell on a creature larger than you, inflict bonus damage equal to your level as you attack from below, probably punching the enemy in the balls..
::Nimble Escape: You can take the Disengage or Hide action as a bonus action on each of your turns.

Surprisingly enough, after a second reprint in Eberron: Rising, the children’s “activity book” Adventure with Muk gave an alternative playable writeup, specifically for the Dankwood Goblins featured. All this does though is raise +1 Wis instead of +1 Con, and replaces Fury of the Small for the Forest Gnome’s Speak with Small Beasts, letting them communicate simple ideas to Small beasts and smaller. Which is nice for the utility, I guess.

As mentioned above, [[Plane Shift]] featured alternative goblin stats first - two separate versions, in fact. Whether they are better than the official versions is a matter of debate, though...

* [[Zendikar]] Goblin
::+2 Constitution
::Small
::Speed 25 feet
::Darkvision 60 feet
::Grit: You have Resistance to Fire and Psychic damage, your Unarmored AC is 11 + Dexterity modifier.
::Tribal Affinity: Choose either the Grotag Tribe (you have Proficiency in Animal Handling), the Lavastep Tribe (you have Advantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks made in rocky or subterranean environments) or the Tuktuk Tribe (you have Proficiency with Thieves Tools).

* [[Ixalan Goblin]]
::+2 Dexterity
::Small
::Speed 25 feet, Climb 25 feet
::Darkvision 60 feet
::Climber: You have a Climb speed of 25 feet if you are not encumbered or wearing either medium armor or heavy armor.

===Farlandish Goblin PCs===
The [[World of Farland]] has its own set of PC stats for goblins.
::Ability Score Increase: +2 Dexterity
::Size: Small
::Speed: 30 feet
::Darkvision 60 feet
::Goblin Proficiencies: You are proficient with the Scimitar, Shortbow, and Light Armor.
::Nimble Escape: This is basically the same as the trait of the same name from 5e canon, except this version can only be used once per short rest.
::Subrace: Choose the Urban Goblin or Subterranean Goblin.

''Urban Goblin''
::Ability Score Increase: +1 Constitution
::Urban Stealth: You have Proficiency in Stealth and apply twice your Proficiency bonus, rounded down, when making Stealth checks in Urban environments.
::Tenacious: After failing a saving throw, a skill check, or an ability check, you gain Advantage the next time that you make a save or check using that same ability score. This trait lasts until used or 24 hours have passed.

''Subterranean Goblin''
::Ability Score Increase: +1 Wisdom
::Dungeon Stealth: You have Proficiency in Stealth and apply twice your Proficiency bonus, rounded down, when making Stealth checks in subterranean environments.
::Pious: You have Proficiency in the Religion skill.
::Improved Darkvision: Your Darkvision increases to 120 feet.

===[[Half-Goblin]]s?===
Given the strong connections between goblins and [[orc]]s in some settings, particularly in [[Dungeons & Dragons]]' older editions, and the existence of [[half-orc]]s, one may ask if there's ever been any love give to half-goblins? Well, ironically, not really; though [[Advanced Dungeons & Dragons]] claimed that [[goblinoid]]s interbred with each other and with orcs all the time, that fluff was lost after the change to 3rd edition, which wanted to try and make the two races distinct. As for goblin/human crossbreeding? Forget about it; they barely gave half-orcs any love, so you can imagine they'd be less than interested in half-goblins.

Except... there was one setting where [[goblinoid]]s took the place of orcs. In the [[Dragonlance]] setting, orcs don't exist, being replaced by goblins and [[draconian]]s, and so the half-goblin appeared there in 3.5's Races of Ansalon sourcebook. Surprisingly, they're known for both being very self-confident and assured (in fact, their Charisma penalty is described as stemming from coming across as ''too'' confident, making them seem overbearing or aggressive), in contrast to the propensity for wangsting endemic to half-orcs and half-elves in other settings, very brave (in contrast to the traditional goblin cowardice) and with a drive to be peacemakers and diplomats, rather like half-elves. Essentially, rather than bitching about being rejected by both worlds (human and goblin) or about the lack of a "true" half-goblin culture, half-goblins are near-universally driven to try and force the world to shape up and make a culture for them, by bringing goblins and humans to work together in peace. Which is actually kind of badass, and certainly a change from the norms for half-breeds. In essence, they're said to combine human ambition and drive with goblin ferocity and mob mentality.

Half-goblins are described as looking more or less like human-sized goblins; half-bugbears might be particularly hairy, and half-"common" goblins shorter than average, but still within the human stature. Although this stature can lead to them being mistaken for [[hobgoblin]]s, they apparently lack quite as many fangs and have more human-like eyes, which makes the difference obvious enough at a closer look.

::+2 Dexterity, -2 Charisma
::Humanoid (Goblinoid)
::Medium
::Base speed 30 feet
::Darkvision 60 feet
::+2 racial bonus on Bluff and Move Silently
::+4 racial bonus on Will saving throws to resist Charm, Compulsion and Fear effects.
::Favored Class: Any

==[[Magic: The Gathering]]==
It should be no surprise that Goblins appear in Magic. Showing up in the very first set, Goblins have risen to be one of the most popular tribes in the game, and boy do they get a ton of support. They are known as the "characteristic" species of red, which means that they show up in pretty much every plane as the default red-aligned race. In fact, the number of planes in which goblins do not appear on can be counted on one hand. In general, when goblins show up, they are shown to be chaotic and unruly. They almost always have green or red skin, and travel in large groups, though this isn't always the case. On [[Ixalan]], they look more like monkeys with white fur and black skin, and tend to be individualistic. They love fire and scrapping together machines and weapons that should by no stretch of the means work, but they do. More often than not, these inventions require the sacrifice of another goblin to get it working properly.

As a tribe, goblins often have small bodies and weak frames. When they show up with high power, it's usually at the cost of toughness. They are cheap to get out onto the battlefield, cheap to search up, and attack fast. They are perfect for aggressive red strategies, and they often come with ways to dump out even more goblins out onto the field. This usually comes in the form of goblin creature tokens, but some of the most powerful goblins let you dump them straight from your hand! If you don't wipe the board, or take out the few key goblins holding the deck together, you can expect the battlefield to be swarming with the little guys, and you'll be losing fast.

==[[Warcraft]]==
Goblins are a staple race in the Warcraft franchise. They have green skin, are very short, have long and strong fingers, long noses, large pointy ears, and sharp teeth.

In Warcraft 2, when the game expanded to more than just Humans, Orcs, Ogres, and Demons, Goblins were first mentioned. They were small mechanically-inclinded lunatics who invented great devices and were god-tier chemists. They offered their services to the Horde since it gave them more opportunities to wreak havoc and the races that would come to be those of the Alliance had ignored them for their entire history.
The Goblins mainly performed recon and VIP transport for the Horde via their Zeppelins, demolitions in the form of suicide Sapper squads, the invention of airtight missile-launching capsules that were tied to the backs of giant turtles to use as submarines, and finally experimenting on their Forest Troll allies to transform them into giant Berserkers. In secret they also helped the resident Sauron, an insane evil dragon named Deathwing, in his various endeavors. Goblins were described as insane, sadistic, and greedy for gold.

In Warcraft 3, Goblins became a neutral group. It was revealed only a small portion of the Goblin race actually worked with the Horde, while the others have always provided their services to anyone with gold to spend and after the fall of the first Horde they have enforced that their own race remain entirely neutral to all factions. They did little of importance other than provide transportation for the various power players in this time.
When the second Horde was building their capital of Durotar, a small number of Goblins lead by world famous Gazlowe provided them with fair deals (which is itself a big deal for their race) for Goblin services including demolition.

In vanilla World of Warcraft, Goblin lore expanded even further; a small number of Goblins were seen in the Alliance, some among the Horde, while it was revealed almost the entirety of their race dwell on an island called Kezan which has a massive underground city called the Undermine. The Cartels run Kezan, the most powerful of which is the Steamwheedle Cartel which performs the basic services offered in Warcraft 3. They maintain a few cities around the world including Ratchet (Gazlowe's city nearby Durotar), Booty Bay (a port which services anyone who reaches it, mainly pirates although they are just as much at threat from pirate attack), Gadgetzan (a desert city of scum and villainy, plus a small gladiatorial arena), and Everlook (a town high in the mountains of Kalimdor near by ancient magical Elf ruins).

Goblins have a racial rivalry with the other mechanically minded race, [[Gnomes]], although hostility varies from giant robot wars to having a giant racetrack where they see which race can build the best vehicles to next-door neighbors who collaborate with each other on inventions and take any opportunity to try and make the other admit their philosophy is better.

In general, the Goblin philosophy is "Chemicals, 50% chance of explosion is acceptable, make it fast so it makes money!" while the Gnomish philosophy is "Magic and radiation, take your time and spend decades if need be, 10% chance of turning yourself into a chicken or a different color is acceptable, make it for the love of knowledge and invention".

In Cataclysm, Goblins recieved a MAJOR update as they became a player race. One of the cartels which was one of the weaker ones (having their section of Kezan entirely on the surface, mainly producing pop culture, cars, sports, and edibles) joined the Horde after Deathwing set their portion of Kezan on fire (since in the middle of a not-football game a ball was kicked and hit him). Their trade prince sold the entire Cartel into slavery after charging them all their possessions for supposedly safe passage off the island, and the ships were caught in a naval battle between the Horde and Alliance. After conquering the island, they then joined the Horde which was in the middle of becoming a fascist genocidal dictatorship again thanks to shit leaders (also, their trade prince got to keep his job despite the mess he caused). They quickly upgraded the Horde from catapults to giant robots and from bow and arrow to machineguns, then created their own new capital by completely renovating a huge chunk of the continent into the symbol of the Horde complete with a Mount Rushmore of their racial leader.
During the Kezan levels it was also revealed that Goblins have become multicultural, taking on things previously alien to them like worship of the light and shamanism (although the former is seen as a combination of medic and television evangelism, while the latter is perceived as cutting deals with nature). Kezan is very modern and has television, pop stars, sunglasses, champagne, fancy cars, neon lights, not-Chinese food, electricity and lightbulbs, and many other conveniences not seen elsewhere in the rest of the Renaissance setting outside the homeland of the Gnomes.

Goblin origins were also explained. In ancient times, Goblins were an semi-intelligent race of monkey which was enslaved by Island Trolls and forced to mine a substance called Kajamite. Kajamite has a side-effect of causing a huge boost to intelligence (although not coherent thought) in anyone who imbibes it, and one day the Troll slavemasters entered the mines to whip their tiny laborers and were disintegrated with laser beams. Since then, the Goblins have mined Kajamite and used it as an ingredient in ingestibles of all kinds (including "Kaja-cola") although their supply was beginning to run out, and there was fear they may regress back to being mere monkeys without it. Like most Cataclysm plots, this was never brought up again although there was hints that with the Kaja-cola that was left everywhere they go that monkeys drinking it have begun becoming intelligent as well.

Goblins in Warcraft 2 had extremely squeaky, high-pitched voices and tended to babble or shriek. In Warcraft 3 the shrillness of the voice was lessened, and they became more calm and coherent. The Goblins in World of Warcraft still have a voice that is higher-pitched than a human, although only slightly more for males while gaining something of an American Brooklyn accent. The non-Bilgewater Goblins still speak in their Brooklyn accent or a general American accent, Bilgewater Goblins speak like they're from New Jersey both in accent and expression.

<gallery>
Image:GoblinZeppelin.png|A Goblin Zeppelin pilot in Warcraft 2.
Image:GoblinSappers 2.jpg|Goblin Sappers in Warcraft 2.
Image:Goblin Sappers.jpg|Warcraft 3 Goblin Sappers.
Image:Goblin Tinker WX.png|Warcraft 3 Goblin Tinker.
Image:WoW Goblin Fem.jpg|World of Warcraft female Goblin player characters.
Image:Warcraft Goblin Player Male.jpg|World of Warcraft male Goblin player characters.
Image:GOBLINS AND GNOMES.jpg|Goblin/Gnome rivalry.
Image:Kezan.png|The Bilgewater portion of Kezan.
Image:Goblin Easter.png|Goblins are into holidays in a big way, either as a business conspiracy or over-enthusiasm.
Image:Goblin femSapper.jpg
</gallery>

==[[Goblin Slayer]]==
[[Skarsnik|The said goblin in this manga while being a weak, tiny and barbaric humanoid is capable of many unorthodox tactics and teamwork that they could outplay and murder low level adventurers numerous times, whom the said adventurers underestimate the cunning goblins]]. They are barbaric primitives so they have to loot tools. However, they are capable of some degree of intelligence, like using signs like totems to create distractions as well as cover their weapons with urine and poisonous herbs to not only prevent adventurers from healing themselves, but also mark them with scents for goblins have an acute sense of smell. While they use mercenaries and pets such as wolves and orcs to further boost their effectiveness, the biggest contributors of their horde are their red shirt goblin goons, who are weak, small, but expendable and effective while attacking in groups. The horde is often led by a goblin mage that is capable of casting spells like fireball.

Oh, and this being Japan, they're sadists native to the moon who have only one gender and use females of other races to reproduce; given their brutal nature, it's done via rape. What the hell else would you read this shit for?

==Goblins (The Webcomic)==
{{/co/}}
[[File:Webcomic Goblins.jpg|thumb|right|400px|"This is the arc that will not end, it will go on and on my friend..."]]
Goblins are the stars of a webcomic called [http://www.goblinscomic.org/ Goblins] created by a man known as "Thunt" (real name Tarol Hunt, though in 2019 he announced that he is transitioning to female and is changing his name to Ellipsis Hana Stephens) in 2005, which claims that #GoblinLivesMatter and all the bad stuff comes from evil clans but most monsters are totally bros and it's all just a misunderstanding or a result of the ignorant sadistic humans, with those of the monster who ARE bad only being a product of human oppression.

Even so, only half of the arcs even have goblin protagonists - the other focuses on two adventurers, the, well, min/maxed human named Minmax and his dwarf cleric partner Forgath. Originally they were in an adventuring party (back when the comic was actually still a parody of an RPG world, complete with characters confusing the first person and meta as well as the cleric praying to the DM) who were at first all [[Drizzt]] clones then a bad weeaboo crew although the joke of the characters all dying at the same time due to their incompetence shortly after being rolled was dropped after the second time, and the parody plot was entirely dropped later on as well.

The supposed main characters are a group of goblins who were supposed to be just your average quick skirmish that was guarding a treasure chest full of magic gear they weren't allowed to open for reasons none of them knew. After surviving the attack by Minmax, Forgath, and their idiot friends that suffered a TPK, the Goblins decided to commit the ultimate act of heresy against their race and become player characters by adopting classes.

Then the story starts getting convoluted, going through a human city that is mostly just built on torture-killing monster races, having Minmax and Forgath go on a subplot that involved a Yuan-Ti that lead into a seemingly unending dungeon arc involving parallel realities before a misunderstanding forced the two characters to separate with her, while at the same time the Goblin group attempted to escape from a paladin who has taken the Lawful Good definition into "an omnicidal maniac who enslaves the souls of those he has killed while maintaining a personality straight out of a [[Warhammer 40000]] fanfic". While having side stories involving ANOTHER insanely complex dungeon. While a third group, made up of one of the Goblins plus an evil Goblin who's really tragically misunderstood product of her situation going through ANOTHER unending dungeon.

The common points that are inevitably mentioned on /tg/ when Goblins is brought up are both the lack of an improvement of art over the course of the comics decade of history and the meme "IMSAD", the latter of which is a good summary of most of the plot of the comic. After a small breakdown caused by backlash from [[SJW]] fans taking issue with the torture-rapist ex-adventurer governor villain, [http://www.goblinscomic.org/kins-story-is-kind-of-true/ the creator revealed that the reason the villains are written so absolutely edgetastically hammy in their evil is he was using the comic to work through some emotional trauma caused when some men raped his mother before he was born and the story of it scarred him.] He also later revealed he had a history of domestic abuse. Somehow he thought this would make things better.

Thunt is currently supported exclusively through the webcomic, which goes on hiatus from time to time.

Thunt has also been working on turning his comic into an animated series which he funded on Indiegogo. Somehow, he managed to get several famous voice actors on the project.

<gallery>
Image:Webcomic Goblins IMSAD.gif|Congratulations, you now know the basic plot.
Image:IMSAD 2.jpg
Image:Webcomic Goblins Page.jpg|An actual page, from when it was still a parody.
Image:Webcomic Goblins Thunt Goes Bananas.jpg|A piece Thunt made during his breakdown, which they later blamed on their gender issues. Feel free to insert your own reference to [[Chaos]] corruption here.
Image:4chan on Goblins.png|tl;dr
</gallery>

==Troll 2 Goblins==

The notorious movie Troll 2 infamously [[Irony|features no actual trolls]]<ref>Nor any connection to its purported prequel, ''Troll'' from 1986, which is a fascinatingly bad movie in itself. Troll 1 features a surprisingly strong cast and a pair of protagonists both named "[[Harry Potter]]" (Sr. and Jr.), among a great deal of other weirdness unrelated to its "sequels". Further, there have been ''two'' movies released as "Troll 3", neither of which has a [[troll]], nor much connection to either Troll 1 or 2 or each other (one purported Troll 3 features a "hobgoblin" and the other features killer trees). And then there was a semi-official sequel to Troll 2 called "Goblin 2" (Troll 2 being originally filmed under the title "Goblins") that actually featured a [[troll]] (and no actual goblins). But enough about other filmmakers' [[Pun|Trolling]] of audiences.</ref>. It instead features goblins (thus, its presence in this article), who live in the town of Nilbog ("Its Goblin backwards!"), and who, for the purposes of this movie, are vegetarian monsters who turn their human victims into plants via various potions and other concoctions. (The writer director was an Italian with ''issues'', okay?)

That being said, the Troll 2 goblins are worth mentioning just because "vegetarian monsters who convert their prey into plants" is a fairly good line for "just how weird you can go with goblins", and also a good adventure seed that could be used for a minor [[World of Darkness]] mystery baddie.

==Monstergirl Depictions==
{{Monstergirls}}
Traditionally, the idea of goblins being [[monstergirls]] was something of a niche, at best; most thought of them as just hideous, stupid, filthy little monsters - who would want to put their dicks in that?

Ironically, it was [[Warcraft]] that probably first sowed the seeds of female goblins being fuggable; whilst the attractiveness of female goblins in that game is contentious, people must admit that they were better-looking than the tumor-riddled, snaggle-toothed, scarred abominations that make up the canon depictions of most goblins prior to that. They were certainly attractive enough to start scoring [[Rule 34]] artwork, and this became a revelation to fa/tg/uys: that goblin-girls did ''not'' have to be fugly!

From there, goblin-girls became an underground sensation, slowly developing and evolving in the steamier underbelly of /tg/ and on /d/ (or at least its "western counterpart" /aco/) until they have become as mainstream in the /tg/ fandom as any monstergirl has a chance of being.

Because goblins vary so widely in their depictions, it shouldn't be surprising that goblin-girls likewise have been a particularly fertile ground for interpretations. There are five "mainstream" depictions of the goblin-as-monstergirl you will probably encounter on /tg/, and many different sub-forms and cross-pollinations. All depend on which of various "goblin aspects" that a creator deigns to focus on; tinker skills, short-sighted hedonism, mischievousness, raw sexual appetites, and fertility:

* The "Pervy Tinker" archetype directly traces its roots back to Warcraft's Rule 34'd goblins: this envisions goblins as a "techy" race with a strong lewd streak, leading to them focusing their mad science skills on coming up with newer and more deviant ways of getting off. Depending on the fundamental tech level of the setting and the creator's own tastes, this can range from aphrodisiac gas grenades and automated dildos to [[golem]]s built as living sex engines and bimbofying/transforming [[magitek]] rayguns. Rule 34 interpretations of World of Warcraft lore can be counted as this, as well as rare goblins in Corruption of Champions that are mentally stable enough to keep their panties on.
* The "Shameless Slut" archetype likewise has its roots in Warcraft goblins, vis a vis their canonical obsession with money, but is perhaps one of the more widely known "generic" archetypes as well. These goblins are hedonists who take a great deal of pride in their libido and their love of pleasure, integrating with the other races and usually gravitating towards roles based on "entertaining", from barmaids to outright prostitutes. In fact, they are often depicted as actively enjoying whoring themselves out, as it ensures a steady stream of partners and profit, whilst sating their perverse and degrading sexual desires. These goblin-girls are often size-queens, specifically choosing partners based on the stature of their masculine organs. The adult comic artist Incase is focused on this one, and might as well started it with his drawings.
* The "Mischief Maker" archetype is the most innocent of the archetypes, portraying goblins as just playful, fun-loving hedonists whose greatest aims in life are pranking, partying and making love, not necessarily in that order.
* The "Savage Slut" archetype is perhaps the oldest of the archetypes, for it owes its origins to the original interchangeability of goblin and [[orc]]. These goblins are basically sexy "savages", wild and primal little monstergirls who live a primitive lifestyle centered on hunting, playing, and of course capturing & having sex with men. Essentially, this depicts goblins as [[shortstack]] or [[loli|"a loophole for masturbating to underage children"]] orcs. Kenkou Cross' Monster Girl Encyclopedia is focused on that.
* The "Breederphile" archetype is, in comparison, probably the youngest of these archetypes. These goblins are defined by their racial pregnancy fetishism, and by having bodies almost literally built to breed. Being impregnated is intensely orgasmic, pregnancy either fills them with ecstasy, makes them incredibly horny, or both, birth is a series of some of the most intense orgasms in their lives, and social standing often revolves around how many daughters they have to boss around. {{BLAM|+++...SCANNING...+++}} {{BLAM|+++Congratulations Neophyte, you have just weathered the single worst psychic assault a slaaneshi daemon is capable of unleashing; you may now be promoted into the ranks of the [[Grey Knights]]+++}}This archetype does make some sense if you think about it: after all as a 'cannon fodder' species for PC, where do all the Goblins come from? Corruption of Champions might as well have started this archetype.

More recently, moreso than even the Breederphile, a variant of goblin-girl portrayal native to [[Urban Fantasy]] settings has come to /tg/'s attention from our [[shortstack]] fetishising kinsfolk on /aco/. Combining parts of the "Shameless Slut" and "Breederphile" stereotypes, paired with some occasionally-awkward racial coding, the so-called "Ghetto Goblin" tends to be used as an less-racially-offensive imitation of the "hot-blooded Latina" or "Ghetto Black Girl" racial stereotype, in that they are sexually open, tend toward foul language and fiery tempers when angry and lewd vocalizing or body-language when aroused or teasing others, and frequently dress provocatively. While breeding for the Ghetto Goblin isn't usually as erotic as with the Breederphile, the social status of the Ghettoblin is often measured by how many offspring they have, how often they have sex, and how early they first had sex. They arouse easily, to the point that human men in their stories often need to talk Ghetto Goblins out of outright molesting them openly in public.

Whilst these archetypes are certainly well known, there are also two specific depictions of goblin monstergirls that have achieved enough recognition to be recognizable by name; the MGE Goblin and the CoC Goblin.

The [[Monster Girl Encyclopedia]] depiction of the goblin is essentially a mashup of the Mischief Maker and the Savage Slut archetypes. These primitive mamono live in tribal clusters, entertaining themselves by playing pranks on each other or the races around them, hunting game, and conducting banditry for fun, profit and boyfriends. In appearance, they resemble pointy-eared human [[loli]]s with horns and superhuman strength, allowing them to fight with weapons that only a strong human man would normally have a chance of lifting. Simple-minded and carefree, they have no intention of giving up the lifestyle they so enjoy.

The CoC Goblin takes its name from Corruption of Champions, a [[/d/|hentai]] fantasy text adventure game that was popular on /tg/ for a while, before the fact that [[furries]] are much more willing to put money where mouth is when it comes to getting fetishistic shit done led to the inevitable flooding of the game with [[beastfolk]] waifus and encounters and /tg/ promptly banished it. Still, before it went under, it had a significant impact on the goblin-girl arena: CoC may not have created the idea of the Breederphile archetype, but it certainly brought it to the attention of what passes for /tg/ mainstream. CoC's goblins are Breederphiles who became a pregnancy-obsessed all-female race due to corruption of their water supply. Once a brilliant race of alchemists and inventors, they have since devolved into a Savage Slut culture, living in crude tribes based on a massively curvy matriarch, her husband(s), and as many daughters as she can make who are willing to stick around - whilst goblins are fiercely competitive with each other, there is also safety in numbers, keeping them from being eaten by [[hellhound]]s or raped/beaten to death by [[minotaur]]s. Such clans are often notably inbred, for their corruption means they have little sense of objection to incest, with only the matriarch's jealous possessiveness in regards her husband keeping her daughters at bay. They're also examples of the Pervy Tinker archetype, using what remains of their former knack for invention to create sex toys and perverse alchemical concoctions for use in subduing husbands and molding them to their liking.

==See Also==
*[[Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition races]]

<gallery>
Image:Cute_Goblin_Adventurer.jpg
Image:Goblin_Dancer.jpg
Image:Goblin_Adventurer_1.png
Image:Goblin_Bar_Wench.png
Image:Goblin_Monk_1.jpg
Image:Goblin_Shamaness_1.jpg
Image:Goblin_Shamaness_2.jpg
File:MGE Goblin.jpg|Giving a new meaning to the term "Child Rapist".
</gallery>

==Gallery==
<gallery>
Image:Sneaky Goblin.gif
Image:Goblin Knight.JPG|A more "player character" variety.
Image:GreenGoblin3.jpg|Most goblins tend to [[Alchemist|throw pumpkin bombs]] and use flying crafts to annoy [[/co/|superheroes]].
</gallery>

==Footnotes==
<references />

==See also==
* [[Unified Setting/Goblins]] Yet another take on a classic concept.
* [[Goblin Slayer]], a man with a serious beef against goblins.
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqx4ywmqYUw The most common reaction to Goblins]
* [[Goblinoid]], for the extended goblin family.

{{D&D1e-Races}}
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{{D&D4e-Races}}
{{D&D5e-Races}}
{{Pathfinder-Races}}
{{Starfinder-Races}}
[[Category:Kings of War]][[Category:Monsters]]

Goblin

2020-06-05T23:10:46Z

2605:E000:141B:DE0:45EC:F6BA:D402:A189: /* Monstergirl Depictions */

{{Promotions}}
[[File:Path Gob Rat.PNG|thumb|right|300px|Brushy brushy.]]
'''Goblins''' are mythological creatures of unclear origin and contradicting descriptions. They are small humanoids of a mischievous nature, possibly belonging to the fey family (along with creatures such as redcaps, brownies, leprechauns, kobolds, etc).

The origin of the word "Goblin" can be traced back to the British "Gobelinus" which was the name of a demon that once caused trouble in Normandy. It has been theorized the term began with [[Kobold]], which was a German Fey spirit whose origins can be traced to one of a variety of earlier myths based in Paganism from various other culture. Kobolds also gave their name to cobalt, due to the fact that new advances in mining in Germany during the middle ages allowed access to large amounts of cobalt ore, although the mining was very dangerous and they had no idea how to smelt the metal so as a result the numerous mine collapses as well as the "theft of the ore, with only poison and ash left behind" were blamed on Kobolds. Either way, Goblin myths often involve mischief, mining, and chemistry.

In modern fantasy, the term "Goblin" has been very much determined by the Tolkienian use of the word - as in a species of humanoids in service to evil, with the "Orcs" being another word for the same thing, with Tolkien claiming the etymology for that word being an old English term for demon. Goblin appearance has been further shaped by both video- and boardgames, as well as various artists. They are universally smaller than humans, although the exact size varies, and often have large pointy ears (larger and more animalistic than elf ears) and either long, crooked and pointed noses or orc-esque noseless features.

The typical goblin stereotype is that of a savage warrior and raider that attacks villages and ambushes unwary travelers; being one-dimensionally evil, they can be (and are) killed without remorse in large numbers (unless you read Eberron, G:LTTE, or Terry Pratchett's Snuff). Another Goblin stereotype is that they are a race of unusually technologically advanced and ludicrously smart and cunning race on par if not better than [[Dwarves]] such as creating fantasy machine guns or an entire robot army such as those in Warcraft or Dungeon Siege. They act and move in smaller groups as they don't pose a large threat by themselves, and are commonly the first combat encounter for a young adventurer. Goblins tend to live in caves and gang up with orcs and similar races, to whom they are sometimes described as belonging to the same family or species. Their intelligence is usually fairly low, although among dumber and larger brutes will be the clever ones doing the "skilled" work while the bigger ones shout orders.

Because of the comedy potential, players have always liked being goblins, and they were one of the three most-popular races requested for an add-on to 5e as of a recent survey.

[[Goblinoid]]s include a vast array of species in D&D, ranging from obscurities like the stone-skinned [[Norker]]s and the "they heal when you hit them, die if you heal them" [[Nilbog]]s to mainstays like the more organized [[Hobgoblin]]s and the big, scary, pseudo-[[orcs]] called [[Bugbear]]s.

==In /tg/ Media==
In the [[Iron Kingdoms]] and [[Magic: The Gathering]] (sometimes), goblins have a penchant for technology and love to tinker with machinery (especially steampunk contraptions and the like), somewhat propagating the "mad scientist" archetype.

In [[Kings of War]] goblins are still a source of evil comic relief. They're often suggested to have been created by the [[Celestians (Kings of War)|Celestian]] Garkhan the Black after he finished creating the orcs with "whatever was left," although where exactly they came from is a mystery. They're still engineers as in many settings, but they tend to be very short-term thinking and don't like to test things before they use them.

In [[Eberron]], goblins are quite a bit different than their usual portrayal, described in the d&d section below

In [[Pathfinder]], they're stupid little freaks with all manner of strange quirks (good singing voices, fear horses and writing, like fire and pickles), sort of a cross between Gremlins and a baby-eating Stitch. They are also very funny and (somewhat) lovable, and even have their own comic series. Surprisingly, despite being described as naturally inclined towards a mixture of [[Chaotic Stupid]] (easily distractable to the point of stopping combat ''mid-swing'' to chase a frog or pick their nose) and [[Stupid Evil]] (love of torturing anything smaller than them) behaviors, they have no mental penalties. Pathfinder also has a goblin variant called the Monkey Goblin, which is even ''stupider'' than regular goblins, but much stronger and more agile, using a rat-like prehensile tail to aid it in a life in the trees.

In [[Malifaux]], they're noseless hillbillies with very few womanfolk called Gremlins complete with straw hats, jug bands, blunderbusses, and lots of pigs. Also come in an Asian variant.

==Tolkien Goblins==
Tolkien was not consistent on the relationship between goblins and orcs. Initially he said that "orc" was merely the halfling word for goblin. Later works said that goblins were a subtype of orc. Later still works treated goblins and orcs like completely separate creatures, so take your pick.

Goblins and Orcs are given different backstories from Tolkien, although the most prominent one is they are the twisted forms of Elves tortured and beat into submission by Morgoth and Sauron. Other origins are being an Asian group of Elves stolen from their people and bred as slaves by Morgoth and Sauron, just being animals uplifted by M&S, fallen Maiar, men who were corrupted rather than Elves (or a mix of the two, with some interbreeding with humans as another possibility), or slimy rocks transformed by Morgoth's magic into living beings. Regardless, almost all were the backbone of Sauron's armies who have heavily industrialized and produce only ugly things that cause sickness (perhaps as a metaphor for wartime industry).

There are hints that not all Goblins and Orcs were evil, as a few passages indicate no race was wholly united for or against Morgoth; there are independent groups of Goblins in The Hobbit, and a few lines given indicate that Orcs will go to great lengths to avenge their fallen leaders, while in his notes he considered them a race capable of free-choice and thus not the "Always Chaotic Evil" that many modern works paint them to be.

<gallery>
Image:Tolkien Goblins.JPG|The most accepted origin of Goblins in the Middle Earth setting.
</gallery>

==Warhammer==
In early [[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]], Goblins were merely a shorter variety of Orcs, which were greenskinned evil humanoids who sometimes bred with humans. In fact, Warhammer Fantasy was the very first depiction of Goblins and Orcs as green skinned, something that has since become a staple of the races in pop culture.

With the creation of [[Warhammer 40,000]], the Goblins became [[Grots]], also called Gretchin, who like the [[Orks]] were actually a type of fungus ape. Between their legs is only two bulging spore-sacs which burst upon death and grow into new Grots/Orks in the ground.

After 40k had massive success, this was ported back into Warhammer Fantasy and Goblins along with the Orcs became fungus men. [[Skub|some oldschool Warhammer fans have rejected this, and the term "Orcgina" can make many on /tg/ go into flashbacks about the arguments inspired between the oldfags and newfags on the subject.]]

In both settings, Goblins/Grots are smaller greenskins who are extremely vicious but extremely cowardly and refuse to attack something unless they outnumber it ten to one (preferably more). Against nonthreatening foes however they enjoy torturing them, and POWs are subjected to horribly slow deaths to the chittering amusement of the tiny greenskins.

In Warhammer Fantasy Goblins are independent of Orcs, many living in their own tribes. A few even have their own gods, like the [[Forest Goblins]] who worship the [[Spider-god]]. Despite this, many Goblins also join groups with Orcs either to bully the Orcs into doing the manual labor, or where they are bullied into doing the manual labor. While only the [[Black Orc]]s are capable of actually producing new goods or learning technical knowledge among the larger greenskins, Goblins produce many things from giant flying ships to chariots. Of particular note is the Night Goblins, master chemists who's biology is bizarre and alien in its fungus nature even to other greenskins. Apart from all this, the main distinction between Goblins and 40k Grots is that Goblins aren't all weak, subservient slaves - Goblins individually ''are'' pretty weedy, but they do try and deck themselves out in armor and whatnot and can even take over Orc tribes, if a cunning or vicious enough Boss arrives. Most often this will be a Shaman (for his tricks and ability to scheme) or a Night Goblin Warboss (for being fucking insane), but even a normal Goblin Warboss can be a significant threat.

In 40k, Grots have almost no freedom and are only found alongside their bigger kin. They're not the strongest, quickest, meanest, or anything-est compared to the Orks, except for being better shots and more kunnin', to the point of generally being brighter (though that's not saying much). In most cases they are at best assistants, at worst slaves and moving targets. The only exception is the [[Gretchin Revolutionary Committee]], although that...ended badly. They fare a little bitter in Mek-controlled settlements where their technological know-how and small size are in more demand. They may even be allowed to make their own tanks - small and scrappy, but dangerous at least

In both Warhammers all greenskins speak in a British Cockney accent, with heavy Chav mixed in for variation. Goblins were renamed to Grots in [[Age of Sigmar]].

<gallery>
Image:Bad Moon Goblins.png|Warhammer Fantasy Goblins of today.
Image:Goblin Airship.JPG|Warboss Beater Pan(ic)!
Image:Gretchinmob.jpg|Grots.
</gallery>

{{Template:Playable Factions in Warhammer: Age of Sigmar}}

==D&D Goblins==
[[Dungeons & Dragons]] did not do anything particularly innovative with goblins. Instead, they are fairly close(ish) to their Tolkien roots - or, rather, to the simplified version of Tolkien's goblins; small, hateful, savage creatures that infest the unwanted corners of the world, constantly squabbling amongst themselves for power and occasionally spilling out to raid and terrorize the neighboring civilized lands when their numbers build up enough. Whilst Tolkien's goblins were actually quite inventive and adept at building things, since they were a combination of the two peoples that Tolkien most disliked (the Central soldiers he'd fought in WW1, and the industrialists he believed were destroying the countryside), D&D's goblins lack that trait due to [[Medieval Stasis]] - they're not as primitive as [[lizardfolk]], but are basically just tribal scavengers, in a stark contrast to goblins in other settings being the "chaotic and/or evil tinker race".

In fact, when you scratch the surface, D&D goblins may tap into the same "evil mook" basis as Tolkien's goblins, but actually are deliberately taken in different ways. Whilst originally D&D [[orc]]s & goblins are implied to have often worked together, and even interbreed, by the time of [[Planescape]] the two were actually bitter enemies - the two races share the same "heaven" of [[Acheron]], where they constantly war in an attempt to drive the other race to extinction. This even persisted into 3rd edition, when the orcs' changed racial alignment of Chaotic Evil meant they shouldn't have been going to Acheron in the first place. This stands in stark contrast both to Tolkien (who initially said that "orc" and "goblin" were words in two different languages for the same race) and to other popular settings, such as [[Warhammer Fantasy]] & [[Warcraft]], where goblins tend to be a strong racial ally to orcs.

Some sourcebooks, usually setting dependent, present a more nuanced portrayal of them and give them a deeper culture than that, but for the most part, D&D goblins are your standard generic cannon fodder evil mook race.
However, just like the [[orc]]s, goblins have a ''long'' history of being a potential PC race in [[Dungeons & Dragons]] - they've been playable in literally every single edition, with multiple incarnations in 3rd edition. The usual idea is to play them up as "spunky little troublemakers" - either a braver analogue to the [[halfling]] or a less annoying version of the [[gnome]]. And, for what it's worth, goblin PCs are actually generally quite liked. In fact, goblins were one of the player races most requested for a formal update into 5th edition PC races. Given the second season of [[Critical Role]] features a goblin PC as a main character, in the form of Nott (a self-loathing female who wants to become a [[halfling]]), and the fact that [[Pathfinder]] goblins have such an fandom that Pathfinder 2e promotes them to a corebook race, many are expecting 6e to feature playable goblins in the PHB, just like how 4e added the [[tiefling]] and the [[dragonborn]].

The biggest exception to goblins being generic evil baddies in d&d is the Eberron
setting, where they're given a nuanced portrayal, with a deep and sophisticated culture. In [[Eberron]], "goblin" is used to refer to bugbears, hobgoblins, and goblins. They are the descendants of the once mighty continent spanning Empire of Dhakaan that collapsed because of an invasion by the Daelkyr, masters of the plane of madness. The invasion was eventually beaten back by an alliance between the empire and the orc tribes called the Gatekeepers (badass men-in-black style druids who protect the world from lovecraftian horrors), but the empire fell afterwards. They're not the savages that you can kill guilt free in every other setting.
In the current day they are split up into three broad cultural groups (and a few splinter groups) - the smallest of the big three are The Heirs of Dhakaan, or Dhakaani, which are the badass super disciplined remanents of the empire who preserved their way of life after the empire collapsed by hiding underground or in secluded mountains and would like to bring goblins back to their previous heights. The various goblin races are all equal under the Dhakaani and share a eusocial bond like ants. They specialize in different tasks - the hobgoblins are administrators and soldiers (females are usually bards), goblins are workers, scouts and spies, and the bugbears are shock troopers and heavy laborers - but if you're better at a job outside your cultural role, the empire doesn't waste talent and puts you in that job.
Then you have the Ghaal'Dar, who made up the bulk of the descendants of the collapsed empire and had to deal with the fallout. Their culture degenerated into petty barbarian tribes with a might-makes-right mentality, their eusocial bond destroyed by the daelkyr. They are usually ruled by hobgoblins due to their superior ability to organize vs the other two subspecies. However, during the conflict known as The Last War they united and stole a chunk of land from the human kingdoms that they named Darguun. It's their "new goblin Homeland" and they're starting to rebuild their culture from there, but nobody thinks it will last. It's ruled by an alliance of clans with the leader, Lhesh Haruuc maintaining a delicate balance of power between them to maintain stability. He's tried to institute the rule of law and has been mostly successful, but a few clans (mostly in desolate areas where they can get away with it) only pay lip service. The country has been a success so far and their culture is slowly clawing it's way out of the dumps, but many are worried that when Haruuc dies it will all fall apart, so he is desperately looking for a competent successor.
The last major cultural group are the city goblins. They're the descendents of Ghaal'Dar goblinoids who weren't killed or fled when the humans conquered the continent, and were enslaved for a few thousand years. They're mostly lower g goblins, and were released from slavery about a thousand years before the current time. They're considered tax paying citizens and have all the rights (on paper) of human or Demi human citizens of the countries they live in. However, they tend to be poor and live as second class citizens in many places due to racism and lack of opportunities. The majority of them are loyal to their country of birth and consider themselves regular citizens, and they often dislike the Ghaal'Dar for commiting war crimes during the Last War and giving goblins a bad name. Most of the ones who were sympathetic to Ghaal'Dar moved to Darguun.
Goblins (like 99% of races in this setting) are not naturally evil in Eberron, they have the same range of alignments as every other sentient race. For cultural reasons they do tend towards being lawful neutral, but only slightly.

As a somewhat curious aside, D&D goblins are yellow (mostly) compared to the more usual goblin color of green. These even survived after the popularization of green Goblins in many other fantasy settings, most prominently the aforementioned Warhammer Fantasy and Warcraft. A few settings sometimes portray them as shades of grey, or the previously mentioned colors with a grey tint. They're even portrayed as red in some artwork.

The D&D goblin has a ''huge'' family tree, to the point they even coined their own racial name; "[[goblinoid]]". The two most prominent goblin-kin are the [[bugbear]]s - large, hairy, brutish goblins that, arguably, are D&D's attempt to maintain the orcy archetype without making orcs & goblins officially related - and the [[hobgoblin]]s, who are literally Tolkien's uruk-hai.

===Basic Stats===
Goblin PCs first appeared, alongside many other "classic humanoids", as PCs in the Known World Gazetteer #10: The Orcs of Thar. Under the Basic system, they had the following crunch:

::Goblin Ability Modifiers: -3 Strength, +1 Dexterity, +1 Constitution
::Note: Like all Humanoids from "The Orcs of Thar", a Goblin has racial ability score caps of 18 in all scores bar [[Intelligence]] and [[Wisdom]], which are capped at 16.
::Note: Like all Humanoids from "The Orcs of Thar", a Goblin determines its [[Charisma]] score for interacting with [[human]]s and [[demihuman]]s by dividing its Charisma score by 3 (rounding down) and subtacting the result from 9.
::Goblin Natural Armor Class: 8
::Can become a [[Shaman]] (8th level) and a [[Wokani]] (6th level)

{| class=wikitable
!Goblin's's level || XP Required || Goblin's hit dice
|-
|0||0||d8-1
|-
|1||800||2d8-2
|-
|2||1,600||3d8-3
|-
|3||3,200||-
|-
|4||6,400||4d8-4
|-
|5||13,000||5d8-5
|-
|6||26,000||6d8-5
|-
|7||55,000||-
|-
|8||110,000||7d8-5
|-
|9||220,000||+2 Hit Points
|-
|Subsequent||160,000||+2 Hit Points
|}

===AD&D Stats===
Having appeared in Orcs of Thar, naturally, goblins went on to appear in [[The Complete Book of|The Complete Book of Humanoids]]:

::Ability Score Modifiers: -1 Strength, -1 Charisma
::Ability Score Range: Strength 4/15, Dexterity 4/17, Constitution 5/16, Intelligence 3/18, Wisdom 3/18, Charisma 3/12
::Class Restrictions: [[Fighter]] 10, [[Cleric]] 9, Shaman 7, Witch Doctor 7, [[Thief]] 12
::Infravision 60 feet
::Can detect new or unusual constructions in an underground area with a 25% chance of success (1-2 on a d8).
::Goblin shamans have access to the Spheres of Divination, Reversed Healing, Protection and Reversed Sun.
::-1 Penalty to their attack rolls when in bright sunshine
::Monstrous Traits: Appearance (-2 to to reaction rolls), Bestial Habits (-2 to reaction rolls)
::Weapon Proficiencies: Axe, Military Pick, Morning Star Sling, Short Sword, Spear
::Nonweapon Proficiencies: Alertness, Animal Handling, Animal Training (Worg), Begging, Chanting, Close-Quarter Fighting, Fast-Talking, Fortune Telling, Hiding, Hunting, Information Gathering, Looting, Mining, Religion, Riding (Worg), Set Snares

===3e Stats===
In 3rd edition, goblins appeared as an NPC race in the [[Monster Manual]] and were made fully playable in [[Forgotten Realms: Races of Faerun]]. They were reprinted without change in a few books after that.

::-2 Strenth, +2 Dexterity, -2 Charisma
::Small
::Humanoid ([[Goblinoid]])
::Base speed 30 feet
::Darkvision 60 feet
::+4 racial bonus on Move Silently and Ride checks
::[[Favored Class]]: [[Rogue]]

====Pathfinder====
Of course the [[Pathfinder]] ruleset included Goblins, and tweaked them up a bit from their third edition version by giving them more dexterity. By Paizo's own reckoning, this puts their overall Race Points (RP) on a par with the other PC races, so should be a viable option for players, even if it is a bit uninspired.

::-2 Strength, +4 Dexterity, -2 Charisma
::Small
::Humanoid ([[Goblinoid]])
::Base speed 30 feet
::Darkvision 60 feet
::+4 racial bonus on Move Silently and Ride checks

Pathfinder did considerably more to support Goblins as a usable race, for both players and DMs. An entire splatbook was dedicated to their place in Golarion, while they were also included in the Advanced Race Guide and had additional options in the Monster Codex, allowing for a respectable variety in race trait customisations, giving them things like bite attacks, perceptions boosts, weapon familiarity, among others; the ability to create a medium-sized goblin who is not a [[Hobgoblin]]; a bunch of racial feats; and a handful of dedicated class archetypes, including [[Alchemist]]s with [[Awesome|flying mount companions]].

===4e Stats===
Like in 3e, the goblin appeared as a PC class in the [[Monster Manual]] for 4th edition. However, like all such races in 4e, its statblok there was...serviceable, but underwhelming. However, one of the last sourcebooks of that edition to be published, "The Dungeon Survival Handbook", brought them back as an official race, and boy were they beefy!

::+2 Dexterity, +2 Wisdom OR +2 Charisma
::Small
::Speed 6 squares
::Low-light vision
::+2 Bluff, +2 Stealth
::Goblin Reflexes: +1 to Reflex defense.
::Racial Power - Goblin Tactics: At will, as an immediate reaction to being missed by an enemy melee attack, you can shift 1 square.

The biggest boost that the DSHb gave, besides the flexible mental ability score boost, was a selection of racial feats and racial utility powers, both of which really strengthened the goblin's mechanics and thematics.

''Goblin Racial Feats:''
* Ankle Biter: +1 feat bonus per tier to damage rolls vs. creatures larger than you, +1d6 damage on critical hits against creatures larger than you.
* Desperate Goblin Tactics: When bloodied, Goblin Tactics lets you shift 3 squares.
* Goblin Feint: When you use Goblin Tactics, you gain Combat Advantage against the triggering enemy until the end of your next turn.
* Shadowcreeper: Requires [[Assassin]] class. When you use Goblin Tactics, you shift 2 squares and gain Partial Concealment until the end of your next turn.
* Sneaky Stabber: Requires [[Rogue]] class. When you deal Sneak Attack damage to an adjacent foe, reroll any damage rolls of 1 until you get a result higher than 1.
* Wrist Biter: When you use Goblin Tactics, the triggering enemy takes 1d4 damage per your character's tier before you shift.

''Goblin Racial Utility Powers:''
* Fast Filch: At-will. When adjacent to a creature granting combat advantage, as a minor action, you can make a Thievery check to pick its pocket or perform sleight of hand. Level 2.
* Leg Up: Encounter. When adjacent to a creature, as a move action, you can jump your speed horizontally or up to 10 feet vertically. Level 2.
* Little Green Lie: Encounter. If you fail a Bluff, Diplomacy or Intimidate check, you can re-roll the check as a free action. If it was a Diplomacy or Intimidate check, you can use your Bluff modifier instead. Level 2.
* Living Shield: Encounter. If you are hit by an enemy melee or ranged attack whilst adjacent to an ally, as an immediate interrupt, you can shift 1 square and transfer the hit to that ally. Level 6.
* Unwitting Guardian: Encounter. When adjacent to a Medium or larger creature, as a move action, you can can shift 1 square to enter the target's space, occupying it until the end of your next turn and being hidden from all creatures except the target. Level 6.
* Down and Through: Encounter. As a move action, choose a Medium or larger enemy adjacent to you and shift up to 5 squares to a different square adjacent to that creature; you can move through its space during this shift. Level 10.

===5e Stats===
Finally, goblins appeared as a PC race in 5th edition's Volo's Guide to Monsters. Like their fellow [[goblinoid]]s, the [[kobold]], the [[orc]] and the [[Yuan-ti]], they were officially described as "unbalanced", which has earned a lot of fan flak, as this is literally an open invitation for more close-minded DMs to refuse goblin PCs - goblin fans are still hoping that WotC will eventually put out a splatbook with a "more official" and/or balanced version of goblin PC stats. Ironically, they were better off than the poor kobold.

Hopes of a reboot were shattered when the Guildmaster's Guide to [[Ravnica]] came out in November 2018; whilst earlier [[Plane Shift]] articles had presented an alternative goblin statblock, the GGR simply reprinted the Volo's Guide stats below.

::+2 Dexterity, +1 Constitution
::Small
::Speed 30 feet
::Darkvision 60 feet
::Fury of the Small: Once per short or long rest, when you inflict damage with an attack or spell on a creature larger than you, inflict bonus damage equal to your level as you attack from below, probably punching the enemy in the balls..
::Nimble Escape: You can take the Disengage or Hide action as a bonus action on each of your turns.

Surprisingly enough, after a second reprint in Eberron: Rising, the children’s “activity book” Adventure with Muk gave an alternative playable writeup, specifically for the Dankwood Goblins featured. All this does though is raise +1 Wis instead of +1 Con, and replaces Fury of the Small for the Forest Gnome’s Speak with Small Beasts, letting them communicate simple ideas to Small beasts and smaller. Which is nice for the utility, I guess.

As mentioned above, [[Plane Shift]] featured alternative goblin stats first - two separate versions, in fact. Whether they are better than the official versions is a matter of debate, though...

* [[Zendikar]] Goblin
::+2 Constitution
::Small
::Speed 25 feet
::Darkvision 60 feet
::Grit: You have Resistance to Fire and Psychic damage, your Unarmored AC is 11 + Dexterity modifier.
::Tribal Affinity: Choose either the Grotag Tribe (you have Proficiency in Animal Handling), the Lavastep Tribe (you have Advantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks made in rocky or subterranean environments) or the Tuktuk Tribe (you have Proficiency with Thieves Tools).

* [[Ixalan Goblin]]
::+2 Dexterity
::Small
::Speed 25 feet, Climb 25 feet
::Darkvision 60 feet
::Climber: You have a Climb speed of 25 feet if you are not encumbered or wearing either medium armor or heavy armor.

===Farlandish Goblin PCs===
The [[World of Farland]] has its own set of PC stats for goblins.
::Ability Score Increase: +2 Dexterity
::Size: Small
::Speed: 30 feet
::Darkvision 60 feet
::Goblin Proficiencies: You are proficient with the Scimitar, Shortbow, and Light Armor.
::Nimble Escape: This is basically the same as the trait of the same name from 5e canon, except this version can only be used once per short rest.
::Subrace: Choose the Urban Goblin or Subterranean Goblin.

''Urban Goblin''
::Ability Score Increase: +1 Constitution
::Urban Stealth: You have Proficiency in Stealth and apply twice your Proficiency bonus, rounded down, when making Stealth checks in Urban environments.
::Tenacious: After failing a saving throw, a skill check, or an ability check, you gain Advantage the next time that you make a save or check using that same ability score. This trait lasts until used or 24 hours have passed.

''Subterranean Goblin''
::Ability Score Increase: +1 Wisdom
::Dungeon Stealth: You have Proficiency in Stealth and apply twice your Proficiency bonus, rounded down, when making Stealth checks in subterranean environments.
::Pious: You have Proficiency in the Religion skill.
::Improved Darkvision: Your Darkvision increases to 120 feet.

===[[Half-Goblin]]s?===
Given the strong connections between goblins and [[orc]]s in some settings, particularly in [[Dungeons & Dragons]]' older editions, and the existence of [[half-orc]]s, one may ask if there's ever been any love give to half-goblins? Well, ironically, not really; though [[Advanced Dungeons & Dragons]] claimed that [[goblinoid]]s interbred with each other and with orcs all the time, that fluff was lost after the change to 3rd edition, which wanted to try and make the two races distinct. As for goblin/human crossbreeding? Forget about it; they barely gave half-orcs any love, so you can imagine they'd be less than interested in half-goblins.

Except... there was one setting where [[goblinoid]]s took the place of orcs. In the [[Dragonlance]] setting, orcs don't exist, being replaced by goblins and [[draconian]]s, and so the half-goblin appeared there in 3.5's Races of Ansalon sourcebook. Surprisingly, they're known for both being very self-confident and assured (in fact, their Charisma penalty is described as stemming from coming across as ''too'' confident, making them seem overbearing or aggressive), in contrast to the propensity for wangsting endemic to half-orcs and half-elves in other settings, very brave (in contrast to the traditional goblin cowardice) and with a drive to be peacemakers and diplomats, rather like half-elves. Essentially, rather than bitching about being rejected by both worlds (human and goblin) or about the lack of a "true" half-goblin culture, half-goblins are near-universally driven to try and force the world to shape up and make a culture for them, by bringing goblins and humans to work together in peace. Which is actually kind of badass, and certainly a change from the norms for half-breeds. In essence, they're said to combine human ambition and drive with goblin ferocity and mob mentality.

Half-goblins are described as looking more or less like human-sized goblins; half-bugbears might be particularly hairy, and half-"common" goblins shorter than average, but still within the human stature. Although this stature can lead to them being mistaken for [[hobgoblin]]s, they apparently lack quite as many fangs and have more human-like eyes, which makes the difference obvious enough at a closer look.

::+2 Dexterity, -2 Charisma
::Humanoid (Goblinoid)
::Medium
::Base speed 30 feet
::Darkvision 60 feet
::+2 racial bonus on Bluff and Move Silently
::+4 racial bonus on Will saving throws to resist Charm, Compulsion and Fear effects.
::Favored Class: Any

==[[Magic: The Gathering]]==
It should be no surprise that Goblins appear in Magic. Showing up in the very first set, Goblins have risen to be one of the most popular tribes in the game, and boy do they get a ton of support. They are known as the "characteristic" species of red, which means that they show up in pretty much every plane as the default red-aligned race. In fact, the number of planes in which goblins do not appear on can be counted on one hand. In general, when goblins show up, they are shown to be chaotic and unruly. They almost always have green or red skin, and travel in large groups, though this isn't always the case. On [[Ixalan]], they look more like monkeys with white fur and black skin, and tend to be individualistic. They love fire and scrapping together machines and weapons that should by no stretch of the means work, but they do. More often than not, these inventions require the sacrifice of another goblin to get it working properly.

As a tribe, goblins often have small bodies and weak frames. When they show up with high power, it's usually at the cost of toughness. They are cheap to get out onto the battlefield, cheap to search up, and attack fast. They are perfect for aggressive red strategies, and they often come with ways to dump out even more goblins out onto the field. This usually comes in the form of goblin creature tokens, but some of the most powerful goblins let you dump them straight from your hand! If you don't wipe the board, or take out the few key goblins holding the deck together, you can expect the battlefield to be swarming with the little guys, and you'll be losing fast.

==[[Warcraft]]==
Goblins are a staple race in the Warcraft franchise. They have green skin, are very short, have long and strong fingers, long noses, large pointy ears, and sharp teeth.

In Warcraft 2, when the game expanded to more than just Humans, Orcs, Ogres, and Demons, Goblins were first mentioned. They were small mechanically-inclinded lunatics who invented great devices and were god-tier chemists. They offered their services to the Horde since it gave them more opportunities to wreak havoc and the races that would come to be those of the Alliance had ignored them for their entire history.
The Goblins mainly performed recon and VIP transport for the Horde via their Zeppelins, demolitions in the form of suicide Sapper squads, the invention of airtight missile-launching capsules that were tied to the backs of giant turtles to use as submarines, and finally experimenting on their Forest Troll allies to transform them into giant Berserkers. In secret they also helped the resident Sauron, an insane evil dragon named Deathwing, in his various endeavors. Goblins were described as insane, sadistic, and greedy for gold.

In Warcraft 3, Goblins became a neutral group. It was revealed only a small portion of the Goblin race actually worked with the Horde, while the others have always provided their services to anyone with gold to spend and after the fall of the first Horde they have enforced that their own race remain entirely neutral to all factions. They did little of importance other than provide transportation for the various power players in this time.
When the second Horde was building their capital of Durotar, a small number of Goblins lead by world famous Gazlowe provided them with fair deals (which is itself a big deal for their race) for Goblin services including demolition.

In vanilla World of Warcraft, Goblin lore expanded even further; a small number of Goblins were seen in the Alliance, some among the Horde, while it was revealed almost the entirety of their race dwell on an island called Kezan which has a massive underground city called the Undermine. The Cartels run Kezan, the most powerful of which is the Steamwheedle Cartel which performs the basic services offered in Warcraft 3. They maintain a few cities around the world including Ratchet (Gazlowe's city nearby Durotar), Booty Bay (a port which services anyone who reaches it, mainly pirates although they are just as much at threat from pirate attack), Gadgetzan (a desert city of scum and villainy, plus a small gladiatorial arena), and Everlook (a town high in the mountains of Kalimdor near by ancient magical Elf ruins).

Goblins have a racial rivalry with the other mechanically minded race, [[Gnomes]], although hostility varies from giant robot wars to having a giant racetrack where they see which race can build the best vehicles to next-door neighbors who collaborate with each other on inventions and take any opportunity to try and make the other admit their philosophy is better.

In general, the Goblin philosophy is "Chemicals, 50% chance of explosion is acceptable, make it fast so it makes money!" while the Gnomish philosophy is "Magic and radiation, take your time and spend decades if need be, 10% chance of turning yourself into a chicken or a different color is acceptable, make it for the love of knowledge and invention".

In Cataclysm, Goblins recieved a MAJOR update as they became a player race. One of the cartels which was one of the weaker ones (having their section of Kezan entirely on the surface, mainly producing pop culture, cars, sports, and edibles) joined the Horde after Deathwing set their portion of Kezan on fire (since in the middle of a not-football game a ball was kicked and hit him). Their trade prince sold the entire Cartel into slavery after charging them all their possessions for supposedly safe passage off the island, and the ships were caught in a naval battle between the Horde and Alliance. After conquering the island, they then joined the Horde which was in the middle of becoming a fascist genocidal dictatorship again thanks to shit leaders (also, their trade prince got to keep his job despite the mess he caused). They quickly upgraded the Horde from catapults to giant robots and from bow and arrow to machineguns, then created their own new capital by completely renovating a huge chunk of the continent into the symbol of the Horde complete with a Mount Rushmore of their racial leader.
During the Kezan levels it was also revealed that Goblins have become multicultural, taking on things previously alien to them like worship of the light and shamanism (although the former is seen as a combination of medic and television evangelism, while the latter is perceived as cutting deals with nature). Kezan is very modern and has television, pop stars, sunglasses, champagne, fancy cars, neon lights, not-Chinese food, electricity and lightbulbs, and many other conveniences not seen elsewhere in the rest of the Renaissance setting outside the homeland of the Gnomes.

Goblin origins were also explained. In ancient times, Goblins were an semi-intelligent race of monkey which was enslaved by Island Trolls and forced to mine a substance called Kajamite. Kajamite has a side-effect of causing a huge boost to intelligence (although not coherent thought) in anyone who imbibes it, and one day the Troll slavemasters entered the mines to whip their tiny laborers and were disintegrated with laser beams. Since then, the Goblins have mined Kajamite and used it as an ingredient in ingestibles of all kinds (including "Kaja-cola") although their supply was beginning to run out, and there was fear they may regress back to being mere monkeys without it. Like most Cataclysm plots, this was never brought up again although there was hints that with the Kaja-cola that was left everywhere they go that monkeys drinking it have begun becoming intelligent as well.

Goblins in Warcraft 2 had extremely squeaky, high-pitched voices and tended to babble or shriek. In Warcraft 3 the shrillness of the voice was lessened, and they became more calm and coherent. The Goblins in World of Warcraft still have a voice that is higher-pitched than a human, although only slightly more for males while gaining something of an American Brooklyn accent. The non-Bilgewater Goblins still speak in their Brooklyn accent or a general American accent, Bilgewater Goblins speak like they're from New Jersey both in accent and expression.

<gallery>
Image:GoblinZeppelin.png|A Goblin Zeppelin pilot in Warcraft 2.
Image:GoblinSappers 2.jpg|Goblin Sappers in Warcraft 2.
Image:Goblin Sappers.jpg|Warcraft 3 Goblin Sappers.
Image:Goblin Tinker WX.png|Warcraft 3 Goblin Tinker.
Image:WoW Goblin Fem.jpg|World of Warcraft female Goblin player characters.
Image:Warcraft Goblin Player Male.jpg|World of Warcraft male Goblin player characters.
Image:GOBLINS AND GNOMES.jpg|Goblin/Gnome rivalry.
Image:Kezan.png|The Bilgewater portion of Kezan.
Image:Goblin Easter.png|Goblins are into holidays in a big way, either as a business conspiracy or over-enthusiasm.
Image:Goblin femSapper.jpg
</gallery>

==[[Goblin Slayer]]==
[[Skarsnik|The said goblin in this manga while being a weak, tiny and barbaric humanoid is capable of many unorthodox tactics and teamwork that they could outplay and murder low level adventurers numerous times, whom the said adventurers underestimate the cunning goblins]]. They are barbaric primitives so they have to loot tools. However, they are capable of some degree of intelligence, like using signs like totems to create distractions as well as cover their weapons with urine and poisonous herbs to not only prevent adventurers from healing themselves, but also mark them with scents for goblins have an acute sense of smell. While they use mercenaries and pets such as wolves and orcs to further boost their effectiveness, the biggest contributors of their horde are their red shirt goblin goons, who are weak, small, but expendable and effective while attacking in groups. The horde is often led by a goblin mage that is capable of casting spells like fireball.

Oh, and this being Japan, they're sadists native to the moon who have only one gender and use females of other races to reproduce; given their brutal nature, it's done via rape. What the hell else would you read this shit for?

==Goblins (The Webcomic)==
{{/co/}}
[[File:Webcomic Goblins.jpg|thumb|right|400px|"This is the arc that will not end, it will go on and on my friend..."]]
Goblins are the stars of a webcomic called [http://www.goblinscomic.org/ Goblins] created by a man known as "Thunt" (real name Tarol Hunt, though in 2019 he announced that he is transitioning to female and is changing his name to Ellipsis Hana Stephens) in 2005, which claims that #GoblinLivesMatter and all the bad stuff comes from evil clans but most monsters are totally bros and it's all just a misunderstanding or a result of the ignorant sadistic humans, with those of the monster who ARE bad only being a product of human oppression.

Even so, only half of the arcs even have goblin protagonists - the other focuses on two adventurers, the, well, min/maxed human named Minmax and his dwarf cleric partner Forgath. Originally they were in an adventuring party (back when the comic was actually still a parody of an RPG world, complete with characters confusing the first person and meta as well as the cleric praying to the DM) who were at first all [[Drizzt]] clones then a bad weeaboo crew although the joke of the characters all dying at the same time due to their incompetence shortly after being rolled was dropped after the second time, and the parody plot was entirely dropped later on as well.

The supposed main characters are a group of goblins who were supposed to be just your average quick skirmish that was guarding a treasure chest full of magic gear they weren't allowed to open for reasons none of them knew. After surviving the attack by Minmax, Forgath, and their idiot friends that suffered a TPK, the Goblins decided to commit the ultimate act of heresy against their race and become player characters by adopting classes.

Then the story starts getting convoluted, going through a human city that is mostly just built on torture-killing monster races, having Minmax and Forgath go on a subplot that involved a Yuan-Ti that lead into a seemingly unending dungeon arc involving parallel realities before a misunderstanding forced the two characters to separate with her, while at the same time the Goblin group attempted to escape from a paladin who has taken the Lawful Good definition into "an omnicidal maniac who enslaves the souls of those he has killed while maintaining a personality straight out of a [[Warhammer 40000]] fanfic". While having side stories involving ANOTHER insanely complex dungeon. While a third group, made up of one of the Goblins plus an evil Goblin who's really tragically misunderstood product of her situation going through ANOTHER unending dungeon.

The common points that are inevitably mentioned on /tg/ when Goblins is brought up are both the lack of an improvement of art over the course of the comics decade of history and the meme "IMSAD", the latter of which is a good summary of most of the plot of the comic. After a small breakdown caused by backlash from [[SJW]] fans taking issue with the torture-rapist ex-adventurer governor villain, [http://www.goblinscomic.org/kins-story-is-kind-of-true/ the creator revealed that the reason the villains are written so absolutely edgetastically hammy in their evil is he was using the comic to work through some emotional trauma caused when some men raped his mother before he was born and the story of it scarred him.] He also later revealed he had a history of domestic abuse. Somehow he thought this would make things better.

Thunt is currently supported exclusively through the webcomic, which goes on hiatus from time to time.

Thunt has also been working on turning his comic into an animated series which he funded on Indiegogo. Somehow, he managed to get several famous voice actors on the project.

<gallery>
Image:Webcomic Goblins IMSAD.gif|Congratulations, you now know the basic plot.
Image:IMSAD 2.jpg
Image:Webcomic Goblins Page.jpg|An actual page, from when it was still a parody.
Image:Webcomic Goblins Thunt Goes Bananas.jpg|A piece Thunt made during his breakdown, which they later blamed on their gender issues. Feel free to insert your own reference to [[Chaos]] corruption here.
Image:4chan on Goblins.png|tl;dr
</gallery>

==Troll 2 Goblins==

The notorious movie Troll 2 infamously [[Irony|features no actual trolls]]<ref>Nor any connection to its purported prequel, ''Troll'' from 1986, which is a fascinatingly bad movie in itself. Troll 1 features a surprisingly strong cast and a pair of protagonists both named "[[Harry Potter]]" (Sr. and Jr.), among a great deal of other weirdness unrelated to its "sequels". Further, there have been ''two'' movies released as "Troll 3", neither of which has a [[troll]], nor much connection to either Troll 1 or 2 or each other (one purported Troll 3 features a "hobgoblin" and the other features killer trees). And then there was a semi-official sequel to Troll 2 called "Goblin 2" (Troll 2 being originally filmed under the title "Goblins") that actually featured a [[troll]] (and no actual goblins). But enough about other filmmakers' [[Pun|Trolling]] of audiences.</ref>. It instead features goblins (thus, its presence in this article), who live in the town of Nilbog ("Its Goblin backwards!"), and who, for the purposes of this movie, are vegetarian monsters who turn their human victims into plants via various potions and other concoctions. (The writer director was an Italian with ''issues'', okay?)

That being said, the Troll 2 goblins are worth mentioning just because "vegetarian monsters who convert their prey into plants" is a fairly good line for "just how weird you can go with goblins", and also a good adventure seed that could be used for a minor [[World of Darkness]] mystery baddie.

==Monstergirl Depictions==
{{Monstergirls}}
Traditionally, the idea of goblins being [[monstergirls]] was something of a niche, at best; most thought of them as just hideous, stupid, filthy little monsters - who would want to put their dicks in that?

Ironically, it was [[Warcraft]] that probably first sowed the seeds of female goblins being fuggable; whilst the attractiveness of female goblins in that game is contentious, people must admit that they were better-looking than the tumor-riddled, snaggle-toothed, scarred abominations that make up the canon depictions of most goblins prior to that. They were certainly attractive enough to start scoring [[Rule 34]] artwork, and this became a revelation to fa/tg/uys: that goblin-girls did ''not'' have to be fugly!

From there, goblin-girls became an underground sensation, slowly developing and evolving in the steamier underbelly of /tg/ and on /d/ (or at least its "western counterpart" /aco/) until they have become as mainstream in the /tg/ fandom as any monstergirl has a chance of being.

Because goblins vary so widely in their depictions, it shouldn't be surprising that goblin-girls likewise have been a particularly fertile ground for interpretations. There are five "mainstream" depictions of the goblin-as-monstergirl you will probably encounter on /tg/, and many different sub-forms and cross-pollinations. All depend on which of various "goblin aspects" that a creator deigns to focus on; tinker skills, short-sighted hedonism, mischievousness, raw sexual appetites, and fertility:

* The "Pervy Tinker" archetype directly traces its roots back to Warcraft's Rule 34'd goblins: this envisions goblins as a "techy" race with a strong lewd streak, leading to them focusing their mad science skills on coming up with newer and more deviant ways of getting off. Depending on the fundamental tech level of the setting and the creator's own tastes, this can range from aphrodisiac gas grenades and automated dildos to [[golem]]s built as living sex engines and bimbofying/transforming [[magitek]] rayguns. Rule 34 interpretations of World of Warcraft lore can be counted as this, as well as rare goblins in Corruption of Champions that are mentally stable enough to keep their panties on.
* The "Shameless Slut" archetype likewise has its roots in Warcraft goblins, vis a vis their canonical obsession with money, but is perhaps one of the more widely known "generic" archetypes as well. These goblins are hedonists who take a great deal of pride in their libido and their love of pleasure, integrating with the other races and usually gravitating towards roles based on "entertaining", from barmaids to outright prostitutes. In fact, they are often depicted as actively enjoying whoring themselves out, as it ensures a steady stream of partners and profit, whilst sating their perverse and degrading sexual desires. These goblin-girls are often size-queens, specifically choosing partners based on the stature of their masculine organs. The adult comic artist Incase is focused on this one, and might as well started it with his drawings.
* The "Mischief Maker" archetype is the most innocent of the archetypes, portraying goblins as just playful, fun-loving hedonists whose greatest aims in life are pranking, partying and making love, not necessarily in that order.
* The "Savage Slut" archetype is perhaps the oldest of the archetypes, for it owes its origins to the original interchangeability of goblin and [[orc]]. These goblins are basically sexy "savages", wild and primal little monstergirls who live a primitive lifestyle centered on hunting, playing, and of course capturing & having sex with men. Essentially, this depicts goblins as [[shortstack]] or [[loli|"a loophole for masturbating to underage children"]] orcs. Kenkou Cross' Monster Girl Encyclopedia is focused on that.
* The "Breederphile" archetype is, in comparison, probably the youngest of these archetypes. These goblins are defined by their racial pregnancy fetishism, and by having bodies almost literally built to breed. Being impregnated is intensely orgasmic, pregnancy either fills them with ecstasy, makes them incredibly horny, or both, birth is a series of some of the most intense orgasms in their lives, and social standing often revolves around how many daughters they have to boss around. {{BLAM|+++...SCANNING...+++}} {{BLAM|+++Congratulations Neophyte, you have just weathered the single worst psychic assault a slaaneshi daemon is capable of unleashing; you may now be promoted into the ranks of the [[Grey Knights]]+++}}This archetype does make some sense if you think about it: after all as a 'cannon fodder' species for PC, where do all the Goblins come from? Corruption of Champions might as well started this archetype.

More recently, moreso than even the Breederphile, a variant of goblin-girl portrayal native to [[Urban Fantasy]] settings has come to /tg/'s attention from our [[shortstack]] fetishising kinsfolk on /aco/. Combining parts of the "Shameless Slut" and "Breederphile" stereotypes, paired with some occasionally-awkward racial coding, the so-called "Ghetto Goblin" tends to be used as an less-racially-offensive imitation of the "hot-blooded Latina" or "Ghetto Black Girl" racial stereotype, in that they are sexually open, tend toward foul language and fiery tempers when angry and lewd vocalizing or body-language when aroused or teasing others, and frequently dress provocatively. While breeding for the Ghetto Goblin isn't usually as erotic as with the Breederphile, the social status of the Ghettoblin is often measured by how many offspring they have, how often they have sex, and how early they first had sex. They arouse easily, to the point that human men in their stories often need to talk Ghetto Goblins out of outright molesting them openly in public.

Whilst these archetypes are certainly well known, there are also two specific depictions of goblin monstergirls that have achieved enough recognition to be recognizable by name; the MGE Goblin and the CoC Goblin.

The [[Monster Girl Encyclopedia]] depiction of the goblin is essentially a mashup of the Mischief Maker and the Savage Slut archetypes. These primitive mamono live in tribal clusters, entertaining themselves by playing pranks on each other or the races around them, hunting game, and conducting banditry for fun, profit and boyfriends. In appearance, they resemble pointy-eared human [[loli]]s with horns and superhuman strength, allowing them to fight with weapons that only a strong human man would normally have a chance of lifting. Simple-minded and carefree, they have no intention of giving up the lifestyle they so enjoy.

The CoC Goblin takes its name from Corruption of Champions, a [[/d/|hentai]] fantasy text adventure game that was popular on /tg/ for a while, before the fact that [[furries]] are much more willing to put money where mouth is when it comes to getting fetishistic shit done led to the inevitable flooding of the game with [[beastfolk]] waifus and encounters and /tg/ promptly banished it. Still, before it went under, it had a significant impact on the goblin-girl arena: CoC may not have created the idea of the Breederphile archetype, but it certainly brought it to the attention of what passes for /tg/ mainstream. CoC's goblins are Breederphiles who became a pregnancy-obsessed all-female race due to corruption of their water supply. Once a brilliant race of alchemists and inventors, they have since devolved into a Savage Slut culture, living in crude tribes based on a massively curvy matriarch, her husband(s), and as many daughters as she can make who are willing to stick around - whilst goblins are fiercely competitive with each other, there is also safety in numbers, keeping them from being eaten by [[hellhound]]s or raped/beaten to death by [[minotaur]]s. Such clans are often notably inbred, for their corruption means they have little sense of objection to incest, with only the matriarch's jealous possessiveness in regards her husband keeping her daughters at bay. They're also examples of the Pervy Tinker archetype, using what remains of their former knack for invention to create sex toys and perverse alchemical concoctions for use in subduing husbands and molding them to their liking.

==See Also==
*[[Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition races]]

<gallery>
Image:Cute_Goblin_Adventurer.jpg
Image:Goblin_Dancer.jpg
Image:Goblin_Adventurer_1.png
Image:Goblin_Bar_Wench.png
Image:Goblin_Monk_1.jpg
Image:Goblin_Shamaness_1.jpg
Image:Goblin_Shamaness_2.jpg
File:MGE Goblin.jpg|Giving a new meaning to the term "Child Rapist".
</gallery>

==Gallery==
<gallery>
Image:Sneaky Goblin.gif
Image:Goblin Knight.JPG|A more "player character" variety.
Image:GreenGoblin3.jpg|Most goblins tend to [[Alchemist|throw pumpkin bombs]] and use flying crafts to annoy [[/co/|superheroes]].
</gallery>

==Footnotes==
<references />

==See also==
* [[Unified Setting/Goblins]] Yet another take on a classic concept.
* [[Goblin Slayer]], a man with a serious beef against goblins.
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqx4ywmqYUw The most common reaction to Goblins]
* [[Goblinoid]], for the extended goblin family.

{{D&D1e-Races}}
{{D&D2e-Races}}
{{D&D4e-Races}}
{{D&D5e-Races}}
{{Pathfinder-Races}}
{{Starfinder-Races}}
[[Category:Kings of War]][[Category:Monsters]]

Drowtales

2020-06-05T22:04:49Z

2605:E000:141B:DE0:45EC:F6BA:D402:A189: /* Setting */

{{Fail}}
{{/co/}}

[[File:Drows_in_SPEEES.jpg|thumb|In the skin darkness of the future, there is only Mary Sues.]]
[http://www.drowtales.com '''Drowtales''': Moonless Age] is a fantasy manga-style webcomic that has been running since 2001, starting out as shitty MSPaint-tier art and growing to dozens of artists collaborating on what is now unarguably one of the best looking webcomics on the internet, although whether the story has likewise improved at all is open to debate. At the very least it is quite imaginative and the babes are hot and there are sexy themes. So, kudos where kudos are due.

On /tg/ Drowtales (woo-oo!) is a [[skub]] topic, sometimes resulting in lulz, like when /tg/ had several raids of the site's roleplaying forums with neckbeards attempting to [[Derp|fight the drow Mary Sues with their own dwarf Mary Sues]].

==Setting==
It's standard fantasy fare with a few changes, mostly with the elves and Drow in particular (go figure) who are shown to be mostly cute, animesque and angsty nerdy teenagers who bitch to each other about their lives before having an orgy on the settlement they just conquered from humans (more on that later). Some other characters have cat ears, all are bisexual. The main character pulls any power imaginable out of her ass when cornered, and there's dumb shit like the drow getting high on chocolate (seriously)(Maybe they just really easily get theobromine poisoning?).
<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
Basically a long time ago there were two elven nations at war, until they used a magic spell to break the fucking moon apart and opened a giant portal to the netherworld so that demons flooded the surface of the planet and ate everyone. What few elves survived this clusterfuck of a war went underground and turned into the drow, building a giant city and then fighting each other while preying on humans and slaughtering entire surface towns to drag the women and children to slavery.
The simplest way to describe what's wrong with Drowtales can be summarized as: Take [[Drizzt]] Syndrome, infect an entire planet's worth of elves with it and replace any self-awareness moments of characters with raging hypocrisy and pump up the [[Mary Sue]]. When you've done that, add in heaps of obnoxious T&A in the middle of all the wangst, and crank up the [[Grimdark#Grimderp|Grimderp]] to eleven.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
[[File:Sparklypoo.jpg|thumb|Drow politics]]

As alluded, the Drow are the villains of the setting. Full stop. The fanbase and the author itself claims that it has no real villains, but that's only really because the Drow are the creator's pets and are evil for the sake of being evil, but unlike the DnD drow nothing about their society requires them to do any of the shit they do. Combine that with blatant bullshit like being able to alter their own DNA with magic and being a futuristic civilization when everyone else is stuck in the middle ages, and you have what is effectively a race full of blatantly evil Mary Sues with a hypocritical streak a mile wide, and cringe-filled plot holes to match. Here are a few quick reasons on how/why they're so unreasonably evil:

*'''Slavery:''' The first and biggest characteristic of the drow, they like to take slaves. It all sounds grim but logical since they are Drow and all that... just... they do not necessarily have need of these slaves (and it's even counterproductive considering food is a very scarce resource), as all of their food/textiles the slaves produce could easily be made and tended to by golems and mana-powered devices on equal terms with modern industry, yet they insist on slaves for... bloodsports and sexual slavery (which is pretty rich when their society is sexually relaxed) for no good reason besides shits and giggles; one Drow even remarks that the races could easily live peacefully. The slavery in this is so juvenile that sentient beings enslaved by Drow immediately become docile and obedient to the point that the Drow can openly gloat about eating their captives to thier slaves' faces without as much as a spot of anger on the victim.
*'''Cannibalism:''' The second biggest offence of the Drow, and one of the main driving forces of the story. They eat people, and this includes other Drow. Apparently meat is rare in the not-underdark, and so are brains since nobody realized they could just have farms up on the surface. They do eventually return to the surface, only to fuck up, massacre and take over human towns and make it look as if it's a heroic act in the series.
*'''Racism:''' Oh dear lord, this is bad. The Drow do not consider other races besides Elves as anything more than soulless cattle to do whatever they want with. Normally this is a fantasy villain staple, but in Drowtales it means you're supposed to agree with their point of view - the [[TVTropes]] page even lists the attempts of Nordic peoples to free their families from slavery by chucking molotovs at drow outposts as "villainous valor". Every bit of atrocity inflicted on non-Drow are repeatedly justified, and any backlash they might get ignored, anything they do is justified and the other races being often even more morally/socially corrupt if barely. It's basically the grimdark White Man's Burden with '''every stereotype on inferior races being true and the inferiors gleefully accepting it'''.
*'''Magic:''' Here's the Mary Sue factor. Elves and Drow are the only race that can use magic, and it allows them to do whatever the hell they want, including having giant walking siege machines and pulse rifles. It also grants them immortality, regeneration, it gives children the ability to take down entire armies on their own and the ability to alter their DNA so that the main character can pull new powers out of her ass whenever she needs to.
*'''Empathic Abilities:''' Arguably the same as magic, but a lot of Drow have the abilities to feel others' emotions. This doesn't prevent them from doing any of the above however, it just means they're a special snowflake with on-the-go created bullshit abilities for Animu effects.
*'''Hypocrisy:''' The biggest issue with the series, its creator, its characters, and its fanbase. Drowtales is full of unintentional double standards, where it's okay for Drow to murder and enslave, but when another race tries to defend itself or counterattack, they're portrayed as being the villains: even Romans noted the strength and dignity of their Gaulish enemies and made an entire statue to commemorate their sorrow, "The Dying Gaul", seeing slavery and defeat as a sad human factor that can be redeemed with manumission. Here? [[What|apparently we have paladins of Sharess who exhort their kind Goddess and march against humans to enslave, massacre and murder...for their philosophy of light.]]
::The series tries to mitigate this point by saying the Drow have a different moral/ethical code. Apparently it's honourable to do something, with the greater honour the harder it is to do whatever it is, but it's dishonourable to fail. If you succeed then your act is worthy of respect and awe, no matter how evil, while if you fail you're looked upon with derision. This applies no matter what, so blowing up the fucking moon during a war is worth great respect. This is also a frequently forgotten point considering how often somebody fails to do something without many repercussions and by contrast, this allows the characters to get away with anything and still claim to be in the right so long as they win, and it fails to apply whenever the creators feel like writing the Drow with regular morals instead.
::This point, a true Crowning Moment of Retardedness is best illustrated (pun intended) when the the characters visit a surface colony (i.e a human village massacred and taken over) and typical of Drow, an orgy ensues. During the blissful after-sex sleep they are woken up to a counterattack by desperate humans coming to save their kin. The humans are defeated, mocked and vilified for trying to save other humans for a lifetime of slavery before the main characters, who are supposed to be against slavery, leave for home having done nothing in the village but support slavery, despite talking about making the world a more peaceful place a few issues before. Crack cocaine might be a reason for the plot writing here.

Arguments with its fans about the bullshit reveal that they simply hand-wave any contradictions with the words that "they are a species with different morals" or "they are morally justified to do so based on their own morals". Apparently they seem to have forgotten that the people reading it don't have those different morals. Besides, even by their own standards however they fall flat (as their morals are whatever they want them to be whenever it's convenient) and if you want to see a case of values dissonance done right, look at 40K instead- practically every single race is a textbook example of how it should be pulled off, from the Imperium to the Dark Eldar.
</div>
TL;DR: All that needs to be done to remove the majority of the grimderp is for the Drow to use their golems/mana tech in place of the slaves to get the exact same results. If that happened though then they wouldn't have NSFW scenes with slaves in bondage, which is quite possibly the reason the comic got so well funded in the first place, or retcon the Magitech bullshit, keep slavery and have a still [[Grimdark]], but logically sounder setting.
</div>

==Other Races==
*'''Elves:''' The surface elves are socially functioning normal people, having a prudish, pacifist and non-slaving sex-segregated caste system. They are the boring to the Drow's exciting, because while the Elves are summed up by 'normal people' the Drow on the other hand are a bisexual, sex-rich, matriarchal BDSM empire which has slaves by the ton to eat/rape/kill with no moral compunctions (odd considering that the Drow are supposed to be the ones to sympathize with).

*'''[[Dorf]]s''': Our good old diminutive curmudgeons are terrorists of the underworld, using gunpowder to ambush the Drow, and with good reason: their simple life was ruined by the arrival of hordes of Dark Elves (whose next generation was born as the Drow), who promptly enslaved them because...well...let's just forget we had no arable land and needed food and pretend they did menial slave work. Survivors and freedmen dwarves (Freedwarves?) ran away and now mostly are Taliban of Chel, the Drow underworld, complete with beards and explosives and ambushes, but with complete justification for their acts. This alone should drive an elegan[[/tg/]]entleman insane.

*'''Everyone else:''' Humans, orcs, and so on. Their failure to manipulate mana makes them soulless and on par with animals in Drow eyes, and as such you're not supposed to feel pity for any of them either. Regularly enslaved (not that they don't enslave regular elves anyway), massacred and eaten even by the "good" characters. There's two flavors of humans, an Anglo-Saxon stereotype and a Japanese stereotype, the former desperately crusading against the Drow and the latter being their lapdogs and animal-like docile to the point of falling over each other to betray and collaborate with the Drow. The orcs and goblins are simply never discussed in detail due to nobody caring save for some dumb muscle tavern guard job.

==Factions==
*'''Sarghress:''' The clan the main character belongs to and thus the default "heroic" or "reasonable" one. They are a clan of mercenary commoners with a musclegirl matriarch who somehow ride wolves around in the dark underworld and are best buddies with the blue empath drow. Their commoner heritage and dislike of status quo slowly edges them to being designated heroes. Around the first arc, they were typical Drow enjoying enslaved humans fighting in a tavern to death with a glass of wine or murdering surfacers for fun. In the third arc, they free all human slaves, give them surface homes and finally become the heroic clan of the series, well, better late than never. Either Kern grew some conscience or empathy, or his [[Magical Realm]] buddies wanted to feel heroic, tough to guess which.

*'''Sharen:''' The aristocrats of the city who all wear beautiful outfits and act haughty. Their clan is split into multiple bloodlines who constantly plot against each other. These are the most D&D-like drow in the setting, and the bad guys who invited demon infestation in many drow. Also they ride dragons around and their males are mostly nether tainted automatons who wear special armor to keep them from being transformed into demonic horrors. Their leader has serious mommy issues and goes hilariously apeshit at the sight of her blood.

*'''Sullisin'rune:''' Essentially the Brave New World society in drow form. They wear a lot of blue, use empath abilities and have regular orgies in their glowing dome fortress (it's implied to be for intelligence gathering reasons). The main character's lover is from there and quips about that they treat their slaves well (Maya, the light elf MILF slave had a real nice outfit and looked healthy and well cared for, albeit depressed), so apparently being an empath works for once in the series as a not-depressing detail. Since everyone in their clan is always sensing each others emotions, they amount to a kind of quasi-benevolent police state with omniscient surveillance. One of the more interesting factions in the story.

*'''Vloz'ress:''' Anarchist demon worshipers. Like anarchists IRL, they are generally useless and self-defeating. Their leader is a figurehead woman with brain damage making her equal to a 4 year-old child who turns the clan's slaves and captives into eternally tortured dolls, accompanied by a reality busting, 4th wall leaning LOLRANDOM orange haired kid because [[Edgy|some donor]] wanted a Drow Joker on crack who runs a horror show and tortures hapless Drow and Elf slaves while trying to be cool.

*'''Beldrobbaen:''' Emo goths who live in an inverted castle built on the cavern ceiling. They dress in all black and mope around. Needless to say, they are by far the most popular clan among the fanbase. Their clan is dying out because they lost a whole generation of their girls during a summoning accident, which one would think wouldn't be too bad for a race of immortal beings who can apparently reproduce for their whole lives, except that they refuse to mate with commoners and traditionally turn any male that impregnates a Beldrobbaen woman into a drider knight, so they're basically drow [[Wat|panda...mantis...things.]].

*'''Nal'sarkoth:''' Surface merchants who dress in all green. They are seen running a surface trading post and treating their human workers as equals as they actively recruit non-drow races to build up their numbers. They might have even been one of the good/more interesting factions (also being good people in general) but they barely show up in the story and nobody gives a flying fuck about them.

*'''Illhar'dro:''' The other merchant clan. Slightly more interesting in that they have a form of magic based on singing (and mana powered concerts). Biggest exporter of drow pop stars in the underworld.

*'''Kyorl'solenurn:''' [[Imperium of Man|Fanatic crusader assholes]], who, aside from torturing tainted Drow to death, are the exact same [[Mary Sue]] bastards, with a twist: most are descendants of former light elf slaves, so their hatred of tainted Drow might be an outlet for their passive-aggressive grudge, kinda like an entire society of half-black KKK. In an amusing irony, they're the only clan who regularly worships the Drow goddess Sharess and hunts down demonic threats, whereas the rest just dick around and ignore the demonic threats she tried to save them from (just imagine a bunch of high elves worshipping Lolth while the Drow go "ah fuck it, who needs her?"). Yes, the insane religious fundamentalists [[fail|have more sense]] than the "normal" Drow...

*'''Jaal'darya:''' Female-only clan who use [[Tyranids|biotechnology]]. They create artificial life forms and transform their bodies into all kinds of weird shit. Regularly seen snatching babies to make bio-golems, because apparently they don't know how to just clone them or simply because [[Edgy]].

==Characters==
Way too many to list. There are dozens of them. The comic just rains characters, most of which are unimportant or are only there for background. The reason is that the characters are commissioned by donators who want to show off their horribly designed alter egos.

Some semi-important characters who still do fuck all half of the time:

*'''Clan Matriarchs:''' The clan matriarchs are all expert mages who would kick your shit in if you fought them, yet can't even run their houses without fucking up half of the city in an enormous conflagration by magic and demons (all with unique abilities, [http://www.drowtales.com/longestwaitarchive//20050719c1p023.JPG basically straight out of Dragonball Z)].
*'''Ariel:''' Ariel is supposedly the main character: a rebellious-toward-parents, hair-dyed Mary-Sue-lesbian OC of the author (who is male and writing what amounts to a self-indulgent Drow-based [[Magical realm|magical realm]], in case you needed a reminder of what's wrong with all of this) whose actions amount to fuck-all, with no real brains or courage. She goes to a magic school and then dicks around on the surface for a while, occasionally wrecking human towns and generally being a Mary Sue with a moral myopia. Before she was retconned, it was even worse: letting her light elf slave Maya be a sacrifice to Sharess for visions (a goddess who wasn't even supposed to be a Lolth expy but a sorcerer/turned savior goddess of her people and the world since she stopped demons from emerging). After the retcon she is still a fucking idiot with a case of Grimderp-lesbian-mana-operated mecha pilot (which is one of her hundreds of different, omnipotent skills) who accidentally killed Maya in a fit of rage when the light elf tried to maternally protect her young master, and started to feel bad about it... for a few days. When she grows up, she supposedly feels bad for slaves and how they are treated, yet cheerfully murderfucks humans who were massacred and were coming back to free their kin from being sold to slavery. Once she is given to judge a young Drow man accused of counterfeiting money, she pathetically apologizes to him saying "P-please work hard and earn your freedom" as the man is seized and stripped to be made a slave by angry shopkeepers. Once the plot goes forward, she comes out of closet to her mother and says she is in love with a girl and goes to the surface, coincidentally meeting her old slave Vaelia. As befitting of slaves in this setting, she greets her, claims to have forgotten all the massacres and basically says everything is totes OK now.

*'''Liriel:''' Ariel’s perky loli slave who is retardedly optimistic of her fate and cheered as Maya's guts were blasted by a magic missile by accident. It turns out she’s actually the Empress whose soul fled into her personal slave to escape death... yeah, some chuunibyou-grade cliche shit there (I was the Empress in my former life!).
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*'''Vaelia:''' Ariel's human gladiator bodyguard, and a character who is so fucked beyond all saving that she needs to be explained in detail.
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Vaelia is hands down the greatest missed opportunity of the series in the shape of a broken Aesop, and shows how Drowtales never fails to miss the mark of making its story uninteresting to those that don't bend over to the Drow concept 24/7.

To start things off, she was a human gladiator slave woman whose village was destroyed when she told the Drow where it was in a fit of anger. The survivors were put to chains and sold to Drow cities, while she was put to an arena to fight to death because nothing says that slavery is 100% vital to keeping their society alive like arena bloodsports.

Eventually Ariel buys her as a bodyguard, and Vaelia saves her from being strangled by some asshole Drow. This gets her freedom which amounts to fuck-all since Vaelia is now homeless, the rest of her tribe sold to a horrible life of slavery and alone below miles of rock, so she stays with our Skub loli Drow for some time. Vaelia's loyalty and the time she spent with the Drow makes Ariel wonder if humans have feelings and stories worth preserving; so just when we see the trigger of a change in the Drow society, she suddenly goes to the surface and leaves her circle of friends... to work with Drow raiders who hunt for artifacts and murder human towns for fun because she wants to see the sun and didn't feel like asking enough to get '''anyone fucking else''' (not even some wandering Drow trader dude/chick) to take her up there. From that point on she's treated like a dog, beaten and left to starve in a locked magic hut because she prevented Drow from crushing fairies to death for fun (remember, the Drow are supposed to be sympathetic!). At a point her "captain" even remarks how races could get along with a little effort (by robbing the villagers and sparing their lives), inadvertendly poking holes in the whole setting before forgetting this point entirely. One needs real brain damage to even appreciate the broken Aesop.

15 years later she is seen again, now a mother of three human children and helping the more peaceful, less racist Drow overthrow Sharen slavers, STILL treated worse than a dog by her captain, only mildly appreciated by a Drow whom she saved later, and reminiscing that some things get better (LOL they don't). Of course, in typical Drowtales fashion, the kids' fathers are irrelevant and unknown because father figures are anathema to the comic. Surprise: Last few chapters showed her living in a Drow colony with an entire quarter built for humans (Goblins), and Ariel's clan made it a policy to free every human slave. Soo...a belated happy end '''might''' be a redeeming final grace.
</div>
</div>
*'''Chrys'tel:''' One of two ''actual'' main characters. She’s a Sharen petulant loli drow noble who investigates her traitorous family.
*'''Kiel'ndia:''' The other main character. A Vloz'ress tomboy punk demon summoner girl who breaks the 4th wall and speaks in modern English vernacular. This is as obnoxious as it sounds.
*'''Naal'suul:''' is the best character in Drowtales. She is a totally adorable Beldrobbaen emo goth drow girl who has a giant spider that she wears as a backpack. She’s also one of the few characters who could be considered to be purely heroic.
* There's 4-5 other characters from various clans that travel with Ariel, but they do nothing of any importance.
*'''Snadhya'rune:''' The main villain of the story. She is a purple haired Sharen summoner who wears fabulous fur coats and has smug levels that go into orbit. Though evil and cruel, at least she doesn't dick around or claim goodness or innocence. Perfect sociopath.

==Now for the Porn==

Amazingly enough, somebody thought a "Space Age" story arc/parallel universe about 10000 years later would be a good idea. In this timeline, the Drow apparently are the sole rulers of their world and [[Wat|explore the space with mana powered spaceships and Earth of all places]]. In this arc Drow are somehow good people after millenia of slavery and genocide and help Earth humans with some civil war; only after they beat the crap out of them when they mistake a powered-down human spacecraft for a derelict.

But what about the humans on the Drow planet?

They're left alone in hut reservations next to high tech Mary Sue cities. The exact reason for this is because apparently [[Derp|the humans haven't developed far enough to be on the same technological level as Drow, despite stating to have developed faster than regular human civilization]], (i.e. yet another "medieval stasis" handwave). Funnily enough, they also mention that humans used to be classed as beasts and hadn't developed nearly as - both of those were caused by Drow raids, and those 'modern day' Drow take no accountability for the actions of their ancestors and like to pretend they never happened.

Everyone else is only given the bare minimum of attention due to lack of interest. Instead, they just show bizarrely deviant porn involving nanomachine dildos.

...yeah, that'll do it actually: there is no real plot beyond a mishmash of repetitive lesbian sex scenes, because of course nothing else rakes in the donations harder than taking a page out of the standard webcomic playbook.

A saving grace is that Daydream is in a different universe (which means no Moonless Age!), so we can chill. Speaking of saving graces...

==Are there saving graces?==

Now to render unto Caesar...

As stated, the art is outrageously above and beyond the usual free webcomic fare. It really can't be stressed enough how beautiful some of the pages can get, though when other webcomics are mostly teenagers on DeviantART and you employ the best artists with porn sponsor money, that's to be expected.

The artists also deserves some praise for actually keeping this thing going since 2001. They also deserve a lot of praise for their hard work and improvement - just compare their current skill with the [http://web.archive.org/web/20040707183606/http://www.drowtales.com:80/archive_c1-3.php?location=20010417 original crayon art from 2001],

With 54 chapters and over 3500 pages not including the spin-offs, it is one of the longest webcomics ever and runs at an insane ''near daily update rate'', and it is not going to end until the fans stop paying. The artists work at a pace that makes [[Servitors]] look lazy. If only we could give some of their energy to [[A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire|GRRM]]... But then, they have a certain motivation called money and actually employ lots of artists by the fuckton and are financed by fan donations. Pay enough and they can have your own [[Derp|self-insert characters]](when humans try to liberate their imprisoned kin, an out-of-place drow character uses a female high heel shoe to kill the desperate (and justified) attackers while shouting a stupid line) as well as their own plot lines, so the sheer commercial motivation will allow this series to carry on for a long time yet, which is a good thing if you enjoy it, or enjoy to hate it.

==See Also==
*[[Goblin#Goblins_.28The_Webcomic.29|Goblins]]: A sort of inversion on Drowtales where instead of the main race being blatantly OP, the main race is constantly bullied by everyone else to show how sad they are.
*[[Edgy]]: Most of the problems in entertainment articles with a less-than-mature financing crowd and artists, permeating Drowtales.
*[http://badwebcomicswiki.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Drowtales Drowtales' entry on the Bad Webcomics Wiki], which according to the page we inspired.

[[Category:Webcomics]]

Seven Sisters

2020-06-05T21:31:50Z

2605:E000:141B:DE0:45EC:F6BA:D402:A189: /* Dove Falconhand */

{{dnd-stub}}

The '''Seven Sisters''' are a set of... well, seven sisters who are highly important to the [[Forgotten Realms]]. At least, they were prior to [[Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition]]. They are the result of the goddess [[Mystra]] specially engineering the birth of seven girl-children from a possessed mortal host to serve as her Chosen, since she'd had very bad luck with picking adults to fill the role, as they tended to either go crazy or be more independently minded than Mystra wanted. [[Elminster]] played a big role in their lives.

The Seven Sisters had their own dedicated [[Advanced Dungeons & Dragons]] [[splatbook]], titled, simply, "The Seven Sisters".

==Conception==
Mystra possessed a she-wizard named Elué and seduced a [[ranger]] named Dornal Silverhand, whom had been in love with Elué, to conceive seven children in turn. But a mortal host couldn't sustain a god's essence for the years it took, and towards the end of the 7th and final pregnancy, Elué's body was basically a spectacularly well-preserved [[lich]]. Dornal grew suspicious of why his wife was so weird and managed to figure out that she had been possessed; confronting her, he forced Mystra to reveal the truth, and was so disgusted the revelation that he turned his back on both arcane magic and his seven daughters, walking away and avoiding them for the rest of his life.

==Anastra Syluné Silverhand==
More commonly known as "Syluné", she was a founder of the [[Harpers]] and spent many years as the kindly Witch of Shadowdale before being slain by a [[Chromatic Dragon|Red Dragon]]. She existed as a unique [[ghost]] called a Spectral Harpist for a long time after that, but was ultimately destroyed by agents of [[Shar]].

==Alustriel Silverhand==
The Lady of Silverymoon, founder of the nation known as the Silver Marches.

==Dove Falconhand==
A towering giantess of a woman who, ironically, disdained her natural talent for magic and instead preferred to focus on swordplay and wilderness lore; she served as a [[ranger]] in an adventuring company known as the Knights of Myth Drannor, marrying a fellow Knight named Florin Falconhand.

==Storm Silverhand==
The only other of the Seven Sisters raised by [[Elminster]] who stayed with him in Shadowdale, alongside Anastra; a co-founder of the [[Harpers]], she was known as the Bard of Shadowdale.

==Laeral Silverhand Arunsun==
Married the wizard-lord Khelben "Blackstaff" Arunsun of [[Waterdeep]] and became his beloved consort. Spent a long time being mind-controlled by an evil crown possessed by a sliver of a dead god.

==The Simbul==
Birth name "Alassra Silverhand". Raised by [[Elminster]], grew up to become his lover. Founder of the kingdom of Aglarond, a self-titled "friend of the [[fey]]" and an interfering self-righteous busybody who secretly dreamed of shattering all human nations into small, rural communes that would be forced to live in harmony with the fey and [[demihuman]] races. Incredibly powerful, more than a little mad, and a bitter enemy of [[Thay]].

==Qilué Veladorn==
Arguably the most [[Mary Sue]] of all the Seven Sisters. When Mystra was forced to reveal herself to Dornal Silverhand, it proved more than her host-body could stand. Desperate to save her seventh daughter, she made a bargain with a pregnant [[drow]] priestess of [[Eilistraee]] who had led a congregation of renegade drow away from the major cities of the [[Underdark]], inadvertently killing her own baby in the womb through the stress. With the agreement of the priestess and Eilistraee, Mystra swapped the drow's dead child for her own living one, and Qilué was thusly born as a drow who grew up to be both a powerful wizard ''and'' a priestess of both Mystra and Eilistraee simultaneously.

[[Category: Forgotten Realms]]