While working off and on making my Brute (Large) Minotaur I also had a go at simpler, but sillier race; three Kobolds in a Coat!

This is inspired by the Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden artwork showing three Kobolds in an alleyway hiding inside a trenchcoat. I've seen some attempts at making a monster stat block, which is nice and easy since the Kobolds can just be Kobolds when separated, but creating a playable race is more complicated. There are actually already a few homebrew races for small creatures in a coat, but most seem to be for Halflings, and don't quite give the flavour I wanted.

So I decided to have a go at making my own take on Kobolds in a Coat. To quickly summarise:

• Ability Scores: +1 to DEX or CHA, +1 to INT or WIS, and -2 to STR or CON.
• Size: Medium
• Speed: 20 feet, can move an additional 10 feet but must pass an Acrobatics check for fall Prone instead.
• Small Hands: Disadvantage on Heavy weapons
• Darkvision: 60 feet
• Cunning Manoeuvres: You can perform two special manoeuvres, Sly Recon and Scatter! Sly Recon has one Kobold emerge while the others maintain the disguise but must remain in place. Scatter! has two Kobolds emerge as all three act separately. There are a bunch of details to make this work but basically each Kobold gets a third of your HP, max HP, temporary HP, carrying capacity, one of your attacks (minimum of one each), and any equipment it wants. If you can cast spells then only one of the trio can cast per round, spell slots, charges etc. are shared, and once-per-turn abilities can only be used by one of the trio per round.
• Perfect Disguise: Somehow your disguise actually fools people. Basically NPCs that become suspicious can see through it the normal way (Insight vs. Deception), if they beat you by more than 5 they know you are three Kobolds. You can restore your disguise by spending one minute adjusting it somewhere out of sight. 
• Replaceable Parts: "You" can only be killed if the other two Kobolds are killed first. Otherwise if "you" are killed you can trade places with any one of them and keep going, but you'll need to replace the dead Kobold to restore your disguise, max HP etc.
• Languages: Common, Draconic, and one of your choice.

Now obviously the race isn't intended to be serious, but I'm hoping it's reasonably balanced and fun.

The ability scores was something I wasn't sure about; originally I was going to give none (no bonuses, no penalties) but that's boring, but I also couldn't decide on exactly what they should be, so I opted for a trio of choices, to reflect the calibre of Kobolds your coat contains.

The ability to split apart into separate Kobolds and reform gives some interesting possibilities, but shouldn't be overpowered as it's also very high risk (a single blast spell could potentially kill all three outright). Abilities and such are shared among all three, but also limited among all three, so while you could separate in order to get "solo" sneak attacks every round, only one Kobold will get one per round. Same with spells, you can separate and cast from any Kobold as the caster, but only one Kobold can be casting each round and so-on.

There's a possibility for some abuse by separating then leaving one Kobold outside a dungeon, so if you're down to your last one you can effectively teleport out, but I think this is balanced by the fact you'll be leaving behind HP and gear, plus if the one left outside gets into trouble they're probably screwed, so I'm not too concerned about that. Also it's up to the DM how exactly you replace dead Kobolds, so abusing this could become tricky if the DM makes fresh Kobolds reluctant to join your trio.

Anyway, I'd appreciate any feedback!

Kobolds in a Coat Race

its cool the only doubt its... is it balanced enough so that Help isnt op ? Bc i can see someone using the turns of the other kobolds for the help action ... i mean... imagine that you can give your barbarian and your paladin advantage and then attack yourself.. the downside i see its that its easy to kill one.. but does it really balance it ?? maybe im thinking too much since the objective of this class is to be fun more than anything.. Tkz anyway for posting this Race

These are fair points; it's not strictly intended to be balanced, though the HP loss is definitely the main balancing factor.

Deployed kobolds only get one third of your HP, which even on a Kobolds in a Coat Barbarian is not going to be a lot of HP against higher level enemies and mobs, even with Rage active. They will also have worse defence without careful management and spare gear, as they need their own weapons and armour, they don't copy what "you" have. So if you've got medium armour on the main Kobold, you need medium armour for the other two as well or they may have a lower AC. Defensive abilities are shared among the three so anything requiring a reaction can only be used by one per round and so-on.

I think overall it shouldn't be OP, it's high risk/reward, and there may be some ways to break it but the kobolds themselves are individually quite fragile. When you're playing at level 9 and separating fully, it could be equivalent to having three level 3-5 players instead, though this will depend a lot on build and abilities, so better than a single level 9 in some situations, but potentially worse in others, depending upon build and abilities.

I remember seeing someone homebrewed a subclass that had a similar idea. Let's see if I can find it...

Here it is.

Would you change the negative modifiers with the updates from Tasha's?

How do negative modifiers apply to other races post-Tasha's? By the wording of the customising your origin rule the ability to customise seems limited only to ability score increases (not penalties), so I'm not sure whether any change is warranted?

That said, the penalty is not intended to reflect the "origin" of your Kobolds in a Coat, it's to reflect the fact that you're three Kobolds in a coat, so delivering strength-based attacks or taking a lot of punishment aren't exactly your specialties for simple logistical reasons, i.e- it has nothing to do with training/upbringing 😉

this is my favorite homebrew race- it is just such a cool concept- though, I have  3 kobolds in a trench coat idea: one is a baby dragon wyrmling head, the other the body, and the back one the tail (the tail is gripping on to the body's tail), how would pretending to be a baby dragon with its mother nearby work- deception check, performance check, or intimidation check?

Quote from tarasque2897 >>

this is my favorite homebrew race- it is just such a cool concept- though, I have  3 kobolds in a trench coat idea: one is a baby dragon wyrmling head, the other the body, and the back one the tail (the tail is gripping on to the body's tail), how would pretending to be a baby dragon with its mother nearby work- deception check, performance check, or intimidation check?

That's going to be up to your DM, Deception check seems reasonable but dragons are intelligent creatures so it might involve a bit of extra work to be convincing – wyrmlings are fluent in draconic and would presumably have a name, might have recognisable features etc., so it would need to be a very good disguise, or have some very good distractions, to pull it off.

Depends a lot on how comedic and/or difficult the campaign usually is though!

If anyone needs a mini for this: (https://www.heroforge.com/load_config=34539f56-bddb-449e-8e29-a1ef704dbcaa/Two Kobolds in a Trenchcoat/). I know the mini is only sposta be 2 kobolds in a coat, but it should still suffice for the most part.

Kobolds in a trenchcoat... hmm

Do you get 9 attunements or does each kobold only get one? Also potential for suicide bombers? Keep some kobold prisonners then send one kobold out to go blow himself up and grab the next kobold. Still I really like this build.

Question, if you have all three kobolds out and you have only one attack from your class (like when your all pulled together you have one attack) does that mean theoretically while split apart you get to attack 3 times per turn? (Since each kobold has 1 attacks.)

Now, don't take this the wrong way, but I already made a species very similar to this a while ago: https://www.dndbeyond.com/species/1757118-two-goblins-in-a-trench-coat

However, mine's a bit skimpy on the details, and yours is very detailed. Also, you releas yours way before mine.

 love this!

Definitely putting this as an NPC in one of my campaigns!

For the Scatter ability, I have a homebrew warlock class which does something similar (split into 2), and the approach I took was that you have 2 characters, and half HP each, but you still only get one action, one bonus action, and one reaction, and can split them as you like.

With Kobolds, I'd suggest similar, but if they don't use an action or bonus action, they dodge. So you can scatter and one gets both while the other 2 dodge, or you can have 2 do things while the third dodges. Keeps action economy the same whilst increasing your position utility. Does make you susceptible to area attacks, but that's the trade-off.