So, I hadn’t planned for this. I really thought that the threat of 30 armed and ready kobolds would give them pause.
Our heroes used regroup well and emerged unscathed. Completely murdered all 30 kobolds in 4 rounds of combat.
+2 from might, and one dwarf with chainmail, a helmet, and a battleaxe.
This was our third session. We were all pleasantly surprised when it wasn’t a TPK.
Does that sound like an accurate report? Dwarf,Halfling, Fighter, Strider VS. 30 Kobolds. Heroes win, 30 - 0?
Wow!
Although, Kobolds have the Swarms special, which means that they’re Order of Might 2 in groups of five or more.
The party must have chosen their actions well. Although, it could be worse than kobolds. Since kill isn’t one of their listed conflict types they need to roll for disposition for every helper, so that probably knocked about half of them out from the start. Also, that’s a rather Fighter heavy party, compare that against the Cleric, Elf, Mage (no missile spell) party that my players rolled. 10-20 kobolds is 12-22 dice for the first action, which your party could probably match with nature tapping, traits, and help. And the thing about swarms of monsters is that once you get your first successful attack off, they just keep getting weaker and weaker. The gamble is those first few rounds while they’re still at full strength.
The swarm special would have made a difference. It doesn’t look like much but -1s against 30 kobolds would’ve been noticeable.
Stay cool 
/facepalm
I shall look that rule up, as I’m not familiar with it. 
Still only 3 sessions in, so I’m ok with.
They did choose their actions very well, I also played the kobolds in the way I thought kobolds would behave.
Had the dwarf not been wearing chainmail and a helmet(briefly), it would have been over in the first round. Party rolled Disposition of 5, Kobolds I had at 30. Nature 2, +28 kobolds, = disposition 30, so I just made it 30 kobolds, with one hit each. Had them move in 6 groups of 5.
So!
In retrospect, it appears my adventures were killed to death with a furious anger by a small tribe of kobolds.
Clearly playing with the increased might and swarm rules would have made a huge difference. The kobolds(there being 30 of them) took attack as the first action, made sense. 30 of them, crazy dwarf, and a burglar, a strider and a fighter entering the fray with grimaces and thoughts of what their next characters might be like.
The Kobolds hit the dwarf in an I test V Attack with only 2 successes, and his armor negated them both(helmet and chainmail.) The chainmail survived. But, still a measly 2 points of damage and my heroes would have been at disposition 3. Very close to TPK.
Thanks everyone for your helpful observations. I’ll let my party know they must have been feeling particularly heroic that day. I’ll also impress upon them that they most likely would have had a TPK. Hopefully that helps, but we have a foolhardy dwarf run by a character tends to just blurt out what he’s doing. 
So we’ll see.
Another question, could the rest of the party said “Uh… yeah we’re not gonna follow him into that killing field.” and not been a part of the conflict?
Thanks!
They had a disposition of 5? Did they not roll any Fighter successes? If the Dwarf led the charge then I assume he was the conflict captain, and Dwarves start with a health of 5, so that’s 5 disposition from the start. Then rolling 4D for the fighter skill plus 3D for help (I assume a Strider has Fighter), you have 5 + 7D disposition without using rewards or traits. That would be some bad luck if they only came out with 5 disposition. And on the other side, Kill isn’t a listed conflict for Kobolds, so you don’t add one for each kobold, you roll one extra die. So you should have been rolling 32D for the kobold disposition, and probably only around 16 kobolds would have actually entered the fight (unless I’m missing something). So yeah, you missed the swarm bonus, but it looks to me like you actually made it harder on the players with the disposition, if I’m not totally goofing on the rules again.
I would allow the party to choose to sit out the conflict (flee) if they disagree with it. That would basically be splitting the party, and I’m guessing the kobolds that were knocked out of the disposition roll would be the ones to chase them. They would eat two turns for splitting the party and having separate conflict though, and who knows where they’d be at the end. I would also allow the dwarf to change his mind when he realizes they aren’t following him. However, “I charge in for the kill” is something that still happened, so at that point negotiation or trickery is probably out and we’re talking a flee or drive off. I might even consider the foolhardiness of the dwarf to be using a trait against himself on whatever course of action they do choose to take once the rest of the party holds him back (and assuming he agrees that holding back is a good idea). That’s how I would handle the situation, and I think this is a “use your discretion” as a GM type of situation.
We had a kill conflict the other night where a dwarf rolled 0 successes on about 8 dice for dispo, so a disposition of 5 might not be as uncommon as I thought.
Not sure why you opted to split the kobolds into groups of 5, but definitely something to correct for next time. Give the Denizens chapter another read. Torchbearer is more… unforgiving than that. All of them should have been helping each other on each action. So, if you had 30 kobolds, you should have been rolling 31 dice minimum on that initial attack. Though like jovial says, you probably would have had about 16 kobolds. Still, that would have meant 17 dice.
Who is the leader on this adventure?