This question came up when I was using XGE's This is Your Life section for the first time, to discover and develop my kobold's backstory… rolling a 24 in Life Events which would have left me married. A quick google search led me to discover, however, that kobolds are non-monogamous and the females lay up to six eggs a year… but nothing I found about their romantic lives. There was one entry I found (on Google's search page) that clarified that they are reptilian so they lay fertile hard-shelled eggs.
I didn't think of it much at first, just rerolling that event and moving on, but as I started to piece his story together, it dawned on me how impactful it was… If their reproduction cycle was pheromone-based like that of many animals, then they would be naturally asexual resulting in:
- A lack of understanding of any romantic subplot development
- The complete (and possibly comical) lack of awareness of touching moments such as a marriage, divorce, or proposal… (which now makes me think of how hilarious a kobold acolyte with ceremony would be)
- An advantage/immunity to any mundane means to seduce
- Any magical means used to seduce would be like using the pheromones as perfume and "release the wild beast" (which might follow the same rules as a Barbarian's Reckless Attack/Rage for that moment)
- This might be the most seen as a difference in tone with how that character relates to the group, almost rendering them like the oblivious PG character in a gangbang film.
So I started to look into this and did not find much on the kobold (sorry if I missed any on here), but then realized that other races might be affected too, like the lizardfolk that has an alien/primal mind. So what I was hoping to learn is what playable character races are monogamous, polyamorous, or asexual, and how does that mindset affect the campaign?
Note: I understand that not all campaigns involve sex all that much, but the concept is still present in kids' movies, so I think that would find itself everywhere. For instance, even in CoS, there are heavy romantic elements; with the 3 wives and the whole reason Strahd became a vampire… If my hunch is correct, that would mean that the kobold player in the campaign would be oblivious to the whole reason one should empathize with this character and simply see him as a lawful evil tyrant.
Best Answer
Look to older editions
D&D publications became a lot more “streamlined,” for lack of a better word, with 4e, and while 5e has reversed that somewhat, it is still rather slim compared to the monumental amount of material published prior to 4e. For example, as far as I can tell, 5e has less than half a page total devoted to kobolds. The closest we get to hearing about their family life is that they are “egg-laying.”
D&D 3.5e, by contrast, gave them an entire 18-page book chapter. Races of the Dragon is a 3.5e supplement devoted to several “draconic” races. This was the original debut of dragonborn (which have changed massively in the editions since) and the spellscales (who have never appeared again, to my knowledge), and it also greatly expanded the lore for kobolds and half-dragons.
Obviously, it’s been two editions. Even more obviously, as I just said, the dragonborn changed massively between 3.5e and 5e.¹ Things can and do change, including stuff from this very same book.
That said, Races of the Dragon addresses this question—with respect to kobolds, anyway—directly:
(Races of the Dragon, pg. 43)
So romantic partnerships are not precisely alien to kobolds, but they’re far from the norm. Those romantic partnerships are committed, but are typically not sexually monogamous; “sex itself has little emotional value to kobolds.”
There is nothing here about “pheromones,” though non-specific “instincts” are mentioned several times. It’s entirely plausible that these instincts are triggered by non-chemical cues; pheromones are just one of many ways that animals can indicate a desire and/or willingness to mate.
Anyway, one way or another, kobolds are sexual, even if they don’t attach emotional significance to the act. They are also capable of romance, though most neither seek nor find it. It is unlikely, therefore, that any of the game-mechanical effects you describe would be particularly appropriate. At best, circumstantial disadvantage for interracial seduction attempts, if the seducer is unfamiliar with the sexual instincts of the seducee, but that can probably said for most interracial pairings in D&D.
But note here that while kobolds rarely do romance, and don’t attach romantic feelings to sex (or constrain sex to romantic relationships), this is primarily because kobolds’ emotional lives are tied so heavily to the tribe. The same section, for example, states (up front, the very beginning of the Love section, as part of the “[…]” in my quote) that kobolds are eager parents:
(Races of the Dragon, pg. 43)
Thus, it would be a mistake to see kobolds as purely driven by instinct or incapable of emotional reactions to others. They just have different emotional tendencies and needs.
I suspect most playable races fall in the same boat. But you can look into this more by looking into older editions’ material. Not every race is covered in this kind of detail, of course—lizardfolk don’t have their own dedicated book chapter, for example. But it’s a good place to start, to save you the trouble of inventing it all yourself.
For what it’s worth, though, I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of a D&D race being subject to differing rules with respect to seduction et al. like you propose. That certainly doesn’t exist in WotC-era D&D. I wouldn’t be utterly shocked to find out TSR had written up some rules like that, but be aware that the further back you go, the less connected it’s going to be to modern D&D. TSR did a lot of things that WotC wouldn’t (and vice versa).