I had a commentor on one of my YouTube videos about Konosuba TRPG ask why some enemies are listed as “Mobs,” and was wondering if there was any special rules pertaining to them.

Straight Through the Heart

All I was able to find, was that page 261 of the English edition describes them as 2~10 characters being treated as one, and 270 describing Mobs as only having Action Bonus and Reaction Bonus. They possess to other stats besides HP, and any skills they use that would have an MP cost, treat that cost as 0 MP, and otherwise use them for free.

Incidentally, this is a useful way to write how Mobs, to close any loops such as “Spend X MP, get Y benefit based on how much MP spent. Specifying the MP cost makes it harder to justify “Well, it’s infinite, since they don’t have to use MP!” Also worth noting is that none of the Enemy Skills listed in Konosuba TRPG use MP; and further, none of the Mob type enemies have skills that call for MP anyways.

Which would mean that a group of Goblins, which is treated as a Mob, would be around 5 Goblins treated as 1 character that has only one HP bar, and only takes one Action. This does bring up the question of why include a tag like this if it effectively does nothing?

A Legacy Text Block

To answer that question, we can look at other games related to Kobosuba TRPG. Thankfully, we have two of those available in English: Double Cross, and Kami ga Kari! Bear in mind, however, all of these games were translated by different companies, so there will be some differences in terminology. (Translation is more of an art than a science.)

Double Cross

In Double Cross, the term they use for this is Troops. And beyond that minor difference, the text explaining a Troop enemy or a Mob enemy is nearly identical.

The second paragraph, however, is where things diverge, since Double Cross has a wildly different premise, and with some equal deviations. Pertinent to Troops, there’s no mention of MP since that doesn’t exist in the DX setting, and they’re also unable to perform the action Cover. (Taking a hit for another character.)

For background, the game Double Cross is a modern day game where you play as an individual that’s been infected with a virus that grants people super powers, but can also turn them into monsters if they rely too much on said powers.

Syndromes are the analogue of Classes from other games. They represent how this virus manifests itself in a given character, and determine what powers they would gain for having that syndrome. One such syndrome is the Hanuman syndrome, which has a lot of powers that pertain to wind, sound, and speed.

They possess a power called “Sonic Boom.” This power, if it hits, automatically incapacitates any enemies with the Troop tag; most of which in Double Cross represent fairly ordinary people, such as police officers, gang members, and weak monsters whomst have been created from the virus.

Kami ga Kari

For the official English translation of Kami ga Kari, the term used is Swarm, and there isn’t any explicit explanation of what a swarm is beyond being group of several monsters.

However, there are numerous talents and weapon upgrades that make it possible to instantly kill swarm type enemies, and some enemies have abilities that target swarm monsters specifically. (Either to grant some bonus to them, or to kill them in order to heal themselves.)

In conclusion, it’s likely that Konosuba TRPG kept the tag that indicates a monster is actually a group of monsters, but didn’t really do much with it in its core book. It’s likely a holdover from other FEAR games, as demonstrated in Double Cross and Kami ga Kari.