That Anxiety video was tough to make and of course I was anxiously second guessing whether it was at all helpful or just self indulgent or whatever, (hush, I tried my best,) but at the end of that one I made a joke that we'd get back to talking about how to make goblins cool and stuff so here we are, that's what we're doing.
Goblins are fantastic tier one bad guys, they are so fantastic in fact that everybody uses them all the time and so now they're boring. End of post. But no, actually this presents us with a fantastic opportunity to spice them up and surprise our players. First, I would think about how are they different than other low level humanoids in this world. For me I treat goblins as if they are straight out of the Eighties movie Gremlins: a little cute, a little funny, and a little scary. After the party has fought them a few time I'll start going the Gremlins 2 route and differentiate them more: this one has an eye patch, this one has a mohawk, this one has mad scientist hair and alchemist fire, this one is in a tattered suit, where did he get that? Give them personality. If they drop a player to zero have them do a little happy dance or go through their pockets mid-combat. If they drop below half health have them give the finger and run away. Because these little guys are probably not standing and fighting to the death if they don't have to. In fact, they're probably never standing and fighting at all.
Goblins have Nimble Escape, use it, every round. Shoot an arrow, run, hide. Stay out of sight, out of range, or at the least behind cover. If they're swinging their scimitar they've messed up, they're likely going to disengage, run, hide, and live to fight another round. You want to take it easy, especially on new players, cool, I get it. I've done it plenty of times. But played well goblins are little guerilla fighter monsters, with +6 stealth. “The goblin attacks with advantage because you didn't see it hiding behind the tree: and it hits! You take 1d6+2 piercing damage from the filthy arrow sticking out of your shoulder and hear high pitched laughter echo through the trees as the goblin runs deeper into the dark forest, disappearing from sight. What do you do? Search for them? OK, that will be your action this turn and you don't have darkvision so it will be a perception check at disadvantage.” A couple rounds like that and your players are going to hate these little bastards and they're going to try to burn the forest down to get them.
We get one phrase in the goblin language in the Monster Manual and it's “I surrender.” Again, these guys aren't fighting to the death for their comrades and country, they'll surrender if they're beat and can't escape. Have them drop their bow and put their hands up and see what the players are going to do now. You don't need to do a goblin voice, though it's nice, bur I highly recommend having a list of names ready for this eventuality. The party might even have a new pet, for a few days at least until they trust it enough to leave it untied during a long rest and it gets away with all their rations or gold or something. Maybe it gets smashed or flees in the next combat. Or maybe they convince it to reform it's evil ways and the next time a PC dies they can stat up Boblin the Goblin rouge.
If you want to go deep on Goblinoid variations and culture, maybe make them a centerpiece of your campaign, Volo's Guide to Monster's has a solid dozen pages on lore, and some really great, actionable ideas. Once your players begin to outgrow goblins, keep them in the mix as the grunts to their bigger, badder cousins: hobgoblins and Bugbears. Let's talk about them next.
