To be fair if you don’t make it clear to the party that they can’t take the creature or some other kind of warning there’s no way for them to know if they can handle it without metagaming.
I the player know a level 2 can’t take on a giant, but does my character know that
If you’re playing a character that foolhardy to see a creature anywhere from 2x to 10x their size and think tbey can fight it, then let them die. It’s not metagaming to see something large and make the reasonable assumption that it could crush you.
Can you beat an orca in a fight? How can you assume that without metagame knowledge of its stats?
Edit: quite a few people have very low opinions of a reasonable person’s self-preservation instincts. Or assume every PC is the type of internet person that says they could fight a lion mano-a-mano.
An orca on land wouldn’t be too difficult, and knowing what a whale is wouldn’t be metagaming unless being uneducated is part of your backstory/character.
I don’t know man I can cast fire from my hands. That’s pretty over powered. Plus Steve over there can channel divine energy into their weapon. I think we can take a giant. It’s just like a really big human right? And there’s 4 of us.
That’s not an unreasonable viewpoint for inexperienced adventurers.
Now if your character is a little more familiar with monsters and other adventures they would know better.
To your Orca example I’m just a guy. I have no abilities. A commoner wouldn’t try to fight a giant. Now if you give me the ability to shoot lighting from my hands and 3 other people with similar abilities, I could reasonably believe I could fight an Orca.
Friendly reminder that 6% of Americans think they can beat a grizzly bear in a fight. A shocking 17% think they could beat a chimpanzee. These are just regular people without special skills.
Again, if you want to play a character that doesn’t think well, that’s fine. But 6% (or even 17%) is not a majority of people and when a person sees something taller than most houses looming over them, I assume the average person would correctly adjust their chances of success.
This is about the need for a GM to establish for PCs that they can’t engage a giant in combat. Most people don’t do a year of BJJ and think they and 3 mates can wrestle down an elephant. I just have a higher opinion of people’s self-preservation instincts, especially when they haven’t been as far removed from nature as most people on the internet are. People used to be afraid of forests and the wilds, and I think that level of society is closer to RPGs than we are.
You missed the point those 6 to 17 percent are just regular people. They don’t shoot fire from their hands.
Remember even a level two adventure is a very very small percentage of the world’s population. Most people are way weaker in DND. Being a level 2 adventurer is way beyond a year of BJJ
Yeah but what about the remaining 94 to 83% of regular people who rightly judged their ability to judo-chop a bear to death? Or does having the self-awareness to know you probably can’t win against a bear make you abnormal? I didn’t miss the point, I scaled the challenge. Because a bear is much less threatening and dangerous than a 20 ft giant.
Listing that stat is just assuming that adventurers are mainly pulled from the 6% group who, once they get their hand on a bit more power, would try something even dumber. I don’t think that is reasonable.
And the backgrounds in most RPGs are so varied that you can’t map it on to any amount of training. A background as a soldier might mean you spent years fighting and then you start as a level 1 fighter, so it took you decades to reach level 2. Or you could be a farmhand and then, after a couple weeks of travel later, you’re now a level 2 sorcerer. A year of serious BJJ training is rather generous.
You are making the mistake of setting your fantasy character up against a normal animal.
You as a real life human would be fighting the orka, not your fantasy character. They would be fighting a Chimera. Which can do all those things you mentioned as well.
And if you think your fantasy character can beat a Chimera with their weapons and magic, that would be the same as you thinking you can beat an orka with your bare hands.
Unless you are some elite high level special ops in the military, you will not win against an orka.
Let’s say as a party you’ve taken down a few monsters already. Without knowing the proportional strength of a chimera to the monsters you’ve already faced how would you know?
Like let’s say I did kill an Orca on my own. Then I see a polar bear, the Orca was a lot bigger so seems reasonable.
Now living in the age of technology, not a fantasy setting, I personally know that a polar bear would be a lot harder to beat. But how’s an adventurer supposed to know that? They don’t have wikipedia and national geographic in most fantasy settings. It’s not unreasonable to believe when encountering a creature that no one in the party is familiar with it at all.
Wasn’t familiar with “Touch of Death”; I don’t play clerics often. But it’s just a smite.
Assuming average HP on level up and +3 CON mod: Barb: 25; Fighter: 22; Cleric: 19.
And Touch of Death does +9 damage at level 2.
I’m only breaking out numbers to get a better idea of what the users of the ability would be seeing, and what level of lethality they would come to expect from repeated usage. And that’s not killing anyone with a touch except commoners, and level 1 wizards and sorcerers.
My only point is: people who have had to risk their life to even get to level 2 (unless they’re reckless or an idiot) probably wouldn’t have an overly big head over middling magical abilities. They might be feeling themselves and think they can fight a group of thugs at 4 to 1 odds but it’s bonkers to pretend a normal adventurer would need some ex machina explanation to warn them off fighting something like a giant or a dragon at level 2.
To be fair if you don’t make it clear to the party that they can’t take the creature or some other kind of warning there’s no way for them to know if they can handle it without metagaming.
I the player know a level 2 can’t take on a giant, but does my character know that
If you’re playing a character that foolhardy to see a creature anywhere from 2x to 10x their size and think tbey can fight it, then let them die. It’s not metagaming to see something large and make the reasonable assumption that it could crush you.
Can you beat an orca in a fight? How can you assume that without metagame knowledge of its stats?
Edit: quite a few people have very low opinions of a reasonable person’s self-preservation instincts. Or assume every PC is the type of internet person that says they could fight a lion mano-a-mano.
An orca on land wouldn’t be too difficult, and knowing what a whale is wouldn’t be metagaming unless being uneducated is part of your backstory/character.
I don’t know man I can cast fire from my hands. That’s pretty over powered. Plus Steve over there can channel divine energy into their weapon. I think we can take a giant. It’s just like a really big human right? And there’s 4 of us.
That’s not an unreasonable viewpoint for inexperienced adventurers.
Now if your character is a little more familiar with monsters and other adventures they would know better.
To your Orca example I’m just a guy. I have no abilities. A commoner wouldn’t try to fight a giant. Now if you give me the ability to shoot lighting from my hands and 3 other people with similar abilities, I could reasonably believe I could fight an Orca.
Friendly reminder that 6% of Americans think they can beat a grizzly bear in a fight. A shocking 17% think they could beat a chimpanzee. These are just regular people without special skills.
https://www.newsweek.com/surprising-americans-beat-wild-animals-fight-experts-1691793
Again, if you want to play a character that doesn’t think well, that’s fine. But 6% (or even 17%) is not a majority of people and when a person sees something taller than most houses looming over them, I assume the average person would correctly adjust their chances of success.
This is about the need for a GM to establish for PCs that they can’t engage a giant in combat. Most people don’t do a year of BJJ and think they and 3 mates can wrestle down an elephant. I just have a higher opinion of people’s self-preservation instincts, especially when they haven’t been as far removed from nature as most people on the internet are. People used to be afraid of forests and the wilds, and I think that level of society is closer to RPGs than we are.
You missed the point those 6 to 17 percent are just regular people. They don’t shoot fire from their hands.
Remember even a level two adventure is a very very small percentage of the world’s population. Most people are way weaker in DND. Being a level 2 adventurer is way beyond a year of BJJ
Yeah but what about the remaining 94 to 83% of regular people who rightly judged their ability to judo-chop a bear to death? Or does having the self-awareness to know you probably can’t win against a bear make you abnormal? I didn’t miss the point, I scaled the challenge. Because a bear is much less threatening and dangerous than a 20 ft giant.
Listing that stat is just assuming that adventurers are mainly pulled from the 6% group who, once they get their hand on a bit more power, would try something even dumber. I don’t think that is reasonable.
And the backgrounds in most RPGs are so varied that you can’t map it on to any amount of training. A background as a soldier might mean you spent years fighting and then you start as a level 1 fighter, so it took you decades to reach level 2. Or you could be a farmhand and then, after a couple weeks of travel later, you’re now a level 2 sorcerer. A year of serious BJJ training is rather generous.
To be fair humans did take down wooly mammoths at some point
If I was a magic robot that could throw fireballs or kill something by simply touching it IRL, probably.
You are making the mistake of setting your fantasy character up against a normal animal.
You as a real life human would be fighting the orka, not your fantasy character. They would be fighting a Chimera. Which can do all those things you mentioned as well.
And if you think your fantasy character can beat a Chimera with their weapons and magic, that would be the same as you thinking you can beat an orka with your bare hands.
Unless you are some elite high level special ops in the military, you will not win against an orka.
Let’s say as a party you’ve taken down a few monsters already. Without knowing the proportional strength of a chimera to the monsters you’ve already faced how would you know?
Like let’s say I did kill an Orca on my own. Then I see a polar bear, the Orca was a lot bigger so seems reasonable.
Now living in the age of technology, not a fantasy setting, I personally know that a polar bear would be a lot harder to beat. But how’s an adventurer supposed to know that? They don’t have wikipedia and national geographic in most fantasy settings. It’s not unreasonable to believe when encountering a creature that no one in the party is familiar with it at all.
Yeah, but you’re not that at level 2.
Well, not fireball; but being a Warforged isn’t level dependent, it’s a race, and Touch of Death is a level 2 spell for a Death Domain cleric.
Wasn’t familiar with “Touch of Death”; I don’t play clerics often. But it’s just a smite.
Assuming average HP on level up and +3 CON mod: Barb: 25; Fighter: 22; Cleric: 19.
And Touch of Death does +9 damage at level 2.
I’m only breaking out numbers to get a better idea of what the users of the ability would be seeing, and what level of lethality they would come to expect from repeated usage. And that’s not killing anyone with a touch except commoners, and level 1 wizards and sorcerers.
My only point is: people who have had to risk their life to even get to level 2 (unless they’re reckless or an idiot) probably wouldn’t have an overly big head over middling magical abilities. They might be feeling themselves and think they can fight a group of thugs at 4 to 1 odds but it’s bonkers to pretend a normal adventurer would need some ex machina explanation to warn them off fighting something like a giant or a dragon at level 2.