• qarbone@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    3 days ago

    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.

    • arrow74@lemmy.zip
      1·
      2 days ago

      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

      • qarbone@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        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.