D&D 5E (+)What Ubiquitous DnD Tropes Get It Totally Wrong?

[Oofta]

Being able to accurately hit someone two football fields away with an arrow because they're looking at you through a knot-hole. Oh, and you can have the strength of an average 10 year old when you do it.

 

[R_J_K75]

Examples of double-bitted battle axes made of stone apparently go back to like, 3400 B.C.

I wasn't sure what they were called but that looks more reasonable. All the double bladed axes in fantasy you see are ridiculously huge.

 

[R_J_K75]

Wizards being able to set down a fireball so precisely so that all bad guys get toasted but the heroes in melee with them don’t, and being able to do so in the heat of battle.

The mechanics of the spell are pretty straight forward so if the wizard gets the spell off and out of range of the party its going to hit any creatures in its area of effect. If you are talking about novels then that's another story all together.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

is it already a trope to consider that all halfling commoner have the Lucky trait?

Halflings being luckier than others has been a trope since Tolkien. But also, I didn’t actually refer to that as a trope in my post.

Wizards being able to set down a fireball so precisely so that all bad guys get toasted but the heroes in melee with them don’t, and being able to do so in the heat of battle.

I haven’t been to war, but I have friends who have, and they mostly seem to view that as something that should involve a roll, but not a hard one.

Being able to accurately hit someone two football fields away with an arrow because they're looking at you through a knot-hole. Oh, and you can have the strength of an average 10 year old when you do it.

Yeah, I think D&D only makes sense if you don’t think of the stats that literally. A high Dex character has what the real world would recognize as a decent amount of strength, and vise versa.

I mean, we can know that simply by what they can do, right?

But the arrow target would have 3/4 cover, at least.

still, is “the mechanics of the game” really a trope? You do you, but I was more referring to tropes about the world and how things work, not mechanical abstractions that aren’t meant to actually reflect how the world works.

 

[Oofta]

Halflings being luckier than others has been a trope since Tolkien. But also, I didn’t actually refer to that as a trope in my post.

I haven’t been to war, but I have friends who have, and they mostly seem to view that as something that should involve a roll, but not a hard one.

Yeah, I think D&D only makes sense if you don’t think of the stats that literally. A high Dex character has what the real world would recognize as a decent amount of strength, and vise versa.

I mean, we can know that simply by what they can do, right?

But the arrow target would have 3/4 cover, at least.

still, is “the mechanics of the game” really a trope? You do you, but I was more referring to tropes about the world and how things work, not mechanical abstractions that aren’t meant to actually reflect how the world works.

Except that a high dex PC can still have very limited carrying capacity because they aren't strong. If I wasn't clear I was talking about sharpshooter feat. No penalty for cover or distance.

While the trope of the low-strength person using a longbow and longbows being basically sniper rifles is by no means limited to D&D it is still a common trope.

 

[Oofta]

Hmm ... more generic? You mean like everybody wearing heavy armor all the time? Plate mail being worn by anyone but royalty?

How about monsters ...

• Monsters like dragons that can survive and even thrive for centuries. But somehow they always live in the isolated wilderness and don't have a huge impact on the surrounding world. Oh, and they can be taken out by a small group of 4-6 combatants.
• The ubiquity of predatory monsters without enough prey animals to sustain them.
• Giant creatures living in harsh environments such as caves.
• Hordes of humanoids like orcs living "in the mountains".

I'm sure I could go on.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

I'm pretty sure any real D&D world should be little more than a seething ocean of green slime.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Hmm ... more generic? You mean like everybody wearing heavy armor all the time? Plate mail being worn by anyone but royalty?

How about monsters ...

• Monsters like dragons that can survive and even thrive for centuries. But somehow they always live in the isolated wilderness and don't have a huge impact on the surrounding world. Oh, and they can be taken out by a small group of 4-6 combatants.
• The ubiquity of predatory monsters without enough prey animals to sustain them.
• Giant creatures living in harsh environments such as caves.
• Hordes of humanoids like orcs living "in the mountains".

I'm sure I could go on.

I have no idea how to word the OP differently, but, yeah okay it's a complain about things that strike us as unrealistic in dnd thread now.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Also, a gymnast has less ability to move external mass than a power lifter or a heavy weight boxer does. Gymnasts are strong, but not in ways that are modeled by dnd's stats using the strength score.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Also, a gymnast has less ability to move external mass than a power lifter or a heavy weight boxer does. Gymnasts are strong, but not in ways that are modeled by dnd's stats using the strength score.

They might not have built themselves just for weightlifting, but gymnasts are much stronger and able to move much more external mass than the average person.