Clint_L
Legend
Well, yeah, because they would similarly buy a bunch of 10' poles and hire a bunch of disposable hirelings.
D&D General Could a real human survive your D&D adventures?
- Thread starter Zubatcarteira
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GrimCo
Hero
Actually, we used to buy 11 foot poles. That extra foot was crucial. Never used hirelings though. But yea, using numbers to gain advantage is smart way to play. In one adventure we fought adult white dragon (2ed dragons had like 90ish hp). Lured him to good position, used scorpions with steel cables attached to harpoons and anchored in mountain, had something like 7-8 crossbowmen in stone pillboxes with narrow slits. And we killed that sucker at lv 4. Never once did any of our characters went into melee. Oh, and wizard cast a web on it and then we set it on fire with flame arrows.
So yeah, was it heroic solo adventurers going toe to toe with big foe? Nope. But it was very fun fight for all of us.
ezo
Hero
That is quite the elaborate set up for (remote?) snowy mountains. Good thing it was a white dragon so it was actually stupid enough to be lured into such a position.
And "level 4" automatically negates qualifying as "normal humans" as per the OP, as does the wizard casting web since no spells was part of it as well.
Yes, numbers can be key in general, but that scenario screams to me of a DM allowing you to "get away with it". I mean, "steel cables anchored into mountains", "stone pillboxes"? Quite a bit of a stretch IMO.
I don't understand why you keep say "as per the OP" for things that I can't find in the OP.
Being a "real human" doesn't mean you can't have levels. In fact, 3e had rules for high level mundane NPCs that explicitly had no special abilities, but still had things like HP, skills, and other basic class mechanics. So you could easily have a level 20 Commoner or Aristocrat.
HaroldTheHobbit
Hero
If I didn't get killed in that cellar with giant rats I would definitely get rabies or crippling PTSD. And our gaming table would be massacred by 8 goblins with a hound rider. I might survive a short while as a scribe in the Old World, until I got corrupted by chaos, but doubt I could last more than a day on a barge on the Reik. I might fare ok on a free trader in space, but would probably break down in existential anguish at the slightest evidence of The Ancients being real, and don't even get me started on a life of crime in Drinax.
GrimCo
Hero
That's how you fight superior foe. Ambush tactics. Not so remote, it was part of dwarven kingdom, one of their supply routes. Dragon wasn't stupid. It knew dwarfs use those mountain roads to haul goods, which was primo place for easy fly by plundering of livestock and food supply. So party tracked dragon movements, patterns, with help from caravan people and route wardens. Extensive scouting and research about foe was done, so was in choosing right time and spot for setting ambush point.
Lv 4 in 2ed AD&D. Our party fighter had 15HP, ranger 18, thief had 10, wizard was at 8. Don't know if you played it, but you rolled for HP at every level, even first. So fighter with 1 hp at lv1 was also possible. Also, stats were 3d6, arrange as you wish, so good luck getting that extra 15 needed to put into CON for extra 1 hp per level. Normal human would definitely fall into lv 3-4 ad&d character. As in, 1-2 good hits from sword and you are dead.
No. It was just few sessions of extensive prep work to set things in place, formulate plan, gather equipment, resources etc. Overlapping fields of fire, negating one big dragons advantage (flight), surprise attack with artillery, and of course, right spot. Pillboxes where just basic round low stone buildings with slits for crossbows, same type farmers build across our islands for hundreds of years ( they are built across Mediterranean region,specially islands) as shelter from storms. Built couple with my grandpa as a kid in our olive gardens. Fighting dragon in narrow gorge is like infantry fighting tanks in urban environment, same tactical principles, modified for fantasy.
As i said, 2ed was much more realistic, specially low levels. Low hp, low to hit, you needed way higher stats for bonuses (at least 15, sometimes even 16). So normal humans have same chance as PCs to survive low level adventures. They just have to play it very smart and don't try to act a hero.
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
The scenario is intentionally unfair to the real humans.
borringman
Explorer
As a matter of stylistic preference, I kind of make it a point that real people can't. That you need to be heroic to survive.
That said, I do think it's (darkly) amusing that many fans of games, shows, and movies don't realize how incredibly deadly humans are. The Monster Manual is full of creatures that frankly wouldn't pose much of a threat even to Stone Age humans, let alone modern technology. Recent research indicates our ancestors wreaked devastation on all megafauna tens of thousands of years before we invented gunpower or even metalworking. They reliably took down elephants and mammoths with stone-tipped javelins, and only got more dangerous from there. The reality is that D&D actually nerfs humans, particularly human weaponry, far more than most realize.
So while I tend to rely on supernatural elements to create existential threats, I think OP's question changes depending on the context. There is a significant difference between reality vs. "real humans" as D&D characters without special abilities, and it's the latter that's far weaker.
That said, I do think it's (darkly) amusing that many fans of games, shows, and movies don't realize how incredibly deadly humans are. The Monster Manual is full of creatures that frankly wouldn't pose much of a threat even to Stone Age humans, let alone modern technology. Recent research indicates our ancestors wreaked devastation on all megafauna tens of thousands of years before we invented gunpower or even metalworking. They reliably took down elephants and mammoths with stone-tipped javelins, and only got more dangerous from there. The reality is that D&D actually nerfs humans, particularly human weaponry, far more than most realize.
So while I tend to rely on supernatural elements to create existential threats, I think OP's question changes depending on the context. There is a significant difference between reality vs. "real humans" as D&D characters without special abilities, and it's the latter that's far weaker.
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