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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fenriswolf456" data-source="post: 5879290" data-attributes="member: 6687664">Because the situation is ridiculous? We're trying to discuss credible threats. He doesn't need to metagame, in-world knowledge tells him that 4 year olds aren't trained in fighting in any way, they have little strength and conditioning, have no tactics or strategy, and aren't even wielding threatening weapons. How can they be considered a threat?   Personally, I find this snatch/bite ability to be, on a believability scale, to be very lacking. Seriously. If nothing else, the snatched monk should be helpless and take crit damage from the ongoing bite and the breath weapon. He'll probably still live, because I find a lot of damage ratings on certain attacks to be out of whack with how they really should be, and are scaled so that everything is at the proper level of challenge. How does this get justified? Well, the same way we have the person who survives a fall from an airplane, or lives through an inferno. Luck, chance, fate, what-have-you. Really, once trapped in the bite, he really should be crunched in a round or two. But this isn't fun in a game sense, and so concessions are made to give characters a chance.   Because playing with experiences from the past isn't metagaming. And sure, PCs should have a very good knowledge of how bows and crossbows work, heck, someone in their party likely uses one. And they've seen their pal shoot some poor mook through the neck, killing him instantly. At low levels, this really should be a "holy f*&^" moment. The realization that one arrow can kill. And the characters see this_all_ the time. It should be all but ingrained in their heads that arrows = danger. Sure, they survived encounter after encounter, taking arrows to the arms (or dare I say knee?), and lived. But the character should never feel that an arrow is never dangerous to them (unless of course it really wouldn't, like having damage resistance or high level magical protection). They've spent months, even years, seeing the plain evidence that arrows fired by trained marksmen are indeed dangerous (notice also we're talking trained guardsmen here, not as some are suggesting peasants with no training, or 4 year old children, but credible threats). So when the PCs come up to that town with a dozen bowman on the walls with nocked arrows, shouldn't the characters (not players, the characters) at least give pause to the potential threat?  No, but giants are huge. I totally buy into them having a ton of HP to absorb damage. A giant twice as big as a human has 8 times the mass. Eventually, yeah, even a giant could be brought down by a troop of militia, but likely the giant will have rampaged through them and sent them scattering before them. Hence the heroes arriving on the scene, and through their dogged determination, beat back the giant and save the day. As for manticores, sure, a bunch of them attacking a town should win. They're injuring and killing multiple guards a turn, probably routing them in short order, though likely losing a couple of their own. But individually, no, I don't think they should be immune to guards. There's nothing overly special about them (beyond flying and the spikes). Should the town guard be overrun by a pride of lions, say?   Really? You find it unbelievable that 50 trained men could kill a giant, or even a flying man-headed lion? If this isn't the case, how the heck are there even towns and cities with the humungous number of monstrous threats in the world? Again, I'm not suggesting that 12 guardsmen should be the ultimate hero killers. When and if the gauntlet drops, I fully expect the PCs to win the day. I'd just prefer it to not be from the thinking that beause they have so much HP, that there isn't a threat.   Again, really, this could be argued back and forth, as it depends on the rules being used, and the preferences of the gaming group. I passed on 3E, it just wasn't my cup of tea at the time, and couldn't get the enthusiasm to try when 3.5 was developed. I eventually played in some 4E Encounters, which turned out to be fun enough to continue playing in actual games. I could just as easily say that the troll faced in Moria was a Fell Troll (level 20 elite) over a regular troll (level 9). The only dragons left in the world seem to be ancient wyrms, so they're epic enemies. The Kraken? They fought enough to free the hobbits, and sure, they ran. It was a humungous threat to them, and it's not like they had to fight it to continue on their quest. And, in the movie at least, it was the dragging over the cliff that took Aragorn out of the warg fight. I really don't buy into a character who's been adventuring for around 50 years to have gained only 4 or 5 levels (even giving a span of 1-20, leaving out the epic tier). Now if you're only playing heroic tier, or this E6 variant, I could probably agree.  Sure, once the fight starts, and the character starts using his abilities and battle knowledge, then all the rules for combat and fighting come rushing in, and it makes 'sense' for such a skilled character to avoid blows and dodge arrows and massacre a dozen or even a dozen dozen foes. And this is D&D's strength, to make encounter combats interesting and exciting, where all kinds of factors influence the coarse of battle. Where it has always been weak is in the extremes. There's really no way to emulate a sucking chest wound in D&D (well, perhaps as high damage and on-going Stun), or getting an arrow to the face. Even the coup de grace rules are lacking in believability. Partly this is due to it being a game, and we play games for fun. It's not so much fun when your character gets ganked and killed in one hit, so the game makes concessions in believability in favour of increasing the fun-factor. The Troy Achlles is rather a special case. The character and fight scenes were designed to give a 'believable' reason for the legend of Achilles' invulnerability, without actually bringing in the supernatural to explain it. So he becomes so skilled that he's never hit, and as word gets around about his legendary ability to not be wounded, why, he must have been invulnerable to mortal weapons! But I could concede the point, that if a character is so skilled that he never gets hit, even by high level threats (such as Hector), then I could buy into them not being threatened by a bunch of mooks with bows. I doubt, however, that any PC could say they've never been hit over the span of a dozen or two levels. And yes, I will also concede that a character of such a level that can take on a dozen lvl 27 elites readily by themselves, they are likely beyond being concerned over a few mundane bows pointed at them.  Well, you sort of hit things on the nail for me with some of what you've said. What makes a hero a hero is their ability to accept the dangers in front of them, and to push on regardless. What makes the common folk quail with fear, the hero stands firm against. But they do so knowing the danger, and doing it anyway. That's why the two dozen city guard fail, because they likely don't have the experience to face down a flight of manticore diving out of the sky at them, hailing down a rain of spikes. And oh god Guardsman Jacen just took a spike through the eye and crumpled to the ground what are these monsters they are everywhere got to get away! I suppose a lot of it comes down to roleplay too, on both the players' and DM's part. It's difficult to hide the mechanics of the game, especially in the later editions where we're constantly adding up bonuses and modifiers and crunching math. Most of my D&D years were spent with Advanced and 2E, and though we got to high levels, we never felt that we were demigods beyond the mortal ken. We had flashier weapons and armour, but we still felt mortal and vulnerable. I'm not saying we couldn't have eventually taken on gods (well, statted ones that are really just high level monsters), but more that it didn't occur to us, as we usually portrayed gods as statless surpreme beings. I've yet to play in the epic tier of 4E, so not sure how that feels compared to past experience. So all my experience and enjoyment of D&D has been grounded with a sense of believability and character mortality, and would like for that feeling to be incorporated in some way in 5E.</blockquote>

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