this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2025
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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.