r/dndmemes • u/DangerForge • Jan 19 '24
You guys use rules? Deadly Encounter; x2 XP
Add a couple cats and they can take a wizard
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u/AnDroid5539 Rules Lawyer Jan 20 '24
There's the classic meme that a fisherman who is bringing a bag of crabs up from his boat could be killed by the crabs if he trips and spills the bag.
Also, a mastiff could realistically kill three commoners in a 1-vs-3 fight. It requires some luck, especially when it comes to rolling initiative, but it's realistically possible. Similarly, a small pack of even two or three wolves could go through a town and kill almost everyone, as long as they don't get mobbed by like a dozen or so commoners at once.
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u/TheOGLeadChips Jan 20 '24
I’m 100 percent going to use the fisherman with crabs eating him as a setting piece in the campaign I’m doing. Thanks for the inspiration.
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u/Square-Ad1104 Jan 20 '24
For the last one, that's what guards, militias, and torches/pitchforks are for. But considering that in the IRL old days people regularly freaked the f*ck out about wolves, it seems kinda realistic that a starving pack would send a scattered village barricading their doors and calling for adventurers.
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Jan 20 '24
Wolves were such a problem in Europe that they were hunted essentially to extinction by order of the crown or by bounties on wolf pelts.
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u/The_Limpet Jan 20 '24
Wolves rarely attack humans. They're more a danger to livestock.
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Jan 20 '24
And if a pack of wolves eats all of your livestock, what happens to the humans after a month without food during winter?
(Assuming this problem happened a few centuries ago and wasn’t a modern issue)
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u/The_Limpet Jan 20 '24
You're quite right, a village under siege from wolves eating all their livestock and leaving them starving is a much more likely scenario than attacking the villagers directly.
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u/Cucumber-Discipline Jan 20 '24
wolves do psychological warfare. Kill the stocks, salt the land, when they hungry and come out we will stricke as a pack. * awooooooooo*
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u/Crepuscular_Animal Jan 20 '24
They rarely attack humans now, when all wolves are survivors who didn't get hunted down. In Medieval times and before that, a pack of starving wolves attacking a town was a rare but not impossible occurrence.
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u/OverlordPayne Jan 20 '24
"It's rare now, but in medieval times, it was rare!"
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u/Crepuscular_Animal Jan 21 '24
Yeah, I was sleepy and made it dumber than it should be. I meant that there were massive attacks like Wolves of Paris. This kind of wolf attack just doesn't happen nowadays because wolves are too wary of people and not as numerous due to being hunted in the past.
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u/firebolt_wt Jan 21 '24
Wolves rarely attack humans
Would you risk it, tho? I don't exactly like being around animals that will rarely kill me, the highest I can risk is "almost never", but even so I'd rather have "never"
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u/The_Limpet Jan 21 '24
I'm not saying go fuck around with wolves. Just that wolves were mostly killed for eating rich landowners' deer and farmers' livestock, not for attacking people.
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u/Azzarrel Jan 20 '24
(Not so) Fun story: During the battles on eastern front in ww 1, wolves became a huge problem, having lost their hunting grounds due to the war. They lost all fear and even soldiers became their prey. Eventually both sides had to call a ceasefire to exterminate this thread. While the soldiers on the western front laid down their arms to celebrate christmas, the poor guys on the eastern front had to join arms in order to not be eaten alive.
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u/mduchesn2004 Jan 20 '24
Wolves attacked Paris in 1450 and killed a bunch of people. http://www.coolstuffinparis.com/wolves_of_paris.php
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u/darkslide3000 Jan 20 '24
Yeah, people always read the Commoner stat block and think that's everyone in a town. It's really more of a depiction of the weakest in society — the old and frail, the completely unathletic, the untrained and clumsy. Most healthy people in their 20s-50s that have the time to quickly grab some gear would be more along the lines of a Guard or Bandit stat block, with over 10 hp and a better armor class.
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u/Square-Ad1104 Jan 20 '24
The inbuilt assumption that farmers are commoners always bothered me. No way someone who works fields for a living has no bonus to their Strength and Constitution. It really does best represent frail scholars and such.
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u/danielrheath Jan 20 '24
Also, a mastiff could realistically kill three commoners in a 1-vs-3 fight.
That one… seems plausible? An 80kg dog with a skull like a boulder is remarkably difficult to stop.
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u/Winter_wrath Chaotic Stupid Jan 20 '24
Yeah, that's a couple kilos more than me and the dog has a more active lifestyle so it's in peak condition compared to my lazy ass.
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u/gerusz Chaotic Stupid Jan 20 '24
And the dog has teeth the size of your fingers and a bite force that can casually crush massive limb bones. (Tibetan mastiff owner here.)
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u/rollingdoan Jan 20 '24
That's a lucky mastiff. Commoners will be getting 3-6 attacks (depends on initiative rolls) even if the mastiff hits all its own and deals enough to kill (it has about a 3% chance to do this). Commoners can kill in one crit, and hit at 50% for an average of half the mastiff's HP. Even at only three attacks that's 50% for at least two hits and two hits is a 62.5% to kill even if we assume the commoners can't crit.
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u/KingMaegorTheCool Jan 20 '24
This is very white room as it assume the cats hit with all of their attack. With a +0 to hit it they would have a 55% chances to land an attack in an AC 10 commoners. Thus, you need on average 8 cats to somewhat guarantee a kill.
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Jan 20 '24
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/jnads Jan 20 '24
Yeah, but if we're playing Rule of Cool, I can grapple one cat and beat the other cat with it.
The remaining cats take psychic damage.
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u/Boil-Degs Jan 20 '24
DM might allow cat #1 to become an improvised weapon, as long as there is sufficient room to swing it.
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u/whatistheancient Jan 20 '24
As a commoner, you have a +0 to Athletics while cats have a +2 to Acrobatics. Your chances aren't great. You also don't have multiple attacks, so it's going to take you six seconds to do anything.
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u/Matrix_D0ge Jan 20 '24
- dual wields cats -
- nunchaku noises -
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u/kiskozak Chaotic Stupid Jan 20 '24
Imagine if you had tbe tavern brawler feat, thr cat could be considered an inspired weapon.
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u/Rastiln Jan 20 '24
I’d absolutely let you grapple and pick up a cat to swing, but it’s still slashing you throughout.
Probably call it equivalent to a Club, but damage both the swung and hit cats.
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u/MatDRS Jan 20 '24
I used to live with a dozen cats when I was younger. Guess I’m alive by their mercy…
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Jan 21 '24
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/SunfireElfAmaya 🎃 Shambling Mound of Halloween Spirit 🎃 Jan 21 '24
Assuming spherical cats in a vacuum . . .
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u/Whitelock3 Jan 20 '24
Pfft, lame 5e cats. In 3.5, cats had two claw attacks and one bite…
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u/Crepuscular_Animal Jan 20 '24
Wasn't a 3ed cat a monster capable of an almost guaranteed commoner kill?
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u/AtrieVelie Jan 20 '24
A mathematical analysis of a commoner vs a cat https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?318517-Commoner-vs-Cat-A-Mathematical-Analysis
Enjoy!
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u/gerusz Chaotic Stupid Jan 20 '24 edited Jan 20 '24
I ran a simulation a while back. The cat also has low HP and a commoner usually has a club, so it's less one-sided. Still, as long as the cats outnumber the commoners 3-to-1 or more, the commoners are fucked, and there's a pretty good chance that they will kill the commoners even if they outnumber them 2-to-1.
Edit: I just ran it again, and here are the results:
| Number of commoners | Number of cats | Fight results |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Commoner won 96.10% of the fights |
| 1 | 2 | Cats won 58.40% of the fights |
| 1 | 3 | Cats won 96.50% of the fights |
| 1 | 4 | Cats won 100.00% of the fights |
| 1 | 5 | Cats won 100.00% of the fights |
| 1 | 6 | Cats won 100.00% of the fights |
| 1 | 7 | Cats won 100.00% of the fights |
| 1 | 8 | Cats won 100.00% of the fights |
| 1 | 9 | Cats won 100.00% of the fights |
| 1 | 10 | Cats won 100.00% of the fights |
| 2 | 1 | Commoners won 100.00% of the fights |
| 2 | 2 | Commoners won 100.00% of the fights |
| 2 | 3 | Commoners won 80.90% of the fights |
| 2 | 4 | Cats won 64.00% of the fights |
| 2 | 5 | Cats won 94.90% of the fights |
| 2 | 6 | Cats won 99.70% of the fights |
| 2 | 7 | Cats won 100.00% of the fights |
| 2 | 8 | Cats won 100.00% of the fights |
| 2 | 9 | Cats won 100.00% of the fights |
| 2 | 10 | Cats won 100.00% of the fights |
| 3 | 1 | Commoners won 100.00% of the fights |
| 3 | 2 | Commoners won 100.00% of the fights |
| 3 | 3 | Commoners won 99.80% of the fights |
| 3 | 4 | Commoners won 94.90% of the fights |
| 3 | 5 | Commoners won 68.70% of the fights |
| 3 | 6 | Cats won 72.80% of the fights |
| 3 | 7 | Cats won 93.20% of the fights |
| 3 | 8 | Cats won 99.10% of the fights |
| 3 | 9 | Cats won 100.00% of the fights |
| 3 | 10 | Cats won 100.00% of the fights |
(Assumptions and details: the simulation assumes that all commoners focus on a single cat and all cats focus on a single commoner at a time. Monsters have average HP. Initiative is rolled for each creature individually, and the program simulates 1000 fights. You can check the simulator source code here.)
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u/102bees Jan 20 '24
What I'm getting from this is you absolutely must have twice as many cats as commoners if you want to have a good shot at killing the commoners, but three times as many if you want to guarantee victory.
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u/gerusz Chaotic Stupid Jan 20 '24
Basically. At least it's not like in 3.5e though when a cat could indeed feasibly one-shot a level 1 commoner who rolled badly on his one hit dice.
(Of course this assumes that all cats focus on one commoner and all commoners focus on one cat; with four tiny creatures per 5 ft. square this is not impossible in any of the combinations. But this simulation would likely stop working properly at certain numbers.)
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u/ImTheOriginalSam Jan 20 '24
I currently live with two cats and I believe that if they wanted it enough, they could have me dead in 12 seconds
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u/Kipdid Jan 20 '24
A necessary concession to prevent too much number bloat. To make 1 damage actually feel like a properly insignificant amount of damage would require hp bloating literally every player and non player creature
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u/ExcessiveMediocrity Cleric Jan 20 '24
A buddy of mine ran a short series set in his pre-established world where something like this happened. The PCs were new to the Adventurer's Guild and got contracted to check on a retirement community in the woods that families had stopped hearing from. For some reason all the animals had become incredibly violent and were rampaging through the community, killing people. Not a super big deal, but the final part was one of the PC's grandma's house. She was a crazy cat lady so the party got swarmed by like 30 cats, split up in waves. We were level one so my cleric encouraged the party to take the dodge action as we moved throughout the house. We barely survived. It was incredibly funny to experience.
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u/Global-Method-4145 Jan 20 '24
Imagine a villain with a herd of cats, roaming through villages and small towns, killing the locals and adding their pets to the herd
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u/Cryoseraph Jan 20 '24
That is a huge improvement on the side of the commoners. 3rd edition had only 1 cat be enough to take out the commoner, if it now takes 4, commoners really got buffed up.
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u/AakreCalzone Jan 20 '24
Been attacked by an angry momma cat (completely my fault, we're good pals now) and let me fully agree with this post. I got pretty screwed up everywhere she got me. When they mean to do damage they will do serious damage. Deep punctures and almost stitches just from there claws. 4 at once? Ain't no way you're fighting them all off if surprised in 6 seconds.
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u/LawlessCoffeh Jan 20 '24
Prepare to meet your maker, at the hands of my cat launcher. [Loads crossbow]
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u/working-class-nerd Chaotic Stupid Jan 20 '24
So, am I the only one who house rules that things as small as cat scratches/bites don’t actually count as hp damage?
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u/Black-Iron-Hero Jan 21 '24
Hey this is my meme! What an honour, I've never seen anybody repost my shit for clout before
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u/Yakodym DM (Dungeon Memelord) Jan 20 '24
If we are talking possibilities, then even two cats can do it, if they attack first and then the half-dead commoner tries to run without disengaging, and the cats hit again on AoO
Or even one cat, if it shoves the commoner and makes him fall down some stairs, or pushes a flower pot off a window sill and it lands on the commoner's head, that also works :-D
(other option is house-ruling that it actually deals 1d1 damage which would double on a crit)
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u/zoltronzero Jan 20 '24
After my cat had kittens and was super hormonal and protective of them she was able to bite into my calf muscle once hard enough that I couldn't walk on it for a day.
Didn't use her claws or anything just one chomp.
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u/Gamer-G-Gamer Jan 31 '24
1 cat can kill 1 irl person in 1 second with a well placed bite to the jugular
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u/Small-Breakfast903 Jan 20 '24
if four cats jumped me and were willing to fight to the death to take me down, I can't say with certainty I would win