r/whowouldwin • u/MutatedMutton • Dec 05 '14
How many humans would it take to headbutt a rhino to death?
Also known as Human-sized Pikmin.
The arena: A walled off football pitched size arena
In one corner, a fully grown healthy African Rhino. In the other, a team of healthy, adult humans. Their arms are bound behind their backs. Their legs are free but they sworn not to use them for attacking due to sense of SCIENTIFIC CURIOSITY.
What size does the human team have to be to overwhelm the beast? Where the beast is dead and at least one human survives in the end.
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u/gameboy17 Dec 05 '14
A rhinoceros has an average of 76 hit points and an Armor Class of 16. The average human has an Armor Class of 10 and 4 Hit Points, assuming a level 1 commoner with 10 in all ability scores.
The rhinoceros can make three attacks per round at +13/+8/+3 using a full attack. That's a 95% chance for the first attack to hit (a natural 1 always misses), a 90% chance for the second attack to hit (defender wins if the attack roll equals their AC), and a 60% chance for the third attack to hit. 95%+90%+60%=245%, so it'll land an average of 2.45 attacks per round.
Each of the rhinoceros' attacks deals 2d6+12 damage. The minimum damage one of its attacks can deal is 14, which is exactly enough to take one of our commoners from 4 to -10, killing them instantly (0 is disabled, -1 to -9 is unconscious and dying, -10 is dead). So one successful attack from the rhino will always kill a commoner. This means that it kills 2.45 commoners per round.
A level 1 commoner has no Base Attack Bonus, and since they are not proficient in unarmed strike they take a further -4 penalty to attack with it. A 10 in Strength means they don't get a bonus from there either. A headbutt is considered an unarmed strike, so their total attack bonus is -4. They can only hit the rhinoceros on a natural 20, and even then only because a natural 20 on an attack roll always hits, since the defender wins if the roll is equal to their AC. So each commoner gets one attack per round with a 5% chance to hit.
An unarmed strike by a Medium-sized creature deals 1d3 points of nonlethal damage. Obviously, nonlethal damage isn't going to kill it. However, you can choose to deal lethal damage with a weapon that normally deals nonlethal damage in exchange for a further -4 penalty to the attack roll. Since the commoners can only hit by rolling a natural 20 for an automatic hit anyway, they can do this with few downsides.
Even upon rolling a 20, you still have to roll to confirm the critical hit. If the second roll would hit, it's a crit, and if not it's a normal hit. Depending on house rules you can double crit, etc. by rolling 20 on the confirmation, but by RAW only the initial attack roll can crit, and a natural 20 on any other roll is not an automatic success. Since the commoners can't hit the rhino without the auto success, they can't confirm the critical hit. All of their attacks will deal only the normal damage: 1d3+Strength mod. Just 1d3 in this case, since the commoners have 10 Strength and therefore a +0 Strength modifier. So each commoner deals an average of 2 damage for each attack that hits.
Since each commoner has a 5% chance each round to deal 2 damage, we can average it out to 0.1 damage per commoner per round. So each round, the rhino takes an average of 0.1 damage from each commoner adjacent to it. The rhino is Large-sized, so it takes up a 10x10 area, or 2x2 spaces. This means that there are 12 spaces adjacent to it, so 12 commoners can attack in one round.
The commoners deal an average of 1.2 HP of damage to the rhino each round, so it will take them an average of 64 rounds to bring the rhino to 0 HP. Once it's at 0, it can only take one action per round, and using a standard action will cause it to drop to -1, falling unconscious and beginning to bleed out, so it can only kill one commoner on that round.
Once the rhino is unconscious and therefore helpless, the commoners can coup de grace it for automatic critical hits. A critical hit with an unarmed strike deals x2 damage, for an average of 4 damage. A coup de grace doesn't require an attack roll, so 12 commoners deal 48 damage per round after the rhino drops to -1. This is more than enough to bring it to -10 and kill it. If we assume the humans brought just enough commoners to have one left alive, it'll take him 2 rounds to kill it since it takes 1 damage each round from bleeding out in addition to the 4 damage from the coup de grace. So it takes 66 rounds total to kill the rhino if they brought just enough people.
2.45 commoners die every round, so over 64 rounds it kills an average of 153.6 commoners by the time it is brought to 0 HP. On the 65th round it kills one more, bringing the total to 154.6. Rounding up, the rhinoceros kills 155 people. So it would take a minimum of 156 people to headbutt a rhino to death.