>AHAHAHAHHAHAHA KNOWING WHAT A BEAR IS IS A DC15 NATURE CHECK
>BEAR LORE BEAR LORE BEAR LORE, QUICK SOMEBODY UPDATE THE /TG/ MEME WIKI
Why is it so unbelievable that uneducated adventurers from fantasy Europe doesn't know dangerous animals?
>AHAHAHAHHAHAHA KNOWING WHAT A BEAR IS IS A DC15 NATURE CHECK
Sorry he's an autist who put all his points into Knowledge (Goblins)
It makes sense considering Elephants live nowhere near where he's spent his entire life. No excuse for not knowing what an owlbear is when they live a few hours away from his home, though.
you should expect people to know enough about the wildlife they grew up around to have a rough perspective on how tough they are. Only excuse to not have any clue whether you can take on a bear is if your character would have never heard of bears or grew up so distant from nature they have no real clue how anything in it is supposed to work.
28% of Americans don't think they could beat a rat.
That's worse than the 6% that think they could beat a grizzly.
Ayo those NY rats do be built different thou
>28% of Americans don't think they could beat a rat.
50% of Americans (give or take) are women, some women would straight up refuse to touch vermin.
Then there's very young (say under 3 years of age), very old, disabled (blind and such), and some morbidly obese immobile without assistence - all those are incapable of fighting anything. Don't have the exact numbers on those groups but it adds up.
See
. For the purposes of this poll, declining to fight isn't an option. You beat the animal or you're dead. If you really need more motivation for women, assume they're protecting their child.
Wheelchair guys are still fricked, though.
>If you really need more motivation for women, assume they're protecting their child.
Average american woman would just throw the child to distract the animal so that she can secure her own escape.
if i had a long stick or a thick jacket/gloves or a big metal belt buckle i could but unarmed I'd probably be too worried about getting bitten and catching something and run instead
so I would say no if prompted with that question.
If I were asked if I could beat a rat in a fight, I'd probably answer "no" because rats are small and fast and adept at scurrying into tiny holes; it's not that the feel a rat could defeat me but that it would escape, thus I could not strictly defeat it. How questions are worded or are understood has an insanely large effect on responses, so it's always a good idea to look at them critically.
There's also the issue of lack of nuance in response options. "No I couldn't beat it, it'd escape first" and "No I couldn't beat it, it's a goddamn bear" are both stripped down to a simple "no" because the poll only has a simplistic binary choice.
I think you need to assume the animal is hostile and down to fight to the death for any consistency. Since there is a lot of variation in how these animals or even individual animals behave. Many of the scarier animals on the list are actually somewhat likely to run away from a threatening display nevermind an attack in many circumstances. But if they really want to kill you they can you up. To use the bear example, if we were going to say that an escape doesn't count as a won for the animal to address the rat issue, you could potentially "defeat" the bear just by scaring it away with noise, making yourself appear larger, etc. In that regard people "beat" bears fairly often. I've even beaten bears before by that criteria. But if we are establishing that this is a straight up deathmatch between you and an animal who's down to rumble, you can more fairly assess combat strength.
You know what? I don't think you could beat a rat in a fight.
First off, let's be clear, the rat is going to run away unless there's something wrong with that rat. Thankfully, can't be rabies (unless it's a new strain at which point get fricked) but there could be something else fricked up about it.
If the rat gets away, that's not a win for you. The rat got what it wanted - to not get murdered by you.
And yeah, if you got your hands on a rat you're probably going to win. There's a non-zero chance the rat could kill you but not a serious threat.However, once again, we address something. The rat is going to fight to escape. It's going to claw and bite at you in order to get out of your grip. And once it's done that, bam, it runs and the rat wins because the rat's goal in the fight is to get away from you.
Or, you know, you could just assume that running means the OTHER side wins. Since this is obviously the intent behind the question. You outside-the-box thinkers aren't as smart you think you are.
Giving my personal performance on this list, assuming I'm dressed for a normal day at work, where I'm either wearing blundstones (summer) or kamiks (winter)
>rat
The hardest part is actually landing the stomp that is going to paste it. Rodent bites suck, but they're superficial at best.
>housecat
Also, stomp it to death. May incur scratches bad enough to require some stitches.
>Goose
Also stomp it to death. Unlikely to sustain injuries (inb4 cringe reddit memes about geese being the spawn of Satan- they're aggressive but 99% of it is mock charges)
>Medium sized dog
We are reaching the threshold of stuff you can't easily stomp to death. Depends on what you consider medium. I'm coming out of this either stomping it to death after disabling it with a kick to the head, or I'm just gonna grapple it and break its neck. I'm gonna need stitches from the bites, but I'll survive.
>eagle
Its bones are made of cardboard. Easy to crush, but I'm also sustaining lacerations, maybe losing an eye or suffering permanent facial disfigurement
>Large dog
Now we get to the hard ones. 50/50, either I break its neck or it crushes mine in its mouth (I'm assuming something like an English mastiff)
>chimpanzee
I die as a mutilated, genital-less mass of flayed Hamburger meat
>king cobra
Stomp it to death, die of cardiac/respiratory failure minutes later
>kangaroo
I either break its neck or get disembowelled with a kick, assuming a male red
>wolf
See Large Dog
>crocodile
I get deathroll'd and drown
>gorilla
It breaks my neck and then runs like he'll
>elephant
Now I'm the one who gets stomped to death (I've also heard they will kneel on you and grind you into the ground with their forehead)
>lion
It's an honour to be your dinner, sir
>grizzly bear
Timothy Treadwell was an enormous closeted homosexual narcissist, and unfortunately I'm gonna die just like him
That's all assuming you have the determination to actually fight them no matter what. Most people will start freaking out the moment they get scratched.
>goose reddit meme
They have broken people's arms with their wing flaps.
>medium-sized dog
Those are an official classification from roughly 35 to 65 lbs animals and include breeds like pitbulls.
I'm assuming we are in thunderdome, and it's killed or be killed, so I'm finishing the job one way or another. The Goose meme is just that, a meme. If you can provide me with a documented instance of an adult man having a longbone broken by a canada Goose, I will concede a higher threat level from the animal, but still say with confidence it's going to get stomped to death.
>Medium sized dog
The 35lb beagle loses, the 65lb pit has a better chance but still is getting stomped.
>he 65lb pit has a better chance but still is getting stomped
lol
lmao
Troonime poster perceives the world as a series of memes, many such cases
sized dog
>The 35lb beagle loses, the 65lb pit has a better chance but still is getting stomped.
You have never seen a combat breed fight.
Pray you never will.
>The 35lb beagle loses, the 65lb pit has a better chance but still is getting stomped.
Neither is really a threat to an adult human solo. You pretty much need your weight in medium and large dogs and wolves to threaten a human.
Most dog attack deaths involve 3+ medium or large dogs and wolf attacks are similiar.
I have and most true combat breeds are are not effective against adult humans solo. Most dog fights are between dogs of similar weights and most attack and guard dogs are trained to fight with one or more partners.
>Neither is really a threat to an adult human solo. You pretty much need your weight in medium and large dogs and wolves to threaten a human.
You fricking moron. I actually hope you die in a dog attack.
>Most dog fights are between dogs of similar weights
That's not a combat breed you moron that's a fighting breed. Combat breeds are specifically selected because their inborn reflexes works well against humans and can be developed. And no weight advantage means frick all to a well trained combat dog, the momentum he has is more than enough to literally judo-fight flip you on the run. Its insane how fricking agile these frickers are in the air.
>Most dog attack deaths involve 3+ medium or large dogs and wolf attacks are similiar.
yeah because they won't attack a grown human one on one. Rest assured though that if they did, (you) would not stand much of a chance against a murderous pitbull.
>They have broken people's arms with their wing flaps.
I thought those were swans, who have aggressiveness of a goose, but can actually back it up
I was assaulted by swan as kid. Lucky me he was just scaring me away from the nest, so just charged, knocked me down and fricked off.
>housecat
>Also, stomp it to death. May incur scratches bad enough to require some stitches.
People underestimate housecats... But recently there was on in Florida that put like 4 people in the hospital ER.
They can kill, anon.
>Blunnys
Those are just chinkshit now m8
I decided to give them a shot because I got a $150 voucher from work for new boots, and I've always done lace-ups. The pair of lace ups by Caterpillar that the random good Ole boy in the aisle swore up and down would last me 5 years only made it through two summers (not even 2 years, 2 summers). They're doing okay. I miss the ankle support but the foot bed is comfy and the leather is good quality. I'll probably go for anither pair that laces fairly high when the blundstones inevitably go though.
There are 2 claimed case of men killing a grizzly bear that I know of, one was a russian and there was almost no info online on it last time I checked, so I assume its fake. The other one was in the US and the claim was authenticated by a some zoologist or whatever, we still have the bear's bones exposed in some memorial to the event.
Incidentally we also know humans *can* beat lions unarmed, it happens once every other decade, there was some african dude who killed one about 2~3 years ago, got away with his arm broken and torn up and a few good scratches but he did kill the cat. The cat itself was still immature but he wasn't small either.
In all cases it seemed that strangling the animal was key to winning. The american vs grizzly supposedly choked the bear by biting in its neck and not letting go for a minute or so and the bear passed out, at which point he brained it with a stone. In the case of smaller big cats and larger dogs I've heard that even feeding them your arm or fist and then just pushing as hard as you can while holding on their neck for dear God is the way to go.
> Eagle
Depends entirely on what kind of eagle, and who gets the first shot. Thing is you probably don't know its coming until its on your ass. A harpy eagle can VERY easily drive its claws a few inches into your skull, and a slice at your neck and you are dead. But it can't take a hit, and if you see it coming and can grab a long stick you might be able to keep it at large just with that.
But they don't see humans as something to interact with in 99.999% of cases so we will never know.
Dude, an eagle isn't puncturing a human skull with its talons.
Fracturing a skull requires about 15 pounds of pressure.
Crushing a skull takes a bit under 200.
An harpy eagle's claw clocks at ~700.
Yes it is.
People have been skullpierced by fricking owls.
No brother, no way raven has a claw that's longer than wolfs, what the frick?
have you ever seen a raven?
They are huge
also a wolf's main weapons are its teeth, not its claws
Wolf claws are not that sharp, I don't see where you are getting that from. And very obviously they don't need them to be sharp because a wolf's jaw is about as deadly a natural weapon you can get.
And while birds almost never have the size and impulses to threaten humans, you have to be one of the biggest fricking fool not to realize the predators amongst them are fricking optimized as hell as far as killing machines go.
Imagine the mindset of something that has a single large fricking claw for a mouth. You see something to frick up and your first instinct is to dive headfirst into it to rip and tear.
But the connection, curve and mobility of the claw counts for a lot too so despite looking a lot less scary than an eagle's, all feline claws are better, perhaps even better than bears. I've watched a jaguar handler get the top of its skull removed like you do a boiled egg with a spoon, cleaner cut than any weeb samurai sword could have accomplished (handler kinda deserved it tbh he was whipping the cat with a chain while standing 2 feet from it like a fricking moron).
Is this a question of whether winning is even conceivable, or whether winning is a likely outcome?
Because those are two very different questions.
My chances against a wolf, chimp, lion, or crocodile aren't very good, but they're not zero either.
People massively underestimate chimps and vastly overestimate wolfs. Especially compared to dogs
>win a fight with a grizzly
Psychopaths and serial fibbers lying because they assume that's what people want to hear.
>win a fight with chimpanzee
You'd literally have to be on speed to fight a chimp, those frickers are ripped and they have greater proportional strength.
>lose a fight to a goose
Just punt that shitter.
>lose a fight to a rat
Literally how? If the rat flees and hasn't bitten off finger, you win by default. Throw it on the ground and stomp.
If you want the actual answer, it's because the 4e page going over bears where the DC 15 check comes from is a page about Cave Bears and Dire Bears. Presumably knowledge about more standard bears might be somewhat more common knowledge, but the page itself is about weirder monstrous bears.
In a fantasy world where there are hundreds of different monsters on top of the already normal dangerous wildlife though, there is a lot more for even a seasoned adventurer to keep track of.
A knowledge check to know if you're looking at a black bear, brown bear, polar bear, cave bear, dire bear, werebear, bugbear, owlbear, on top of any other distinctions or variants like half-dragon bears, zombie bears, awakened bears, and so on would be a lot to know the potential distinctions between. Especially if you're trying to quickly identify what just charged at you from behind some rocks.
>Why is it so unbelievable that uneducated adventurers from fantasy Europe doesn't know dangerous animals?
it's not, you're literally making up this problem just to post that image.
>Why is it so unbelievable that uneducated adventurers from fantasy Europe doesn't know dangerous animals?
Because "uneducated" people know more about the real world than """Intellectuals""" and this has been true for literally all of history. Touch grass.
Canadian here. You'd be amazed how many people here think every bear is a grizzly bear, or have mistaken black bear antics for dogs, or have called black bears they saw (from not too far a distance) timber wolves (which don't even live anywhere in the region we're at), to thinking polar bears are grizzly bears that migrate north, etc. And this is all in the age of mass media and public education. Unless the adventurer is seasoned or a woodsman, it's likely they won't know shit about wildlife at first. A roman Legionnaire from southern Italy might have seen some animals at the circus, but he's not going to know shit about them when he first arrives in Spain, or Africa, or Germany.
They know what a bear is, the problem in fantasy is: is it really a bear?
I think it's fine. 'Bear' isn't even the original name. There was a myth that saying its true name would summon one so everyone started using 'bear' as a slang name for it. Information wasn't freely accessible until modern times, so characters in medieval settings should require special training for anything beyond eating and shitting
Are you moronic? They may not recognize a tiger or elephant, but they would 100% know what the frick a bear is.
Even a feral troglodyte hick would know what it was, he would probably just call it something fricking moronic, but in all ways in would just be Black person speak translated to “bear”