Adventurers are not stupid

[Arael666]

I'm looking for an article (well, I don't really remeber if it's an article or a post somewhere), in wich the author talked about adventurer being treated as "stupid". He disapproved of the basic assumptions people make about adventurers, that they don't know how to start a fire, dont know if water is good for drinking etc. I also remeber him ranting about DM's that leave everything to the d20 ( and I mean just the d20, not even a skill check or ability check): wanna skin that deer? roll a d20. you a got a 1? too bad, you lost your hand, and similar issues.

Anyway, does anyone know of the article I'm talking about? Would you be kind enough to post a a link?

[Aasimar]

I don't know the article, but I do agree with the gist of what you said.

People forget about taking 10 a lot.

Or GMs want there to be a bit of dramatic tension so they make people roll for these little things, hoping to put some stress on the players.

[nedz]

I tend to do these things a little to showcase characters who have Survival skills. After all a character who grew up in a city isn't going to know these things. The same goes for Wizards and Cloistered Clerics et al. It's not worth over-doing, and gets old fast, so it's best left for the party's first trip into the Wilderness.

[Arael666]

I tend to do these things a little to showcase characters who have Survival skills. After all a character who grew up in a city isn't going to know these things. The same goes for Wizards and Cloistered Clerics et al. It's not worth over-doing, and gets old fast, so it's best left for the party's first trip into the Wilderness.

One of the points of the article says that adventurers are not your average joe. They are not just some random guy who decided to go out in the wilds to play kill the goblins, adventurers are the best people you'll find, they are wit, strong and knowledgeable. Even at level 1, your "worst" adventurer would be miles away from the commom folk.

[P.F.]

I know some very intelligent people who would be totally incapable of skinning a deer. There's also socioeconomic distinctions; Sam the Slayer was miles beyond the common folk, yet he grew up as a noble who literally never had to make a fire for himself--the servants did that for him, every day.

As far as drinking water, there's not always an easy way to tell. A clear mountain brook might have the decaying caracss of a deer only a hundred yards upstream, polluting the water with microscopic pathogens and parasites. Plants and insects abound in certain natural springs of the American Southwest, but those springs are known to the locals to have high levels of arsenic and are deadly to humans. Only a prolonged observation will reveal that no mammals or birds will drink the waters there. Conversely, some springs smell so strongly of sulphur that no one in their right mind would assume one could drink the waters, but despite the smell the water is perfectly safe to drink, even in large quantities.

The adventurers may not be stupid, but they don't know everything.

Also, no luck on finding that article :smallannoyed:

[nedz]

I'm not sure I buy the Elite Adventurers line entirely, and I don't see why you should assume that they know all about everything. Characters with ranks in Survival will know how to start a camp fire, but some bookish type is unlikely to know that. It's something that they are likely to pick up quickly, but at level 1 — not so much.

[Arael666]

I'm not sure I buy the Elite Adventurers line entirely, and I don't see why you should assume that they know all about everything. Characters with ranks in Survival will know how to start a camp fire, but some bookish type is unlikely to know that. It's something that they are likely to pick up quickly, but at level 1 — not so much.

I'm not saying adventurers should know everything, while that is ridiculous, it's even more ridiculous assuming they know nothing.


I know some very intelligent people who would be totally incapable of skinning a deer. There's also socioeconomic distinctions; Sam the Slayer was miles beyond the common folk, yet he grew up as a noble who literally never had to make a fire for himself--the servants did that for him, every day.

As far as drinking water, there's not always an easy way to tell. A clear mountain brook might have the decaying caracss of a deer only a hundred yards upstream, polluting the water with microscopic pathogens and parasites. Plants and insects abound in certain natural springs of the American Southwest, but those springs are known to the locals to have high levels of arsenic and are deadly to humans. Only a prolonged observation will reveal that no mammals or birds will drink the waters there. Conversely, some springs smell so strongly of sulphur that no one in their right mind would assume one could drink the waters, but despite the smell the water is perfectly safe to drink, even in large quantities.

The adventurers may not be stupid, but they don't know everything.

Also, no luck on finding that article :smallannoyed:

Again, common knowlege for us is not the same thing as for characters in a game setting. While fairly intelligent people today may not even know how to peel a potato, for a character in a "medieval" setting it's pretty safe to assume that he knows how to use a knife.

But I'm not saying that every adventurer knows how to "skin a deer". Lets get your example, the noble would never know how to skin a deer, but he would have other types of knowledge, like basic combat tactics of armyes, politcs and other topics, but the DM would simply order "roll a d20 to see if you know that". My point is, any character should have "basic knowledge" of something, anything at all, and people assume they have NONE! That usually happens when it goes beyong what rules cover, and instead of houserulling that you could do a related skillcheck/ability check, people just assume the character is a complete and uther idiot, and any attemp he makes would yield random results, hence the "rolls a d20" mentality.

[stanprollyright]

I'm looking for an article (well, I don't really remeber if it's an article or a post somewhere), in wich the author talked about adventurer being treated as "stupid". He disapproved of the basic assumptions people make about adventurers, that they don't know how to start a fire, dont know if water is good for drinking etc. I also remeber him ranting about DM's that leave everything to the d20 ( and I mean just the d20, not even a skill check or ability check): wanna skin that deer? roll a d20. you a got a 1? too bad, you lost your hand, and similar issues.

Most of those things are part of "get along in the wild", which is a DC 10 Survival check. Survival can be used untrained. Taking 10 is a thing. Your author doesn't seem to know what he's talking about.

[Florian]

It rather seems like the falacity of using the D20 system as the basis for Sim Life, something that doesn't work out.

[nedz]

I'm not saying adventurers should know everything, while that is ridiculous, it's even more ridiculous assuming they know nothing.

I don't: I check their relevant skill.

[Daefos]

But I'm not saying that every adventurer knows how to "skin a deer". Lets get your example, the noble would never know how to skin a deer, but he would have other types of knowledge, like basic combat tactics of armyes, politcs and other topics, but the DM would simply order "roll a d20 to see if you know that". My point is, any character should have "basic knowledge" of something, anything at all, and people assume they have NONE! That usually happens when it goes beyong what rules cover, and instead of houserulling that you could do a related skillcheck/ability check, people just assume the character is a complete and uther idiot, and any attemp he makes would yield random results, hence the "rolls a d20" mentality.

What should he know then? Exactly what topics does this noble have "basic knowledge" of? Do we write up a list of everything our characters are passingly familiar with and bring it to the table? Or do we just decide as we go?

If your DM is telling your zero-ranks-in-Survival character to roll to make a fire, that is perfectly within his rights, just as it's well within yours to Take 10 on the check and automatically succeed. If you decide to roll and get a 1, then you have failed to make a fire (and also to find food, but whatever). It does not matter how simple or basic you think the knowledge is, if it is covered by the rules and you don't have the requisite skill ranks, then your character either doesn't know it, or they do understand the theory but can't make it work in practice. A wizard who casts Fireball all day can still fail his Spellcraft check to identify an enemy Fireball. He understands the magic just fine, he just missed some vital clue that would have let him do so. Back to the campfire example, if you roll a 3 on the Survival check then it doesn't necessarily mean your character doesn't know how to make a fire, it could just mean that for whatever reason he couldn't make a fire; maybe he couldn't find enough tinder, maybe the wood is damp and he can't overcome that, or maybe the fire just won't catch for reasons beyond his control. A character with a +7 or better Survival check could have taken that bad luck and still made it work, but your poor shmuck can't.

If it's explicitly part of the rules, then no, it doesn't matter how basic you think it is, you need to invest in it if you want to be good at it. If it doesn't fit into the rules (such as your example of a noble automatically knowing things about tactics), then it's into the realm of houseruling and backstory, and nothing you nor I or anyone can say here will really help anyone.

Addendum: Every Knowledge skill can used untrained if the DC is 10 or less. Every character without an intelligence penalty can Take 10 on a Knowledge check and make that DC. So yes, your character does have "basic knowledge" on a lot of topics. But that doesn't mean he can lead an army or survive in the wilderness.

[Telok]

The adventurers might not always be stupid but the players sometimes!

"We're half way throught he dungeon of the Kobold King and have routed his common guards! Let us camp in this dead end room for ten hours, those kobolds that escaped us won't cause any trouble and we'll be well rested to attack the elite guards on the next level!"

Oy!

[Templarkommando]

I would dare say that nearly everyone in a medieval society knows how to start a fire. They *might* not be as efficient as the most experienced wilderness survivalists, but we're not talking about a society where if you get cold or need to cook food you just go and turn on the heater or the oven. So, they might not be able to start a fire in the rain, but in normal conditions, they ought to be able to start a fire with the right materials. The way that you cook a meal is you start a fire and you roast meat, cook vegetables, or bake bread. Same thing goes for if you get cold. You start a fire and sleep on the rug or a mat next to the fireplace. You heat up some coals, put it in a metal box and put it underneath your blankets to keep you warm.

[Florian]

Besides what Templarkommando said, there is the basic assumption that even having one level in a PC class makes you a training professional who knows what he does and can survive on his own. There's no need to actually go to deep into it and relate everything a person could do to a skill and translate that to a skill check.

Else we could start checking use rope to properly bind ones shoes.

[nedz]

I would dare say that nearly everyone in a medieval society knows how to start a fire. They *might* not be as efficient as the most experienced wilderness survivalists, but we're not talking about a society where if you get cold or need to cook food you just go and turn on the heater or the oven. So, they might not be able to start a fire in the rain, but in normal conditions, they ought to be able to start a fire with the right materials. The way that you cook a meal is you start a fire and you roast meat, cook vegetables, or bake bread. Same thing goes for if you get cold. You start a fire and sleep on the rug or a mat next to the fireplace. You heat up some coals, put it in a metal box and put it underneath your blankets to keep you warm.

In their own hearth maybe, but out in the woods ?

Besides you only need one person in a household to be able to do this, so it might be someone else's job.

Survival is the skill you need.

[snowblizz]

I would dare say that nearly everyone in a medieval society knows how to start a fire. They *might* not be as efficient as the most experienced wilderness survivalists, but we're not talking about a society where if you get cold or need to cook food you just go and turn on the heater or the oven.
Long into the modern era starting a fire was such a non-trivial task that the preferred way of starting a fire was to make sure it never really went out. Properly packing away the embers in ash was an important task before bedtime.

[raygun goth]

Long into the modern era starting a fire was such a non-trivial task that the preferred way of starting a fire was to make sure it never really went out. Properly packing away the embers in ash was an important task before bedtime.

It was pretty trivial, it just wasted time - pretty much everyone in a household would know how to start a fire. Even so, keeping your embers going speaks rather highly of fire management skills in general (note: I've lived for a period of about two weeks like this, I do not recommend it).

Adventurers at base should be counted very much like modern survivalists or doomsday preppers. People with a smattering of skills that allow them to maintain clothing, basic health, and capable of avoiding most forms of starvation and thirst. Not saying this flies in every environment: swamps/marsh, subarctic conditions (including dry mountains), and deserts are places that are extremely difficult to handle, even for experts (and kind of in that order).

Anyway, as others have mentioned, this is totally what taking 10 is for.

[nedz]

Long into the modern era starting a fire was such a non-trivial task that the preferred way of starting a fire was to make sure it never really went out. Properly packing away the embers in ash was an important task before bedtime.

My parents had a coal fire until well into the 90's. The trick was to bank it up to keep it going all night so you could just poke it, empty the ash tray and add more fuel. Remaking it required a lot more work. My own success rate was about 50% and this was with a modern grate, matches and dry fuel. Out in the woods: well I have done it, but it's a lot harder and is in fact a very different skill.

[tadkins]

Worst case scenario, isn't that what Prestidigitation is for?

[Templarkommando]

In their own hearth maybe, but out in the woods ?

Besides you only need one person in a household to be able to do this, so it might be someone else's job.

Survival is the skill you need.

I think I have to disagree with you. Percussion firestarting is a period method from all the way back to the Iron Age and probably earlier. The coat of arms of the Kingdom of Serbia features 4 fire steels. The Otzi man from around 3300 B.C.E. had a somewhat complex firestarting kit. Flint and steel is a relatively cheap item in the PHB (1 gp). This might be a little bit expensive for a character that makes 1 sp per day, but you could probably expect most households to have at least one in varying states of repair. If this reality isn't accepted, we suddenly have the absurd notion that a character that's good enough to have several ranks in survival has to wonder around town and start fires for everyone.

As a DM, I would allow PCs to start a fire under the following circumstances without a check:

- Relatively dry wood, and firestarting material is available in an adequate quanitity
- At least one flint and steel is available amongst interested parties trying to start the fire
- Flat ground is available
- No precipitation

I would require a check under the following situations among others:

-It is raining/snowing currently, or it has rained recently
-We are in an environment where firestarting materials are not readily available i.e. a Tundra, Glacier, Ocean, Desert, or some similar place
-The fire needs to be started quickly for some reason. For example: there is only a short time period available before darkness, the party needs a fire to scare off wild animals.
-The character has a background in which they have never been required to start a fire - a noble of some sort, or a wealthy person with servants, possibly a young child.
-High winds
-On the edge of a cliff, or climbing a mountain

[nedz]

There's more to starting a fire than producing a spark. The way you build a fire on an indoor hearth is quite different to how you do it outdoors. It's quite easy to build a fire, light it, and then watch it go out because you didn't build it properly.

[Templarkommando]

There's more to starting a fire than producing a spark. The way you build a fire on an indoor hearth is quite different to how you do it outdoors. It's quite easy to build a fire, light it, and then watch it go out because you didn't build it properly.

I have actually built a fire outdoors using nothing more than a flint striker(not a lighter mind you, just a knife and a flint), dry grass, some small twigs, some bigger sticks, and a few logs. It's not that hard. I personally don't see any big reason why a person in a medieval society should have any major difficulties building a fire - even outdoors - especially if they're accustomed to building them on a regular basis. It's also not very hard to place a grate over said fire and then grill hotdogs, or whatever kind of meat you want to cook. It should be fairly easy for anyone who's done it say... five times to build one without a lot of difficulty. If someone was making a fire using the drill method, that might require a check, but as long as you have the appropriate materials and somewhat normal conditions, it shouldn't present much of a challenge.

[nedz]

It's not that hard — hence the low DC on the survival check.

[Platymus Pus]

Even peasants and the despondent should know how to start fires.

[TheMiningDwarf]

Isn't that why the check to make fire is only a 10 DC so the player can take 10 on it? Or did we descend into arguing about semantics already?

[Tvtyrant]

It's already an autopass except in difficult conditions (ie rainstorms) so I don't see what the problem is. An untrained DC 10 means anyone with a neutral or positive associated stat auto succeeds 100% of the time.

[P.F.]

Starting a fire with ample tinder, dry kindling, and a striker is pretty trivial. Using actual flint and steel is substantially more challenging. The nontrivial component usually ends up being the tinder, which must have much smaller fibers and be more densely packed than dry grass, although, if the grass is dry enough it can be rolled between the hands to break up the stems into smaller fibers and create a substrate capable of catching a spark. Dryer lint is a popular modern material; in older times the making of spark-catching tinder was a process that involved charring linen fluff in the absence of oxygen or drying and pounding certain kinds of mushrooms; at later times gunpowder was used as well.

Of course without a good sparking stone and fire steel, the ever-popular rubbing two sticks together method will still serve; this process is sufficiently involved that some cultures would rather carry hot coals in a small tube than hav e to start a fire anew.

In settled life, it was often enough trouble to get a fire started anew that people would preferentially go get a hot coal from a neighbor, or go find some one who already had a flame to light their candle.

[nedz]

I have seen experienced people fail at this. What normally happens is that the tinder burns all right, but the fire doesn't catch. Everyone seems to be focussing on generating a spark and burning the tinder — that isn't the issue.