If you're really fat, it takes quite a while to get the weight off. In BG3 specifically, you're not an adventurer before the game, but get picked up randomly in a city. I see no issue with a fat level 1 wizard, and even for martials you can just say they trained for a couple of years and then stopped training once they got a job in the city. They probably *should* get some kind of penalty, but on the other hand you should also get a penalty for being small (i.e. gnome or halfling) and BG3 just threw that out completely. If a gnome can wield a standard two-handed sword without penalties, a fat dude can have the same stamina as a thin dude.

I played the demo a year ago or so and it seemed promising. Would you say it’s more Skyrim or Oblivion in terms of character stats/skills and “crunchiness?” Is there a dedicated speed stat?

Older editions had stuff like "small characters are harder to hit, so they get +1 AC. But then it's weird they have a hard time hitting each other, so they get a +1 to-hit, too". Trying to simulate reality gets wacky real fast, and quickly becomes more work than it's worth.

Ah, the ol' Skyrim Space Program.

To be fair humans did take down wooly mammoths at some point

I don't know many I can cast fire from my hands. That's pretty over powered

>Can you beat an orca in a fight? If I could throw fireballs or kill something by simply touching it IRL, probably.

Yeah, but you're not that at level 2.

Well, not fireball; but being a Warforged isn't level dependent, it's a race and Touch of Death is a level 2 spell for a Death Domain cleric.

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.

Wasn't familiar with "Touch of Death"; I don't play clerics often. But it's just a smite. Assuming average HP on level up and +3 CON mod: Barb: 25; Fighter: 22; Cleric: 19. And Touch of Death does +9 damage at level 2. I'm only breaking out numbers to get a better idea of what the users of the ability would be seeing, and what level of lethality they would come to expect from repeated usage. And that's not killing anyone with a touch except commoners, and level 1 wizards and sorcerers. My only point is: people who have had to risk their life to even get to level 2 (unless they're reckless or an idiot) probably wouldn't have an overly big head over middling magical abilities. They might be feeling themselves and think they can fight a group of thugs at 4 to 1 odds but it's bonkers to pretend a normal adventurer would need some _ex machina_ explanation to warn them off fighting something like a giant or a dragon at level 2.

i do enjoy walking around with a big ol crowd of skellies tho. by mid-act 2 i have so many godsdamned summons

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

>real DM wouldn't allow that This is an actual military doctrine used by the people of Afghanistan to kick the shit out of most of the biggest imperial powers of the world, by TE Lawrence to take out the ottomans, and by one part of the Vietnamese resistance during the american invasion. It has an extremely good record for doing exactly what it does in the game, and for ruining morale of the big guy getting shoot-twice-then-run'd.

Small characters in older edition used different equipment; a small sized weapon used smaller dice, rules for number of hands between sizes were pretty much what you'd expect, which lead to crazy shit like feats that let you use a larger size category weapon, a small size suit of armor wouldn't fit a medium character, carrying capacity multipliers, +/- to hit, and all kinds of shit. Pathfinder still has them. It requires extra design consideration and doesn't add much. Plus, fat sits differently on different bodies, jiggles when running, adds complexity to animations like holding yourself against wall or getting stabbed, and have you ever been camping for more than a week without modern gear or tasted hard tack+pemmican?

You are making the mistake of setting your fantasy character up against a normal animal. You as a real life human would be fighting the orka, not your fantasy character. They would be fighting a Chimera. Which can do all those things you mentioned as well. And if you think your fantasy character can beat a Chimera with their weapons and magic, that would be the same as you thinking you can beat an orka with your bare hands. Unless you are some elite high level special ops in the military, you will not win against an orka.

Oh, I do agree that it's tedious, especially when it's tabletop instead of a video game. My point is pretty much that I want consistency - if you (the game) don't care about adventurers who are very short, it doesn't make sense to care about adventurers who are very fat. Though I think it's pretty clear that the main issue for the BG3 devs was that animating fat characters is a lot of extra work that most players won't appreciate. > and have you ever been camping for more than a week without modern gear or tasted hard tack+pemmican? Have you ever tried losing a lot of weight? Takes a pretty long time, even if you basically don't eat anything. The main character in BG3 basically spring into existence at the beginning of the game (with a very good excuse for why someone who never did any adventuring is suddenly on the road), and the game takes places over a couple of weeks or a few months, depending on how often you rest.

But also all but one of them are kind of wizards. And there is an amount of selection. And they do get stabbed and set on fire a lot. And they are all kind of infested with parasites.

While that is fascinating and worth considering, I think the way it's implemented in the video games is kind of unsatisfying. Specifically, how the NPCs just go back to their idle routine even if that means standing casually on the bodies of their friends. For days. The "for days" part is also particular to DnD. You can sleep for days while the world remains static. The rite of thorns never completes. The prisoners are never executed. Not even if you kill half the guards and take a snooze. I think the Batman video games did a better job of NPCs freaking out and not just calming back down, but most games don't invest in that. Also bg3 specifically let's you teleport to safety once you're 30 meters away, which is extra cheesy.

You're complaining that the game where the wizard who fucked a god and the vampire with an ancient alien brain parasite from the future are just table stakes *is unrealistic*? I don't know what to say. Are you trying to say it clashes with the design? Are you saying every game should have every feature and 'StarCraft' should have the nemesis system from the 'shadow of' games? I don't get it. The whole thing is an abstraction. Doing everything is a lot of developer hours and this one in particular aas shackled to a system made for tabletop play with a human gm, and not even one of the good systems fit that. Here's another way to think about it: what would you have cut to include that?