Quote:
Originally Posted by Targan
Another PC was a heavy horse mercenary (Hundred Years War level of tech approximately). His player had rolled very well for his family background (most Harmaster PCs are some variety of peasant or mediaeval town dweller/commonfolk). He went out hunting by himself after the party had made camp in a woodland area and snuck up on a fairly large male brown bear. The player didn't know much about bears and his character had never hunted one before, so he put an arrow from his longbow into it from about 50 yards away. It was not a killing shot and the bear came at him, fast. Both the player and the PC learned a valuable lesson in how fast and how dangerous bears can be. There ensued a "Legends of the Fall"-type combat with the PC having to go toe-to-toe with an enraged bear and only having time to pull his heavy dagger. The PC won the fight (he was a pretty impressive specimen of a man with much better combat skills than the average Harnmaster PC) but he was grievously injured and literally had to crawl back to camp. The scars and impairments from those injuries stayed with that character for life.
So yes, standard, Earth-type wild animals can be just as scary as fantastic monsters if the system and the GM are realistic.
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I had a AD&D character go through something like this. The PC party was shipwrecked and the DM told us we could each grab one item. My character was a Conan type barbarian, he grabbed his short sword length belt knife. After the party made it ashore, he made a bow and half a dozen arrows. No arrowheads, he knew how to make a bow and arrows but not flintknapping so they were fire- hardened tips. He went out hunting alone and ran into a bear. He managed to scramble up a tree and fired off all 6 arrows, doing very little damage. Bear got pissed and started tearing down the tree, so my character jumped down on the bear with his knife. Like you said, the scars marked the character for life.