How do the People of DnD Settings Survive?

Windbit

How do the weaker races survive in a world populated with creatures far more powerful than the average humanoid? I don't see how humanoids could prosper when they have to fend off powerful brutes like giants, incredibly intelligent beings like mind flayers, and all-around powerful creatures like dragons.

It would make more sense to me if the more powerful creatures dominated most of the world, sending weaker humanoids to seek secluded areas to avoid destruction.

terminal stupidity

Volume.

Dragons may be powerful, but there are thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of humans (not counting other humanoids) per dragon.

INeedNoSalt

Beat me to it, but yeah. Giants and dragons and mind flayers aren't that common, and if you're playing in a setting where they're populous, chances are the setting has it's fair share of high-level folks of 'weak' races.

Maticore

Adventurers. Kill. Everything.

Litejedi

Plus, unless you're the dreaming dark, you can't simply wipe out a village. Someone will find out about it. Maybe they'll send trained monster killers. Maybe you dispatch them. Unfortunately, in D&D worlds, as in other worlds, there's always a bigger fish. That fish might have a +4 holy shocking burst wounding greatsword.

zerg rush

Maticore wrote: »

Adventurers. Kill. Everything.

And town guards are always the same or higher level than the nearest adventurers.

And just about every non-adventurer you interact with is either entirely helpless or used to be one before he 'hung up the wand'. IE, your tailor probably was a 20th level wizard adventuring with Drizzt Do'Urden; incidentally your baker also used to be a 20th level fighter also adventuring with Drizzt but at a different time.

Ozmodai

Most evil races tend to spend as much time fighting eachother as they do the more good-aligned civilizations.

DevoutlyApathetic

Yea, from the OP Giants are either dumb or enviromentally limited. Mind Flayers are fairly individualistic and don't tend to play nice in big organizations. Dragons...dragons are the definition of "loner".

In general most settings have 'civilized' areas where these things are simply not that common. Where these things are common are not where humanoid civilizations are strong.

Skorri Siggeir

Yeah.

A world set in eternal war is bound to have lots of casualties everywhere, either from the hand of the enemy or a traitorous ally.

Its just like the Stop Measure for the Orkz in WH40k, they never ally because they are too busy fighting eachother which is why races like Space marines live.

Dortmunder

It doesn't really matter that Giants are 10x your height / weight. As soon as one of your puny race learns how to ram a Fireball up it's rectum it's Goodbye anarchy and Hello Starbucks.

Yes, the Fireball is civilization.

PsychoCucumber

To put it another way, how did real life settlers survive with bears and the like running around? Either stay the fuck away from them, or get a big group together to go kill them.

Maticore

DevoutlyApathetic wrote: »

Mind Flayers are fairly individualistic and don't tend to play nice in big organizations.

Mind flayers play very nice with other Mind Flayers... because the Elder Brain says so.

Besides, Mind Flayers rely on humans being able to propagate themselves in order to feed effectively and have somewhere to hunt, so they have a small stake in humans being somewhat dominant.