User blog:Aramirtheranger/On the importance of having the right weapon for the job

I would like to share a story. Once when I was GMing a role playing game, the heroes were hired to go kill this massive iron-shelled turtle-like monster by some villagers. Basically, this thing would come out of the lake, chow down on two or three villagers, and then go back to the water. So, these characters are armed with an assortment of swords, spears, axes, and bows. All by this point were living legends. So they waltz up to the lake and all the players expected a fairly easy battle.

Now, when they attacked the monster (I decided to name it simply "Snappah"), it was barely scratched, because their weapons couldn't get through the shell, and blows elsewhere were superficial damage only. The situation rapidly deteriorated, and one character actually died. So they realize they're no match for Snappah, and smartly decide to run away.

Now, later on in the journey, they're passing by the same lake when it was cold but not quite freezing, and see a bunch of soldiers from the empire (it was an evil empire, but it still protected it's citizens). So, the imperials had been observing Snappah's behavior from a distance for quite some time. They noticed that it had a favorite place to leave the water, and they intercepted it. They had these teams of horsemen pull logs with spikes in them to form a barrier between Snappah and the water, and had a number of men with these big two-handed hammer-pick thingies, and they stepped in to swing away. Their efforts cracked part the shell, and then they had these massive pikes that took four men to hold keeping Snappah from fleeing into the woods. Then, they brought up this huge steel armed crossbow that took four soldiers on each crank to draw back and another ten to carry, and fired these five foot long steel bolts. They aimed at the exposed flesh on the beast's side, and with one shot to the crack in Snappah's shell, she fell dead.

Now, the point of this blog is that it doesn't matter how skilled you are, if you have the wrong weapon for the job, you will lose.