Is life in the Realms worse then life in Warhammer 40K?

[The Mad Kobold]

This came up in a thread on another forum that I'm lurking at. The argument went that with the various monster types, the lack of most small settlements' ability to defend themselves from monster attacks, the infrastructure, and the behavior of the gods, non-players are pretty much screwed.

With most monsters tendencies to live in remote lairs and rarely terrorizing the populace, it might not seem so bad, however once you factor in Formian Myrmarchs, Cloud Giants, and Fire Giants (who actively raid settlements), things look a lot grimmer.

In addition, it was pointed out that undead such as shadows, wights and wraiths have the create spawn ability, allowing them to replenish and expand their ranks. A tribe of fire giants could potentially depopulate a city.
[quote= Academia Nut]ADDENDUM: On doing some math, the NPC classes are so fucked its not even funny. The average soldier in D&D is a warrior, and looking up the stats for some of them, I get this:

Your typical level 1 warrior has 8 HP, an AC of say 13, an attack bonus of +3, and the ability to do say 1d8+1 damage

Your typical fire giant has 142 HP, an AC of 23, and an attack bonus of +20/+15/+5 (three attacks per round in full attack), and the ability to do 3d6+10 damage

So the warrior hits the giant 5% of the time (dumb luck really) and typically does 5.5 points of damage. So each warrior will do 0.275 points of damage a round. That's 517 "warrior rounds" to bring down the giant.

Conversely, the giant is going to miss only 5% of the time, and any hit it lands will drop the warrior below 0HP instantly, no need to roll dice. The giant also has Great Cleave so in melee it will get another attack against any ajacent warriors. When you factor in reach, assuming it has enough targets, it will kill 8 warriors a round in front of it. If surrounded, it will reap a gory path of destruction and only a roll of 1 will stop it. Unless of course it still has attacks left, in which case the carnage will continue until the giant is out of targets in reach.

The description for a tribe, AKA the basic family unit for fire giants is: 21-30 fire giants (NPCs can weep now) plus 1 adept, cleric, or sorcerer of 6th or 7th level (what lucky hits you do get in can be healed!) plus 12-30 hellhounds, 12-22 trolls (like life wasn't bad enough, these guys can regenerate so lucky shots that don't involve fire don't even help!), 5-12 ettins, and 1-2 young red dragons (fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!). Seriously, a single tribe of fire giants has no physical comparison to any real world army that doesn't involve tanks as real armies don't have living seige engines capable of wading through essentially unlimited numbers of footsoldiers with air support capable of incinerating entire blocks of soldiers on a pass-by. [/quote]
As for the infrastructure...
[quote= Satori]Faerun seems to be made up of rare fortress cities with peasants squatting in muck outside, being ravaged by Zombies, Xvarts, and the occasional angry Ankleg. Trade is sporadic and frequently hindered by bandits, and Ogliarchies or loose Artistocracies based on merchantile wealth, military might, or arcane lore run most outposts of civilization. The High level casters that run arcane colleges and *magic railways* in Eberron exist in Faerun, but almost all are busy killing eachother or plotting to. The few good-aligned casters who might be able to promote reforms or quality of life increases are busy fighting off extraplanar incursions, often by in-efficient means thanks to the general lack of government and organization.

Well, heck, looking at this, WH40k doesn't seem so bad. At least they have people trying to make things better. The People who could in FR are all busy, and few of them would, even if they weren't busy.[/quote]
As for the deities... well Mystryl was taken completely unprepared by Karsus' spell, and she paid for it. As for Lathander, I think his role in the Dawn Cataclysm says much about him. Then there's the matter of the Wall of the Faithless, something that every neutral or chaotic good deity should object to.
[quote= Xon]Mystryl was guilty of the high crime of wishful thinking, and given god-like powers she had that should be punishable by death.
Ao is ultimately responcible for the mess the Goddess of Magic had made, as he is the asshole who setup the entire system.[/quote]
What are your thoughts on the matter?

[Samloyal23]

Life sucks for peasants in a D&D campaign. Anyone not living in major city is not going to get any of the benefits of magic, just suffer all the consequences...

[The Mad Kobold]

No argument there. Do you agree about the gods being criminally incompetent? I recall the King referring to Lathander as an 'arrogant retard', and I'm guessing that you could count the number of fans that Mysteria has (on this forum at least) on one hand.

[Samloyal23]

Look at the actual behaviour of mythical gods in the legends about them and you will find most of them were petty, arrogant, and stupid. Zeus was a lecherous pig who did nothing to take responsibility for his bad acts, letting his wife torture and harass the mortal women he more or less raped. Odin was such a pathological liar and so greedy for gold and magical knowledge that his deeds set in motion the conflict with the giants that leads to Ragnarok, so he is ultimately going to be responsible for destroying the Nine Worlds. I doubt any of the gods of Toril are much better...

[Fiendish Construct]

I think this particular individual needs to research some of his "facts" [and I use the term very loosely] before making assumptions like this.

[Samloyal23]

I think this particular individual needs to research some of his "facts" [and I use the term very loosely] before making assumptions like this.

Could you please be more vague and ambiguous?

[Nist]

Honestly no, just no. While peasants may have shit lives in FR humans (and practically everything else) are hardcore boned in 40K. Depending on where and how you live you can end up having to fight swarms Orcs, Tyranids, Tau, fucking Eldar, Necrons, Daemons, and even your fellow humans. You live in a fascist society that doesn't give a rat's ass unless you live on one of the close core worlds and exults messing up your body with all sorts of retarded cybernetic implants in order to emulate some moron who basically went Cyberman. Good luck getting a division of space marines to help you especially with the empire's view of all aliens as inferior savages. The peasants have a far better chance of someone giving a crap and possibly sending someone to take care of things.

Pity the poor fool who naturally manifests psionics, magic, or mutations of any sort as you'll find yourself either forcibly constripted and mind raped or hunted to the ends of the galaxy by a bunch of genocidal morons. At least in FR someone who displays such abilities has some chance of making a decent living for themselves. Further while the FR gods can be idiots there are still those among their numbe who want to do good in the world unlike the Emperor, Mork, the Chaos gods, and those damn things the Necron worship.