Sunday, August 19, 2018

A D&D Analysis of David vs Goliath

As I listened to Brother Dahm teach his lesson on David and Goliath, I could hardly help analyzing this fight from a D&D perspective. I hope you'll indulge me in sharing this analysis.

Let's start with Goliath, beginning with his size category. Arguably, Goliath's most noteworthy trait is his size. 1 Samuel 17:4 says that Goliath's height was "six cubits and a span," which is roughly nine and a half feet tall. This is very big for a human, about three feet taller than the 5th Edition rules normally allow a human to be. He's even bigger than a typical member of the fictional Goliath race, which stands between seven and eight feet tall. Goliath's height is almost great enough that I would consider him a Large creature, which is roughly the size of a horse. It's a close call. There's one factor that makes me think that Goliath would be officially considered "Large": the weight of his armor.

1 Samuel 17:5 says that Goliath wore "a coat of mail; and the weight of the coat was five thousand shekels of brass," which converts to 126lbs. The closest D&D equivalent to a "coat of mail" would likely be Chain Mail armor, which normally weighs a mere 55lbs; however, armor for Large creatures weighs twice as much as armor for Medium-sized creatures like normal humans. This would put the Chain Mail's weight at 110lbs, which is much closer to our 126lb. target weight. Plate armor, with a normal weight of 65lbs., would get us even closer to our target weight, and would offer Goliath more protection, but I think that if Goliath wore Plate armor, the scriptures would've said so. 1 Samuel 17:6 does mention a few metal plates that he was wearing, but I don't think it's enough to say that he was wearing full Plate armor, and I think I know why he wasn't. In addition to weighing more than Medium-sized armor, Large armor also costs more than Medium-sized armor. Four times more, in fact, and Plate armor is already the most expensive nonmagical armor in the game at 1,500gp. A Large set of Plate armor would cost Goliath 6,000gp, the equivalent of 120lbs. of gold, whereas a Large set of Chain Mail would have cost Goliath only 300gp or about 6lbs. of gold. Arguably, adequate protection is worth any price, if you can afford it, but at such a steep price, I'm not entirely sure Goliath could afford Large Plate armor.

Goliath's other equipment is fairly straightforward. His shield grants +2 bonus to his Armor Class, bringing his AC up to 18, and his spear is probably just a regular spear. I'm not 100% sure what type of sword his sword would be. My two top picks would be a Longsword and a Greatsword (I somehow can't picture him wielding a shortsword or a rapier). The Greatsword deals more damage, but it's a two-handed weapon, so if he used that, he couldn't also use his shield. With a Longsword, Goliath would be able to use both his sword and his shield at the same time; he just wouldn't be able to dish out as much damage as quickly. However, even with a weaker weapon, Goliath could still deal a lot of damage with his considerable Strength. His exact Strength Modifier is difficult to estimate. It has to be at least +1, but it could be as high as +5. He also probably gets some kind of damage bonus based on his Large size. The Enlarge/Reduce spell gives an enlarged target a +1d4 bonus to damage, so we'll go with that.

All told, Goliath would be a Large Human Fighter with an AC of 18 and attacks that deal 1d8+1d4+at least 1 per hit. There's still a lot we don't know about him. We don't know how many Hit Points he has. We don't know what level he is. We don't even know for sure that he's a Fighter, but I'd say that's a pretty safe bet, especially since Saul said that he was "a man of war from his youth" (1 Sam 17:33). We don't know how many Fighter levels all that warfare would've gotten him, but still, we know enough to establish him as a fairly formidable opponent, especially compared to his challenger.

David did not have much going for him going into this fight. His size was Medium, perhaps even on the smaller side of medium. In 1 Samuel 17: 39, David demonstrates a lack of proficiency in armor, and his best weapon was a Sling, which deals pitifully little damage.

However, if David was using a high Dexterity build, he might have had a decent shot. A high Dexterity modifier would have improved his Armor Class, especially without Heavy Armor weighing him down, though some Light Armor still might've been nice. A high Dex Mod would also have increased his accuracy and damage with ranged weapons, like the sling, though a bow still would've been better. We don't know David's HP or level any better than we know Goliath's, but we do know a few things about David that might help us figure it out. Namely, we know that he slew a Lion and a Bear.

Lions are tough, especially for a single 1st or 0th level character to face on his own. I don't know how David could have defeated it, but if we accept his word that he did it, he would have gotten 200xp for that. The bear could have been either a Black Bear or a Brown Bear. Brown Bears are about as powerful as Lions are, but Black Bears are a little weaker. Either way, after defeating both the Bear and the Lion, David would have earned at least 300xp, which is enough to let a character advance from 1st level to 2nd level, so we can assume that David is at least a 2nd level character.

This is both good and bad news for David because whatever level he is, Goliath's level must be higher, and while we can guess that Goliath chose the Fighter class (and the combat bonuses that go with it), it's not clear what class David would have been. Fighter would be decent for him, but it would have granted him proficiency with much better weapons and armor than what he ends up using, including the Heavy Armor with which we know he's not proficient. There are many other classes that would have given David some help in this fight, but most of them require the character to have received some training. For a moment, I considered making David a Monk, but Monks in D&D are basically martial artists, and David would never had a chance to learn martial arts. The one combat-ready class I can think of that doesn't require training is Barbarian, and David doesn't strike me as a Barbarian. It could be the case that, despite having earned xp from the Bear and the Lion, David has no class.

So, David had no armor, and no weapons besides a staff and a sling, and he was fighting a heavily armored Fighter with martial weapons. Yet, David won with only one shot. How is this possible? First, David seemed to have won the Initiative roll, allowing him to act first in combat. Second, David's Sling attack seems to have landed a Critical Hit, judging by where the attack hit (1 Sam 17:49). Even so, slings don't deal very much damage, even on Critical Hits. On a regular hit, a sling deals 1d4 damage, plus whatever the attacker's Dexterity Bonus is. Even assuming that David had the maximum modifier of +5, that would give a regular sling attack a maximum damage of 9, which isn't enough to one-shot even a 1st level Fighter, unless that Fighter somehow had terribly low Constitution. Now, David's attack was a critical hit, which would have increased the damage, but Goliath also must have been at least a 2nd level Fighter, which would have increased his Hit Points. Fighters used a d10 plus their Constitution Modifier to determine the number of Hit Points they gain at each level. If Goliath rolled a 1 and had a -1 Constitution Modifier, he wouldn't have gained any Hit Points when he gained his second level, but if he took the average result from the d10, which he could have chosen to do, he would have gained at least as many Hit Points as the amount of damage the Critical Hit would have added, and that's assuming that David had the highest possible Dexterity Modifier and Goliath had the lowest possible Constitution Modifier, neither one of which would have been true under normal character-building circumstances.

My conclusion is that, even in D&D, David's defeat of Goliath could only have been a miracle. Sure, given enough time and enough luck, even a classless commoner could have defeated even a level 5 Fighter, but to kill Goliath in one hit, with a sling, would have taken exceptionally special circumstances and/or the allowance of some variant rules, like allowing feats or using a special table to determine the outcome of a Critical Hit. David's single-stone victory over Goliath would have been practically impossible within the normal rules of 5th Edition D&D, just as it was in real life, but with the help of God, or a generous DM, anything can happen.

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