this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2025
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Counterpoint, fire was historically used to drive away predators and is commonly depicted in movies as well. A random townsfolk may not know all the particulars, but put fire between the bad thing and yourself is a reasonable strategy for most monsters. It becomes a metagaming problem if it's only done against monsters that don't resist fire.
Oh, sure, you could absolutely make a case for your character accidentally stumbling on the right answer simply because fire is a good weapon, and a good roleplayer could use that to their advantage to metagame a bit more acceptably, but there's a difference between that and just automatically grabbing fire stuff because you the player know it's good against trolls.
Yeah, this is the way.
We just fought a Troll in a Pathfinder session I was in. I'm playing an Athamaru (fish person) new to dry land, so I don't have a ton of knowledge about stuff like fire. But the Druid hitting it with a fire spell, and the GM describing the way the Troll reacts is enough to naturally gain that knowledge on the spot. There are all kinds of reasons a character might not know even common monster weaknesses.
I think doing this kind of metagaming is important, because it gives opportunities for specific characters to stand out. If you have a party member with monster knowledge, it's cooler for them to yell a warning, than it is for everyone to just act like they already know