How do you get defeated by low-level enemies...?

[skicoak]

You can forget the obvious counter...I use to do this in Arkham Asylum with stun baton guys... kept forgetting to get behind them before attacking.

[DiegoPalacios]

Here are some ideas:

1-Have a really unoptimized build (maybe a character focused in a stat that is useless for combat)

2-Having all your gear and skills of a certain element against an enemy that is immune to said element.

3-Any low level creature with a one hit kill ability should do the trick if you are not careful

4-Maybe this low level enemy is smart, and studied his high level oponent deeply and figures out how to exploit their weaknesses

5-Attrition, all those weak fights may do very low damage to the character, but they stack up, and if the character doesnt have healing items/spells, they are gonna have a bad time in a specially long dungeon/adventure

6-Hitting yourself with your own area of effect spells.

7-An enemy that has a natural advantage against certain classes...your wizard may be strong, but if that creature casts silence of you, you are in deep trouble.

[darthmongoose]

When I've had my players struggle in D&D at low levels, it was usually due to two kinds of enemies:

1. Monsters or enemy characters that can hide and catch the players by surprise, like Shadows. Often players send the barbarian rushing forward, without thinking "What if a hidden monster jumps the healer and the squishy wizard from behind?"
2. Monsters or enemies with status-inducing abilities, like Dust Mephits. The whole party got stun-locked choking on mephit dust. Even though their damage was low, nobody could attack them and they almost slowly got tapped to death. They were saved when the bard made a save and buffed everyone's saves.

Generally big groups of small enemies are more dangerous than one big one, because more enemies = more attacks = more chance to get hit or land a crit, and while a single enemy can get taken out by a really strong spell or critical hit, at low levels, few characters have decent crowd control for groups. Big gangs of goblins are deadly!

The other thing is.... FRIENDLY FIRE. The most deadly thing is often characters missing and hitting each other (I have a house rule where if you roll a 1 and there is somebody in the line of fire, roll again. If you roll enough to hit them, they get hit. If you roll another 1, you hit yourself. This can be... more dangerous than you'd expect!) OR people casting spells like "Thunderwave to AoE a group of monsters and being like "Oh, it's fine if it hits some of my friends too!" (your friends disagree).

[joannekwan]

If you aggro enough low-levels and have a mob swarm you.

[AbelDraws]

Most of the times this has happened I was just trying to go back to a place I can heal because I overstayed leveling up or whatever and got killed on the way back home x'D

[cleo_san]

I swear those chicken in Kakariko Village only LOOK like low level... but in reality they are the REAL gods of Hyrule!
Invincible!
Unkillable!
But oooooh, how easy they can peck your sorry self to death...

[ar-ninetysix]

Environment can definitely be a factor. Like fighting 'em in places that work to their benefit or ones that put you at a disadvantage. Maybe even both. Get sneak-attacked by them, or bottle-necked and whittled down

[KRWright]

Being underequipped and needing better gear without even realising it.

[Kann]

A lot of people here mentioned this already, but big swarms of low-level enemies should do the trick.
Or maybe if they were really really fast?
Or if they had some deadly poison.

Or all of the above. xD

[unknown_user]

1. When a low level monster has an ability to push you, and did it, when you were standing at the verge of deep chasm or near the deadly trap...
2. When you tried to blow the low level monster up with the powerful bomb or AOE spell, but hit yourself, too.
3. When a low level monster makes glitchy attack, which makes you both fall under textures and crush (happened to me in old games).
4. When under some specific rare conditions the monster's attack crushes the game itself (happened in old games, too).
5. When you killed the monster and accidentally met a bug, which made it invincible instead of dying. So it goes after you and tortures you to death by everlasting small attacks...
6. When you are AFK.

P.S. Ah, also when killing the particular weak NPC gives you a bad ending. And in that ending you die.

[Greetings]

Jump from a very high point on the map, lose almost all of your HP, land in front of a low-level enemy, you have one HP left, it hits you, you die.

[Tornex]

You'd be surprised how often this happens.

Especially when you are completely new to the game and are still testing stuff... And realize fall damage is a thing here.

[Greetings]

Especially when you are completely new to the game and are still testing stuff... And realize fall damage is a thing here.

Or when you're fooling around!

[DualDragons]

When the enemy does a naruto and appears in a insanely large amount and you don't have any AoD skills so you can hit only one enemy at once

[Rhonder]

I juuuuust started up Final Fantasy 14 again this week (played initially last summer for 2 months, then was busy with my comic and stopped until now). To get re-acquainted with the game, I decided to start a new class to level up from 1 again. In this case White Mage (or Conjurer, the baby version). So like i have heals to keep myself alive and some basic magic to kill stuff with, nice.

Anyways on Sunday my goal was to get to level 15 so that I could start running party dungeons because those are a really fast way to level up at low levels- I left the story off at level 20 quests so I figured I'd rush from 1-15, then run a few dungeons, and be able to pick the story back up. Levels 1-10 flew by, at first you get a level every few kills, and then the class quests every 5 levels give nice exp too at first, and even after that filling out the Hunting Log gives you a nice chunk of bonus Exp.

After level 10 it kinda falls off though. It's not terribly slow but you're not just blasting through the levels any more. I start taking some optional side quests, and start trying to complete the level 10-20 range hunting log quests which has me fighting enemies now that outlevel me a bit. That's fine though, I'm a White Mage! I can just heal myself! So I get into a tussle with a group of over-sized house flys for the hunting log which were level 16 vs. my level 12. Even though they aggro if you get too close, I'm able to lure them over 1 at a time due to my ranged magic and fight them 1v1. They chunked my HP a fair bit more than things my level, but it would still take them like 7 hits to kill me and I can heal myself for ~50% as much as I need to so I'm fine.

And then suddenly I fall over and die, 2 or 3 flys in. I have absolutely no idea how I lost track of my HP bar long enough for that to happen, but lo and behold. I let myself die to a minor threat as a freaking healer lmao.

[doomerC]

random crits.

RANDOM CRITS.

[spadedigsbutts]

A single rat may be tiny but it’s bite can still get infected and kill you idk

[Elixiink]

When I was re-playing Pokemon diamond version I was on a bidoof killing spree trying to level up my level 7 chimchar. My HP was around 10 I think? I was too lazy to go to the Pokemon center and I think I was battling a level 3/4 bidoof. My chimchar always attacked first and it takes me 3 moves to defeat a bidoof. Each attack from the bidoof pretty much costed me 4 HP. So I was confident that the bidoof would be defeated in the 3 move.

But then the tragedy happened.

The bidoof landed a critical hit on the second move and my chimchar was done for.

So yeah-
Always visit the Pokemon center when your HP is below half of its original.

I lost because luck clearly wasn't on my side that day. If it was a normal scenario I'd win. But I could've lost the match in another way too. Instead of the bidoof's critical hit, if the bidoof had dodged the attack then I'd lose too.

Long story short I got too cocky

Which resulted me losing 200 poké's :'D

[Kaylim]

It's really easy in Elder Scrolls. Accidentally swipe a sweet roll and every guard in town starts to hack at you

As a newbie I was so confused, I didn't even realize I had stolen something, next thing I know I'm being chased out of town haha

Editing to add that I don't actually know if the guards are low-level. I mean I killed them pretty easily in Skyrim, but they just kept coming D: So strength in numbers got me down lol

[TAMAnnoying]

Do not forget about ongoing damage!

We have a saying in my DnD group

“Rat Clan Powerful.” We where playing 1e and rats in that edition basically make you bedridden for Sevral days if you catch their rat disease, if you don’t have a healer that can cure it or live in a backwater town with no cleric- your gonna be in that bed for seven days vomiting cause rats are scary XD