Eh, I know nothing about how to handle most dangerous animals, even ones that live in my area; I’d imagine that even in a world with trolls, regular people wouldn’t know anything about them.
If your character is a seasoned adventurer or monster enthusiast, sure, light it up, but if your backstory places you as the village baker for most of your life, running in with alchemist’s fire at the ready seems a bit strange.
Ultimately I’d consider it to be on the GM’s shoulders - if the only way your group is going to survive the troll encounter is with fire, then put an NPC in the local tavern who warms newcomers of a troll in the area, recommending that they have a lit torch at the ready.
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.
Eh, I know nothing about how to handle most dangerous animals, even ones that live in my area; I’d imagine that even in a world with trolls, regular people wouldn’t know anything about them.
If your character is a seasoned adventurer or monster enthusiast, sure, light it up, but if your backstory places you as the village baker for most of your life, running in with alchemist’s fire at the ready seems a bit strange.
Ultimately I’d consider it to be on the GM’s shoulders - if the only way your group is going to survive the troll encounter is with fire, then put an NPC in the local tavern who warms newcomers of a troll in the area, recommending that they have a lit torch at the ready.
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.