[HN Gopher] Peasant Railgun
___________________________________________________________________
Peasant Railgun
Author : cainxinth
Score : 162 points
Date : 2025-07-03 14:05 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (knightsdigest.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (knightsdigest.com)
| eszed wrote:
| Oops! Your site is hugged to death at present.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Hit by another kind of peasant railgun, in a manner of
| speaking.
| ourmandave wrote:
| I hadn't heard of this until it was called out in a paragraph in
| the new DND 2024 rules explaining that the game is an abstraction
| and not a physics textbook.
| nkrisc wrote:
| I think games this are most fun when you play within the bounds
| of the rules (as written) and not consider them reality
| simulators (...magic...). Then you can approach the rules as
| merely constraints in which to optimize solutions to problems.
|
| Of course as games like DnD are also a social affair, it's
| worth making sure everyone is having fun with something like
| this, otherwise what's the point?
|
| I never could get into DnD because of the roleplaying. To me
| games are a set of rules which I view as a puzzle.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| For what it's worth, there are plenty of tables that focus a
| lot less on plot & roleplaying, and more on the combat &
| puzzle aspect. There are even whole RPGs that are effectively
| dungeon crawls, where your characters don't need much of a
| personality, and are often explicitly disposable.
|
| D&D may not be for you, but I bet there's a RPG out there
| that is!
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| I personally haven't found much luck with finding tables
| that focus less on plot and roleplaying. Ever since
| Critical Role became very popular, the hobby has skewed
| heavily towards Roleplay and it's really disappointing
|
| I don't know why people bother to play a game with rules
| when they don't actually want to engage with the rules ever
| antisthenes wrote:
| > I don't know why people bother to play a game with
| rules when they don't actually want to engage with the
| rules ever
|
| There are definitely groups of players where there is an
| overemphasis on rules and combat.
|
| To each their own.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| An overemphasis on playing the game using the rules in
| the book?
|
| Why even buy the book if you aren't going to play by the
| rules in the book? I have never understood this
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I'm heavy into roleplay, and that's how I prefer to play
| D&D.
|
| And I think you're probably right.
|
| D&D is barely the right fit for the kind of game I like
| to play. _But_ D &D is wildly popular, and it's much
| easier to find people who'll play D&D with a heavy
| emphasis on roleplay, than it is to find people who'll
| play Heart, or Wildsea, or things that are even further
| way from the "roll-play" aspect.
|
| For what it's worth, we still engage in combat, we use
| our various abilities outside of combat, etc. _Most_ of
| the rules are about combat. Even the magic section is
| framed around using magic in actions. But exploration,
| etc., is still a part of the game; it 's just that those
| rules are jotted down on like 5 pages out of the 200.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > But D&D is wildly popular, and it's much easier to find
| people who'll play D&D with a heavy emphasis on roleplay,
|
| Yes, to my dismay.
|
| I like classic D&D, dungeon crawling and what people so
| derisively call "rollplaying". I find amateur theater
| improv quite tedious and uninteresting
|
| I haven't been able to find other players like me at all
| for ages. Everyone I meet "Just got into the game because
| of Critical Role"
|
| I feel quite strongly that my lifelong hobby has been
| warped away from me. I try hard not to be resentful but
| it sucks I can't find groups to play with that want the
| same kind of game I do
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| You should play Nethack. Not a TTRPG though.
| grey413 wrote:
| Finding local players is always an issue, but there's
| tons of folks who prefer the more classic style of D&D.
| Take a look into Dungeon Crawl Classic and OSR takes on
| D&D like the Black Hack. Those tend to put dungeon
| crawling front and center. Finding a group usually
| involves trawling OSR discords or GMing your own local
| playgroup, but sometimes you can luck out at your local
| game store.
| tagami wrote:
| Check out simple combat games by Steve Jackson Games
| (melee, wizard) circa 1977. No RP required
| ourmandave wrote:
| That was us way back in the day. The same dungeon map over
| and over with nothing but random encounters. I forget how
| long it took before someone finally lived to make 2nd
| level.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| The first dungeon from the red-book DM guide was
| merciless for parties of less than 6ish. Before you even
| got into the dungeon, there was a carrion crawler that
| got a guaranteed surprise round with 6 attacks with
| paralysis on each attack. The only time it didn't TPK a
| new group I ran it with was when the thief ran back to
| town.
| throwawayoldie wrote:
| Which is a perfectly fine way to play if everyone at the
| table is having a good time. I think of RPGs as the lovechild
| of wargames and improv theater: some people favor one parent,
| and some the other.
| dllthomas wrote:
| > some people favor one parent, and some the other
|
| A number of the responses here say things like this, and
| I'm picking this one somewhat arbitrarily to call out that
| "people" isn't the only dividing line - some people very
| much favor different sides of it at different times, in
| different moods, in different contexts, to varying degrees.
| spacemadness wrote:
| DnD 5e seems like it's already on the generic rules side of
| things and gives DMs a lot of room for interpretation. That's
| why the railgun seems silly. "I guess that'd be a persuasion
| or performance check, your pick", etc.
| wheybags wrote:
| I don't really understand this - to me, DnD without rp is
| just a bad facsimile of a video game. Wouldn't you rather
| just play skyrim? Or Baldur's gate in coop mode, if you still
| want to be social?
| mrob wrote:
| The only video game I can think of that seriously tries to
| replicate the experience of playing old-school D&D is
| Nethack and its forks. Nethack goes to great lengths to
| allow for player creativity, even at the cost of game
| balance. E.g. there are monsters (cockatrices) that petrify
| on touch. If you kill one, it's possible to pick it up
| (wearing gloves) and instantly petrify other enemies by
| hitting them with the corpse. This isn't without risk, e.g.
| if you fall into a pit trap while attempting this you'll
| end up petrifying yourself, and enemies can do the same to
| you if they're capable of wielding weapons and are wearing
| gloves. There's a simulationist approach to its design that
| goes beyond other games. There's a community saying: "the
| dev team thinks of everything."
|
| The problem is this isn't actually true. They certainly
| think of a lot of things, but it's still only a finite,
| predetermined set. All the clever tricks are common
| knowledge now. Anybody can read the Wiki and learn how to
| win without much difficulty. Nethack becomes boring once
| you understand how it works. If you want to play it but
| haven't yet done so I recommend avoiding spoilers as much
| as possible (the cockatrice thing is so well known that I
| don't think there's any real problem sharing that one; the
| game was designed around less extensive pre-Wiki-era
| sharing of knowledge, not zero sharing).
|
| Real D&D doesn't have this problem. A human DM can
| adjudicate improvisation without needing to program it in
| advance, and do this while maintaining consistency in a way
| that LLMs still fail at. Well-run tabletop RPGs are still
| the best games available for allowing player creativity.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I've definitely had to raise the fact that D&D is not Real Life
| Simulator at games, both as a DM and a player, when people have
| argued either that "the rules technically allow this", and
| "well, in real life, it would work like this." (Sometimes as
| part of the same argument!)
| jks wrote:
| Why the number 2,280? What keeps you from adding peasants until
| your projectile travels at 0.99c?
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I'm guessing to get a nice, round number of two miles:
|
| > _At the start of combat, the chain of events is initiated and
| that wooden rod is carried two miles in 6 seconds which means
| it had to accelerate to the speed of 1900 miles per hour. This
| is due in part that a medium creature (which human peasants
| categorize as) takes up a one-by-one 5 foot square. Multiply
| that space times 2,280, and you easily get a line that spans
| two miles._
|
| As far as why two miles, specifically? I don't know. Wizards
| can cast Meteor Swarm out from a range of one mile, so maybe
| there's something that can counter-act this nonsense from a
| range of 1.9?
| rich_sasha wrote:
| It's worse, if I follow the logic, the projectile will travel
| _any_ distance in 6s, so long as you have enough peasants.
|
| I don't know what the D&D5 rules are on relativistic time
| dilation, I guess these would perhaps need to be invoked.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Given how grid-based combat works, I'm not even sure that D&D
| exists in a Euclidean-adjacent space time.
| dsr_ wrote:
| Nothing in any of the D&D universes suggests that it
| follows the same physical laws as ours, and many, many
| things say otherwise.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I demand at least a semblance of pythagorean distances for
| this reason; (N+M/2 is close enough for the distances
| involved in combat). The 5e default of diagonal moves being
| equal to grid-aligned moves is significantly more painful
| to my brain than dividing by two is.
| water-data-dude wrote:
| Yeah, the whole thing gets messy in an interesting way.
|
| - if the rod travels across 7 light seconds in a round, the
| only way to avoid breaking relativity is if the 6 seconds the
| round takes are measured in the frame of reference of the rod
|
| - that would mean that from the frame of reference of the
| rest of the people/monsters/edgy antiheroes/misunderstood
| blob creatures, the rod's "turn" took 7 seconds.
|
| All characters in the D&D universe are accustomed to a
| reality where each round takes 6 seconds, and everyone - in
| synchrony - is able to perform an integer number of tasks
| that fit within that timespan. Rounds begin and end
| simultaneously for everyone involved in combat. How
| disturbing would it be for such beings to see those laws
| broken?
| disillusionist wrote:
| I personally adore the Peasant Railgun and other such silly
| tropes generated by player creativity! Lateral problem solving
| can be one of the most fun parts of the DnD experience. However,
| these shenanigans often rely on overly convoluted or twisted ways
| of interpreting the rules that often don't pass muster of RAW
| (Rules As Written) and certainly not RAI (Rules As Intended) --
| despite vociferous arguments by motivated players. Any DM who
| carefully scrutinizes these claims can usually find the seams
| where the joke unravels. The DnD authors also support DMs here
| when they say that DnD rules should _not_ be interpreted as
| purely from a simulationist standpoint (whether physics, economy,
| or other) but exist to help the DM orchestrate and arbitrate
| combat and interactions.
|
| In the case of the Peasant Railgun, here are a few threads that I
| would pull on: * The rules do not say that passed items retain
| their velocity when passed from creature to creature. The object
| would have the same velocity on the final "pass" as it did on the
| first one. * Throwing or firing a projectile does not count as it
| "falling". If an archer fires an arrow 100ft, the arrow does not
| gain 100ft of "falling damage".
|
| Of course, if a DM _does_ want to encourage and enable zany
| shenanigans then all the power to them!
| hooverd wrote:
| Did you use ChatGPT/an LLM for this comment or do you just
| write Like That?
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| LLMs had to learn from somewhere, a lot of internet comments
| write Like That
| hooverd wrote:
| It's very jarring when you see it nowadays, and rather
| unfortunate for people who have that style of writing.
| lukan wrote:
| But maybe less and less will, if all it gets them nowdays
| are accusations of using/being an LLM.
| Macha wrote:
| I've often written lists of bullet points with bolded
| headings and nowadays every time I do I feel I have to
| say that it's not written by chatgpt
| formerphotoj wrote:
| And, "I'm not a cat."
|
| (Except sometimes maybe as a NPC)
| max_on_hn wrote:
| ChatGPT was sticky for me very early because its writing
| style reminded me of my own -\\_(tsu)_/-
| otikik wrote:
| It does read very chatgpt-y
| disillusionist wrote:
| I just Write Like That. It always takes me longer to write
| things than intended because I tend to overthink things, too.
| :/
| hooverd wrote:
| It was a good comment!
| zahlman wrote:
| For what it's worth: having seen that someone else
| suspected ChatGPT usage, and reading it again, I can
| understand what sorts of heuristics it might have tripped.
| But on overall intuition, I didn't get that impression on a
| first read.
| y-curious wrote:
| Welcome to the erosion of trust we are seeing live. Soon we
| won't trust anything outside of a speaker we can touch
| physically.
| moconnor wrote:
| This; applying the falling object rule makes no sense. But we
| can compare it to a falling object that has attained the same
| velocity - this will have fallen (under Earth gravity) 48k
| feet, or the equivalent of 800d6 damage.
| standeven wrote:
| If you're using the falling object rule then cap it at an
| appropriate terminal velocity, maybe 200 km/h.
| altruios wrote:
| > The rules do not say that passed items retain their velocity
| when passed from creature to creature. The object would have
| the same velocity on the final "pass" as it did on the first
| one.
|
| Since this wooden rod travels several miles in a 6 second time
| frame - traveling more than 500M/s on average - don't we have
| to assume it accumulates?
|
| Falling damage is the mechanism that makes the most sense to
| shoehorn in there. Using an improvised weapon on a rod already
| traveling more than 500M/s seems even more clumsy, as well as
| calculating the damage more wibbly-wobbly.
|
| There's also the rule of cool. If it makes the story better/
| more enjoyable: have at it.
| disillusionist wrote:
| If we were trying to create a real-time simulation system,
| then YES you are totally correct. However, many table-top
| RPGs rules only make sense in the context of adjudicating
| atomic actions (such as one creature passing an item to
| another) rather than multi-part or longer running activities.
| Readied actions are already a bug-a-boo that break down when
| pushed to extremes. While not listed in the rules, it might
| make sense for a DM to limit the distance or number of hand-
| offs that the "rail" can travel in a single round to
| something "reasonable" based on their own fiat.
| altruios wrote:
| Agreed. Chaining readied actions is the real issue here.
| Maybe the mechanical fix is - as you say - a limit on that.
| I would simply say that a readied action can not be in
| response to a action that has itself been readied.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| I think the more simple and complete solution is to limit
| multiple characters interactions with one object similar
| to the way the rules limit one character interacting with
| multiple objects. Note that even without readied actions,
| an infinite number of characters could still pass an
| object in the space of a round, each passing it on their
| turn, so long as they were arranged in space in
| initiative order, so limiting readied actions both
| doesn't solve this (and allowing readied actions to be a
| bypass to others readied actions opens up as much space
| for exploitation as it closes.)
| plorkyeran wrote:
| The problem with this interpretation is that it relies on
| hyper-literal RAW when it's convenient and physics when it's
| convenient. If you apply the rules of physics to the wooden
| rod, then the answer is simple: the peasant railgun cannot
| make the rod travel several miles in 6 seconds. If you apply
| D&D RAW, the rod can travel infinitely far, but does not have
| momentum and doesn't do anything when it reaches its
| destination. You only get the silly result when you apply RAW
| to one part of it and ignore it for another part.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Yep. And if we apply hyper-literal RAW rules, then gravity
| also doesn't _accelerate_ items, it simply sets their
| velocity to some arbitrary degree. None of the falling
| rules I 've seen have ever mentioned acceleration, only
| fall speed.
|
| (Actually, it looks like it's Sage Advice, technically?)
| patmcc wrote:
| >>Since this wooden rod travels several miles in a 6 second
| time frame - traveling more than 500M/s on average - don't we
| have to assume it accumulates?
|
| If we assume it does accumulate, then we also have to assume
| peasant #2000 couldn't possibly pass it successfully.
| fishtoaster wrote:
| My take has always been:
|
| 1. D&D mechanics, like all games, are a simplification of the
| real world using primitives like "firing a bow" and "passing an
| item" and "downing a potion"
|
| 2. The real world is fractaly deep and uses primitives like
| "plank length" and "quark spin"
|
| 3. Therefore there will always be places where the real world
| and the simplification don't line up. Finding those gaps might
| be a fun meme, but it's not an exploit. We play with the
| simplification's primitives, not the real-world physics'.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _primitives like "plank length" and "quark spin"_
|
| I'm going to be that guy - because I _love_ being that guy,
| and I won 't apologize for it - and point out that we're not
| even sure if those _are_ primitives!
| fishtoaster wrote:
| Haha, yeah, I, I was considering putting some disclaimers
| around those. "What actually _are_ the true, base-level
| primitives of physics? " has been an ongoing project for
| centuries. :)
| ekidd wrote:
| My approach is that there is a tension between three things:
|
| 1. The "combat simulator" built into the rules. I run this
| according to the spirit of the rules, so that players'
| investments in classes and feats pays off as expected.
| Otherwise my players feel cheated.
|
| 2. The simulation of the world. This is important because it
| makes the world feel real and believable (and because as DM,
| I get many of my plot ideas by "simulating" consequences).
|
| 3. The story. The campaign should ideally tell a story.
| Sometimes this means involving what I think of as "the Rule
| of Cool (But It's Only Cool the First Time)."
|
| The "peasant railgun", unfortunately, fails all three tests.
| It isn't _really_ part of the intended combat rules. It doesn
| 't make sense when simulating the world. And it probably
| doesn't fit into the campaign's narrative because it's too
| weird.
|
| On the other hand, if a player proposes something really cool
| that fits into the logic of the world, and that also fits
| into the _story_ , then I'll look for ways to make it happen.
|
| Let's say the PCs find 200 peasant archers, and set them up
| on a high hill, and have them all rain down arrows on a
| single target. That seems like it _ought_ to work, plus it 's
| a great story about bringing the villagers together to save
| the day. So in this case, I'll happily handwave a bunch of
| rules, and declare "rain of arrows" to be a stupidly powerful
| AoE.
|
| But different tables like different things, so this isn't
| one-size-fits-all advice!
| fenomas wrote:
| The underlying issue with TFA is that it's a player describing
| a thing they want to attempt - and then _also_ describing
| whether the attempt succeeds, and what the precise result is.
|
| And that's... not D&D? I mean players could certainly _attempt_
| to have several people pass an object quickly with the Ready
| action, under RAW. But what happens next isn 't "the rod speeds
| up to such and such a speed", it's "the DM decides whether the
| peasants need to roll a dexterity check" and so forth.
|
| And to me as a DM, that's why I find articles like TFA
| annoying. Not because it's confused about fall damage (though
| it is!), but because it's confused about who decides whether to
| apply fall damage!
| aspenmayer wrote:
| > And that's... not D&D?
|
| Some people are there because their life is not their own,
| and they want to live freely in the game; some people are
| there because their life is an exercise in control, and they
| want to play with the win conditions.
|
| Every table and game is unique. It's a microcosm of society
| that is simultaneously everything to anyone and yet no one
| thing to everyone. It's a way to directly engage with the
| Other via metaphor and indirection.
|
| This is D&D.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zng5kRle4FA
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| It's actually a well-known (at least in my blog circles)
| problem with D&D. _Everyone_ house-rules things to such an
| extent that the only thing that most tables have in common
| is how leveling up works, and which spells they use.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| Rules lawyering as a concept wasn't invented at a D&D
| table, but the creation of the phrase almost certainly
| involved sitting at one.
|
| That's what separates good games and groups from each
| other: the collective suspension of disbelief as a shared
| goal. When everyone is in it for themselves, it rapidly
| devolves into Mary Sue wish fulfillment and power gaming,
| and as another deleted commenter mentioned, Calvinball.
| When everyone is in it together, it builds on itself and
| each other, and you get something like Dragonlance.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonlance
|
| > Dragonlance is a shared universe created by the
| American fantasy writers Laura and Tracy Hickman, and
| expanded by Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis under the
| direction of TSR, Inc. into a series of fantasy novels.
| The Hickmans conceived Dragonlance while driving in their
| car on the way to TSR for a job interview. Tracy Hickman
| met his future writing partner Margaret Weis at TSR, and
| they gathered a group of associates to play the Dungeons
| & Dragons role-playing game. The adventures during that
| game inspired a series of gaming modules, a series of
| novels, licensed products such as board games, and lead
| miniature figures.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| A note to my fellow DMs: if your players badger you into allowing
| this, remember that their enemies - typically BBEGs like Kings,
| Dukes, Wizards, Liches & the like - are _much_ more likely to
| have two thousand peasants at their disposal than the party is.
| joseda-hg wrote:
| BBEG: "I have to give this one to you heroes, I thought
| peasants were a lot less useful than you did apparently, time
| to make use of those conquered villages I guess"
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| "Looks like I'm going to have to conquer a lot more villages.
| Say, come to think of it, is there any reason the peasants
| have to be alive to fire the railgun? I don't have to feed
| zombies..."
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| And if the players seek out the right artefacts of power (or
| bribe a level 17 wizard), they may be able to Wish away the
| loophole, bringing their nigh-indestructible enemy back down to
| mortal (unmortal?) levels.
| noelwelsh wrote:
| I think of a spectrum of RPG participants. At one end you have
| the mini-maxers, who want to squeeze every advantage possible out
| of the rules, and at the other end you have the story tellers,
| for whom the rules are a just framework to hang a story on. I've
| always been at the story teller end and while I appreciate the
| ingenuity in the peasant railgun I'm not very interested in
| playing a game where it features. If I'm going for slapstick I'd
| rather have a setting that explicitly encourages and handles it
| (e.g. Paranoia). OTOH, navigating different player desires is one
| of the big challenges of RPGs, and if people at the table really
| want to play a certain I think it has be allowed to an extent.
| foota wrote:
| I'd argue in some ways it's a triangle, with RAW vs RAI being
| the third point. Someone can minmax either under RAW/taken to
| the extreme, or under RAI or they can do silly things under RAI
| or RAW/home brewed.
| ourmandave wrote:
| That's what session 0 is for.
| spacemadness wrote:
| Not exactly tabletop, but this is the issue I have with every
| Pathfinder build I see for Wrath of the Righteous. Everyone
| dips into these nonsensical combinations to get a better armor
| rating, etc. So then you get a Paladin that decided to become a
| witch for part of the campaign for "reasons". You can roleplay
| something, sure, but it's rather forced by the numbers.
| Semaphor wrote:
| It's because those online guides are only relevant for people
| playing on unfair, yet those guides never/rarely mention
| that. Even on core I can do pure RP builds (with TB combat at
| least), all that minmaxing is only really important for the
| "I'd rather play a puzzle" difficulty.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I've only played a little bit of Pathfinder 2e, but it seems
| like a game explicitly aimed at min-maxers. There are so many
| various conditions, so many ways things interact, so many
| ways to build a character _badly_ that you basically have to
| be a munchkin to build something playable.
|
| If you're like noelwelsh or me, and prefer to lean into the
| storytelling and roleplaying, there are significantly better
| options than Pathfinder.
|
| (And better than D&D of course, but everyone knows how to
| play D&D. :/)
| uv-depression wrote:
| That's very funny, because I think it's the opposite.
| There's a ton of interactions, but those (in my view) are
| to encourage group tactics. Individual characters can
| definitely be built wrong, but so long as you have at least
| a +3 in your class's key attribute the difference in power
| between a vibes-based player and a hyperoptimizer isn't all
| that large. Feats in Pf2e mainly add versatility instead of
| power. Lots of first edition players hate it for that
| reason (first edition seems to be the hyperoptimizer's
| dream game).
|
| > [If you] prefer to lean into the storytelling and
| roleplaying, there are significantly better options than
| Pathfinder.
|
| That's true in the sense that Pathfinder has far less
| support for the more modern style narrative-first play and
| most of its rules focus on tactics. I dislike the premise
| that story and tactics are opposing goals, though; in my
| view they're two separate goals a game may or may not have.
| Pathfinder 2e has both, though its story-support is very
| traditional. If you enjoy in-depth stories with lots of
| intrigue &c, Pathfinder can totally deliver, and it also
| features significant amounts of tactical combat. If you're
| just not into the combat, then there are totally far better
| games. If you like the modern narrative-first game approach
| to story, then it's also not the best. But I absolutely
| like storytelling and roleplaying, and I enjoy Pf2e quite a
| lot.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _If you enjoy in-depth stories with lots of intrigue
| &c, Pathfinder can totally deliver_
|
| That's how I feel about D&D - but only in the hands of a
| decently skilled DM. I think other games provide a lot
| more tools & framework for the storytelling aspect.
|
| And I like the combat; Pathfinder just has a lot more ...
| work involved than D&D. It could be, though, that I'm
| just more familiar with D&D, and if I played as much PF2E
| as I do 5E, I would find it totally easy and intuitive,
| too.
| starkparker wrote:
| > And I like the combat; Pathfinder just has a lot more
| ... work involved than D&D. It could be, though, that I'm
| just more familiar with D&D, and if I played as much PF2E
| as I do 5E, I would find it totally easy and intuitive,
| too.
|
| It's very much about familiarity. I've played quite a lot
| of both (and D&D 3.5 and PF1 before them).
|
| It's not wrong that PF2E has a harder and more demanding
| focus on mechanics and tactics, especially teamwork,
| which is for both better and worse. D&D5E doesn't just
| allow for the DM to define more outcomes through
| narrative-focused hand-waving, it _requires_ it by
| lacking rules or guidance and having imbalanced
| granularity in some rules or builds over others. PF2E is
| more demanding in both design and practice, but in
| exchange provides more tools out of the box that a GM
| doesn't need to invent on the fly when players invest
| time and effort into tactical cooperative play. 5E has
| the shallower difficulty curve, but experienced 5E
| players who get past 2E's steeper curve find it has a
| higher ceiling... _if_ combat is a heavy focus.
|
| I had a rather contentious argument last year with a
| fellow freelance designer when I tried to suggest that
| PF2E is a roleplaying game. There's a significant cohort
| of PF2E players who play it almost exclusively for its
| combat. To me, that was telling in ways that I think the
| combat advocate didn't intend. Part of the allergy to
| D&D4E that players of D&D3E and earlier had when it came
| out was its narrowing of focus to combat. PF2E is
| likewise (and borderline ironically) a response to
| D&D5E's reduced focus on combat balance.
|
| To put it more generally, adept improvisational DMs with
| players who don't care as much about combat balance or
| fidelity are better served by D&D5E (or a wide array of
| TTRPGs with even less focus on simulation in tactical
| combat over giving players difficult choices, like
| Powered by the Apocalypse games, Mork Borg and its OSR-
| adjacent or -derived family of short-lived character
| gantlets, or narrative playgrounds like Bastionland).
|
| GMs who struggle to create fair mechanics for unusual
| circumstances mid-game and players who demand greater
| balance and fidelity in combat are better served by PF2E
| (or a smaller but still robust field of TTRPGs with more
| streamlined _or_ more extensive mechanics with similar
| goals, like 13th Age, the Warhammer family of games, or
| even D&D4E.)
| Ekaros wrote:
| My ruling on this would be that there is no acceleration. Last
| peasant just drops it on ground. Thus making it pointless setup.
| That seems most consistent way to me.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Yet the rod traverses a mile in 6 seconds. How can that be?
| Without acceleration.
| Ekaros wrote:
| And who says the acceleration must be constant? It might be
| that it reaches maximum speed at middle and then drops to
| zero at end?
|
| But really, system does not simulate such for other parts of
| combat. Like say tabaxi monk with haste bodying someone.
| jerf wrote:
| I would also rule that in the D&D world there is effectively
| is no such thing as velocity or acceleration. Note that
| weapons do not do damage because of their weight or velocity;
| they simply... do it. Your Greatsword does 2d6 damage,
| because in their world, that's just what it does. Weapons may
| have "heavy" and "light" categories but those interact with
| other rules and are not the cause of damage. Velocity doesn't
| exist in the sense we think of it. A vague analog does, but
| it's really quite vague.
|
| Really, the problem is the very selective application of
| real-world physics and game physics and then trying to very
| selectively obtain a particular outcome. If we want to play
| real-world physics, well, we all know the reasons why this
| isn't going to work in the real world. If you want to play
| D&D physics, then yeah, sure, the rod arrives at the other
| end of the line in one turn but with no more or less velocity
| than it started with, because "velocity" isn't even a concept
| in D&D. There is only "damage" in the D&D world, and there
| are no rules that state that handing off an item to the next
| person changes its "damage" any. Railgun a Greatsword from
| one end of the line to the other and a Greatsword still does
| 2d6 damage.
|
| It does successfully demonstrate that the D&D rule set is a
| just a complete and utter failure as a Grand Unified Field
| Theory of Physics. I join the rest of the nerd world in shock
| and dismay at this outcome and encourage them to try harder
| next edition. If they'd just listen to my feedback and import
| the Standard Model this would all go away.
|
| There's plenty of other ways to munchkin the rules to obtain
| absurd damage even completely within the ruleset.
| Fortunately. Or unfortunately. The reader may decide for
| themselves.
| card_zero wrote:
| The article cites the falling object rules, which I think
| do mention velocity. This is from the 2nd edition DM guide:
|
| _When a character falls, he suffers 1d6 points of damage
| for every 10 feet fallen, to a maximum of 20d6 (which for
| game purposes can be considered terminal velocity). This
| method is simple and it provides all the realism necessary
| in the game, It is not a scientific calculation of the rate
| of acceleration, exact terminal velocity, mass, impact
| energy, etc., of the falling body._
|
| So accelerating the object (increasing its damage) up to
| some arbitrary cap sounds reasonable. Perhaps limited to
| twenty times.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| Game mechanics that don't actually simulate physics
|
| You might as well ask how a character turns into stone when
| looking at a gorgon
| jayd16 wrote:
| Magic. The end.
| rtkwe wrote:
| The average velocity is that but that's not the true velocity
| of the rod. As it's passed from person to person it has to
| briefly stop then the person swings it to the next person in
| line. Through the Power of Almighty RAW this happens as fast
| as is required for it to take place in one round but the
| peasant can only move it that fast to pass it. When thrown
| the strength abandons them and it's just a peasant throwing a
| pole; d20+Dex to hit 1d4 on hit 20/60 range(improvised weapon
| rule).
| naniwaduni wrote:
| You're already relying on the rules' inconsistency with
| Outside physics; commit to the bit.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Conservation of mass, energy, momentum, etc does not exist in
| D&D.
| rtkwe wrote:
| No no no the last peasant gets to make an Improvised Weapon
| attack at least! d20 + Dex to hit and 1d4 on hit. Thrown it has
| a normal range of 20 feet and a long range of 60 feet.
|
| You're right though that it's just a mishmash of inapplicable
| rules (it's not a falling object) and mixing real and game
| world physics only to the players advantage (peasants are able
| to pass it any distance in 6 seconds but you turn on real world
| physics when it comes time to apply damage). That's why my
| general rule is we're either working all in one world or all in
| the other when trying to figure out what happens in weird
| situations.
| fenomas wrote:
| If one is actually taking this seriously, the simplest ruling
| would be that peasants need to pass a dex check to handle an
| object moving at such high speeds.
| stego-tech wrote:
| This is an excellent example of the difference between the
| _letter_ of the rules /law, and the _spirit_ of the rules /law.
|
| Is it possible under the _letter_ of the rules? Technically yes.
| Is it in the _spirit_ of the rules? Not really, no! And that grey
| area is where negotiations can happen, and erode one side in
| favor of the other.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Nope, it's not a falling object so those rules don't apply,
| each step is just a peasant with a pole passing it from person
| to person. d20 + Dex to hit and 1d4 improvised weapon damage on
| a hit as thrown by the last peasant.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > Is it possible under the letter of the rules? Technically yes
|
| Actually no, because there are no rules for accurately
| simulating real physics. Strictly by the rules, the last person
| in the chain of the peasant railgun simply throws it at the
| enemy for exactly the damage number that it would do under any
| other circumstances
| Nevermark wrote:
| You don't even need a ladder/rod. Just one more unlucky peasant!
| generalizations wrote:
| If I were the DM, I'd allow it.....but the players have to roll
| for each commoner sequentially to see if they can do their part.
| And the rolls get harder.
|
| If they want to spend 3hrs making increasingly hard rolls as the
| pole speeds up, more power to 'em.
| mey wrote:
| Yup. Each peasant after say the first 4 give me a DC check that
| gets harder to catch/pass the projectile down the line. If you
| need to be a 3rd level monk to potentially catch the missile,
| and not even rethrow the missile unless you get the damage to
| zero, this isn't getting up to any dangerous speed before
| hurting someone in the line. At least under my ad-hoc ruling.
| bovermyer wrote:
| If I was a GM encountering this from players, I would absolutely
| allow it, and then the players would discover the consequences.
|
| For one thing, most of the peasants would die. The few remaining
| would be so horrified that they'd probably attempt to bring down
| whatever authority figures exist on to the player characters,
| unless of course the PCs killed them in cold blood. There are
| consequences for _that_ too.
|
| For another, whatever they used it against - if it survived
| somehow - would remember that tactic, and might use it against
| them.
|
| And as usual, the use of overwhelming force (regardless of
| source) is something that people talk about. Any observers would
| report what they saw, and that information would spread. Further
| consequences there, both to the party's reputation and to the
| number of enemies that have greater resources than the party.
| petsfed wrote:
| There's also an opportunity for essentially an Oppenheimer-type
| NPC to explore it, but then at the end of 2 miles of ladder-
| brigade, it just falls disappointingly on the ground, and you
| have a battalion of thoroughly demoralized peasants in a combat
| zone to contend with.
| aitacobell wrote:
| I'm more about a mage hand giving wet willies
| kibwen wrote:
| In earlier editions, a similar hack was to line up an arbitrarily
| long line of chickens (or similarly expendable 1 HP creature) and
| use a combination of cleaving feats to meat-teleport from one end
| of the line to the other in a single round.
| Loughla wrote:
| My favorite exploit was when a set of players realized the
| druid could transform into [large animal] and if taken to 0 hp,
| would revert to their druid form.
|
| They immediately wanted to make a hot air balloon to drop the
| druid onto groups of monsters in his largest shape.
| greesil wrote:
| I was the master of techniques like this playing Warhammer 40K.
| Hello conversion beamer on a jet bike. That's a nice squad of
| terminators you have there, blorp. I'm surprised my friends let
| me play like this.
| putzdown wrote:
| I know that folks are just having fun with this, but it embodies
| one of the things I dislike about D&D, one of the reasons I
| simply ignore most of the "rules." At heart a role playing game
| happens in the imagination of the players. You can play RPGs
| entirely in those terms, with no real rules and very few numbers,
| just storytelling and imagination. On the other hand there are of
| course many tabletop games that do rely on structure, rules, and
| numbers, but these tend to limit the scope of what may happen in
| the game by virtue of having limited elements and rules. You
| cannot earn a trillion coins in Powergrid, there simply isn't the
| time or resources. What is so strange about D&D is that it tries
| somehow to join these two models of gameplay: the
| subjective/imaginative and the objective/numeric. When it works,
| it's fine (though, as I said, I personally tend to find the
| imaginative, storytelling part for more compelling than the
| objective, more tabletop-like part). This railgun embodies some
| sort of weird distortion in the whole affair. No: of course
| peasants cannot throw a pole however many thousands feet in a
| matter of seconds. If the rules somehow imply they can, the rules
| are dumb. Even if you accept the rules, use your imagination:
| what will happen to peasant hands and heads with an object
| passing that rapidly along them? What would happen to peasant
| skin if it tried to pull a pole with the kind of forces we're
| talking about? I truly don't understand how D&D players think. No
| disrespect: I'm not saying anyone is dumb. I'm saying that I
| can't picture how I would be thinking about a game, or rules, or
| a line of peasants, such that I would consider for a moment the
| idea that they might propel a pole in railgun fashion. It's...
| kinda funny... kinda. But the fact anyone pursues the joke more
| than two seconds, much less actually attempts this play with real
| DMs, is unfathomable to me. I don't understand how you would be
| trying to merge the domain of rules with the domain of
| imagination in order to get yourself into this knot. Does that
| makes sense at all?
| noelwelsh wrote:
| Like you, I'm very much in the role playing is story telling
| camp. I think the difference is people who, like you and I,
| want to play in the world, and people who want to play with the
| world. I.e. they are playing a meta game where they play with
| the rules to "win". This makes no sense to me, because there is
| no winning when you play in the world. It's the story you tell
| that is the point. But I can understand their POV because I do
| play to win in other domains.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Every table and group has it's own ideal version of the game
| and you can play either in D&D. I think a lot of people fall
| into the play to win because it's simpler and fits the mould
| of most games people are used to playing so it makes more
| sense to apply that pattern to role playing games.
| disillusionist wrote:
| To me, I see pushing rules boundaries as part and parcel with
| exploring fantastical worlds. Elves, dwarves, and dragons
| exist. Those aren't "real". Magic spells that allow you to fly
| and shoot fire from your finger-tips also exist but also aren't
| "real". If we're already breaking biology and meta-physics, why
| assume basic physics works exactly the same way either? For
| some, I think it is re-capturing the child-like attitude of
| wonder, excitement, adventure, and asking the question "what
| if?". This, of course, may be tempered by campaign tone;
| something that might happen in a DnD campaign but likely not in
| Call of Cthulu, Kids on Bikes, Monster of the Week, etc
| drivingmenuts wrote:
| > One of the major problems would be the absolute destruction
| caused to those you convinced to line up for this weird tango.
|
| As long as there is an earth-shattering kaboom, I don't see the
| problem.
|
| That said, if I ever introduced this idea in a game, he would
| probably introduce me to a tarrasque (for non-DnD people: the
| tarrasque is pretty damn near invincible and a railgun would
| probably just piss it off).
| rtkwe wrote:
| The problem comes from trying to mix real world physics with game
| mechanics only in ways that benefit the players and also applying
| rules where they don't fit [0]. Only the game mechanics allow you
| to pass it between the peasants so fast and the game already
| tells you what happens the last peasant throws it and it's a
| (likely non-proficient) attack with whatever item they're passing
| with the same range limitations that javelin or improvised weapon
| has. The item is only on average moving 1900 mph but it's really
| just being rapidly handed from person to person so the true
| velocity is a rapid sawtooth as the person moves it to pass it to
| the next person, enabled by the power of RAW itself to these
| feats.
|
| [0] This is just an object being passed between creatures not a
| falling object so the Falling Object rules are irrelevant.
| otikik wrote:
| This reminds me of the "Dual Octo-cat Flail", invented by a
| friend of mine.
|
| A flail is basically a stick with a pointy ball chained to one
| end. It does one attack per turn.
|
| A dual flail attacks twice (it has two balls).
|
| Now replace each ball by an octopus. And each octopi is holding a
| cat on each of its 8 tentacles. So when you attack, the
| cephalopods attack, and that means that 16 angry felines attack.
| I think at the time they came up with this animals had some sort
| of guaranteed damage exception in some cases (perhaps in a
| previous DND version?).
|
| Anyway it was completely OP.
| dexwiz wrote:
| How do you explain an octopus holding 8 cats, let alone keeping
| the octopodes alive for more than a day?
| Yizahi wrote:
| Probably there was no need for that, because game evening has
| ended while everyone was arguing about correct plural name
| for octopuses :)
| petsfed wrote:
| Obviously it's _octopoxen_
|
| Like the inspiring concept, I think part of the joy of DnD
| is that it's often an invitation to discussions about
| irrelevant minutae. Provided the rules-lawyering doesn't
| take up all the oxygen in the room, it's a fun diversion.
| sapphicsnail wrote:
| My ex's goal in life is to get people to say octopodes
| because that's the proper Greek plural. Hasn't taken off
| yet
| nartho wrote:
| It'd need to be enchanted with "Create Water".
| Loughla wrote:
| Every single group I have ever played with, when playing
| with brand new Players, has had someone try to drown
| enemies with create water inside their lungs.
|
| It generally devolves into an argument about whether or not
| human lungs count as an open container, but it always
| happens.
|
| It's a human consciousness constant. It's amazing.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| A wizard did it.
| xg15 wrote:
| I hope there were some buttered toasts attached to the cats as
| well, for additional infinite energy.
| Klathmon wrote:
| Our group once badgered our DM at the time into allowing the
| parties pet goat to deal some minimal amount of damage in combat.
| Then we backtracked and bought a hundred of them from the local
| shepherd and had a small goat army for a bit.
|
| Unfortunately there was a flood shortly after and our goat army
| was lost
| tonyarkles wrote:
| My experience with a few fun DMs is that you have to be really
| careful with the shenanigans. I'm not surprised at all about
| the flood that took out your goats. I'm impressed with the
| restraint demonstrated by your DM in fact... one of my old DMs
| would have almost certainly done something more damaging first;
| off the top of my head, good chance we would have woken up to
| discover that the goats had eaten all of our clothing in the
| middle of the night.
| ecshafer wrote:
| Perfect chance for the army of goats to be corrupted by dark
| magic and become evil goats that are intent on killing the
| party.
| Yizahi wrote:
| If anyone enjoys this kind of foolery, I recommend a Harry Potter
| x DnD crossover fanfiction:
| https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8096183/1/Harry-Potter-and-the-...
|
| Main character is a self-aware munchkin mage transported to the
| HP world and DnD rules apply to him only.
|
| Unfortunately the story is unfinished on the most interesting
| point, but the finished amount chapters is more than enough :)
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I've also read the HPMOR series (it was ... not something I'd
| recommend), and started one of the ratfics about D&D world -
| and bounced off of it quickly.
| fitsumbelay wrote:
| _extremely_ disappointed this isn 't an instructable
| ticulatedspline wrote:
| Other problems aside, wouldn't it be more damage to just use the
| ready action to have them all attack (2,280d4?)? also wouldn't
| the projectile inherit the peasant's THAC0 which is probably
| terrible?
| ajkjk wrote:
| I always felt like the best part of tabletop games was telling a
| good immersive story, which necessarily means that the world have
| some semblance of realism, which means the peasants would
| obviously refuse to do this, not to mention fail, and also that
| no PC would ever try to do it because it's absurdly out-of-
| character.
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| "Some of the peasants dutifully stand in line while the
| majority look bewildered at your request."
| Semaphor wrote:
| This reminds me of Knights of the Dinner Table [0], a 90s D&D
| Parody cartoon magazine that later spawned its own TTRPG
| Hackmaster [1] (first with the 4th edition based on licensed D&D
| 1st ed, 5th ed is fully standalone (and less humorous, I don't
| think you can even die during character creation anymore)).
|
| Anyway, the KotDT players would in several comic make use of the
| mob rules, hire a ton of beggars, and just "mob" the bosses, as
| those abstracted, simplified rules for mob fights allowing the
| otherwise useless peasants to fight a boss monster for relatively
| little money. Same concept as TFA ;)
|
| [0]: https://kenzerco.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Knights-
| Of-T...
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HackMaster
| dmoy wrote:
| > Falling Object rules for 5e.
|
| Well I haven't kept up with D&D at all since sometime around 3e
| (maybe?), but I'm glad to hear that falling object rules are
| still broken as hell
|
| You used to be able to use relatively low level spells that
| summon e.g. rocks or whatever, up in the air, and have them fall
| on someone's head for way imbalanced amounts of damage. I don't
| remember it being 300d6, but still a lot.
| zeroq wrote:
| Back in the days we used to troll GMs at conventions with stuff
| like that.
|
| Can I cast invisibility or cloak? Can I use levitation? And
| roughly how large rock can I create with a create element earth
| spell?
|
| Alright, so my character's name is Northrop, and let's bomb some
| cities.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Imagine for a moment an army of 1000 archers firing longbows at a
| target. You'd expect 5% of these to hit by rolling 20s, and 5% of
| those to do critical hits by rolling two 20s. Repeat every 6
| seconds for 50+ d8 dmg against any target, no rule twisting
| required
|
| DnD rules are not useful for things like that.
| fizlebit wrote:
| I actually prefer a game where the rules mostly come from the DM.
| I think it is better if there is no players handbook. The
| characters develop along their story arc, e.g. at some point you
| character acquires new powers, e.g. your character has been
| spending a lot of time developing new combat moves, they kind of
| level up and now the DM explains a new mechanic. Your character
| has become adept at disarming opponents and now gets such and
| such a bonus to attempt a disarm.
|
| This is a lot to place on the DM, but I like the anarchy of a
| system like dungeon crawler classic. You expect some of your
| characters to die, e.g. in one adventure my character in a last
| ditch effort to save himself drank a potion of unknown origin,
| that potion turned him into a mithral statue. It was a fitting
| end to his short but eventful life.
|
| Another character played by a different player managed through a
| long process involving books and negociations with his patron to
| construct a demonic sentient flying dog through whom he could
| cast spells and see.
|
| This kind of exploration I think encourages players to see their
| characters much more as characters than machines to be min maxed
| and it is way more fun.
|
| Give the DM total control to decide the dice roles that determine
| the outcome of the shenanigans. You try to hire an army of
| peasants you're going to be dealing with appointing sergeants,
| logistics, mutany, desertion all before you try to line them up
| to throw a ladder at some dude, which in the end is probably like
| a 1d20 >= ac for a chance of 1d4 damage, with of course crit
| tables, where on a critical success the dude might be tangled up
| in the ladder and fall over or something.
| pugio wrote:
| When I was a kid I had a character that could fly. I realized
| that a Decanter of Endless Water put out a pretty powerful
| constant thrust. Then a Helmet of Freedom of Movement could be
| interpreted to remove all excess friction due to win resistance
| (forget the details but it was something about removing any
| factor that would inhibit your movement). Constant acceleration
| and no friction... Unlimited speed.
|
| I actually sat down and worked out all the equations based on the
| mass of my character and the amount of thrust the decanter
| provided. Our party would be deep in the wilderness somewhere and
| I'd say " I nip back to town to pick up some supplies, with
| acceleration and deacceleration it takes me 17 minutes".
|
| Looking back, I think I was a pretty annoying player, but my DM
| was very patient. I guess he could see I put a lot of work into
| the scheme. It was also probably the most exciting application of
| physics I had encountered in my life so far.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| Back when I was in college, we used to play various tabletop RPGs
| a lot. For one of them (DragonQuest), the rules we had were
| fairly complex (game rules + house rules) and covered a lot of
| situations. The general rule of thumb was that, if you came up
| with something that the rules said was ok, even if a bit
| ridiculous; you could do it. The caveat being, it would be
| discussed post-session to see if it should work going forward.
| But everything flies once.
|
| One night, one of the characters was transformed into a frog and
| knocked off a roof. He triggered a spell, Shadow Wings, which
| grants the play large wings made of shadow, allowing them to fly.
| However, the wings are large enough to lift a human... I imagine
| on the order of a 15-20' wingspan. The DM made it known that it
| was not reasonable for a frog to fly using them. Much debate
| happened because... everything flies once. At the end of the
| discussion, the frog was _not_ allowed to fly.
|
| The result being a new quote came out of that night.
|
| Everything flies once, except a frog.
| protocolture wrote:
| Much prefer Skeletron.
|
| https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/2010/12936417...
|
| Has a better RAW foundation (The issue being maximising the
| number of skeletons)
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