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[-] HornyOnMain@kbin.social 38 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I've never understood the argument for Peasant Railgun just because the argument is self contradictory. You take a very strict RAW interpretation of a mechanic that might be technically possible in the rules and then just abandon that adherence to interpret the results in a non-RAW way

[-] TwilightVulpine@kbin.social 14 points 11 months ago

It's just a "clever" rhetorical trick of considering rules and real world physics only where it enables them to pull bulshit.

To be fair, it's pretty funny but I would never let that fly in a regular game.

[-] Lianodel@ttrpg.network 8 points 11 months ago

Yeah. I'm usually not one to accept "The DM can fix it" as an excuse for bad rules, but it absolutely applies here. It's an extremely specific set of circumstances that can only happen if the players are trying to break the game and the DM lets them. It's not a broken rule in practice so much as it is a fun thought experiment for people to talk about.

I think there are much better examples of broken rules out there.

[-] bouh@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

That is not true. You are ignoring half the written rules for this to work.

[-] gullible@kbin.social 23 points 11 months ago

Alright, the peasant railgun operates under the principle that the object moves at an infinitely scaleable speed. However, there aren’t any rules about movement at speed interacting with dropped items so peasant cannon’t. But, what are some major speeds that human bodies tolerate poorly? My thoughts go to wind abrasion, desiccation, eyelids tearing, air pressure bursting bronchi, and simple sonic booms. Say you bind an enemy in a net and send them through the peasant supercollider, what speeds would cause the cause the enemy to take damage?

[-] TwilightVulpine@kbin.social 12 points 11 months ago

D&D rules have nothing about taking damage through excessive speed either, unless you are talking about fall damage, but that's not it.

[-] DudeDudenson 4 points 11 months ago

Sounds to me like you could yeet your party to your destination no problem with it

[-] TwilightVulpine@kbin.social 1 points 11 months ago

That would be fully RAW compliant 👍

[-] Demdaru@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

So, peasant chain up to the closest pit/cliff, yeet enemy at them and watch him disappear on the horizon. Got it. Tie first if flying.

[-] Honytawk@lemmy.zip 1 points 11 months ago

All of those peasants will need to perform a grapple check with a +0 bonus.

[-] gullible@kbin.social -4 points 11 months ago

Yes, but accelerating to a specific speed would necessarily involve certain effects, if your DM is halfway fun. The object is dropped harmlessly upon reaching the final peasant but until then, your enemy is on mr bone’s wild ride. If you really want me to offer specific rule-centric (boring) solutions then reverse gravity, 4 100 foot ladders holding queued action peasants, 4x10d6 fall damage to a bound enemy. 8x if you want to occupy all 8 surrounding spots, but we do half-spaces so I don’t know if that would work for other tables.

[-] TwilightVulpine@kbin.social 13 points 11 months ago

C'mon, lets not dictate who's fun based on a shameless attempt to bend D&D rules and physics into a pretzel. You already gave up on physics at the moment you decided a line of people can pass an object instantly. Going from 100% RAW no physics to 100% physics RAW be damned is kind of a smartass move. I honestly doubt people would even be trying this in real games if not for the meme, because how do you even organize a perfect line of peasants in the middle of a combat encounter?

There's a lot of fun things you can do without stretching believability to the breaking point. One of my favorite Pathfinder characters was an aarakocra barbarian that used enhanced carry capacity to wrestle enemies into the air and throw them at each other. No need to selectively reinvent physics to make it work.

[-] gullible@kbin.social 3 points 11 months ago

It’s my gods given right to bend the rules until they tell me otherwise! How Crawford hasn't errata’d this away with an incredibly simple clarification of “items can’t be transferred between more than 3 people per round of combat” is beyond me. Not to mention the innumerable chances for the DM to say “no” before you gather 6k+ peasants. The line existing presupposes quite a bit.

[-] TwilightVulpine@kbin.social 3 points 11 months ago

Oh yeah that is pretty silly. You could make the kingdom's fastest and most people-demanding mail system, but anything more and your DM is just indulging wacky shenanigans. Preservation of momentum and damage by air friction aren't in the book so that's not so much bending RAW as it is quickly switching the PHB for a Physics 101 book and expecting nobody to notice. Bugs Bunny might be impressed but puzzled why you'd bother with those books at that point.

[-] Froyn@kbin.social 8 points 11 months ago

I am intrigued by your "peasant supercollider" and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

[-] spittingimage@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

Pheasant supercollider, possibly.

[-] TheOakTree@lemm.ee 5 points 11 months ago

At a certain point your blood will be unable to flow because the pumping of your heart won't be able to overcome the high pressure in certain sections of your arteries/veins (which would be caused by the ridiculous acceleration).

[-] PugJesus@kbin.social 19 points 11 months ago

On the other hand, it would be a super useful bucket-brigade within the rules as-written

[-] neoman4426@kbin.social 6 points 11 months ago

Pseudo telegram could also work within the "kind of works if you squint" framework of it without bumping into the "now we ignore RAW and use actual physics for the final attack" bit

[-] gerusz@ttrpg.network 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

If you want to set up a proper telegram system with D&D tech, Magic Mouth is a better choice. Let's say you set them up onto poles that are spaced 30 feet apart, 4 magic mouths per pole. Say, the line is going east-west:

  • Mouth 1: If it hears a "one" coming from the east, it says "one".
  • Mouth 2: If it hears a "zero" coming from the east, it says "zero".
  • Mouth 3 and 4: same but from the west.

Each pole costs 40 GP to set up, so this telegram is rather expensive, costing 7040 gp per mile... but once it's set up, it doesn't sleep, doesn't need payment, doesn't need maintenance, just two people on each end with a binary code table. You could say that these are skilled hirelings, working in 3 shifts that means that the upkeep of both ends of a line is 12 gp per day.

Peasants shouting the message... well, to make it absolutely sure that the message is heard, you need to put a messaging post every 100 feet. (Loud noises are audible at 2d6×50 feet per the DM screen.) If they are working in 3 shifts, that's 6 sp per day per post, making the upkeep of the line ~32 gp per mile. Thus the magic mouth setup would become cheaper after only 220 days.

Monodrones are probably much more reliable for that. Or you can straight-up use monodrones to set up a proper Clacks system.

[-] Archpawn@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago

Or to move anything really. That's why I think they should rename it to the peasant railway.

[-] VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

Could transport a bucket of water from the Atlantic ocean to anywhere on Earth in three seconds.

[-] spittingimage@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

With a sufficient number of peasants, sure.

[-] FaceDeer@kbin.social 3 points 11 months ago

I always thought that was all it was intended for, a niche situation where it was necessary to move something quickly. Not everything in D&'D can be solved by damage rolls.

[-] sirblastalot@ttrpg.network 2 points 11 months ago

Love it. Sure, the boss takes no damage from the impact, but did you give him any ranks in swim?

[-] shadowbert@kbin.social 15 points 11 months ago

That's a very succinct rebuttal... I like it.

[-] chetradley@lemmy.world 11 points 11 months ago

Sure, but the final peasant can only make an improvised ranged attack roll for 1d4+STR (20/60).

[-] gerusz@ttrpg.network 10 points 11 months ago

If we're about to simulate physics, the wooden stick would turn into an expanding cloud of plasma about halfway through the "railgun" anyway.

[-] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 9 points 11 months ago

If you peasent rail gun something upwards, you can throw it high enough to take 20d6 damage falling on someone, given your peasents are able to hand off something 200lbs.

https://olddungeonmaster.com/2016/12/23/dd-5e-falling-objects/

[-] HeyJ@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 11 months ago

That doesn't work anyway, as the item would only be dropped next to the final peasant, as per the rules of the game.

[-] MajorHavoc@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago

Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure a variant of that attack featured prominently in Final Fantasy: Advent Children.

[-] otter@lemmy.dbzer0.com -3 points 11 months ago
[-] DahGangalang@infosec.pub 5 points 11 months ago
this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2023
277 points (97.9% liked)

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