[disillusionist]

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!

[fenomas]

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]

> 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

[rtkwe]

That's how D&D goes, player comes up with the plan, tries to argue what they think the rules say should happen and tries to convince the DM if they disagree. DM gets ultimate say but it's still a collaborative process at it's core.

[tiltowait]

TFA is actually the first time I've seen the peasant railgun interpretation that actually causes damage. Other conversations I've seen all concluded it wouldn't do any damage, which made it even funnier depending on your point of view.

Two of my favorite bits of D&D (3.5) logic:

* Mounting a horse is a free action. Therefore, much like the peasant railgun, you could set up saddle highways: a post every five feet, with a saddle on top. Then, you mount and dismount between cities as one gigantic free action, allowing instantaneous travel.

* Per the rules governing object visibility at distance, the moon was invisible.

* Arguably, once you started drowning, you could not stop drowning, even if removed from water.

[fc417fc802]

> Per the rules governing object visibility at distance, the moon was invisible.

The devs forgot to special case it in the LoD algorithm.

[IAmBroom]

You're making an assumption about the distance to the moon.

[fishtoaster]

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'.

[ekidd]

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!

[pavel_lishin]

> 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!

[altruios]

> 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.

[plorkyeran]

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.

[disillusionist]

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.

[da_chicken]

> 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?

No, we don't.

The most recent D&D Dungeon Master's Guide actually puts a note in the book[0] for things like this: The D&D rules are not a physics engine. The D&D rules are a simple framework for creating a game world, but that's not the same thing as being a 3d game engine or a generative data model. It's a game where you're expected to resolve complex events with a single die roll. It's not Unreal Engine 5 or Autodesk Inventor or COMSOL Multiphysics.

Just like D&D's morality and ethics system (alignment) falls over and cries when you poke it with a Philosophy 101 moral quandary, the game's event resolution is not intended for you to model the Large Hadron Collider.

[0]: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dnd/br-2024/the-basics#Pla...

[PhasmaFelis]

> 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?

The basic assumption here is that the rules as written beat physics and common sense. When you play that game, you have to do it rigorously. You can't say that rules trump physics one moment, and physics trump rules the next.

> There's also the rule of cool. If it makes the story better/ more enjoyable: have at it.

That does rule out the Peasant Railgun more thoroughly than any rules argument.

[patmcc]

>>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.

[shitpostbot]

It's far more reasonable to assume it moves infinitely fast between peasants, but comes to a halt at each one.

Or if not infinitely fast, but we're going to assume a chain could accelerate it indefinitely, than it's still more reasonable to assume each pass happens exactly how fast it needs to for 6s/num_peasants, comes to a halt, and then moves to the next. That way all the peasants have the same, minimum, speed, Instead of some slow, other absurdly fast based on an arbitrarily assumed, linear, acceleration.

(Why not assume exponential acceleration and say after 10 passe s it hits light speed)

[bee_rider]

Would I expect a DM to accept a peasant railgun? No.

Would I love to play in a campaign where we are dungeon-crawling scientists who are investigating the theory that we are actually living in a poor simulation? Hell yeah. Just imagine your d&d university admissions departments working out that people somehow can be sorted precisely on a scale of -5 to +5 in terms of natural competency for any skill…

[devilbunny]

It was abandoned partway through a second "series", but it's still out there: Harry Potter and the Natural 20. Fanfic, obviously, but a very amusing take on how you could theoretically break D&D by applying Potterworld physics (or vice versa).

The peasant railgun was a footnote to one of the early chapters. Author specified that he would never, ever allow most of the munchkin tricks he wrote about in a game that he DM'd, but since crazy munchkin tricks are the source of a lot of the humor in the writing, he left them in the fiction.

[IAmBroom]

Nah, there's always sub-integer Charisma modifiers to those results.

It's not like Behavioral Science is objective, in our world or theirs...

[whatshisface]

There is no way the rules for gun could be used to carry five people at seventy miles per hour. For one thing, the idea that a, "piston rod" could somehow catch the bullet without being damaged is preposterous, not to mention the idea that it could turn some kind of "crank shaft." How fast do you think this, "flywheel" would have to be moving? While I admit that we've used the fact that some low-velocity bullets can't penetrate thick plates of steel armor in the past, the idea that the rotation of the armor could push a second bullet back in to the barrel of a gun that had just been fired is beyond reason. No, I do not want to hear about how you've put the mechanism from the flour mill we fought in last session into a metal box and filled it with oil. Roll for initiative.

[jagermo]

Player creativity should be rewarded. I'd let them use it once, but if they try it more than that, the bad guys hear about it and suddenly they'll look at the wrong end of a bunch of those railguns.

[moconnor]

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]

If you’re using the falling object rule then cap it at an appropriate terminal velocity, maybe 200 km/h.

[hooverd]

Did you use ChatGPT/an LLM for this comment or do you just write Like That?

[bluefirebrand]

LLMs had to learn from somewhere, a lot of internet comments write Like That

[disillusionist]

I just Write Like That. It always takes me longer to write things than intended because I tend to overthink things, too. :/

[y-curious]

Welcome to the erosion of trust we are seeing live. Soon we won't trust anything outside of a speaker we can touch physically.

[max_on_hn]

ChatGPT was sticky for me very early because its writing style reminded me of my own ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[otikik]

It does read very chatgpt-y