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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 t
by disillusionist 1y ago
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!
- jagermo 1y agoPlayer 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.
- hooverd 1y agoDid you use ChatGPT/an LLM for this comment or do you just write Like That?
- bluefirebrand 1y agoLLMs had to learn from somewhere, a lot of internet comments write Like That
- hooverd 1y agoIt's very jarring when you see it nowadays, and rather unfortunate for people who have that style of writing.
- lukan 1y agoBut maybe less and less will, if all it gets them nowdays are accusations of using/being an LLM.
- Macha 1y agoI'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 1y agoAnd, "I'm not a cat." (Except sometimes maybe as a NPC)
- bcrosby95 1y agoJust wait until your LLM starts accusing you of being an LLM
- max_on_hn 1y agoChatGPT was sticky for me very early because its writing style reminded me of my own ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- otikik 1y agoIt does read very chatgpt-y
- disillusionist 1y agoI just Write Like That. It always takes me longer to write things than intended because I tend to overthink things, too. :/
- hooverd 1y agoIt was a good comment!
- zahlman 1y agoFor 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.
- fc417fc802 1y agoIf LLMs had the necessary theory of mind to model context well enough to write the comment in question the world would be a very different place. Writing style and fitting in to the context are entirely different things. LLM responses tend to give me the vibe of a disengaged office worker who isn't emotionally present and lacks a proper mental model of the topic. It's been shocking to me to witness how frequently people around me IRL fail to notice such writing.
- zahlman 1y ago> Writing style and fitting in to the context are entirely different things. Absolutely — which goes a long way towards how I make the judgment myself, now that you say it. Although it's still hard to be precise about. (One positive impact that LLMs indirectly had on my life is that they motivated me to look up ways to type em-dashes more easily. I now have my caps lock key mapped as a compose key, and a custom compose-key mapping for it.) > It's been shocking to me to witness how frequently people around me IRL fail to notice such writing. To notice, they'd have to themselves be engaged, I suppose. Or at least have some idea about the subject matter.
- y-curious 1y agoWelcome to the erosion of trust we are seeing live. Soon we won't trust anything outside of a speaker we can touch physically.
- moconnor 1y agoThis; 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 1y agoIf you’re using the falling object rule then cap it at an appropriate terminal velocity, maybe 200 km/h.
- altruios 1y ago> 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 1y agoIf 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 1y agoAgreed. 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 1y agoI 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.)
- fishtoaster 1y agoMy 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 1y ago> 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 1y agoHaha, 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. :)
- bdsa 1y agoI'm going to be that that guy and say "plank length" is probably constant for a given plank. Planck length, on the other hand... :)
- ekidd 1y agoMy 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 1y agoThe 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 1y ago> 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zng5kRle4FA
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- pavel_lishin 1y agoIt'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 1y agoRules 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 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.
- bee_rider 1y agoWould 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…
- IAmBroom 1y agoNah, there's always sub-integer Charisma modifiers to those results. It's not like Behavioral Science is objective, in our world or theirs...
- devilbunny 1y agoIt 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.
- tiltowait 1y agoTFA 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 1y ago> Per the rules governing object visibility at distance, the moon was invisible. The devs forgot to special case it in the LoD algorithm.
- IAmBroom 1y agoYou're making an assumption about the distance to the moon.
- whatshisface 1y agoThere 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.