The Peasant Railgun and Dunbar's Number

[ShaneMRoth]

The Peasant Railgun.
A cheeky game-breaking concept from 1d4 Chan. Link! (http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Peasant_Railgun)



...
Hire a ton of peasants; let's just say that it is two thousand two hundred and eighty. Line them up in single file; this will form a chain of peasants two miles long. It'd have been four miles back in MY day (witness me hiking up my 2nd Edition suspenders).

Buy a ladder. Just buy a standard, ten-foot ladder. Disassemble the ladder into a bunch of rungs and a pair of mighty ten-foot wooden poles. Hand a pole to the peasant at the back of line.

First round of combat. Peasant at the front of line readies an action to throw the pole at the enemy. Every peasant behind him readies an action to hand the pole to the peasant in front of him.

Next round: peasants fire off their readied actions, passing the pole two miles down the line and hurling it in six seconds or less. Pole accelerates to the speed of 1188 miles per hour, or Mach 1.546875 in dry air, at 20°C/68°F, at sea level on our planet
...

I've read the threads that I could find on the Peasant Railgun, but I was unable to find one that addressed the issue that jumped out at me almost immediately.

"... Hire a ton of peasants; let's just say that it is two thousand two hundred and eighty. ..."


So, just go and hire 2,280 peasants?

Really?

The focus of this thought experiment falls on implausibility of the Railgun part.

I'm mindful of that.

Still, I find the Peasant part of this concept to be only marginally more plausible than the Railgun part.

How do you go about rustling up the 2,280 peasants needed to form the Railgun?

Just go to Ye Olde PeasantTemp and hire a couple of thousand of 'em?

Do peasants just wander around your campaign setting and spontaneously form Railgun Flash Mobs? They don't in mine.

If a player wanted to even try to build a Peasant Railgun in my campaign, I would get around to addressing the problems with the Railgun, but not until after she explained to me in vivid detail how she intended to hire a couple thousand peasants.

In fact, once these peasants realize that they are expected to become a living siege weapon, they will be aware that they are taking a significant physical risk. All of these peasants would need to have a Helpful attitude towards her.

And once she has her 2,280 peasants, then there is also the matter of Dunbar's Number Link! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number)


Dunbar's Number is 150. Anthropologists have determined that humans have difficulty maintaining stable social groups when those groups have significantly more than 150 members.

If a player wanted to try and break my campaign with 150 peasants, I might sign off on that and let her take her best shot.

But 2,280?

I'm going to need her to show her work.

Among other things, I need to know how she intends to keep her 2,280 Helpful peasants functioning as a coherent social group.

I can find no part of the SRD that entitles a player to an on-demand supply of Helpful Peasants.

No Peasants? No Railgun. No problem.

[Know(Nothing)]

Finally a needlessly circuitous counter to a situation that will never come up in a real game. Great work.

[Keltest]

Go to a village. ~2000 peasants/villagers was historically not an especially large number of them. It wasn't a tiny hamlet by any means, but finding that many people who weren't nobility was not an especially difficult task if you had any knowledge of local geography.

Also, id like to point out that the peasant railgun is a rules glitch caused by vagueness in the wording of the rules as written and was not intended to be a thing in the first place. Its no wonder it doesn't make much logical sense.

[MyrPsychologist]

1. The Railgun doesn't actually work. But for sake of argument we'll pretend it does.

2. Dunbar's Number isn't a law. It's a theory based on some pretty flimsy evidence.

So you go to a city with a population large enough to support it and do your best to wrangle as many people as possible together. Or you establish an army and move to another area and conscript more people into the army for this purpose.

If I must solve the problem within the parameter of Dunbar's Law. You conscript a series of officers to conscript legions and establish military styled units.

[ShaneMRoth]

Go to a village. ~2000 peasants/villagers was historically not an especially large number of them. It wasn't a tiny hamlet by any means, but finding that many people who weren't nobility was not an especially difficult task if you had any knowledge of local geography.

Also, id like to point out that the peasant railgun is a rules glitch caused by vagueness in the wording of the rules as written and was not intended to be a think in the first place. Its no wonder it doesn't make much logical sense.

I've seen many posts on the nature of the mechanical glitch associated with this concept.

Finding a couple thousand peasants would not be the problem. I'm asking how someone would get a couple thousand peasants gathered for the purpose of making a Railgun, or any other ambitious and ill-advised project, in the first place.

[ShaneMRoth]

1. The Railgun doesn't actually work. But for sake of argument we'll pretend it does.

2. Dunbar's Number isn't a law. It's a theory based on some pretty flimsy evidence.

So you go to a city with a population large enough to support it and do your best to wrangle as many people as possible together. Or you establish an army and move to another area and conscript more people into the army for this purpose.

If I must solve the problem within the parameter of Dunbar's Law. You conscript a series of officers to conscript legions and establish military styled units.

Alright, now this is helpful...

How long do you estimate it might take to get this many peasants wrangled together?

[Keltest]

I've seen many posts on the nature of the mechanical glitch associated with this concept.

Finding a couple thousand peasants would not be the problem. I'm asking how someone would get a couple thousand peasants gathered for the purpose of making a Railgun, or any other ambitious and ill-advised project, in the first place.

How do you think? Pay them, threaten them, find their lord and convince him it would be hilarious, ask them nicely...

How do you get anyone to do anything?

[AvatarVecna]

I can find no part of the SRD that entitles a player to an on-demand supply of Helpful Peasants.

Here's (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/feats.htm#leadership) two (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/prestigeClasses/thrallherd.htm). Of course, at that point, we're getting into Leadership abuse, which has far greater destructive potential than throwing a stick, no matter how fast that stick is thrown.

...which brings me to why the Commoner Railgun is only a joke about RAW being silly and not an actual thing you can do, even in a pure RAW game. Obviously, the CR abuses the action economy to pull of an extremely powerful result; because of the realistic logistics of pulling this off (that make such a task effectively impossible), it only works when RAW is the only thing that matters. However, RAW also has rules dictating what happens when the stick is thrown: namely, how far it can be thrown, how accurate a throw it is, and how much damage it does when it hits. These are all defined by RAW; it doesn't matter how fast the stick theoretically got while travelling down the chain of commoners, because by RAW the distance a thing can be thrown and how much damage it does are based on its base weapon stats, and not on how fast the object itself was going (the character wielding the weapon can potentially affect those things with their movement, but the movement of the object itself does not).

You can't combine silly TO-level RAW with RAI and IRL physics, because then it's not pure RAW anymore.

[Know(Nothing)]

Also yeah, more than 2,000 people doing the same thing would be impossible. (http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/largest-thai-dance)

You don't need extra reasons the railgun wouldn't work. It is not a thing that happens anyway.

[MyrPsychologist]

Alright, now this is helpful...

How long do you estimate it might take to get this many peasants wrangled together?

Variable depending on party composition, level, stats, and campaign specifics.

If you're acting on direct authority of the King and have the capacity to use a standing military in addition to conscripts, probably not too long. It'd be like raising a militia. Only the militia is tasked to just stand in a line and hand off wood to launch it at whatever elder evil crosses in front of it.

[ShaneMRoth]

Here's (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/feats.htm#leadership) two (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/prestigeClasses/thrallherd.htm). Of course, at that point, we're getting into Leadership abuse, which has far greater destructive potential than throwing a stick, no matter how fast that stick is thrown.

You can't combine silly TO-level RAW with RAI and IRL physics, because then it's not pure RAW anymore.

Excellent points...

I'm not sure how Leadership can net thousands of followers though.


How do you think? Pay them, threaten them, find their lord and convince him it would be hilarious, ask them nicely...

How do you get anyone to do anything?


Good, good, and good...

I realize that the "gather a bunch of peasants together" part is a boring detail. And by that virtue, easy to overlook.

It was just bugging me.

[jiriku]

If you have the blessing of the local leader and sufficient motivation (either through bribery or threat of force), it shouldn't take more than a day. Perhaps only half a day. Medieval towns were fairly compact affairs -- most of the citizens couldn't afford a horse, so everything had to be within walking distance of everything else. Send half a dozen mounted heralds galloping through town shouting your offer of a pouch of silver to every man, woman, and child who assembles at the fairgrounds in time for the dinner bell. People will drop what they're doing and run to the spot if the motivation is sufficiently large.

[Saintheart]

How do you think? Pay them, threaten them, find their lord and convince him it would be hilarious, ask them nicely...

How do you get anyone to do anything?

And in the case of peasants, you could even pay them at hireling rates: 1 sp piece per day. Hell, pay them for 10 days of labour for the inconvenience of travel in from the countryside or wherever, for the colossal sum of 1 gp each. 2,280 gp, i.e. the rough price of a +1 longsword, achievable at the mindblowing point of character level 2. Hell, let's ensure the countryside or everyone in the reasonably-sized town eats for a month for showing up for one day: 30 days per person who shows up, for 3 gp each, at 2,280 gp: 6,840 gp, not even half the price of a +4 item. Adventurers are utterly loaded in comparison to civilians.

[Ashtagon]

And once she has her 2,280 peasants, then there is also the matter of Dunbar's Number Link! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number)


Dunbar's Number is 150. Anthropologists have determined that humans have difficulty maintaining stable social groups when those groups have significantly more than 150 members.


This is why no war has ever featured more than 150 combatants on either side.

[Saintheart]

This is why no war has ever featured more than 150 combatants on either side.

How ever did we get out of hamlets, that's what I want to know.

[Keltest]

This is why no war has ever featured more than 150 combatants on either side.

Indeed. I would suggest that Dunbar's number is entirely irrelevant to this scenario. Nothing says the peasants involved have to know each other beyond recognizing who theyre passing the pole to.

[AvatarVecna]

Excellent points...

I'm not sure how Leadership can net thousands of followers though.

It can be done, even with just SRD material (via nested Thrallherds and sentient psycrystals with the Leadership feat). If you're including material from splatbooks as well, you can end up with cow poo like this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=18446784&postcount=2).

[paranoidbox]

Also, they don't have to be peasants. I know it's called the peasant railgun, but they can be anything as far as job description goes. I mean, historically, gathering armies of a few thousand people strong, even ten thousand, wasn't exactly unheard of.

It's a bit of a strange hurdle to fall over, people aren't exactly in short supply, usually. Was there a pox in your campaign world?

[ShaneMRoth]

Also yeah, more than 2,000 people doing the same thing would be impossible. (http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/largest-thai-dance)

You don't need extra reasons the railgun wouldn't work. It is not a thing that happens anyway.

Okay, my man. You've made a helpful point...


Variable depending on party composition, level, stats, and campaign specifics.

If you're acting on direct authority of the King and have the capacity to use a standing military in addition to conscripts, probably not too long. It'd be like raising a militia. Only the militia is tasked to just stand in a line and hand off wood to launch it at whatever elder evil crosses in front of it.

So, the King would probably want a really good reason why some ne'er do well adventurer needed a couple thousand members of his militia, and probably wouldn't be too keen on them being used in the D&D equivalent of an episode of Jackass.


This is why no war has ever featured more than 150 combatants on either side.

Well, no.

But it is why the size of a military Company has been about 150 for over a thousand years (From Ancient Rome to this afternoon.) A Company is the most socially coherent military organization in an army.



One of the reasons I'm addressing this concept in this way is that... in my experience... DMs get lobbied by players to allow a lot of things that turn out to be bad ideas...

Know(Nothing) is correct, the typical argument for a bad idea in a campaign rarely a bad idea Turned Up To Eleven like the Peasant Railgun, but some other wingnut notion that tends to chip away at the quality of the campaign... and it is usually argued from the perspective of game mechanics (the SRD and the Rules As Written...)

Sometimes DMs need to remember that they can stave off a bad idea by not being distracted by the mechanical and focusing on the larger storytelling perspective... such as, "So, where exactly is your character going to get a quarter of a million ball bearings at this time of night?"

I appreciate all of the patience I'm getting from the thread on this.

[jiriku]

One of the reasons I'm addressing this concept in this way is that... in my experience... DMs get lobbied by players to allow a lot of things that turn out to be bad ideas...

Know(Nothing) is correct, the typical argument for a bad idea in a campaign rarely a bad idea Turned Up To Eleven like the Peasant Railgun, but some other wingnut notion that tends to chip away at the quality of the campaign... and it is usually argued from the perspective of game mechanics (the SRD and the Rules As Written...)

Sometimes DMs need to remember that they can stave off a bad idea by not being distracted by the mechanical and focusing on the larger storytelling perspective... such as, "So, where exactly is your character going to get a quarter of a million ball bearings at this time of night?"

I dunno. The moment you decide to hard-stop a bad rules-based idea from the perspective of "this isn't a reasonable in-game action to take because of xyz", some players will see that as a Challenge To Overcome. My experience is that players will simply pile more and more magic onto the problem, making the situation progressively dumber and dumber, until it works through sheer brute force (teleport the commoners in, call an outsider with at-will charm person to mind-control them all, kill them all and animate dead, etc). I could tell stories. You would probably find them depressing. If you're going to hard-stop something because you feel it's not the kind of campaign you want to run, I think you're better to be open about your motives and say "look guys, that's hilarious, but I'm really hoping to run a serious game here".

[ShaneMRoth]

Also, they don't have to be peasants. I know it's called the peasant railgun, but they can be anything as far as job description goes. I mean, historically, gathering armies of a few thousand people strong, even ten thousand, wasn't exactly unheard of.



It can be done, even with just SRD material (via nested Thrallherds and sentient psycrystals with the Leadership feat).


And in the case of peasants, you could even pay them at hireling rates: 1 sp piece per day.


If you have the blessing of the local leader and sufficient motivation (either through bribery or threat of force), it shouldn't take more than a day. Perhaps only half a day.

Alright!

I'm hearing due diligence and attention to detail... resulting in the necessary numbers of participants.

We have 2,280 participants.

Now... how do you get them into a perfectly straight line two miles long?

And more importantly... how you do keep them in a perfectly straight line two miles long?

[AvatarVecna]

Alright!

I'm hearing due diligence and attention to detail... resulting in the necessary numbers of participants.

We have 2,280 participants.

Now... how you to get them into a perfectly straight line two miles long?

And more importantly... how you do keep them in a perfectly straight line more than two miles long?

nested thrallherds have no range limit, and their control is some sort of psionic influence. They're not standing still because some ass they follow told them to do it; they're doing it because their living god told them to do it. And you'd better believe they're going to freaking do it. BTW, this is exactly what that dude up there was talking about: D&D worlds operate in literal infinite universes, where casters can get infinite everything at the higher levels; there is literally nothing imaginable that can't be done with infinite wishes, or chain-gating solars/efreeti. Making up reasons it doesn't work just brings people like me out of the woodwork to show you that, yes, this can be done, it just requires ridiculous bull****. Saying "you can't do that" to players just gets them to prove that it can be done; instead, you should say "you shouldn't do that".

[Brookshw]

One of the reasons I'm addressing this concept in this way is that... in my experience... DMs get lobbied by players to allow a lot of things that turn out to be bad ideas...

Know(Nothing) is correct, the typical argument for a bad idea in a campaign rarely a bad idea Turned Up To Eleven like the Peasant Railgun, but some other wingnut notion that tends to chip away at the quality of the campaign... and it is usually argued from the perspective of game mechanics (the SRD and the Rules As Written...)

Sometimes DMs need to remember that they can stave off a bad idea by not being distracted by the mechanical and focusing on the larger storytelling perspective... such as, "So, where exactly is your character going to get a quarter of a million ball bearings at this time of night?"

I appreciate all of the patience I'm getting from the thread on this.

Well sure, there's lots of ideas that can get disruptive to a campaigns tone. Trying to keep a game moving when the party wants to effectively goof off is one of the challenges of DMing. Generally you can strike a good balance point/compromise with them on how much time to spend on each. It's one of those things to discuss pre-session 1.

[ShaneMRoth]

nested thrallherds have no range limit, and their control is some sort of psionic influence. They're not standing still because some ass they follow told them to do it; they're doing it because their living god told them to do it. And you'd better believe they're going to freaking do it.

Okay... okay...

I need to rephrase, I think...

What mechanism, measure, or technique is going to be employed to enable 2,280 participants to stand in a perfectly straight line for any amount of time. Because unless they are statues, it's going to be like nailing 2,280 pieces of Jello to 2,280 trees.

[AvatarVecna]

Okay... okay...

I need to rephrase, I think...

What mechanism, measure, or technique is going to be employed to enable 2,280 participants to stand in a perfectly straight line for any amount of time. Because unless they are statues, it's going to be like nailing 2,280 pieces of Jello to 2,280 trees.

That's part of the beauty of this railgun idea: unlike with a real railgun, the object being accelerated doesn't have to travel in a straight line to work; as long as Minion N is standing within arm's reach of Minion N+1, this would work.

[Ashtagon]

Okay... okay...

I need to rephrase, I think...

What mechanism, measure, or technique is going to be employed to enable 2,280 participants to stand in a perfectly straight line for any amount of time. Because unless they are statues, it's going to be like nailing 2,280 pieces of Jello to 2,280 trees.

You underestimate humanity.

This peasant railgun is essentially playing a massive game of pass the parcel. In a sense, this can be likened to a simple dance with just two moves (receive parcel, give parcel): http://www.worldrecordacademy.com/mass/longest_YMCA_dance_Mandan_sets_world_record_112977 .html

Alternately, it can be likened to lots of people standing in a specific formation: http://www.worldrecordacademy.com/mass/largest_human_gender_symbol_Philippine_breaks_Guin ness_World_Records_record_215210.html or http://www.worldrecordacademy.com/mass/largest_human_national_flag_Bangladesh_breaks_Guin ness_World_Records_record_213647.html or http://www.worldrecordacademy.com/mass/largest_Human_QR_Code_Mission_Hills_China_sets_wor ld_record_213222.html

(Seriously, that human QR code is impressive)

[Karl Aegis]

Research an epic spell that creates a line of 478 billion catgirls, each one readied an action to pass off an object handed to them except the frontmost one which throws the object. The catgirls expire after one round.

Because casters have no morals. Logistics problem solved. It's also a good way to get from one side of your demiplane to the other.

[Chronos]

To those saying to get the cooperation of the local lord, it's even simpler than that: Maybe you are the local lord.

[Heliomance]

But the whole exercise is entirely pointless, because once it gets to the end of the line, the quarterstaff does 1d6 points of damage plus the last commoner's strength score, with a -4 penalty on the attack roll because the commoner isn't proficient with a quarterstaff, another -4 penalty because quarterstaves aren't throwing weapons, and another -2 penalty for every 10 feet beyond the first you want it to go.

[5ColouredWalker]

To those saying to get the cooperation of the local lord, it's even simpler than that: Maybe you are the local lord.

Given the existance of landlord, that's actually quite reasonable.

[ShaneMRoth]

Research an epic spell that creates a line of 478 billion catgirls, each one readied an action to pass off an object handed to them except the frontmost one which throws the object. The catgirls expire after one round.

Because casters have no morals. Logistics problem solved. It's also a good way to get from one side of your demiplane to the other.

You, sir, are felony awesome.

[Segev]

Yeah, gathering that many people for a task is no harder than gathering that many serfs to build a castle overnight (something old Russian nobility apparently used to do every now and again, presumably because they had not cleaned up from last night's feast and had a ball to run in the morning).

Hiring people and appointing middle-managers works quite well for this level of simple logistics problem.

As for what to do with them...we know that the railgun doesn't work, but that wouldn't stop this from being a very rapid message-passing system!

[Flickerdart]

Step 1: Construct a long, hollow cable and hang it between two cities.
Step 2: Fill the tube with fine-sized constructs or undead at 30ft intervals.
Step 3: Have each creature ready an action with the condition "when a creature hands me an object" and the action "run over to the creature on the other side of me and hand it the object."

Congratulations, you just made an internet with zero lag.

[Segev]

Step 1: Construct a long, hollow cable and hang it between two cities.
Step 2: Fill the tube with fine-sized constructs or undead at 30ft intervals.
Step 3: Have each creature ready an action with the condition "when a creature hands me an object" and the action "run over to the creature on the other side of me and hand it the object."

Congratulations, you just made an internet with zero lag.

Not quite; by requiring they take their move action, you've got only one "object"-per-six-seconds. However information-dense your "objects" are becomes your bit-rate equivalent. You need them to be standing adjacent to each other so all they have to do is take the free action to hand something off, without moving.

[Flickerdart]

You need them to be standing adjacent to each other so all they have to do is take the free action to hand something off, without moving.
This required many, many more creatures - and if you can have that many, you can just use Free Action Mount/Dismount to leapfrog back and forth across millions of horses as many times as you want.

[OldTrees1]

This is a rather simple obstacle to overcome.

Step 1: Recruitment
Premise: Most people are not at their Dunbar's Number.
1) Ask an arbitrary peasant to name a friend.
2) Ask that friend to name a friend that was not already named.
3) Repeat step 2 until you reach your goal or you reach a dead end.
4) Ask an arbitrary peasant not yet named to meet the last person from your prior chain.
5) Repeat steps 2-4 until you reach your goal.
(Point of failure: If your goal is greater than the number of existing peasants, you will fail)

Step 2: Performance
You know each of your peasants knows 2 other peasants in a chain of an length that meets your goal.
1) Have them line up according to this arrangement(which they should remember since they each only need to remember 2 individuals)
2) Have them work with the 2 peasants on their immediate right and left.
Since we are only requiring a Dunbar's Number of 2 and the theorized value is much higher than 2, this should work perfectly.

[SowZ]

nested thrallherds have no range limit, and their control is some sort of psionic influence. They're not standing still because some ass they follow told them to do it; they're doing it because their living god told them to do it. And you'd better believe they're going to freaking do it. BTW, this is exactly what that dude up there was talking about: D&D worlds operate in literal infinite universes, where casters can get infinite everything at the higher levels; there is literally nothing imaginable that can't be done with infinite wishes, or chain-gating solars/efreeti. Making up reasons it doesn't work just brings people like me out of the woodwork to show you that, yes, this can be done, it just requires ridiculous bull****. Saying "you can't do that" to players just gets them to prove that it can be done; instead, you should say "you shouldn't do that".

Okay. So as I DM, I let you exploit RAW and make the parcel travel two miles in six seconds. However, the parcel only gets thrown as far as the last commoner can throw it. There is nothing you can do to make the intent of the trick work. There are ways to make the parcel travel insane speeds, but the fact that the peasants are there does nothing.

You can ask me to make small house rules so that physics functions or you can ask me to stick solely to RAW. You cannot say I must do the former when you want and the latter when it is convenient.

[AvatarVecna]

Okay. So as I DM, I let you exploit RAW and make the parcel travel two miles in six seconds. However, the parcel only gets thrown as far as the last commoner can throw it. There is nothing you can do to make the intent of the trick work. There are ways to make the parcel travel insane speeds, but the fact that the peasants are there does nothing.

You can ask me to make small house rules so that physics functions or you can ask me to stick solely to RAW. You cannot say I must do the former when you want and the latter when it is convenient.

If you read upthread, I pointed this very thing out myself. I'm not arguing that the trick works at all, by RAW or RAI. I'm arguing that the OP's reasoning for it not working ("you can't get that many people working together") is laughably wrong the way the system is working. Of all the reasons the Commoner Railgun doesn't work, getting 2000 people in a line is not one of them.

EDIT: Minionmancy is just too easy to pull off in 3.5; whether it's leadership stacking, nested thrallherds, zombie hordes, chain-gating solars/efreeti, or metamagic reduction cheese on an extended maximized empowered twinned repeated Summon Monster III at effectively CR 40 (getting you 4d2+20 celestial monkeys per casting), getting this many creatures to work together is not the implausible part of the Commoner Railgun.

EDIT 2: The fact that a really optimized Cerebremancer build with a Thrallherd dip can literally use every single one of the methods above at the same time is just icing on the cake.

[jiriku]

What mechanism, measure, or technique is going to be employed to enable 2,280 participants to stand in a perfectly straight line for any amount of time. Because unless they are statues, it's going to be like nailing 2,280 pieces of Jello to 2,280 trees.

This is where magical compulsion or slaying the commoners and animating them as zombies enters the equation, and you throw the DMG at the nearest player.

Alternately, it's very simple to select a flat piece of land, then draw a line on it with chalk dust or paint, then draw 2,280 circles on the line, and say "find an empty circle and stand in it". Then you hire another 100 people and say "look for anyone who's screwing around and not getting on their circle, fire them, and replace them with one of the commoners in the reserve group." If you really, really, really want to spend a lot of time on this, you can arrange them into corps and drill them on how to march in formations and follow shouted commands. My high school band directors routinely demonstrated that you can get 350 teenagers to march across a field in very precise formations with a little bit of yelling and a lot of practice.

[Hrugner]

Why not just grab a lyre of building and put your 100 effective workers to use on this task.

feel free to check my math:
We get 14,400 turns per day for 3 days so 43,200 turns per "worker". That work is accomplished over 30 minutes(300 turns) so in each turn, the worker only gets 144 turns. Just have your lyre of building's effective workers stand in a circle passing the load around until they are ready to release.

[Keltest]

Why not just grab a lyre of building and put your 100 effective workers to use on this task.

feel free to check my math:
We get 14,400 turns per day for 3 days so 43,200 turns per "worker". That work is accomplished over 30 minutes(300 turns) so in each turn, the worker only gets 144 turns. Just have your lyre of building's effective workers stand in a circle passing the load around until they are ready to release.

It doesn't work like that. The pole isn't constantly accelerating while it goes through the loop, it hits maximum velocity after the first ring. And subsequent passes are redundant, so all you've done by using fewer workers in a ring is lower the maximum velocity (and thus acceleration and thus force were it to ever be released).

On an unrelated note, would the rail gun actually fire under RAW if the final peasant readied an action not to throw the pole but instead deliberately fail to receive the pole when it was passed to him? You point the line of peasants at the target, and the last one in the line fails to receive it, but it was still passed, so it just goes flying in whatever direction the line was facing.

[jiriku]

I'm pretty sure that by RAW it would just drop to the ground in the next-to-last peasant's square.

[Keltest]

I'm pretty sure that by RAW it would just drop to the ground in the next-to-last peasant's square.

How do you figure? According to the SRD document (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/specialInitiativeActions.htm) im reading, completing a readied action can allow for the triggering action to be completed, so reading an action to deliberately let the pole go flying will still have the peasant pass the pole at whatever absurd velocity was reached by your particular brand of rail gun.

[Hrugner]

It doesn't work like that. The pole isn't constantly accelerating while it goes through the loop, it hits maximum velocity after the first ring. And subsequent passes are redundant, so all you've done by using fewer workers in a ring is lower the maximum velocity (and thus acceleration and thus force were it to ever be released).


We're looping it to get the full use of each of the 144 turns per second. An alternative solution: since they're only effective workers and not real workers we don't need them to be in the same place when they act for each of their 144 turns in the round.

Looping it would have allowed the ammo to stay within 300 feet so you could use the lyre to make it invincible, but if we need it to have an end point to determine speed rather than just a travel distance, then I guess that's that.

[jiriku]

By RAW, the pole does not have a velocity, absurd or otherwise. Newtonian physics is only present in the D&D world as fluff and flavor, not as RAW. RAW only provides for objects to move while unattended when they are dropped or thrown. Attempting to pass someone an object which they do not accept from you is the equivalent of dropping that object. When an object is dropped by a Medium creature, it lands in the square that creature occupies. Dropping the object in any other square is called "throwing" and has its own rules.

It may seem silly to ignore the obvious velocity that the pole is "supposed" to have, but bear in mind that the pole only acquired that velocity because we were already ignoring the limit of how much momentum a peasant is "supposed" to be able to impart to the pole.

[AvatarVecna]

How do you figure? According to the SRD document (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/specialInitiativeActions.htm) im reading, completing a readied action can allow for the triggering action to be completed, so reading an action to deliberately let the pole go flying will still have the peasant pass the pole at whatever absurd velocity was reached by your particular brand of rail gun.

The problem is that IRL physics are not RAW, and are barely RAI. If physics are part of your game world, then the readied action passing the stick thing takes longer than 6 seconds...or tears the arms off the poor commoners trying to hand off a stick going more than mach 1. If physics aren't a part of your game, and you're going by pure RAW, then the last commoner not grabbing the stick means it drops in his space (no matter how fast it was going); similarly, if he throws the stick, it only gets thrown his usual throwing distance.

Getting up to speed requires that you accept only RAW while ignoring real physics; taking advantage of that great speed requires you to accept only real physics while ignorijg RAW. You can't do both.

[Keltest]

By RAW, the pole does not have a velocity, absurd or otherwise. Newtonian physics is only present in the D&D world as fluff and flavor, not as RAW. RAW only provides for objects to move while unattended when they are dropped or thrown. Attempting to pass someone an object which they do not accept from you is the equivalent of dropping that object. When an object is dropped by a Medium creature, it lands in the square that creature occupies. Dropping the object in any other square is called "throwing" and has its own rules.

It may seem silly to ignore the obvious velocity that the pole is "supposed" to have, but bear in mind that the pole only acquired that velocity because we were already ignoring the limit of how much momentum a peasant is "supposed" to be able to impart to the pole.

In other words, theres no rules that cover it, so nothing happens without houseruling it. Gotcha.

[jiriku]

Looping it would have allowed the ammo to stay within 300 feet so you could use the lyre to make it invincible, but if we need it to have an end point to determine speed rather than just a travel distance, then I guess that's that.

It probably does more damage if you don't use the lyre to make it invincible. If your hypersonic pole hits, say, a castle wall, it's going to deform and break apart, transferring more of its energy into the wall over a larger surface area, with destructive consequences for the wall. However, if it's invincible, it's going to punch a nice, clean hole in the wall and keep on going, with most of its energy still intact and relatively little damage done outside the immediate point of impact. This characteristic is why armor-piercing bullets are actually less lethal than fragmentation rounds against soft targets -- any armor piercer tends to punch a hole through the target and keep going while a frangible is designed to break apart, come to a stop inside the target, and inflict damage within a larger volume of the target.

[AvatarVecna]

In other words, theres no rules that cover it, so nothing happens without houseruling it. Gotcha.

That is exactly what we're saying. Physics doesn't work with D&D. A pound of TNT exploding in your face is just as damaging as Hagrid hitting you with a greatsword; sure, for you and me, we end up dead either way, but a RL Heracles would know there's supposed to be a difference. Everything falls at the same rate, to the same maximum velocity, despite the fact that air resistance should make different objects have different acceleration rates and different terminal velocities. We are literally debating how an object can be passed a theoretically infinite distance in just 6 seconds as long as you had enough people lined up to keep passing it on, despite how blatantly that breaks the Law of Momentum. Real life physics and RAW are not compatible; physics only makes sense in RAI, and even then only barely.

[jiriku]

I must say, though, if you can get your DM to accept the idea of using physics to determine collision damages, teleportation allows you to make some GRAND suborbital kinetic energy weapons. I'm talking Hiroshima-scale AoE damage, obtainable using mid-level spells. Good stuff.

[Hrugner]

It probably does more damage if you don't use the lyre to make it invincible. If your hypersonic pole hits, say, a castle wall, it's going to deform and break apart, transferring more of its energy into the wall over a larger surface area, with destructive consequences for the wall. However, if it's invincible, it's going to punch a nice, clean hole in the wall and keep on going, with most of its energy still intact and relatively little damage done outside the immediate point of impact. This characteristic is why armor-piercing bullets are actually less lethal than fragmentation rounds against soft targets -- any armor piercer tends to punch a hole through the target and keep going while a frangible is designed to break apart, come to a stop inside the target, and inflict damage within a larger volume of the target.

As it stands, the wooden pole ammo wouldn't make it out of the peasant railgun. Since the lyre only protects something within 300 feet, you plot your range so that the ammo begins to fragment just inside your target. If you could launch a massive bundle of sticks all bound together with twine that wouldn't fall apart till it got a good foot into your target, I imagine it would do more damage than a wooden pole.

[jiriku]

Hmm, good point, it would probably tend to burst into flame and break apart just from air friction and turbulence. Clearly the rail in our railgun needs optimization! An adamantine rod would probably be a better choice than a wooden pole. Adamantine is basically as hard as diamond while being as tougher than the best sorts of alloyed steel. In fact, maybe you could make a fragmentation bomb from a collection of adamantine slivers suspended in a lead matrix. The lead would hold it together during firing but would basically vaporize thereafter -- your target would be peppered with hypersonic adamantine slivers amid a superheated lead plasma. That's making good use of your commoners!

[Karl Aegis]

I must say, though, if you can get your DM to accept the idea of using physics to determine collision damages, teleportation allows you to make some GRAND suborbital kinetic energy weapons. I'm talking Hiroshima-scale AoE damage, obtainable using mid-level spells. Good stuff.

But then you have to ask yourself: Which one is better, crowdsurfing across the universe at faster than light speed or leveling cities with decently-sized space debris?

[jiriku]

You know, it probably says bad things about me, but I just get a giggle out of leveling cities that I don't get from crowdsurfing.

[AmberVael]

I've seen many posts on the nature of the mechanical glitch associated with this concept.

Finding a couple thousand peasants would not be the problem. I'm asking how someone would get a couple thousand peasants gathered for the purpose of making a Railgun, or any other ambitious and ill-advised project, in the first place.

So a lot of people gave potential answers to this problem already, but I'm not seeing my favorite potential answer to it: Jump at them. (http://community.wizards.com/forum/previous-editions-character-optimization/threads/1141886)

[AvatarVecna]

Hooray! :smallbiggrin:

[jiriku]

Lol certainly. :smalltongue:

[Flickerdart]

Can I sig this?
Probably not - the forum length limit on signatures is pretty harsh.

[AvatarVecna]

Probably not - the forum length limit on signatures is pretty harsh.

Yeah, it kept doing that, so I ended up shortening it. Even just the quote on it's own was a bit too long.

[Zakerst]

I think the real question is how much blood do we need to pass through this commoner rail gun assembly before we can use it as a pressure cutter to cut through castles (after all blood is a component found in the spell component pouch). Or perhaps more fun use the assembly to deposit hypersonic spiders into people, or tarts to spell your name in the side of a mountain.

[jiriku]

I think the real question is how much blood do we need to pass through this commoner rail gun assembly before we can use it as a pressure cutter to cut through castles (after all blood is a component found in the spell component pouch). Or perhaps more fun use the assembly to deposit hypersonic spiders into people, or tarts to spell your name in the side of a mountain.

I don't know that there would be a mountain left by the time you were done. Just a smoking crater, a mushroom cloud, and the smell of burnt strawberry glaze.

[ShaneMRoth]

... I'm arguing that the OP's reasoning for it not working ("you can't get that many people working together") is laughably wrong the way the system is working. Of all the reasons the Commoner Railgun doesn't work, getting 2000 people in a line is not one of them.


I do apologize if that is what I lead you to believe, but my original thesis was that getting 2,000+ people together and working on a single problem would pose a significant (if admittedly boring) logistical obstacle that would be extremely time consuming, and that it is well within DM discretion to use to dissuade a player from trying absurd things.

Another possibility, is for the 2,000+ participants to listen to the wackadoo idea ("You want us to what now...?") and then just disperse ("Call us again when you make sense...").

(This wouldn't apply to a Thrallherd, of course.)

[paranoidbox]

Another possibility, is for the 2,000+ participants to listen to the wackadoo idea ("You want us to what now...?") and then just disperse ("Call us again when you make sense...").

I don't know, I do pretty nonsensical things in my line of work just so I get paid.

"You want us to do what? ... But you'll pay us, right? In that case, no problem, guv'ner. We'll get right on passing around that little stick/lead pipe full of adamantine shards. (Can you believe this guy? It takes all sorts, eh? Ah well, a silver piece is a silver piece.)"

[ShaneMRoth]

Oh, and as to the supposed simplicity of getting people to perform a simple task...

I offer the following...

https://youtu.be/YuZDbbz_6xY

Now take that and apply it to 2,280 people.

[AvatarVecna]

Thrallherd can do it, necromancer can do it, summoner can do it. Heck, one could argue that you could get it done if you paid them each a platinum piece instead of a silver.

EDIT: Also, are you basing a serious argument on a Monty Python sketch?! That's about as hyperbolic an exaggeration as you can get!

[ekarney]

How ever did we get out of hamlets, that's what I want to know.

So he's trying to tell me that the Apollo program was socially impossible? Which involved 34,000 NASA employees.

[LeSwordfish]

My office is 151 people. We take it in turns to be socially ostracised and chased with spears.

[ShaneMRoth]

So he's trying to tell me that the Apollo program was socially impossible? Which involved 34,000 NASA employees.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm trying to tell you.


My office is 151 people. We take it in turns to be socially ostracised and chased with spears.

Ah HA!

[jiriku]

I do apologize if that is what I lead you to believe, but my original thesis was that getting 2,000+ people together and working on a single problem would pose a significant (if admittedly boring) logistical obstacle that would be extremely time consuming, and that it is well within DM discretion to use to dissuade a player from trying absurd things.

Another possibility, is for the 2,000+ participants to listen to the wackadoo idea ("You want us to what now...?") and then just disperse ("Call us again when you make sense...").

(This wouldn't apply to a Thrallherd, of course.)

My problem with this is that you when you try to defeat an absurd idea with a reasonable concern, you are bringing a knife to a gunfight. Any players who will propose an absurd idea in the first place aren't persuaded by reasonable concerns, and D&D provides more than enough tools to overcome your concern anyhow, as it is quite trivial compared to the capabilities of a half-dozen superhuman murderhobos. In fact, you're likely just pouring gasoline on the fire, because many of the methods for ensuring absolute, timely compliance from a group of 2,000 peasants stack another level of silly and disruptive on top of the initial silliness. A much better approach would be "Haha. Very funny guys, but no. What's your real plan?"

[OldTrees1]

Oh, and as to the supposed simplicity of getting people to perform a simple task...

I offer the following...

https://youtu.be/YuZDbbz_6xY

Now take that and apply it to 2,280 people.

What about my argument that each of the arbitrary number of people only has to work with 2 others?
(Although I am firmly in the stance that the railgun doesn't work)

[Segev]

I think we all agree the peasant rail gun doesn't work.

The peasant pneumatic tube, on the other hand...

[Brookshw]

What about my argument that each of the arbitrary number of people only has to work with 2 others?
(Although I am firmly in the stance that the railgun doesn't work)

Seems like on of many ways to divide the work and teams. If this was something we were project managing I'd probably grid out the distance we wanted to cover and assign teams to each grid so that a team number is within the boundary and their specific task is to transfer rod through grid square x. Same thing you're saying roughly.

[ShaneMRoth]

Okay, I figure that in order to get 2,280 people acting in such a high degree of synchronization will require each of them to make a Concentration check.

I haven't figured out the DC of the skill check, but regardless... it is going to be very difficult for there to be 2,280 skill checks without at least one person failing it.

Also, it's up the the players to make the die rolls.

For the record, this is not a house rule, it is plain old DM discretion.

Rule Zero is not a House Rule.

[Segev]

Okay, I figure that in order to get 2,280 people acting in such a high degree of synchronization will require each of them to make a Concentration check.

I haven't figured out the DC of the skill check, but regardless... it is going to be very difficult for there to be 2,280 skill checks without at least one person failing it.

Also, it's up the the players to make the die rolls.

For the record, this is not a house rule, it is plain old DM discretion.

Rule Zero is not a House Rule.

Nah. Nothing here is all that complicated such that distraction would interfere with it. "Go to your assigned spot, then hand anything given to you by somebody next to you to the person on the other side of you."

This really isn't even three-digit arithmetic level complicated.

[Keltest]

Okay, I figure that in order to get 2,280 people acting in such a high degree of synchronization will require each of them to make a Concentration check.

I haven't figured out the DC of the skill check, but regardless... it is going to be very difficult for there to be 2,280 skill checks without at least one person failing it.

Also, it's up the the players to make the die rolls.

For the record, this is not a house rule, it is plain old DM discretion.

Rule Zero is not a House Rule.

Rule Zero is the house rule. Every single houserule is a subset of rule 0.

[AvatarVecna]

Anything rule that isn't specifically written down in a book is a houserule. That doesn't mean the houserule is unreasonable, it just means that it's not RAW (and thus, might not be used by other DMs). That said, you don't need a houserule to explain why the Common Railgun doesn't work, because it doesn't work by RAW: by RAW, once it gets to the end of the line, it doesn't fly out at Mach 1, because momentum and acceleration are only relevant in a universe where physics doesn't constantly get turned into a wizard's bitch.

EDIT: I for one, think this Concentration rule is a wonderful way to simulate the difficulties of working together with a large group of people. I also think there's other ways you could simulate that in the system as it exists (perhaps a Will save of some kind). That being said, since neither way of dealing with that specific problem (or any other way) exist in the rules as they are currently written, they would be houserules. Granted, they'd be good houserules, if this kind of situation otherwise comes up a lot in your game, but houserules all the same.

[eggynack]

Rule Zero is the house rule. Every single houserule is a subset of rule 0.
Pretty much. In particular, I think rule zero may be a non-houserule, but if you use it for anything at all, then you're creating a houserule, which means that classifying rule zero itself otherwise isn't a particularly meaningful designation. In any case, as has been repeatedly stated, peasant management represents a logistical concern, but it is in no way in insurmountable one.

[atemu1234]

The hell does Dunbar's number have to do with this? It only refers to close, personal relationships like family, childhood friends and the like. Work relationships are by definition not the same. Also, as to hiring, anyone here read Grapes of Wrath?

[ShaneMRoth]

The hell does Dunbar's number have to do with this? It only refers to close, personal relationships like family, childhood friends and the like. Work relationships are by definition not the same. Also, as to hiring, anyone here read Grapes of Wrath?

Yeah, I thought I knew where I was going with that and then... not so much...

[atemu1234]

Yeah, I thought I knew where I was going with that and then... not so much...

Did you get the Grapes of Wrath reference?

[ShaneMRoth]

Did you get the Grapes of Wrath reference?

Sadly, I didn't.

[Jay R]

But the whole exercise is entirely pointless, because once it gets to the end of the line, the quarterstaff does 1d6 points of damage plus the last commoner's strength score, with a -4 penalty on the attack roll because the commoner isn't proficient with a quarterstaff, another -4 penalty because quarterstaves aren't throwing weapons, and another -2 penalty for every 10 feet beyond the first you want it to go.


Okay. So as I DM, I let you exploit RAW and make the parcel travel two miles in six seconds. However, the parcel only gets thrown as far as the last commoner can throw it. There is nothing you can do to make the intent of the trick work. There are ways to make the parcel travel insane speeds, but the fact that the peasants are there does nothing.

You can ask me to make small house rules so that physics functions or you can ask me to stick solely to RAW. You cannot say I must do the former when you want and the latter when it is convenient.

Exactly. If anybody tried to do this in my game, I would ask, "Do you want me to rule on this action based on real-world common-sense physics, or based on RAW applied blindly?

If the say common-sense physics, I will tell them that only about 4 peasants will touch it in 6 seconds, and that it will take hours for the quarterstaff to arrive, at which point it will be moving at the normal speed a peasant can move it, and do 1d6 damage (plus the STR bonus of the last peasant).

If they say RAW applied blindly, I will let them do it, and them tell them to roll 1d6, and apply the STR bonus of the last peasant.

There is no physics application that will allow human power to move a quarterstaff at relativistic speed, and no ruleset that includes rules for increasing the damage of a quarterstaff because more people handled it.

[Karl Aegis]

So, practical applications of weird hand-off rules:

How many dudes do you need reloading and passing around Heavy Crossbows to have the one guy with proficiency and an actual attack bonus in the group at the most attacks per minute? Can the one guy fire the crossbow, hand it off in one round, take a crossbow and shoot it the next round, hand off the second crossbow and take the first one back after its been reloaded and then repeat the first round? That is at least two shots every three rounds, much better than the two shots every four rounds the guy gets loading the crossbows himself. Does it work with three guys, or do you need four?

[Segev]

You need one dedicated loader per attack the designated shooter makes.

If you have one guy with BAB +5, and no Rapid Shot, he can make 1 attack/round.

Round 1: BAB5man fires, free-action hands the heavy crossbow to his caddy.
Round 2: Caddy takes a full-round action to reload the heavy crossbow; free action hands it to BAB5man. BAB5man fires, and free-action hands it back to his caddy.

If BAB5man has Rapid Shot, he needs two caddies, but the process is otherwise the same.

If BAB6man is doing this, he needs two caddies as well; 3 if he has and is using Rapid Shot.

Notably, as no skill DC nor Str requirement is listed to be the caddy, the job could be performed by an unseen servant.

[SowZ]

You need one dedicated loader per attack the designated shooter makes.

If you have one guy with BAB +5, and no Rapid Shot, he can make 1 attack/round.

Round 1: BAB5man fires, free-action hands the heavy crossbow to his caddy.
Round 2: Caddy takes a full-round action to reload the heavy crossbow; free action hands it to BAB5man. BAB5man fires, and free-action hands it back to his caddy.

If BAB5man has Rapid Shot, he needs two caddies, but the process is otherwise the same.

If BAB6man is doing this, he needs two caddies as well; 3 if he has and is using Rapid Shot.

Notably, as no skill DC nor Str requirement is listed to be the caddy, the job could be performed by an unseen servant.

And this is totally kosher. Not only is it rules friendly, it is actually plausible. People actually did this.

[Segev]

And this is totally kosher. Not only is it rules friendly, it is actually plausible. People actually did this.

A not-bad use for those 3-4 level followers, if you don't have a friendly wizard to cast unseen servant 2-5 times for you.

[dascarletm]

There is a bit of a problem with the wielding of all these crossbows. You would need Quickdraw and a house-rule that lets you use Quickdraw to sheath weapons as a free action as well.

Example: (P=player, C=Caddy), player has rapidshot and a BaB of +6
Round 1:
P: Shoots crossbow1, free action hands it to C1; Quickdraw crossbow2, shoot crossbow 2, free action hand to C2; Quickdraw crossbow3, shoot crossbow 3, free action hand to C3

C1: Full action reload crossbow1, hand to P, one hand is holding crossbow1

C2: Full action reload crossbow2, hand to P, one hand is holding crossbow2

C3: Full action reload crossbow3, hand to P, P cannot accept more things, unless he sheathes a crossbow.

[Flickerdart]

A not-bad use for those 3-4 level followers, if you don't have a friendly wizard to cast unseen servant 2-5 times for you.
Those followers would have a hard time of surviving the first fireball to head your way, though. Unless you can use disposable or invulnerable servants, you are best off using very small creatures who can hide in a bag of holding or something for cover. After all, there are no rules saying that a Tiny creature cannot reload a Medium crossbow.

[Segev]

There is a bit of a problem with the wielding of all these crossbows. You would need Quickdraw and a house-rule that lets you use Quickdraw to sheath weapons as a free action as well.

Example: (P=player, C=Caddy), player has rapidshot and a BaB of +6
Round 1:
P: Shoots crossbow1, free action hands it to C1; Quickdraw crossbow2, shoot crossbow 2, free action hand to C2; Quickdraw crossbow3, shoot crossbow 3, free action hand to C3

C1: Full action reload crossbow1, hand to P, one hand is holding crossbow1

C2: Full action reload crossbow2, hand to P, one hand is holding crossbow2

C3: Full action reload crossbow3, hand to P, P cannot accept more things, unless he sheathes a crossbow.

Hm. I see your point. The issue is in the timing of the turns. technically you need somebody able to hold their action until the MIDDLE of P's turn in order to have a free action to hand him the crossbow.

Using the RAW alone, not caring a lick about common sense, it thus requires two caddies per crossbow: caddy A is responsible for reloading, while caddy B is responsible for handing the crossbow to PC.

Round 1:
P: accepts crossbow1 from C1B, fires crossbow1, free-action hands crossbow1 to C1A, accepts crossbow2 from C2b, fires crossbow2, free-action hands crossbow2 to C2A, accepts crossbow3 from C3B, fires crossbow3, free-action hands crossbow3 to C3A

C1A: full-round action reloads crossbow1, free-action hands it to C1B
C1B: readies an action to hand P crossbow1 when he reaches for it.
C2A: full-round action reloads crossbow2, free-action hands it to C1B
C2B: readies an action to hand P crossbow2 when he reaches for it.
C3A: full-round action reloads crossbow3, free-action hands it to C1B
C3B: readies an action to hand P crossbow3 when he reaches for it.


The reason this is required is because a readied action is needed to be able to do something in the middle of another player's turn, and loading a heavy crossbow is a full-round action. A readied action can only be a standard action. (If you could ready an action to load the crossbow and take the free action to hand it over, I'd do it that way. But you can't, per the RAW.)


edit to add: On further thought, you could technically get by with 1 fewer caddy. Crossbow1's caddy can take his action at any point before P's next one to full-round reload the crossbow and hand it to P, because P doesn't need to have that crossbow handed to him mid-turn, the way he needs the other two.

[paranoidbox]

Snipperooni.

I figured handing someone something or accepting something from someone is a swift action, not a free action. I'm mainly inferring this from the PHBII spell Bigby's Helpful Hand though, so it might not be something that's a rule otherwise.

[Segev]

I figured handing someone something or accepting something from someone is a swift action, not a free action. I'm mainly inferring this from the PHBII spell Bigby's Helpful Hand though, so it might not be something that's a rule otherwise.

I'm coming up blank on an actual quote to support this, but the underlying rule behind the classic "peasant rail gun" relies on it being a free action to hand something to somebody else.

The really interesting thing I found on my search, however, is that speaking is specifically a free action that you can perform even when it is not your turn. I wonder if any other free actions fall into that category. (If handing items off can, then we're back to one caddy per crossbow.)

[Jay R]

I'm coming up blank on an actual quote to support this, but the underlying rule behind the classic "peasant rail gun" relies on it being a free action to hand something to somebody else.

I thought it was based on the notion that a readied action happens instantly. Each person in line (except the last one) has the readied action "Put anything in my hand in the hand of the next guy." The last one has "Throw any weapon in my hand at the wall."

[Segev]

Hm. If so, it begs the question: is handing an item off a standard action? Is receiving an item a reflexive action?

[paranoidbox]

Hm. If so, it begs the question: is handing an item off a standard action? Is receiving an item a reflexive action?

It depends on how the item is transferred from person to person, what if the item is simply taken out of your (willing) hands? That's not an action, but the other person grabbing your stick/crossbow might be using an action to do so.

[Jay R]

But analyzing the hand-offs is still meaningless, because if you can do it at all, you are applying the rules blindly, in which case after it gets there at relativistic speeds, it still does 1d6 damage.

[Segev]

But analyzing the hand-offs is still meaningless, because if you can do it at all, you are applying the rules blindly, in which case after it gets there at relativistic speeds, it still does 1d6 damage.

Oh, sure, but the point has shifted to whether you can use hand-off rules to allow somebody to have "crossbow caddies" who handle loading and hand-off duties such that he can full attack with a (number of) heavy crossbow(s) each round.