Quote from: Slipshot762 on February 18, 2023, 11:16:18 PM
Heh, I do not require that you believe it, but what other explanation is there for those who insist you let them peasant railgun, you are not playing the rules if you dont, and if you do then see the game is broken we should play something else.

I never ran into anyone that did that stuff IRL, but you have.  I really would love to know how common that stuff really was, that forumite that spammed a bunch of rules crap.  All I'll ever have is anecdotes, and I'm genuinely curious.  How would such a player actually interact at the table?  Someone who reads a degenerate charop and then tries to instantiate it?

I was not opposed to playing something else, even magic (up to weatherlight, i find ice age optimal) or battletech or anything really, but there is a whole table of people that came to play dnd, not just me, and it really puts you on the spot to have to either deal with one player pulling this crap or relent and possibly piss off or ruin it for the other people who came to play dnd. Imagine getting into a game, maybe 4 sessions or so, and that guy gradually ramps up his injection into real life of whatever forum crap he is into, into the game and the dm relents and says well i guess we'll play something else. I'd be pissed at the dm for folding. Not to mention the whole schtick employed for the derail is ridiculous anyway and requires such mental gymnastics as to be exhausting to consider.

eta:
also i will admit i share a portion of blame for not being more restrictive in collecting players. an open table policy is unwise as a method to fill empty spots in an otherwise normal long running group of friends.

eta2:

" How would such a player actually interact at the table?"
forgot to answer this for you; took the form of standard rules lawyer bs but dependent upon swapping between letter of the rule and intent as it suits the player, to the point where you wind up arguing about what the rules don't say.  one minute the player is arguing for strict joules of force calculations derived from real world physics, the next citing werewolf lore or something with equal conceptual solidification as laws of the physical world, being whiney an angsty and snarky when none of this is treated as valid.

eta3

so yeah such creatures exist and i have encountered them; the question for me is were they always this way or are they just like this because of social media/online play/reddit etc?
i find it hard to believe that they seriously want the computer-logic/mtg type adjudication to be the standard for a game being broken or not because every rpg is broken then...it just feels it has to be malicious intentional spiteful and subversive. given that the game is broken and we should play something else is their entire lament, the stated desired thing and goal, yeah, my hackles be raised.

Quote from: Slipshot762 on February 18, 2023, 11:16:18 PM
Heh, I do not require that you believe it, but what other explanation is there for those who insist you let them peasant railgun, you are not playing the rules if you dont, and if you do then see the game is broken we should play something else.

(But CCG players playing D&D to try to subvert the RPG hobby? No. Who is going to invest potentially hundreds of hours into something like that?)
^the pricks i played with i suppose, lol.

I think the issue you state is real, but that the cause and effect is backwards.  There wasn't anything special about 3E that causes players to be especially bad.  There have always been players that are out to wreck the game.  What was different about 3E was that its design allowed a different kind of lever for the wreckers to use--a lever you maybe didn't catch onto right away because it was different. 

My first hand experience with players out to wreck the game is somewhat limited, because I tend to pick up on that and toss 'em at the first sign.  At least if they don't show some sign of wanting to get over it when balked.  However, from what I have seen, it's always the personality type that does the same thing in all walks of life, and that I do have a lot of experience with.  It's the kind of person who will think hard about how they can use whatever is being done to screw with people and/or assert their control.  Now, I can see MtG being a bad filter on that crowd, since that's a game that tries to codify not having any filter except what is in the rules.  There's a really good chance that some of the MtG crowd weren't really all that fond of those particular players you encountered, either.

Quote from: Slipshot762 on February 18, 2023, 11:16:18 PM
Heh, I do not require that you believe it, but what other explanation is there for those who insist you let them peasant railgun, you are not playing the rules if you dont, and if you do then see the game is broken we should play something else.

"This game is broken! See my character build of urban assassin/sea fisherman/horticultural expert feats on a wizard-barbarian-monk?! I can now instantly manifest an entire elephant into your stomach as I wield two fine dining room tables after inhaling 100kg of cocaine directly into my manbearpig lungs!!"

"Fine, you win, I guess we'll play 'Barbie's Day at the Beach' instead."

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on February 19, 2023, 08:36:24 AM
My first hand experience with players out to wreck the game is somewhat limited, because I tend to pick up on that and toss 'em at the first sign.  At least if they don't show some sign of wanting to get over it when balked.  However, from what I have seen, it's always the personality type that does the same thing in all walks of life, and that I do have a lot of experience with.  It's the kind of person who will think hard about how they can use whatever is being done to screw with people and/or assert their control.  Now, I can see MtG being a bad filter on that crowd, since that's a game that tries to codify not having any filter except what is in the rules.  There's a really good chance that some of the MtG crowd weren't really all that fond of those particular players you encountered, either.

If there was any kind of player that I would have tried to avoid, it was that guy. Long before all of the woke stuff hit. I guarantee you that this has nothing to do with the rules, they're only this way because they fundamentally misunderstand the point of either game's experience. They've brought such a fever pitch to their sense of superiority that you'd react to a few false positives.

Quote from: Slipshot762 on February 18, 2023, 11:16:18 PM
Heh, I do not require that you believe it, but what other explanation is there for those who insist you let them peasant railgun, you are not playing the rules if you dont, and if you do then see the game is broken we should play something else.

I never understood the peasant rail gun. The rules as written say that you can have all the NPCs form a line and bucket-brigade a javelin for miles in a single round due to the magic of free actions. The same rules as written say that the damage from a javelin is 1d6+STR, and it has absolutely nothing to do with how fast the javelin was travelling just prior to being thrown.

Now, there are some prestige classes which allowed some very broken stuff. I remember one where a prestige class allowed someone to throw arbitrary objects and do damage based on the weight of the missile, then coupled with a (feat? magic item?) which allowed one to double one's carrying capacity and which could be stacked, so that eventually the character could throw small mountains weighing tonnes and causing hundreds of dice of damage. But the peasant rail gun? That's amateur stuff.

https://tabletopjoab.com/the-legend-of-the-peasant-railgun-in-dd-5e/

Now I get it.

This shit is braindead.

Put 6 (medieval, not even Greco-Roman) peasants in a line and assume they won't awkwardly fumble it all the way up to their thrower, with alternating moments of grip at every moment the javelin is held by two peasants at the same time. The very last peasant still has to wind up (without poking the guy behind him which would cause a fumble), inhale and aim, exhale and throw, and then hopefully catch his balance without falling prone on his face--so a minor action (let's be charitable and call that 3 seconds) even before he gets his readied "take the javelin" free action. Even if they barely hold the javelin, carefully balancing it in the palm of each hand and praying to Almighty God in Heaven that a strong breeze doesn't blow it askew away from the gentle palms of the next peasant in line, there is simply no momentum to speak of (because that's not how momentum works, as if that needs to be said at all).

It'd be nice if they could form a line to give their strongest thrower a means to aim these javelins down against targets from a higher vantage point, which would give you the inertial damage you want by using gravity and distance to power the extra damage (as known from archers aiming up into the sky, which at least has been done in some movies they must have seen). Maybe the one guy is also the only good climber, and a barrel of javelins is too heavy to bring to a rooftop on short notice because he can't carry 30 javelins in one arm and climb up without dropping half of them, or it has to be from atop a single stone column with hand and footholds for a few peasants to climb part way up because there isn't enough space at the top of that column for the barrel of javelins and the thrower. Or maybe he can walk off the edge of a cliff first, so he can hang motionless in the air because he's looking down at his targets and not the ground below itself.

I'd ban these morons from tournaments and conventions, but first I'd make them try it in real life with just a softball, and ask them to throw harder than the third best American league pitcher. And then I'd ban them from M:tG events too, just to be safe.

I will easily and happily defend the peasant railgun.  I will also point out that if someone says that they don't like players that "build peasant railguns", they are definitely not referring to that in a literal fashion.  I would understand that as "this player uses rules that are well intentioned to argue for degenerate results", not that they are literally trying to break the physics engine in comical ways, and arguing with any DM who is playing by the rules and disallowing that (peasant railgun doesn't actually even work by the rules of 3.X D&D).

The peasant railgun is not a charop exercise.  It's a degenerate state that occurs whenever too many readied actions are conditional on each other, and is a flaw in any game that doesn't explicitly address this in its rules.  Every game dev (probably correctly) doesn't consider such situations to be worth elaborating on.

The specific case that peasant railgun works on- that readied actions invoke two delays, one where the readier waits for the trigger, and one where the readier executes the action- neither of which is accounted for in the physics of the system- allows you to generate a thought experiment where something impossible happens (in this case, the physical impossibility is simply that passing an item doesn't actually accelerate it to absurd speeds- a DM would assume that whatever is being passed would go through about six peasants, perhaps fifteen if they were really good at it, and be moving at a perfectly normal speed)- but that this edge case, and indeed any case where readied action A depends on readied action B (instead of a primary action)- requires DM intervention to be certain that too much time has not passed in the round.

There are several other critiques of the same sort- for instance, a dropped item falls some number of feet instantly in most systems, allowing you to place a device underneath that in turn drops another item, etc, and you can transmit information faster than light with this system, etc.  Peasant railgun sticks around as a good commentary.

Should games bother handling readied actions in a complex enough way to handle this?  Honestly, maybe they should.  Almost all games that allow readying an action, interrupts, or out of cycle turns generate strange results sometimes.  More mundane concerns involve, too much conditional and conversation in a six second space and issues with counterspells countering counterspells, none of which play out in a fully satisfactory method in any game without side based initiative or predeclared actions.

In any event, 3.X was a system with enough conditional things to make this conversation worth having.  In general, readied actions are gutted enough in 5e that only the spells or abilities that specifically allow you to use your reaction still create serious issues there, and generally such issues largely don't hit the OSR nearly as much.

Quote from: Venka on February 19, 2023, 11:16:53 PMIn any event, 3.X was a system with enough conditional things to make this conversation worth having.

Why?

Quote from: Venka on February 19, 2023, 11:16:53 PM
I will easily and happily defend the peasant railgun.  I will also point out that if someone says that they don't like players that "build peasant railguns", they are definitely not referring to that in a literal fashion.  I would understand that as "this player uses rules that are well intentioned to argue for degenerate results", not that they are literally trying to break the physics engine in comical ways, and arguing with any DM who is playing by the rules and disallowing that (peasant railgun doesn't actually even work by the rules of 3.X D&D).

The peasant railgun is not a charop exercise.  It's a degenerate state that occurs whenever too many readied actions are conditional on each other, and is a flaw in any game that doesn't explicitly address this in its rules.  Every game dev (probably correctly) doesn't consider such situations to be worth elaborating on.

The specific case that peasant railgun works on- that readied actions invoke two delays, one where the readier waits for the trigger, and one where the readier executes the action- neither of which is accounted for in the physics of the system- allows you to generate a thought experiment where something impossible happens (in this case, the physical impossibility is simply that passing an item doesn't actually accelerate it to absurd speeds- a DM would assume that whatever is being passed would go through about six peasants, perhaps fifteen if they were really good at it, and be moving at a perfectly normal speed)- but that this edge case, and indeed any case where readied action A depends on readied action B (instead of a primary action)- requires DM intervention to be certain that too much time has not passed in the round.

There are several other critiques of the same sort- for instance, a dropped item falls some number of feet instantly in most systems, allowing you to place a device underneath that in turn drops another item, etc, and you can transmit information faster than light with this system, etc.  Peasant railgun sticks around as a good commentary.

Should games bother handling readied actions in a complex enough way to handle this?  Honestly, maybe they should.  Almost all games that allow readying an action, interrupts, or out of cycle turns generate strange results sometimes.  More mundane concerns involve, too much conditional and conversation in a six second space and issues with counterspells countering counterspells, none of which play out in a fully satisfactory method in any game without side based initiative or predeclared actions.

In any event, 3.X was a system with enough conditional things to make this conversation worth having.  In general, readied actions are gutted enough in 5e that only the spells or abilities that specifically allow you to use your reaction still create serious issues there, and generally such issues largely don't hit the OSR nearly as much.

Now that is rather illuminating indeed.


Could this be resolved by having to pass a saving throw to complete the readied action?

Prior to doing your readied action, if you fail a reflex/fort/will save, then the result is an auto-fumble, i.e. crit-fail, and you might miss your next turn due to other circumstances, or just go to the bottom of the initiative order. Otherwise if you crit-pass, i.e. auto-succeed, choose: you can change your initiative order to before or after the target of your action, or reroll your initiative.

I think that this would be most practical if you took crits out of regular play.

Quote from: ClusterFluster on February 19, 2023, 08:53:28 PM
https://tabletopjoab.com/the-legend-of-the-peasant-railgun-in-dd-5e/

Now I get it.

This shit is braindead.

It is... mainly because those pursuing such things want it both ways... they want to abuse the physics resulting from the mechanics in one way (move object incredible distance in a single round), but then ignore the physics resulting from the mechanics in another (i.e. just because its moved that incredible distance in a single round doesn't mean it leaves the hands of the last peasant any faster than it normally would) in order to get a game breaking result.

Basically ALL the idiot things center around the same sort of selective readings... require Rules as Written for setup, but then demand results based on ignoring Rules as Written in favor of "common sense" for the results.

It comes up with certain players of WotC-era D&D enough that I devoted a paragraph of a sidebar on my "core rules" page (i.e. how to resolve an action, specific rules trump general rules for interpreting results, always round down unless told otherwise) to stating outright that "with all the potential interactions of rules elements there are bound to be times when a nonsensical result could happen. In these cases, the GM should rule in favor of what they believe makes the most sense for the situation."

In essence, I codified for all those rules lawyers out there that my system's Rules as Written are to interpret outcomes via "Rules as Intended (as interpreted by the GM)."

I didn't have to... common sense is a thing. I just enjoy the thought of any GM confronted by such loophole abusers just being able to point to the section on, off the top of my head, page 8 saying "your attempt at rules abuse splatters against the adamantine gates of common sense."

RAW, RAI, & RAF, meet: Rules as Convenience!

It's great that you had that loophole, except for the loophole within the loophole of GMs who think the peasant rail gun is permissible in their own games.

Quote from: Chris24601 on February 20, 2023, 10:55:33 AM
Basically ALL the idiot things center around the same sort of selective readings... require Rules as Written for setup, but then demand results based on ignoring Rules as Written in favor of "common sense" for the results.

Well, not all of them. But the other ones can generally be handled by a judicious application of "Mitch McConnell-ing". "I say to my friends on the other side of the [screen]: You will regret this, and you may regret it a lot sooner than you think."

Things like "I can create water in people's lungs because the rules don't say I can't!" and "I can cast Create Light on someone's eyeballs!" suddenly become a lot less fun when they are applied equally.

Quote from: Bruwulf on February 20, 2023, 09:27:48 AM

Quote from: Venka on February 19, 2023, 11:16:53 PMIn any event, 3.X was a system with enough conditional things to make this conversation worth having.

Why?

The 3.X ruleset walked away from predeclared actions that resolve mostly-simultaneously, crawling your way up the initiative to figure out what's going exactly.  Before 3.X, you could make the case that no one was ever frozen in space at a particular point in time, as miniatures tend to yield.  Like yes, at the end of the round, Bojak The Semicunning was right about to turn that corner, but you could make the case he was running and had momentum and maybe that matters for something, and maybe it doesn't.  In 3.X, that kind of edge case call was sorta pushed away. 

Instead we got a much more detailed way of handling things.  Events would still resolve in order, but you didn't have to predeclare them- if you acted at the end of the round, you no longer were limited by saying "I'll attack the enemy caster" and when it gets to your turn, the enemy caster had put up a shield against arrows and then become silenced, making him no longer a priority target.  Instead you got to act with full knowledge of events up until that point.  Further, someone could have set up a readied action contingent on your action- for instance, if the geography has a 10 foot wide path, with a wall on one side and a chasm on the other, an enemy could have readied an action to shove you into the chasm, should you try to move past him.  How much of an action should be able to be readied?  A shove, certainly, but why not a full attack? 

Also, what of the limits on readied actions?  Lets assume that every action has a speed associated with it, 1 for fast actions, 2 for your average standard action, such as attacking or drinking a potion, and 3 for certain actions that might be considered even longer.  Now everything inherits this single-use speed factor, and we'll say that for any readied action that triggers off another action, the total amount of speed factors can't be more than 5.  So in the peasant railgun case, now you have a rule that prevents the sixth peasant from passing it via readied actions.  Perhaps you could get there more elegantly; that's not the point.  You would definitely have some framework about timing that would give you some math to do that hardly ever matters, so it's not a great system.

Further, you can get to the peasant railgun without readied actions- each peasant can simply delay their turn such that, an the initiative of the slowest peasant, the entire thing executes in line.  Now all the crap I typed about timing and readied actions doesn't help.  Now we need something to fix simultaneity in the general initiative order.

This is a problem even in medium scale combats where the PCs have a few helpers and the bad guys have some minions, where the events that happen in a round, or any amount of time, all end up being too contingent on each other.  It breaks down utterly in large scale combat, but 3.X never pretends that it's about that.

So this is a conversation about scale of combat, simultaneity, and how long each atomic action takes.  Why would this not be worth having?  It's a problem common to all modern games and to some degree old school games (you can't tell me that if three PCs had set up some clever timing on a round, that it wouldn't be hard to adjudicate, especially if your NPCs were also doing something semiclever that round), and there's not much guidance on it as a general topic.

Quote from: ClusterFluster on February 20, 2023, 11:14:40 AM
It's great that you had that loophole, except for the loophole within the loophole of GMs who think the peasant rail gun is permissible in their own games.

No GM is going to allow you to abuse timing rules or initiative count to do something comical like breaking the sound barrier.  One who does is running an absurdist parody about rules systems, like it or not.
And while peasant railgun got discussed in 3.X circles, every game that offers repositioning in time or preparing an action with a trigger has this issue.  It's not about 3.X, it's a thought experiment, and a pretty good one at that.

Quote from: Bruwulf on February 20, 2023, 11:33:32 AM
Things like "I can create water in people's lungs because the rules don't say I can't!" and "I can cast Create Light on someone's eyeballs!" suddenly become a lot less fun when they are applied equally.

Now that stuff is just a player being creative and not thinking through the ramifications if you were to allow it.  When I was young and something like that would come up, I'd say "it doesn't work", and then I would figure out which new section of "rules about the world" exist that prevent that, because obviously something does.  As I've gotten older, I now simply tell the player, "you know that plan won't work" and let them do something else.  I don't want to discourage creativity, and crap like that is technically creative.  Often a player doesn't know that what they are coming up would be totally shitty if it was actually allowed.

It's worth pointing out that most games normally have rules that are kinda explicit to prevent that stuff these days.  Either the description will make it clear you can't target organs by telling you what you can target in a way that excludes creatures, or there will be some uber-rule somewhere player-visible that you can point them at that shuts it down, as a kindness to tables that have players at that point in their learning, and the DMs that must make rulings for them.

Quote from: Venka on February 20, 2023, 11:47:44 AM

Quote from: ClusterFluster on February 20, 2023, 11:14:40 AM
It's great that you had that loophole, except for the loophole within the loophole of GMs who think the peasant rail gun is permissible in their own games.

No GM is going to allow you to abuse timing rules or initiative count to do something comical like breaking the sound barrier.  One who does is running an absurdist parody about rules systems, like it or not.
And while peasant railgun got discussed in 3.X circles, every game that offers repositioning in time or preparing an action with a trigger has this issue.  It's not about 3.X, it's a thought experiment, and a pretty good one at that.

I'm no longer focusing on the inertia of the javelin in this discussion, I understand that this thought experiment concerns the chain of reactions much better now. It seems like it's still a game breaking phenomenon to an important degree, and covers several other issues such as readied spells. I've also realized by now that my proposal to add saving throws to readied actions does adds risk and rewards when they're made in isolation but doesn't quite resolve the core problem.