Would the peasant railgun be possible in GURPS?

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Rupert

The really funny thing about the peasant railgun? It doesn;t work, because just as D&D internal 'physics engine' allows readied actions to wok to allow instant movement of an object from one end of the chain to the other, they also confer no momentum on it as a result. Peasant chains are 'great' from instant communication, but terrible as railguns.

Honestly I don't think it even works in the D&D physics engine. Surely both pass and retrieve an item are Move Actions, you don't get to do two in a round, which means the railgun can only be two characters long. Sure you can *drop* the item as a Free Action for the next guy to retrieve but if you do that it's completely clear why it retains no momentum.

Instead of just mostly clear - after all if it's still moving relative to you, it's not really retrieved is it? You couldn't, say, drop it to the floor as a Free Action - it'd fly off somewhere rather than land at your feet - or prepare it as a material component to cast a spell if it was going to go flying out of your hand in the next millisecond.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Honestly I don't think it even works in the D&D physics engine. Surely both pass and retrieve an item are Move Actions, you don't get to do two in a round, which means the railgun can only be two characters long.

I can't speak to anything outside of 3.x, but you absolutely can do two Move Actions in a round there - you get one Standard Action and one Move Action, with the option to trade in the Standard Action for an additional Move Action. So you can pass items, messages, etc at incredible speed doing this (but you can't retain that speed for an attack - just as the peasants don't have their hands catch fire for passing an item between them at supersonic speed, the item is treated as moving at a more relaxed speed; this is more akin to a Warp Drive than a railgun).

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Nah, in GURPS the scheme would be reliant on Cascading Waits.

In D&D, the behavior is pretty heavily dependent on edition. Some of them have delay actions, which at least solves the initiative sorting problem. Sometimes they have triggered held actions (the GURPS Wait), though maybe that's just Pathfinder, and sometimes not -- before the houserules show up.

In fact, one reason for the lack of actual military application of the peasant railgun is that field commanders learned not to rely on weapons whose operation is so sensitive to changes in the fundamental laws of metaphysics. Terrific in this campaign, useless in the next. Makes magic look tame and stable by comparison. So there's no way to rely on the weapon system when drafting your military plans.

Swords, on the other hand, almost always work (as Corwin pointed out). In any edition, you can make some progress by whacking things with a sharp piece of steel. Much sounder basis for the foundation of your military might.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Swords, on the other hand, almost always work (as Corwin pointed out). In any edition, you can make some progress by whacking things with a sharp piece of steel. Much sounder basis for the foundation of your military might.

Though for some rules sets and targets the damage from a sharp piece of steel may differ enormously from a blunt one. So bring a *single edged* sword, in case it helps to flip it over and thwack it with the dull side.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

In D&D, the behavior is pretty heavily dependent on edition. Some of them have delay actions, which at least solves the initiative sorting problem. Sometimes they have triggered held actions (the GURPS Wait), though maybe that's just Pathfinder, and sometimes not -- before the houserules show up.

The 'ready' action, which is like GURPS' wait, turns up in D&D3, and continues into 3.5 and Pathfinder 1e (not sure about PF2).

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by Rupert

The really funny thing about the peasant railgun? It doesn;t work, because just as D&D internal 'physics engine' allows readied actions to wok to allow instant movement of an object from one end of the chain to the other, they also confer no momentum on it as a result. Peasant chains are 'great' from instant communication, but terrible as railguns.

It strikes me as a specifically computer game and 3e.3.5e D&D idea ... earlier editions of D&D were usually like GURPS, the GM was always right. It was 3e D&D which tried to offer exactly one clear and authoritative answer to any question governed by the rules.

Rules lawyering is an old tradition, but this specific idea strikes me as specific to a particular concept of the game.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

It strikes me as a specifically computer game and 3e.3.5e D&D idea ... earlier editions of D&D were usually like GURPS, the GM was always right. It was 3e D&D which tried to offer exactly one clear and authoritative answer to any question governed by the rules.

Rules lawyering is an old tradition, but this specific idea strikes me as specific to a particular concept of the game.

D&D3.x was very clear that the GM could, and should, rule on ambiguous situations, and that they could and should change rules that were resulting in dumb outcomes. I don't know of any GM that's ever allowed instantaneous message movement via chain readies, let alone a 'peasant railgun', nor even teleporting samurai (there was a class feature for them that allowed a step between each blow of a great cleave, so as long as they never missed and every hit dropped someone they could 'teleport' across crowded battlefields).

Likewise, I don't know of anyone who allowed some of those obviously abusive character builds in their games (though less obvious builds certainly slipped through), just as I don't know any GURPS GM that would allow those cheap galaxy-killing area attacks you can legally build. In each case that doesn't mean people didn't have fun coming up with the builds, even though they probably never had any intent to use them in a game.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Rupert

D&D3.x was very clear that the GM could, and should, rule on ambiguous situations, and that they could and should change rules that were resulting in dumb outcomes. I don't know of any GM that's ever allowed instantaneous message movement via chain readies, let alone a 'peasant railgun', nor even teleporting samurai (there was a class feature for them that allowed a step between each blow of a great cleave, so as long as they never missed and every hit dropped someone they could 'teleport' across crowded battlefields).

I would totally allow teleporting samurai.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Anthony

I would totally allow teleporting samurai.

My recollection is that the prestige class in question was fairly rubbish (in that iteration, at least), so it never came up for us.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by Anthony

I would totally allow teleporting samurai.

Teleporting samurai are tight.