D&D 5E When RAW goes too far

[Coroc]

What planet are your physics from? It's the same small impact area, twice. Not a doubled impact area on one lance.

As an example. Lets say a lance punches through you ribs and skewers your left lung. Compare that to two lances punching through your ribs on either side of your sternum and skewering both lungs. Are you really suggesting that the second example should be doing the same abstract damage as the first? Crazy talk.

no it is one energy source distributed to two areas of impact. So it is the energy divided by two. So it is half of the damage.
check out pictures of jousting lances, for tournament they got some crown like tip instead of the spear head for war.
that is to lessen the impact and distributing it over a bigger area.
the tip of a spear might be sharp but it is still an area.
I am tired of trying to explain this to you. Please do some research on your own.
Charging with a Lance (or two) is a different situation than piercing someone with a dagger in each hand. The horse the rider and the Lance is one fixed system. The rider just holds the Lance firm, the movement does the damage. He does not additionally do a stabbing movement.
to expand on your example depending on whether both lances hitting simultaneously or not I would say that either impact energy is half of it or if one lance hits first, so the movement that causes the damage. gets stopped or slowed down, then the first does 50-100% of the damage while the second causes 50-0% with the zero damage if the first impact brought the movement to a full stop before the second impact.
so your example just adds a bit of gore, but does not clarify the issue.

 

[Xetheral]

no it is one energy source distributed to two areas of impact. So it is the energy divided by two. So it is half of the damage.
check out pictures of jousting lances, for tournament they got some crown like tip instead of the spear head for war.
that is to lessen the impact and distributing it over a bigger area.
the tip of a spear might be sharp but it is still an area.
I am tired of trying to explain this to you. Please do some research on your own.
Charging with a Lance (or two) is a different situation than piercing someone with a dagger in each hand. The horse the rider and the Lance is one fixed system. The rider just holds the Lance firm, the movement does the damage. He does not additionally do a stabbing movement.
to expand on your example depending on whether both lances hitting simultaneously or not I would say that either impact energy is half of it or if one lance hits first, so the movement that causes the damage. gets stopped or slowed down, then the first does 50-100% of the damage while the second causes 50-0% with the zero damage if the first impact brought the movement to a full stop before the second impact.
so your example just adds a bit of gore, but does not clarify the issue.

Quick note: I think you're assuming far too high levels of energy transfer. The lance, the rider, the tack, and the horse would all need to be improbably strong to survive the levels of the force involved in bringing their combined mass to a stop in the space of a lance impact.

It seems far more likely to me that only a small portion of the total kinetic energy can be transferred to the target. If that's true, there's no reason to assume that the total energy transferred is independent of the number of lances. Depending on precisely which factors are limiting the energy transfer, multiple lances could conceivably be either more or less efficient than a single lance, which considerably complicates the question of which setup does more damage.

Put simply, I think the kinematics of a lance hitting a target are too complicated to be approximated by your (total KE)/(impact area) formula.

 

[the Jester]

Hmm... I guess here I mean something like "perform acts that could result in what you want". My 1st-level character cannot disintegrate Waterdeep (the city, everyone in it). They cannot "attempt" to do that, because any such attempt will be nonsense.

I mean- I'd argue that such a character could attempt to disintegrate Waterdeep, but it would involve questing and leveling up until he found a way to do it.

But yeah, I get your point- this isn't something you can try to do the simple way, simply by taking some single action or other. It's something you can attempt to do by forging an entire adventure or campaign around the goal.

 

[Coroc]

Quick note: I think you're assuming far too high levels of energy transfer. The lance, the rider, the tack, and the horse would all need to be improbably strong to survive the levels of the force involved in bringing their combined mass to a stop in the space of a lance impact.

It seems far more likely to me that only a small portion of the total kinetic energy can be transferred to the target. If that's true, there's no reason to assume that the total energy transferred is independent of the number of lances. Depending on precisely which factors are limiting the energy transfer, multiple lances could conceivably be either more or less efficient than a single lance, which considerably complicates the question of which setup does more damage.

Put simply, I think the kinematics of a lance hitting a target are too complicated to be approximated by your (total KE)/(impact area) formula.

of course my model is simplified, and does not compute elasticity etc. But even with diminished energy my thesis is still correct, as is the base math for the initial impact.

 

[Coroc]

of course my model is simplified, and does not compute elasticity etc. But even with diminished energy my thesis is still correct, as is the base math for the initial impact.

addendum: RL war horses only needed about 10 ft to accelerate to base combat speed, a trained lancer was an incredible dangerous opponent.
getting hit by the momentum of the horses mass is a different thing than your stab of a footman @Xetheral

 

[Fenris-77]

And your simple human math is incorrectly modeling getting hit by two lances instead of just one. I have no interest in trying to plumb the depth of your issues with physics here. Two lances making two holes is not the same amount of physical damage as one lance making one hole.

Perhaps you are only considering the transfer of kinetic force rather than having a second bloody great hole punched in your chest? If that's the case I suggest you revisit your thesis.

 

[Coroc]

And your simple human math is incorrectly modeling getting hit by two lances instead of just one. I have no interest in trying to plumb the depth of your issues with physics here. Two lances making two holes is not the same amount of physical damage as one lance making one hole.

Perhaps you are only considering the transfer of kinetic force rather than having a second bloody great hole punched in your chest? If that's the case I suggest you revisit your thesis.

two holes of 5 cm depth might be about the same amount of injury like 1 hole of 10 cm depth. Assuming the lances hit at the same time. Just to complete my theory.
I give up to convince you any further, since you stick to game / simulation conditions whereas I try to explain why a RAW legally thing is a nono for me because of make believe colliding with my understanding of basic physics. Of course that could also apply to giants existing and dragons breathing fire, but those are things without a comparable counter IRL.

 

[Fenris-77]

Even if I stuck to your theory, two holes going halfway through your chest cavity is worse than one hole going all the way through. You're resting your argument on the lances not penetrating that far because there's two of them, but that isn't a given: if the force was twice that needed to drive one lance through the whole distance they would both go all the way through, which leaves two big holes instead of just one. That said, like you, I'm going to leave this very silly subject behind.

 

[clearstream]

Even if I stuck to your theory, two holes going halfway through your chest cavity is worse than one hole going all the way through. You're resting your argument on the lances not penetrating that far because there's two of them, but that isn't a given: if the force was twice that needed to drive one lance through the whole distance they would both go all the way through, which leaves two big holes instead of just one. That said, like you, I'm going to leave this very silly subject behind.

Rats, I was enjoying the debate.

 

[Lanefan]

One thing being ignored with the idea of a rider charging with two lances is this: if each of the rider's hands is completely occupied with holding and aiming a lance, and thus neither hand is on the reins, then who's driving the horse and making sure it goes in a nice straight line along the rail?

Never mind that without having the off-hand available to brace and steady him-herself the two-lance rider is going to rock back and forth in the saddle considerably more than would a one-lance rider, making aiming either lance correspondingly more difficult.....