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<blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 7837277" data-attributes="member: 177">Put the person-payload in front of the ballista (off to the side a touch, or lying on the ground, or sitting atop the mechanism, for those pedantic enough to try to tell me the person gets shot if they are standing in front of it).&nbsp; Feed the rope back into the mechanism, and connect it to the bolt.&nbsp; Only a short bit of rope has to go through the mechanism.Well, it doesn't lose all momentum.&nbsp; In our world, the kinetic energy will be conserved.&nbsp; So, say, if a 10 pound bolt is moving at a bit short of a ludicrous 500 mph. The resulting man+bolt will be moving along at a bit more than 100 mph or so - the speed of a fastball pitch.&nbsp; If, of course, the person keeps their limbs when trying to hold on to a rope moving 500 mph.Mind you, if you pull this trick with a lightly armored halfling, and only a slightly ludicrously overpowered ballista (throwing a huge metal bolt that weighs, say, 50 lbs) then you have an image that might work&nbsp; out.(That was a joke.)More seriously, dude - You are talking to people who are okay with games that have swords like this in it:[ATTACH=full]115108[/ATTACH]Exactly.&nbsp; We also have a flying dragon, which suggests its own departures from physics as we know it.&nbsp; What works out in our collaborative myth-making is really dependent on the individual group's tolerance for the wacky.&nbsp; Don't try too hard to structure the experience of others.&nbsp; You will get trampled as they charge by on their way to having fun.To put it another way - we are talking about a fictional tradition that includes Baron Munchausen crossing back and forth across a battlefield a few times, riding on cannonballs.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Umbran, post: 7837277, member: 177"] Put the person-payload in front of the ballista (off to the side a touch, or lying on the ground, or sitting atop the mechanism, for those pedantic enough to try to tell me the person gets shot if they are standing in front of it). Feed the rope back into the mechanism, and connect it to the bolt. Only a short bit of rope has to go through the mechanism. Well, it doesn't lose all momentum. In our world, the kinetic energy will be conserved. So, say, if a 10 pound bolt is moving at a bit short of a ludicrous 500 mph. The resulting man+bolt will be moving along at a bit more than 100 mph or so - the speed of a fastball pitch. If, of course, the person keeps their limbs when trying to hold on to a rope moving 500 mph. Mind you, if you pull this trick with a lightly armored halfling, and only a slightly ludicrously overpowered ballista (throwing a huge metal bolt that weighs, say, 50 lbs) then you have an image that might work out. (That was a joke.) More seriously, dude - You are talking to people who are okay with games that have swords like this in it: [ATTACH type="full" alt="1571750865585.png"]115108[/ATTACH] Exactly. We also have a flying dragon, which suggests its own departures from physics as we know it. What works out in our collaborative myth-making is really dependent on the individual group's tolerance for the wacky. Don't try too hard to structure the experience of others. You will get trampled as they charge by on their way to having fun. To put it another way - we are talking about a fictional tradition that includes Baron Munchausen crossing back and forth across a battlefield a few times, riding on cannonballs. [/QUOTE]

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