Adjudication for Dwarf Tossing

[sev]

I signed up for this forum specifically because of this thread.
My character in a play-by-post game is a 55 pound gnome with an acrobatics of 10. We were wondering if our half-orc ranger could throw the gnome to an advantageous position where he could use his ranged attacks from a safe vantage point. Or if there may be a situation where we have to get one person across a chasm and there's nowhere to tie rope, etc.

Surely there must be some weight / strength / range table somewhere? This is a willing target I'm talking about. And gnomes are considered "small" creatures, which may change things from the original dwarf topic this thread has. Any ideas?

How far does the gnome need to be thrown? The easy answer -- which may be insufficient for your purposes -- is for the half-orc to provide an assist to the gnome's Jump via Aid Another.

Alternately, how about using the half-orc's Athletics check for the gnome's "jump"?

I agree that throwing an unwilling victim sounds like a two-standard-actions sort of deal; one standard to grab, and one to throw. So unless the character has an action point available, the victim would have a chance to struggle free before the character's next turn came around. I'd probably use the "Actions the Rules Don't Cover" from the DMG for the throw-part.

 

[Taed]

My character in a play-by-post game is a 55 pound gnome with an acrobatics of 10. We were wondering if our half-orc ranger could throw the gnome to an advantageous position where he could use his ranged attacks from a safe vantage point.

I'm DMing a group where something similar came up. There were some baddies on the other side of a small waterfall and I had told the group that everyone would be able to walk through the waterfall fine as difficult terrain except the Halfling who would probably be knocked down because of her low weight.

So, they turned it into their advantage. The 20 Strength Half-Orc used a standard action to throw the Halfling the 10 feet through the waterfall. I had the Half-Orc do a Athletics check DC 15 to get the throw on target through the waterfall, and he succeeded. The Halfling then had to do a DC 15 Acrobatics check to land on her feet (a move action), and she succeeded. Then the Halfling used her standard action to throw her dagger at the closest target, using first strike and also scoring a critical hit and killing the first baddie. To top it all off, the wizard had walked through the waterfall, didn't like the targets for whatever reason, and used his standard action for ghost hand to retreive the dagger (non-magical) from the now-dead body and return it to the Halfling. It was a good way to start that encounter!

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

GhostToast, welcome to the boards! I think you will find some of the best house-ruling minds lurking around here... that is why I read these boards!

I can concede the point that using the damage entries on DMG page 42 does end up making this more effective then using a sword to stab the target. Conversely, the series of actions is absolutely more difficult to pull off, and a single d4 of damage is too low.

My apologies as I have been lurking/MIA, I missed this a couple months ago and it looks like we had a miscommunication.

I was suggesting in my post to treat the damage as X[W] where X = 1/2 squares thrown and W = the dice based on the improvised weapon rules..

So if you could toss the dwarf 4 squares you could deal 2D6 damage. If you were to used a ranged power that dealt 2[W], you could be dealing 4D6 damage.