Funny Rules Lawyering Moments...

[Edward Kann@StoryART]

Thought I would share this story. At the time it seemed rather amusing. This is not meant as a slam only as a funny situation that came out of a playtest game.

Sitting in on a playtest for a d20 Future campaign at a friends house and while everyone was gearing up using the D20 Modern firearms and some of the future weapons my friend Steve pipes up with a quirky grin on his face that he is opting to carry an old world musket.

"A musket? You gotta be kidding."

"Nope a musket is fine."

So play continues and Steve volunteers to go out with our friend Mark to scout. They run into trouble against some baddies and eventually Mark and Steve decide to cut and run so they can set up an ambush.

"Your not using that musket I hope." Mark complains. He gets his Barrett Light Fifty sniper rifle set up on it's tripod and orders Steve to just keep quite and he'll try to take them out fast before Steve has to try and do anything with his wonky old fashioned Musket.

"What are we waiting for?" Complains Steve as the bad guys move into the ambush...now 300 feet away...and closing.

"I want to get them in under 240 ft so my range increment improves...hush!"

"The heck with that, I open up with my musket.."

Steve cackles and opens the DMG to page 145 where low and behold a musket is listed with a range increment of 150 feet....

Mark's Barrett Light Fifty sniper rifle has a range increment of 120 feet...

Steve's musket inflicts 1d12..while Mark's 50 caliber does 2d12..so Mark has him there.

However Steve keeps rolling criticals and does X3 damage with his critical hits while Mark's are only X2.

In the end because Steve is able to, according to the rules, reload his muzzle loading 16th century musket in one combat round (six seconds), Steve is able to howl and cackle his way through almost half of the bad guys inflicting almost as much mayhem as Mark with his super modern 50 caliber sniper rifle.

We all had a pretty good laugh and buried Steve under a hail of empty soda cans after the play session was over.

But this does beg a big question.

We want the combat system to be pretty much fun oriented and not necessarily super realistic..but shouldn't black powder weapons take a long darn time to reload? Once you start getting black powder weapons to where they need to be then other parts of the missile weapon combat becomes a little suspect. Six seconds to reload a crossbow? Maybe. But certainly not ones that you have to crank.

We spent an entire hour tossing around ideas for trying to make the missile weapon combat a little more balanced but in the end decided that it was better to have a lean, simple and fun unrealistic combat system over a complex and slow, more realistic combat system.

Anyone else have any funny stories from game sessions where a player rule lawyered something but in a funny, creative and brilliant way?

Ed

 

[Varianor Abroad]

That was really funny! Thanks for sharing that one.

I do remember a friend who managed to create a permanent, flying hot tub using one of a DM's custom spells combined with a create water or something, but that was a long time ago. Similar example.

As to the musket, yes in the Real World it would take a lot longer to reload. The black powder weapons in the DMG had their reload times lowered to make them more fun to play, according to Monte Cook (if I recall correctly). But then again, I've had to recrank a crossbow by hand personally. It takes longer than 6 seconds unless you're trained. If you want to do it, I'd make it take two rounds. Then if he wants to get a Rapid Reload style feat, he can do it in one round.

 

[Piratecat]

That's really funny... but yes, black powder weapons should take forever to reload. In general you fire them, draw a cutlass, and wade in.

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

Though its stuff like this that makes me glad there is playtesting.

 

[deranged DM]

The key here is to look at similar items in Modern and D&D. A composite longbow in D&D 3.5 has a range increment of 110'. A compound bow (a far better bow) in Modern has a 40' range increment. and this is where the problem happened...
Very funny, though, but the DM didn't look closely enough at the weapons in play.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

Oddly enough, I just saw a thing on Mail Call about reloading a revolutionary rifle. Takes a trained individual 20 seconds, on average, to load and fire an aimed shot.

So, really, 2-2.5 rounds to load up a weapon like that.

I figure I can swing a round one way or the other... Might use the longer time if I were playing a period army-type game or something like that.

--fje

--fje

 

[^Graff]

It should actually take five rounds, or 30 seconds, to reload a musket. The 20-second figure is from the time that it took the British Regulars to reload, and the British Regulars were the best-trained infantry in the world at the time. The rapid reload feat would be extremely useful in this case, as it would knock a full-round action and a move-equivalent action off of the reload time.

I always figured that the DMG firearms were breach-loading weapons, and that in D&D, the inventors managed to bypass the muzzle-loader. That's the only way that it would work.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

Actually the 20-second figure is from watching a moderately-trained recreationist with a period weapon reloading and firing on my television.

--fje

 

[ragboy]

Actually the 20-second figure is from watching a moderately-trained recreationist with a period weapon reloading and firing on my television.

--fje

Did he hit it?

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

Actually, yea. He was pretty good.

And he had R. Lee Ermey hovering over his shoulder the whole time, which is sort of like being in combat.

I know that guy scares ME, at any rate.

Then the gunny took a turn at it and was able to keep up, but having never fired that type of weapon before, didn't do as well. It was a goodly distance to my living room, too.

--fje