Greenfield
Adventurer
This was prompted by a post in another thread, but I'll try to keep this self-contained.
One thing that drives us all a little nuts, I think, is when someone at the game table starts to try and impose physics onto a magical game setting. Worse is when they try to impose *their version* of physics.
One such discussion ensued when we were discussing an Epic monster called a Collossus of something-something. Bloody huge thing with a DR50/+5 (This was a 3.0 critter). It also had an anti-magic aura around it, so there was no such thing as a +5 anything anywhere near it.
I proposed an old 1st Ed. trick known as the Paladin killer. Essentially, you take something big and heavy and reduce it to a size or form that can be easily hurled. When it hits the anti-magic effect it reverts to being big and heavy.
The specific example I used was to take a mule, add a pack saddle and load it with boulders until it could barely stand. Next, Polymorph it into a Hamster. By the rules, items worn by polymorphed beings fold into the new form, unless it's an item that the new form can wear.
Hamsters don't wear pack saddles.
Mule, fully loaded, weighs about 2,000 lbs. Hamster can fit in a sling.
The entire argument was silly to begin with, as the monster in question was Epic grade silly, but a self appointed physics expert argued that "Conservation of Momentum" would come into play, and the moment the hamster hit the anti magic field he'd lose pretty much all of his speed.
He's trying to apply his vision of real world physics to a situation that can't occur in the real world. There is no real world circumstance where an object just spontaneously gains mass. Still, I played along.
"Is your vision of the game world like the real world? Does it spin on its axis? Does it orbit the sun?", I asked.
He said it had to, and elaborated for far too long.
"Then let's look at the situation at a slightly earlier point in the sequence.", I suggested.
"A hamster weighs about 4 ounces, and the loaded mule weighs a solid ton. That's an 8000-to-1 change in mass when the transformation hits. Since the surface rotational velocity of the Earth is a little over 1000 mph at the equator, (25,000 miles in 24 hours), and the Earth's orbital velocity is about 62.5 times more, if we do the initial Polymorph at midnight, the local velocity is 63,500 mph. Applying conservation of momentum to that, the speed should increase by a factor of 8000, giving us a take off velocity of three quarters of the speed of light."
That silenced him. The hamster would take off horizontally, in an easterly direction, at about 500 million miles an hour (508 million, if you're on the equator), and would probably tear away half the planet's atmosphere in the split second it took to leave the world behind.
If you did the transformation right at sunset, the direction would be down instead of east, and the impact would probably cause an effect similar to the meteor strike that created Iceland (and subsequently wiped out the dinosaurs.)
If you did the transformation at sunrise the direction of take off would be straight up. That form would cause the least damage to the world at large, but the spell caster and everything else within a few miles would probably be caught in the vortex and sucked up into space.
Now, for our next trick, we'll load an elephant with that pack saddle and...
Isn't physics fun?
So, what's your favorite tale of someone trying to argue physics in a fantasy game?
One thing that drives us all a little nuts, I think, is when someone at the game table starts to try and impose physics onto a magical game setting. Worse is when they try to impose *their version* of physics.
One such discussion ensued when we were discussing an Epic monster called a Collossus of something-something. Bloody huge thing with a DR50/+5 (This was a 3.0 critter). It also had an anti-magic aura around it, so there was no such thing as a +5 anything anywhere near it.
I proposed an old 1st Ed. trick known as the Paladin killer. Essentially, you take something big and heavy and reduce it to a size or form that can be easily hurled. When it hits the anti-magic effect it reverts to being big and heavy.
The specific example I used was to take a mule, add a pack saddle and load it with boulders until it could barely stand. Next, Polymorph it into a Hamster. By the rules, items worn by polymorphed beings fold into the new form, unless it's an item that the new form can wear.
Hamsters don't wear pack saddles.
Mule, fully loaded, weighs about 2,000 lbs. Hamster can fit in a sling.
The entire argument was silly to begin with, as the monster in question was Epic grade silly, but a self appointed physics expert argued that "Conservation of Momentum" would come into play, and the moment the hamster hit the anti magic field he'd lose pretty much all of his speed.
He's trying to apply his vision of real world physics to a situation that can't occur in the real world. There is no real world circumstance where an object just spontaneously gains mass. Still, I played along.
"Is your vision of the game world like the real world? Does it spin on its axis? Does it orbit the sun?", I asked.
He said it had to, and elaborated for far too long.
"Then let's look at the situation at a slightly earlier point in the sequence.", I suggested.
"A hamster weighs about 4 ounces, and the loaded mule weighs a solid ton. That's an 8000-to-1 change in mass when the transformation hits. Since the surface rotational velocity of the Earth is a little over 1000 mph at the equator, (25,000 miles in 24 hours), and the Earth's orbital velocity is about 62.5 times more, if we do the initial Polymorph at midnight, the local velocity is 63,500 mph. Applying conservation of momentum to that, the speed should increase by a factor of 8000, giving us a take off velocity of three quarters of the speed of light."
That silenced him. The hamster would take off horizontally, in an easterly direction, at about 500 million miles an hour (508 million, if you're on the equator), and would probably tear away half the planet's atmosphere in the split second it took to leave the world behind.
If you did the transformation right at sunset, the direction would be down instead of east, and the impact would probably cause an effect similar to the meteor strike that created Iceland (and subsequently wiped out the dinosaurs.)
If you did the transformation at sunrise the direction of take off would be straight up. That form would cause the least damage to the world at large, but the spell caster and everything else within a few miles would probably be caught in the vortex and sucked up into space.
Now, for our next trick, we'll load an elephant with that pack saddle and...
Isn't physics fun?
So, what's your favorite tale of someone trying to argue physics in a fantasy game?
