The Three Thousand Elf Mach 2 Army

[UngainlyTitan]

This might also explain Santa's travels.

Hadn't though of that but it fits the original hypothesis, we could be onto something here.

 

[RyvenCedrylle]

You know, there's a campaign hook in here somewhere too. "Where have all the elves gone? Why are their cities intact but their people missing? And how did this town get razed overnight?"

 

[LostSoul]

Light Step obviously doesn't stack.

Light Step does stack.

What the OP ignores, however, is that only PC elves get this bonus. The elves in the MM don't have Light Step.

It's funny, though!

It could be cool to play a group made up only of elves who are some kind of super strike team. Or to create an Elf "monster" with Light Step - call them Elven Runners. They harass orcish supply lines and disappear thanks to their superior mobility.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

Light Step does stack.

What the OP ignores, however, is that only PC elves get this bonus. The elves in the MM don't have Light Step.

It's funny, though!

It'd be a neat stunt to gather enough players together at a convention for this trick to work. I can see the t-shirt now, "I broke the speed of sound at GenCon 2009."

 

[LightPhoenix]

FTeLf
Elves are also the solution to faster than light travel - let's call it FTeLf.

*snerk*

 

[CharlesRyan]

What the OP ignores . . . is that only PC elves get this bonus.

This sounds like an opportunity for the RPGA!

 

[Donovan Morningfire]

Can't speak to the rules legality of this, but is a funny read

But wouldn't the elves moving this fast announce their presence by way of a sonic boom, which occurs when jets break the sound barrier? Granted, they'd still get the surprise round (since they are moving faster than the speed of sound), but only that one round as the big boom lets folks know the elves have arrived (and probably in better style than whoever they're attacking).

 

[Iron Sky]

But wouldn't the elves moving this fast announce their presence by way of a sonic boom, which occurs when jets break the sound barrier? Granted, they'd still get the surprise round (since they are moving faster than the speed of sound), but only that one round as the big boom lets folks know the elves have arrived (and probably in better style than whoever they're attacking).

This is true. It also made me realize that they probably wouldn't need more than one round to take out what they are shooting at. If they all fire off an arrow just as they stop moving, they'd impart their velocity + the bow's velocity to the arrows.

If you combine the velocity imparted by the bow combined with their velocity, you'd end up with something like 2200-2400 feet per second initial velocity on the arrows. For comparison, an AK47 has a muzzle velocity of about 700-1000 feet per second, and an M16 has about 2700-3000 feet per second.

An AK-47 7.62mm round weighs about 1/50th of a pound and a 5.56mm M16 round weighs a bit less. An arrow fired from an elven longbow might weigh as much as a pound.

Doing rough estimations, each arrow would hit about 50-100 times harder than an assault rifle bullet. Using google-fu and more rough estimations and assuming the arrows are fired at close enough range before the arrow's larger wind resistance drastically drops its velocity, each arrow could probably penetrate 6-8 feet of solid steel or probably enough to punch through a 10-15 or more foot thick stone wall.


For the FTeLf scenario, I read at a scifi space combat page that at something like 20,000 kilometers per second, a bag of dirt would do about as much damage to a space-borne object as a nuclear missile. So, the arrows need only be tied to the side of the FTeLf craft and released as the FTeLf drive takes a single "step" to achieve amazing railgun or super-kinetic missile quality effects on their targets...

 

[Piratecat]

That's as good as the peasant railgun!

From 1d4chan (with profanity gently removed):

1. Hire a ton of peasants; let's just say that it is two thousand two hundred and eighty. Line them up in single file; this will form a chain of peasants two miles long. It'd be four miles back in MY day (witness me hiking up my 2nd Edition suspenders).

2. Buy a ladder. Just buy a standard, ten-foot ladder. Disassemble the ladder into a bunch of rungs and a pair of mighty ten-foot wooden poles. Hand a pole to the peasant at the back of line.

3. First round of combat. Peasant at the front of line readies an action to throw the pole at the enemy. Every peasant behind him readies an action to hand the pole to the peasant in front of him.

4. Next round: peasants fire off their readied actions, passing the pole two miles down the line and hurling it in six seconds or less. Pole accelerates to the speed of 1200 miles per hour, or a little less than Mach 2 at sea level.

5. Peasant Railgun can be reloaded and fired in less than 12 seconds.

6. ????? - Really, your choice. Weapon is scalable, you could use your peasant railgun to fire a number of things at a really long range. Add more peasants to make the weapons even faster; paint them red to make them fasta. Use gobbos to make a DnD grot cannon. Hurl pointy bombs for HEAT weapons. Severed heads make an impressive psychological warfare tool. It's even more wild with a bag of holding - place a team of fighters in it for DYNAMIC ENTRY over castle walls and hell, hurl some fricking bear cavalry directly into enemy lines, who knows. Combine this with the 15,000,000 gold-a-day trick and you're ready to absolutely ruin your DM's day.

7. PROFIT

 

[Iron Sky]

You could even combine the two tricks and get a 3 mile long line of elves travelling at mach 2 that fire a wooden pole at mach 4...