You've got physics in my D&D!

[RangerWickett]

I have a kitsune samurai/iaijutsu master in my game. She has a 26 Dexterity and 20 Charisma.

Last game, she had the party's big warrior hurl her while she was in fox form. Then she intended to transform into human form in mid-air, quickdraw her katana, and cut down a monster that was flying away. Sort of a fastball special.

Our resident physics major informed her that, due to conservation of momentum, if her mass changed from a 10-pound fox into a 120-pound woman, her momentum would be reduced by a factor of 12, which would cause her to fall short. We laughed and ignored science, and ended up with one bisected monster.

Later, they wanted to get from one boat to another. The kitsune suggested, "Throw me in human form. Then I'll transform into a fox, and multiply my speed by 12 times, so I should hit the other boat easily."

This session was also witness to an attempt to teleport a sealed box to the moon ("No, the moon is not just a thousand miles away."), with the intent of shattering it when the moon crashed into the box.

I had to explain the multidimensional teleportation theory of conservation of reference, which says that wherever you show up after teleportation, you'll have the same relative angle and speed as you did in your previous frame of reference. Thus, if you're standing on a plane, and you teleport to a ferris wheel, you'll show up stationary relative to your seat in the ferris wheel. You won't be flying forward at 300 miles an hour.

Any funny physics stories from your games?

 

[soulcat]

here's one I have that isn't so much funny, as an argument I had with a player.

In the end I conceded that we would go with the rules.

Fireball. detonated at your feet. It spreads out to cover a large area. The rules give you a reflex save for half. I don't think you should always get that save.

Obviously if your flat footed I don't think you should. If you don't see it comming I don't think you should. If you naked, I don't think you should.

Okay you probably agreed with the first 2 and wonder about the third.

If an explosion goes off at your feet and fills a large area, your chances of getting out of the way are pretty non existant. So your only defense is to wrap yourself in your clothes and hope they take some of the initial burn (hence half damage). Physically it would be impossible to move your body (when naked) so you would only take half damage from a large explosion happening at you feet.

The players argument is, but the rules say......

The other players in the group couldn't care either way (they weren't hit by the fireball, and could take full damage anyway).

I agree with the reflex save further out, but if the fireball is centred on you, I think it is circumstantial, dependent on the laws of physics.

 

[dbm]

Interestingly, Traveller 2000 had official rules for what happens to your momentum etc when you teleport. Made using this power over long distances practically impossible.

Cheers,
Dan

 

[Algolei]

Physics is evil. IRL, stuff just happens because God says so. Why confuse your RPGing experience? Stuff just happens because (a) the rules say so, or (b) the DM says so.

All this thinkemefying will just confabrulate things.

 

[shilsen]

My "General comments" document that I've sent players before a campaign starts specifically mentions that physics, biology, etc. do not work the same (as in our world) in the game world and they should not necessarily assume that it does. The problem with trying to apply real-world assumptions to the game world is that it is invariably applied arbitrarily, namely in areas which the given player/DM notices and has knowledge of, and ignored in others. As long as I'm playing a game where every human being has the same walking speed, I'm not going to care much about normal "reality".

 

[Numion]

Obviously if your flat footed I don't think you should. If you don't see it comming I don't think you should. If you naked, I don't think you should.

Players probably won't contest this ruling since their PCs are rarely naked whereas their opponents are almost always naked if they are monsters and not NPCs.

Personally I think save should be allowed even if naked. Maybe it's something like rolling with the blows, you know how to 'land right' when caught in explosion. Or something

 

[soulcat]

Like I said I'm all for the save further from the epi centre (due to rolling with the explosion etc) but most of the damage from a fireball at the centre is due to heat, not impact, and the impact is going to be so instant that a reflex save for half doesn't make much sense to me.

Incidently, on the flip side I'm quite happy for players to hang off a flying carpet at full speed firing a bow, cos the magic over-rides physics.

I'm not hard and fast for physics everytime, just the fireball thing has always confusticated me. I cannot figure in my head how you can take half damage when stood at the epicentre. But like I said, I capitulated and went with the spell description to avoid it turning into an argument and ruining the game.

I have one player who is a huge rules junky, and refuses to accept any changes to the rules (real or imagined) that I may try to implement, and he has a tendancy to sulk. Unfortunately he is one of my best friends, so I usually back off from arguments.

 

[Numion]

Like I said I'm all for the save further from the epi centre (due to rolling with the explosion etc) but most of the damage from a fireball at the centre is due to heat, not impact, and the impact is going to be so instant that a reflex save for half doesn't make much sense to me.

I'm not hard and fast for physics everytime, just the fireball thing has always confusticated me. I cannot figure in my head how you can take half damage when stood at the epicentre.

How do you then wrap your head around the fact that the full damage is enough to incinerate one man but only annoy another (commoner vs. 20th level fighter)? Two people in the impact point seem to suffer different degrees of damage .. just like they would if one made the save and another didn't.

Half and full damage, like all hitpoints, are relative.

 

[RangerWickett]

Eh, I'd view a Reflex save as "making sure you don't inhale flames and let the fire sear out your eyes," but no worries.

Another story I feel the pressing need to share is the most painful of my D&D experiences. My friend was DMing for his first time, and we wake up with amnesia, tied to the ground (huh?) in the bottom of a canyon, with a huge dam overlooking us. Then the dam opens, and water begins to spill out, rushing toward us.

We manage to get free, and though our first idea is just to ride the water downstream, the DM tells us that we see pirahnas in the water. So we climb, because that's what 1st level characters should do: climb sheer stone canyon walls.

But oh, it gets better. Because as we climb, we notice the water is rising faster, almost chasing us, to heighten tension. Tension is good, but we demanded to know how the water rushing out of the dam could be increasing in pressure as time went on. After some grumbling from the DM, we decided that obviously the canyon got narrower closer to the top, so it was filling at the same rate, just with a smaller cross-section, which made it rise faster.


This was the same campaign where diarhettic monkey feces deals 1d4 damage per hit.

 

[Numion]

After some grumbling from the DM, we decided that obviously the canyon got narrower closer to the top, so it was filling at the same rate, just with a smaller cross-section, which made it rise faster.

Hopefully your 1st level characters didn't have to climb up a > 90 degree cliff because of this