Ok, but hear me out:
If you accelerate something into a freefall orbit, then it stands to reason that the projectile would deal falling damage (equal and opposite force, you know) which maxes out at 20 d6.
this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2025
317 points (97.0% liked)
RPGMemes
14409 readers
400 users here now
Humor, jokes, memes about TTRPGs
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
If a character has 121hp or more they're able to jump from a space station onto earth with like a super hero landing??
In 5e yes. I think the theory is once you hit terminal velocity, you aren't going to get any more damage from a longer fall.
Fun fact, I actually did have a villain do exactly that in a campaign once. The party achieved a secondary win condition during combat and so the BBEG jumped off the top of the space elevator to escape.
Wouldn't jumping off the top of a space elevator just put you in orbit? Or, if by top you mean the point where the space elevator anchors to its counterweight, in orbit around the sun.
OK, you've got space elevators wrong, and that's OK.
The counter-weight doesn't orbit the sun. It orbits earth. If it orbited the sun it'd rip the thing apart. It sits somewhere above a geostationary orbit, as a geostationary orbit is where the orbit point is always over the same point on the ground, which would be where your elevator is tethered.
The station part is somewhere below this. The higher it is the heavier or further out your counter-weight needs to be —and since it's already impossible around earth no matter what, this needs to be as low as possible.
Because of this setup, your velocity (while below the geostationary line) is always less than the orbital velocity at that altitude. For example, the ISS orbits the earth 15.5 times a day. Our point on the space elevator cable stays at the exact same position over the ground, so it orbits 0 times. At the same altitude as the ISS you need to be moving the same speed as the ISS or you'll fall down. It only doesn't while attached to the cable because it's being pulled by the counter-weight.
Basically, stuff dropped off a space elevator falls, unless it's at geostationary altitude. It needs to be given some extra horizontal speed to stay in orbit.
The counterweight orbits above escape velocity, pulling the space elevator's cable taut. If the cable were severed the counterweight would drift off into space into a solar orbit. So if you jump off at the counterweight, you'll enter solar orbit.
At geostationary orbit (which could be considered the "top" of the space elevator as that's where you would normally get off, presumably) the space elevator orbits at exactly orbital velocity, so if you jump off there you end up in orbit. Below that your velocity would be below orbital velocity and you'd fall back to Earth.
load more comments
(8 replies)
theyd also need something to protect them from the friction and resulting heat of air brushing by at terminal velocity tho, i assume?
oh no wait, im making it too realistic
Terminal velocity for a human is not fast enough to cause air to heat up. You'd probably get frostburn instead.
If you're jumping from a space station then you'd be traveling at orbital velocity when hitting the atmosphere which is plenty fast enough to generate heat.
Heating on reentry is actually due to compressing the air in front of you, not friction. Falling from orbitall height will absolutely cause you to heat up the air in front of you, even as the air paassing you by is doing you no harm.
Though, if you smash into the atmosphere at orbital speeds, it's probably going to do you some harm as it tries to force you back down to TV.
Hold up. Didn’t some guy drop balls off a roof to show that things fall at the same speed?
So, yes and no. Acceleration due to gravity impacts all objects equally. With no air resistance, on earth, everything speeds up at 9.8m/s/s. But, that "no air resistance" is a big asterisk. This is why, say, parachutes work. It's also how we get terminal velocity. Often misinterpreted as "how fast you'd have to go to die from a fall" it's actually "how fast you need to go before the drag from your air resistance is a force greater than or equal to gravity"
Right. That all makes sense. So the air resistance is what is also causing it to heat up. I still don’t see why a person wouldn’t do that.
So, multiple options here. Skydivers regularly hit terminal velocity, as fast as they'll go in atmosphere, before pulling their chutes. At these speeds, heat from friction isn't enough to worry about. Once again though, if you're coming down from space, that "in atmosphere" asterisk goes away. If you're dropping from a satellite, you're going at speeds necessary to orbit, and you don't have anything slowing you down until you hit the atmosphere. Suddenly your terminal velocity is way lower than infinity, and the friction you're feeling from the atmosphere is INTENSE, rapidly turning that speed into heat
Alight cool. All basically what I figured. Thanks!
I recently had this explained to me, terminal velocity is falling versus the force of the air pushing back on you, right? In vacuum you just keep accelerating, in atmosphere the air pushes back against you falling, limiting your speed
That force follows the rule that force (of air pushing back) is equal to acceleration (9.8m/s/s) times mass
So different weights fall at different speeds.
Half of the replies to me when I said what you said were
Idiot, f=ma
Or similar
Piss hard so the reaction mass slows you down along with the cloud of expanding piss vapor.
They call me the yellow comet
Alternatively, invest 18 levels into monk and get no damage in 99,51% of cases
No. They'd need a pretty impressive jump height to slow down enough to leave orbit.
Applying real world logic to game rules never works out.
Also, you forget to take into account the weapon's mass, form, structural integrity, the commoner's reaction time, probability to fumble, the force of the wind, and probably a few dozen other factors that have an effect in the real world.
Just don't. It's a game.
I was just making a joke. Lighten up.
If you can manage to get someone into freefall I'd allow it. But no, equal opposite forces doesn't mean you roll dice the same lol. Your sword does not take damage when you attack with it.
Fun fact about this in real life: A problem that gunmakers have had to deal with is that, although a faster-moving bullet fires straighter and penetrates better into its target, if the bullet moves too fast it will just poke a hole straight through a person without imparting enough of its kinetic energy onto them to be able to do real damage. So, i doubt the peasant railgun would be effective in real life.
That is simply not true. All you have to do is design your projectile in shape, construction and materials so the kinetic energy gets properly used to have the desired effect on the target.
A tiny 40 grain .204 Ruger bullet with the insane muzzle velocity of 4100 fps will absolutely explode a watermelon if you use a rapidly expanding projectile such as a ballistic tipped varmint round. If you use the same against a reactive steel target that was only rated for rimfire, it will melt a clean hole through it without even noticeably moving it. And if you use it against a bull moose, it will absolutely destroy a large amount of surface tissue but not achieve enough penetration to reach the internal organs for a clean kill.
It isn't a simple problem, the are many different types of dynamics that you can encounter depending on the nature of the projectile, velocity and target.
This is simply true, you do lose potential energy transfer if the bullet exits, that's how it can exit, that's just not usually the point of a bullet, and generally speaking making exit wounds is considered a positive.
Now if you want to design a bullet that explodes inside a wound causing mass trauma and an incredibly difficult surgery to repair it is a problem, but surely no one would ever deliberately design a weapon to do that! /S
Fun Fact: the .50 cal MGs the Soviets supplied to the Vietnamese during the American invasion usually had enough penetrative power to go through the M113 APC's aluminum hull...
Once. And then it would bounce around inside.
I don't see the point you're trying to make here. You sound like you're trying to disprove my point that more velocity won't necessarily equate to overpenetration and "penciling through" with minimal damage but you all you did is explain that overpenetration means unused kinetic energy. Which is usually true depending on the situation but doesn't disprove what I said.
The rest is just unrelated edgy statements. But yeah, downvote me. What the fuck do I know, I've only worked for 15 years in weapons and ballistics.
They also said that exit wounds can have benefits, though they didn’t get into it nearly enough. I’m imagining that two wounds, especially on opposite side of a person, are going to be a lot harder to deal with and the increase blood loss potential while also distracting anyone trying to help them has a lot of benefits.
Also I say benefits, but yuck.
The peasant railgun is kinda weird tbh.
It first uses game rules ignoring physics (using the ready action to pass the object super fast along the line of peasants), to then flip and ignore game rules while using physics (not applying the rules for throwing an object but instead claiming that physics "realism" demands that the object keeps its speed and does damage according to the speed, not according to game rules).
Fun meme, but really doesn't make sense in game.
which is why the dm is able to stop them in their tracks by enforcing the game rule about not calculating speed for damage
I think it's totally valid to run a realistic game where realism takes precedence over game rules, but then the "passing of the object" part fails.
It's also totally valid to run RAW game, but then it fails like you said.
So no matter what game you run, the railgun makes no sense.
What would make sense with a RAW game is to use the railgun for fast travel/fast transport, but then again for it to give a decent advantage, you need thousands or millions of peasants who willingly cooperate, which also won't really work in most games.
I use my reaction to activate the IRL-physics-inator when the object reaches the last peasant!
load more comments
(1 replies)
It's just one of those times where you have to accept that D&D is a boardgame, and the small details fall apart when you try to make "real" stuff fit the rules.
A round is six seconds. If you want to apply logic to it, the DM would just say that the ball/rail/tungsten rod only moved up a few people in six seconds.
The obvious use of the peasant railgun is instant delivery. Gonna start my new enterprise, pFood, coming at you within 1 turn or your money back!
It even works with people. They can carry up to 150 pounds if you have them move 30 feet before passing it to the next guy or 300 pounds if they're moving 5 feet. I call it the peasant railway.
load more comments
(1 replies)
I want to play a game where there is an NPC roving band of guerrilla peasants that in times of crisis form a rail gun militia. Dragons? Rail gun. Tax Administrator? Rail gun. Cathy's Baby Shower? Also believe it or not, rail gun.
Cathy's Baby Shower? Also believe it or not, rail gun.
Handing out gifts at the speed of sound.
See what you do is, you put the peasants in a circle and have them pass a magnet to eachother. Put a coil of wire in the middle and you've got infinite free energy!
That's just slave labour with extra steps (magnets)
Peasants, how do they work?
Often and for little pay.
Wait till you hear about necromancy
Each peasent can only pass the magnet once every 6s, as they can only do so on their turn.
Also, this is a universe with magic in it. A level 0 sorcerer can endlessly cast the cantrip "shape water" to move a turbine for infinite free energy. For less work (but more training) the level 2 spell "Heat Metal" can be cast on a boiler.
load more comments
(1 replies)
The peasant railgun and the squirrel chain are effective in 2 conditions:
-
Each one with above average strength contributes a +1 "helper" bonus. You're not concerned with how fast it gets to a place, but that with everyone helping, you can get it around the world and back again - and everyone helped.
-
You're not concerned with the damage - only how it gets there. So if you can get a Hands Across America thing happening, you can pass messages in a single round.
Let them do it, then when they're done executing it just say "alright, that's 1d4 damage for an improvised weapon."
Live by the jank, die by the jank. Make an improvised ranged weapon attack with 20/60 range lol
So does that mean whatever universe this is is non-relativistic?
view more: next ›