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Any D&D/D20

Shadowrun

World of Darkness

Palladium

Other (feel free to post about it)

[SOLDIER First]

AKA “physics works because we can launch an object at incredibly high speeds within 6 seconds, but physics doesn’t work because we can somehow pass an object between thousands of people within those six seconds”?

[Egan_BW]

If we're treating "free actions take up no time" as some sort of law of physics, rather than merely a helpful abstraction, we should probably also address the fact that time stops for as long as you keep talking. Opening up the possibility of some sort of combat filibuster.
Also those rules only really come into play during combat, meaning you need to make all your peasants punch each other first.

[LordPorkins]

Personally, I let it happen once when i  was DMing. But that was weird Situation. One of my players was trying out the “DM Patron” from Middle Finger of Vecna, which I will saw was incredibly well done in that its so up for interpretation. His character regularly tried to exploit physics, be it from the aforementioned railgun or the “Bag of Holding Shotgun” (Turning a BOH inside-out while running at 25 Meters per second). I usually let him have fun with the second one, Having each object deal damage at the cost of most likely shattering. The Peasant Railgun worked once, when they had to blow up a blockaded tunnel. None of the peasants were willing to go into battle though, so for the most part the Railgun stayed as a utility tool. However, I did let two warriors in lead armor hold up two iron greatshields, have someone cast lightning bolt in between them, then shoot an arrow through to create an actual (albeit rustic) railgun. Considering it took 3 players turns to accomplish this action, i just set the resulting arrow as a 6d8 guaranteed damage. They abandoned the tactic after a while.

As for how NPC’s perceive this, one of the ways we kept the Warlock DM Patron form effecting too much was we just had the NPC’s more or less shrug and accept it, assuming it was just some sort of magic that they couldn't conceive.

[Tawa]

I propose we call this Level .5 Philosopher Zeno's paradox. If free actions take up no time, do they even happen?

Still better than rolling for enunciation, though.

[IcyTea31]

we should probably also address the fact that time stops for as long as you keep talking. Opening up the possibility of some sort of combat filibuster.

Watch any anime with any sort of combat, sport or other physical conflict. It happens all the time.

[deathpunch578]

as far as I'm aware a free action can only be five seconds long or shorter.

[IcyTea31]

Six seconds, technically. Even so, the best time to discuss battle plans is in the middle of battle, as exemplified here.

[pikachu17]

In 5E, talking isn't a free action. It actually says that you can only say somehing like a short warning during a combat round. Pretty sure most people homebrew it to being a free action again. And another thing, in 3.5 you can only use a reasonable amount of free actions.

The Peasant Railgun would only work if the line of peasants happened to have an initiative in which each person in line has the next turn.

And how would the Bag Of Holding Shotgun work? The items don't have any acceleration on them, seeing as they were in a different dimension until they were let out, and gravity doesn't start to work on them until the items are let out.
What you could do, is you could use the Bag of Holding to drop a lot of stuff on something after flying above the something.

[deathpunch578]

question for the GMs (just because I'm curious, and it relates to my new character)
have you ever had a player try and make a half-troll, if so how did you have it work. I'm mostly interested in the character's size and regeneration (If you did do the limb removal thing how did you do it and what did the players think)

[Harry Baldman]

A half-troll like what you'd want would normally be way too spicy to put into a regular party, no way that it doesn't give you some serious LA and no way it lets you actually regenerate (which is what I assume you mean with the limb removal thing - limbs fight on and that sort of thing). Like here's a homebrew example for 3.5 and here's one for 5E.

I recall there being guidelines in some book or another in 3.5 about how to homebrew up half-monster races which might be the closest thing to an official verdict since I don't think half-trolls figure much in legit D&D stuff, not even in Pathfinder.

[deathpunch578]

A half-troll like what you'd want would normally be way too spicy to put into a regular party, no way that it doesn't give you some serious LA and no way it lets you actually regenerate (which is what I assume you mean with the limb removal thing - limbs fight on and that sort of thing). Like here's a homebrew example for 3.5 and here's one for 5E.

cool thanks for these links
I sent my GM the 3.5 one (he already saw the 5e one and said he didn't like a bit of the stuff in there).
I'm sure that at this point the GM and me are going to make a half-troll from scratch.

[Harry Baldman]

Digging a little deeper, the 3.5 template I posted looks to actually be official rather than homebrew, apparently it's from one of the Fiend Folios. Don't have any of those myself so I can't check to be sure.

[deathpunch578]

just looked up the book (its available as a pdf) and there is no mention of half trolls or trollkin (another term I saw floating around)

[Criptfeind]

It's a template in the fiend folio, got in hand right now, it's on page 92.

I'm pretty sure the fiend folio wasn't released under ogl, so naughty website probably. But there's a lot of stuff around marked as "homebrew" to avoid getting hammered down I guess.

[Rolan7]

Almost every time I search an actual 3.5 thing and get a dandwiki hit, it's just unrelated homebrew given the same name.  It's got to where I actively scrub dandwiki from my history just to prevent it from showing up in autocomplete.

Not that all the homebrew is *bad*, it's just very distracting when I'm looking for content we're allowed to use.  (I do love the Red Mage, and we are allowed to choose some of the *reasonable* flaws from amongst the ridiculous).

Edit:  Actually I must have misremembered, since this Red Mage is loosely based on actual Final Fantasy (instead of 8-bit Theater's version who believes in dice and constantly edits his "character sheet").