Wouldn’t it dispell the magic before it got to the ring? So your gun just exploded and your ring is now somewhere downrange?
Yeah, if its range is enough to dispel a lock, then it must be at least an inch. So the cannon ball grows while an inch down the barrel.
Meme is still correct though as that’s my face while calculating what to change so they don’t TPK or something when they try it on the next encounter…
Rogue fires gun. Cannonball grows and shatters the gun. Gun pieces fall to floor in front of rogue. If you look, the ring is still in the wreckage, and still usable. Enemy spends a turn just looking at the rogue in amusement. Turn after goes as usual.
They would have gone all in on this strat and left themselves open for shenanigans.
Or decided to test it inside or something.
I imagine that the momentum would be conserved. So if the rifle normally shot a 30 gram ball at 300 meters per second, it would shoot a 5 kilogram ball at around 23 meters per second.
- The larger size and lower speed of the cannon ball would likely reduce the range.
- The larger size of the projectile would spread out the impact causing reduced damage.
- The ballistics would be significantly different making it far harder to hit with.
This is how I would do it in my game:
- Reduce the damage from 1d12 to 1d10
- Change piercing type to bludgeoning
- Reduce range from 40/120 to something like 20/60
- Add knockback of 5 ft to medium targets or 10 for small
The really neat thing would be shooting non standard rounds that wouldn’t be possible from a musket like incendiary or smoke rounds.
is a “30 gram ball” some kind of archeaic unit? 30/5000 = 1/166 != 23/300 = 1/13.
but anyway, I feel this ruling would open an even better exploit the other way. Shoot an enlarged half-gram grain of sand weighing 30 gram at 300 meters per second, when it travels through the ring it will reduce down to it’s original size increasing speed to 19.2 km/s, having a new kenetic energy of 92 megajoules or 22kg of tnt.
In dnd terms that’s maybe 6d6 fire damage, range 10/30.
30 grams is a round number somewhere in the ballpark of a musket ball. I am also uncertain as to how you ended up with 19.2 km/s.
To the best of my recollection the energy should be conserved according to the formula: energy = mass * velocity squared
Mass is in kg and velocity is in m/s
So solving for v would give us around 2.3 km/s for a 0.5 g projectile. At that speed, the projectile would most likely detonate immedeately due to air resistance rendering it problematic as a firearm.
Your original comment specified a conservation of momentum, rather than energy, the formula for momentum is Mass * Velocity. 300m/s * 30 gram is the same as 19200km/s * 0.468 gram (I am told that enlarge reduce only does factors of eight so chose 1/64th the mass rather than 1/60th) The kenetic energy forumla is Half * Mass * Velocity squared, hence why lighter faster projectiles have increased energy for the same momentum.
As to Areodynamic heating, I think you are fine up to 3m, the grain of sand has a radius of 3.5mm (from volume of a sphere and density of quartz), using newtons impact formula D=L(A/B) L is the length of the penetrator (7mm) A is the density of quartz (2.64) B is the density of air (0.0012) the grain of sand should be able to travel ~15 m, even if it vapourises during that process. Though I wouldn’t be opposed to 2d4 fire “splashback” to the user and any surrounding persons.
I’m here for it, if they earn it. I love players having OP bullshit magic, but it’s no fun unless they work for it. Changing magic artifacts isn’t easy; everything about them is intrinsic to how they work. This is why wizards are useless without their cookbooks detailing every little step, and sorcerers always get weird side effects with their “fuck it, we ball” casting. This is where you tell the players that they’re going to need to return to the forge that cast the ring, or find a way to get help from someone high up in the jeweler’s guild or something like that. Sure, you could always try to DIY your magic canon, but you’re basically doing fantasy electrical engineering with vibes and a screwdriver; ask yourself, what could go wrong?
What could go wrong? The gun/shooting makes the size and effect of the field unstable. Weird effects on size and momentum and direction, causing damage and hit chance reduction based on rolls you select every shot. Also, after about three shots the field it unstable enough to reach into the barrel and ruin it by having the next ball expand inside, jamming and destroying the weapon.
If it is a muzzle loader, no you don’t.
I suppose you’d have to remove the ring while loading in that case?
Good way to lose the ring.
Then segue into smeagol rp.
if the ring permanently ends magical effects that enter its area of effect, that’s unusual and probably has a bunch of unexpected uses.
It it merely suppresses magical effects in its area, I guess the projectiles would briefly return to full size when in the anti-magic field, and return to small size afterwards? Doesn’t seem very effective unless you like point blank someone.
“Cannonball Punch” sounds like a fun move, though.
Would the momentum stay if the mass increases?
Momentum could still be conserved if the velocity is unchanged, but it would mean there’s now a lot of kickback once it gets big…
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Because I hate fun, I assume that the people in a fantasy world aren’t all fools so if there’s an application of magic that seems obvious but isn’t already happening in the setting, there’s a good reason for that.
There’s also the rule of “if you can do it, so can NPCs”. Even if your character has thought of something no one in the universe has thought of before, word will get around.
I have it as: “cool idea, i’ll let you get away with it once. Start abusing it and all the NPCs start using it.” works pretty good.
Sounds as if you play as most unimaginative character that does everything in a dullest way possible. What’s the point of playing tabletop then? I mean half of the fun of tabletop rpgs is exploring the possibilities and creativity (for me).
The vibe I like is “gritty action movie”. Some people prefer something zanier.
As with most of these things, this doesn’t actually work. Antimagic fields suppress magic inside them, they don’t dispel it. So the bullet would be unshrunk while inside the field (and the field would affect the bullet while it’s still inside the gun’s barrel, so that would turn out really badly) and then instantly shrink again as soon as it exits the field.
Ironically, this is actually just an overly complicated way to do something the spell alone can achieve. You can end shrink item with a command word from the caster. It would require two people working together, but if the caster readies to give the command immediately after the gun is fired, the bullet would be unshrunk midflight and have the desired effect!
I have a few questions now.
- What is the weight of the shrunk cannonballs?
- Are you going to say that the shrink/unshrink spells don’t conserve energy and/or momentum and were originally made to conserve the movement vector?
If it is full mass, you not only need to have more STR to hold a gun with the bullet in it, you also need a gun made of better materials and more gunpowder to propel it to a significant speed.
If mass is reduced, normally, one of momentum/energy is expected to be conserved (I haven’t read the DnD manual, so going by physics) and in both these cases, you see the fast bullet converted to a slow cannonball which doesn’t even reach the target.To fix this, you should at least require a metamagic to change the shrink/unshrink spell to conserve the movement vector on activation/deactivation
Weight of a shrunk item is approximately its original weight multiplied by 0.00025 (or 1/4000th if you prefer fractions) of the original weight.
Shrink item doesn’t affect the movement of the item, so it would retain the same velocity, it would just be bigger. There is precedent for this in, for example, the reduce person spell, which shrinks a person and all their equipment, but as soon as an item leaves the possession of the shrunken person, it expands to full size (but does not become less accurate or have its range altered in any way).
However that did remind me of one thing. It wouldn’t work with a projectile weapon. With a projectile weapon, it deals damage based on the weapon that fired it. A thrown weapon would deal damage based on its size at impact. Funny little quirk there.
It wouldn’t work with a projectile weapon. With a projectile weapon, it deals damage based on the weapon that fired it. A thrown weapon would deal damage based on its size at impact. Funny little quirk there.
Summon the gun as a pet and tell it to “throw” the bullet
