Disclaimer These rules are copied directly from r/DnDMemes and will be adapted to Lemmy shortly.
Rule 1. Be Excellent to One Another: No trolling, harassment, personal attacks, sea-lioning, hate speech, slurs, or name-calling. Overly off-topic, political, or hateful debates will be removed, and bans may be issued based on severity. This includes both posts and comments. We reserve the right to remove content or comments that contain discrimination or distasteful content. Be kind and stay on topic.
Rule 2. No Reposts: Posts must not have been posted in !DnDMemes before. Reports with direct links to the original post will greatly expedite their removal process. Reposts from other subreddits are allowed, but once a meme is posted to !DnDMemes, it will forever after be considered a repost.
Rule 3. Post Style Guide: Posts must be strongly relevant to D&D (or other TTRPGs) and must include an attempt at humor or entertainment. Posts must be legible, understandable for a general audience and have some effort put into them, including titles. Video posts may be up to 3 minutes long, and they must be humorous in nature. Only one meme is allowed per post; posts with multiple images inside of them, such as a collage, will be removed. Posts must not rely solely on the title to relate to D&D.
Rule 4. No Advertising: Meme culture is non-profit. No links to stores, fundraising/payment sites, or comments asking for money/followers. Social media handles or website watermarks on original content are acceptable, unless these are monetized, and self promotion of one’s own social media should be limited to once per week. Accounts whose sole purpose are to push products, whether legitimately or fraudulently, will be permanently banned and their content removed.
Rule 5. No Piracy: Do not share or request pirated content. No linking, hinting at, or naming hosts of illicit non-SRD D&D content. You are allowed to copy-paste relevant rules or sections from sources, but large blocks of text may be removed.
Rule 6. No Beating a Dead Horse: Moderators may step in to issue a 3 month prohibition on certain meme topics and formats. The requirements for placing a topic on hiatus are 1. The topic has been prominent on the front page for at least 3 days or 2. The debate topic is toxic in nature. Certain historically overdone themes or formats may be retired permanently at moderator discretion/per user poll. Please see the current list.
The rules listed above are not exhaustive and decisions are made on a case-by-case basis. Such decisions can be appealed in mod mail, and the mods will do their best to come to a productive resolution. All "borderline" mod decisions are the product of informed and objective internal discussion. We welcome feedback on our rules and are always seeking to improve them for better clarity and creating a friendly, social environment here at !DnDMemes.
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.
It wouldn't work on a magical lock if you had to hold it up to it all the time
I love how everyone is discussing the physics of a cannonball gun DIY setup in a game where magic can instantly teleport people or turn a person into a huge dragon.
I'm not complaining, I just find it amusing.
So that is engineering. Is this character an engineer with knowledge of magic, physics and mechanics?
It's fine and easy for a player to think in term of game mechanics. But the actual process is not so goofy. And the character is not the player. The dice decide after that.
I dunno sounds like the only even vaguely engineering part is glueing a ring to the end of a pistol? If that's considered out of the box clever enough to require a check I can only assume D&D takes place in the systemic lead poisoning dimension.
I think the engineering part kicks in once the cannonball leaves the ring, or maybe around the mass of the shrunken ball. If the cannon ball retains it's mass in it's shrunken size does the gun have enough power to move it? If it does, then the gun is a ship cannon already, just a convenient size. If it doesn't and can only shoot because the balls are as easy to fire as regular shot, then as soon as the ball exits the ring it is a cannonball being moved with the force of a small shot and likely drops to the ground an inch or so past the muzzle.
Many of the things we take for granted as obvious these days were anything but until recently. Take bolt cutters for example. The compound lever that let's them function so well seems like something that would have been around for centuries, but in reality wasn't something that was widely used/understood until the 1890s when they were marketed as a wonder tool.
On the other hand, this is a game and should be fun regardless of how anachronistic it is at times. At least as long as the witch/duck proportionality is maintained. There has to be at least some realism.
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.
This is how I would do it in my game:
The really neat thing would be shooting non standard rounds that wouldn't be possible from a musket like incendiary or smoke rounds.
I think damage reduction would be even more than that. The damage a projectile does to a target is directly related to its kinetic energy which is calculated as e = ½mv². So when you increase mass but reduce velocity you also reduce the damage by the square of the difference in velocity (I think). As long as the damage just relies on the physics of the projectile and not magic, that is.
I was assuming that the total energy would be maintained (In this case 1350 joules) and thus the damage should be the same if weren't spread out. It has been 20+ years since I has to do any of that math so I could be wrong about any of that. And since the only paper that was handy happened to be an envelope I guess it was technically back of the envelope math. :)
Wouldn't it dispell the magic before it got to the ring? So your gun just exploded and your ring is now somewhere downrange?
You'd have to mount it on a wire a bit past the end of the barrel, or custom create a barrel that expands toward the end. Depends on whether dispelling the magic is an instant transformation, or if it "grows" at some rate.
If it dispels magic before it gets to the ring it's going to be an issue...
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.
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.
Would the momentum stay if the mass increases?
Lol the ball just falls out the end like a defective Acme gun
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...
As another poster mentioned, this is likely the reason this isn't already done in the fantasy setting. Either the mass is the same (in which case your flintlock isn't going to launch it terribly far) or the mass changes and it would reduce momentum.
That being said, it's still a useful way to transport cannonballs, and could still be quite useful. Just not quite a "free" Catapult spell on demand.
If the mass increases after the ball is already moving, then velocity should be conserved and momentum would increase with the mass. That breaks all kinds of physics rules, but this is DnD in a magical universe, there are worse violations going on.
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.
This is a good take, but it partly depends on the setting. Specifically, if these magic artifacts are fairly rare and valuable (even something meager like this ring), it's entirely possible that people haven't explored that kind of application of magic. It could also be viable if there are very few inventors/scholars in the setting.
In any case, the conservation of mass thing another commenter mentioned would make this less viable, so you're right on the money. That being said, laws of physics can be bent for rule-of-cool if that's your table. Personally, if I were DMing it, I'd probably try to find a way to balance between realism and making their research process hilarious and/or dangerous, with the end result being them producing something useful but not gamebreaking (e.g., you can carry and deploy the cannonballs, but the gun doesn't really fire them, but in combination with a method of flight, could still be awesome--or they apply this method with a large boulder and have that to work with instead).
Or, if you want to shut it down, the plan works, but since the magic effect has a range, to ball begins expanding before it makes it to the ring, taking the end of the barrel and the ring with it. If the ring is indestructible the character has to go on a search for the ring at the point of impact every time, it i expands within the ring, meaning you have a canon ball that explodes at the end of your gun with shrapnel, or you have to melt the ball down to retrieve the ring downrange.
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.