When you mix real-world physics and the rules of D&D (or any tabletop game, really), weird things happen.
I can’t think of any better examples than the infamous force of nature that is the “Peasant Railgun.”
I recently saw a TikTok video where the creator was talking about this concept. It stirred something up in me and I knew I just had to talk about this in an article.
With promises of incredible speed and hilarious damage output, we’re going to look closer at this idea.
Is it possible to hire an army of peasants and create a possibly campaign-ending superweapon with them?
Read on as we tackle the myth of the legendary Peasant Railgun in D&D 5e!
What Is The Peasant Railgun in D&D?
The theory behind the Peasant Railgun is pretty straightforward:
Line up a bunch of peasants (or skeletons or goblins or whatever other reasonably intelligent creatures) and have them take the “Ready” action. When the peasant is handed the item they immediately pass it to the next peasant down the line.
The item could be a rock, spear, bucket, 10-foot pole, or whatever else. Ultimately, as the theory goes, the item doesn’t entirely matter.
The final peasant in the line has a different Ready action than the others. This peasant has instead used their Ready action to throw the item at a target once the item has been handed to them.
By handing the item to the first peasant in the line, you start the Domino Effect of peasants passing the item down the line and towards the final peasant who is ready to throw the object at their target.
Because a single round in D&D 5e is 6 seconds long regardless of how many reactions happen, it would take only 6 seconds for the item to be passed down the entire line and, ultimately, yeet-ed at whatever poor target the final peasant is aiming at.
How Does the Peasant Railgun Work?
The idea behind the Peasant Railgun is that the item would be accelerating to an incredible rate and therefore deal a colossal amount of damage simply because of the force behind the item.
Let’s say you round up 1000 peasants (each occupying a 5-foot square) and give them instructions. In theory, the item being passed down the line has traveled an astounding 5000 feet in 6 seconds.
We’ll go into more detail about the math on this in just a bit.
But even without exact math, you can easily get the point that anything traveling THAT fast will deal some incredible damage to whatever it collides with.
As the theory goes, the thing that this object collides with is an incredibly unlucky enemy who quite literally never saw this coming.
They may have heard it coming though.
You know… considering that all but the first couple hundred peasants are likely screaming in pain as their arms are ripped off as they pass a rock at mach-speed.
You see where this is going…
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Is a Peasant Railgun Possible?
The quick and dirty answer to whether a peasant railgun is possible or not is: no.
For this to work as intended, you would need two things:
- A set of rules that mixes real-world physics with D&D game rules to create something not quite as good as either.
- A DM who either doesn’t understand the rules of the game or can’t be bothered to care.
If we’re taking the RAW (rules as written), the party could theoretically hire a bunch of peasants, stand them in a line, and have them pass objects to each other.
However, the final peasant in the chain would then just be making a standard improvised weapon attack. He rolls 1d20+STR for the attack to deal 1d4+STR damage if it hits.
The acceleration of the item being passed down the line of peasants doesn’t change this.
For the Peasant Railgun to work as intended, you have to do a TON of physics homework and then ignore the 5e rules to substitute your own damage with the goal of being “realistic.”
Ultimately, the point of the rules in 5e isn’t to be hyper-realistic. They’re meant to provide a framework for the game to take place while giving DMs plenty of resources to help them adjudicate situations accordingly.
Of course, there’s also Rule Zero which is basically that the DM has the final say on what goes.
We’ll get to that shortly.
But first, let’s do some math!
The Math
Alright, so let’s break this down.
For the sake of this example, let’s say that the party has lined up 1000 peasants and given them their instructions as we described earlier. Each peasant occupies a 5-foot space which means that this line stretches 5000 feet.
All but the final peasant has readied the action to pass the rock to the next peasant in the line. The final peasant will throw the rock at the enemy goblin, Zekke the Unfortunate.
5000 feet away from Zekke, the party hands the rock to the first peasant in line. Zekke watches on in horror.
The rock travels 5000 feet in 6 seconds (833.33 feet per second) or an average of 567.95 miles per hour.
Now, let’s say 1000 peasants just isn’t grand enough for your tastes. Let’s up that to 10,000 peasants!
In this exercise, the rock travels 50,000 feet in the same amount of time (6 seconds) that it would take to travel 5000 feet. With 10,000 peasants, the rock is traveling at 8333 feet per second or 5681.6 miles per hour!
For reference, the fastest bullets travel at around 1,800 miles per hour. The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second. This is faster than an F-15 fighter jet which has a top speed of 3,017 mph.
As the screaming peasants continue to pass the rock down the line, the final peasant throws the rock at our poor Goblin target. Zekke presumably explodes and the rock continues on its trajectory doing untold damage to whatever happens to be in its path.
You can certainly go deeper with this calculation if you would like. Tracking the rate of acceleration to determine at exactly what point in the line these peasants will start losing limbs as they pass something moving faster than a fighter jet.
I’m terrible at math and physics so the calculations beyond the basic average aren’t exactly my forte. If someone out there who enjoys calculating these things wants to give it a crack, let me know what you find!
Should You Allow Players To Make A Peasant Railgun?
Ok, this might be a bit of a controversial take that even kind of contradicts my tone earlier in this article.
If your group expresses interest in creating a Peasant Railgun and you are playing a game that is basically purely comedy, then go for it.
If you are playing a more serious game with a driving story, I would strongly recommend against trying to make this work. Lining up peasants to throw rocks at 3,000mph into (and through) the BBEG’s fortress to assassinate them is possibly one of the most surefire ways to derail an entire game.
As the DM, you are more than welcome to allow the players to line up their peasant army only to find that their idea doesn’t work. (I’d still warn them ahead of time though…)
At the end of the day, it’s about having fun. If this is your group’s idea of fun and it doesn’t compromise all of the work that has been put into the story so far, then why not.
Just promise me one thing:
If you DO (for some reason) decide to allow your players to do this, please use it yourself as well (and let me know how it goes!). Send them running out of a dungeon screaming as a necromancer lines up 1000 zombies and hands the first one a rock.
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Mixing Physics with D&D Rules is a Bad Idea
Ok, so I haven’t ever met someone who chose to go all-in in favor of building a Peasant Railgun. I’m willing to bet that cases where a player is genuinely and with 100% seriousness attempting to make this happen in their game are incredibly rare.
I mean, ultimately, the concept of this thing is itself just people being silly. There are likely hundreds of different reasons why it just simply doesn’t work.
But this does touch on something more common than lining up hundreds or thousands of townspeople with the singular intention to throw things very fast and very hard.
As I mentioned, the theory behind the Peasant Railgun relies on creating some strange and selective hybrid of the rules of D&D 5e and physics.
Honestly?
Any time that you try to apply real-world physics and science into a Fantasy game, it’s never going to be clean. Just look at 5e’s rules for Falling Damage for example!
Without fail, refusing to take the game’s world and rules for what they are will almost always lead to long, passionate, and ultimately pointless arguments.
As a good friend of mine would say, “stop overcomplicating a marshmallow.”
For the same reason that the game’s rules and the DM’s usage of them shouldn’t be used as a club to punish and restrain players from telling a great story together, your game shouldn’t just be people arguing about the rules.
As a DM you sometimes have to say “no, this is how it is” and move on. The Peasant Railgun is exactly such a situation.
So enjoy the game and suspend your disbelief so that you can fully explore the world that is being created at your table!
Trust me, there are plenty of ways to harass your DM without needing to bust out the calculator and a physics book!
Conclusion – The Peasant Railgun in D&D
It’s very difficult to talk or write about the Peasant Railgun with a straight face. The concept is so hilarious and absurd that the mental image led to me accidentally choking on my coffee several times while writing this.
Ultimately, I think it’s just a funny thing to talk about.
Are there any world-breaking spells or mechanics that you have heard of?
Let’s talk about them in the comments!
And speaking of world-breaking, you might be interested in the tale of Gimble Pamplemousse, the gnome who (basically) built a Death Star!
This is a delightful idea, and I’m so glad I learned about it. But I may be missing something with your math. 5,000 feet in six seconds equals 50,000 feet a minute, or 3,000,000 feet an hour. Divide that by 5,280 feet in a mile, and the speed is “only” 568,mph, or less than triple the speed of yer average compound-bow-fired-arrow. Is that right?
Make the line 10,000 peasants, now, and you’ve really got something.
Heya Daniel!
Thank you for catching this. Looking back over and my math was indeed off. I believe I was trying to factor for the acceleration, but it didn’t come out quite as “clean” as I had thought when I first published this.
I’ll update accordingly and really appreciate the help!
What happened is you did not account for the 6 second in a single round. Your calculation is correct for 5000 feet in a single second.
Nothing in the mental exercise requires the peasants to stand in a straight line; they could be in a circle, allowing any one of them to be the start point with one of their neighbors being the “muzzle”. One projectile per round fired in any direction.
Fun!
Hey James!
You’re so correct! Thanks for commenting as I meant to come back and fix my math mistake but got distracted and forgot. Haha!
OD&D had an exploit where a first-level wizard could take down an ancient red dragon in a single round. It’s all because the original wording of Magic Missile didn’t require the target of the spell to be designated at the time of casting. This meant that a first level wizard could prepare Magic Missile as his one daily spell, cast it in the morning with no target, then go to bed and cast it again the next day. Do this an arbitrary number of times until you have a veritable galaxy of missiles stored up in orbit around your head. Now you go looking for your dragon. As soon as you see him, you use a readied action to target all of your Magic Missiles at his scaly dome. Magic missile always hits, so you roll d4+1 300 times or so and laugh all the way to the bank with the dragon’s treasure. Then, because it’s OD&D, you have to spend it all on xp to level up.
Heya Nerdsamwich!
I have never heard of that and just choked on my coffee from laughing so hard. Thanks for sharing! The mental image of a level one wizard effectively being able to call in a guaranteed-hit orbital strike is hilarious!
Can you imagine a wizard school getting attacked?
“Headmaster! There’s a powerful Ancient dragon attacking the academy!”
“Let the first-year students deal with it. We taught them Magic Missile first for a reason.”
Haha!
Here was my thought on how I would run this if I were the DM. The player who initiated the cannon would role a d20 strength role using the peasants stats to see if it hits the intended target (common people have +0 to all stats so it would be just a straight d20). If it hits enemies AC perfect, it will work no matter what, if it misses the enemies AC, the cannon still fires but wont obviously hit intended target.
(For the next part let’s say we are only using 100 peasants for math reasons.) Then I would have that player role again but this time a d20 dexterity saving role again using peasant stats. If it is a nat 20 perfect success. If it is a 19 on the dex save, then the last 1-6 villagers are suffering the fate of this attack. (regardless of if it hits the intended target)
Example, Lets say the player pulls this off and they role a 19 strength which succeeds and hits the targets AC of 18. But then roles a 4 dex save. Then the target will still be hit by the projectile however, 80 villagers also take the same damage as the enemy (100/20=5, 5*4=20) so 20 are fine and 80 of 100 are not) If players Strength role is 17. Then the attack does not hit the intended target, however the player will still need to role to see how many peasants suffer the consequences.
One added feature. Let’s say the adventurers want to assist the peasants so that they can use their stats. Then I would allow them 1 dex role for every adventurer that helps out however they all must be equally spaced in the peasant cannon. This means that whatever adventurer is at the end of the line is at risk of suffering the same fate and could potentially be instantly killed. For the players benefit, it would be taken as advantage so if only one player would have to role a nat 20, for all the peasants and themselves to survive.
Hiya Michael!
That’s a clever way to run this! I think you did a good job at balancing the risk/reward of attempting this!
What would you propose for calculating damage if someone were to run the Peasant Railgun like this?
While it’s safe to assume that our goblin crash-dummy, Zekke the Unfortunate, will be obliterated, I’m sure players would still want to roll for damage. Who would roll and what kind of damage dice would you think?
A wizard I was playing in the longest running 1st & 2nd ed campaign (started 1st, switched to 2nd when it came out) I’ve played in had a “I need a railgun” moment at one point, and here’s my solution:
Get a smith to make a metal tube 10 feet long. Enchant the end-caps to make a portal that teleports anything about to touch either so it comes out the portal at the other cap. Enchant tube and caps to be lined with a Wall of Force. That wizard’s favorite spell of all time was Squaring The Circle, as you can probably imagine.
Next, stand the thing on end and teleport some rocks into the tube. Under each tube is one end of a pre-programmed Teleport spell, linked to charges in a wand, with Contingency-linked Dispel Magic spells aimed at the bottom end-cap’s Wall of Force and Teleport spells.
Aim wand at utterly screwed target – ideally from some distance away and behind something rather sturdy – activate wand. Teleport end-point appears above doomed target. Contingency removes Wall and Teleport protecting bottom of one of the tubes, causing the EXTREMELY energetically messy destruction of the tube and an ungodly concussive blast near the tube, as the rocks are teleported one final – very final – time.
Meteor Swarm has NOTHING on what happens next. Even a Wish for the target’s destruction would likely do less damage unless VERY carefully phrased. Those rocks, each with about the same mass as a human body, do 1d6 per 10 feet fallen, which doesn’t seem like much until you realize there might be up to ten rocks in each tube, and they’ve all been falling endlessly for YEARS. And since the exit point can face in ANY direction, it can be aimed like God’s Cannon.
Forget Rods From God, they only have the depth of a gravity well to build up momentum. There is no terminal velocity in AD&D, not at the edition we were on anyway. But even if there is terminal velocity, making the tubes airless solves that too.
Heya Bergman!
I’m sitting here laughing hysterically at how incredible that is. I mean, I’m also a little terrified that my players might see this and build a cannon of their own, but I’ll cry about that later! 😉
Few things are as terrifying (and I mean that as a compliment!) as a player as inventive as you! When you start looking at some of the crazy ways that you can have spell effects build off of each other like that, it’s simply astounding what can be made!
Massive props for building what is possibly the single most dangerous device I’ve ever heard/read about in D&D!
Ages ago, when we were playing AD&D, my character got a Portable Manhole from a module published in The Dragon. Apparently intended as a way to destroy valuables, anything put in the Manhole continued to fall until the Manhole was next opened, destroying the object when it fell out and doing damage to anybody who happened to be in the way as a bonus. Swap the side-effect for the principle one and it wasn’t long before I had peasants lined up to dump a thousand bushels of baseball-sized rocks into my Manhole.
My poor DM had arranged an Ancient Red Dragon as a pivotal point in our adventure, forcing us to parley our way past an otherwise insurmountable obstacle. Feeling threatened by the Ancient One, I slapped my Manhole onto a readied shield and let fly. Even accounting for the inevitable misses in such a shotgun blast, the load was so massive that my DM didn’t bother to roll To Hit or Damage, simply declaring “Hamburger!” Shortly thereafter, our crew of eleventh-level characters had an encounter with a deity designed to take my toy away.
Hiya Lance!
That’s epic and “Hamburger!” is probably the only thing that could really be said about releasing such a weapon.
No wonder that deity took such an interest in your toy! Considering what it did to the Ancient Red Dragon, they were probably worried they were next… 😉
Thanks for sharing! I got a great laugh out of the mental image!
The “I need a railgun” moment I mentioned in my above description of the falling rocks super-weapon was red dragon related, much like Lance’s was.
Ours was objectively worse though – a mad archmage had been breeding LARGE numbers of alchemically-altered red dragons, with the intent of making them Lawful Neutral pack hunters. He’d screwed up and they came out uniformly Lawful Evil, but dumb as rocks. But he had made thousands, there was no kill switch in their design, and they were capable of spelljamming under their own power.
Luckily, we had a bit of time, but not a lot. That’s when I, in the form of my then-level 28 wizard, had that idea…
Let’s just say it’s a good thing we were playing in a Spelljammer setting, that the mad archmade had found an uninhabited planetoid for his breeding problem… and that nobody made us pay for what happened to that planetoid in terms of collateral damage!
It’s called the Peasant Canon….not Railgun….
Heya Anon,
I’ve seen it called both. “Peasant Railgun” is just the most search-friendly name! 🙂
The range of the thrown object would still be a factor so wouldn’t the object decelerate just as fast, if not faster than it accelerated?
Hi Tracy!
Sorry for the delay on the response. I’ve been under the weather but am back to it now!
If we’re looking at the game’s mechanics, the last peasant would simply throw the item a standard distance (say, 20 feet) which would hit for similarly basic damage. Despite traveling however far in the scope of 6 seconds, it’s nothing special otherwise.
But that’s still a bit weird. If we’re trying to put real-world physics behind the object, it would have too much momentum behind it to be so weak.
From there, it just gets weirder.
Once thrown, the object would have to decelerate but I imagine that calculation is very messy. Depending on the object, the speed, and I’m sure many other factors we could probably figure out what the deceleration is. Unfortunately, I’m really not that good when it comes to physics so I have no idea how that calculation would go! 🙂
Your physics doesn’t check out, you are correct that the item will have travelled an immense distance in a very short amount of time but you are ignoring the fact that the velocity is not constant. If we assume a peasant can pass an object at incredible speed then yea the object will move really fast for however long it takes for the peasant to pass it to the next one, but every time the object reaches the hands of another peasant it will abruptly decelerate before accelerating and therefor the last peasant will decelerate the object enough to where they either have to just throw it with regular strength or drop it.
If we instead assume the peasants cant catch a speeding bullet or pass an object with such speed then the whole idea falls apart and you’re left with a daisy chain of peasants passing a rock. Even with the rules allowing the object to move that far in a very short period of time, the last peasant will always decelerate the object to however fast they can take and throw it.
The key thing is that acceleration (and therefor velocity) is not constant when an object interacts with some form of energy loss I.e. friction or being held/passed.
Hi rEAL_engineer!
Physics is definitely not my strong suit and attempting to make some kind of equation that satisfies both real-world physics and game rules is way past the limits of my sanity! For ease, I just figured the velocity as a constant if only to give a ballpark example.
That is a good point that peasants attempting to pass the object would inadvertently decelerate the object’s velocity. As you mentioned, that’s with the assumption that the peasants can successfully catch an object going so fast.
It would be interesting to see an actual graph tracking the velocity, but that’s well beyond my experience to calculate!
This is the greatest thing I’ve seen in a while. It goes up there with the dreaded gazebo.
Hi Meredith,
OMG, I had forgotten about the dread gazebo! That’s a hilarious one as well!
Thank You for one of the hardest laughs i´ve had alone in front of my pc!
Hi Wolf!
Glad you enjoyed it! 🙂
I sent a msg to the dm of my group and could imagine the horror on his face when he was reading it as i explained in detail how it would absolutely obliterate the bbeg with out a fight. Cant wait to make that dream a reality
Hi Josh!
Glad you enjoyed the article! It definitely comes with an “attempt to use at your own peril” sign.
If you attempt it, let me know how it goes!
Poor Zekke the unfortunate
Hi HollowKnight!
He made our lives at least a little bit brighter and a lot stranger! 😉
If I am being honest I haven’t played Dungeons and Dragons a day in my life but if I ever do start playing it I am coming here for advice. I even bookmarked The main page!
Thank you so much for saying that and I’m glad you’re enjoying the site! 🙂
You should definitely at least give the game a try. The current edition is very beginner-friendly and there are tons of really great communities for finding games and just nerding out! 🙂