November 18, 2023

Sawyer Bohannan is a Chicago-based writer and longtime Dungeon Master. With a background in political science and storytelling, he blends worldbuilding, strategy, and humor—both at the table and on the page.

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You may have been scrolling through the r/dnd or r/dndmemes subreddits when you scrolled past a comment containing the phrase “Peasant Railgun”, and if you were like me, instantly became confused. So my dear and sweet reader, I have taken it upon myself to find the answer to the question: What is a Peasant Railgun?

What is the Peasant Railgun?

During the tail-end of the 2008 financial crisis, 1d4chan released a post detailing a theory that they had been working on. When released, two sides erupted from within the community; DM’s who had enough, and players who begged their DM to allow it.

In summary, the party could hypothetically hire 2,280 peasants, have them stand in a line, and have them do 300d6 damage by throwing a dismantled ladder at your foes. The best part? This process only takes one round of combat, and can be reloaded and fired again in less than 12 seconds.

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How does the Peasant Railgun work?

Several different rules come into play to achieve this. The Ready Action, the Amount of Time it takes to takes to complete one round of combat, space taken up by any one medium-sized individual, and Falling Object rules for 5e.

The Ready action is meant for when a player wants to get the jump on a foe or wait for a particular circumstance. To do this, the Ready action allows you to act using your reaction before the start of your next turn. You might already see where this is heading… but I continue.

When taking the Ready action, the player establishes a circumstance that will trigger the reaction. In this case, you disassemble the ladder and give the wooden pole to the person at the end of the line. You then direct everyone to ready their action to pass the pole to the peasant in front of them. After that, you then run to the front and tell the peasant to aim at the BBEG, stone castle, or any poor soul that dares stand in your way.

At the start of combat, the chain of events is initiated and that wooden rod is carried two miles in 6 seconds which means it had to accelerate to the speed of 1900 miles per hour. This is due in part that a medium creature (which human peasants categorize as) takes up a one-by-one 5 foot square. Multiply that space times 2,280, and you easily get a line that spans two miles.

This is also possible due to there being no restrictions on how many combatants can participate in combat, and how long a single round takes. Combine the fact that a single round encompasses the action economy of every single individual involved, than you get a really, really, fast rod.

Lastly, the Peasant Railgun takes into account the Falling Object rule which assumes the wooden pole weighs 7 pounds and would do 2d6 damage per 60ft. Do the math and you end up with our 300d6 of damage per turn!

Real Life Physics vs. RAW

Now before you send this article to your DM saying “I have an idea for next session…” there are a couple of things you should probably consider first.

Everything we have discussed so far is possible under rules as written (RAW) which don’t entirely adhere to real life physics (which is probably why you haven’t seen the military take advantage of the Peasant Railgun quite yet). If we were to take this quite literally, you’d see problems arise quite quickly.

One of the major problems would be the absolute destruction caused to those you convinced to line up for this weird tango. If a wooden rod was going at that speed, as it accelerates (which RAW doesn’t even account for), those peasants who would grab the rod would most likely have to roll to see if they could even withstand the pain of encountering an object at that speed. The 4 (1d8 average) hit points assigned to the commoner stat block would probably not leave many of our 2,280 peasants left standing.

The second problem is that most people can’t track an item going at that speed, let alone pass it to the person in front of them. When you gather for your next session, grab a tennis ball and see how fast you all can pass it around in a circle. That would be similar to the max speed the peasants could probably handle. And no, you can’t gather together 2,280 level 20 monks to do it, they’re all too busy catching magic missiles with each other.

Lastly, lets say our wooden rod got all the way to the front of the line despite the issues above. Good for them! Although, I do feel like the peasant in the front of the room is really going to bring down the vibe when he isn’t able to hit his mark. This kind of goes back to our second problem, an item going at that speed simply can not be tracked by a person’s eye. Additionally, any miscalculation in the toss would lead to it missing the mark by a mile depending on how close/far the target is.

Will my DM let Me use the Peasant Railgun?

Honestly, the rule of cool is a widely used tool by DM’s and I am a huge advocate of it. But I think that trying to attempt the Peasant Railgun would be a bit of a stretch of that rule. Hell, it’s a stress of RAW as well.

So no, your DM will probably not allow you to use the Peasant Railgun. But hey, what do I know?

I personally think that this could be a hilarious one shot idea. Imagine your party has to go around town to convince over two thousand people to pass a rod around. Perhaps you could unite a village against an evil king who is hiding behind a giant stone wall. Nothing a couple of sticks could solve.

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Resources:

https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Peasant_Railgun

https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/combat#Ready

*(is not accounting for acceleration time to 1900mph, dry air, or other factors that the original article does mention here)

**(2d6 per 60ft travelled by an object of 5-9 lbs) also the math is a going to be a little off due to other physical mentioned in the original article. I thought to add it anyways just to clear things up.