“The People’s Cannon” – Dungeons & Dragons

Dungeon Masters hate them: How one party converted 15 filthy peasants into an over-powered railgun of death using 1 weird trick!

Not to be confused with “The People’s Cannon”, a Magic the Gathering deck using a similarly OP dynamic.

The past weekend, I attended the third annual Queen City Anifest as a volunteer. I walked the perimeter and handed out water to vendors mostly, and had a pretty good time. After my shift, I sat down at the D&D table and joined a rousing game.
We stayed to talk to the Dungeon Master after the game. During our conversation, he described the time he experienced what may well be one of the most hilarious, game-breaking logic bugs ever encountered. This super-combo move is called “The People’s Cannon” (or as I like to call it, “The Caber Toss of Doom”).

It really just boils down to the interaction between 2 rules:

1. Players with high charisma can ask villagers to do simple tasks.
2. Simple actions – such as passing a 10 foot pole – take 1 second of in-game time to complete.

Firing the Cannon:

• Two players request something like 15 villagers to follow them to the lair of some incredibly powerful monster.
• Once the monster is in sight, a player requests the villagers stand single file with 10 feet between each.
• The players then stand at either end of the line and instruct the villagers to pass on whatever is handed to them.
• The first player passes a 10-foot pole to the first villager, who then passes it to the next, and so on.
  (Remember, only 1 second passes between when the first player hands off the pole to when the second player receives it. Therefore, by the time it reaches the end of the line, it must be moving at 150 feet per second. That’s over 100 miles per hour!)
• The second player – who must be quite strong – then throws the high-velocity pole directly at the monster.
• This move deals critical damage almost inevitably, assuming your roll was successful.

With this method, you are essentially able to fire an NPC-Powered Railgun at will, making your party veritable gods amongst men.

It is worth noting, however, that virtually no dungeon masters will actually allow this to play out. That said, they’ll probably get a kick out of you trying. Generally, game-breaking bugs are at the discretion of the DM to fix ad-hoc.

Editors Note: Obviously, this post is a bit of a break from our “regularly scheduled programming”, but so is everything on this site. What is regular, anyway?