if you manage to polymorph an enemy, choose something small and lightweight, like a snail or a fish. after they are polymorphed, tie them to an arrow, and shoot it straight up with a longbow 600 feet.
this will deal the max 20d6 falling damage, which is absolutely insane for a 4th level spell.
another method is if you make a custom hollow arrow with a screw - on arrowhead and turn it into an unbreakable arrow either by an infusion or by a few days of work, you could turn them into a super small creature, like a worm or a spider you could shoot it at a solid but soft surface like wood or another enemy. they will hit the front of the arrow with a high speed, causing them to turn back into whatever form they were before inside the confines of the arrow. i will not elaborate in detail what happens to them, but they arent surviving.
Hollow unbreakable arrows are the most OP common magic item, and my current method of coming up with insane combat shenanigans.
if you make a steel pipe with one end closed and a nozzle on the other, you can enlarge it, fill with any liquid, and then drop concentration, creating a high pressure squirt gun. (or a pipe bomb, depending if it holds)
On part two, the “they aren’t surviving” bit is entirely dependent on the nature of the DM, who could rule that they cause the whatever to burst.
again, this is like the third or fourth post I have seen trying to apply real world limitations to a game that does not have real world physics or chemistry. Ain’t gonna work.
that said, the arrow straight up thing has a sad problem, lol: if the polymorphed individual takes damage beyond the new form, they return to their original form and original hit points, only taking whatever is left over.
since that number could be as low as 20, it isn’t as great a threat (though 120 might be).
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
If a player wants to start trying to pull shenanigans using falling damage, I'm going to start implementing rules for falling damage based on mass, density, and what kind of surface they're landing on. And introduce the party to a little thing called a Highlander Burial...
The funny thing is: If you're applying "real world" physics you gotta respect all of Newtons rules. that means for one: An arrow with a mass > a standart arrow won't go up that much. That also means the "launch" would likely also damage the creature, being accelerated like an arrow would likely kill a worm. Since the Worm dies and "plopps" to whatever creature it was before. It's mass would change dramatically - and the force the bow is applying won't be enough to shoot for example a humanoid BBEG. They will just fall on your face, likely not doing any damage, but being mad at you.
Unlike the others I think this is using D&D rules rather than real physics. Real physics says terminal velocity of a cannon ball is more than a spider and the horizontal range of a bow is more than the range straight up.
It is D&D rules that state the range of a longbow is 600ft in any direction and any fall from 200ft or more does 20d6 damage.
The only wiggle room I can see for a DM is tha a arrow is very streamlined and balanced and tying a snail to it is likely to significantly reduce the height it gets to.
An "are you sure you want you enemies to be able to employ this tactic" might also getting desired effect.
An arrow shot from a longbow goes nowhere near 600' straight up - much less so with something like a fish tied to it.
On the 'unbreakable arrow' thing, it needs pointing out that the poor spider or whatever hits the back of the chamber with almost the same force when the shot is fired. So the spider-splosion doesn't happen when the shot strikes - it happens, instead, right as the shooter releases the bowstring.
It's a fairly elaborate and time consuming plan - cast polymorph, catch the spider, put it in the arrow, screw it shut, cast the infusion, ready the bow, then die as the spider explodes in your face. For ritual suicide, I'd recommend just jumping off a cliff.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
I had a similar trick I pulled off a couple times, but instead I turned the guy into a turtle and tossed them into a bag of holding. I ended up letting them out because murdering someone by suffocating them to death in an extradimensional space devoid of light was a little too f*cked up for me and my particular friend group, but the DM did confirm that it would have worked if I had gone through with it. We still used it as an interrogation tactic, though, and also used it to take an enemy off the board for most of one particularly rough fight.
I had a similar trick I pulled off a couple times, but instead I turned the guy into a turtle and tossed them into a bag of holding. I ended up letting them out because murdering someone by suffocating them to death in an extradimensional space devoid of light was a little too f*cked up for me and my particular friend group, but the DM did confirm that it would have worked if I had gone through with it. We still used it as an interrogation tactic, though, and also used it to take an enemy off the board for most of one particularly rough fight.
So my thoughts with this trick are two fold. One, the turtle could bite his way through the bag and wind up spread across the astral plane....
Second if it suffocated it should revert back to the original creature which could also either rip the bag or exit the bag.
Yeah, I'd allow this once then after that say the force of the arrow shot like that is going to cause a couple points of damage, enough for the creature to revert to normal form and is then no longer going to be light enough for the momentum to make it go high enough for damage. A polymorph form big enough to absorb that first damage is too big to be fired in such a way. Otherwise this goes into making fights boring and a headache for the DM that is unnecessary. It's clever once, but annoying after that.
At higher levels it becomes useless or considerably less efficient than other tactics depending on enemies.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond. Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ thisFAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
I had a similar trick I pulled off a couple times, but instead I turned the guy into a turtle and tossed them into a bag of holding. I ended up letting them out because murdering someone by suffocating them to death in an extradimensional space devoid of light was a little too f*cked up for me and my particular friend group, but the DM did confirm that it would have worked if I had gone through with it. We still used it as an interrogation tactic, though, and also used it to take an enemy off the board for most of one particularly rough fight.
So my thoughts with this trick are two fold. One, the turtle could bite his way through the bag and wind up spread across the astral plane....
Second if it suffocated it should revert back to the original creature which could also either rip the bag or exit the bag.
yeah, we never pushed it far enough that the person had the opportunity to really try and escape. A Turtle can hold its breath for a pretty long time, so any enemy we put in there didn't hang out long enough to see what they could do once they grew back to human size. I know if I was DM'ing I'd probably just treat it like a grapple, in the sense that someone on the outside has to actively hold the bag closed to keep someone trapped in there with repeated Athletics contests until the person inside either escapes or suffocates.
I gotta say, this whole thing is so much more complicated than "cast fly and fly the polymorphed person into the air 200 feet" which I admit I thought the actual suggestion would be, lol.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I gotta say, this whole thing is so much more complicated than "cast fly and fly the polymorphed person into the air 200 feet" which I admit I thought the actual suggestion would be, lol.
I gotta say, this whole thing is so much more complicated than "cast fly and fly the polymorphed person into the air 200 feet" which I admit I thought the actual suggestion would be, lol.
You can't concentrate on both at the same time.
you can if you have more then one caster, or if you just put boots of flying on the creature and have them fly up
I gotta say, this whole thing is so much more complicated than "cast fly and fly the polymorphed person into the air 200 feet" which I admit I thought the actual suggestion would be, lol.
You can't concentrate on both at the same time.
you can if you have more then one caster, or if you just put boots of flying on the creature and have them fly up
Yes, but the description of this scenario was a self-contained "you" instance.
I gotta say, this whole thing is so much more complicated than "cast fly and fly the polymorphed person into the air 200 feet" which I admit I thought the actual suggestion would be, lol.
You can't concentrate on both at the same time.
you can if you have more then one caster, or if you just put boots of flying on the creature and have them fly up
Yes, but the description of this scenario was a self-contained "you" instance.
I gotta say, this whole thing is so much more complicated than "cast fly and fly the polymorphed person into the air 200 feet" which I admit I thought the actual suggestion would be, lol.
You can't concentrate on both at the same time.
you can if you have more then one caster, or if you just put boots of flying on the creature and have them fly up
I think some version of this would likely work, and it seems like a smart, pragmatic way to deal with an enemy, but would it be a fun, satisfying or not fun, not satisfying way to handle an enemy, espeically a BBG, for everyone at the table (including the DM, who might have worked hard on designing this character and this combat session)? Maybe it's a little gimmicky or cheap or too easy and then what does that say about using polymorph on an enemy, in general?
I like to think up solutions like this, but does this cross some sort of a line?
D&D is a game with rules and Polymorph is part of the rules system, so on that standard, it seems okay, but then maybe it's sort of not. I'm questioning some of my own Polymorph behavior and trying to figure out where some of the lines are within the game. I tend to think that what we do to imaginary chararcters might not matter and it's just a matter of problem solving (would very likely make different decisions, if it were real life, even if all of the stuff in the game was possible in real life) but then there are the feelings of other people at the table and also this is supposed to be fun. And then the possiblity of escalation and what comes around goes around (as well as what goes up come down).
I gotta say, this whole thing is so much more complicated than "cast fly and fly the polymorphed person into the air 200 feet" which I admit I thought the actual suggestion would be, lol.
You can't concentrate on both at the same time.
you can if you have more then one caster, or if you just put boots of flying on the creature and have them fly up
I think some version of this would likely work, and it seems like a smart, pragmatic way to deal with an enemy, but would it be a fun, satisfying or not fun, not satisfying way to handle an enemy, espeically a BBG, for everyone at the table (including the DM, who might have worked hard on designing this character and this combat session)? Maybe it's a little gimmicky or cheap or too easy and then what does that say about using polymorph on an enemy, in general?
I like to think up solutions like this, but does this cross some sort of a line?
D&D is a game with rules and Polymorph is part of the rules system, so on that standard, it seems okay, but then maybe it's sort of not. I'm questioning some of my own Polymorph behavior and trying to figure out where some of the lines are within the game. I tend to think that what we do to imaginary chararcters might not matter and it's just a matter of problem solving (would very likely make different decisions, if it were real life, even if all of the stuff in the game was possible in real life) but then there are the feelings of other people at the table and also this is supposed to be fun. And then the possiblity of escalation and what comes around goes around (as well as what goes up come down).
i posted this because i used this once to attempt to finish off a boss that was very close to killing a party member. (he survived, we were 70 feet above where he landed, so we fireballed him and that was that.) i would not do it more than once, maybe twice because it could ruin combat. (basically, this is just an idea for theorizing sake, not for nuking your DMs campaign)
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Hollow unbreakable arrows are the most OP common magic item, and my current method of coming up with insane combat shenanigans.
if you make a steel pipe with one end closed and a nozzle on the other, you can enlarge it, fill with any liquid, and then drop concentration, creating a high pressure squirt gun. (or a pipe bomb, depending if it holds)
i posted this because i used this once to attempt to finish off a boss that was very close to killing a party member. (he survived, we were 70 feet above where he landed, so we fireballed him and that was that.) i would not do it more than once, maybe twice because it could ruin combat. (basically, this is just an idea for theorizing sake, not for nuking your DMs campaign)
Makes sense that context would matter a lot. I really like the idea in the right context!
For this to work, the DM would have to go to great lengths to make it possible.
There is no rule to firing arrows with something tied to it, they would have to make a house rule that really utilizes fantasy physics to make this possible.
There is also no rule for damage caused by acceleration and air resistance. They'd choose to not have the firing deal any damage.
It would be 100% justified for the DM to just say: not possible.
Also, when would this come up? If it needs 20d6 damage, then most likely you can deal much more damage with your actions.
Polymorph - 1 turn, picking up the critter - possibly 1 turn, securely attaching it to an arrow - quite a few turns and hoping their allies don't drop your con, firing the arrow - 1 turn, waiting for the arrow to reach 200 meters and time dropping concentration - at least 1 turn, waiting for them to fall and hope they don't have feather fall or similar - 1 turn.
You can deal a lot of cantrip damage by then.
Also. Why wouldn't they survive the indestructible arrow tube? A lot of spells determine an effect when such a thing happens. Oftentimes appearing in the closest available space and/or taking a bit of dmg etc. Polymorph doesn't specify this. So the DM has absolute control over what happens. Maybe the magical transmutation effect will still destroy the arrow, maybe they will appear next to it. Maybe they will magically squeeze out of the point's seams while their body is magically reshaping.
This idea cherry picks when to use physics and rules and makes rulings on behalf of the DM. Basically an obvious exploit attempt without any ground.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Finland GMT/UTC +2
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
if you manage to polymorph an enemy, choose something small and lightweight, like a snail or a fish. after they are polymorphed, tie them to an arrow, and shoot it straight up with a longbow 600 feet.
this will deal the max 20d6 falling damage, which is absolutely insane for a 4th level spell.
another method is if you make a custom hollow arrow with a screw - on arrowhead and turn it into an unbreakable arrow either by an infusion or by a few days of work, you could turn them into a super small creature, like a worm or a spider you could shoot it at a solid but soft surface like wood or another enemy. they will hit the front of the arrow with a high speed, causing them to turn back into whatever form they were before inside the confines of the arrow. i will not elaborate in detail what happens to them, but they arent surviving.
Hollow unbreakable arrows are the most OP common magic item, and my current method of coming up with insane combat shenanigans.
if you make a steel pipe with one end closed and a nozzle on the other, you can enlarge it, fill with any liquid, and then drop concentration, creating a high pressure squirt gun. (or a pipe bomb, depending if it holds)
And then , of course, complain bitterly about how unfair it is when the GM does the same thing to you. ;-)
On part two, the “they aren’t surviving” bit is entirely dependent on the nature of the DM, who could rule that they cause the whatever to burst.
again, this is like the third or fourth post I have seen trying to apply real world limitations to a game that does not have real world physics or chemistry. Ain’t gonna work.
that said, the arrow straight up thing has a sad problem, lol: if the polymorphed individual takes damage beyond the new form, they return to their original form and original hit points, only taking whatever is left over.
since that number could be as low as 20, it isn’t as great a threat (though 120 might be).
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
If a player wants to start trying to pull shenanigans using falling damage, I'm going to start implementing rules for falling damage based on mass, density, and what kind of surface they're landing on. And introduce the party to a little thing called a Highlander Burial...
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
The funny thing is: If you're applying "real world" physics you gotta respect all of Newtons rules. that means for one: An arrow with a mass > a standart arrow won't go up that much. That also means the "launch" would likely also damage the creature, being accelerated like an arrow would likely kill a worm. Since the Worm dies and "plopps" to whatever creature it was before. It's mass would change dramatically - and the force the bow is applying won't be enough to shoot for example a humanoid BBEG. They will just fall on your face, likely not doing any damage, but being mad at you.
Unlike the others I think this is using D&D rules rather than real physics. Real physics says terminal velocity of a cannon ball is more than a spider and the horizontal range of a bow is more than the range straight up.
It is D&D rules that state the range of a longbow is 600ft in any direction and any fall from 200ft or more does 20d6 damage.
The only wiggle room I can see for a DM is tha a arrow is very streamlined and balanced and tying a snail to it is likely to significantly reduce the height it gets to.
An "are you sure you want you enemies to be able to employ this tactic" might also getting desired effect.
An arrow shot from a longbow goes nowhere near 600' straight up - much less so with something like a fish tied to it.
On the 'unbreakable arrow' thing, it needs pointing out that the poor spider or whatever hits the back of the chamber with almost the same force when the shot is fired. So the spider-splosion doesn't happen when the shot strikes - it happens, instead, right as the shooter releases the bowstring.
It's a fairly elaborate and time consuming plan - cast polymorph, catch the spider, put it in the arrow, screw it shut, cast the infusion, ready the bow, then die as the spider explodes in your face. For ritual suicide, I'd recommend just jumping off a cliff.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
I had a similar trick I pulled off a couple times, but instead I turned the guy into a turtle and tossed them into a bag of holding. I ended up letting them out because murdering someone by suffocating them to death in an extradimensional space devoid of light was a little too f*cked up for me and my particular friend group, but the DM did confirm that it would have worked if I had gone through with it. We still used it as an interrogation tactic, though, and also used it to take an enemy off the board for most of one particularly rough fight.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
So my thoughts with this trick are two fold. One, the turtle could bite his way through the bag and wind up spread across the astral plane....
Second if it suffocated it should revert back to the original creature which could also either rip the bag or exit the bag.
Yeah, I'd allow this once then after that say the force of the arrow shot like that is going to cause a couple points of damage, enough for the creature to revert to normal form and is then no longer going to be light enough for the momentum to make it go high enough for damage. A polymorph form big enough to absorb that first damage is too big to be fired in such a way. Otherwise this goes into making fights boring and a headache for the DM that is unnecessary. It's clever once, but annoying after that.
At higher levels it becomes useless or considerably less efficient than other tactics depending on enemies.
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond.
Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ this FAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
yeah, we never pushed it far enough that the person had the opportunity to really try and escape. A Turtle can hold its breath for a pretty long time, so any enemy we put in there didn't hang out long enough to see what they could do once they grew back to human size. I know if I was DM'ing I'd probably just treat it like a grapple, in the sense that someone on the outside has to actively hold the bag closed to keep someone trapped in there with repeated Athletics contests until the person inside either escapes or suffocates.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
I gotta say, this whole thing is so much more complicated than "cast fly and fly the polymorphed person into the air 200 feet" which I admit I thought the actual suggestion would be, lol.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
You can't concentrate on both at the same time.
you can if you have more then one caster, or if you just put boots of flying on the creature and have them fly up
Yes, but the description of this scenario was a self-contained "you" instance.
then there are other ways of flight
I think some version of this would likely work, and it seems like a smart, pragmatic way to deal with an enemy, but would it be a fun, satisfying or not fun, not satisfying way to handle an enemy, espeically a BBG, for everyone at the table (including the DM, who might have worked hard on designing this character and this combat session)? Maybe it's a little gimmicky or cheap or too easy and then what does that say about using polymorph on an enemy, in general?
I like to think up solutions like this, but does this cross some sort of a line?
D&D is a game with rules and Polymorph is part of the rules system, so on that standard, it seems okay, but then maybe it's sort of not. I'm questioning some of my own Polymorph behavior and trying to figure out where some of the lines are within the game. I tend to think that what we do to imaginary chararcters might not matter and it's just a matter of problem solving (would very likely make different decisions, if it were real life, even if all of the stuff in the game was possible in real life) but then there are the feelings of other people at the table and also this is supposed to be fun. And then the possiblity of escalation and what comes around goes around (as well as what goes up come down).
i posted this because i used this once to attempt to finish off a boss that was very close to killing a party member. (he survived, we were 70 feet above where he landed, so we fireballed him and that was that.) i would not do it more than once, maybe twice because it could ruin combat. (basically, this is just an idea for theorizing sake, not for nuking your DMs campaign)
Hollow unbreakable arrows are the most OP common magic item, and my current method of coming up with insane combat shenanigans.
if you make a steel pipe with one end closed and a nozzle on the other, you can enlarge it, fill with any liquid, and then drop concentration, creating a high pressure squirt gun. (or a pipe bomb, depending if it holds)
Makes sense that context would matter a lot. I really like the idea in the right context!
For this to work, the DM would have to go to great lengths to make it possible.
There is no rule to firing arrows with something tied to it, they would have to make a house rule that really utilizes fantasy physics to make this possible.
There is also no rule for damage caused by acceleration and air resistance. They'd choose to not have the firing deal any damage.
It would be 100% justified for the DM to just say: not possible.
Also, when would this come up? If it needs 20d6 damage, then most likely you can deal much more damage with your actions.
Polymorph - 1 turn, picking up the critter - possibly 1 turn, securely attaching it to an arrow - quite a few turns and hoping their allies don't drop your con, firing the arrow - 1 turn, waiting for the arrow to reach 200 meters and time dropping concentration - at least 1 turn, waiting for them to fall and hope they don't have feather fall or similar - 1 turn.
You can deal a lot of cantrip damage by then.
Also. Why wouldn't they survive the indestructible arrow tube? A lot of spells determine an effect when such a thing happens. Oftentimes appearing in the closest available space and/or taking a bit of dmg etc. Polymorph doesn't specify this. So the DM has absolute control over what happens. Maybe the magical transmutation effect will still destroy the arrow, maybe they will appear next to it. Maybe they will magically squeeze out of the point's seams while their body is magically reshaping.
This idea cherry picks when to use physics and rules and makes rulings on behalf of the DM. Basically an obvious exploit attempt without any ground.
Finland GMT/UTC +2