My character is Enlarged, Raging, and has Muleback Cords. Raw strength 20. Lifting strength 28.
He is standing on a dock. Out in the water, but within my character's reach, is a 20x30 barge with enemies on it.
One enemy with a reach weapon is Threatening me.
I want to tip the barge to try to dump the enemies into the water.
Muleback cords do not apply because I am in combat.
I take an AoO.
I make a Grapple check against the barge to grab it.
Next round, I take another AoO and attempt to Pin the barge. If I successfully Pin it, and if I am able to lift it's weight (without the benefit of Muleback Cords) then I can tip it over.
I take an AoO for picking something up while being threatened.
I make a Touch Attack against the barge to get a hand on it.
I check the weight of the barge against my encumbrance values. If I can lift the barge, I can tip it. Lifting weight is a static value, so no further roll is necessary.
The two issues are:
A) Does lifting an object require a Grapple check (and/or a roll to Pin)
B) Do Muleback Cords apply their bonus to lifting objects while in combat.
A civil, but frustrating argument has ensued. I'd appreciate any feedback, one way or the other.
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A) I wouldn't know why you'd want to grapple an inanimate object, or even a slow-moving one.
B) Yes, they do. They just don't add anything to other strength related rolls. So no bonus when you are swinging that greatsword or wrestling with tentacles.
You'd be able to lift the barge over your head if you could exert enough force. You could lift 2400 lbs. above your head but as you're not lifting the entire barge into the air, you don't have to lift the entire weight of the barge. I'd say that should be about enough.
Now a good GM would have told you to make a strength check, and oppose it with balance checks, but that's another story.
Otherwise, it would be slightly slippery, severely sloped, severely unsteady surface, wider than 3 feet so it would have a DC of 17.
You only have a strength of 20 when you're raging and enlarged? Isn't a strength of 14 a bit weak for a barbarian? My level 2 half-giant barbarian/psychic warrior had a strength of 26 when he was using expansion+rage.
Honestly , with just 28 str on a biped large creature , i can only see you tipping it a little bit at best.
But maybe im the only one who imagine barges being freaking heavy.
A) If the barge was moving a lot then maybe it would have been fair to make the grapple. I see more sense in it than making a touch atk, but honestly , unless you roll 1 , i would say you got past the CMD.
B) I would say lifting is inside the carrying category , so it should benefit you.
You only have a strength of 20 when you're raging and enlarged? Isn't a strength of 14 a bit weak for a barbarian?
<-- here's the character
Sea Reaver Barbarian 1/Scarred Witch Doctor 4
He's a Con based character, not Strength.
(setting-based house rule allows him to take an orc archetype as a human of a particular culture)
Barges are flat-bottomed. If you lift one side and the cargo starts sliding... it's all over.
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Generally I think your version of how it would work is more in line with how I would run the attempt than how your DM wants to do it.
I can understand why he is saying that muleback cords don't work here, but I don't agree. If they stopped affecting what you could lift/carry in combat then anyone who uses them would become encumbered every time combat started.
Now as far as the question of can he lift the barge or not, we don't have enough info for that I think. It will be dependant on how much cargo is on the barge, how heavy-duty it's construction is, the number of enemies on it, etc... You are going to have some mechanical advantage because you aren't lifting the whole thing, but since you are reaching out to lift it that could negate the mechanical advantage so lets call that a wash. He can lift 2400lbs, but I'm going to guess that a if a 20x30 barge is loaded with even a moderate amount of goods, or if there are more than 4 occupants, then it's going to be too heavy for him to lift, even with muleback cords.
Barge weighs probably 20,000 lbs or more. You're capacity, with 28 strength and large, is 4800 lbs for your heavy load. Of course your just trying to tip it.
My ruling? You're reach out and try to tip it, due to Newton's third law (For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction), as you do begin to move the barge the dock breaks. Not capable of dealing with the force being applied to it surface and leaving your barbarian swimming in water.
How do you figure the barge weighs that much. It's a 20x30 wooden platform. Wood just isn't that dense, and the barge is carrying a pretty light load.
The OPs post doesn't mention how much cargo, nor that the barge is made of wood. Nor does it mention how much tall the barge is.
A 20 ft by 50ft keelboat can carry 50 tons (100,000 lbs).
This "barge" is about 60% of the size of the keelboat. So, should be able to carry roughly 60,000 lbs. 20,000 lbs means its only loaded up about 1/3 of the way. My value was just an estimate, but seems pretty good.
And even if its less, the dock still breaks.
@Claxon how did you get 4800?
Well we can assume he is a biped large.
Since with 28 he got 1200 lbs and biped large gives 2x that , should it not be 2400 lbs?
What made you give him the extra 2x?
If it was a barge, and it was loaded, you're not moving it. That's about 10 tons if it's just an old wooden barge.
If it was, on the other hand, empty or an old wooden ferry, you might be able to tip it, or more likely pick up one corner which causes it to side slip sideways quite a bit.
If it was 20 by 50, that's 20x50 board feet (1ft x 1ft x 1 inch) per inch of thickness (1000 board feet per inch). Let's assume it needs a good 6 inches thickness, so 6000 board feet. If it had 2 feet of side walls, that would be 50x2x6 = 600 board ft per long side, and 20x2x6 = 240 board ft per short side. So, 6000 + 600 + 600 + 240 + 240 = 7680 board ft.
Assuming it was white oak, it was 39,936 pounds of weight. Or, 20 tons.
With a 28 strength, you can lift 2400 lbs off the ground or push 6000 lbs. To tip it, you'd need to lift at least 25% of it's weight. That would be 10,000 lbs.
So, yeah, afraid that's not going to happen.
@Claxon how did you get 4800?
Well we can assume he is a biped large.
Since with 28 he got 1200 lbs and biped large gives 2x that , should it not be 2400 lbs?
What made you give him the extra 2x?
1200 is carry weight
Lift off Ground is 2x carry, or 2400
Large doubles both numbers, or 4800. Still not enough to lift the 25% of the minimum weight of the barge.
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I lost my long math post, but a box 30x20x4 with 4" walls would weigh 16-24,000 pounds, empty; range is density of pine to oak. It would have a maximum displacement when loaded of 140,000 lbs. half of that would give gunwales 2 feet above the waterline and a draft of two feet. This assumes a deck.
The empty weight scales linearly with average timber thickness; the loaded displacement doesn't care.
20k lbs empty or 70k loaded sounds in the neighborhood.
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The problem is that weight is less of an issue than leverage and water cohesion.
The best way to handle this in my opinion, is to use the rules for this that already exist for this exact situation.
Capsize:
"A creature with this special quality can attempt to capsize a boat or a ship by ramming it as a charge attack and making a combat maneuver check. The DC of this check is 25, or the result of the captain’s Profession (sailor) check, whichever is higher. For each size category the ship is larger than the creature attempting to capsize it, the creature attempting to capsize the ship takes a cumulative –10 penalty on its combat maneuver check."
So, CMB vs. DC 25 minus the size difference. Very simple.
I lost my long math post, but a box 30x20x4 with 4" walls would weigh 16-24,000 pounds, empty; range is density of pine to oak. It would have a maximum displacement when loaded of 140,000 lbs. half of that would give gunwales 2 feet above the waterline and a draft of two feet. This assumes a deck.
The empty weight scales linearly with average timber thickness; the loaded displacement doesn't care.
20k lbs empty or 70k loaded sounds in the neighborhood.
My assumption was the bottom would be a foot thick but with lots of empty space and compartments to enhance buoyancy. Then the walls built on top of that two feet high. Most of the wooden barges I ran into back in the swamps in the day were very shallow draft flat bottoms with a rake on one end (the bow). Usually not more than a foot or two of draft, with a foot or two above water (these things were not made for rough water, just calm rivers lakes and swamps). I took 6 inches as figuring half the foot thick walls were empty air, and the other half wood.
And I prefer oak for stuff like this, pine tends to not react well with water over time, it warps horribly.
@Claxon how did you get 4800?
Well we can assume he is a biped large.
Since with 28 he got 1200 lbs and biped large gives 2x that , should it not be 2400 lbs?
What made you give him the extra 2x?
1200 is carry weight
Lift off Ground is 2x carry, or 2400
Large doubles both numbers, or 4800. Still not enough to lift the 25% of the minimum weight of the barge.
Ah ic. I just went over it in the books again, ty for the info :D.
The problem is that weight is less of an issue than leverage and water cohesion.
The best way to handle this in my opinion, is to use the rules for this that already exist for this exact situation.
Capsize:
"A creature with this special quality can attempt to capsize a boat or a ship by ramming it as a charge attack and making a combat maneuver check. The DC of this check is 25, or the result of the captain’s Profession (sailor) check, whichever is higher. For each size category the ship is larger than the creature attempting to capsize it, the creature attempting to capsize the ship takes a cumulative –10 penalty on its combat maneuver check."So, CMB vs. DC 25 minus the size difference. Very simple.
Based on this the barge would be colossal(long). So thats 3 size categories. So a -30 penalty. Effectively a CMD 55, minimum. Higher if the ship has a veteran captain. Those rules seem like a decent way to simulate this. Though, very high level characters could possibly pull this off.
Just don't forget your weapon bonuses don't apply.
Just don't forget your weapon bonuses don't apply.
What if you're striking it with a magical mallet?
Thank you for the information everyone.
A barge that is 20x30 has a load capacity of 37,500 lb per foot of draft.
It's kind of hard to read, and the barges are much longer and narrower than your 20x30, but that gives you an idea.
First question is : Rule of cool.
Is it cool to do it once? Is it plausible?
If yes then yeah it's quite easy to do it.
Now you could maybe not tip the boat over but may be shake it enough such that the soldiers on board need to roll for an acrobatic check may be DC 15 or something. They fail ? They are in water, hope you have swim ranks.
To be honest I could hardly imagine one tipping such a big barge on its own. Nevertheless rule of cool would allow one or 2 soldiers to fall off the barge. Why ? Because it's cool and i can imagine them sinking while the others get slaughtered and because I want to reward my players for thinking "out of the box" and using other things than THACO (wink) and swinging swords.
Just a short story, very recently my PCs were followed by soldiers on fishing boat, the soldiers were about to attack my PCs boat and it would have been a real slaughter. I won't explain how they got there to keep it short but anyway...
The summoner called for some dolphins, he had 5 dolphins who charged on the side of the packed fishing boat (6-7 feet by 18feet was the size of the boat). I rolled for acrobatic checks for all the soldiers and 2 fell including the BBGG paladin who sank like a stone(the PC are evil against good). The summoner called then a crocodile for good grapple and that's how my big boss died. Sinking in a lake.
It was a great joy for all PCs. I as a DM was a little bit frustrated to have spent time tuning my lvl 9 paladin big boss just to see him drown as i didn't put any swimming ranks. But my players were extatic and they are still talking about full plates as "the stone that sinks".
All in all we had a great time and my players thought out of the box. That's why I want to reward them for that.
Coolness ... and think out of the box. Who cares about RAW or RAI or whatever....
@Major Longhorn.
Exactly.
Slavishly attending to the minutiae of RaW or even RAI can completely nullify player's desire to try anything "outside the box" at all - if at every turn the DM says "Nope, technically that won't work" rather than "Cool idea - here's what happens!" (Even if it isn't exactly what the PC's planned or intended) then the game quickly degenerates into the PC's just as slavishly attending to every situation utilizing only their class abilities/skills in a manner codified somewhere in some arcane tome.
Because the Core Rulebook just doesn't cater for all eventualities, and to have the DM search for some esoteric ruling in a supplement or sourcebook rather than just either make a decision (or, "reward creativity") really kills that creativity.
Unless you disagree. In which case this post is symptomatic of an extremely slippery slope of casual casuistry that will disassemble the core mechanics and cause an implosion in several realities where Baba Yaga may or may not reside. But if she does, you can bet her heartbeat has been codified and her resistance to humour has a DC. Written down. Not at all made up on the fly. Creatively.
@To the OP. I do think the water resistance should be considered - tha did occur to me. But tipping the barge was a way more fun tactic than the alternative.
Rule of Cool is great...
Until it breaks the game.
It would be super cool if I could fire my black powder pistol, put the bullet through mook 1's eye, out the back of his head, bounce it off the shield of Mook 2, through the ear of Mook 3, out his other ear, and into the BBEG's Nads. That would be uber cool!
But it would also let me get 3 attacks out of one barrel, two of them fatal.
Sure it would be super cool if my fighter could pick up the 20 ton barge and knock the level 9 anti-paladin into the water so he can drown. But if my fighter can do that why can't my wife's druid make an oak tree grow up out of the river bottom to do the same thing on demand? Why can't the rogue in the party sneak attack the barge and make it catostrophically fail by hitting the exact piece of wood that's holding it all together and dump them all into the river? Why can't the party cleric call down his god's wrath to just obliterate the raft and everyone on it?
Rule of Cool - Giving the GM's favorite super powered bonuses since 1950!
I agree with mdt , even more because for some reason you guys are against denying the player because that kills his/her creativity.
Then again , it is a game , and the purpose it is to have fun , some groups will want it to be "realistic" (within the game universe heh), others more "super power" style and so on.
Problem is , this is in the rules forum , so lets assume the answer should be based on RAW (or atleast closest possible to it).
The situation has been sorted out, but there are some things in this thread that seemed strange to me and caused me to do a lot more research about barges than I ever thought I would.
I'm not sure what kinds of Barges people in this thread have seen before. There have been a few references to how big the vessel is.
It's 20x30 feet.
Most barges are at least 50 feet long. Many are 100+. In this case, the barge is actually one of the smallest I've ever heard of. It's a very light cargo barge for ferrying lightweight goods short distances. It's closer to a raft.
These 20,000 pound weight estimates are completely ridiculous. If a flat-bottomed vessel that size weighed 20,000 pounds it would sink.
These 20,000 pound weight estimates are completely ridiculous. If a flat-bottomed vessel that size weighed 20,000 pounds it would sink.
I did the math for you. Just 6 inches of solid oak at 20x50 is 40,000 lbs. If it was 20x30 it would be 32,750 lbs. If you wanted the lightest possible wood, white pine, it would be 19000 lbs.
You'd be shocked at just how heavy a wooden construct is at small sizes. Heck, a single tree can weigh a ton (literally). :) Most weigh more if they're tall.
These 20,000 pound weight estimates are completely ridiculous. If a flat-bottomed vessel that size weighed 20,000 pounds it would sink.
Not true. Sinking/floating is based on density and displacement, not weight.
Wood floats (well, the kind of wood you'd make a boat out of at least). You can't sink wood with more wood. Buoyancy is funny that way.
These 20,000 pound weight estimates are completely ridiculous. If a flat-bottomed vessel that size weighed 20,000 pounds it would sink.Not true. Sinking/floating is based on density and displacement, not weight.
Wood floats (well, the kind of wood you'd make a boat out of at least). You can't sink wood with more wood. Buoyancy is funny that way.
NUH UH!
If you put a million pounds of styrofoam in the ocean, it'd sink to the bottom! Water can't lift a million pounds of anything!
</sarcasm>
:)
The situation has been sorted out, but there are some things in this thread that seemed strange to me and caused me to do a lot more research about barges than I ever thought I would.
I'm not sure what kinds of Barges people in this thread have seen before. There have been a few references to how big the vessel is.
It's 20x30 feet.
Most barges are at least 50 feet long. Many are 100+. In this case, the barge is actually one of the smallest I've ever heard of. It's a very light cargo barge for ferrying lightweight goods short distances. It's closer to a raft.
These 20,000 pound weight estimates are completely ridiculous. If a flat-bottomed vessel that size weighed 20,000 pounds it would sink.
The formula for determining the weight of a flat bottomed boat and its cargo is fairly simple. It's length times width times draft times 62.5 in feet, that gives the weight in pounds. So 30x20x62.5xdraft= 37,500 times the draft. So if the bottom is 6.5" below the water line that is 20,000 lbs.
Yes this "barge" is a funny shape, and likely would be very hard to move through the water, but the amount of cargo it could carry is just as massive as one that is 60 feet by 10 feet which would be a better shape.
man builds a 40 ton boat (80,000 lbs)
He has spent the past seven years building a boat.
One that’s 52 feet long, 22 feet tall and weighs 40 tons.
Boats are heavy.
Rule of Cool is great...
Until it breaks the game.
It would be super cool if I could fire my black powder pistol, put the bullet through mook 1's eye, out the back of his head, bounce it off the shield of Mook 2, through the ear of Mook 3, out his other ear, and into the BBEG's Nads. That would be uber cool!
But it would also let me get 3 attacks out of one barrel, two of them fatal.
Sure it would be super cool if my fighter could pick up the 20 ton barge and knock the level 9 anti-paladin into the water so he can drown. But if my fighter can do that why can't my wife's druid make an oak tree grow up out of the river bottom to do the same thing on demand? Why can't the rogue in the party sneak attack the barge and make it catostrophically fail by hitting the exact piece of wood that's holding it all together and dump them all into the river? Why can't the party cleric call down his god's wrath to just obliterate the raft and everyone on it?
Rule of Cool - Giving the GM's favorite super powered bonuses since 1950!
Snarky Sarcasm - reducing arguments to hash by exaggerating and ultra-ridiculous extrapolation for the sake of superiority since the Dawn of Time.
I'm not advocating taking the rules and throwing them out the window (Attack roll please). I'm merely suggesting that a default reliance to "physics" that can't match "irregular" approaches to mechanical combat will be constrained by that very inability.
I agree with mdt , even more because for some reason you guys are against denying the player because that kills his/her creativity
This is a misrepresentation of my position. Also, I'm not sure there is a "you guys" here, and even if there were I'm not sure there is a unified position.
I'm not saying that denying the players kills the player's creativity. I am saying that continuously making decisions based on strict interpretation of arcane mechanics leads me to feel as if the game is bogged down in minutiae, and I'm better off relying merely on the tried and true hack and slash or spamming of class abilities rather than engaging with the environment or thinking on my feet. If there was a sense that creativity would be rewarded, not curtailed or reduced to unreasonable mechanics then perhaps I would be happier.
I'm very happy to accede that this is entirely a playstyle thing, and I'm sure "unreasonable" is a completely relative term. Have fun people!
A character can generally push or drag along the ground as much as five times his maximum load. Favorable conditions can double these numbers, and bad circumstances can reduce them by half or more.
29 466 lbs. or less 467–933 lbs. 934–1,400 lbs
That is 7000 lbs at STR 29.
A character can lift as much as double his maximum load off the ground, but he or she can only stagger around with it. While overloaded in this way, the character loses any Dexterity bonus to AC and can move only 5 feet per round (as a full-round action).
That is 2800 lbs.
Bigger and Smaller Creatures: The figures on Table: Carrying Capacity are for Medium bipedal creatures. A larger bipedal creature can carry more weight depending on its size category, as follows: Large ×2, Huge ×4, Gargantuan ×8, Colossal ×16. A smaller creature can carry less weight depending on its size category, as follows: Small ×3/4, Tiny ×1/2, Diminutive ×1/4, Fine ×1/8.
So if he were colossal with a 29 str...
Large ship
Squares 1 (10 ft. by 20 ft.)
...
Cargo/Passengers 2 tons/up to 12 passengers (depending on size, a ship's boat can carry up to a total of 16 Medium creatures, either as crew or passengers)
This is one third the size you mention. Scaling up, you have 6 tons capacity, and I doubt that the ship weighs more than a third of that. So: 8 tons = 16,000#.
Strength 28 gets 4,800# overhead. Lifting one side of something will double this number to 9,600#. The barge is too heavy to overturn.However, tipping it, causing balance checks is easy. Just go with the capsize rule posted earlier.
/cevah
a 10 x 20 is a longtown canoe or longboat in the parlance. It's what you see them using on Pirates of the Carribean.
Scaling is not linear when it comes to boats, buoyancy and draft. It's a logarithmic progression.
In other words, you can make a boat out of balsa wood that is 10 inches by 5 inches that floats well and can keep a 1 lb weight out of the water.
If you scale that up to feet, you end up with a 10 ft boat that's 5 feet wide, and that has a 12 lb weight in it. It's probably fine for the weight, but the structural integrity means it'll crack apart with the same design. To keep it structurally sound, you have to put in a lot of reinforcements, which makes it heavier.
Scale it up to 10 ft per inch, and it get's worse. You can't even complete construction. This is the difference between a barge and a longboat. As you scale up, and increase the intended maximum weight, you are going to have to increase the structural framework, and it's not a linear increase.
So any arguments about a 10x20 longboat vs a 20x50 bare is like comparing a go-kart to a dump truck.
Scaling is not linear when it comes to boats, buoyancy and draft. It's a logarithmic progression.
...
So any arguments about a 10x20 longboat vs a 20x50 bare is like comparing a go-kart to a dump truck.
First, the OP indicated a barge of size 20*30, not 20*50.
Second, my conclusion was that he could not do this realistically.So, making a heavier boat carrying more just makes an unlikely situation even less likely. This does not change my conclusion.
That said, what if he added a Heavy Load belt? This would triple the carrying capacity. That would cap out at 28,800# which could tip the barge. :-)
/cevah
Newton's third law
Nooo! Think of the catgirls!
Sorry, misread your post then. :)
But yeah, if you keep loading on stuff, you could certainly tip or sink the barge.
20 STR + Cords (+8) + Heavy Load Belt + Barbarian Rage (+4) + Bear's Strength (+4) + MW Backpack (+1 Str) would result in 37 str, or 4,160 max load. Multiply that by 5 to get max lift of 16,640.
Belt would then make it 49,920 lbs. So certainly enough.
Nobody said it gave a bonus to breaking, Morris Chan.
However, it does give you a bonus to picking things up. Picking up the corner of the barge is lifting it up. That is the exact word for word meaning of 'lift off ground'. How much you can lift off ground. It doesn't matter if it's in combat or not.
First, the GM set the rule. He made the call, so run with it. Don't bog the game down arguing, as there is sure to be more fun to be had.
Personally, I think I would let him tip the boat, and force a few acrobatics checks. Call it his strength check (with the cords factoring in), minus, say, 10, the DC for the check. Those that fail by 10 are in the drink. Those that just fail are knocked prone.
I would also have the dock break under his feet, if is was made of wood. Reflex save to snatch an unbroken chuck of dock not to fall in (say, DC 10 to 15).
As far as the "Rule of Cool" argument...I reward the players for out witting me. If they come up with something I never thought of, they get an extra hero point and/or extra xp. I will have to plan better next time, making me a better GM, and they get to feel good about being sharp.
The first example that comes to mind is when the diplomatic monk/cleric intimidated a troll ranger, threatened her husbands, and negotiated the troll assistance in hunting down some vampires.
The second was when the bad guy wizard teleported away, and the hero wizard teleported him right back (it was a Mutants and Masterminds fantasy game, so the magic was more freeform).
So...I encourage out-of-the-box fun. There is a limit (the ricocheting bullet, for example), but being sensible people, I'm pretty sure we'll know when "cool" turns in to "stupid".