The “Peasant Railgun” is No Longer Possible in DnD 2024
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If you’re a longtime Dungeons & Dragons fan and have spent any time scrolling social media, chances are you’ve come across the infamous Peasant Railgun concept. Originating in an online forum discussion, it’s a theoretical rules exploit around the Ready action that allows players to line up thousands of commoners and turn a simple broken down ladder into a deadly ranged weapon that can fire faster than the speed of sound and deliver enough damage to obliterate an army of dragons.
While the Peasant Railgun is a hilarious concept rather than something that might actually be used at the table, it’s also an example of how easy it is to bend the rules of DnD 5e as written. Fortunately (or unfortunately for players looking to raise an army of projectile hurling commoners) the Peasant Railgun is no longer possible thanks to a simple yet significant rules clarification in the new 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide.
So what is the Peasant Railgun in DnD 5e and why is it no longer possible in the new 2024 rules? Below, we launch into all the details.
What is the Peasant Railgun?
The “Peasant Railgun” is a humorous and unofficial exploit in Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition that plays on the game’s turn-based mechanics and rules around actions and object interactions. In the current DnD 5e rules, passing an object from one character to another is generally considered a free action, with no strict limits on how many times it can occur in a turn. Since each turn in combat lasts exactly six seconds, and there is no established cap on the number of characters who can perform an action sequentially within those seconds, the Peasant Railgun theoretically allows for absurd projectile speeds that deliver incredible damage and would be impossible under the normal laws of physics.
The concept – which originated in a now deleted 2008 thread on 4Chan – involves forming a line of thousands of peasants that’s at least two miles long (in the original post, they suggested using Commoners with minimal combat stats). This works out to a little over 2,000 peasants, with each individual taking up a five foot square.
The peasants would then break down a simple ladder into two ten-foot wooden poles, handing one of the poles to the peasant at the back of line and one to the peasant at the front. In the first round of combat, the peasant at the front of the line would Ready an action to throw. Every peasant behind him would then Ready an action to hand the pole to the peasant in front of him.
In the next round, then peasants then fire off their Readied actions, passing the pole two miles down the line. Because a round is only six seconds but the line is over 2 miles long, this means the pole would accelerate to a speed of Mach 1.5 (or roughly 1,200 miles an hour). Using the Falling Object rule (which dictates how much damage an object delivers based on its speed), a single Peasant Railgun projectile could therefore potentially deliver around 300d6 damage in a single shot. For context, the dragon goddess Tiamat has about 1,200 hit points, so a few good hits from a Peasant Railgun would be more than enough to kill even a legendary BBEG.
Why is the Peasant Railgun no longer possible in DnD 2024?
On Page 19 of the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide under the section entitled “Players Exploiting the Rules,” Wizards of the Coast actually alludes to the oft-cited Peasant Railgun, noting:
Rules Aren’t Physics. The rules of the game are meant to provide a fun game experience, not to describe the laws of physics in the worlds of D&D, let alone the real world. Don’t let players argue that a bucket brigade of ordinary people can accelerate a spear to light speed by all using the Ready action to pass the spear to the next person in line. The Ready action facilitates heroic action; it doesn’t define the physical limitations of what can happen in a 6-second combat round.
This is something that hasn’t ever appeared in any previous rules, but is an important clarification that essential closes the loophole on the Peasant Railgun and makes it clear that rules (particularly as they pertain to the laws of physics) are meant to be interpreted by the Dungeon Master and not taken as gospel.
Final Thoughts
While Peasant Railgun is a hilarious piece of DnD fan discussion and not something that’s likely to be used during an adventure (no matter how awesome it may be) it is a great example of how the rules and creative play can often lead to friction. It’s a loophole that Wizards of the Coast has now tried to close in the new 2024 rules. So for aspiring players looking to build their own Peasant Railgun in 2024, you’ll have to find some other use for your ladder and army of commoners.
You can find more information on the new rules in the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide, which is available now on D&D Beyond and Amazon.
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Cameron Nichols is a Senior Editor who lives in Boston, Massachusetts, and has been playing D&D since the early 90s, when he was introduced by his older brother and cut his teeth on AD&D 2nd Edition. Since then he’s played virtually every RPG he could get his nerdy little mitts on (including a weird Goth phase in the early 2000s when he rocked Vampire: The Masquerade pretty hard). His favorite D&D campaign setting is the Forgotten Realms and his favorite character to play was a Half-Orc Barbarian named Grug (who was unfortunately devoured by a gelatinous cube).
