Moral of the story: Every magic item is as broken as the Dungeon Master allows it to be! Yes, this does get pretty unhinged by the end. But isn’t that the true spirit of D&D? 😅 Let me know your thoughts on all of the above! Cheers.
well as someone who knows a fair bit about ships I can tell you a hole that small under the waterline is not that big of a deal on a galleon size ship but the guy who used the rod is probably not getting it back because in addition to the reflexes to grab it he also has to keep the water pressure from turning into a missile when he hits the button. Also a pirate without a ring of water breathing?
Coat an immovable rod with sovereign glue, let it get close to setting and push it into the back of a baddie in the vertical position and activate rod. Your very own Saw game. Win or die, you decide.
Immovable rod is anchored to the planet as a reference so that last example wouldn't have worked otherwise it'd anchor like that any other time it's used and kill everything around it.
See; there is a single, basic premise made in their logic that completely invalidates their entire argument. Yes, this world is about as large as Earth, but there’s one key difference: this world is flat! That’s why it’s the *plane* of existence? How does that work exactly? Magic; that’s how!
@golbez1583 well assuming standard dnd settings such as Forgotten Realms, Toril is a planet like earth and regular physics can be assumed to work unless otherwise stated. (Note: changing physics tends to create other player exploits, a few poor final bosses have lost their lives to creative players with better grasp of Newtonian physics then the DM)
Plus it can never be used for anything else at that point. If the immovable rod uses the universe and not the planet as a reference point, then it could only function as a projectile.
its better for the GM to let the rod be fixed into a position in 3d space then if you make the planet move and sun move and galaxy move then your never getting the rod back it would leave the orbit of the planet in a few seconds and never be seen again
Yeah, if that last example worked, then the exampke with the pirate ship wouldn't have worked. If the lurate ship example worked, then it means the rod locks itself in a position relative to the planet's core, meaning it travels with the planets rotation. If the orbital strategy worked, then the rod would basically be unuseable because it would sanic away every time you pressed the button
In a joke oneshot, my players entered the workshop of an insane artificer who'd made tons of humorously useless magic items. One of which was the immovable shield. It had no switch off mode and permanently inconvenience hovered in the middle of the hallway half-blocking one of the main doors.
@@goldenbananas1389 Go for it. There was also the sword of findel bane. (Good luck finding out what a findel is) The fork of spooning (a fork you can eat soup with) The ring of teleportation (the ring teleports without the wearer) The cloak of invisibility (makes you invisible as long as no one is looking) The boots of blinding speed (once a day doubles your movement for a round but blinds you at the same time. Idea stolen from Morrowind) Clogs of haste (once a turn as an action, click your heals to gain an action)
@@LamirLakantry "The cloak of invisibility (makes you invisible as long as no one is looking)" Missed opportunity: You could have had it so that the cloak turns invisible when donned, but not the wearer.
@@I_Art_Laughing”HAH you think you’re in a galaxy right now?! The world which you perceive is currently taking place inside of the magic orb of an eldritch deity; the greater workings of which are purely simulated to appease the minor intelligences that reside within it. You are merely a mote of dust in a grander but equally insignificant glass ball, collecting dust on a shelf in a realm beyond your imagination!”
@@ekothesilent9456 simulated physics are just as good to my existence as real physics. It's not how the rules are enforced that matters it's THAT the rules are enforced.
The last scenario makes the rod utterly useless as an immovable rod, and so this simply does not happen The rest are just players being inventive and I would allow them to, mostly they would work, sometimes an enemy would be expecting this ...
Planets are also moving in space and not just rotating and solar systems are also moving around the centers of their galaxy. So if an immovable rod worked like that then it would either fly off into space or destroy everything in it's way until it hit enough force to deactivate it. In my opinion, the immovable rod is set in place to the perceptual vision of immovable to the person who places it. Other wise it would be called the exploding hand rod as it exploded out of your hand at thousands of miles an hour everytime you pushed the button.
@@Crucio78 If in your world Einsteinian relativity works, the first question to ask is, realtive to what? We are moving a 0km/h relative to a small dog sleep in Geneva, why is that less important than a groblank in the city of Melokvant on Kepler22b ...
@@Crucio78 That is an excellent excuse for this to now work. Alternatively another reasoning for why you wouldn't let it work is that you can declare that the material plane doesn't work the same way the Earth does. Perhaps the Sun in actually a portal to the plane of fire that orbits the planet, or that the god Apollo drives the Sun across the sky.
With that last example, remember that the planet is also moving through space, not just around its star, but also around its galactic center. If the immovable rod worked the way this player wanted, then each rod would be usable only once before instantly disappearing into the depths of space or being destroyed as it smashes into the planet's surface. Doesn't seem like an item any wizard would bother to make.
yeah if it is like anchored to some mystic "universal center" then it could just shoot off near the speed of light and make an explosion around 80-100 fat man nukes in force. lol
This is d&d, and while the motion of the planet around the Sun would effect the results, depending on the plane of reference of the rod, the stars do not move in relation to each other in the d&d universe. The stars are each surrounded by a crystal sphere that blocks movement out of the local area, unless you have the proper magical items.
yeah i was going to mention this, what happened to the rod would heavily depend on what plane of existence you were on, since D&D functions on almost vedic-like cosmology, the universe runs by different rules.@@jamesraykenney
Player 1: GM: "Oookay... this is different from how Immovable Rods usually work in this plane of existence - but if you insist, I'll allow it. Are you really sure that's what you want?" Player 1: "Hell yeah!" GM: "Okay... so as you click the button, the first thing you notice is a spray of pink mist and a streak of fire emanating from your hand due west - then a sharp pain shoots up your arm. You take... (rolls) 12 points of bludgeoning damage and 4 points of fire damage. As the pink mist settles to the ground, you notice that your fingers are no more - the rod must have taken them right off your hand, and either taken them with it or just straight atomized them. Oh, and as for the Tarasque, make a DC 30 Survival check to see if you are in fact precisely due east of the creature, and exactly at the same altitude." ... (1 in-game day later) ... GM: "While you're sitting at the inn, waiting for your contact - I need everyone to roll a D20 for me. Just a plain roll, this is just a matter of luck." Player 2: "Uh... okay... that wasn't so good. A nat 1 here." GM: "Nice! So... Suddenly, without any warning whatsoever, a streak of fire shoots through the commons room as the eastern and western walls explode with a deafening crack! There is no time to react, and Player 2 - you, having fumbled this roll, happen to sit right in the path of the fiery streak, taking 300d6 points of bludgeoning damage... do you insist that I roll for the damage, or shall we just call it 'more than enough'?"
@@GalvTheImpressive It wouldn't even work like that because the planet is also moving through space around the star, so it'd leave the atmosphere before a full day occurred. It also wouldn't come back in a year because the solar system is rotating around the galaxy and the galaxy is moving through space as well. IF it's just like Earth or our universe.
ehh the first one yes. the second one - the rod would be 1 day's orbital rotation around the planet's star away and 1 day's worth of the star's rotation around its galaxy's center, 1 day's worth of the galaxy's movement etc. it wouldn't be anywhere close in the same plane of space.
@@MrNb22 The player, by arguing "as long as I'm on the same elevation as the Tarasque and due east, the Immovable Rod should strike it", clearly establishes a frame of reference that, while not rotating with the planet, is still co-moving with the planet as a whole. Otherwise this method of aiming at the Tarasque wouldn't work either. So if that's what they insist on - that's exactly what I'll give them. Who am I to argue with the rules of magic.
It strikes the beast/ground/air with such force that it heats the air around it to thousands of degrees and kills you all. If it hits the ground, the resulting explosion causes a nuclear winter. Or did you think I didn't take physics? *Smirks at idiot player*
I GMd a party trying to escape from the underdark, they polymorphed into giant eagle, flew 55 minutes, planted the rod and tied ropes to suspend themselves long enough to short rest before continuing
I would only ever allow the 'Orbital Strike' Immovable rod, to be a 'cursed' immovable rod, and completely indistinguishable from a 'true' immovable rod (which works on a geo-reference frame) until activated. It would probably be known in-game as the Extremely Movable Rod.
So, first time it is activated it becomes a supersonic rod, orbiting the planet once every 24 hours on the same course at ground level. I guess that could be rather catastrophic depending on what else it intersects.
@TheAgamemnon911 hey, if you're gonna claim any reference frame outside of earth the only one I've accepting is a universal reference frame. It's still gonna do damage to anything along the way.
@@Gr3nadgr3gory You wouldn't see it again in that situation because you wouldn't see anything again after that incident. I cannot even describe for you how titanic an explosion would result from an object moving through an Earthlike atmosphere at (ballpark figure) Mach 758.
Right?! On the first one that hole isn't going to do jack in any meaningful time frame. For the second.. he can just scoot to the side? Unless you've stabbed it into their body it isn't going to stop them getting out. Maybe make it take an extra 5ft of movement to standup form prone and then difficult terrain in that square until the rod is deactivated. The last one doesn't make any sense or work in anyway so it can just be ignored. I know it's just a fun video but definitely makes me less likely to trust his rules interpretations going forward.
90% of the time, "This magic item BREAKS your campaigns!" stories are, in fact, stories about stupid and hasty homebrews (especially ones where the player runs the scene, not the DM) breaking your campaign, not the magic item itself.
In every example the Player defines the physics of the world and not the GM. He self and not the rod is his problem. Neither the ship nor the Tarrasque example should work.
@@Holo121 I mean, with the second one he did say he put all of his weight on it before activating the rod this would mean that it would be pressed into his skin at the very least.
My group is full of a bunch of aerospace engineers and the DM specializes in astrodynamics so when we got the immovable rod we had to choose at that point which reference frame to fix it and then we could not change it later. So you essentially had to choose whether you were going to have a super-weapon or something that would be useful in a number of situations
Nice! If I used this item I think I would say the reference point is fixed to the nearest local apparent "ground" and call it there - activate it riding an airship, it stays stationary relative to the airship
I had similar idea, accept the I thought it could become immovable in relation to an object you can see at the time of its activation within some distance to prevent locking onto stars or other planets. I think this is great thing, that might even let you save friend from falling, or create carrying handle, or greap to hold onto something. Also great group for DND.
You can make it at rest in the inertial comoving frame of the player at the moment of activation. Although it will drift due to centrifugal force. On the equator of the Earth the acceleration is 0.033 m/s², so it will rise 3 m in about 13s (neglecting coriolis)
6:54 fun fact: pathfinder has a variation of the immovable rod called the "immovable arm" which seems to be made exactly for this purpose. It is, as the name says, a prosthetic arm with an immovable rod worked into it. It even has rules to discover the button!
The rod assumes that the point of reference for its lack of movement is the planet, so the rod and the terrasque are both being carried by the planet at the same speed. So the last scenario obviously cannot work.
Yeah I would assume this is a “one time use rod” as the players are not gonna be able to catch the rod after it’s used. It depends on how you rule it. Earth is also moving through space very quickly as it rotates around the sun and our sun moves through space as it moves with our galaxy which is also moving. If you wanted to you could just rule, “you didn’t account for the movement of celestial bodies and the rod rips through you at 1.3 million miles an hour”
I am setting the rule that the point of reference for the rod is the person who pushes the button at the moment they press it. This opens up its own can of worms, but would need a lot more interesting thought on the part of the players to do horrible things with.
@@bearnaff9387 That would mean the rod simply follows the player to stay exactly where it was in relation to the player when he used it, making it mostly useless.
@@TroySavary Not quite? This formulation of the rod would adopt the straight-line movement of the user at the moment they pushed the button. Absent the space-bending effects of gravity, all movement is basically in straight lines, with net movement effected by gravity and, y'know, other objects. I probably won't adopt this version of the Immovable Rod after all, since no one wants to really measure complex velocity to figure out if the rod is moving relative to its surroundings.
Milkbeard might have had the rod pinning him down, but the shallow water terrain of an ocean implies that what is beneath him is sand, which is very easy to dig out, slipping out from under the rod, therefore saving him from drowning.
The breath holding time is 1 + CON modifier minutes (minimum of 30 seconds). Assuming Milkbeard is a bandit captain, he has a CON modifier of +2, so that is 3 minutes, or 30 rounds. Additionally, after Milkbeard starts suffocating, he has a number of turns equal to his CON modifier before he drops to 0 hit points, giving him 32 rounds. Unless Milkbeard is alone in the encounter, that shouldn't be overpowering.
DND also doesn't just let you willy nilly apply the restrained condition. It's a powerful, and difficult condition. If a 500lb 27str barb grapples a 10lb 1 star gnome... The gnome is grappled with 0 movement speed, but is not restrained. The idea this rod would give the restrained condition is laughable. Secondly "I get behind him" how? Rounds are simultaneously taken. The NPC just turns with you. Also no check to try to plant the rod? Also forgetting that irl if there was a rod placed almost anywhere on your body, you'd be able to squeeze out in seconds because we're made of flesh and bone, not rock. This entire video is just terrible dming.
@@TheeDuelistNW I wouldn't call it terrible DMing, the DM may just be inexperienced. Either way, the player is taking advantage of the DM's lack in a way that is unsporting.
@@fenixmeaney6170 I would say a ruling that neither makes sense in the real world, a magical world, or RAW. That breaks the game and the story = terrible DMing
@@TheeDuelistNW”dnd doesn’t let you Willy-Nilly apply the restrained condition” Web (2nd level spell): “Each creature that starts its turn in the webs or that enters them during its turn must make a Dexterity saving throw. On a failed save, the creature is restrained as long as it remains in the webs or until it breaks free.” Snare (1st level spell able to be cast by Druid, ranger, artificer, and wizard): “The trap triggers when a Small creature or larger moves into the area protected by the spell. The triggering creature must succeed on a Dexterity saving throw or fall prone and be hoisted into the air until it hangs upside down 3 feet above the protected surface, where it is restrained.” Net (ITEM IN THE PHB): “A Large or smaller creature hit by a net is restrained until it is freed” If a martial weapon can restrain a creature, I’d wager an uncommon magic item could do the same. There are in fact rules for flanking, so there is a precedent for being behind an enemy Furthermore, being pinned down, an immovable object COULD keep you restrained, particularly if it was placed under your chin so that it would slightly press down on your neck. It may be possible to shimmy out from the sides, but the design of the rod in the official art would prevent that as well. Trying to slide upwards would get stopped by your collarbone, going down would be stopped by your chin. HOWEVER, pinning a creature down is an ability exclusive to the grappler feat (which also mentions both characters are restrained until the grapple ends “You can use your action to try to pin a creature grappled by you. To do so, make another grapple check. If you succeed, you and the creature are both restrained until the grapple ends”) so this situation could not happen without some sort of opposed roll. Also, nothing is stopping milkbeard from just pushing the button and becoming free again.
9:11 they are immune to bludgeoning from nonmagic WEAPONS, as the DM you can simply say that since the immovable rod is labeled a magic ITEM and not a magic WEAPON it would be immune to the damage
Even better. The rod just sat there, doing nothing. The Tarrasque just ran into an object at 9000 feet/second. Therefor it doesn't matter if said object was magical, as there is nothing magical about running into a wall. That's just physics. Also the rod is now destroyed, because it too just took 360d6 damage.
Or: you only asked about the lenght of the day, not where the sun rises. Turns out this world rotates in the opposit direction compared to earth. You get impailed by your own rod and are k!lled immediately as your courps flys away, making resurection impossible. Roll up a new character. And given the obvious danger of this Item, as just demonstrated by your dea!h, a new law has been passed, declaring this item to be to dangerous for civilian use, thus all immoveable rods are now banned in this world and it is basically impossible to get one.
The prime material plane is flat. Or if you game is on a moving planet. Then (said to player) "the wizard that enchanted the rod is smarter than your dumbass and made it work in Geo stationary reference frame.
Nah. The rod is fixed in space. If we allow planets, we have to have spacetime. Planets pull spacetime with them as they rotate. It's called frame dragging. The rod is, by dm fiat, using this effect along with the acceleration of gravity to calculate its relative position to the planet and continues to just hang in place like it says in the description. It will do the same on any planet or plane based on the gravity and direction of frame dragging, if any. In microgravity it will use the nearest mass at the time of activation and fix itself relative to that. This will always be the largest creature/object touching the rod at the moment of activation. Or, tl;Dr, if it could do that it wouldn't work as described so no. Because magic. Less satisfying but still fine. Especially for dms who don't want to be bothered by physics.
PS: frame dragging occurs when any massive object, like your mom, moves through space. Don't be offended. It's literally true. You, a house fly. If it has any mass it drags. Also, your mom.
the rod doesn’t move, that’s it’s hole thing…. You click it and it stays in place relative to the world Also, Tarrasque is immune to non magical damage So even if the planet would rotate away under the rod, our just loose the rod and someone will find it at the side of a mountain somewhere
That second scenario is absolutely fair though. I mean 1) it's really hard to make it work on anything bigger than medium 2) the enemy could have an alternate way to escape that doesn't involve moving the rod 3)players had to invest their entire turn and an action surge 4) player had to win a grapple contest 5) a pirate king would definitely have a crew
Really creative players could even capture him alive, force him to tell where he hid his treasure then give him a fate worse than death. You know, make sure that everyone knows about this humiliating defeat, make him watch as his empire crumbles and his most loyal followers turn against him and those who used to tremble at the mere sound of his name now throw rotten eggs at his cage
The ground being wet also suggests that the ground is probably a softer surface like sand, that could be shifted. Also, yes, general dexterity save to wriggle out of the pin is fine. Maybe take a point of damage from the scrape
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 What if the tip of the rod was tied to a dagger and so the actual body of the rod would go inside the person's flesh after pushing it in. Taking 1d6 after raking themselves out of that sounds too generous, not to mention the mental scarring after the realization of what they'd need to do in order to escape.
Worst trouble an Immovable Rod got my group into was an at sea portion of an Eberron campaign and they were fighting enemies in the lower decks when someone had the bright idea to pop their rod. Since the ship was moving at full sail, the ship's interior walls promptly started bashing into the rod, shredding the thin wood walls like paper, with the rod's owner wedged nicely between them as it was happening. He was a warforged that was beefy enough to survive going through a few wood walls, but eventually the rod and himself blew through the aft of the ship and he was left clinging to the rod as the ship sailed away. He barely managed to keep clearing his slowly increasing strength checks until the party finished off the enemies and got the ship to circle back to retrieve his tin can butt.
I like the idea that the rod adopts the frame of reference of the user, so "immovable" simply means it continues with the momentum the player has at a round of 0 movement.
I'll run towards the ravine holding my immovable rod high and a couple of steps from the edge I activate it and pull myself up holding on to the rod, flying over the ravine and land behind the enemy guards who have not seen me since it is night. DM: the other side of the ravine is 5 feet higher. They might be minions, but they do know the value of high ground. You need to roll to see if you manage to not just smack into the rock face and fall into the waters below.
Like thor's hammer, imo, it wouldn't destroy a ship when "activated", it would just stay still as if unaffected by gravity. Thor's hammer didn't blast through the Helicarrier when he used it to stop Hulk in the movies.
@@SpaceDogLaika I mean Thor's Hammer is different to the immovable rod though. Mjolnir can't float in place, and it's more so that it actually just enhances gravity to those "not worthy".
Or if it is a human You stuff it in the persons mouth and activate it And get the barbarian to pull their legs I call it The say goodbye to your neck as if you force it in that area it’s basically a insta kill action
I once let a PC replace the handle for his tower shield with a 1 ft immovable rod. He built a big spike on the front, focused on tripping attacks, and used his shield to basically pin them and activate the button. He was unstoppable, an eldritch knight, and eventually through magic items he could misty step and had gauntlets of ogre's strength. It was fun.
yea using it for combat tricks is something i'd want to encourage, that's some creative play, and being able to use your action to lock down one enemy isn't going to destroy balance.
glad to see my idea of a spiked immovable shield isn't unique. Very nice take using a tower shield too. Mine was two bucklers. Monkey bars to "climb through air" to then dive bomb unaware mobs was amazing.
@@mrosskne Regularly wasting a powerful magic item is fun, especially if the rest of the party also see it and want to get it from you. I had a character have his ability to do magic removed and turned into a ruby that stored a substantial amount of spells, I couldn't use em and as it happened to glow I put it in a lantern, or occasionally used it to make my beer glow red.
Simple: When the rod is subject to more than 8,000lbs of pressure at once, it immediately snaps out of its position. If it's a gradual pressure, it will hold until breaking eventually, but if it's an immediate amount of pressure like impacting a moving ship or getting swiped by a dragon's talons, it doesn't get a chance to apply any meaningful pushback. The last example would require a lot of retconning on the item's usage, because you wouldn't be able to use it for *anything* else unless you want it to go flying off with the planet's rotation. No holding doors closed, no makeshift ladders, no impromptu barricades... as soon as that button is pressed, it shoots off into space. And that's another thing too: There was no consideration for the planet's orbit around the sun, just the rod's orbit around the planet. The rod will either shoot upwards as the planet leaves the spot it was frozen in place, or shoot downwards as the planet collides with its point in space and applies well over the pressure threshold for it.
The last example ignores that in DND the prime material plane is a Litteral plane. It am unmoving flat space. If you were on a moving planner then the wizard would have KDE the rod work in a Geo stationary reference. As of doing so would have made it useless.
So, what you are saying is when someone tries to pull the last one you have an explanation that excludes that option but allows most creative uses like "Unfortunately that would not work because the magic used to create the rod simply affects the gravity of the plain it is on to create an immovable point in relation to the primary gravity field present. So while it is stationary in relation to the plane it is on." This allows the stationary torpedo option without allowing use of the planet as a weapon.
@@darkpheonix77 Not true actually, the Forgotten Realms take place on Toril, an Earth like planet. But yeah the Rod clearly locks it's motion relevant to the planet.
The ship example is probably fine; it'd be surprising if a single plank, especially in the stern, had a yield strength such that 4 tons wouldn't dislodge it. The mistake was thinking removing a single plank is enough to sink a large seaworthy vessel; they're going to have pumps, and they're going to have materials to effect basic repairs.
@@darkpheonix77 The Prime Material might be a plane in the same sense that the universe is flat but the spheres within that contain the planets that things occur on are not necessarily, themselves, flat. Of course now that they've nixed the phlogiston separating spheres (and, honestly, I have no idea if crystal spheres are even a thing in the official lore regardless of how much sense it made) and half joined the Astral and Prime Material planes I don't even know what planar distinctions even mean. Which means, of course, that DM fiat wins out.
Great video! So hilarious you covered this item. I'm currently at the end of the third party campaign "Call From The Deep" and the Bard of the group took this item. We all raised out eyebrows because it seemed so random. I believe the DM let the length be 3 feet. I can't remember the exact details, but I believe he attached the rod to the ship's anchor, activated the rod, dropped said anchor and caused our ship to do an almost instant u-turn to which we were able to wreck the other ship. It was such an amazing sequence of events. So many uses for the item when you actually think about it.
in an underdark campaign I was given two rods, I had wrist straps for both and would use them like monkey bars. My favourite usage however, was to find the highest ceiling caverns to long rest in, as I would rig up hammocks for the party 30ft in the air in the pitch black 😀(they were made of rock coloured fabric)
I'm in a homebrew Spell Jammer game. One of the most heavily defended section of our ship is where we keep the runed glass casing of the "Non-consensual Emergency Brake" and there been a couple of ships that have seen its wrath. The DM might have come to regret my starting magic item I believe.
@@renookami4651 The name kind of stuck after I used it for the first time while aboard an enemy ship. I think I said something along the lines of "as I hop on my mount in the docking bay I activate the non-consensual emergency break!"
This is reminding me heavily of a certain Mel Brooks movie. I'm guessing the only time you use the "non-consensual emergency brake" is when you have to stop after going straight to... LUDICROUS SPEED!
On the Tarrasque: "You damned well know that's not what the game creators meant by being fixed in space. Try to Rules Lawyer me again and your character is facing an unstatted deity"
I'd say this reading of "fixed in space" opens the player to a monkey's paw wish. The planet isn't just spinning around it's axis in a circle around the star, it's spiraling around the star as the star spirals around the galaxy's center, which is likely also moving through space in the universe, so the rod is just as likely to slam down into the ground or off into the atmosphere as it is hit the Tarrasque, depending on the relative movement of everything through space. So roll a d4, 1- the rod hits the Tarrasque as intended, 2- the rod falls to the ground and stops moving as the planet has more than 8,000 pounds of force behind it, 3- the rod flies off into the sky in a random direction, or 4- the rod flies off in the direction of the player, catching them and immediately launching them into space if they weight less than 8,000 pounds.
@@KAPsub2 An Immovable rod may become "immovable" but is it impervious to damage? The shell of a tarrasque is notoriously hard (in what most call first ed- needed a +5 weapon to hurt it, or was that the shell could be used to make a +5 weapon or armor, also it might have required a wish to make it stay dead). A little wear and tear from previous "overuse" and zipping along to crash into something made of a much harder material would simply destroy the rod with little notice from the tarrasque. Heck the first example of sinking a ship may also seriously damage the rod and it might become a rod of "maybe it's" immovable.
@@sertandoom4693 The 5e tarrasque is immune to nonmagical bludgeoning damage, so a magic rod should suffice to damage it in this edition. If we're talking about previous editions, resistance used to be damage reduction (for example DR 20 means it takes -20 damage from weapon attacks), but depending on the enchantment bonus and resistance, that DR can be ignored (so a +3 magic item counts as silver for like werewolves, even if it isn't actually made of silver). Similarly, magic items have higher hardness and hit points in comparison to their nonmagic counterparts, so the rod is more durable than a normal rod and would still deal damage before it breaks
@@KAPsub2 But is there a difference between a magic "item" and a "magic weapon"? If "it just has to be magic" then that is the rules related problem that gives a DM nightmares since many things are "magic" and most if not all can with "some" creative argument be used to stop pretty much anything. (I'd suspect that the rod would have a lower hardness than a magic weapon) In any case I'd rule that the max damage that the rod will do will be the max damage it can take after which it breaks (remember player has been abusing it and it likely already has damage). In "first Ed" if you didn't have that +5 weapon to hit something that needed a +5 weapon to hit you could put all the force you want behind it- nothing would happen- it was meant as the ultimate monster which I seem to recall reflecting spells. The end of a campaign monster where the party and the rest of the setting could die or the party wins and retires(those who make it). Just had a thought- wasn't the Tarrasque a size large? A human sized person pushing the button on a rod to use like this might need to aim higher or "zip right under him- The tarrasque pause for a second as it feels a breezy pass between it's legs"
@@sertandoom4693 The Tarrasque is the largest size category, which is why the player moved to a location at the same elevation as its head. The damage immunities for it say "from nonmagical attacks", which doesn't specify it has to be a weapon, but that argument makes sense. 1st edition seems to say it's immune to weapons that aren't at least +1 enchanted, while 3rd edition has DR 25/+5, meaning that you can hurt it you do more than 25 damage or if your weapon is at least +5 enchanted. As for the rod breaking, the broken pieces will still deal damage. Like a bullet that shatters after impact will still deal damage beyond the damage it had already done before breaking. The amount of damage will depend on how deep it needs to penetrate to fatally wound a creature, but dnd is not that specific and would be the wrong game system to use if you want to get that in the weeds with things.
Reminds me of the time I salmon laddered with my immovable rod over a castle wall... All the guards could see, they were just massively confused why I didn't just use the gate.
A barbarian trained in stealth due to his background and 2 immovable rods is a great part of any entry team. Then they just lift the noddle armed casters up.
@@dreww2647 Only one if you're willing to make it a series of dex/athletics check. Pull yourself up, deactivate it and lift it up, activate it at a higher place. Over and over until you're as high as you want to be. Lots of relatively easy checks, with the only consequence of failing being that you lose some progress. Of course, only to be acted once you agree with your DM that this is how it can be done.
My favorite Immovable Rod invention I've created was Dragon Ripper arrows. Basically, an ImRod with fletching, a good arrowhead, and a pressure switch over the button. You fire it at a flying dragon. Assuming you hit, it penetrates the dragon's wing or underbelly, its flesh activates the rod when it's nearly fully in, and the rod suddenly stops in the air. The dragon then has all of its flying momentum tearing against the rod, gutting it instantly.
I like it! Of course, if it hits the dragon on the tip of the tail, dragon will be annoyed and the arrow will stay in that spot in the air for the rest of time...
The best use of an immovable rod is the one for which it was obviously designed but no player ever uses it for. Construction material relativistically locked rebar to be specific. Didn’t you ever wonder how they supported all those wizard towers with their floors separated by open air with unconnected steps forming the stairs between them?
Most of these issues are easily resolvable. 1, Below the waterline activation. a) the rod is embedded in the hull and cannot be removed easily. It will delay the sinking but not by much, the rod may well sink with the ship. b) Impalement may cause the button to be depressed deactivating it, or get buried in the hull and become undeactivatable temporarily I(see 1a). 2. Rod on pirates back. a) The rod wont move but the sand beneath the pirate will, the pirate wriggles free. b) The pirate is pinned in place but wriggles free anyway at the cost of heavy damage to himself. In both cases the pirate is still liable for a coup de grace, so use of the rod is valid, that being said the set up requires several actions and would likely require a rogue to pull off, who could just backstab instead. 3. Using rod for pit traps. This is valid and is what the rod is there to do. You have to be able to hold onto the rod though. 4. Cheating at arm wrestling You have braced your wrist against an immovable object, that is bad posturing as the barbarian is now leveraged full force focused against your wrist. If the cheat does not win the arm wrestle outright their wrist will likely be broken. 5. Cavalry trap. a) Use cheese wire, it is cheaper covers a wider area and more effective. It is also near invisible. b) The second cavalryman gets the expensive rod. 6. Pulley hoist. Another valid standard use of the rod as Gygax intended. 7. Bludgeoning damage bullshit. This simply does not work. Yes planets spin but the rod spins with the planet, it is immobile but relative to the planets position. This feature cannot be turned on or off. If you were to allow this then ANY activation of the rod will result in the user holding onto an object that suddenly accelerates to ridiculous speeds. Each any every attempt to use the rod will result in the user losing their hand to a spray of red mist, and also being subsequently unable to recover the rod because it has gone that way and is leaving fast. Also dependant on orientation it may and eventually will be hurtling into the planet or out into space. The former will destroy the rod the latter make it unrecoverable by anything short of a wish spell. Wording will also be important because the returned rod will otherwise still be moving and in an entirely random direction from the point of view of the user. Assuming the rob is sabotaged/modified to function as a one shot weapon in this way I would allow it, as it would be a clever way to tinker with the item, but it would require a safe trigger for the rod. However facing east will do jack, because the planet is not only spinning it is moving in its solar orbit. Most likely it will miss the terrasque entirely and an adventurer will need to make a very high (DC30?) intelligence test to accurately determine the heading of the planet in its solar orbit to have an opportunity to roll to hit. So the terrasque needs to be due east and the rod must be activated at the exact time of day when the heading of the planet matches the rotational orientation. Any error will result in an automatic miss, otherwise roll to hit as normal. Finally 8000lbs of pressure will not kill the terrasque and this rule means that the rod will disintegrate as it hits the terrasque's hide, lots of damage from the impact, but not enough penetration to lay low a divine monster. Frankly it is the wrong target. I would use a missile modified rod to take out city gates, you can run the maths on that in advance, activate the rod to see the rod and gates explode into fragments. Then send in your army. Also for the record when you add orbital velocity to rotational velocity for an Earth type planet the rod is moving approx 36000mph, not 1000mph, on activation. There is a good chance it will not even reach the gate as a single piece if at all. It would be a very short ranged weapon but potent in the correct circumstances. I assume I can ignore the direction of movement of the solar system, or the galaxy as that would be too distant for the item creators magic to touch. This and related magicks have built in stability if they did not then a hemispheric teleport will result in the traveller appearing upside down and travelling at 1800mph on an Earth equivalent world. This latter scenario is how I was introduced to this problem, and explains why portals need to be anchored with careful magicks. You cant just make a portal, you need to tune and stabilise the portal to stop it becoming a remote offal dispenser.
The captain didn't have to "move the rod" to get out from under it. He can shimmy sideways with a much lower strength check, maybe even taking some small scraping damage if he was laying on rock (if he wasn't, if it was sand or mud under him, the squirming out from underneath should be even easier).
Exactly, the ground under the water will, most likely, be muddy or sandy. An escape check is all that is needed. Or have the Pirate Captain be wearing a ring/amulet of Freedom of Movement. Cannot be restrained.
The player made sure to 'press against him with all my weight' to really dig the rod into the guy's back and pin him to the ground. So for this shimmy to make sense, it would also have to make sense to just shimmy out from under a boot on your neck or a man pinning you to the ground with all his weight in your back. One does not simply shimmy from under an immovable rod. The man has deformed the wet ground beneath him with two men's weight and is barred into this rut by a resistance of 8000lbs. He's stuck guys. Just accept the drowned captain's fate and find a way to deal with the sociopath in the party.
@@wmbtech Yeah. I've actually been caught like that, though not under water. You can't actually get out. [Truck suspension, and a bracket on my back, in case you were curious.]
Both of your examples still include a force being exerted down, once fixed the rod resists the upward force, but whereas if you find a few mm of space to go down, in either case of pinning the downward force would keep the foot/ body in contact. The immovable rod by contrast is immovable. The human body is rounded (and also breathing impacts volume, so moving the center of mass away from the rod, would create space, so it should be possible to slip from under it, in a way isn't true for objects that are obeying normal laws of physics. It's possible to envisage a scenario where the rod catches in a place that would be inescapable, but considering that activating the rod takes the action from action surge any positioning of the rod in this case has the mechanical power of an object interaction, it wasn't positioned with the force of an attack or a grapple, so assuming it catches in such a place feels flawed.
For the Tarrasque scenario, I deliberately gave my players a "broken" and "not quite immovable" rod that behaved exactly as described in the video. The NPC that gave it to the players made it clear that it was malfunctioning, and if activated, it would basically become a rail gun. Watching my players walk around with a howitzer in their back pockets and wondering when to use it was a delight.
@@Steelrat1994 When there find it with that note then good for the creator to have the Good reference frame :) When he defined it as stationary to the Universe the rod can never be found on that planet, or when the reference frame was the Sun it plumeted into the Earth at 30kps. Both are interesting Results :)
I had a similar thing. but it required my players to recite a speech similar to the 'Holy Handgrenade' one before it launched. Each line was 1d10 of damage. It launched as soon as one of the players using it laughed. They got five out of ten in, but got sweet rolls of 8-10 on them so the BBEG took a good hit.
Tarrasque scenario A tarrasque is immune to nonmagical bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage and also the rod would be gone any other time they used it and also also a tarrasque is heavier than 8000 pounds
I love creative uses to items, the immovable rod isn't a problem, it's the funnest solution. Locking an opponent underwater is a creative way to kill a boss for sure and should be encouraged.
It's definitely fun, but I could see how some players would feel left out in that situation. Some people want to contribute to the fight and if 90% of a climactic encounter was solved by one member, then I imagine some people could feel jipped. I'd be cool with it, because it's an insanely novel and funny. It would get lame if every boss was cheesed with the IR, though.
@@NicholasW943 Exactly, it's an idea worth rewarding, but making it a one hit boss kill is too much imo. Like the captain realising they're defeated and using sending or other nonverbal communication to bargain their life or destroying the ground beneath them with magic to escape but dealing a significant amount of damage to themselves. Managing fun player ideas is like playing with kids, you don't want to be a buzzkill, but you're the responsible one. Edit: typo 😅
Or just have him do a dex check to move out from under the rod. Nothing says he must be completely pinned. Just that the rod itself can't be moved@@sarowie
In a campaign setting where it was just floating islands above a sea of clouds, I came up with the scheme of creating a base beneath an island by using Immovable Rods as mounting points for scaffold to work on the structure. That was how my party had a secret base directly beneath the capital city island, started with Immovable Rods XD
Simple solution. "so if we allow it to do this to the tarrasque, the god of time will have to rewrite history since you changed the dynamics of the rod, as such all your enemies you killed with it, will come back to life, and all the allies you saved with it, will be placed back in their prediciment. there is also a hidden DC on a D100 that you have to roll, I will tell you if the rod stays or not. (the dc is 100) if it is vanished away, you must 1v1 the tarrasque, and seeing as all the loot you got was a direct effect of the rods use, you will be using just starting class equipment. do you wish to roll the d100, or put that rod back in your bag of holding good sir?"
I gotta speak up as a DM and say that every one of these except for the last one (which wouldn't work, RAW) are rad as hell, and I would give my players points of inspiration for thinking of them. Using it as a pulley? Hell yeah!
Then again, if he used the rod to pierce the hull, that means the ship and the rod move separately. So pinning them down under water wouldn’t work as the ship is moving down and it would just create space in a second for him to slip out. These scenarios assume two different things. First, the rod doesn’t move with the ship and cracks the hull. Second, the rod now moves with the ship and it will remain at a fixed place and as the ship moves, the rod stays in the same place moving with it. The first one would be clever. The second one would not. The third one is impossible as the rod doesn’t work that way and assuming it does in that one case is like the first two scenarios. The way the rod works would have to change to make it work. Lastly, if you’re out in the ocean and you just sank the ship you were on, you’re stranded out at sea. Even if you were doing a boarding action, you’d be stuck below while the rest of the crew of the ship you’re on closes you in the hold and escapes using your ship. There are various ways these just aren’t clever. If your players are outsmarting you with these things, you probably aren’t the best DM for the job.
A friend of mine is running a campaign for my son and his friends. He gave a group of 10-13 year olds, an Immovable Rod that had a command word, instead of a button. I watched, as they rolled high on every persuasion and every deception check, to convince the black dragon that was supposed to kill them (to start the real campaign, an escape from the underworld) to eat their pack horse...with the rod inside...then it flew off...and they...activated the rod... Black Dragon liver was on the menu that night...
As you activate the rod, the resulting sonic boom implodes you as it rockets away toward the terrasque. There is no death save, you are hamburger. The trail of destruction caused by the hypersonic weapon causes fissures in the earth leading to the terrasque. Fortunately, the terrasque succeeds in the DC30 strength check and the path of destruction stops there. After absorbing the initial blow, badly wounded but making a strength save, the terraque moves the rod out of the way and continues forward, leaving the rod to continue its deadly journey across the land. Or just, "Upon activation, the magic of the rod leaves it stationary in the air in front of you. The rod remains gloriously stationary, wowing the rest of your party with its perfect immobility. Everyone else, roll a willpower save. Anyone that fails says, 'Oooohhhhh.' In an impressed tone of voice."
I think for my games, I'm going to account for this by saying that the immovable rod technically moves. It's not possible for an object to be absolutely stationary when all movement is relative. What happens when you press the button on the rod is it becomes locked into the velocity of the person who pushed the button. That means if you activate it on a ship, the rod will travel alongside the ship at the exact same speed as when it was activated. This will only become a problem once the ship changes its speed or direction.
@@54l68l65l20l47l61l6D Ya know what? If someone manages to figure out that you can do that, I'm happy to let them do it. That's much less worrisome than the other game-breaking things players use the rod for and it's pretty creative.
Another generally useful rule of thumb is the reaction the rod has to being overpowered, be that by weight or strength. Instead of assuming it's being muscled into a new position, it's generally better to assume this activates an emergency shutoff and the rod just deactivates.
I've actually seen the last actually come up in play many years ago in 3.5 (in a pick up game I was running at a FLGS). Very similar argument about rotational motion of the planet. If we're playing with real-life physics, he failed to account for revolutions around the solar body and galactic motion of the system. The rod, instead of staying fixed at a certain height with the revolving planet, got yeeted into the air as the planet made it's inexorable journey around the sun. No more worries about that specific item.
The correct answer to the last scenario is either "that's not how the immovable rod works, it stays put relative to the planet", or (my personal preference) "that's not how this world works, this is a fantasy world and geocentrism is true here".
1. The Immovable Rod is staying put relative to the planet in that last scenario. It is not locked to its rotation is all. 2. Whether or not the planet orbits the sun or the sun orbits the planet is irrelevant in this case. Day and night is determined by the rotation of the planet, which is unaffected by whether the world is geocentric or not.
@@burgernthemomrailer Fair enough on 1, I didn't phrase that precisely enough. What I meant was more "relative to the plantary surface". But as for 2, day and night are *not* caused by planetary rotation in a geocentric cosmos, but rather by the orbit of the sun around the earth. Historically, the lack of evidence (at the time) for plantary rotation was one of the major scientific arguments against heliocentrism in the 1600s. Scientists of the day recognized that plantary rotation would produce what we now call Coriolis effects, but (due to limitations of experimental equipment and methodology at the time) no such effects could be detected. Not realizing the results were an artifact of their insufficiently precise tools, scientists of the day concluded earth must not rotate, and thus counted this as evidence for geocentrism. (Theoretically one could posit a geocentric model *with* a rotating earth, but this is not how geocentric models in our own history were conceived, and thus not how my geocentric fantasy worlds work.)
Events that didn't happen: Player: I activate the rod. DM: Okay. As you press the button, a series of morbid thoughts cross your mind. First, you never asked which direction the planet spins. Second, it occurs to you that the planet you're on is also orbiting a star, and that star is moving through the galaxy. You didn't factor this into your plan. Third, when the rod accelerates out of your hand, the friction is going to obliterate your hand, and possibly tear your arm off. Player:.. DM: The rod clatters harmlessly to the ground. Player: What? DM: Yeah. For the rod to come to a standstill, it has to shed all of its momentum. Given the speed you described, it would have to shed way more than 8,000 pounds of force. Wizards will often sell "truly immovable rods" to adventurers as a joke.
Ship example: To grap the rod outside of the hull now gushing with water - DEX DC35 check Melee in shallow water: To be able to pin an opponent down exactly so he cant wiggle sideways from the rod in the middle of combat/brawling - DEX DC35 check Tarrasque example: The Rod is most likely "geo-stationary" thus moving with planets rotation otherwise it cant be used for any of the other examples
Exactly my thought on the first one. Lets them success but with predictable consequences. Tho I would have put it as dc 30. No bigger than the role to move the rod.
So the ship has a hole in it, but it is filled with the rod, no leak. Water will only come in if the rod is removed. When the rod is extended, roll save on the ships hull, if it fails, catastrophic collapse and everyone in the compartment is knocked unconscious and drowns. Not so smart now are your Mr. Player?
The Tarrasque one doesn't really work. If it were the case that the rod being immovable and the planetary rotation would be a factor, if you were to EVER activate it, you would immediately lose it as the planet would move out from under it every time. It has to be geostationary.
Where does the Immovable Rod set its reference point? would the not spin across a rotating planet? Or the rod move off the planet if relative to the local star?
If you have to deal with the last one as all motion is relative and the player has just argued that the ground should not be the reference point you could say that the rod remains stationary with respect to the centre of the solar system or galaxy which probably gives you 2 new directions to send the rod in at even faster speeds (or get the person who sold it to them to demonstrate the rod being immovable with respect to the ground before they buy it)
"You activate the rod. Unfortunately, as the movement of the galaxy in the universe is in the opposite direction that you're facing, the rod immediately rockets through your chest at untold speeds, removing both itself and your heart completely from the game."
Same for the first example. The player wants the rod to be immovable relative not to the ship but to the environment around it. If that's the case, then the rod would be immovable to the universe around it and would immediately move in a random direction at over 100 miles per second. Roll to see if you are in the path of the rod.
galaxy speed 372 miles per second, galaxy rotation speed 130 miles per second, solar system speed 143 miles a second, speed of planet around the sun 18.5 miles a second, rotation of earth between 1000 miles and 800 miles per hour if your between the equator and lest say the UK... so if a person holds the item and hits the button they find themselves not even on a planet within a second. take in to account the air and gasses around them on the planet, the friction of going from earths rotation and speed of everything above to a stationary spot in an instant would rip a person apart down to carbon level. more so when the galaxy goes from 372 miles a second to zero.... would the rod even survive that transition?
I love the immovable rod, and work it into campaigns when I can. It really can be used in fun and clever ways -- I've never run into a case where someone 'abused' it. That use of the rod in a ship was funny, but no way would I have let someone roll to save the rod after it started to destroy the ship. As someone else mentioned, it's as broken as you let it be.
Yeh if its got enough force to break the hull its long gone, and a pinhole in a ship is not that big of deal. Ships carry corks or block of wood and tar with a kinfe and hammer to carve the plug to size and pound into the leak for this exact reason.
Well, either make the rod's reference point being the ship for that scenario, since they're below water, so the ship IS their whole reference point at that time. Or make it in a way where the rod is forever lost, since there's no way he could've reached the button in time. I would, every now and then, tell stories about tragedies of boats mysteriously sinking in that region "for no apparent reason" and that would make the ships avoid the whole area, creating problems for the transport of goods. Creating an economical problem and inflation, making prices "randomly" skyrocket because "well, the last shipment bringing this just sunk from that damn curse..." And, of course, if they ever traveled by ship in that region, I would ask for very high perception/wisdom/history checks from them. And, if they failed a luck roll, failed to remember the existence of the rod, failed to "remember" the exact location of the rod, and/or a high Dex roll for maneuvering the ship around the rod, then their ship would also sink.
Check sailing ship movement rates. The rod won't fly though the hull at great speed since the ship isn't moving that fast. If the rod is locked to the planet rotational frame, then it will likely slowly break open a hole. Ships have great carrying capacity and they don't need rest at night like animals, so they can make good range over longer distances, but they're not fast.
@@BlueFrenzy the rod also doesn't say that it exerts 8k lbs of force, just that it can hold up to 8k lbs. It's a subtle difference that many miss. it's only strength is when being acted upon, not acting upon anything else.
My players once tried that last one. I told them that the rod disappears as they activate it. Because if the rod is not anchored to the motion of the planet, why would it be anchored to the motion of the sun? The sun orbits the galaxy at a speed of 75000 feet per second. That thing was out of the planet's atmosphere as soon as they activated it. One of the players just asked, "Do we get the nuclear explosion caused by an object moving that quickly in the atmosphere?"
Even better, our galaxy moves at about 2 million km/h according to some calculations. That's over 60 times faster than the orbital re-entry speed of the space shuttle. Both the rod's user and the rod itself would just melt instantly.
I love the idea of describing that -- "you press the button, and immediately you're temporarily deaf and blind (from a sonic boom and a photonic boom) and as you regain your senses, your wrist is a bloody stump, and there's a rod-shaped hole in the ground that you almost think you can see stars through... then the Tarrasque arrives"
If a player wants to start talking forces applied over surface areas, they can also enjoy the 'realistic' physical consequences of the edge of an ogre's greataxe applied to a region of their character's body.
Usually you can out physics people. In this case, the motion of the planet itself is greater than that of the rotation, causing the rod to be transfixed in place as it appears to soar into space in the opposite direction of the earth's rotation around the sun with no other effects. You now have one year to prevent the destruction of the earth due to the rod being in the path of the planet's orbit
@@casuallydone468 pretty sure the entire goddamn planet is a bit heavier than 8000 pounds, it'd just cause a small crater or burn up in the atmosphere during exit or entrance
the galaxy is still moving through space along with the solar system and plantes, so... rest assure they're not seeing that rod ever again and the planet is safe from ever encountering the rod in it's path hahahahha@@casuallydone468
@@casuallydone468 Unfortunately if we're talking a one to one similarity of our own universe, you'll ever see it again as even our entire galaxy is moving as well. The rod will be off in space with no possible way to find let alone recover it
"As you crest the hill, you notice a several thousand peasants marching in a long line next to the Tarrasque. If you squint really hard, you can see that the one at the very end is carrying a 10ft poll. You're move, chief."
i think the rod aligns its self relative to the planet so it can "appear to stay in place" because how was it useful before the attempt at the orbital strike. It should have ripped right through you or go in a "random" direction.
The last use i had happen in my game but it was a specific rod known as the “immaculate immovable rod” as soon as the button was pushed, it launched deep into space as it held its exact spot in the universe. There was a loud boom that deafened the party for a couple hours. Likewise there was a crcked variant that held its place above the core of the planet. There was a rod in dangerously low orbit for about 3 days before the party turned it off again doing a large amount of damage to anything it dug through
Fun fact! The universe expands (or 'moves') at the sped of light! If you did this and the inertial reference from was "The Universe", then the speed the rod would instantly reach would cause a violent string of nuclear explosions due to it's speed causing the air molocules around it to go through nuclear fusion.
I've stopped planning my D&D sessions and just have a collection of areas, NPCs, and potential plot points to handle player chaos, so creative uses for stop like this is always welcome in my games, as the players have a lot of fun with it, and if I can handle it, so do I. Within reason though, as orbital strike doesn't work because that would make the item useless in an other scenario.
My answer. "Oh. Well then you and everyone on the planet die." "What?" "Well you're claiming the rod has a universal inertial reference frame. So the planet isn't just rotating. It's also orbiting. It's orbiting the sun. It's orbiting the galactic core. The galaxy itself is moving through the universe towards other galaxies. So you have just increased the potential mass of that rod towards infinity. However, the rod can only hold 8000 lbs, which means that it immediately starts to move with near infinite velocity generating so much local heat that it creates a kugelblitz of expanding space and heat stripping apart atoms down to their unstable leptons. The gamma ray burst of you activating that rod is going to be detected for hundreds of millions of years as alien civilizations wonder just how so much energy was generated without colliding supermassive black holes or collapsing blue supergiants.
The Tarrasque weighs more than 8000 lbs and can easily beat a DC 30 STR check. The rod bounces off it's chest and drops to the ground. The Tarrasque doesn't notice. [edited for spelling]
I've seen the Immovable Rod used only once, in a Lv20 oneshot. We all had various magic items, and the Monk asked for Two(2) rods. The DM had a short discussion with them in DMs, and allowed it. Ended up merely being the setup for the most unnecessary substitute for a grappling hook there ever was.
Two rods is amazing. You can effectively use them as a ladder by placing one, climbing onto it, placing the next one, climbing onto it, deactivating and replacing the first one, etc.
As for the barbarian arm wrestling contest, the rod can withstand 8000 lbs of force, but your arm and wrist cannot. The barbarian crushes your arm against the rod. As the bones in your arm splinter, you hear a sickening snap as the barbarian rips your hand clean off your wrist.
in the dark days of 3.5 I was once swallowed whole by a t-rex. I activated an immovable rod in it's stomach, and then crawled out of it's throat. The old description of an Immovable rod was that the massive str check was to move it 10 feet. So the party just walked away. And a week later we came back to find a dead dino. It starved to death because it couldn't chase it's prey.
A huge/gargantuan creature absolutely weighs more than 8000lbs: take a ~300 lb medium-sized dino, large-size means x8 weight, huge size means x8 weight again = 19,200 lbs, meaning it would deactivate. Maybe some piercing damage, but still. People drastically overestimate how big 8000lbs is, or underestimate how much big things weigh.
@@goatmeal5241 So you are saying that the soft tissue of the stomach of the t-rex would be able to withstand a force of 8000lbs. And if it is the orientated with the top or bottom of the rod that is what presses against the side of the stomach. Then the 8000lb force the rod can withstand to move it would be on a smaller surface area. It would tear right through the side of the t-rex. Not to mention that the person swallowed must be going by the loony tunes version of getting swallowed. As the stomach is not an open space as cartoons would make one to believe.
When the Owlin came out I rolled one up for a one shot and used an immovable rod as a "put it anywhere bird perch". It was fantastic. I can't remember if we fudged the activation and deactivation being a full action or bonus or what but I wasn't doing any of these over the top abuses, just had a cute little owl fly around and then perch on the rod wherever they wanted. Pretty sure I was using that psychic rogue class too so they could snipe enemies with psychic damage from range. It was a lot of fun.
“You activate the rod. It bulldozes into the ground, leaving an immovable rod-shaped hole in the ground. Well, for a second anyway, until the hole explodes from the combined heat and compression. In case you forgot, the planet is also moving around the sun, and it’s evening.”
I remember a couple stories of the rod. I was running the Temple of Elemental Evil as my team used two rods to basically climb the air. It was slow but exciting. I remember another time they were getting chased down by an undead white worm behemoth. They put the rod sideways in the air and the work ate it... Ripping a massive hole in its back end! That was a cool scene.
A player in my campaign has 2. I deem them the length of a ladder rung and he sometimes uses them like climbing axes. They have not been abused but they do allow all kinds of challenges to be bypassed. He also has a magic rope.
I mean, if the player is that antagonistic, use their creativity against them. 😈 DM: "Are you absolutely sure that you want to change how the rod works so it is no longer in the planet's reference frame?" Player: "Yes, absolutely." DM: "And you're standing to the east of the tarrasque during the day?" Player: "Yes, that's what I said." DM: "Okay, if you say so.... As you press the button, your body turns into a fine mist as the Immovable Rod stays put while the planet continues its orbit about the sun at 107,000 kph or approximately 585,000 feet per round, dealing 23,400 d6 damage to your body. Your companions can try to pick up the rod in one year's time."
Tarasque event: Player activates the rod only to find himself 10,000 feet in the air before he can release the rod. The planet is moving away from the center of the big bang at that rate. If its on the other side of the planet, the player now has lost a hand/arm/foot due to the rod cutting through them as it impacts with the planet.
Creativity by a player just means that the DM did not consider that. "Using their creativity against them" is just lazy and makes the DM a tyrannic little bitch.
Even more: it's bold to assume that our sun is at the center of the universe. It actually deals an unknowable amount of damage as the galaxy you are in careens away from the center of the universe at unimaginable speed. The rod is irrecoverable, lest you get a spelljammer and retrieve it from the cold depths of space.
Last scenario: after pressing the button you made the unmovable rod break the sound barrier, generating a sonic boom at point blank that ripped off your arm, you also made the gods angry because you broke one of their limits and they given you the X curse. Oh! Right, you recive N d6 of damage from the Sonic boom and you teammates recive N-2 d6 damage because they were behind you ☠️
Our party had and immoveable rod when we were running Tomb of Annihilation and it just saved our butts so many times- Some notable moments- stopping a number of trap mechanisms including a spinning fan blade, using it to repel down a pit, and holding up a collapsing ceiling. But the best use was when a T-rex swallowed our rogue and tried to run. Luckily the DM forgot that he was the one currently in possession of the rod, but the rogue remembered.
For the last scenario 1000mph only applies at the equator, you will get slower velocities at higher latitudes (calculated as 1000×COS[latitude]) down to zero at either pole. If you account for the planet's orbit around the sun and possibly the sun's movement you can get other interesting results. The rod could ark skyward if you are on the backside of the planet relative to its orbital trajectory, or it could jab down into the ground on the frontside. If you assume the sun isn't moving and the rod goes skyward it will impact the planet in just under a year. Incorporating all these different velocities could get numbers much lower or much higher than you used at this point. Insisting on incorporating them can quickly negate the value of "orbital strike" as your player probably won't want to spend in game hours calculating where they need to stand to make it work.
"You activate the rod, and it is fixed in place, relative to the planet. It floats there , unmoving, because everything on the planet is moving at the same speed. It is now the tarrasque's turn."
In the last scenario, the Immovable Rod is fixed in place relative to the planet. What it is not fixed in place relative to, is the planet’s rotation. Meaning that by your logic, the Immovable Rod would still fly and pierce through the tarrasque.
@@burgernthemomrailer Tarrasque got a critical. You are dead. While in the Aetherial plane you talk with the ghost of Steven Hawking. He reminds you that everything in the theater you were firghting in was not only moving through space but also rotating and the rod would not be fun if it didn't also move through space AND rotate with the rest of the world. He then passed you on to Jesus who sent you to the lowest of Hells for defying the DM.
Most of the 'quick examples' would work and should be rewarded for clever play. With regards to the length of the Rod: I believe that a 'rod' is defined as being 18" to 2' long (I'd have to research that). With regards to trapping the pirate captain: He specifically said that he was putting his weight on the rod and then activating it. IMHO this means that the captain could make a Dex or Str check modified by the weight of the character (a Halfling Rogue would convey a BONUS!) to wriggle out from under the rod. I would call that (and standing back up) all of his movement though. As for the Terrasque (or any other 'using the rod to stop a moving thing) the weight limit would likely kick in long before that kind of damage would be inflicted. I believe the DMG has tables for calculating falling damage from heavy things so just use those. In our current game, our party has TWO such rods and my character is an Artificer with an Int of 22 so he can be pretty clever on how to use them. The DM has never regretted letting us buy the rods and has rewarded us for clever use of them. Just remember that almost any magic item can be abused if you think about it.
Okay, so we need to destroy something big. Maybe a castle wall or like the video said, a giant tarrasque - first we need an adamantine box. Not a big one, one square foot should be fine, it just needs to be open on one side. Next we need SEVERAL immovable rods. We're going to suspend the box at torso height facing the open side towards the target using the rods, making sure to place multiple at the back of it. Next we need our wizard to cast mass polymorph on a herd of cows, transmuting them into any insect that is easily catchable and put them all in a jar. Next we gently GENTLY place the jar inside the open side of the box. Lastly....the wizard drops focus. I call it, "The CowMeHaMeHa."
I also really like the cube of force. Such a great utility item that is rife with possibilities. I'm not really an active player at the moment, but when I was I was able to reasonably convince DM's to let me use it in all sorts of creative ways. (it basically breaks the whiteplume mountain AL module in several glorious ways)
nah, the immovable rod is a great magical item to give the party, it sparks their creativity. The example you gave can be thought around. Fun story though, I once gave out a cursed immovable rod, it would randomly go off. Once they were riding on horse and it went off and the horse kept walking and they just were hanging in the air. It ended up being really funny because they thought they were being stalked by an invisible creature.
that's great 😂 TS a faulty magic item: Soo... have you tried recasting? Checking the connection to the laylines? Consulted the spirits if anything changed?
Just because the rod is immovable doesn't mean the ground is. Especially in areas of standing water (sand, mud). Being already wet, the escape artist check to slip out from under an immovable rod against your back is likely fairly easy for anyone with even a mediocre dexterity. Yes, I know, 5e got rid of a lot of skills, this is why it shouldn't have. Even without a skill, the mere fact that such an action is possible at all can allow characters with decent stats to take basic actions and have rules for them. Also since wooden hulls for shipbuilding (hardwoods, oak, etc) possess a yield strength of around 40-60 megapascals, on average you need over 7000PSI to punch through the hull at all, much less do so in a credible fashion. A holdable rod is likely slightly more than a square inch in diameter (at least, especially if long), and is unlikely to punch through a ship's hull, especially if it deviates on impact and glances or pitches sideways like a projectile might. Even if it does, a one inch square hole in a large ship's hull will not overwhelm the bilge pumps, as ships are always taking on water that needs to be removed in normal operation, especially early ships. I won't even entertain the "earth's rotation" argument, as the rod locking to a non-SOI plane of reference renders it useless as a practical item to people that live, y'know, on the planet. Also it'd lock to a solar reference frame, not a non-rotational earth one (this makes no sense as a concept as the planet isn't a perfect sphere), and move at the speed of the planet rotating its star in a direction retrograde the planet's orbit. This may be through the planet, but again, the rod's limit on strength means it's probably still less dangerous than 120mm APFSDS or equivalent. Given the rod is only capable of securing 8000lbs, most people are able to create an immovable rod by hammering a large post into the ground several feet. This is admittedly harder than pressing a button, but requires a spade instead of a physics-negating magical artifact. Yes, I do play GURPS, how did you guess?
As to the orbital strike, any, and I do mean any, previous adjudication which allowed the rod to stay in place above the ground for use, such as the pully for the pit, would immediately rule out the orbital strike option. (Any smart DM would anyway, because the rod becomes useless if you don't)
The orbital strike is essentially allowing the player to define a magical object. For example, if the DM decided that, when the immovable rod was activated, it shot off at the relative speed of the cosmic background radiation in a random direction, never to be seen again, the player would be rightly upset.
First one. You deactivate if before it goes out of your reach. It is now lodged in the hull of the ship Ishtar a small leak around it. DC 30 str to pull it out.
To the last argument involving the planet’s rotation: the rod moves relative to the planet’s position in space. If the rod were truly immovable on Earth, for example, not only would you have to account for the Earth’s rotation, but also its movement around the Sun, the Solar System’s orbit through the Milky Way, and the Milky Way’s speed relative to the rest of space. If the rod was completely immovable relative only to space, you’d click the button once, and never see it again.
The one where they stick it to a prone creature is very easy to circumvent, just have them roll an athletics or acrobatics check (DC equal to 8+PB+strength mod of the player that fixed the rod or a STR check from the player). My explanation for why that works is if you breathe out and contract your chest, you can reduce its size by 0.5-1 inch, and a lot more if the rod is parallel to your belly, since the rod doesn't move you now have a gap to slip through and then stand up.
Two problems with this. First issue is armor. Outside of possibly elven chainmail, most armor is bulky and heavy. Not leaving a lot of room for fine movement like wriggling and shimmying. Second issue is he was knocked prone from from behind, placing him on his belly. Exhaling may move your diaphragm and belly a couple of inches, but it won't give you a lot of space at the sternum. It's why most law enforcement pins people face down during a handcuffing procedure with a knee on their back.
Point One: For the Pirate Captain, the rod is immovable, the Captain is not. He is laying on sand, in the water, he can dex. check and move out from under the rod and run the player's character through with his cutlass of stupidity slaying. Since it remains stationary, it is not pushing down on him. Point Two: For the Tarrasque, The rod retains the momentum of the rotation of the earth, otherwise every time you set it, it would move away from you to the east.When you pushed the button, it would remain stationary, on the hill and the Tarrasque would crush you under foot, no save. Point Three: Mr. Player, you are being a D**k. Knock it off or find a different table. Problem solved. Point Four: Great Vid, how many of us have had to deal with this kind of player?
Agreed, though one point of clarification: the rod would be moving due _west_ relative to the earth if not in a geostationary orbit. For the DM - that calculation depends on where you are on the globe. Sure, if you were at the equator that is the correct speed, but this campaign is in the remote north, it will take four rounds to reach the tarasque.
for point one the player stated that he pushed down on the rod before activating and so if he pushed down hard enough it could trap him. someone would have to roll to see if it was pushed down hard enough in the right place so he couldn't move out but it could work.
@@jameshulse1642 as soon as the button is pushed, the rod freezes in place, so there is no continuing downward force (that would imply movement). Overruled.
@@Marcus-ki1en I was imagining a scenario similar to being trapped in a small tunnel. just because the walls don't move doesn't mean you aren't stuck. you would have to push down the rod fairly hard in a difficult to wriggle out of area (in between shoulder blades might work) to get the thing set up though.
Love the concept of the video but sorry some issues here. the standard measurements for a 35ft wooden boat built in this day and age (with thinner wood than in medieval times) you should use the naval architect's measurement called 'sinkage'. This allows for that 35ft boat to hold upto 10,000lb per 0.75 inch of hull. work out what the resistance that is greater than 8.000lb/length*width(in inches) for example a 2 foot bar say 2 inches high to allow for the button would only have 166lbs per square inch of pressure. in this case unless the boat was sailing very fast it would cause a brake action on the boat but probably would not go through it depending on speed. if the bar was 4ft long as requested the it would only have 83lbs of pressure per square inch... the longer the pole the less actual force it can bring to bear. And we have a limit of 8,000lbs so once the counter force was greater than that it would just move the bar. This is a great object to hold a human down with, or to suspend in the air and try a rope off of. Or even if you can click the button repeatedly quick enough to salmon ladder with. If the bar was orientated inside the boat on the horizontal plane perfectly level then it would push a hole through the wood the same as the area of a cross section of the rod. so about 2inch by 2 inch which is not that big in the grand scheme of things. Most wooden medieval sailing boats were always leaking which is why bilge pumps were and are a thing A 2inch diameter hole on the back of a sailing vessel which would be on the aft, would be in the wake of the vessel while moving, so low pressure water, so it is not going to force its way in side it more going to be a slow leak inside, whilst the boat is moving, most other areas of the ship/storms will bring water in faster. So the pirate would have time if it does leak to note the ship is slowly and i mean slowly becoming heavy in the aft, definately enough time to send a member of the crew to investigate and find a leak as from the aft being heavier they would know leak. If the bar was perpendicular to direction of travel it would cause a braking action which actually might do more damage to the ship as putting all joints and joins under sudden stress, but then it would just either anchor the ship (not substantial damage) or add greater drag to the ship (slows it) both of which would be able to be felt at the helm as being from the aft of the ship. Great distraction but not catastrophic failure, unless the ship was already falling apart, in which case it is more likely to meet rotted wood and just go straight though and we are back to a 2inch by 4 foot hole, if horizontal or somewhere down to a 2in by 2 inch hole depending on orientation... even a 4 foot by 2inch hole would not sink the ship.. cannon balls below the water line make bigger holes than that and a ship can take multiple hits in battle before needing to worry (obviously worry once battle has stopped = but not worry as in we are going to sink in the next 10 minutes.) Concerning the "nuclear option" This would imply the bar is not locked to the planet, in which case depending on which side of the planet you are on it is going to either fly up into space as the planet is also moving through space not just rotating, or try and bury itself into the planet's surface until it finds a higher resistance than whatever lb/in^2 it is ... but if this was the case then it would work like this every time you used it for any reason. holding a person to the ground do-able but the longer the bar the more unstable that bar would be... so the 2ft one would be better at this. Arm wrestling, funny and do-able Using it as a brake for yourself on a run away horse do-able but likely to rip your shoulders out of the joints 30mp to 0mp in an instant. same with falling, think Garfield Spiderman saving Gwen. So reality wise in the air to try a rope to Holding a door or window closed a mobile place to tie your horse to. a fun way to climb a mountain. there plenty of ways to use it in the game but not as catastrophic as making things explode. Though.... put in the way of someone falling see gwen stacy put in front of a moving horse or wagon messy destruction of horse flesh. put in front of fast moving human also messy destruction of human flesh. depending on the armour of a dragon and pressure it can take per sq/in probably brusing to a fast flying dragon... seeing as most swords can not go through their scales and they are pointy so that the lbs/in^2 is maximized. Sorry to be a poo-poo-platerhead.
That last one exploited one of the first questions I had about the Immovable rod. Basically my DM said, No, it's locked in relation to the position and rotation of the planet and would not go rocketing off into space due to being locked in absolute position. I would further more rule that the Tarrasque lumbers over and eats the fool who's playing with his rod rather than focusing on the fight.
A lot of these type of magic item problems go away if you don't consider the materials the items are made with to be infinitely strong, and the magic effect to have infinite force. That does make the DM have to make a call about HOW strong they are if they don't specify, but then, the DM guide doesn't tell you exactly how much force it takes to bend or break a regular metal rod either.
Re-watching this I'm reminded of a fantastic plot point that my DM had. In order to craft an Immovable Rod, you must craft the rod *and* the 8,000 lb block that serves as its absolute reference point... If the rod is on another plane from its anchor or moving too quickly relative to the anchor, the rod doesn't activate. This became abused in entirely different ways.
These situations are only an issue if you have a highly permissive and unimaginative DM. Comments: 1st scenario: "So, you're now locked in the hold of a ship below the water line that is taking on water and will probably sink, with you still trapped in the hold, if you don't alert someone to come and fix the hole. But, regardless, a half-inch sized hole in the hull will cause the ship to take on only marginally more water than such vessels already take on during regular operation (these large wooden hulled ships are not entirely watertight, so are always in a state of taking on water), so there's a decent chance the bilge pumps that are regularly used by the crew will be able to handle the excess. You can try to make additional holes, but understand that each one will require a Dex check to deactivate the Rod before it's unreachable outside of the hull." 2nd scenario: "Roll to hit. If you fail, you do not adequately place the rod in an effective position. He's not just laying there waiting for you to do things to him. And, he won't necessarily need to make a Strength check to move the rod. He can make an Acrobatics check to try to squirm out from under it. Since he's not trying to move the rod, the DC will be far lower than 30. Since you state that you are intending to lean with all your force before activating the Rod, I would rule that the Acrobatics check DC would be equivalent to your Strength score." 3rd scenario: "So, you're just giving yourself a new special effect for your Dex save to avoid falling in the pit? Pressing the button while falling will not be automatic; you'll have to roll to maintain grip. If there's a pit and you succeed in the Dex save, you've activated the rod and are hanging by the rod. If you fail, you fail to activate the rod before falling. If the pit is deep enough that you don't hit bottom in the first second (~16 feet), I'll allow a second save to trigger the rod before hitting bottom; in such a case, you'd need to make a Str check to hang onto the rod due to the sudden deceleration." 4th scenario: "Up it's butt? Good luck with that. Roll to hit. You have Disadvantage since this is a called shot. Since the target is small, the enemy will get a large bonus to AC for the attack as well." 5th scenario: "The rod is 4 feet long. It is impossible for you to hide it up your sleeve." 6th scenario: "The rod is 4 feet long. That's enough to impact one of the riders since they are charging line abreast. Also, you're on foot. How exactly are you placing the Rod at chest high to a mounted person? These are warhorses, which are pretty big. The rider's chest will be roughly 8+ feet high, and the horses head would likely get hit before the rider. The rider would get a Perception check to notice the rod. If successful, he'll get a Handle Animal check to try to stop the horse before the collision." 7th scenario: "It's an improvised weapon that will do damage equivalent to a club." 8th scenario: "I mean, you could have driven a piton in the wall do accomplish the same effect, but the Rod will suffice." 9th scenario: "You've made a fundamentally incorrect assumption. This is a fantasy universe; this planet does not rotate. This planet is the center of the solar system, and the sun and everything else revolves around it. You place the Rod, and it sits there, exactly where you placed it." None of these take a huge amount of thought. I wrote this whole commentary while listening to the video, pausing to write each. Took me about 30 minutes total time, so about a minute or two of thought on each. My advice to DM's: Do not let your players pull out "wouldn't it be cool if...." scenarios trying to justify "creative" use of items/spells to give dramatically stronger than appropriate for their power level. No amount of imagination should result in a 1st level spell mimicking the power of a 9th level spell (I'm sure people can remember some of the absolute nonsense that was argued online for applications of Prestidigitation under Pathfinder 1e). An uncommon magic item shouldn't be allowed to mimic or exceed the power of an artifact. (Edited for formatting.)
If an item can destroy a campaign, talk with the player on the side. 99% understand, as long as you let them do it once. But I’ve been DMing for 33 years. The reason I’ve lasted this long is because I love my friends and their shenanigans more than I love campaign planning.
I lost my DM privileges when I used an illusion spell to trick the party into killing the actual family in a house, from which the remains were used to serve dinner to said party (ala Donner style), I called it "Baby Tips and Rice".... So yeah, no more DM'ing for me...
As a player in 2e, we were being dived upon by a red dragon going for a bite. My Rogue character baited it and jumped aside at the last moment, revealing the immovable rod behind me. WHAM! Another time, in 3.5, I was DMing and a character got swallowed by a purple worm. She used a dimension door to get out, but not before setting up the immovable rod inside the beast which got horribly stuck. URK!!
I think for the boat and the tarrasque you could just say the rod is stationary in the activating character's frame of reference - after all, it doesn't go flying off into outer space when they push the button.
You do have to be careful if you have the rod function that way, because then the rod will function as a battering ram. Ride towards the castle gate, activate the rod, then stop. Rod will continue forward and impact the gate with 8000 pounds of force.
The orbital strike strat blatantly doesnt work since the rods become immobile relative to the planet (or they would begin moving very fast indeed the moment they are activated). Most of the brief summaries could be done with normal tools with as potent or even more deadly effect. Pinning someone to the ground -is- a pretty solid use of the rod though I notice they didnt make the guy roll to place the rod properly before activating it which I figure should take at least another opposed athletics check. And honestly if your players can just shove the badguy over on their back or front regularly they could almost as easily do this while the rest of the party stomps them. Likewise the ship-sinker strat... I fail to see how you could Possibly yank the rod back to recover it And have it pierce the ship's hull. The user has to pick one or the other and those rods are kind of pricey. Maybe not as pricey as the ship but still... Also while it's a good hole in the hull its not like the sailors cant simply patch it, if they're pirates or sailors of any experience then they have to have some preparation for dealing with damage like this... even if Usually the thing tearing through the hull comes from outside and slams its way in... it'd basically be half as challenging as patching the exit hole from a theoretical cannon ball punching out the other side, plus the rod is a lot narrower in profile than most cannon balls so the damage should be even easier to fix. Now granted the story specified a fairly rickety and ramshackle hull that's harder to fix but... well, if its that worn down then there's like a hundred ways to put some holes in the thing if you have time and access to the hull interior and some tools. In short, I assert that the Immovable Rod is not so much overpowered as it enables a few niche tactics to be pulled off on short notice without the prep time normally required and that is about all. Fun video though!
Did a character once who used two buckler shields with IR's for the handles, and a 6 inch spike in front. He was able to put a charging Minotaur down by using his reaction to activate it before impact. He also uses them like jungle gym bars he can move, so can climb in mid air. And has turned them into make shift stepping stones between large gaps. My absolute fav though was when he got difinistrated off the tallest tower of an annoyed wizard. He activated one mid fall to swing back in the other direction and the second to correct trajectory.... Threaded the needle back through the window.... Planting both feet into the wizards chest, Difinistrating him through the opposite window. Wizard hadn't bothered to learn any movement spells.....
I'm now imagining a factory full of people that spent their entire life learning how to enchant slaving away creating rod after rod so that some nerfed dwarves can build very strong bridges.
So you place the rod as you said, press the button and (add dramatic pause here) it's gone, unlike the boss wich seems to be pretty alive and still raging. Than you realize it, in the heat of battle you made a brilliant plan and forgot one minor detail that spoiled it completly because you forgot that not only the planet does move in circles but the whole solar system the planet is in does move (similar to the one we live in) at an average speed of 448,000 mph (720,000 km/h) through the space and since you cant see a hole in the ground you probably stood on an angle that the rod just vanished into space, or at least it will be after your turn. Two birds, one stone.
the last example does not really work, if your DM knows anything about physics the planet is both rotating on it's axis and orbits the sun, in addition to that the whole universe is expanding, in short the rod would ether fly off into the sky or bury itself to the point it hits the strata in which case it just gets dragged along with the rest of the planet.
I if I were the DM in this situation, the terrasque would not only breeze past a dc 30 strength check, but it would just spit fire? acid? burning acid? on the player as he stood there on the hill holding his stationary immovable rod.
@@jonburan6090 I'd back this one up to the ship they were in, that the player decided he was going to sink. So they put a hole in the ship they were traveling in? The whole party sounds like shark food to me. An immovable rod won't help you very much when you're in the middle of the ocean. It could be four feet or forty feet long---if you're in the middle of the ocean, or at the very least have no idea what direction land is to be found... sounds like a TPK to me, and a justly deserved one.
@@andrewlustfield6079so I guess you missed the teleport spell in the PHB. If you go by the fact that it wouldn't sink in one round there is also teleport circle. These work even if you have no real clue where you are. But generally speaking to have an Idea of where you can go so things like gaseous form, polymorph, and even fly could be used and these are just the ones that come to mind without a search of the spells. If you expect to do something like that you probably planned for your survival.
@@nickm9102 If you're high enough level to cast Teleport or Teleport Circle, then there are plenty of other spells available to destroy a ship anyway, and talking about the Rod is redundant. The video used level 5 characters as examples, so I think it's pretty clear they're talking about the rod being a problem in lower level situations.
I love it when my players pull shenanigans like this. I gave them an immovable rod last session and said to them “Please make me regret giving this to you”. I love to enable their creativity
Upon reading your comment a particular verse popped into my head: “Darkness falls across the land; The midnight hours’ close at hand…” Sorry that I can’t continue, but my mind has been replaying this very song for the past few minutes. And with the way my brain is wired, it’s going to take awhile before it goes away. Cheers!🤪
With the last example and the tarask, the wand will fly away forever because of the rotation of the earth and because of the movement around the sun, and then because of the movement of the sun inside the galaxy and something else. It is reasonable for the master to ask why this did not happen in the example with the ship. In general, in none of the examples would the players have been able to use the wand in a broken way The hole in the ship is simply plugged by experienced sailors The captain simply gets out from under the rod, because he does not need to lift the rod himself, he can simply move sideways. he is pressed down hard, but at risk of drowning, he may tear his clothes or even his skin to get out. And if the bottom is sandy, then it will not be difficult for anyone at all. In general, the rod can't do anything terrible.
In the first critical role campaign they teleported into a giant ancient dragon with two immovable rods and activated both of them so it did massive amounts of damage to the dragon as it flew off and the immovable rods ripped holes through its guts. The DM allowed it because you got it admire the brilliant creativity of it, although I don't think they ever managed to go back and get either of them as they were both stuck in mid-air and they would have had a hard time locating them again after that fight. Pretty expensive but when you're going up against your dragon of that size you blow everything in your inventory just to survive and win
Moral of the story: Every magic item is as broken as the Dungeon Master allows it to be!
Yes, this does get pretty unhinged by the end. But isn’t that the true spirit of D&D? 😅
Let me know your thoughts on all of the above! Cheers.
Well, at least it`s not as broken as a Decanter of Endless Water...I have committed war crimes with that thing.
@@anonymouse2675please do tell!
well as someone who knows a fair bit about ships I can tell you a hole that small under the waterline is not that big of a deal on a galleon size ship but the guy who used the rod is probably not getting it back because in addition to the reflexes to grab it he also has to keep the water pressure from turning into a missile when he hits the button.
Also a pirate without a ring of water breathing?
Coat an immovable rod with sovereign glue, let it get close to setting and push it into the back of a baddie in the vertical position and activate rod. Your very own Saw game. Win or die, you decide.
Last one doesn't work. Rod is immovable in relation to the planet, so it is carried by the planet's rotation at same speed as the terrasque.
Immovable rod is anchored to the planet as a reference so that last example wouldn't have worked otherwise it'd anchor like that any other time it's used and kill everything around it.
See; there is a single, basic premise made in their logic that completely invalidates their entire argument.
Yes, this world is about as large as Earth, but there’s one key difference: this world is flat!
That’s why it’s the *plane* of existence?
How does that work exactly? Magic; that’s how!
@golbez1583 well assuming standard dnd settings such as Forgotten Realms, Toril is a planet like earth and regular physics can be assumed to work unless otherwise stated. (Note: changing physics tends to create other player exploits, a few poor final bosses have lost their lives to creative players with better grasp of Newtonian physics then the DM)
Plus it can never be used for anything else at that point. If the immovable rod uses the universe and not the planet as a reference point, then it could only function as a projectile.
its better for the GM to let the rod be fixed into a position in 3d space
then if you make the planet move and sun move and galaxy move then your never getting the rod back it would leave the orbit of the planet in a few seconds and never be seen again
Yeah, if that last example worked, then the exampke with the pirate ship wouldn't have worked. If the lurate ship example worked, then it means the rod locks itself in a position relative to the planet's core, meaning it travels with the planets rotation.
If the orbital strategy worked, then the rod would basically be unuseable because it would sanic away every time you pressed the button
In a joke oneshot, my players entered the workshop of an insane artificer who'd made tons of humorously useless magic items. One of which was the immovable shield. It had no switch off mode and permanently inconvenience hovered in the middle of the hallway half-blocking one of the main doors.
i might have to steal that idea.
@@goldenbananas1389 Go for it. There was also the sword of findel bane. (Good luck finding out what a findel is)
The fork of spooning (a fork you can eat soup with)
The ring of teleportation (the ring teleports without the wearer)
The cloak of invisibility (makes you invisible as long as no one is looking)
The boots of blinding speed (once a day doubles your movement for a round but blinds you at the same time. Idea stolen from Morrowind)
Clogs of haste (once a turn as an action, click your heals to gain an action)
@@LamirLakantry "The cloak of invisibility (makes you invisible as long as no one is looking)"
Missed opportunity: You could have had it so that the cloak turns invisible when donned, but not the wearer.
@@coryzilligen790 Yeah, though of that, but that's just the ring joke again.
One of my players sovereign glued an immovable rod to the inside of their +2 shield
For the last one, my response would have been, "Ha! You think this is a heliocentric solar system? You think this world ROTATES???"
Rod goes ripping into space as galaxy shrieks away in a random direction.
The world is flat your rod is lost in space forever, fuck you leave my table lol.
The world is actually, flat!!! *immovable rod defeated*
@@I_Art_Laughing”HAH you think you’re in a galaxy right now?! The world which you perceive is currently taking place inside of the magic orb of an eldritch deity; the greater workings of which are purely simulated to appease the minor intelligences that reside within it. You are merely a mote of dust in a grander but equally insignificant glass ball, collecting dust on a shelf in a realm beyond your imagination!”
@@ekothesilent9456 simulated physics are just as good to my existence as real physics. It's not how the rules are enforced that matters it's THAT the rules are enforced.
The last scenario makes the rod utterly useless as an immovable rod, and so this simply does not happen
The rest are just players being inventive and I would allow them to, mostly they would work, sometimes an enemy would be expecting this ...
100% this. I wanna encourage creativity in my games, not give the impression that a clever solution is "destroying a campaign" or an encounter.
Planets are also moving in space and not just rotating and solar systems are also moving around the centers of their galaxy. So if an immovable rod worked like that then it would either fly off into space or destroy everything in it's way until it hit enough force to deactivate it. In my opinion, the immovable rod is set in place to the perceptual vision of immovable to the person who places it. Other wise it would be called the exploding hand rod as it exploded out of your hand at thousands of miles an hour everytime you pushed the button.
@@Crucio78 If in your world Einsteinian relativity works, the first question to ask is, realtive to what?
We are moving a 0km/h relative to a small dog sleep in Geneva, why is that less important than a groblank in the city of Melokvant on Kepler22b ...
That player would’ve died instantly the first time they ever activated the rod
@@Crucio78 That is an excellent excuse for this to now work. Alternatively another reasoning for why you wouldn't let it work is that you can declare that the material plane doesn't work the same way the Earth does. Perhaps the Sun in actually a portal to the plane of fire that orbits the planet, or that the god Apollo drives the Sun across the sky.
With that last example, remember that the planet is also moving through space, not just around its star, but also around its galactic center. If the immovable rod worked the way this player wanted, then each rod would be usable only once before instantly disappearing into the depths of space or being destroyed as it smashes into the planet's surface. Doesn't seem like an item any wizard would bother to make.
yeah if it is like anchored to some mystic "universal center" then it could just shoot off near the speed of light and make an explosion around 80-100 fat man nukes in force. lol
This is d&d, and while the motion of the planet around the Sun would effect the results, depending on the plane of reference of the rod, the stars do not move in relation to each other in the d&d universe. The stars are each surrounded by a crystal sphere that blocks movement out of the local area, unless you have the proper magical items.
yeah i was going to mention this, what happened to the rod would heavily depend on what plane of existence you were on, since D&D functions on almost vedic-like cosmology, the universe runs by different rules.@@jamesraykenney
in other words, this magic item if it existed irl would be a flat earther's worst nightmare lol.@@fnytnqsladcgqlefzcqxlzlcgj9220
A wizard? No, definitely not. Bored Artificer though. Thats possible
Player 1:
GM: "Oookay... this is different from how Immovable Rods usually work in this plane of existence - but if you insist, I'll allow it. Are you really sure that's what you want?"
Player 1: "Hell yeah!"
GM: "Okay... so as you click the button, the first thing you notice is a spray of pink mist and a streak of fire emanating from your hand due west - then a sharp pain shoots up your arm. You take... (rolls) 12 points of bludgeoning damage and 4 points of fire damage. As the pink mist settles to the ground, you notice that your fingers are no more - the rod must have taken them right off your hand, and either taken them with it or just straight atomized them.
Oh, and as for the Tarasque, make a DC 30 Survival check to see if you are in fact precisely due east of the creature, and exactly at the same altitude."
...
(1 in-game day later)
...
GM: "While you're sitting at the inn, waiting for your contact - I need everyone to roll a D20 for me. Just a plain roll, this is just a matter of luck."
Player 2: "Uh... okay... that wasn't so good. A nat 1 here."
GM: "Nice! So... Suddenly, without any warning whatsoever, a streak of fire shoots through the commons room as the eastern and western walls explode with a deafening crack! There is no time to react, and Player 2 - you, having fumbled this roll, happen to sit right in the path of the fiery streak, taking 300d6 points of bludgeoning damage... do you insist that I roll for the damage, or shall we just call it 'more than enough'?"
and this is how you deal with min/maxers
Thus, all it right in the world.
@@GalvTheImpressive It wouldn't even work like that because the planet is also moving through space around the star, so it'd leave the atmosphere before a full day occurred.
It also wouldn't come back in a year because the solar system is rotating around the galaxy and the galaxy is moving through space as well.
IF it's just like Earth or our universe.
ehh the first one yes. the second one - the rod would be 1 day's orbital rotation around the planet's star away and 1 day's worth of the star's rotation around its galaxy's center, 1 day's worth of the galaxy's movement etc. it wouldn't be anywhere close in the same plane of space.
@@MrNb22 The player, by arguing "as long as I'm on the same elevation as the Tarasque and due east, the Immovable Rod should strike it", clearly establishes a frame of reference that, while not rotating with the planet, is still co-moving with the planet as a whole. Otherwise this method of aiming at the Tarasque wouldn't work either. So if that's what they insist on - that's exactly what I'll give them. Who am I to argue with the rules of magic.
It strikes the beast/ground/air with such force that it heats the air around it to thousands of degrees and kills you all. If it hits the ground, the resulting explosion causes a nuclear winter.
Or did you think I didn't take physics? *Smirks at idiot player*
I just like the idea of having two immovable rods and using them as mobile monkey bars/ climbing holds in a heist or infiltration scenario.
Someone athletic and dextrous should be able to do it with just one. Kip, release, jerk upwards, immobilize, repeat.
@@Sgrunterundt +1 exhaustion
pesky 6 second actions
Or adding it to the back of a tower shield. basically an impenetrable shield.
I GMd a party trying to escape from the underdark, they polymorphed into giant eagle, flew 55 minutes, planted the rod and tied ropes to suspend themselves long enough to short rest before continuing
I would only ever allow the 'Orbital Strike' Immovable rod, to be a 'cursed' immovable rod, and completely indistinguishable from a 'true' immovable rod (which works on a geo-reference frame) until activated. It would probably be known in-game as the Extremely Movable Rod.
So, first time it is activated it becomes a supersonic rod, orbiting the planet once every 24 hours on the same course at ground level. I guess that could be rather catastrophic depending on what else it intersects.
@TheAgamemnon911 no, it flies away because the earth and the sun are both moving quite fast. You'll never see it again.
@@Gr3nadgr3gory It depends on what frame of reference the rod will attach to. Also, you are not fun.
@TheAgamemnon911 hey, if you're gonna claim any reference frame outside of earth the only one I've accepting is a universal reference frame. It's still gonna do damage to anything along the way.
@@Gr3nadgr3gory You wouldn't see it again in that situation because you wouldn't see anything again after that incident. I cannot even describe for you how titanic an explosion would result from an object moving through an Earthlike atmosphere at (ballpark figure) Mach 758.
Pfft. No u can't save the rod. U got tossed across the cell when 90K pounds of sea water shoot into the boat u just decided to scuttle
Nah, in DnD there's ways to resist all of that
The problem here is more the Rulings of the DM, rather than the Immovable Rod itself.
Right?! On the first one that hole isn't going to do jack in any meaningful time frame.
For the second.. he can just scoot to the side? Unless you've stabbed it into their body it isn't going to stop them getting out. Maybe make it take an extra 5ft of movement to standup form prone and then difficult terrain in that square until the rod is deactivated. The last one doesn't make any sense or work in anyway so it can just be ignored.
I know it's just a fun video but definitely makes me less likely to trust his rules interpretations going forward.
90% of the time, "This magic item BREAKS your campaigns!" stories are, in fact, stories about stupid and hasty homebrews (especially ones where the player runs the scene, not the DM) breaking your campaign, not the magic item itself.
While you are doing math in your head, the Terrasque eats you.
In every example the Player defines the physics of the world and not the GM. He self and not the rod is his problem.
Neither the ship nor the Tarrasque example should work.
@@Holo121 I mean, with the second one he did say he put all of his weight on it before activating the rod this would mean that it would be pressed into his skin at the very least.
My group is full of a bunch of aerospace engineers and the DM specializes in astrodynamics so when we got the immovable rod we had to choose at that point which reference frame to fix it and then we could not change it later. So you essentially had to choose whether you were going to have a super-weapon or something that would be useful in a number of situations
Imagine in addition to the on/off switch it had a suspicios switch between states like: Earth, Sun, Galaxy.
I mean, how could anyone resist the option of making their own character the reference frame?
Nice! If I used this item I think I would say the reference point is fixed to the nearest local apparent "ground" and call it there - activate it riding an airship, it stays stationary relative to the airship
I had similar idea, accept the I thought it could become immovable in relation to an object you can see at the time of its activation within some distance to prevent locking onto stars or other planets. I think this is great thing, that might even let you save friend from falling, or create carrying handle, or greap to hold onto something. Also great group for DND.
You can make it at rest in the inertial comoving frame of the player at the moment of activation. Although it will drift due to centrifugal force. On the equator of the Earth the acceleration is 0.033 m/s², so it will rise 3 m in about 13s (neglecting coriolis)
6:54 fun fact: pathfinder has a variation of the immovable rod called the "immovable arm" which seems to be made exactly for this purpose. It is, as the name says, a prosthetic arm with an immovable rod worked into it. It even has rules to discover the button!
The rod assumes that the point of reference for its lack of movement is the planet, so the rod and the terrasque are both being carried by the planet at the same speed. So the last scenario obviously cannot work.
Yeah I would assume this is a “one time use rod” as the players are not gonna be able to catch the rod after it’s used. It depends on how you rule it. Earth is also moving through space very quickly as it rotates around the sun and our sun moves through space as it moves with our galaxy which is also moving. If you wanted to you could just rule, “you didn’t account for the movement of celestial bodies and the rod rips through you at 1.3 million miles an hour”
To be fair, terrasques are also immune to bludgeoning damage so it wouldn’t take any damage from the rod even if the DM allowed this scenario.
I am setting the rule that the point of reference for the rod is the person who pushes the button at the moment they press it. This opens up its own can of worms, but would need a lot more interesting thought on the part of the players to do horrible things with.
@@bearnaff9387 That would mean the rod simply follows the player to stay exactly where it was in relation to the player when he used it, making it mostly useless.
@@TroySavary Not quite? This formulation of the rod would adopt the straight-line movement of the user at the moment they pushed the button. Absent the space-bending effects of gravity, all movement is basically in straight lines, with net movement effected by gravity and, y'know, other objects.
I probably won't adopt this version of the Immovable Rod after all, since no one wants to really measure complex velocity to figure out if the rod is moving relative to its surroundings.
Milkbeard might have had the rod pinning him down, but the shallow water terrain of an ocean implies that what is beneath him is sand, which is very easy to dig out, slipping out from under the rod, therefore saving him from drowning.
The breath holding time is 1 + CON modifier minutes (minimum of 30 seconds). Assuming Milkbeard is a bandit captain, he has a CON modifier of +2, so that is 3 minutes, or 30 rounds. Additionally, after Milkbeard starts suffocating, he has a number of turns equal to his CON modifier before he drops to 0 hit points, giving him 32 rounds. Unless Milkbeard is alone in the encounter, that shouldn't be overpowering.
DND also doesn't just let you willy nilly apply the restrained condition. It's a powerful, and difficult condition. If a 500lb 27str barb grapples a 10lb 1 star gnome... The gnome is grappled with 0 movement speed, but is not restrained. The idea this rod would give the restrained condition is laughable. Secondly "I get behind him" how? Rounds are simultaneously taken. The NPC just turns with you. Also no check to try to plant the rod? Also forgetting that irl if there was a rod placed almost anywhere on your body, you'd be able to squeeze out in seconds because we're made of flesh and bone, not rock. This entire video is just terrible dming.
@@TheeDuelistNW I wouldn't call it terrible DMing, the DM may just be inexperienced. Either way, the player is taking advantage of the DM's lack in a way that is unsporting.
@@fenixmeaney6170 I would say a ruling that neither makes sense in the real world, a magical world, or RAW. That breaks the game and the story = terrible DMing
@@TheeDuelistNW”dnd doesn’t let you Willy-Nilly apply the restrained condition”
Web (2nd level spell): “Each creature that starts its turn in the webs or that enters them during its turn must make a Dexterity saving throw. On a failed save, the creature is restrained as long as it remains in the webs or until it breaks free.”
Snare (1st level spell able to be cast by Druid, ranger, artificer, and wizard): “The trap triggers when a Small creature or larger moves into the area protected by the spell. The triggering creature must succeed on a Dexterity saving throw or fall prone and be hoisted into the air until it hangs upside down 3 feet above the protected surface, where it is restrained.”
Net (ITEM IN THE PHB): “A Large or smaller creature hit by a net is restrained until it is freed”
If a martial weapon can restrain a creature, I’d wager an uncommon magic item could do the same.
There are in fact rules for flanking, so there is a precedent for being behind an enemy
Furthermore, being pinned down, an immovable object COULD keep you restrained, particularly if it was placed under your chin so that it would slightly press down on your neck. It may be possible to shimmy out from the sides, but the design of the rod in the official art would prevent that as well. Trying to slide upwards would get stopped by your collarbone, going down would be stopped by your chin.
HOWEVER, pinning a creature down is an ability exclusive to the grappler feat (which also mentions both characters are restrained until the grapple ends “You can use your action to try to pin a creature grappled by you. To do so, make another grapple check. If you succeed, you and the creature are both restrained until the grapple ends”) so this situation could not happen without some sort of opposed roll. Also, nothing is stopping milkbeard from just pushing the button and becoming free again.
9:11 they are immune to bludgeoning from nonmagic WEAPONS, as the DM you can simply say that since the immovable rod is labeled a magic ITEM and not a magic WEAPON it would be immune to the damage
Even better. The rod just sat there, doing nothing. The Tarrasque just ran into an object at 9000 feet/second. Therefor it doesn't matter if said object was magical, as there is nothing magical about running into a wall. That's just physics. Also the rod is now destroyed, because it too just took 360d6 damage.
Or: you only asked about the lenght of the day, not where the sun rises. Turns out this world rotates in the opposit direction compared to earth. You get impailed by your own rod and are k!lled immediately as your courps flys away, making resurection impossible. Roll up a new character. And given the obvious danger of this Item, as just demonstrated by your dea!h, a new law has been passed, declaring this item to be to dangerous for civilian use, thus all immoveable rods are now banned in this world and it is basically impossible to get one.
The Terrasque is immune to nonmagical WEAPONS, the rod is not a weapon, therefor the Terrasque is not immune to it.
That last one is basically “how to turn your DM into a flat-Feruner”
The prime material plane is flat.
Or if you game is on a moving planet. Then (said to player) "the wizard that enchanted the rod is smarter than your dumbass and made it work in Geo stationary reference frame.
Nah. The rod is fixed in space. If we allow planets, we have to have spacetime. Planets pull spacetime with them as they rotate. It's called frame dragging.
The rod is, by dm fiat, using this effect along with the acceleration of gravity to calculate its relative position to the planet and continues to just hang in place like it says in the description. It will do the same on any planet or plane based on the gravity and direction of frame dragging, if any. In microgravity it will use the nearest mass at the time of activation and fix itself relative to that. This will always be the largest creature/object touching the rod at the moment of activation.
Or, tl;Dr, if it could do that it wouldn't work as described so no. Because magic. Less satisfying but still fine. Especially for dms who don't want to be bothered by physics.
PS: frame dragging occurs when any massive object, like your mom, moves through space. Don't be offended. It's literally true. You, a house fly. If it has any mass it drags.
Also, your mom.
Flat-Toriler, you mean. Faerun is a continent. The planet is called Toril.
the rod doesn’t move, that’s it’s hole thing…. You click it and it stays in place relative to the world
Also, Tarrasque is immune to non magical damage
So even if the planet would rotate away under the rod, our just loose the rod and someone will find it at the side of a mountain somewhere
That second scenario is absolutely fair though. I mean
1) it's really hard to make it work on anything bigger than medium
2) the enemy could have an alternate way to escape that doesn't involve moving the rod
3)players had to invest their entire turn and an action surge
4) player had to win a grapple contest
5) a pirate king would definitely have a crew
Really creative players could even capture him alive, force him to tell where he hid his treasure then give him a fate worse than death. You know, make sure that everyone knows about this humiliating defeat, make him watch as his empire crumbles and his most loyal followers turn against him and those who used to tremble at the mere sound of his name now throw rotten eggs at his cage
Cats are made of liquid. The rod strategy would never work on a tabaxi.
@@maxxpower3d6 Tabaxi could roll acrobatics instead of athletics
The ground being wet also suggests that the ground is probably a softer surface like sand, that could be shifted.
Also, yes, general dexterity save to wriggle out of the pin is fine. Maybe take a point of damage from the scrape
@@aprinnyonbreak1290
What if the tip of the rod was tied to a dagger and so the actual body of the rod would go inside the person's flesh after pushing it in.
Taking 1d6 after raking themselves out of that sounds too generous, not to mention the mental scarring after the realization of what they'd need to do in order to escape.
Worst trouble an Immovable Rod got my group into was an at sea portion of an Eberron campaign and they were fighting enemies in the lower decks when someone had the bright idea to pop their rod. Since the ship was moving at full sail, the ship's interior walls promptly started bashing into the rod, shredding the thin wood walls like paper, with the rod's owner wedged nicely between them as it was happening.
He was a warforged that was beefy enough to survive going through a few wood walls, but eventually the rod and himself blew through the aft of the ship and he was left clinging to the rod as the ship sailed away. He barely managed to keep clearing his slowly increasing strength checks until the party finished off the enemies and got the ship to circle back to retrieve his tin can butt.
I like the idea that the rod adopts the frame of reference of the user, so "immovable" simply means it continues with the momentum the player has at a round of 0 movement.
I'll run towards the ravine holding my immovable rod high and a couple of steps from the edge I activate it and pull myself up holding on to the rod, flying over the ravine and land behind the enemy guards who have not seen me since it is night.
DM: the other side of the ravine is 5 feet higher. They might be minions, but they do know the value of high ground. You need to roll to see if you manage to not just smack into the rock face and fall into the waters below.
@@GustavSvard This is funny, but you might have a slight misunderstanding of "Frame of reference" and "Momentum" means here, lol
Like thor's hammer, imo, it wouldn't destroy a ship when "activated", it would just stay still as if unaffected by gravity. Thor's hammer didn't blast through the Helicarrier when he used it to stop Hulk in the movies.
Oooh, I like this.
@@SpaceDogLaika I mean Thor's Hammer is different to the immovable rod though. Mjolnir can't float in place, and it's more so that it actually just enhances gravity to those "not worthy".
Okay, the Tarrasque explodes, and the entire party is killed by the shockwave and flying debris.
Or if it is a human
You stuff it in the persons mouth and activate it
And get the barbarian to pull their legs
I call it
The say goodbye to your neck as if you force it in that area it’s basically a insta kill action
I once let a PC replace the handle for his tower shield with a 1 ft immovable rod. He built a big spike on the front, focused on tripping attacks, and used his shield to basically pin them and activate the button. He was unstoppable, an eldritch knight, and eventually through magic items he could misty step and had gauntlets of ogre's strength. It was fun.
yea using it for combat tricks is something i'd want to encourage, that's some creative play, and being able to use your action to lock down one enemy isn't going to destroy balance.
what a waste of an item lol
GROW UP!!!!@@mrosskne
glad to see my idea of a spiked immovable shield isn't unique. Very nice take using a tower shield too. Mine was two bucklers. Monkey bars to "climb through air" to then dive bomb unaware mobs was amazing.
@@mrosskne Regularly wasting a powerful magic item is fun, especially if the rest of the party also see it and want to get it from you. I had a character have his ability to do magic removed and turned into a ruby that stored a substantial amount of spells, I couldn't use em and as it happened to glow I put it in a lantern, or occasionally used it to make my beer glow red.
Simple: When the rod is subject to more than 8,000lbs of pressure at once, it immediately snaps out of its position. If it's a gradual pressure, it will hold until breaking eventually, but if it's an immediate amount of pressure like impacting a moving ship or getting swiped by a dragon's talons, it doesn't get a chance to apply any meaningful pushback.
The last example would require a lot of retconning on the item's usage, because you wouldn't be able to use it for *anything* else unless you want it to go flying off with the planet's rotation. No holding doors closed, no makeshift ladders, no impromptu barricades... as soon as that button is pressed, it shoots off into space. And that's another thing too: There was no consideration for the planet's orbit around the sun, just the rod's orbit around the planet. The rod will either shoot upwards as the planet leaves the spot it was frozen in place, or shoot downwards as the planet collides with its point in space and applies well over the pressure threshold for it.
The last example ignores that in DND the prime material plane is a Litteral plane. It am unmoving flat space.
If you were on a moving planner then the wizard would have KDE the rod work in a Geo stationary reference. As of doing so would have made it useless.
So, what you are saying is when someone tries to pull the last one you have an explanation that excludes that option but allows most creative uses like "Unfortunately that would not work because the magic used to create the rod simply affects the gravity of the plain it is on to create an immovable point in relation to the primary gravity field present. So while it is stationary in relation to the plane it is on."
This allows the stationary torpedo option without allowing use of the planet as a weapon.
@@darkpheonix77 Not true actually, the Forgotten Realms take place on Toril, an Earth like planet. But yeah the Rod clearly locks it's motion relevant to the planet.
The ship example is probably fine; it'd be surprising if a single plank, especially in the stern, had a yield strength such that 4 tons wouldn't dislodge it. The mistake was thinking removing a single plank is enough to sink a large seaworthy vessel; they're going to have pumps, and they're going to have materials to effect basic repairs.
@@darkpheonix77 The Prime Material might be a plane in the same sense that the universe is flat but the spheres within that contain the planets that things occur on are not necessarily, themselves, flat.
Of course now that they've nixed the phlogiston separating spheres (and, honestly, I have no idea if crystal spheres are even a thing in the official lore regardless of how much sense it made) and half joined the Astral and Prime Material planes I don't even know what planar distinctions even mean. Which means, of course, that DM fiat wins out.
Great video! So hilarious you covered this item. I'm currently at the end of the third party campaign "Call From The Deep" and the Bard of the group took this item. We all raised out eyebrows because it seemed so random. I believe the DM let the length be 3 feet. I can't remember the exact details, but I believe he attached the rod to the ship's anchor, activated the rod, dropped said anchor and caused our ship to do an almost instant u-turn to which we were able to wreck the other ship. It was such an amazing sequence of events. So many uses for the item when you actually think about it.
in an underdark campaign I was given two rods, I had wrist straps for both and would use them like monkey bars. My favourite usage however, was to find the highest ceiling caverns to long rest in, as I would rig up hammocks for the party 30ft in the air in the pitch black 😀(they were made of rock coloured fabric)
This, and the one sidenote where the rod-PC used the rod as a pulley, is the kind of usage I want to see out of my party.
which type of rock?
@@mrosskne never was specified or important
@@g00b3rguts3 Then your camouflage doesn't work.
you aren't my DM @@mrosskne 🙂
I'm in a homebrew Spell Jammer game. One of the most heavily defended section of our ship is where we keep the runed glass casing of the "Non-consensual Emergency Brake" and there been a couple of ships that have seen its wrath. The DM might have come to regret my starting magic item I believe.
your glass casing of what? xD
@@renookami4651 The name kind of stuck after I used it for the first time while aboard an enemy ship. I think I said something along the lines of "as I hop on my mount in the docking bay I activate the non-consensual emergency break!"
Does this function similarly to that scene in the final season of The Expanse when all the ships inside the Ring immediately stop moving?
@@conliffeiain sometimes it would stop ships sometimes it would rip massive holes in their hull.
This is reminding me heavily of a certain Mel Brooks movie. I'm guessing the only time you use the "non-consensual emergency brake" is when you have to stop after going straight to... LUDICROUS SPEED!
On the Tarrasque:
"You damned well know that's not what the game creators meant by being fixed in space. Try to Rules Lawyer me again and your character is facing an unstatted deity"
I'd say this reading of "fixed in space" opens the player to a monkey's paw wish. The planet isn't just spinning around it's axis in a circle around the star, it's spiraling around the star as the star spirals around the galaxy's center, which is likely also moving through space in the universe, so the rod is just as likely to slam down into the ground or off into the atmosphere as it is hit the Tarrasque, depending on the relative movement of everything through space. So roll a d4, 1- the rod hits the Tarrasque as intended, 2- the rod falls to the ground and stops moving as the planet has more than 8,000 pounds of force behind it, 3- the rod flies off into the sky in a random direction, or 4- the rod flies off in the direction of the player, catching them and immediately launching them into space if they weight less than 8,000 pounds.
@@KAPsub2 An Immovable rod may become "immovable" but is it impervious to damage? The shell of a tarrasque is notoriously hard (in what most call first ed- needed a +5 weapon to hurt it, or was that the shell could be used to make a +5 weapon or armor, also it might have required a wish to make it stay dead). A little wear and tear from previous "overuse" and zipping along to crash into something made of a much harder material would simply destroy the rod with little notice from the tarrasque. Heck the first example of sinking a ship may also seriously damage the rod and it might become a rod of "maybe it's" immovable.
@@sertandoom4693 The 5e tarrasque is immune to nonmagical bludgeoning damage, so a magic rod should suffice to damage it in this edition. If we're talking about previous editions, resistance used to be damage reduction (for example DR 20 means it takes -20 damage from weapon attacks), but depending on the enchantment bonus and resistance, that DR can be ignored (so a +3 magic item counts as silver for like werewolves, even if it isn't actually made of silver). Similarly, magic items have higher hardness and hit points in comparison to their nonmagic counterparts, so the rod is more durable than a normal rod and would still deal damage before it breaks
@@KAPsub2 But is there a difference between a magic "item" and a "magic weapon"? If "it just has to be magic" then that is the rules related problem that gives a DM nightmares since many things are "magic" and most if not all can with "some" creative argument be used to stop pretty much anything.
(I'd suspect that the rod would have a lower hardness than a magic weapon) In any case I'd rule that the max damage that the rod will do will be the max damage it can take after which it breaks (remember player has been abusing it and it likely already has damage). In "first Ed" if you didn't have that +5 weapon to hit something that needed a +5 weapon to hit you could put all the force you want behind it- nothing would happen- it was meant as the ultimate monster which I seem to recall reflecting spells. The end of a campaign monster where the party and the rest of the setting could die or the party wins and retires(those who make it).
Just had a thought- wasn't the Tarrasque a size large? A human sized person pushing the button on a rod to use like this might need to aim higher or "zip right under him- The tarrasque pause for a second as it feels a breezy pass between it's legs"
@@sertandoom4693 The Tarrasque is the largest size category, which is why the player moved to a location at the same elevation as its head.
The damage immunities for it say "from nonmagical attacks", which doesn't specify it has to be a weapon, but that argument makes sense. 1st edition seems to say it's immune to weapons that aren't at least +1 enchanted, while 3rd edition has DR 25/+5, meaning that you can hurt it you do more than 25 damage or if your weapon is at least +5 enchanted.
As for the rod breaking, the broken pieces will still deal damage. Like a bullet that shatters after impact will still deal damage beyond the damage it had already done before breaking. The amount of damage will depend on how deep it needs to penetrate to fatally wound a creature, but dnd is not that specific and would be the wrong game system to use if you want to get that in the weeds with things.
Reminds me of the time I salmon laddered with my immovable rod over a castle wall...
All the guards could see, they were just massively confused why I didn't just use the gate.
I honestly would have laughed if someone tried to make a ladder of immovable rods
A barbarian trained in stealth due to his background and 2 immovable rods is a great part of any entry team. Then they just lift the noddle armed casters up.
@@JamesTDG You just need 2 to climb anything.
@@dreww2647 Only one if you're willing to make it a series of dex/athletics check. Pull yourself up, deactivate it and lift it up, activate it at a higher place. Over and over until you're as high as you want to be. Lots of relatively easy checks, with the only consequence of failing being that you lose some progress. Of course, only to be acted once you agree with your DM that this is how it can be done.
@@dreww2647 you also need a strength or athletics check depending on your DMs playstyle and edition to pass.
My favorite Immovable Rod invention I've created was Dragon Ripper arrows. Basically, an ImRod with fletching, a good arrowhead, and a pressure switch over the button.
You fire it at a flying dragon. Assuming you hit, it penetrates the dragon's wing or underbelly, its flesh activates the rod when it's nearly fully in, and the rod suddenly stops in the air. The dragon then has all of its flying momentum tearing against the rod, gutting it instantly.
I like it! Of course, if it hits the dragon on the tip of the tail, dragon will be annoyed and the arrow will stay in that spot in the air for the rest of time...
@@hoi-polloi1863 Somebody'll build a ladder or something.
See, now THIS is a very humorous abuse of a magic item. I would allow it.
The best use of an immovable rod is the one for which it was obviously designed but no player ever uses it for.
Construction material relativistically locked rebar to be specific.
Didn’t you ever wonder how they supported all those wizard towers with their floors separated by open air with unconnected steps forming the stairs between them?
@@nicholaskehler9169 I like how you think.
Most of these issues are easily resolvable.
1, Below the waterline activation.
a) the rod is embedded in the hull and cannot be removed easily. It will delay the sinking but not by much, the rod may well sink with the ship.
b) Impalement may cause the button to be depressed deactivating it, or get buried in the hull and become undeactivatable temporarily I(see 1a).
2. Rod on pirates back.
a) The rod wont move but the sand beneath the pirate will, the pirate wriggles free.
b) The pirate is pinned in place but wriggles free anyway at the cost of heavy damage to himself.
In both cases the pirate is still liable for a coup de grace, so use of the rod is valid, that being said the set up requires several actions and would likely require a rogue to pull off, who could just backstab instead.
3. Using rod for pit traps.
This is valid and is what the rod is there to do. You have to be able to hold onto the rod though.
4. Cheating at arm wrestling
You have braced your wrist against an immovable object, that is bad posturing as the barbarian is now leveraged full force focused against your wrist. If the cheat does not win the arm wrestle outright their wrist will likely be broken.
5. Cavalry trap.
a) Use cheese wire, it is cheaper covers a wider area and more effective. It is also near invisible.
b) The second cavalryman gets the expensive rod.
6. Pulley hoist.
Another valid standard use of the rod as Gygax intended.
7. Bludgeoning damage bullshit.
This simply does not work. Yes planets spin but the rod spins with the planet, it is immobile but relative to the planets position. This feature cannot be turned on or off.
If you were to allow this then ANY activation of the rod will result in the user holding onto an object that suddenly accelerates to ridiculous speeds. Each any every attempt to use the rod will result in the user losing their hand to a spray of red mist, and also being subsequently unable to recover the rod because it has gone that way and is leaving fast. Also dependant on orientation it may and eventually will be hurtling into the planet or out into space. The former will destroy the rod the latter make it unrecoverable by anything short of a wish spell. Wording will also be important because the returned rod will otherwise still be moving and in an entirely random direction from the point of view of the user.
Assuming the rob is sabotaged/modified to function as a one shot weapon in this way I would allow it, as it would be a clever way to tinker with the item, but it would require a safe trigger for the rod. However facing east will do jack, because the planet is not only spinning it is moving in its solar orbit. Most likely it will miss the terrasque entirely and an adventurer will need to make a very high (DC30?) intelligence test to accurately determine the heading of the planet in its solar orbit to have an opportunity to roll to hit. So the terrasque needs to be due east and the rod must be activated at the exact time of day when the heading of the planet matches the rotational orientation. Any error will result in an automatic miss, otherwise roll to hit as normal.
Finally 8000lbs of pressure will not kill the terrasque and this rule means that the rod will disintegrate as it hits the terrasque's hide, lots of damage from the impact, but not enough penetration to lay low a divine monster. Frankly it is the wrong target. I would use a missile modified rod to take out city gates, you can run the maths on that in advance, activate the rod to see the rod and gates explode into fragments. Then send in your army.
Also for the record when you add orbital velocity to rotational velocity for an Earth type planet the rod is moving approx 36000mph, not 1000mph, on activation. There is a good chance it will not even reach the gate as a single piece if at all. It would be a very short ranged weapon but potent in the correct circumstances. I assume I can ignore the direction of movement of the solar system, or the galaxy as that would be too distant for the item creators magic to touch.
This and related magicks have built in stability if they did not then a hemispheric teleport will result in the traveller appearing upside down and travelling at 1800mph on an Earth equivalent world. This latter scenario is how I was introduced to this problem, and explains why portals need to be anchored with careful magicks. You cant just make a portal, you need to tune and stabilise the portal to stop it becoming a remote offal dispenser.
The captain didn't have to "move the rod" to get out from under it. He can shimmy sideways with a much lower strength check, maybe even taking some small scraping damage if he was laying on rock (if he wasn't, if it was sand or mud under him, the squirming out from underneath should be even easier).
Exactly, the ground under the water will, most likely, be muddy or sandy. An escape check is all that is needed. Or have the Pirate Captain be wearing a ring/amulet of Freedom of Movement. Cannot be restrained.
This isn't Thor's hammer, you can slip from under it
The player made sure to 'press against him with all my weight' to really dig the rod into the guy's back and pin him to the ground. So for this shimmy to make sense, it would also have to make sense to just shimmy out from under a boot on your neck or a man pinning you to the ground with all his weight in your back. One does not simply shimmy from under an immovable rod. The man has deformed the wet ground beneath him with two men's weight and is barred into this rut by a resistance of 8000lbs. He's stuck guys. Just accept the drowned captain's fate and find a way to deal with the sociopath in the party.
@@wmbtech Yeah. I've actually been caught like that, though not under water.
You can't actually get out.
[Truck suspension, and a bracket on my back, in case you were curious.]
Both of your examples still include a force being exerted down, once fixed the rod resists the upward force, but whereas if you find a few mm of space to go down, in either case of pinning the downward force would keep the foot/ body in contact. The immovable rod by contrast is immovable.
The human body is rounded (and also breathing impacts volume, so moving the center of mass away from the rod, would create space, so it should be possible to slip from under it, in a way isn't true for objects that are obeying normal laws of physics.
It's possible to envisage a scenario where the rod catches in a place that would be inescapable, but considering that activating the rod takes the action from action surge any positioning of the rod in this case has the mechanical power of an object interaction, it wasn't positioned with the force of an attack or a grapple, so assuming it catches in such a place feels flawed.
For the Tarrasque scenario, I deliberately gave my players a "broken" and "not quite immovable" rod that behaved exactly as described in the video.
The NPC that gave it to the players made it clear that it was malfunctioning, and if activated, it would basically become a rail gun.
Watching my players walk around with a howitzer in their back pockets and wondering when to use it was a delight.
i love that lol
I can see a scenario in which they find the rod with a note: DO NOT TURN ON. I never quite figured out the reference frame problem.
@@Steelrat1994 When there find it with that note then good for the creator to have the Good reference frame :) When he defined it as stationary to the Universe the rod can never be found on that planet, or when the reference frame was the Sun it plumeted into the Earth at 30kps. Both are interesting Results :)
I had a similar thing. but it required my players to recite a speech similar to the 'Holy Handgrenade' one before it launched. Each line was 1d10 of damage. It launched as soon as one of the players using it laughed.
They got five out of ten in, but got sweet rolls of 8-10 on them so the BBEG took a good hit.
Tarrasque scenario
A tarrasque is immune to nonmagical bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage
and also the rod would be gone any other time they used it
and also also a tarrasque is heavier than 8000 pounds
I love creative uses to items, the immovable rod isn't a problem, it's the funnest solution. Locking an opponent underwater is a creative way to kill a boss for sure and should be encouraged.
It's definitely fun, but I could see how some players would feel left out in that situation. Some people want to contribute to the fight and if 90% of a climactic encounter was solved by one member, then I imagine some people could feel jipped.
I'd be cool with it, because it's an insanely novel and funny. It would get lame if every boss was cheesed with the IR, though.
@@NicholasW943 Exactly, it's an idea worth rewarding, but making it a one hit boss kill is too much imo. Like the captain realising they're defeated and using sending or other nonverbal communication to bargain their life or destroying the ground beneath them with magic to escape but dealing a significant amount of damage to themselves. Managing fun player ideas is like playing with kids, you don't want to be a buzzkill, but you're the responsible one.
Edit: typo 😅
@@NicholasW943 the true villiian could be the second mate of the pirate captain, sneaking behind the immovable rod user, knocking him out.
Or just have him do a dex check to move out from under the rod. Nothing says he must be completely pinned. Just that the rod itself can't be moved@@sarowie
Creative solutions are only creative if they occur once. If the same solution comes up again and again, it's not creative and it's a problem.
In a campaign setting where it was just floating islands above a sea of clouds, I came up with the scheme of creating a base beneath an island by using Immovable Rods as mounting points for scaffold to work on the structure. That was how my party had a secret base directly beneath the capital city island, started with Immovable Rods XD
This is a great idea. 2 or 4 immovable rods and some rope also make for excellent restraints and or booby traps. See scoody doo for inspiration. 😂
Simple solution.
"so if we allow it to do this to the tarrasque, the god of time will have to rewrite history since you changed the dynamics of the rod, as such all your enemies you killed with it, will come back to life, and all the allies you saved with it, will be placed back in their prediciment. there is also a hidden DC on a D100 that you have to roll, I will tell you if the rod stays or not. (the dc is 100) if it is vanished away, you must 1v1 the tarrasque, and seeing as all the loot you got was a direct effect of the rods use, you will be using just starting class equipment. do you wish to roll the d100, or put that rod back in your bag of holding good sir?"
I gotta speak up as a DM and say that every one of these except for the last one (which wouldn't work, RAW) are rad as hell, and I would give my players points of inspiration for thinking of them. Using it as a pulley? Hell yeah!
Then again, if he used the rod to pierce the hull, that means the ship and the rod move separately. So pinning them down under water wouldn’t work as the ship is moving down and it would just create space in a second for him to slip out.
These scenarios assume two different things. First, the rod doesn’t move with the ship and cracks the hull. Second, the rod now moves with the ship and it will remain at a fixed place and as the ship moves, the rod stays in the same place moving with it.
The first one would be clever. The second one would not. The third one is impossible as the rod doesn’t work that way and assuming it does in that one case is like the first two scenarios. The way the rod works would have to change to make it work.
Lastly, if you’re out in the ocean and you just sank the ship you were on, you’re stranded out at sea. Even if you were doing a boarding action, you’d be stuck below while the rest of the crew of the ship you’re on closes you in the hold and escapes using your ship.
There are various ways these just aren’t clever. If your players are outsmarting you with these things, you probably aren’t the best DM for the job.
A friend of mine is running a campaign for my son and his friends.
He gave a group of 10-13 year olds, an Immovable Rod that had a command word, instead of a button.
I watched, as they rolled high on every persuasion and every deception check, to convince the black dragon that was supposed to kill them (to start the real campaign, an escape from the underworld) to eat their pack horse...with the rod inside...then it flew off...and they...activated the rod...
Black Dragon liver was on the menu that night...
As you activate the rod, the resulting sonic boom implodes you as it rockets away toward the terrasque. There is no death save, you are hamburger. The trail of destruction caused by the hypersonic weapon causes fissures in the earth leading to the terrasque. Fortunately, the terrasque succeeds in the DC30 strength check and the path of destruction stops there. After absorbing the initial blow, badly wounded but making a strength save, the terraque moves the rod out of the way and continues forward, leaving the rod to continue its deadly journey across the land.
Or just, "Upon activation, the magic of the rod leaves it stationary in the air in front of you. The rod remains gloriously stationary, wowing the rest of your party with its perfect immobility. Everyone else, roll a willpower save. Anyone that fails says, 'Oooohhhhh.' In an impressed tone of voice."
I think for my games, I'm going to account for this by saying that the immovable rod technically moves. It's not possible for an object to be absolutely stationary when all movement is relative. What happens when you press the button on the rod is it becomes locked into the velocity of the person who pushed the button. That means if you activate it on a ship, the rod will travel alongside the ship at the exact same speed as when it was activated. This will only become a problem once the ship changes its speed or direction.
This seems like a really good idea and the only way for it to work consistently.
It also means that if you're walking or jumping while activating it you can climb on top and ride it like a broomstick
@@54l68l65l20l47l61l6D Ya know what? If someone manages to figure out that you can do that, I'm happy to let them do it. That's much less worrisome than the other game-breaking things players use the rod for and it's pretty creative.
Another generally useful rule of thumb is the reaction the rod has to being overpowered, be that by weight or strength. Instead of assuming it's being muscled into a new position, it's generally better to assume this activates an emergency shutoff and the rod just deactivates.
You could just say it's pinned to the gravity well.
I've actually seen the last actually come up in play many years ago in 3.5 (in a pick up game I was running at a FLGS). Very similar argument about rotational motion of the planet. If we're playing with real-life physics, he failed to account for revolutions around the solar body and galactic motion of the system. The rod, instead of staying fixed at a certain height with the revolving planet, got yeeted into the air as the planet made it's inexorable journey around the sun. No more worries about that specific item.
should have taken the player with it
better idea, have it slam into the ground at the players feet, and make them take damage
Clever
“Theres always a bigger perspective”
The tarrasque is immune to nonmagical bludgeoning damage.
So if a meteor hits a Tarrasque it doesn't do damage?
Well, that's dumb :D
As an immovable rod is a magic item, any damage it causes would be magical damage.
@garyasselstine9186 It would be nice if that's how it worked. Sadly, it's just regular old bludgeoning.
from nonmagical *attacks*, it can still take fall damage or other environmentally caused things
@@TheBrinkofDestruction fall damage is bludgeoning damage 💔
The correct answer to the last scenario is either "that's not how the immovable rod works, it stays put relative to the planet", or (my personal preference) "that's not how this world works, this is a fantasy world and geocentrism is true here".
1. The Immovable Rod is staying put relative to the planet in that last scenario. It is not locked to its rotation is all.
2. Whether or not the planet orbits the sun or the sun orbits the planet is irrelevant in this case. Day and night is determined by the rotation of the planet, which is unaffected by whether the world is geocentric or not.
@@burgernthemomrailer Fair enough on 1, I didn't phrase that precisely enough. What I meant was more "relative to the plantary surface".
But as for 2, day and night are *not* caused by planetary rotation in a geocentric cosmos, but rather by the orbit of the sun around the earth. Historically, the lack of evidence (at the time) for plantary rotation was one of the major scientific arguments against heliocentrism in the 1600s. Scientists of the day recognized that plantary rotation would produce what we now call Coriolis effects, but (due to limitations of experimental equipment and methodology at the time) no such effects could be detected. Not realizing the results were an artifact of their insufficiently precise tools, scientists of the day concluded earth must not rotate, and thus counted this as evidence for geocentrism.
(Theoretically one could posit a geocentric model *with* a rotating earth, but this is not how geocentric models in our own history were conceived, and thus not how my geocentric fantasy worlds work.)
The rod has to be immovable to some frame of reference. I require it to be touching something. That something is what the rod is immovable against.
Last example: "Improvised weapon attack, roll 1d4."
It isn't an attack.
@@TheBaconWizardi doubt the tarrasch would agree with you
@@SoupSnakeSal True. But it isn't an attack ROLL.
@@TheBaconWizardDifferent perspective: You are aiming at the target (attack roll) and calculating the actual relative movement of the rod (int roll).
It’s immune to bludgeoning damage from non magical attacks, so this arguably wouldn’t do anything. I mean, it’s technically a magic item, but
Events that didn't happen:
Player: I activate the rod.
DM: Okay. As you press the button, a series of morbid thoughts cross your mind.
First, you never asked which direction the planet spins.
Second, it occurs to you that the planet you're on is also orbiting a star, and that star is moving through the galaxy. You didn't factor this into your plan.
Third, when the rod accelerates out of your hand, the friction is going to obliterate your hand, and possibly tear your arm off.
Player:..
DM: The rod clatters harmlessly to the ground.
Player: What?
DM: Yeah. For the rod to come to a standstill, it has to shed all of its momentum. Given the speed you described, it would have to shed way more than 8,000 pounds of force. Wizards will often sell "truly immovable rods" to adventurers as a joke.
Ship example: To grap the rod outside of the hull now gushing with water - DEX DC35 check
Melee in shallow water: To be able to pin an opponent down exactly so he cant wiggle sideways from the rod in the middle of combat/brawling - DEX DC35 check
Tarrasque example: The Rod is most likely "geo-stationary" thus moving with planets rotation otherwise it cant be used for any of the other examples
Exactly my thought on the first one. Lets them success but with predictable consequences. Tho I would have put it as dc 30. No bigger than the role to move the rod.
So the ship has a hole in it, but it is filled with the rod, no leak. Water will only come in if the rod is removed. When the rod is extended, roll save on the ships hull, if it fails, catastrophic collapse and everyone in the compartment is knocked unconscious and drowns. Not so smart now are your Mr. Player?
The Tarrasque one doesn't really work. If it were the case that the rod being immovable and the planetary rotation would be a factor, if you were to EVER activate it, you would immediately lose it as the planet would move out from under it every time. It has to be geostationary.
@@Marcus-ki1enthats not how water physics work, based on the size of the rod. youre just being a dick to your metaphorical players at that point
@@ciaphascain2807 That is the point, the player has no understanding of basic physics and is just meta gaming to get advantage.
Where does the Immovable Rod set its reference point? would the not spin across a rotating planet? Or the rod move off the planet if relative to the local star?
If you have to deal with the last one as all motion is relative and the player has just argued that the ground should not be the reference point you could say that the rod remains stationary with respect to the centre of the solar system or galaxy which probably gives you 2 new directions to send the rod in at even faster speeds (or get the person who sold it to them to demonstrate the rod being immovable with respect to the ground before they buy it)
"You activate the rod. Unfortunately, as the movement of the galaxy in the universe is in the opposite direction that you're facing, the rod immediately rockets through your chest at untold speeds, removing both itself and your heart completely from the game."
Yes, a rather large hole in the reasoning. Had they ever used it previously in the game and had it done this?
Same for the first example. The player wants the rod to be immovable relative not to the ship but to the environment around it. If that's the case, then the rod would be immovable to the universe around it and would immediately move in a random direction at over 100 miles per second. Roll to see if you are in the path of the rod.
galaxy speed 372 miles per second, galaxy rotation speed 130 miles per second, solar system speed 143 miles a second, speed of planet around the sun 18.5 miles a second, rotation of earth between 1000 miles and 800 miles per hour if your between the equator and lest say the UK... so if a person holds the item and hits the button they find themselves not even on a planet within a second. take in to account the air and gasses around them on the planet, the friction of going from earths rotation and speed of everything above to a stationary spot in an instant would rip a person apart down to carbon level. more so when the galaxy goes from 372 miles a second to zero.... would the rod even survive that transition?
@@TimLewallenI would allow the first one. It is immovable in relation to a fixed point on the planet.
I love the immovable rod, and work it into campaigns when I can. It really can be used in fun and clever ways -- I've never run into a case where someone 'abused' it. That use of the rod in a ship was funny, but no way would I have let someone roll to save the rod after it started to destroy the ship. As someone else mentioned, it's as broken as you let it be.
Yeh if its got enough force to break the hull its long gone, and a pinhole in a ship is not that big of deal. Ships carry corks or block of wood and tar with a kinfe and hammer to carve the plug to size and pound into the leak for this exact reason.
Actually I would have deactivated the rod as the ship weights more than what the rod can handle.
Well, either make the rod's reference point being the ship for that scenario, since they're below water, so the ship IS their whole reference point at that time. Or make it in a way where the rod is forever lost, since there's no way he could've reached the button in time. I would, every now and then, tell stories about tragedies of boats mysteriously sinking in that region "for no apparent reason" and that would make the ships avoid the whole area, creating problems for the transport of goods. Creating an economical problem and inflation, making prices "randomly" skyrocket because "well, the last shipment bringing this just sunk from that damn curse..."
And, of course, if they ever traveled by ship in that region, I would ask for very high perception/wisdom/history checks from them. And, if they failed a luck roll, failed to remember the existence of the rod, failed to "remember" the exact location of the rod, and/or a high Dex roll for maneuvering the ship around the rod, then their ship would also sink.
Check sailing ship movement rates. The rod won't fly though the hull at great speed since the ship isn't moving that fast. If the rod is locked to the planet rotational frame, then it will likely slowly break open a hole. Ships have great carrying capacity and they don't need rest at night like animals, so they can make good range over longer distances, but they're not fast.
@@BlueFrenzy the rod also doesn't say that it exerts 8k lbs of force, just that it can hold up to 8k lbs. It's a subtle difference that many miss. it's only strength is when being acted upon, not acting upon anything else.
My players once tried that last one. I told them that the rod disappears as they activate it.
Because if the rod is not anchored to the motion of the planet, why would it be anchored to the motion of the sun?
The sun orbits the galaxy at a speed of 75000 feet per second. That thing was out of the planet's atmosphere as soon as they activated it.
One of the players just asked, "Do we get the nuclear explosion caused by an object moving that quickly in the atmosphere?"
Even better, our galaxy moves at about 2 million km/h according to some calculations. That's over 60 times faster than the orbital re-entry speed of the space shuttle. Both the rod's user and the rod itself would just melt instantly.
I love the idea of describing that -- "you press the button, and immediately you're temporarily deaf and blind (from a sonic boom and a photonic boom) and as you regain your senses, your wrist is a bloody stump, and there's a rod-shaped hole in the ground that you almost think you can see stars through... then the Tarrasque arrives"
If a player wants to start talking forces applied over surface areas, they can also enjoy the 'realistic' physical consequences of the edge of an ogre's greataxe applied to a region of their character's body.
Usually you can out physics people. In this case, the motion of the planet itself is greater than that of the rotation, causing the rod to be transfixed in place as it appears to soar into space in the opposite direction of the earth's rotation around the sun with no other effects. You now have one year to prevent the destruction of the earth due to the rod being in the path of the planet's orbit
@@casuallydone468 pretty sure the entire goddamn planet is a bit heavier than 8000 pounds, it'd just cause a small crater or burn up in the atmosphere during exit or entrance
@@casuallydone468Thats actually a pretty fun campaign idea
the galaxy is still moving through space along with the solar system and plantes, so... rest assure they're not seeing that rod ever again and the planet is safe from ever encountering the rod in it's path hahahahha@@casuallydone468
@@casuallydone468 Unfortunately if we're talking a one to one similarity of our own universe, you'll ever see it again as even our entire galaxy is moving as well. The rod will be off in space with no possible way to find let alone recover it
"As you crest the hill, you notice a several thousand peasants marching in a long line next to the Tarrasque. If you squint really hard, you can see that the one at the very end is carrying a 10ft poll. You're move, chief."
*your.
i think the rod aligns its self relative to the planet so it can "appear to stay in place" because how was it useful before the attempt at the orbital strike. It should have ripped right through you or go in a "random" direction.
The last use i had happen in my game but it was a specific rod known as the “immaculate immovable rod” as soon as the button was pushed, it launched deep into space as it held its exact spot in the universe. There was a loud boom that deafened the party for a couple hours. Likewise there was a crcked variant that held its place above the core of the planet. There was a rod in dangerously low orbit for about 3 days before the party turned it off again doing a large amount of damage to anything it dug through
Fun fact! The universe expands (or 'moves') at the sped of light! If you did this and the inertial reference from was "The Universe", then the speed the rod would instantly reach would cause a violent string of nuclear explosions due to it's speed causing the air molocules around it to go through nuclear fusion.
I've stopped planning my D&D sessions and just have a collection of areas, NPCs, and potential plot points to handle player chaos, so creative uses for stop like this is always welcome in my games, as the players have a lot of fun with it, and if I can handle it, so do I. Within reason though, as orbital strike doesn't work because that would make the item useless in an other scenario.
Some players make every DM day an improv show. I kinda Like it.
My answer. "Oh. Well then you and everyone on the planet die." "What?" "Well you're claiming the rod has a universal inertial reference frame. So the planet isn't just rotating. It's also orbiting. It's orbiting the sun. It's orbiting the galactic core. The galaxy itself is moving through the universe towards other galaxies. So you have just increased the potential mass of that rod towards infinity. However, the rod can only hold 8000 lbs, which means that it immediately starts to move with near infinite velocity generating so much local heat that it creates a kugelblitz of expanding space and heat stripping apart atoms down to their unstable leptons. The gamma ray burst of you activating that rod is going to be detected for hundreds of millions of years as alien civilizations wonder just how so much energy was generated without colliding supermassive black holes or collapsing blue supergiants.
The Tarrasque weighs more than 8000 lbs and can easily beat a DC 30 STR check. The rod bounces off it's chest and drops to the ground.
The Tarrasque doesn't notice.
[edited for spelling]
Tarrasque.
I've seen the Immovable Rod used only once, in a Lv20 oneshot. We all had various magic items, and the Monk asked for Two(2) rods. The DM had a short discussion with them in DMs, and allowed it.
Ended up merely being the setup for the most unnecessary substitute for a grappling hook there ever was.
Two rods is amazing. You can effectively use them as a ladder by placing one, climbing onto it, placing the next one, climbing onto it, deactivating and replacing the first one, etc.
@@Sirithil or if your thumb is very fast one only for the salmon ladder you see in gyms
used as a ladder, then as a platform with two rods side by side. Great high point for ranged attack. :)
Space ladder.
As for the barbarian arm wrestling contest, the rod can withstand 8000 lbs of force, but your arm and wrist cannot. The barbarian crushes your arm against the rod. As the bones in your arm splinter, you hear a sickening snap as the barbarian rips your hand clean off your wrist.
Um, just how much strength does does this barbarian have, 50?
@@Nukestarmaster why not? F around and find out, right?
in the dark days of 3.5 I was once swallowed whole by a t-rex. I activated an immovable rod in it's stomach, and then crawled out of it's throat. The old description of an Immovable rod was that the massive str check was to move it 10 feet.
So the party just walked away. And a week later we came back to find a dead dino. It starved to death because it couldn't chase it's prey.
5E is just a very easy 2E
A huge/gargantuan creature absolutely weighs more than 8000lbs: take a ~300 lb medium-sized dino, large-size means x8 weight, huge size means x8 weight again = 19,200 lbs, meaning it would deactivate. Maybe some piercing damage, but still. People drastically overestimate how big 8000lbs is, or underestimate how much big things weigh.
@@goatmeal5241 So you are saying that the soft tissue of the stomach of the t-rex would be able to withstand a force of 8000lbs. And if it is the orientated with the top or bottom of the rod that is what presses against the side of the stomach. Then the 8000lb force the rod can withstand to move it would be on a smaller surface area. It would tear right through the side of the t-rex. Not to mention that the person swallowed must be going by the loony tunes version of getting swallowed. As the stomach is not an open space as cartoons would make one to believe.
3.5 was the peak. The good stuff. Before they dumbed it down.
@@wyeteepaleface9199 yeah, remember the epic level handbook?
When the Owlin came out I rolled one up for a one shot and used an immovable rod as a "put it anywhere bird perch". It was fantastic. I can't remember if we fudged the activation and deactivation being a full action or bonus or what but I wasn't doing any of these over the top abuses, just had a cute little owl fly around and then perch on the rod wherever they wanted. Pretty sure I was using that psychic rogue class too so they could snipe enemies with psychic damage from range. It was a lot of fun.
“You activate the rod. It bulldozes into the ground, leaving an immovable rod-shaped hole in the ground. Well, for a second anyway, until the hole explodes from the combined heat and compression. In case you forgot, the planet is also moving around the sun, and it’s evening.”
I remember a couple stories of the rod.
I was running the Temple of Elemental Evil as my team used two rods to basically climb the air. It was slow but exciting.
I remember another time they were getting chased down by an undead white worm behemoth. They put the rod sideways in the air and the work ate it... Ripping a massive hole in its back end! That was a cool scene.
Is it better than the inanimate carbon rod?
That rod got its picture on 'Time' magazine. They had a parade for it. It saved astronauts.
A player in my campaign has 2. I deem them the length of a ladder rung and he sometimes uses them like climbing axes. They have not been abused but they do allow all kinds of challenges to be bypassed.
He also has a magic rope.
I mean, if the player is that antagonistic, use their creativity against them. 😈
DM: "Are you absolutely sure that you want to change how the rod works so it is no longer in the planet's reference frame?"
Player: "Yes, absolutely."
DM: "And you're standing to the east of the tarrasque during the day?"
Player: "Yes, that's what I said."
DM: "Okay, if you say so.... As you press the button, your body turns into a fine mist as the Immovable Rod stays put while the planet continues its orbit about the sun at 107,000 kph or approximately 585,000 feet per round, dealing 23,400 d6 damage to your body. Your companions can try to pick up the rod in one year's time."
Tarasque event: Player activates the rod only to find himself 10,000 feet in the air before he can release the rod. The planet is moving away from the center of the big bang at that rate. If its on the other side of the planet, the player now has lost a hand/arm/foot due to the rod cutting through them as it impacts with the planet.
Creativity by a player just means that the DM did not consider that. "Using their creativity against them" is just lazy and makes the DM a tyrannic little bitch.
Even more: it's bold to assume that our sun is at the center of the universe. It actually deals an unknowable amount of damage as the galaxy you are in careens away from the center of the universe at unimaginable speed. The rod is irrecoverable, lest you get a spelljammer and retrieve it from the cold depths of space.
Once the rod hits the earth that weighs more than 8000lb, the rod would deactivate.
There was no center of the big bang. It happened everywhere at once@@zarthemad8386
Last scenario: after pressing the button you made the unmovable rod break the sound barrier, generating a sonic boom at point blank that ripped off your arm, you also made the gods angry because you broke one of their limits and they given you the X curse. Oh! Right, you recive N d6 of damage from the Sonic boom and you teammates recive N-2 d6 damage because they were behind you ☠️
Our party had and immoveable rod when we were running Tomb of Annihilation and it just saved our butts so many times-
Some notable moments- stopping a number of trap mechanisms including a spinning fan blade, using it to repel down a pit, and holding up a collapsing ceiling. But the best use was when a T-rex swallowed our rogue and tried to run. Luckily the DM forgot that he was the one currently in possession of the rod, but the rogue remembered.
MILKBEARD THE TABAXI PIRATE?!?!? 😂😂😂😂😂
Milk Beard is also the name of my cat
For the last scenario 1000mph only applies at the equator, you will get slower velocities at higher latitudes (calculated as 1000×COS[latitude]) down to zero at either pole. If you account for the planet's orbit around the sun and possibly the sun's movement you can get other interesting results. The rod could ark skyward if you are on the backside of the planet relative to its orbital trajectory, or it could jab down into the ground on the frontside. If you assume the sun isn't moving and the rod goes skyward it will impact the planet in just under a year. Incorporating all these different velocities could get numbers much lower or much higher than you used at this point. Insisting on incorporating them can quickly negate the value of "orbital strike" as your player probably won't want to spend in game hours calculating where they need to stand to make it work.
This is where the new rule of “Yes” becomes the tried and true rule of “No.”
"You activate the rod, and it is fixed in place, relative to the planet. It floats there , unmoving, because everything on the planet is moving at the same speed. It is now the tarrasque's turn."
In the last scenario, the Immovable Rod is fixed in place relative to the planet.
What it is not fixed in place relative to, is the planet’s rotation.
Meaning that by your logic, the Immovable Rod would still fly and pierce through the tarrasque.
@@burgernthemomrailer Sorry, it didn't work. You lose your turn. It is now the tarrasque's turn.
@@grugnotice7746 I fail to detect a counterargument except “nuh uh!”
@@burgernthemomrailer Tarrasque got a critical. You are dead. While in the Aetherial plane you talk with the ghost of Steven Hawking. He reminds you that everything in the theater you were firghting in was not only moving through space but also rotating and the rod would not be fun if it didn't also move through space AND rotate with the rest of the world.
He then passed you on to Jesus who sent you to the lowest of Hells for defying the DM.
@@grugnotice7746 Portent. Nat 1. Dimension Door 500 feet up. Feather Fall. Fly. Spam Sacred Flame out of range. Good game.
Your real background for the sponsor segment Is much better than the AI generated rubbsh in the rest of the video.
Most of the 'quick examples' would work and should be rewarded for clever play. With regards to the length of the Rod: I believe that a 'rod' is defined as being 18" to 2' long (I'd have to research that). With regards to trapping the pirate captain: He specifically said that he was putting his weight on the rod and then activating it. IMHO this means that the captain could make a Dex or Str check modified by the weight of the character (a Halfling Rogue would convey a BONUS!) to wriggle out from under the rod. I would call that (and standing back up) all of his movement though. As for the Terrasque (or any other 'using the rod to stop a moving thing) the weight limit would likely kick in long before that kind of damage would be inflicted. I believe the DMG has tables for calculating falling damage from heavy things so just use those.
In our current game, our party has TWO such rods and my character is an Artificer with an Int of 22 so he can be pretty clever on how to use them. The DM has never regretted letting us buy the rods and has rewarded us for clever use of them. Just remember that almost any magic item can be abused if you think about it.
I know these are tongue in cheek, but I love when my players take the time and brain energy to come up with clever ways to win.
Okay, so we need to destroy something big. Maybe a castle wall or like the video said, a giant tarrasque - first we need an adamantine box. Not a big one, one square foot should be fine, it just needs to be open on one side. Next we need SEVERAL immovable rods. We're going to suspend the box at torso height facing the open side towards the target using the rods, making sure to place multiple at the back of it. Next we need our wizard to cast mass polymorph on a herd of cows, transmuting them into any insect that is easily catchable and put them all in a jar. Next we gently GENTLY place the jar inside the open side of the box. Lastly....the wizard drops focus.
I call it, "The CowMeHaMeHa."
I also really like the cube of force. Such a great utility item that is rife with possibilities. I'm not really an active player at the moment, but when I was I was able to reasonably convince DM's to let me use it in all sorts of creative ways. (it basically breaks the whiteplume mountain AL module in several glorious ways)
I used it with Winged Boots to airlift a prisoner to safety. I had a plan to use it as a drop pod to assault with the entire party in melee.
nah, the immovable rod is a great magical item to give the party, it sparks their creativity. The example you gave can be thought around. Fun story though, I once gave out a cursed immovable rod, it would randomly go off. Once they were riding on horse and it went off and the horse kept walking and they just were hanging in the air. It ended up being really funny because they thought they were being stalked by an invisible creature.
that's great 😂 TS a faulty magic item:
Soo... have you tried recasting? Checking the connection to the laylines? Consulted the spirits if anything changed?
I love that! A magic item that activates randomly sounds like a great time. I think I'm going to have to steal this idea for a campaign.
Just because the rod is immovable doesn't mean the ground is. Especially in areas of standing water (sand, mud). Being already wet, the escape artist check to slip out from under an immovable rod against your back is likely fairly easy for anyone with even a mediocre dexterity. Yes, I know, 5e got rid of a lot of skills, this is why it shouldn't have. Even without a skill, the mere fact that such an action is possible at all can allow characters with decent stats to take basic actions and have rules for them.
Also since wooden hulls for shipbuilding (hardwoods, oak, etc) possess a yield strength of around 40-60 megapascals, on average you need over 7000PSI to punch through the hull at all, much less do so in a credible fashion. A holdable rod is likely slightly more than a square inch in diameter (at least, especially if long), and is unlikely to punch through a ship's hull, especially if it deviates on impact and glances or pitches sideways like a projectile might. Even if it does, a one inch square hole in a large ship's hull will not overwhelm the bilge pumps, as ships are always taking on water that needs to be removed in normal operation, especially early ships.
I won't even entertain the "earth's rotation" argument, as the rod locking to a non-SOI plane of reference renders it useless as a practical item to people that live, y'know, on the planet. Also it'd lock to a solar reference frame, not a non-rotational earth one (this makes no sense as a concept as the planet isn't a perfect sphere), and move at the speed of the planet rotating its star in a direction retrograde the planet's orbit. This may be through the planet, but again, the rod's limit on strength means it's probably still less dangerous than 120mm APFSDS or equivalent.
Given the rod is only capable of securing 8000lbs, most people are able to create an immovable rod by hammering a large post into the ground several feet. This is admittedly harder than pressing a button, but requires a spade instead of a physics-negating magical artifact.
Yes, I do play GURPS, how did you guess?
As to the orbital strike, any, and I do mean any, previous adjudication which allowed the rod to stay in place above the ground for use, such as the pully for the pit, would immediately rule out the orbital strike option. (Any smart DM would anyway, because the rod becomes useless if you don't)
The orbital strike is essentially allowing the player to define a magical object. For example, if the DM decided that, when the immovable rod was activated, it shot off at the relative speed of the cosmic background radiation in a random direction, never to be seen again, the player would be rightly upset.
First one. You deactivate if before it goes out of your reach. It is now lodged in the hull of the ship Ishtar a small leak around it. DC 30 str to pull it out.
DC 30 strength check to pull a stick out of an old ship’s hull. Good one, idiot.
To the last argument involving the planet’s rotation: the rod moves relative to the planet’s position in space. If the rod were truly immovable on Earth, for example, not only would you have to account for the Earth’s rotation, but also its movement around the Sun, the Solar System’s orbit through the Milky Way, and the Milky Way’s speed relative to the rest of space.
If the rod was completely immovable relative only to space, you’d click the button once, and never see it again.
The one where they stick it to a prone creature is very easy to circumvent, just have them roll an athletics or acrobatics check (DC equal to 8+PB+strength mod of the player that fixed the rod or a STR check from the player).
My explanation for why that works is if you breathe out and contract your chest, you can reduce its size by 0.5-1 inch, and a lot more if the rod is parallel to your belly, since the rod doesn't move you now have a gap to slip through and then stand up.
Two problems with this. First issue is armor. Outside of possibly elven chainmail, most armor is bulky and heavy. Not leaving a lot of room for fine movement like wriggling and shimmying. Second issue is he was knocked prone from from behind, placing him on his belly. Exhaling may move your diaphragm and belly a couple of inches, but it won't give you a lot of space at the sternum. It's why most law enforcement pins people face down during a handcuffing procedure with a knee on their back.
Use 2 rods placed diagonally. Tie a wire between the two rods and now you've got a fantastic tool. 👌
Point One: For the Pirate Captain, the rod is immovable, the Captain is not. He is laying on sand, in the water, he can dex. check and move out from under the rod and run the player's character through with his cutlass of stupidity slaying. Since it remains stationary, it is not pushing down on him. Point Two: For the Tarrasque, The rod retains the momentum of the rotation of the earth, otherwise every time you set it, it would move away from you to the east.When you pushed the button, it would remain stationary, on the hill and the Tarrasque would crush you under foot, no save. Point Three: Mr. Player, you are being a D**k. Knock it off or find a different table. Problem solved. Point Four: Great Vid, how many of us have had to deal with this kind of player?
Agreed, though one point of clarification: the rod would be moving due _west_ relative to the earth if not in a geostationary orbit.
For the DM - that calculation depends on where you are on the globe. Sure, if you were at the equator that is the correct speed, but this campaign is in the remote north, it will take four rounds to reach the tarasque.
for point one the player stated that he pushed down on the rod before activating and so if he pushed down hard enough it could trap him. someone would have to roll to see if it was pushed down hard enough in the right place so he couldn't move out but it could work.
@@jameshulse1642 as soon as the button is pushed, the rod freezes in place, so there is no continuing downward force (that would imply movement). Overruled.
Sand. No strength check required to dig himself out from under the Rod. The Rod may be immovable but the beach isn’t.
@@Marcus-ki1en I was imagining a scenario similar to being trapped in a small tunnel. just because the walls don't move doesn't mean you aren't stuck. you would have to push down the rod fairly hard in a difficult to wriggle out of area (in between shoulder blades might work) to get the thing set up though.
Love the concept of the video but sorry some issues here.
the standard measurements for a 35ft wooden boat built in this day and age (with thinner wood than in medieval times) you should use the naval architect's measurement called 'sinkage'.
This allows for that 35ft boat to hold upto 10,000lb per 0.75 inch of hull.
work out what the resistance that is greater than 8.000lb/length*width(in inches)
for example a 2 foot bar say 2 inches high to allow for the button would only have 166lbs per square inch of pressure.
in this case unless the boat was sailing very fast it would cause a brake action on the boat but probably would not go through it depending on speed. if the bar was 4ft long as requested the it would only have 83lbs of pressure per square inch... the longer the pole the less actual force it can bring to bear. And we have a limit of 8,000lbs so once the counter force was greater than that it would just move the bar.
This is a great object to hold a human down with, or to suspend in the air and try a rope off of. Or even if you can click the button repeatedly quick enough to salmon ladder with.
If the bar was orientated inside the boat on the horizontal plane perfectly level then it would push a hole through the wood the same as the area of a cross section of the rod. so about 2inch by 2 inch which is not that big in the grand scheme of things.
Most wooden medieval sailing boats were always leaking which is why bilge pumps were and are a thing
A 2inch diameter hole on the back of a sailing vessel which would be on the aft, would be in the wake of the vessel while moving, so low pressure water, so it is not going to force its way in side it more going to be a slow leak inside, whilst the boat is moving, most other areas of the ship/storms will bring water in faster.
So the pirate would have time if it does leak to note the ship is slowly and i mean slowly becoming heavy in the aft, definately enough time to send a member of the crew to investigate and find a leak as from the aft being heavier they would know leak.
If the bar was perpendicular to direction of travel it would cause a braking action which actually might do more damage to the ship as putting all joints and joins under sudden stress, but then it would just either anchor the ship (not substantial damage) or add greater drag to the ship (slows it) both of which would be able to be felt at the helm as being from the aft of the ship.
Great distraction but not catastrophic failure, unless the ship was already falling apart, in which case it is more likely to meet rotted wood and just go straight though and we are back to a 2inch by 4 foot hole, if horizontal or somewhere down to a 2in by 2 inch hole depending on orientation... even a 4 foot by 2inch hole would not sink the ship.. cannon balls below the water line make bigger holes than that and a ship can take multiple hits in battle before needing to worry (obviously worry once battle has stopped = but not worry as in we are going to sink in the next 10 minutes.)
Concerning the "nuclear option" This would imply the bar is not locked to the planet, in which case depending on which side of the planet you are on it is going to either fly up into space as the planet is also moving through space not just rotating, or try and bury itself into the planet's surface until it finds a higher resistance than whatever lb/in^2 it is ... but if this was the case then it would work like this every time you used it for any reason.
holding a person to the ground do-able but the longer the bar the more unstable that bar would be... so the 2ft one would be better at this.
Arm wrestling, funny and do-able
Using it as a brake for yourself on a run away horse do-able but likely to rip your shoulders out of the joints 30mp to 0mp in an instant. same with falling, think Garfield Spiderman saving Gwen.
So reality wise
in the air to try a rope to
Holding a door or window closed
a mobile place to tie your horse to.
a fun way to climb a mountain.
there plenty of ways to use it in the game but not as catastrophic as making things explode.
Though.... put in the way of someone falling see gwen stacy
put in front of a moving horse or wagon messy destruction of horse flesh.
put in front of fast moving human also messy destruction of human flesh.
depending on the armour of a dragon and pressure it can take per sq/in probably brusing to a fast flying dragon... seeing as most swords can not go through their scales and they are pointy so that the lbs/in^2 is maximized.
Sorry to be a poo-poo-platerhead.
That last one exploited one of the first questions I had about the Immovable rod. Basically my DM said, No, it's locked in relation to the position and rotation of the planet and would not go rocketing off into space due to being locked in absolute position. I would further more rule that the Tarrasque lumbers over and eats the fool who's playing with his rod rather than focusing on the fight.
A lot of these type of magic item problems go away if you don't consider the materials the items are made with to be infinitely strong, and the magic effect to have infinite force. That does make the DM have to make a call about HOW strong they are if they don't specify, but then, the DM guide doesn't tell you exactly how much force it takes to bend or break a regular metal rod either.
The DMG has clear rules for objects to include AC HP and Resistances.
The rod doesn't do damage. If something that weighs 8,000 lbs or more pushes on it at all, it deactivates. Material strength doesn't matter.
Re-watching this I'm reminded of a fantastic plot point that my DM had. In order to craft an Immovable Rod, you must craft the rod *and* the 8,000 lb block that serves as its absolute reference point... If the rod is on another plane from its anchor or moving too quickly relative to the anchor, the rod doesn't activate.
This became abused in entirely different ways.
These situations are only an issue if you have a highly permissive and unimaginative DM.
Comments:
1st scenario: "So, you're now locked in the hold of a ship below the water line that is taking on water and will probably sink, with you still trapped in the hold, if you don't alert someone to come and fix the hole. But, regardless, a half-inch sized hole in the hull will cause the ship to take on only marginally more water than such vessels already take on during regular operation (these large wooden hulled ships are not entirely watertight, so are always in a state of taking on water), so there's a decent chance the bilge pumps that are regularly used by the crew will be able to handle the excess. You can try to make additional holes, but understand that each one will require a Dex check to deactivate the Rod before it's unreachable outside of the hull."
2nd scenario: "Roll to hit. If you fail, you do not adequately place the rod in an effective position. He's not just laying there waiting for you to do things to him. And, he won't necessarily need to make a Strength check to move the rod. He can make an Acrobatics check to try to squirm out from under it. Since he's not trying to move the rod, the DC will be far lower than 30. Since you state that you are intending to lean with all your force before activating the Rod, I would rule that the Acrobatics check DC would be equivalent to your Strength score."
3rd scenario: "So, you're just giving yourself a new special effect for your Dex save to avoid falling in the pit? Pressing the button while falling will not be automatic; you'll have to roll to maintain grip. If there's a pit and you succeed in the Dex save, you've activated the rod and are hanging by the rod. If you fail, you fail to activate the rod before falling. If the pit is deep enough that you don't hit bottom in the first second (~16 feet), I'll allow a second save to trigger the rod before hitting bottom; in such a case, you'd need to make a Str check to hang onto the rod due to the sudden deceleration."
4th scenario: "Up it's butt? Good luck with that. Roll to hit. You have Disadvantage since this is a called shot. Since the target is small, the enemy will get a large bonus to AC for the attack as well."
5th scenario: "The rod is 4 feet long. It is impossible for you to hide it up your sleeve."
6th scenario: "The rod is 4 feet long. That's enough to impact one of the riders since they are charging line abreast. Also, you're on foot. How exactly are you placing the Rod at chest high to a mounted person? These are warhorses, which are pretty big. The rider's chest will be roughly 8+ feet high, and the horses head would likely get hit before the rider. The rider would get a Perception check to notice the rod. If successful, he'll get a Handle Animal check to try to stop the horse before the collision."
7th scenario: "It's an improvised weapon that will do damage equivalent to a club."
8th scenario: "I mean, you could have driven a piton in the wall do accomplish the same effect, but the Rod will suffice."
9th scenario: "You've made a fundamentally incorrect assumption. This is a fantasy universe; this planet does not rotate. This planet is the center of the solar system, and the sun and everything else revolves around it. You place the Rod, and it sits there, exactly where you placed it."
None of these take a huge amount of thought. I wrote this whole commentary while listening to the video, pausing to write each. Took me about 30 minutes total time, so about a minute or two of thought on each.
My advice to DM's: Do not let your players pull out "wouldn't it be cool if...." scenarios trying to justify "creative" use of items/spells to give dramatically stronger than appropriate for their power level. No amount of imagination should result in a 1st level spell mimicking the power of a 9th level spell (I'm sure people can remember some of the absolute nonsense that was argued online for applications of Prestidigitation under Pathfinder 1e). An uncommon magic item shouldn't be allowed to mimic or exceed the power of an artifact.
(Edited for formatting.)
Any kind of Peasant Railgun or Immovable Rod Orbital Strike shenanigans can easily be finagled to "Improvised weapon attack; roll me a d4."
If an item can destroy a campaign, talk with the player on the side. 99% understand, as long as you let them do it once.
But I’ve been DMing for 33 years. The reason I’ve lasted this long is because I love my friends and their shenanigans more than I love campaign planning.
I lost my DM privileges when I used an illusion spell to trick the party into killing the actual family in a house, from which the remains were used to serve dinner to said party (ala Donner style), I called it "Baby Tips and Rice".... So yeah, no more DM'ing for me...
As a player in 2e, we were being dived upon by a red dragon going for a bite. My Rogue character baited it and jumped aside at the last moment, revealing the immovable rod behind me. WHAM!
Another time, in 3.5, I was DMing and a character got swallowed by a purple worm. She used a dimension door to get out, but not before setting up the immovable rod inside the beast which got horribly stuck. URK!!
I think for the boat and the tarrasque you could just say the rod is stationary in the activating character's frame of reference - after all, it doesn't go flying off into outer space when they push the button.
You do have to be careful if you have the rod function that way, because then the rod will function as a battering ram. Ride towards the castle gate, activate the rod, then stop. Rod will continue forward and impact the gate with 8000 pounds of force.
@@CatacombD just say that it's motionless relative to the largest nearby object (Like the planet, or a ship, but not the user)
The orbital strike strat blatantly doesnt work since the rods become immobile relative to the planet (or they would begin moving very fast indeed the moment they are activated). Most of the brief summaries could be done with normal tools with as potent or even more deadly effect. Pinning someone to the ground -is- a pretty solid use of the rod though I notice they didnt make the guy roll to place the rod properly before activating it which I figure should take at least another opposed athletics check. And honestly if your players can just shove the badguy over on their back or front regularly they could almost as easily do this while the rest of the party stomps them. Likewise the ship-sinker strat... I fail to see how you could Possibly yank the rod back to recover it And have it pierce the ship's hull. The user has to pick one or the other and those rods are kind of pricey. Maybe not as pricey as the ship but still... Also while it's a good hole in the hull its not like the sailors cant simply patch it, if they're pirates or sailors of any experience then they have to have some preparation for dealing with damage like this... even if Usually the thing tearing through the hull comes from outside and slams its way in... it'd basically be half as challenging as patching the exit hole from a theoretical cannon ball punching out the other side, plus the rod is a lot narrower in profile than most cannon balls so the damage should be even easier to fix.
Now granted the story specified a fairly rickety and ramshackle hull that's harder to fix but... well, if its that worn down then there's like a hundred ways to put some holes in the thing if you have time and access to the hull interior and some tools.
In short, I assert that the Immovable Rod is not so much overpowered as it enables a few niche tactics to be pulled off on short notice without the prep time normally required and that is about all. Fun video though!
Did a character once who used two buckler shields with IR's for the handles, and a 6 inch spike in front. He was able to put a charging Minotaur down by using his reaction to activate it before impact. He also uses them like jungle gym bars he can move, so can climb in mid air. And has turned them into make shift stepping stones between large gaps.
My absolute fav though was when he got difinistrated off the tallest tower of an annoyed wizard. He activated one mid fall to swing back in the other direction and the second to correct trajectory.... Threaded the needle back through the window.... Planting both feet into the wizards chest, Difinistrating him through the opposite window. Wizard hadn't bothered to learn any movement spells.....
In my campaign gnomes use these for bridges. At 8000 pound capacity each a bridge suspended by immovable rods would be ridiculously strong.
4 tons is not a heavy bridge. Only very light vehicles. 4 horses and a wagon are almost too heavy.
@@archersfriend5900 That's four tons per rod. That adds up fasrt.
@@MrAshura17 It does, but it also fails in a cascade. Absolutely terrible for infrastructure.
I'm now imagining a factory full of people that spent their entire life learning how to enchant slaving away creating rod after rod so that some nerfed dwarves can build very strong bridges.
So you place the rod as you said, press the button and (add dramatic pause here) it's gone, unlike the boss wich seems to be pretty alive and still raging. Than you realize it, in the heat of battle you made a brilliant plan and forgot one minor detail that spoiled it completly because you forgot that not only the planet does move in circles but the whole solar system the planet is in does move (similar to the one we live in) at an average speed of 448,000 mph (720,000 km/h) through the space and since you cant see a hole in the ground you probably stood on an angle that the rod just vanished into space, or at least it will be after your turn. Two birds, one stone.
That last example is actually kinda horrifying and I now NEED to try this
the last example does not really work, if your DM knows anything about physics the planet is both rotating on it's axis and orbits the sun, in addition to that the whole universe is expanding, in short the rod would ether fly off into the sky or bury itself to the point it hits the strata in which case it just gets dragged along with the rest of the planet.
I if I were the DM in this situation, the terrasque would not only breeze past a dc 30 strength check, but it would just spit fire? acid? burning acid? on the player as he stood there on the hill holding his stationary immovable rod.
@@jonburan6090 I'd back this one up to the ship they were in, that the player decided he was going to sink. So they put a hole in the ship they were traveling in? The whole party sounds like shark food to me. An immovable rod won't help you very much when you're in the middle of the ocean. It could be four feet or forty feet long---if you're in the middle of the ocean, or at the very least have no idea what direction land is to be found... sounds like a TPK to me, and a justly deserved one.
@@andrewlustfield6079so I guess you missed the teleport spell in the PHB. If you go by the fact that it wouldn't sink in one round there is also teleport circle. These work even if you have no real clue where you are. But generally speaking to have an Idea of where you can go so things like gaseous form, polymorph, and even fly could be used and these are just the ones that come to mind without a search of the spells. If you expect to do something like that you probably planned for your survival.
@@nickm9102 If you're high enough level to cast Teleport or Teleport Circle, then there are plenty of other spells available to destroy a ship anyway, and talking about the Rod is redundant. The video used level 5 characters as examples, so I think it's pretty clear they're talking about the rod being a problem in lower level situations.
I love it when my players pull shenanigans like this. I gave them an immovable rod last session and said to them “Please make me regret giving this to you”. I love to enable their creativity
Upon reading your comment a particular verse popped into my head:
“Darkness falls across the land;
The midnight hours’ close at hand…”
Sorry that I can’t continue, but my mind has been replaying this very song for the past few minutes. And with the way my brain is wired, it’s going to take awhile before it goes away. Cheers!🤪
With the last example and the tarask, the wand will fly away forever because of the rotation of the earth and because of the movement around the sun, and then because of the movement of the sun inside the galaxy and something else. It is reasonable for the master to ask why this did not happen in the example with the ship.
In general, in none of the examples would the players have been able to use the wand in a broken way
The hole in the ship is simply plugged by experienced sailors
The captain simply gets out from under the rod, because he does not need to lift the rod himself, he can simply move sideways. he is pressed down hard, but at risk of drowning, he may tear his clothes or even his skin to get out. And if the bottom is sandy, then it will not be difficult for anyone at all.
In general, the rod can't do anything terrible.
In the first critical role campaign they teleported into a giant ancient dragon with two immovable rods and activated both of them so it did massive amounts of damage to the dragon as it flew off and the immovable rods ripped holes through its guts. The DM allowed it because you got it admire the brilliant creativity of it, although I don't think they ever managed to go back and get either of them as they were both stuck in mid-air and they would have had a hard time locating them again after that fight. Pretty expensive but when you're going up against your dragon of that size you blow everything in your inventory just to survive and win