Thrown For a Loss
Are we doing dwarf tossing? How have we managed to go nearly 400 comics without dwarf tossing!?
First and foremost, in case it wasn’t obvious from Oracle’s halfling heritage, you don’t have to be a literal dwarf to fit the trope. You can be a halfling, a superhero, or both. Whatever. All that matters is that there’s a big enough dude to give you the old heave-ho. This is among the most basic of power moves, and I suspect that more gamers than not have seen it in action.
Unfortunately for GMs, unless you’ve actually got something like fling ally in your back pocket, chances are you’re left looking at your system of choice and saying, “What mechanics do I use? Is ‘dwarf’ a thrown weapon? Does encumbrance come into play? Maybe it’s just a straight up Strength check?”
That was exactly my problem back on the tropical island of “it bit the boat” and tlkeen longsword fame. My guys were climbing this Mountain of Fire, all bright-eyed and eager to make friends with the local volcano god. Of course they stumbled across an inconvenient lava flow. And being low level, they didn’t have access to flight spells yet. That meant they had to make do with levitate and the strong right arm of their ogre pal. After doing some carrying capacity calculations, factoring in wind speed, and adjusting for the unsteady footing provided by a steep cliff face, I realized I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.
“Give me a combat maneuver check I guess?”
“Hrrrrragh!” said the ogre.
“Um,” said I. Papers were shuffled. Rules were consulted.
“Is an 18 good enough?”
“I mean… Sure? Actually, you know what? Yes it is. Why the hell not? Your sorcerer pal pinwheels ass over teakettle across the lava, and even gets a boost from the rising heat. Sorcerer? You can see your base camp from here.”
There was much rejoicing. And for me, there was a lesson learned. When the players come up with a weird mechanic and there’s no clear rule in place, you just make something up, set a lowish DC, and try to call the close ones in the players’ favor. Dwarf tossing is one of those things that could be handled half a dozen different ways in any given system. That’s why I say to trust your gut and go with one that feels right. When goofy power moves and player shenanigans are in play, I now make it a policy to get out of the way and try to let the magic happen. I doubt it’s a mechanically sound approach, but goddamn if my players don’t have fun.
Question of the day! Have you ever been involved in an in-game dwarf tossing? How’d it go? How did you resolve the maneuver? Let’s hear your far-flung tales of far-flung allies down in the comments!
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I had a player literally using the party cleric has a thrown weapon because she had wings to begin with and he had a lot of strength.
I also had a player play the Get Help card because he had two characters right then (best friends of course), but one of them died that encounter because of Get Help and a lot of very bad rolling for him.
Dead Friend: “I hate Get Help.”
If you toss hard enough at low levels, dwarfs (gnomes/halflings/whatevers) count as splash weapons.
Most goblins get their turn firing the catapult, but few achieve the coveted title of Ammunition Holder.
Thought that sounded familiar: https://scryfall.com/card/m10/138/goblin-artillery
*splatter weapons
Never split the party! That’s how halflings get swarmed by gremlins and killed!
Naw man. As long as you’re attached to a rope you’ve got a lifeline. One good Barbarian yank is all it takes.
Well, we didn’t have a rope. Barbarian just tossed Halfling Rogue up there and he got swarmed and died. Little Gnome Bard me decided to have the Barbarian carry me up cliffs for the rest of the game.
Always. Bring. Rope.
https://tenor.com/view/boondock-saints-rope-gif-10825971
Which I did from that day onward. I’ve got several items that I put in almost every character’s starting equipment. Lamp oil, lamp if they can’t cast Light, backup weapon, backup ranged weapon, rope, flint & steel if they can’t cast Spark, etc.
Just need to have halfling wear spiked armor and you have yourself a halfling morningstar/flail
Put ’em on an adorable little hang glider and you’ve got a halfling kite!
It wasn’t a dwarf, but one-time I wanted throw one enemy at another group of enemies barroom-brawl style. I think the GM ruled I had to make a successful grapple-check and strength-based-but-ranged attack roll, on top of the grapple-checks I had already made to pin my target. Luckily I rolled well and it worked, and I got 3 enemies to waste a turn untangling themselves and standing up from prone.
There was definitely some fumbling for rules there, but the GM had only himself to blame- we were in a non-combat contest and damaging attacks weren’t allowed. He should have expected shenanigans.
The GM should always expect shenanigans.
As of 5e, I’d call it an attack roll with disadvantage. In Pathfinder, I believe we ran it as a nonproficient weapon penalty unless the thrower had Throw Anything.
I’ve been involved in it once or twice. Usually, on the end being thrown, as I have a penchant for small-sized characters. That’s what loving halflings and gnomes and kobolds will do to you.
I feel like there ought to be a “hurling harness” that makes small-sized critters easier to throw.
How to throw a character, how to bludgeon one body with another, and how to damage someone by sending them doing into a wall, and/or dropping something heavy on them, are definitely some things that I think any given RPG system ought to tell people how to do, because those are all things that people will keep trying.
I think those are the things that are just one step removed from “normal combat.” Once you’ve covered grappling and disarming and tripping and whatnot, there’s always going to be that extra bit of design space where “the next thing” could have its own set of rules. Where we draw that line is arbitrary, and that’s why I like a system with a little flexibility in its core resolution.
For me, this is where d10 really shines. Want to flirt by showing off with some power lifting? Strength + Socialize is right there for the taking.
Fair enough. Sometimes I think I just want clearly-defined rules for something because there are people going “Well there aren’t clearly-defined rules for it, therefore it is COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE!!!”, and if you point out that the rules technically state the DM can make up whatever they want, and that technically is “The Rules”, they go “Well they HAVE to write that, but that’s meaningless. It’s COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE!!! and any DM who tries to do their job and figure out a solution to what the players want to do is in the wrong!”
I ran into the opposite problem the other day in Pathfinder. A player was prone, and asked if they could attempt to crawl away from combat without triggering an attack of opportunity. I said no, “Because there is already a rogue talent that does that.” That’s a shitty justification though. In retrospect, I feel like allowing a more difficult version of the task is the better way to go since it’s clearly within the realm of the possible.
Barbarian: “Did you tie the rope to something sturdy yet?”
Oracle: “I’m a frayed knot….”
Groan. -50 DKP!
While it is true that those with small stature will be tossed, I feel compelled to also point out that those of large stature will be mounted and ridden.
Truth: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/beast-of-burden
Did my party engage in Dwarf Tossing you ask? My good man, our half gnome/half dwarf (100% insane) battlerager installed handles in the back of her armor to facilitate dwarf tossing! Tie a rope to the handle and you suddenly have a self propelled grappling hook! Our Elven barbarian and the battlerager had the best of friendships.
https://i.imgur.com/FUKrMsI.png
Oddly enough, the only instance of tossing that I’ve seen was when the halfling Goliath Druid wildshaped into an ogre and tried to throw the human Oracle out of the Create Pit pit they were both stuck in. Druid rolled a 2 and the Oracle slammed face-first into the side of the pit.
…The second throw worked a bit better.
I feel like I just saw that in a movie somewhere.
…
Ha! Found it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6jCNhebfg8&t=2m6s
You seem confused on your terminology. “Dwarf-tossing” is a Dwarven sport where they take turns tossing members of lesser races. (All non-Dwarves) Points are awarded for distance and accuracy.
My Dwarf Paladin was fond of tossing the Gnome Wizard out of danger. Once time I tossed him onto a gold pile. “Just act like you’re a rich duck!”
Ouch. Remember that the term “soft metal” is a bit misleading: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/all-that-glitters
Not exactly dwarf tossing but once in a high essence exalted game our circle Midnight caste created a charm to weaponized the whispers background. With the charm “Teaching Incomprensible Truths” as a base he created a new charm that was basically abyssal whispering mind rape called “Sanity Eroding Whispers of The Fallen Mental Virtue” or something like that. Basically the idea was that by using this charm the target would sense the whispers of the Neverborn in his head, that was the basics of the charm that was work-in-progress. Then our deathlord liege without respect of for the process of creating new charms send us to kill or capture a new solar exalted, a mere teenage boy. During the fight, a easy one, between just a solar teenage boy barely a week ago exalted and our well established and high Essence five member Abyssal circle, our Midnight caste decide to use the charm he was doing. Our ST then think what to do with a half-made charm used in the middle of a fight. We, the whole group of players, think some options and then he decide to make the boy do some willpower saving throws. The boy fail one, two, three, and so until he empty his will power track. Well, our ST says, since now his mind is naked to the power of the Neverborn it was time to roll for some intimacies. A botch after the other is what followed, then the time for the virtues. The kid was having a hard day and the dice didn’t help him in anything. 0 will power, botched and inverted intimacies and 0 in all the virtues after the Neverborn ravished his mind. The most hardcore hentai porn can barely scratch the surface of what happened to that boy’s mind. After that utter and complete failure of part of the boy our ST didn’t know what to do, he was thinking that the boy could get at least one success and with that our ST could finish the charm, he was wrong. Now he got not a mind raped but mind gang-banged raped boy with 5 in the whispers background. We didn’t expected that, nobody could have expected that, so our ST decided to roll on with it and says that now the boy is a Abyssal exalted in all but name. A mad abyssal-like solar exalted without virtues or willpower, complete mind broken, angsty and teenager boy. We called that a day and just made a short scene with our now jubilous deathlord asking to know such devious, evil and terrible charm, he also wanted to know how to stop his new abyssal of chewing his Unglorious Abyssal Desk. When teenagers appear in one of our games bad things happen to them 🙂
Remind me never to be an NPC.
No problem. Still being a PC is not safer, not in our table at least 🙂
One of our players is in another group playing a luck-themed Kitsune. They have the ‘fox shape’ feat which lets them turn into an ordinary, tiny fox.
One of their conversations involved the notion of getting a launching crossbow and putting the Kitsune in as ammo.
I think this is one of those: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/43/8f/3f/438f3ffc8c8db5d6461fbfc10b54b1cf.jpg
Not D&D precisely, but.
A fair few years ago, the creators of X-Crawl came to a game store near me when I was in North Carolina. X-Crawl is sort of ‘If D&D were in modern times and dungeons were televised bloodsport.’ Also there’s Emperor Reagan the Third. They ran one shots for a bunch of groups that signed up to play. Our team name was Bloodbath and Beyond, I made a
theme song and sang it, we all got Fame points. I may have shared bits of this story in days gone by, so I’ll skip ahead to the pertinent bit.
We had a halfling who was racking up fame point after fame point with a lot of good rolls and a lot more grandstanding. I, as the team captain Johnny Beverage, went ahead and gave him a ramp-and-boost off of my shield so he could leap onto the head of something Gargantuan sized. This gave him an excellent idea when we encountered a stairwell with a host of goblins and their rinky dink crossbows at the bottom.
So he launched himself, courtesy of a tower shield we’d relieved from the room prior, and sledded down the stairs cackling maniacally. When he got to the bottom, an enormous acrobatics/grandstanding check let him kick the shield into a spin and he Beybladed across the goblins, lopping random bits of them, while the rest of us charged into their broken ranks and mopped things up messily and efficiently. By the time the Crawl was done, the halfling had Elvis-level national fame (the rest of us were ‘merely’ Scottie Pippen level) and had sponsors beating down his door to sign him for their products.
“Yes, and” be awesome.
I’m DM, and the party monk was looking for some unorthodox fighting styles. After knocking out an enemy, he picked him up and started using him to make unarmed strikes. The rules for monk unarmed strikes merely require using a part of the body, and the rules never mention that they have to be your own, so we actually found what we think to be a RAW way of using a minion to beat to death another minion.
And the unconscious minion made good cover, too; it took five rounds before the conscious minion was able to roll high enough to hit the monk rather than his friend.
From the school of thought that brought you half-orcs wielding ORChestras and ORCa whales….
Just a little nit-pick: The way Oracle is tied to that grappling hook makes it both less likely for the hook to find purchase, and for Oracle to get a grab on anything. What with her arms firmly tied up.
Makes it look less like some ‘harmless fun’ for Barbarian and more like ‘deliberate torture’. 🙁
Fun fact? In the original script it was a grappling hat. I imagined it looking something like a jester’s cap.
Y’know, this comic makes me think that throwing characters is common enough we should try to come up with some unified rules for it.
Strength-based attack roll, with a range increment of 5 feet, minus the proficiency penalty for an improvised weapon, and I also feel like we should work size modifiers in there somehow: https://dungeons.fandom.com/wiki/DnDWiki:Size_modifier
I find that adding rules take some of the fun out of it; one of the best things about throwing people is that it is an unorthodox, strange attack method. Adding in rules makes throwing people seem common.
Plus, the lack of rules means that the players always have the ability to put the DM on the spot, so that’s a bonus.
Except it’s not THAT unusual- there’s a whole TVTropes page dedicated to it afterall: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FastballSpecial
Plus, D&D is all about reveling in various fantasy/fiction cliches, so why not give rules to one more?
I don’t remember any stories of other PCs getting thrown, but various characters have hurled nearby animals at enemies.
The first time was years ago in D&D 3e where a rogue woke up from being captured by kobolds. He had no gear, but then strides in this black cat who’s been constantly following him throughout the campaign. He grabbed it and hurled it at the kobold guard. A natural 20 ensued, coining the phrase “critical hit with a cat” at our table.
Then, when I was GM’ing Pathfinder modules, one of the PCs was a goblin barbarian who I gave approval to have a goblin dog companion. At one point during a battle with a troglodyte, the barbarian wanted to throw their companion at the enemy. I don’t remember what kind of check I asked the goblin to make, but he got a natural 20, as did the goblin dog’s subsequent attack roll against the trog. Pretty sure I added extra dice for the force of the throw, on top of the goblin dog’s damage and the crit multiplier.
What’s the crit multiplier on a cat?
Depends on how many lives they’ve lost. I don’t envy the minion on the receiving end of a feline with nothing left to lose.
This happened during a sort of magical triathlon competition. The rules were: 1) run along the track as fast as you can; 2) when there are targets (simple heaps of hay) on the side, shoot them and don’t resume running until you actually hit them; 3) if you step out of the track, you are disqualified; 4) you can attempt to sabotage your competitors, as long as it remains harmless: battery and murder are still crimes punishable by execution.
One of our fiercest competitor NPC was the king’s niece, and a pretty talented wizard. Fortunately, she botched a few rolls against one of the targets, so one of our group caught up with her. Then he just grabbed her and hurled her at the target, scoring a direct hit, and eliminating her from the competition. Since the targets were soft heaps of hay, no serious harm done.
The king was actually quite amused, though the king’s brother much less so.
Nice! What rules did you use for niece tossing?
IIRC, it was basically Str check to lift her up, Dex check (with a hefty penalty) to aim her, and another Str check to throw her fast enough that she’d actually clear the distance required to land on the hay. The str checks were pretty hard, but it was a magical competition after all so all manners of buff spells were allowed.
After the event, the rest of our group decided to give her some interesting scholarly books we had found earlier as an apology gift.
Sounds like you really earned that W if it was three checks for success. Well thrown!
Been involved in? I asked for it! We were running a campaign where character rules were “no races from core books” and “cannot have your only class be from core” as a way to see what nonsense we came up with. I used Savage Species and Monster Manual rules to make a Dire Werefox (Were DireFox?) Swashbuckler. Of course, weapon of choice was rapier. (Who doesn’t like getting a chance to crit on a 15+ after applying Improved Crit?) Another party member made a Warforged Charger Hulking Hurler. Between his strength score, Throw Anything, Really Throw Anything, and a couple of class features? He was effectively “proficient with the party as a thrown weapon”. (The entire party. At once.) He wasn’t the smartest character (I think his INT was around 5?), and his weapons of choice were “spears” and “javelins” (practically telephone poles, at his size).
In one particular combat, the enemies weren’t quite close enough for me to charge in and attack. Rather than delaying my turn after them… I delayed after Hurling Warforged party member, with a simple request: “Throw me at them!” I’m sure most of you can get the mental image already: My character holds a firm stance, rapier out and body straight, and flying like a spear! It’s exactly what I envisioned! … DM had him roll an intelligence check, and then said I was thrown like a rock, instead. (Didn’t even hit the enemies, either.)
As a werefox, you gotta do like Ant-Man in this scenario. Start small, get big: https://thumbs.gfycat.com/ThunderousLeanAnnelid-size_restricted.gif