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Rule of Cool and all, but this is pretty easy to defeat for the DM. The flintlock only provides enough force to make small pellets dangerous. As soon as the cannonball passes through the ring, its mass will go up hugely, meaning the force provided to a small pellet will barely move it any further.
The rogue invented a complicated cannonball dropping system.
Additionally, assuming the ring anti-magic field extends in all directions, the first shot would blow the end of the rifle off with the ring flying somewhere.
Also, do magic items retain their magical properties after leaving the feild? If so, it’s still a pea shooter.
Also, do magic items retain their magical properties after leaving the feild? If so, it’s still a pea shooter.
This is a good question. Is the ring a "magic remover" or a "AoE magic suppressor"?
If its a supressor then this is a double edged item. If you're wearing it on your hand and get healing cast on you, your hand and whatever is near it doesn't get healed. This would be bad news because the instinct is to grab or hold wounds to stop bleeding. This would mean you can still bleed out of the cleric is pouring every bit of their mana into healing you.
If it’s a “magic remover” that would be a very powerful item. Boss has a magic sword? Touch it and now it’s not!
Or let it happen once so the rogue feels cool and then the ring breaks because it's attached to a firearm.
its mass will go up hugely, meaning the force provided to a small pellet will barely move it any further
But since the ring is at the end of the barrel, all of the force has already been applied to the pellet. I supposed to crux of the matter is whether the shrunken pellet has its original mass or not, and whether momentum or velocity is conserved upon transformation.
The limiting factor is not force or velocity but energy. If the pellet retains its original mass, the kinetic energy imparted by the explosion won't be enough to propel it to any kind of useful distance. If the pellet's mass drops proportionally to its size, the explosion will accelerate it to a sufficient velocity, but upon exiting the barrel, the sudden increase in mass means it would have to shed a lot of its velocity to conserve its kinetic energy.
Truly, the question is whether magic can violate the laws of thermodynamics, and how that would affect entropy.
the question is whether magic can violate the laws of thermodynamics
Well obviously it can, it’s magic and can do all kinds of dumb things. Like, go through the Player’s Handbook and tell me which spells DO rigorously follow scientific principles. It’s a pretty short list.
the sudden increase in mass means it would have to shed a lot of its velocity to conserve its kinetic energy
Do we have a reason to believe that a magic ring would conserve kinetic energy, rather than momentum or velocity?
Well either phyisic is getting bent over the tabel. If ke is mantianed as the mass return them it screw up momentum, which is also something that is conserved irl. If the momentum is conserved the keis violated
There is an even simpler way: the text assumes that the cannonball only transforms after it passed the ring. If you rule that it instantly transforms when in contact with or near the ring, then the whole thing just bursts.
"Parry this you fucking casual"
Then the fucking gun explodes
As soon as the cannonball passes through the ring, its mass will go up hugely, meaning the force provided to a small pellet will barely move it any further.
Worse, the player might have just invented a squib suicide gun.
The moment the cannonball returns to normal size, it is blocking the end of the barrel, but the force of the expanding gasses from the gunpowder burning haven't escaped the barrel yet. The barrel, for that moment, is effectively blocked and all the force of the gun will go apply equally in all directions on the barrel to explode with full force in the hand of the player.
It could be under the barrel and a few inches forward, like on the end of a bayonet.
It would have to be well calibrated, but it's possible depending on the rules of the ring.
You'd still have other issues around mass and size, but gun configuration could be solved.
It could be under the barrel and a few inches forward, like on the end of a bayonet.
The ring placement isn't the problem. Its the rings effect on the cannon ball returning it to normal size.
There's a reason today we don't use a few grams of gunpowder to shoot a cannon. The mass of the 5lbs cannon ball is far greater than the energy produced by expanding gasses of a few grams of burned gunpowder. So with a 5lbs cannon ball essentially magically appearing right at the mouth of the barrel (because the ring's effect), it effectively is a plug plugging up the barrel entirely.
Que player droppibg cannon balls from rafters
Hey, being able to carry 5 cannonballs with a convenient applicator to drop them definitely has potential use cases.
A better use for this ring using the same "shrinking something beforehand and using the ring to remove the shrink would be to make a flechette bullet from hundreds of metal spikes pre-shrunk to pin size. Fire the pins into your target, getting under their skin, then send in your brawler with the ring on his punching hand. The blows he lands would remove the magic and the spikes would return to normal size inside the target.
That's pretty rad. Id probably have the ring break if the enemy is high tier, but at least fracture so you only have one more use after the first one.
Another good DM mitigation could be that since the spikes expand and stab, they also partially stab the brawler's hand. Lots of good tradeoffs for the players to consider here.
The DM: OK so your max inventory is limited by strength, so your rogue can only carry 1/3 of a cannonball at a time
Look honey, new weapons of mass destruction just dropped