Can crossbows be relevant in PFO?

[DeathMetal4tw]

I get it, crossbows have been considered the inferior ranged weapon in D&D for ages. Well I've had enough! I'd love to see them come into their own in PFO. I'd love if they had cool bayonet charge options and other stuff to set them apart from long/short bows.

[Valkenr]

In a realm of above-average strength, you don't need the necessity of a crossbow. And the added accuracy get's canceled out by the longer firing cycle and lower damage.

With the change to attributes there could be a whole new situation. If bows that require 'strength' aren't in PFO, crossbows could become more useful.

This is a topic that needs more information from GW on how PF's mechanics will work, and combat is not something they have touched on.

[DeciusBrutus]

Crossbows have two advantages over bows: armor penetration and easier training.
Crossbows which are designed to require more strength will have more force than bows which require the same strength. Crossbow designed to use mechanical advantage in the form of levers and winches can have an arbitraily hard pull at the cost of fire rate.

If armor penetration exists, crossbows should have a niche beyond "ranged weapon for people who can't use bows".

[Nihimon]

DeciusBrutus wrote:

Crossbows have two advantages over bows: armor penetration and easier training.

And the "easier training" part is not trivial. Any real person posting on these forums could probably pick up a crossbow and at least hit a target at 20 feet on the 2nd shot. The likelihood that any of us would hit the same target after 10 attempts with a simple bow and arrow are significantly less.

Also, crossbows can be kept ready to fire at a moment's notice, with no other work than pulling a trigger.

The advantage of bows is that they can be cycled much more quickly.

[Deadestdai]

Nihimon wrote:

DeciusBrutus wrote:

Crossbows have two advantages over bows: armor penetration and easier training.

And the "easier training" part is not trivial. Any real person posting on these forums could probably pick up a crossbow and at least hit a target at 20 feet on the 2nd shot. The likelihood that any of us would hit the same target after 10 attempts with a simple bow and arrow are significantly less.

Also, crossbows can be kept ready to fire at a moment's notice, with no other work than pulling a trigger.

The advantage of bows is that they can be cycled much more quickly.

They're typically more expensive than bows too. A lot more goes into the making of a Crossbow than a standard bow.

I think (hope) the dev's will research all weapons properly so that a good balance and somewhat realistic end effort is created.

[Nihimon]

Deadestdai wrote:

They're typically more expensive than bows too. A lot more goes into the making of a Crossbow than a standard bow.

That's a good point. There are a lot more moving parts in a crossbow, which means they're also a lot less reliable.

[Blaeringr]

Armor penetration is a good point, I think, that many RPGs don't handle very well.

I watched a TV once that pitted samurai vs viking berzerkers and systematically compared all their weapons and armor to each others.

The samurai were at a huge disadvantage as all their various swords are superbly designed for slicing through flesh and even hard leather, but completely useless against a simple coat of chainmail. They had a ballistics gel dummy covered in chainmail just standing there, not fighting back, and the samurai expert was hacking away like Jack the Ripper, but he couldn't do any damage at all.

The vikings, on the other hand, were using weapons that pierce or chop, with a bit more weight to them. Less sophisticated, but given their target they were so much more effective.

I know samurai get a lot of over-hype for being some kind of super warrior, but even if that were close to true you're talking about having only the face as a target and trying to hit someone with longer arms and bigger weapons. The vikings clearly came out on top.

Anyways, so many details to consider that your basic RPG systems just gloss right over.

[Blaeringr]

Concerning the reliability point, slightly more complex does not necessarily equate to delicate. A well made crossbow is just as dependable as any bow. The weakest point in either is the string.

And a few moving parts also does not necessarily equate to more complex. Granted, the standard English longbow is relatively simpler in design, some bows are pretty complex. The huns would spend a lifetime gradually working on their bows.

[Nihimon]

Blaeringr wrote:

I watched a TV once that pitted samurai vs viking berzerkers and systematically compared all their weapons and armor to each others.

Deadliest Warrior?

[Blaeringr]

Ya, that's the one. I remembered the name of the show after posting.

[Paul Zagieboylo]

Historically, the #1 reason for crossbows was the ease of training. They're more expensive, yes. They fire ridiculously slow compared to a bow, yes. They have a relatively low skill cap, yes: a master crossbowman isn't nearly as accurate as a master longbowman (plus he fires one bolt to the bowman's 10 arrows). But any moron farmer who gets called up in the levies can be given his crossbow (there are many like it, but this one is his), and probably hit a man-sized target at 20 yards hard enough to punch through the target's chain mail on his second or third try, and be able to do so reliably after a week or two of practice. It's just not very hard to do. I can do it, and I'm a sedentary nerd who wouldn't survive a month in 12th century Provence. My mom could probably do it, and she's almost completely crippled and uses a powered wheelchair all day long. It's easy. Which is why normal crossbows are simple weapons in Pathfinder, and practically everyone is proficient in them. In contrast, reaching that level of accuracy and power with a bow takes a solid year of practicing 2 hours before breakfast, 2 hours after lunch, and 2 hours after dinner, every day; a lot of it is just building up the arm and torso strength to draw a bow of a useful weight.

Only the English had longbowmen in the ranks, because they mandated archery practice for every male farmer, tradesman, and child over 8, two hours per day, every day, rain or shine (six hours in the winter). And they maintained this policy for hundreds of years. And when the French met them at the battle of Agincourt, the French got cut to smithereens. Because longbows are better. But, and this is the important point, only in the hands of skilled users. The only reason the English could get away with that much practice cutting into their agricultural production was that the English countryside is considerably more fertile than the European average, so they could still feed everyone with a little less daily labor. Everyone else had to let the farmers farm pretty much all the time, so when they called up the levies, they handed out crossbows, because it was the best way farmers could contribute to a battle.

Incidentally, early musket firearms were pretty much equivalent to crossbows, only even more so. They take even longer to reload, they were even less accurate, they were preposterously expensive to manufacture, and as an added bonus they sometimes exploded at inopportune moments. Plus they didn't work in the rain (but neither do bows so that kind of balances out). Basically they were just plain not as good weapons, in the hands of skilled users. Regardless, they were adopted pretty fast by practically everyone, because they made it even easier for a know-nothing conscripted farmer to become an effective soldier. It goes "bang" when you pull the trigger, and even if you aren't lucky enough to hit the guy you were aiming at, you'll hit the guy next to him. And even early crap muskets go right through any kind of armor that a person can actually wear. That was all a farmer needed to know. Remember that the "standard" case is not a skilled user, it's a tenant farmer who took the king's coin so his farm wouldn't be foreclosed on and his wife and kids kicked to the curb, or a 4th son with no inheritance who wasn't smart enough to apprentice to a trade. For people like this, crossbows win handily, because they're easy to use "well enough." But for real heroes, adventurers like Pathfinder characters, they can afford to take the time to learn to use a bow properly, and then it beats crossbows hollow.

[Blaeringr]

Crossbows were generally also better at piercing armor (more kinetic energy in most bolts). They could also be fired more accurately from a mount. It wasn't uncommon for knights on horseback to carry small all-metal crossbows and lead off charges with a bolt or two.

[DeciusBrutus]

The crossbow isn't the weapon of choice for ranged fighting in D&D. It's what people get so that they can fight at range at all.

Keeping the bar to entry very low means that lots of people will have crossbows; keeping the more exclusive bows better means that crossbow users will lose unless they close the distance with longbows.

[Urman]

Or use mass crossbow fire in the opening stages of a fight to eliminate key characters and then close the distance. One on one the trained longbowman might win, but fights are pretty much guaranteed to not be one on one.

A settlement might encourage all their crafters, for example, to train crossbow to use them as a cheap mass missile force. It all depends on how much cheaper crossbows are to acquire and to train.

[Paul Zagieboylo]

Blaeringr wrote:

Crossbows were generally also better at piercing armor (more kinetic energy in most bolts). They could also be fired more accurately from a mount. It wasn't uncommon for knights on horseback to carry small all-metal crossbows and lead off charges with a bolt or two.

It is true that it is much easier to create a crossbow of a given (high) release speed which can still be used by an average person than it is to create a bow of the same release speed and ease of use. Crossbows can incorporate arbitrarily strong mechanical advantage against the string to aid in cocking the weapon (cf. ballistae), while bows are pretty much all about how strong your arms are. In this sense, the average crossbow certainly has higher release speed (and therefore kinetic transfer and penetrative power) than the average longbow, because longbows can only get so powerful before no mortal can draw them to full extension. For references, see Homer's The Odyssey.

I should think knights used crossbows not primarily for their penetration (although it probably helped) but because it's quite tricky to use a bow at all from on top of a speeding horse. Especially if you and the horse are both wearing full plate armor, and you're also carrying a four-foot-tall oak shield that weighs about 20 pounds, and a ten-foot-long ash pole with a point on the far end. These accoutrements tend to get in the way of your bow's draw. In contrast, crossbows can be fired one-handed, even in Pathfinder(!), so your other hand is free to steady your lance, drive your horse, hold your shield, or whatever else you think needs to be done in the middle of a charge. Of course, the knight in question only gets one shot because he can't really cock his crossbow from horseback (because he can't get the right leverage on the lever or windlass, never mind needing both hands), but that's what squires are for.

Urman wrote:

A settlement might encourage all their crafters, for example, to train crossbow to use them as a cheap mass missile force. It all depends on how much cheaper crossbows are to acquire and to train.

Yup, Urman's got it exactly. Even if crossbows cost three times as much to manufacture as bows, they're about 100 times easier to train people to use, so they win. A 13-year-old farmer's kid stuck on top of a wall with a 40-pound-draw bow is more of a danger to himself and his buddies than to anyone more than 20 feet away at the base of the wall (for references, see Robin Hood: Men in Tights). Give that same kid a crossbow, and suddenly he's a serious fighting force. Sure, either way he could get picked off by Robin Hood himself from far outside his own effective range, but the assumption is that there's only one Robin Hood and a couple thousand farmer's kids, and Robin can only snipe them so fast, which means he only goes through so many before the defenders' officers get tired of that noise and send a few hundred guys on a sortie to make him knock it off.

The problem is, Pathfinder characters who actually want to use ranged weapons are Robin Hood. Robin would never consider using a crossbow. His longbow is better in every way, including penetration: a 150lb-draw longbow has about the same release speed as your average crossbow, and the longer, heavier arrow carries a lot farther and straighter than light crossbow bolts. Why would he want to trade down?

[DeciusBrutus]

Modern cam bows can even get around the high-draw weight issue somewhat, providing a higher release velocity for a given draw weight, and a much lower force required at full extension. This comes at the cost of mechanical simplicity.

[gustavo iglesias]

Paul Zagieboylo wrote:

Incidentally, early musket firearms were pretty much equivalent to crossbows, only even more so. They take even longer to reload, they were even less accurate, they were preposterously expensive to manufacture, and as an added bonus they sometimes exploded at inopportune moments. Plus they didn't work in the rain (but neither do bows so that kind of balances out). Basically they were just plain not as good weapons, in the hands of skilled users. Regardless, they were adopted pretty fast by practically everyone, because they made it even easier for a know-nothing conscripted farmer to become an effective soldier.

That's an overstatment. While everybody can shoot a musket, everybody can shoot a bow too. A good, drilled, effective rank of longbowmen is a different matter, just like a good, drilled, effective rank of musketeers is. A line of drilled musketeers, advancing and firing in ranks, is not the same that a group of farmers with a free gun.

Crossbows and Muskets can be fired by cavalry. Plus they have a longer range, being better for siege. An Arbalest has a huge range (and being able to use a pavise shield also helps)

The English kept using longbows even in XVI century (see the Mary Rose wreckage, in 1545), just for the same reason they kept using Bill and Bill-guisarmes when everybody else was using the much more advance Halberd. They were too stubborn to adapt. (Basicaly the same that happened to French cavalry before). By the time the Mary Rose was sunk, full with Longbows and arrows, the muskets were already very good, and the standard battle formation in Europe was based on the Spanish Tercio, the German Holy Roman Empire or the Swiss Army, which included crossbows and arquebois to protect the pikemen.

The Longbow was superior in 1350~1450 (by the time Crecy and Agincourt happened), but that did not stay true when the muskets arrived, in XVI century.

[Blaeringr]

What about repeating crossbows?

[Andius]

Speaking purely game mechanics if crossbows are designed to be competitive with bows I would make them heavy hitters with a slow re-fire that can actually manage to out DPS a bow.

All you have to do to balance it then is have some "apply on hit" effects for achers. Bow fires faster so it applies more.

More armor penetration is a good idea too.

[Blaeringr]

Bows fire more quickly than standard crossbows. Not so much more quickly than repeating crossbows. And rapid reload can eliminate that. Plus two loaded crossbows can be fired in either hand (see the link above to repeating crossbow).

Quote:

Note: The repeating crossbow (whether heavy or light) holds 5 crossbow bolts. You can fire a repeating crossbow with one hand or fire a repeating crossbow in each hand in the same manner as you would a normal crossbow of the same size. However, you must fire the weapon with two hands in order to use the reloading lever, and you must use two hands to load a new case of bolts.

[Kradlum]

Paul Zagieboylo wrote:

Only the English had longbowmen in the ranks, because they mandated archery practice for every male farmer, tradesman, and child over 8, two hours per day, every day, rain or shine (six hours in the winter). And they maintained this policy for hundreds of years.

Where did you get this information? The reality is that King Edward III's declaration of 1363 said: "Whereas the people of our realm, rich and poor alike, were accustomed formerly in their games to practise archery – whence by God's help, it is well known that high honour and profit came to our realm, and no small advantage to ourselves in our warlike enterprises... that every man in the same country, if he be able-bodied, shall, upon holidays, make use, in his games, of bows and arrows... and so learn and practise archery." There was no mandated daily archery practice.

[Andius]

Blaeringr wrote:

Bows fire more quickly than standard crossbows. Not so much more quickly than repeating crossbows. And rapid reload can eliminate that. Plus two loaded crossbows can be fired in either hand (see the link above to repeating crossbow).

Quote:

Note: The repeating crossbow (whether heavy or light) holds 5 crossbow bolts. You can fire a repeating crossbow with one hand or fire a repeating crossbow in each hand in the same manner as you would a normal crossbow of the same size. However, you must fire the weapon with two hands in order to use the reloading lever, and you must use two hands to load a new case of bolts.

I really like the idea of a repeating crossbow but you would have to be careful to implement it in a way that doesn't make it become THEE ranged weapon. Logically crossbows hit hard with good armor penetration, and a repeating mechanism would allow it to fire faster than a bow. But such a weapon would absolutely DESTROY. You would need to nerf it somehow.

[Blaeringr]

Well, if you draw on historical examples, namely the chu no ku of China, you didn't really get the great armor penetration and the firing speed together. The European crossbows were the can openers, but fired reloaded quite slowly. The Chinese chu no ku held cartridges with far more than the Pathfinder 5 bolts and were fired by rapidly pumping a lever back and forth (so actually significantly higher fire rate than a bow) but had terrible accuracy because of the pumping motion required to fire it, and weak punch, which wasn't a huge issue given the Chinese didn't really develop armor to the extent is was done in Europe.

So if we're drawing on historic examples, there's a trade off between speed and damage+accuracy.

[DeciusBrutus]

The key feature of a regular crossbow is the high draw weight; the key feature of a repeating crossbow is a much lower draw weight. That effects both the accuracy, armor penetration, and cycle time.

[Fire Bud]

Andius wrote:

Speaking purely game mechanics if crossbows are designed to be competitive with bows I would make them heavy hitters with a slow re-fire that can actually manage to out DPS a bow.

All you have to do to balance it then is have some "apply on hit" effects for achers. Bow fires faster so it applies more.

More armor penetration is a good idea too.

Well you have to add guns into that equation.

[Andius]

Fire Bud wrote:

Andius wrote:

Speaking purely game mechanics if crossbows are designed to be competitive with bows I would make them heavy hitters with a slow re-fire that can actually manage to out DPS a bow.

All you have to do to balance it then is have some "apply on hit" effects for achers. Bow fires faster so it applies more.

More armor penetration is a good idea too.

Well you have to add guns into that equation.

We do? I wasn't aware this game was going to include them.

[Bluenose]

Blaeringr wrote:

Well, if you draw on historical examples, namely the chu no ku of China, you didn't really get the great armor penetration and the firing speed together. The European crossbows were the can openers, but fired reloaded quite slowly. The Chinese chu no ku held cartridges with far more than the Pathfinder 5 bolts and were fired by rapidly pumping a lever back and forth (so actually significantly higher fire rate than a bow) but had terrible accuracy because of the pumping motion required to fire it, and weak punch, which wasn't a huge issue given the Chinese didn't really develop armor to the extent is was done in Europe.

So if we're drawing on historic examples, there's a trade off between speed and damage+accuracy.

Not necessarily. The Greeks build a repeating ballista, thinking it would be useful in siege warfare to clear battlements. It turned out, the thing was heavy enough that it was hard to turn it to aim at a different target, and it was so accurate that the second shot would go through the same person the first one did. Since that first person was probably dead, this wasn't too useful. That was fast firing, highly accurate, and did lots of damage. And only really more useful than a conventional ballista if people were careful to line up to be shot by it, which didn't compensate for the unreliability of lots of moving parts.

[LazarX]

Blaeringr wrote:

Armor penetration is a good point, I think, that many RPGs don't handle very well.

I watched a TV once that pitted samurai vs viking berzerkers and systematically compared all their weapons and armor to each others.

The samurai were at a huge disadvantage as all their various swords are superbly designed for slicing through flesh and even hard leather, but completely useless against a simple coat of chainmail.

Keep in mind that Samurai evolved in a land where metal was simply too scarce to be used as armor. Their weapons and fighting styles like most such styles were suited to what was needed to be done. Samurai weapons were problematic against metal armor, but that wasn't a problem when everyone (including other samurai) is wearing either leather or a bamboo composite.

[Fire Bud]

Andius wrote:

Fire Bud wrote:

Andius wrote:

Speaking purely game mechanics if crossbows are designed to be competitive with bows I would make them heavy hitters with a slow re-fire that can actually manage to out DPS a bow.

All you have to do to balance it then is have some "apply on hit" effects for achers. Bow fires faster so it applies more.

More armor penetration is a good idea too.

Well you have to add guns into that equation.

We do? I wasn't aware this game was going to include them.

We will know more once they announce the timeline for the game, current time or future means they will have to because they exist in the timeline and are part of core classes like holy gun for paladin or spell guns for wizards.

[Blaeringr]

Bluenose wrote:

Not necessarily. The Greeks build a repeating ballista, thinking it would be useful in siege warfare to clear battlements. It turned out, the thing was heavy enough that it was hard to turn it to aim at a different target, and it was so accurate that the second shot would go through the same person the first one did. Since that first person was probably dead, this wasn't too useful. That was fast firing, highly accurate, and did lots of damage. And only really more useful than a conventional ballista if people were careful to line up to be shot by it, which didn't compensate for the unreliability of lots of moving parts.

Do tell more. How many people to operate this ballista? What was it's rate of fire? I imagine an improvement over the one shot per minute of a standard ballista, but how much of an improvement? What is its kinetic force compared to a standard ballista?

[DeciusBrutus]

Blaeringr wrote:

Bluenose wrote:

Not necessarily. The Greeks build a repeating ballista, thinking it would be useful in siege warfare to clear battlements. It turned out, the thing was heavy enough that it was hard to turn it to aim at a different target, and it was so accurate that the second shot would go through the same person the first one did. Since that first person was probably dead, this wasn't too useful. That was fast firing, highly accurate, and did lots of damage. And only really more useful than a conventional ballista if people were careful to line up to be shot by it, which didn't compensate for the unreliability of lots of moving parts.

Do tell more. How many people to operate this ballista? What was it's rate of fire? I imagine an improvement over the one shot per minute of a standard ballista, but how much of an improvement? What is its kinetic force compared to a standard ballista?

Good questions. Along with "why would you build a siege engine and use it to attack individual soldiers?"

[Blaeringr]

Beginning with Philip of Macedon (father of Alexander) the ballista was actually used as field artillery and not just as a siege weapon. They also became progressively lighter under the use of the Macedonians.

[LazarX]

Fire Bud wrote:

We will know more once they announce the timeline for the game, current time or future means they will have to because they exist in the timeline and are part of core classes like holy gun for paladin or spell guns for wizards.

This is an online MMORG there's a limit to how many of these corner classes they can reasonably program for and balance. All these archetypes are essentially separate classes for these purposes. I wouldn't expect anything other than baseline classes.

[Obakararuir]

I'm interested to see how siege/assault tactics play out.

[Andius]

Fire Bud wrote:

We will know more once they announce the timeline for the game, current time or future means they will have to because they exist in the timeline and are part of core classes like holy gun for paladin or spell guns for wizards.

Based on all that I have read in the blog and the style of artwork associated with the game I would say we are looking at middle ages style time period. Nothing I have read would indicate the presence of firearms, and if they are present, they are surely very basic.

[Onishi]

Andius wrote:

Fire Bud wrote:

We will know more once they announce the timeline for the game, current time or future means they will have to because they exist in the timeline and are part of core classes like holy gun for paladin or spell guns for wizards.

Based on all that I have read in the blog and the style of artwork associated with the game I would say we are looking at middle ages style time period. Nothing I have read would indicate the presence of firearms, and if they are present, they are surely very basic.

Basic guns do exist in the pathfinder setting, however they are not common use near the river kingdoms area that the PFO is going to start at.

[Urman]

DeciusBrutus wrote:

Good questions. Along with "why would you build a siege engine and use it to attack individual soldiers?"

Just imagining the physics of it, I'd guess that the ballista was fired at formations of infantry, not skirmishers. It probably didn't take out an individual soldier, it took out several, one after another until it ran out of kinetic energy. Pretty scary to be losing guys well beyond bow and sling range; it was probably a real morale breaker.

[Fire Bud]

Andius wrote:

Fire Bud wrote:

We will know more once they announce the timeline for the game, current time or future means they will have to because they exist in the timeline and are part of core classes like holy gun for paladin or spell guns for wizards.

Based on all that I have read in the blog and the style of artwork associated with the game I would say we are looking at middle ages style time period. Nothing I have read would indicate the presence of firearms, and if they are present, they are surely very basic.

The artwork? If your talking about the stuff on the kick starter page that all comes from the manuals. And most the guns in pfo are very basic or elemental infused, the ideal way is to do it with very rare or emerging rules so that guns are limited to Magical items or siege engines. You don't need the gunslinger or archetypes with these rules, it only allows gunsmithing in uncommon hands and treats gun creation as still secret and highly sort after arts.

It removes everyone having them as players but allows for such things as the possibility of gunpowder/black powder into campaign for things like cannons which would be useful for sieges and those gunpowder siege weapons are a large chuck of siege weapons.

Also many of the special ammo types are launched from fire engines.

The limit on the rules makes guns as viable as bows or crossbows but at the start they could just limit it so gunslingers aren't in the game but we can use the rules for siege engines and pvp.

[Alexander_Damocles]

I can't recall where it was said, but I believe TPTB said there will not be guns in PFO.

And there was much rejoicing....

[Jamie Charlan]

The biggest problem, really, is that bows in d20 games have no rate of fire limitations whatsoever. Six second round, six aimed shots, no problem?

While this is perfectly acceptable from the standpoint of this being fantasy games with magical supernatural peoples, it leaves us with a problem: They didn't apply that same reality to crossbows.

Crossbow draw-weights rarely fell under 200lb [to a large english war-bow's 120~140], and that's the "lights". A heavy, cranquein loaded arbalest is staring at 600+. Though its span is a little shorter and you lose some efficiency, so we're looking more at 2~3 times the power, not 4~5. Somehow this translates to +1 damage over a NON-STRENGTH-USING [str 12 composites already take the loss back] bow, despite all the penalties.

There's absolutely nothing preventing you from applying your herculean strength to a crossbow: Those mechanical components are no more or less vulnerable than your bow's own parts. Hell, the heaviest crossbows used things like steel as their 'bow'. You can't really apply more power to a bow than it was designed for, either, which is why in older game editions, bows had a pre-set "mighty" characteristic.

Crossbows should have "set" mighty characteristics that old way as well, and set loading mechanisms. This could fix them easily, and make them a versatile option. You just need penalties [or even an impossibility of loading it] for those that can't handle the minimum requirements.

Simple way to do it: Masterwork crossbows also get a mighty rating, set when the thing is crafted. You just can't apply more strength after-the-fact, its a mechanical system, not a bow. But you CAN build it right for someone of that approximate build.

This is the same as "Composite" [composite crossbows with 300+ pounds of draw were around long before the longbow reared its head] bows, except set to a certain strength bonus: you don't get more from being stronger, and you have problems from being too weak. Mighty +1, +2, +3 and so on. Hell, you could say a mithril crossbow has a lower strength requirement by two or something if you wanna do something there.

In exchange for +2 strength bonus on damage, when crafted, the crossbow has a loading mechanism one step faster. Cranqueins replaced by lever or goatsfoot, levers replaced by having to span it by hand [if you need an action for that last one, start applying it to the bloody BOWS too].

Longwinded as I may be, its a simple system that makes a hell of a lot more sense than the current set-up. And it would be nice of weapons that aren't-the-bow to actually be able to be worth something beyond levels 1-4 on a hapless mage whose team has no ranged feats either to compare to....

Or just make dead-shot a basic ability of guns and crossbows.
Or ignore armor-but-not-shield [honestly that should be the same for guns there, its just tougher on the bookeeping] the same way as guns in shorter increments [1-2 crossbows, 1 early gun, 1-4 advanced would probably be appropriate]

[DeciusBrutus]

Crossbows don't require the same strength as bows of the same draw weight. That's why they can have significantly higher draw weights. The tradeoff is lower rate of fire, due to needing to use a mechanism to draw the crossbow.

A good archer in reality can get off five or six aimed shots in a minute with a heavy bow. Compare that to the number of effective heavy blows a boxer can put out in the same period, or to fencers.

[Jamie Charlan]

and yet in d20 based games, Pathfinder included, the bow's topping at over one attack per second, not dissimilar to the boxer.

Still, it would be better to allow them to focus on their higher single shots. Perhaps what we need are bigger, better crossbows in the Martial weapon list. Let'em ignore Armor [but not shields] in their first increment, and up the dice to 2d8 and 3d8. These will represent proper composite-material crossbows, appropriate to an epoch where a Longbow even exists [let alone a "composite" one], but they'll be beyond the reach of arming thirty peasants with.

Even on a maxed out vital-strike build, you won't actually be catching up to a regular, un-feated bow user doing a full attack if he's got some adders like getting to apply his training and a strength bonus four times in his volley, and even if he wants to deal with DR or deal massive damage, he'll be ahead with just the feat of Clustered Shots, but at least your one shot per round will actually be significant.

Archers would still fill the skies with arrows, and, hell, even if you gave'em half the iteratives they'd still come out ahead with Rapid shot and Many shot, but at least they'd have to take them to blow your one big blast out of the bloody water, and you'll actually get to have that one big blast.

[Andius]

Fire Bud wrote:

Andius wrote:

Fire Bud wrote:

We will know more once they announce the timeline for the game, current time or future means they will have to because they exist in the timeline and are part of core classes like holy gun for paladin or spell guns for wizards.

Based on all that I have read in the blog and the style of artwork associated with the game I would say we are looking at middle ages style time period. Nothing I have read would indicate the presence of firearms, and if they are present, they are surely very basic.

The artwork? If your talking about the stuff on the kick starter page that all comes from the manuals.

https://goblinworks.com/blog/

There is more artwork there, and more importantly, a huge blog outlining a lot of the features in this game. All of the artwork features, swords, bows, polearms, etc. Including the cover of the book Thornkeep which introduces us to a location from the game. These things consistent with a middle-ages style time period. Everything in the blog seems to indicate that time period as well.

Not saying that crude hand-cannon or even a flintlock smooth-bore rifle is necessarily out of the question. In-fact according to Onishi it isn't. (Though it probably is until the map expands to areas where fire-arm use would be more common.) But you were talking about current/future settings for the game. I would say based on everything I have seen and heard of this game, there is a 0% possibility that this game's time setting will be post-renascence.

[DendasGarrett]

Keep the crossbow effective for what it was... a ranged weapon for non-ranged-specialist. The easiest way to so this is to make the crossbow a pick-up-and-shoot sort of weapon, and require training to (properly) use a bow.

In other words, it would be a weapon for that Cleric or Fighter who doesn't want to sink skills into archery, but occasionally needs a ranged weapon for sieges or ambushes or what-not. It does decent damage, is easy to use, and is good for 1 shot of an ambush, or multiple shots for prolonged missile exchanges.

If you want crossbows to be an alternative to bows for ranged-specialist... I don't think that is realistic (or cool).

Now, where is the thread on making thrown weapons more viable? :)

[Andius]

DendasGarrett wrote:

Now, where is the thread on making thrown weapons more viable? :)

YES! Throwing weapons are a big thing missing from a lot of games. There are some big advantages to hurling javelins into charging opponents when they are designed to get lodged in whatever they hit be it your opponent's flesh, armor, or shield.

There are also big advantages to having axes bouncing along the ground on which stand's your opponents feet and ankles.

Throwing weapons are far more effective than they are given credit for in most games.

[Obakararuir]

Where is the thread for making grapple more effective? Brazilian Jiu jitsu, judo, sambo, wrestling, muay thai, aikido...

[Bluenose]

DeciusBrutus wrote:

Blaeringr wrote:

Bluenose wrote:

Not necessarily. The Greeks build a repeating ballista, thinking it would be useful in siege warfare to clear battlements. It turned out, the thing was heavy enough that it was hard to turn it to aim at a different target, and it was so accurate that the second shot would go through the same person the first one did. Since that first person was probably dead, this wasn't too useful. That was fast firing, highly accurate, and did lots of damage. And only really more useful than a conventional ballista if people were careful to line up to be shot by it, which didn't compensate for the unreliability of lots of moving parts.

Do tell more. How many people to operate this ballista? What was it's rate of fire? I imagine an improvement over the one shot per minute of a standard ballista, but how much of an improvement? What is its kinetic force compared to a standard ballista?

Good questions. Along with "why would you build a siege engine and use it to attack individual soldiers?"

I'll have to see if I can find the book or article I read about it in. I think it said that it was operable by one man, and could fire ten bolts in quick succession before it needed reloading. It was supposed to be as powerful as any other ballista, though also heavier. I think it's described in Engineering in the ancient world by Landels, but it might have been in a journal article instead.

As for why you'd use it, it's much more powerful than any other greek missile weapon. Armour and shields aren't much use against a ballista. Others were used historically to suppress the defenders during siege assaults, and I assume the idea was something firing faster would be more effective.

[Jamie Charlan]

DendasGarrett wrote:

Keep the crossbow effective for what it was... a ranged weapon for non-ranged-specialist. The easiest way to so this is to make the crossbow a pick-up-and-shoot sort of weapon, and require training to (properly) use a bow

The only way to make this work is to switch Bows to exotic weapon proficiencies, due to the time and effort required. Longbows are well beyond a Martial.

That's the thing that's ill-portrayed: the crossbow takes hours of training to become 'proficient' with; use is covered in the first few minutes, and the remainder of your half-day crash course would involve maintenence and minor repairs on the damn thing.

Bows require months to years, just to achieve normal proficiency. Even on a professional, you just couldn't snap-aim like you can a crossbow either. Hell, you can tell someone was an archer by the fact that their skeletal structure was *DEFORMED* by the specific exercises and strains involved.

Yes, bows should have two to five times the fire rate of a crossbow. But just achieving iteratives oughta be no easier, and the bow's own catch-up game should be in the field of accuracy: you need just as many feats to rapid-fire crossbows that aren't massively under-drawn compared to what your strength could manage [or problematically over-equipped with a loading system] as you should to be able to fire anything remotely straight with a bloody bow.

EDIT
on the subject of Ballistas, I belive that was the cherioballista, or 'hand ballista'. These things were already made of metal way back then.

These, unlike crossbows, are actually fairly mechanically complex, which is how they got supplanted, as their ranges and firepower were pretty solid. The kind of thing that takes one turn to set-up/brace but packs enough punch to snipe a dude through the front of his chariot at 400 yards.

Sadly for crossbows, Psionics Expanded: Find the Mark has a solid number of new, many of which are non-psionic, feats that boost thrown weapons, including twin-throw. Actually the marksman class as a whole is pretty bloody nice, and can even bring a crossbow to a bit over half the DPR of a bow with Sniper Style's augmented shots when you combine that with the vital strike line of feats.

[Onishi]

Jamie Charlan wrote:

The only way to make this work is to switch Bows to exotic weapon proficiencies, due to the time and effort required. Longbows are well beyond a Martial.

That's the thing that's ill-portrayed: the crossbow takes hours of training to become 'proficient' with; use is covered in the first few minutes, and the remainder of your half-day crash course would involve maintenence and minor repairs on the damn thing.

I disagree on what makes something exotic, from what I gathered, it isn't the difficulty of the weapon to use, but the likelyness that one would be taught it in a given field.

Marshal weapons in general are weapons that are taught in basic combat training to any soldier, exotic weapons are ones that are generally only taught in oddball places outside of normal combat training (IE why bards learn whips, but not half of what a normal combatant learns.

Most cultures in the D&D universe learn bow shooting at a young age for anyone who is moderately wanting to learn combat. IE just about any and every child who is from an elvish village or learning basic combat. Before they even begin to set out as an adventurer, a fighter is going off his childhood lessons of bowman-ship. Same reason why dwarvish axes are marshal to a dwarf but exotic to a non-dwarf. It isn't that they are significantly harder to use for a non-dwarf, more that they aren't generally taught to non-dwarfs.

Meanwhile simple weapons are just things that are so basic if you can't figure out how to use them, you probably aren't smart enough to speak

[Jamie Charlan]

You can basically get basic proficiency with all melee martial weapons combined in the time it takes to get maybe half your BAB's worth of accuracy with the bow. Compounds make aiming easy, but the offset bend-around on a wooden longbow is less inutitive than stilts on roller-skates.

A lot of settlements might teach their kids the bow, yes, but no reason there wouldn't be many others that teach the crossbow. Its a little more 'complex' [its not a single stick'] but not necessarily more difficult to craft [a LOT goes into that bloody stick]. Very rugged things, too, overall.

Still think a longbow oughta be exotic [war bows of 120+ draw are not the shorts kids learn to hunt rabbits with], but failing that, you could portray the ease of learning crossbows by making them less feat intensive.

'course, the only way to do this is with freebies. Perhaps every weapon-specific feat [weapon focus, rapid reload, all the "pick a type of weapon" ones] could net you one free extra, if both are selected for crossbows. You could cap that at two three free ones, but it would at least portray the fact that you don't need the years a bow does to be capable with the things.

Mages could afford to dump a pair in there, in fact, many could and several would, but someone truly dedicated all the way to the bow would still be getting 1.5~2x the DPR on them anyhow.