No love for crossbows?

[Sean H]

While I understand the history of the crossbow being a peasant's weapon(and as such, the simple weapon designation), but they just seem... weak compared to bows. It seems to me that, with enough feats, gold and/or class levels, a specialized crossbowman should eventually, maybe, at least be able to equal a skilled archer. With the available Pathfinder material though, they just can't.

Take Rapid Shot for example. Bow users can use it out of the box. In order to use it with a crossbow, the crossbow must be Light and the user must take the Rapid Reload feat. This sort of makes sense, given you can also get Longbow proficiency with a feat. At this point, the Crossbowman and Archer are on roughly even footing.

But then we can add in Manyshot to the mix, which is just plain better than Rapid Shot. We can throw in Bracers of Archery. Composite Longbows. Zen Archer Monk? Crossbow users can't use any of these, and they don't have any crossbow-exclusive alternatives either. Even the Exotic Crossbows don't do much other than allow the use of Rapid Shot with a Heavy Crossbow... but Weapon Specialization would be better than the Exotic Proficiency Feat.

So am I missing something here, or are bows just better? Will support for crossbows be added in later books, or is there a design reason for this?

[Mort the Cleverly Named]

You are missing a few tricks. For example, Crossbow Mastery will allow you to reload a heavy crossbow without that using a repeating crossbow. Not that wasting extra feats is really worth +1 damage, but it is an option that exists. Nice for Rangers who can skip the prereqs. Being simple also makes them much more accessible than bows, and they aren't so much worse that a character who isn't interested in archery will bother using a proficiency for a bow instead. There are also niche where they are superior, such as archery for those with low strength or critical hit builds.

But in general, you a right. For characters who can use them, crossbows just aren't as good for most characters. Blame standard fantasy tropes. From Robin Hood to Odysseus to Legolas, cool kids use bows. Crossbows are for the extras. Or, in this case, the Wizards who can't be bothered learning to use anything better.

[Sean H]

But think of all the Dwarfs! Who ever heard of a dwarf using a bow? Preposterous, I say!

You do have a point there with Crossbow Mastery. I didn't realize Rangers can skip the prerequisites, which saves a feat(though, in that case, which crossbow doesn't provoke an AoO?)

[HaraldKlak]

I think the major issue concerning crossbows, is that in trying to fix them with Crossbow Mastery, the crossbows have just become a weak type of bow.

I think crossbows should have taken another direction. Instead of multiple attacks, they should be able to deal few hard hits.

[WeirdGM66]

Mort the Cleverly Named wrote:

You are missing a few tricks. For example, Crossbow Mastery will allow you to reload a heavy crossbow without that using a repeating crossbow. Not that wasting extra feats is really worth +1 damage, but it is an option that exists. Nice for Rangers who can skip the prereqs. Being simple also makes them much more accessible than bows, and they aren't so much worse that a character who isn't interested in archery will bother using a proficiency for a bow instead. There are also niche where they are superior, such as archery for those with low strength or critical hit builds.

But in general, you a right. For characters who can use them, crossbows just aren't as good for most characters. Blame standard fantasy tropes. From Robin Hood to Odysseus to Legolas, cool kids use bows. Crossbows are for the extras. Or, in this case, the Wizards who can't be bothered learning to use anything better.

First in many ways the "cool" kids using bows is directly out of movies/ fantasy books etc.

If I recall corectlly the Long Bow that the English used was a waepon that required "a lifetime" to master. Crossbows where much easier to learn how to use. I also beleave that a more proper real world compareason would be a crossbow to the short bow as short bows where much more common all oevr the world.

Both the short bow and crossbow could be used mounted, where as the "standard" long bow could not be used mounted. The japaniese long bow the Dyaku (think I have the spelling right on it) was the only type of long bow that I know of that could be used mounted.

Looking at the damage each does the light crossbow does 1d8 and the short bow does 1d6. The Heavy crossbow does 1d10 and the Long Bow does 1d8 per hit presuming they are not compsite bows and can add strength damage to the strike.

Now there are other factors to look at a light crossbow can be fired one handed once at least maybe while climbing a rope or otherwise needing a hand for something else.

[Marthian]

Also, I'd like to point out that you can dual-wield two crossbows if you got the feats for it. The reloading requiring two hands can be solved by getting something like the alchemist's vestigial arm discovery or witch's prehensile hair hex.

I could be wrong, I was also going off of firearms being able to be dual-wielded.

[Midnight-Gamer]

I have been running a crossbowman, it's a fighter archetype in the APG. The damage has been reasonably good and the crossbow lends itself to a dynamic type of fighting style.

It is easy to take a shot from cover, or while prone. The crossbow also gains more damage from vital strike, which means your bowman can take a shot, and then move to better positioning.

The largest advantage is strength is not required to be all that high. It's likely you will have one, maybe two high ability scores. With the crossbow your not pigeonholed, you only need dexterity. My fighter has a 16 intelligence, how many can say that about their fighters?

[Sean H]

The problem with dual-wielding crossbows is you take a -2 penalty for TWF and a -4 penalty for using a Light Crossbow in 1 hand. Taking -6 on all attacks to get an extra one isn't that great a trade, especially when you need a feat just to get it that good.

Bows can still use Vital Strike. I suppose crossbows are slightly better with it, but does +1 damage(on average) really bring up the difference? Good point about prone firing though; crossbows have the advantage there in archer battles.

As for the strength rating, you don't need a high strength to use a bow. 10 will do. If you have even a moderate strength of 12, you can get a damage bonus with a composite bow, which brings the average damage per shot up on par with the crossbow.

[Transylvanian Tadpole]

We just played a session with my gaming group, and our gnomish swashbuckler/sorcerer took out 4 orcs with his crossbow. He's down to five bolts, whilst his pistol (with all its ranged touch attack supposed awesomeness) has yet to be fired (he doesn't dare get close enough to use it).

Of course, he's very much the low-level arcane caster with a crossbow cliche at the moment, but he certainly has grown to love his weapon.

Incidentally, the same gaming group has a fighter with intelligence 15, so it seems intellectual swordsmen are not so rare after all!

[Marthian]

Midnight-Gamer wrote:

I have been running a crossbowman, it's a fighter archetype in the APG. The damage has been reasonably good and the crossbow lends itself to a dynamic type of fighting style.

It is easy to take a shot from cover, or while prone. The crossbow also gains more damage from vital strike, which means your bowman can take a shot, and then move to better positioning.

The largest advantage is strength is not required to be all that high. It's likely you will have one, maybe two high ability scores. With the crossbow your not pigeonholed, you only need dexterity. My fighter has a 16 intelligence, how many can say that about their fighters?

Roy Greenhilt could.

As for the penalty, yeah it's a penalty, but you have more attacks that could hit. Also, you can get feats for it, mw crossbow, and some other magic items to up the chance to hit.

[Ramanujan]

I enjoy the fact that hand crossbows can be concealed about your person... Can't really do that with Bows — or larger crossbows.

In reality they are very different weapons. The rest of this assumes crossbows designed for use by a single individual (Crossbows used by Richard I during the third crusade required three people for example).

The longbow has a far longer effective range, greater accuracy and quicker rate of loading.

The crossbow requires less training, was slower firing had a lower effective range and was less accurate, but hit with much greater force.

I say the longbow has a greater effective range, but that's actually technically wrong: the crossbows had higher poundage (~300lb), so in theory if you pointed a crossbow and a longbow at 45 degrees, and loaded them with the same weight and size ammunition the crossbow would fire further than the longbow (~200lb).

However, due to both the mechanical nature of the crossbow (it's user has less control), the lower levels of skill involved and that fact that crossbow bolts are much heavier and shorter than arrows (for reasons you'll see in the following paragraph) the accuracy and range of crossbow men was much lower than longbowmen.

The two weapons were actually best used very differently in war. The crossbow was a much better at being a relatively short-range weapon designed to be shot directly at the opponent and puncture their armour — hence it being described as 'the great leveller' — with a weeks training a peasant could kill a fully armoured knight. To do this the crossbow was fired at a fairly horizontal angle intending to get maximum penetration force as it hit the plate armour. It was substantially less effective when being used to launch volleys.

The longbow was a more flexible weapon, and although it could be used as a slightly weaker, but faster firing version of the crossbow directly at it's target, it could also be used very effectively to launch volleys into the opposing forces.

By law the english and welsh longbowmen were required to practice with their weapons regularly — at a range of 220-400 yards at targets.
It is tricky to get an equivalent stat for the accurate range of crossbows as they were generally used by less trained individuals. The generally quoted maximum range at a target was about 150-350 yards for volleys, but was more effective at 70 yards.

It wasn't that a crossbow was a peasant's weapon — the longbows were also wielded by peasants. In fact oftentimes being a crossbow man in an army conferred fairly high rank; particularly in spain where it about put them on a par with knights! (note that these crossbows may not have been for use by individuals, so the 'archer' would have had to employ underlings)

The ease of training of the crossbow caused it's popularity to outshine that of the longbow in Europe — the only real exception being Britain. Although I'm told Iceland had similar laws requiring enforced training, and the French briefly experimented with it after the hundred years war.

The thing that annoys me more is the term "composite". There are two kinds of composite bow in reality.

1) Modern bows that use pulleys to achieve far higher poundage than their wielders can physically draw.
2) An eastern style of bow made of layered materials glued together. What would now be called a recurve bow. Recurve bows have more poundage than equivalent sized normal bows — but still substantially less poundage than a longbow.

Edit:
I should note that there is some dispute about whether a longbow could penetrate steel plate.
My comment on that is, probably yes, but definitely at a substantially shorter range than a crossbow could do it at.