Pretty sure all bonuses and precision damage are all multiplied on a critical hit. But extra elemental rider damage form runes or effects will not.
Not a major factor if you're using the extra elemental rider damage to trigger vulnerabilities as that activates even on normal hits.
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Just for any simple weapon in general, rather than crossbows in particular, they are not going to be as powerful as a martial weapon. If they were, what's the point of having simple and martial weapons as a distinguishing feature between characters? When comparing them to bows, as in the OP, they are supposed to be weaker on the net; they are a category down. Now in PF1, due to the action economy, they were pretty terrible even when compared to other simple weapons. In PF2, they're quite solid for a simple weapon, which means worse than a martial.The problem is, simple weapons occupy a weird niche where martial weapons are given for free or at a really trivial cost. So 'simple weapons are not as powerful' just means that they're bad, and not worth using (with specific exceptions for piling wackiness together from various sources).
I have no problems that simple weapons aren't particularly good without investment. As this thread shows, at least at low levels a crossbow is effective for rangers.
But most spellcasters are going to want one so they can at least spam SOMETHING when the enemy is out of cantrip range. Sure you're not doing much but at least it's SOMETHING
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Just for any simple weapon in general, rather than crossbows in particular, they are not going to be as powerful as a martial weapon. If they were, what's the point of having simple and martial weapons as a distinguishing feature between characters? When comparing them to bows, as in the OP, they are supposed to be weaker on the net; they are a category down. Now in PF1, due to the action economy, they were pretty terrible even when compared to other simple weapons. In PF2, they're quite solid for a simple weapon, which means worse than a martial.The problem is, simple weapons occupy a weird niche where martial weapons are given for free or at a really trivial cost. So 'simple weapons are not as powerful' just means that they're bad, and not worth using (with specific exceptions for piling wackiness together from various sources).
Even the characters that don't have access and don't want to pay the general or ancestry feat tax universally have access to cantrips or are monks, so, again, don't have any reason to manipulate their starting stats to be mediocre at using bad weapons.
Bad and trap options are basically non options.
Given all the arguments about "my random weapon I used weapon proficiency to grab doesn't scale with me", I would say no, they aren't given at a trivial cost.
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How would Running Reload interact with the Reload 2 of a heavy crossbow? Does it let you simply reload with the action? It doesn't say it reduces reload time, but rather it just lets you reload.
No, it wouldn't allow you to reload faster. You could move during both actions you spend reloading, though.
To me, I'm not so concerned about crossbows in the abstract, but given that Rangers have gotten extra boons for choosing crossbows, I do hope we see in the future options that are comparative to the Crossbowman Fighter archetype. It's not an archetype that can really directly parallel PF2e, given how much the PF1e archetype relied on Vital Strike and Readied actions, but I think there are ways that could achieve similar results in 2e, that I hope to see in future books.
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Dang it... I lost a huge post because my internet crapped out on me. To briefly summarize:
White Room DPR comparisons fail to capture the tactical significance of Running Reload. Being able to Stride or Sneak (as opposed to just step with Skirmish Strike) means being able to more easily bypass cover and render yourself hidden and therefore the enemy flatfooted. That can swing your chance to hit up by as much as +4 easy, which is very nice on a single high damage attack action. A hafling with distracting/ceaseless shadows can flit around his allies ankles while 360 no scoping people like no tomorrow. He can also leave his strength at 8 and put more points into Wisdom and constitution than the archer can.
Flurry archers are basically PF1 archers: machine gun turrets with a 5 foot step. Crossbow rangers are much, much more interesting IMO. I really want to play one.
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Just for any simple weapon in general, rather than crossbows in particular, they are not going to be as powerful as a martial weapon. If they were, what's the point of having simple and martial weapons as a distinguishing feature between characters? When comparing them to bows, as in the OP, they are supposed to be weaker on the net; they are a category down.
To me, that sounds like a very good argument against the existence of a simple/martial distinction, since without it, the two weapons could be as mechanically equivalent as a player would be conceiving them to be.
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Just for any simple weapon in general, rather than crossbows in particular, they are not going to be as powerful as a martial weapon. If they were, what's the point of having simple and martial weapons as a distinguishing feature between characters? When comparing them to bows, as in the OP, they are supposed to be weaker on the net; they are a category down.To me, that sounds like a very good argument against the existence of a simple/martial distinction, since without it, the two weapons could be as mechanically equivalent as a player would be conceiving them to be.
That doesn't really follow. You can make a simple weapon with feat investment equal to a martial weapon with feat investment, you just need to balance the feats right.
If crossbows are normally a 4 and shortbows an 8, a crossbow ranger feat can raise that by 6 while a shortbow feat can raise it by 2. Both wind up with a result of 10, while still leaving the baseline simple weapon a worse option for non-martials to have access to.
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Just for any simple weapon in general, rather than crossbows in particular, they are not going to be as powerful as a martial weapon. If they were, what's the point of having simple and martial weapons as a distinguishing feature between characters? When comparing them to bows, as in the OP, they are supposed to be weaker on the net; they are a category down.To me, that sounds like a very good argument against the existence of a simple/martial distinction, since without it, the two weapons could be as mechanically equivalent as a player would be conceiving them to be.That doesn't really follow. You can make a simple weapon with feat investment equal to a martial weapon with feat investment, you just need to balance the feats right.
If crossbows are normally a 4 and shortbows an 8, a crossbow ranger feat can raise that by 6 while a shortbow feat can raise it by 2. Both wind up with a result of 10, while still leaving the baseline simple weapon a worse option for non-martials to have access to.
No, you're not following me.
Starting with the premises that weapons must be divided into simple and martial weapons, that simple weapons have to be worse than martial weapons, and that crossbows have to be the former while bows are the latter, your conclusion does indeed logically follow.
I'm disputing the premises in the first place. Who says weapons needed to be so categorized? Prior to the game introducing this expectation, the player is thinking of both choices as equivalent (i.e., crossbows AND shortbows are normally an 8 and taking a feat raises them to a 10). "Crossbows are a 4 and shortbows are an 8" is a complication the game insists on.
To put it another way, glaives are not categorized as "martial" (and therefore 8) while longswords are categorized as "martial-plus" (so, 10). They are distinct from each other without being required to be in separate categories of effectiveness. Crossbows and bows could also have been so distinguished (that is, without requiring weapons to be categorized as simple versus martial). As is, the simple/martial distinction reminds me of this sign, existing just to insist on itself.
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That doesn't really follow. You can make a simple weapon with feat investment equal to a martial weapon with feat investment, you just need to balance the feats right.
If crossbows are normally a 4 and shortbows an 8, a crossbow ranger feat can raise that by 6 while a shortbow feat can raise it by 2. Both wind up with a result of 10, while still leaving the baseline simple weapon a worse option for non-martials to have access to.
This will then undermine the requirement that simple is worse than martial. A Simple weapon should require more investment/sacrifice/opportunity cost to be statistically equal to a martial weapon. Any feats or mechanics that sets aside the categorical difference undermines the depth of the design.
It's tantamount to saying a non-martial class should be able to do the same melee damage as a martial class with the same amount of feat investment.
It is not, actually. At least not as it stands in PF2. A non-martial character needs to spend their second level and fourth level class feats to get the same mileage out of a crossbow that a Ranger can with a 1st level feat. It takes more investment for a class that isn't inherently good at weapons to catch up to a class that is.
I agree with you the simple/martial distinction is an important building block of the system being class based. I just don't see why a martial character can't utilize their feats to make a simple weapon competitive. I don't think the art-form requires that some weapons are inherently worse for all characters, just that some weapons are inherently worse to be given to the caster classes while the martials can kick butt with weapons.
White Room DPR comparisons fail to capture the tactical significance of Running Reload. Being able to Stride or Sneak (as opposed to just step with Skirmish Strike) means being able to more easily bypass cover and render yourself hidden and therefore the enemy flatfooted. That can swing your chance to hit up by as much as +4 easy, which is very nice on a single high damage attack action.
From what I read on the Sneak action, you cannot become hidden, only keep the condition.
"At the end of your movement, the GM rolls your Stealth check in secret and compares the result to the Perception DC of each creature you were hidden from or undetected by at the start of your movement."The sidebar also says something like "now that you are hidden you can Sneak", book is not in hand so I can't check exactly what it says.
Are you sure you can become hidden with the Sneak action? It would be a huge buff to crossbow Rangers since they seem to underperform compared to archers at higher levels.
These topics have amused me for years; they came up since the beginning of these forums.
If option A is mathematically the strongest, a vocal group will assert that options B-Z are all "garbage."
If one weapon build has a DPR of 10, and another has 8.5, the latter is "unusable."
This place needs eye-roll emojis.
This topic is not the same as that topic. This topic is bringing up the differences between simple and martial weapons (and why they should or shouldn't be separated as such), not the DPR olympics/optimization guides like you're implying.
Also, this is one of the few text mediums that doesn't have Hipster-Egyptian on it. If entries in Pathfinder start to be written as such, I will probably cease to buy and partake in these products and any future products they publish.
Hmm, I'm gonna try going XBow + Animal Companion. Seems to synergize well to me. More so than going flurry with twf or bow with a pet.
I would likely go Human. Just so I could start with XBow Ace and a pet (likely a cat) from the get go.
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I feel that when other PC's pull out a crossbow they are commiting a passive-aggressive form of PVP against me and the rest of the party.
Paladin: "And doing necromancy is an actively aggressive form of PVP with me. Back to your crypt, ye ancient thread. You do not belong in this world (year)".
I feel that when other PC's pull out a crossbow they are commiting a passive-aggressive form of PVP against me and the rest of the party.
I mean they are perfectly fine for classes without proficiency in actual bows and they can be made pretty good through feat investment.
I think the biggest issue is that there is very little reason to use the heavy crossbow over the basic crossbow. Even the "I'm investing all of my feats and stuff to be good at crossbows" character won't benefit enough from the larger die enough to make reloading take twice as long.
I've played the precision crossbow ranger and it's fine, but you wouldn't want to use a heavy one except as a "I shoot this once, then throw it on the ground and enter melee" option whereas the basic crossbow works just fine.
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I feel that when other PC's pull out a crossbow they are commiting a passive-aggressive form of PVP against me and the rest of the party.
Crossbows are fine for a Ranger focusing on them. They are also fine for casters and other low Str, no Martial Weapon Proficiency, characters as a backup weapon at low levels (though many casters will be better with cantrips even then).
Other people should generally not use them at all.
The Heavy Crossbow is one of the most damaging weapons in the Dark Eye RPG, with the trade off being that you'll shoot it at the start of a fight and pretty much never get to reload it. It's an alternative take on the weapon that suits that style of game better than it would suit Pathfinder.
I loved that style of play. I had a character that used the repeating crossbow that would pepper enemies with it and once the magazine was empty drop it to go into melee combat.
Shields make the heavy crossbow a lot worse as a backup weapon sadly. since you'd have to drop it to raise the shield or stow it using an action. While the hand crossbow you can shoot and still raise a shield.
Am I wrong? It really seems like we're still in a situation where a 1-die upstep in damage is nowhere near good enough to make up for the longer reload time, and that's before considering bows got sweet upgrades (deadly, propulsive?) while xbows got nothing at all.
What gives? Will fantasy rpgs ever deliver a crossbow that doesn't feel like a drag to choose?
Its almost a feature of the genre. Real work bows fire much faster standard crossbows. That translates into the game.
Its a pity that the weakness of bows, sustained rate of fire on a heavy bow, would be an endurance mechanic and that normally gets abstracted away.
Its good that crossbows are simple weapons that makes sense.
Personally I'd have like to see crossbows get the deadly trait that bows have. There not really any justfication for them being any weaker in impact.
They are OK as a backup or opening round weapon. But really there is little point in a crossbow in this game. A bow is just better.
Its almost a feature of the genre. Real work bows fire much faster standard crossbows. That translates into the game.
Its a pity that the weakness of bows, sustained rate of fire on a heavy bow, would be an endurance mechanic and that normally gets abstracted away.
Its good that crossbows are simple weapons that makes sense.
Personally I'd have like to see crossbows get the deadly trait that bows have. There not really any justfication for them being any weaker in impact.
They are OK as a backup or opening round weapon. But really there is little point in a crossbow in this game. A bow is just better.
an alternative would be stamina as bows require you to maintain force against the drawn string.
In general the simple and martial distinction fits though.Are there already ways to have a reload familiar or is that not supported very well by the available actions? If you could exchange an item for 1 action it would work I think. Shoot exchange crossbow with a loaded crossbow command the familiar to reload it but that's not really any better than using 2 actions to reload, hm.
Edit: aha you could have another player's familiar do the reloading
Don't know if a GM would allow it, but a Baba Yaga familiar (so an object familiar) that's a crossbow with Indipendent, using it's own actions to crank itself seems hilarious to me.
that is amazing and making a heavy crossbow go from reload 2 to reload 1 essentially isn't particularly busted.
Needs GM approval anyway because it's Rare
edit: oh I see with independent a reload 1 crossbow could reload itself
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Its almost a feature of the genre. Real work bows fire much faster standard crossbows. That translates into the game.
Its a pity that the weakness of bows, sustained rate of fire on a heavy bow, would be an endurance mechanic and that normally gets abstracted away.
Its good that crossbows are simple weapons that makes sense.
Personally I'd have like to see crossbows get the deadly trait that bows have. There not really any justfication for them being any weaker in impact.
They are OK as a backup or opening round weapon. But really there is little point in a crossbow in this game. A bow is just better.
an alternative would be stamina as bows require you to maintain force against the drawn string.
In general the simple and martial distinction fits though.Are there already ways to have a reload familiar or is that not supported very well by the available actions? If you could exchange an item for 1 action it would work I think. Shoot exchange crossbow with a loaded crossbow command the familiar to reload it but that's not really any better than using 2 actions to reload, hm.
Edit: aha you could have another player's familiar do the reloading
There's another thread around here asking that. I think the consensus was that you're losing out on actions trying to get your familiar to do the work for you. (Tho that's also my own opinion so I'm biased there.)
There's another thread around here asking that. I think the consensus was that you're losing out on actions trying to get your familiar to do the work for you. (Tho that's also my own opinion so I'm biased there.)
makes sense the action requirements just don't add up.
The self reloading baba yaga familiar regular crossbow or hand crossbow has merit however. Ancient Elf Witch with Ranger dedication for crossbow Ace at lvl 4 could do some work, you're not getting much else from the dedication however.
By giving the familiar manual dexterity and independent you could work out a way for it to grab a bolt whenever it's empty to load and draw itself and you're still left with a familiar ability to choose from.
You can start with 16 dex and 18 int, dump str and charisma to equal out the constitution flaw from elven ancestry and you're left with a 1d6 or 1d8 reload 0 ranged weapon that starts at +6 to hit at lvl 1.
Come lvl 4 you even get up to a 1d10 weapon from crossbow ace.
Probably works decently as a 3rd action however, I don't know how important that is for a witch when they can already use it to sustain a spell.
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I feel that when other PC's pull out a crossbow they are commiting a passive-aggressive form of PVP against me and the rest of the party.Paladin: "And doing necromancy is an actively aggressive form of PVP with me. Back to your crypt, ye ancient thread. You do not belong in this world (year)".
Thread: It is not by my hand that I am once again given posts. I was bumped here by humans who wished to rehash this thread.
Paladin: Rehash? You steal poster's time and make them your fools!
Thread: The same could be said of all topics.
Paladin: Your arguments are as disingenuous as your thread! Mankind ill needs a topic such as you!
Thread: What is a thread? A miserable little pile of inconsistent rules citations! But enough typing, have at you!
I feel that when other PC's pull out a crossbow they are commiting a passive-aggressive form of PVP against me and the rest of the party.Crossbows are fine for a Ranger focusing on them. They are also fine for casters and other low Str, no Martial Weapon Proficiency, characters as a backup weapon at low levels (though many casters will be better with cantrips even then).
Other people should generally not use them at all.
Actually a crossbow is a very nice weapon option for an investigator since they already rely on a very big shot per turn. I would still avoid heavy crossbows though for obvious reasons
Heavy Crossbows are probably best relagated to a "shoot once and drop it" weapon. Which, to be fair, is a valid niche to fill. A caster or Alchemist might only get one shot before enemies close into bomb or spell range and then you might as well roll d10s for it.
Normal crossbows seem pretty viable for most now given the archer archetype, should they choose to specialize in it.
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Actually a crossbow is a very nice weapon option for an investigator since they already rely on a very big shot per turn. I would still avoid heavy crossbows though for obvious reasons
Investigators make better use of them than most. I'm not positive the extra reload action is worth the minimal damage bump, though. Indeed, given that Investigators tend to focus on having one action things they can do instead of an attack they know rolled badly via Devise A Stratagem, I'd argue it's usually worse than using that action for something else. Using Battle Medicine or Demoralize, or a host of other possibilities plus a shortbow will usually be better than the mild damage boost of a crossbow.
Now if you go Ranger Multiclass and grab Crossbow Ace and Running Reload, or grab Archer and the equivalent options, that's another matter, but that's true for most Classes, not just Investigators.
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How would Running Reload interact with the Reload 2 of a heavy crossbow? Does it let you simply reload with the action? It doesn't say it reduces reload time, but rather it just lets you reload.
I agree. I am waiting to see a designer weigh in on this. IMO, Running Reload lets you reload, period, regardless of the weapon. Its reference to the Interact action is just confirmation that it does not negate that requirement. So you could reload a heavy crossbow with a single interact action that also provides a Stride. Some GMs will disagree so expect table variation.
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At least we can all say that crossbows are better than Daikyus.why?
even at a sraight up comparison crossbow is quite subpar to a Daikyu.
1d8 with 0 reload is certainly better than 1d8 with 1 reload.
That said, even as unispiring Daikyu are, they are still longbows without Volley which is an upside (now, if this upside outweights propulsive+deadly is another story)
It has reload --- not 0, so you appear to need to throw it. Lacks propulsive or deadly, and is Advanced so it's difficult to get.