That makes sense. I happen to think weapon proficiency and difficulty of manufacture are very separate issues, but what you are saying makes a lot of sense. I suppose we would first need to identify and agree upon what the class weapon proficiencies mean. Are we talking about craft DCs? Do we want crossbows to be significantly stronger to go along with them being more complex to design?
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In fact I personally have a problem with the proficiency system in PF2, which is that it was designed as a beacon of power and versatility (actually by design paizo designers make trade-offs between power and versatility in the game, something very visible in the traits of the weapons, something I personally don't like, because players have a hard time seeing versatility as a power). And for me, for reasons of logic and also to make it clearer for players who have this difficulty in understanding the balance of power and versatility between damage dice and weapon traits, the designers should have separated the proficiency categories of the weapons only by the amount of traits and not by the damage dice. This would also help to explain that the more complex and versatile the weapon, the more difficult it would be to understand, maintain and use it efficiently.
So for me a Longspear, a Lance and a Three Peaked Tree should be respectively simple, martial and advanced weapons, due precisely to their greater amount of traits given by their greater complexity as a weapon that at the same time would require respectively more complex and difficult proficiencies to master, find adequate formal training due to the rarity, difficulty of manufacturing, distribution and cost of these different weapons.
But what happens today is that as the game also uses proficiency as a standard for damage along with traits, some weapons like axes end up being stuck in the martial weapons group because they simply need to deal more damage and therefore do not suit simple weapons well.
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My point is how common this holds for human society (hence most non-human societies).
For example, a bow is a simple enough weapon for me, to the point where it has existed in many different and unrelated cultures. From Japanese arches to American Indian arches. It may be a bit contradictory what I'm going to say, but the difficulty of training is not so relevant here, but the complexity of the weapon itself in its understanding,...
You are unlikely to be able to string a proper longbow let alone fire it and even if you could aiming a bow isn't all that simple. Now contrast that to a crossbow, you could pick up a crossbow, even a period accurate one, and be hitting targets within a few shots. This in short is why one is simple and one is martial.
That's way a don't include longbows as simple weapons. Just shortbows.
I already shot a shortbow and a longbow in practice. The difference is enormous, the shortbows are far more easy to shoot.
I also shoot crossbows sometimes (but only modern ones). They are a bit easier to aim but far harder to prepare. The main problem you easilly notice is that while you are running the bolt can easily drop into the ground so you just put it into crossbow only when you will shoot.
Due they being more slowly to arm (especially for an inexperienced one like me) becomes clear that they are weapons of shot and run, or shot and cover requiring a more martial tactical training than just keeping practicing until get good like bows.
The other noticable point is that crossbows are more harder to do longshots. Longshots with both bows and crossbows requires that you instinticvaly (today a trained shooter can use a spotter to help but this is probably unavaliable for most classes in medieval fantasy worlds or maybe your GM allow an ally to use Aid with weapon proficiency for this) makes an arc to try to hit a long distance target. The precision of those shoots are horrible, they make sense if you want to hit a big target or maybe someone in a troop but for crossbows this far worse due the low height and size of the bolts. They are way less stable and lighter than arrows many times making them way more difficult to hit at a longer distance.
That's why I have difficult to threat crossbows as simple weapons. Maybe they can appear to be easier at a first view but tactically they are way more complex to use tactically and their maintanance are way harder due their more complex construction and some particularities (for example you cannot carry your crossbow armed, this damage the arc overtime, fragilizes the trigger and many times it simply disarms due the shake).
That's way a don't include longbows as simple weapons. Just shortbows.
I already shot a shortbow and a longbow in practice. The difference is enormous, the shortbows are far more easy to shoot.
I also shoot crossbows sometimes (but only modern ones). They are a bit easier to aim but far harder to prepare. The main problem you easilly notice is that while you are running the bolt can easily drop into the ground so you just put it into crossbow only when you will shoot.
Due they being more slowly to arm (especially for an inexperienced one like me) becomes clear that they are weapons of shot and run, or shot and cover requiring a more martial tactical training than just keeping practicing until get good like bows.
A period-accurate crossbow isn't nearly as complex as a modern system and history disagrees with you. There's a reason why armies switched to crossbows once they became easy enough to produce.
The other noticable point is that crossbows are more harder to do longshots. Longshots with both bows and crossbows requires that you instinticvaly (today a trained shooter can use a spotter to help but this is probably unavaliable for most classes in medieval fantasy worlds or maybe your GM allow an ally to use Aid with weapon proficiency for this) makes an arc to try to hit a long distance target. The precision of those shoots are horrible, they make sense if you want to hit a big target or maybe someone in a troop but for crossbows this far worse due the low height and size of the bolts. They are way less stable and lighter than arrows many times making them way more difficult to hit at a longer distance.
That's why I have difficult to threat crossbows as simple weapons. Maybe they can appear to be easier at a first view but tactically they are way more complex to use tactically and their maintanance are way harder due their more complex construction and some particularities (for example you cannot carry your crossbow armed, this damage the arc overtime, fragilizes the trigger and many times it simply disarms due the shake).
This sounds like the difference between trained, expert, master, etc., and a character having certain feats rather than anything about how easy the weapon is to use.
A period-accurate crossbow isn't nearly as complex as a modern system and history disagrees with you. There's a reason why armies switched to crossbows once they became easy enough to produce.
The real reason is that crossbows are stronger enough to pierce armors at short distances.
The development of crossbows and them firearms made armors pretty useless outside duels. That's why crossbows and then firearms substitute the bows and then the armors was substituted by light armors or even cloths and then without armors the swords was switched to lighter and faster swords like rapiers and other light swords because without armors heavy weapons becomes less efective.
The real reason
A source for this would be lovely. I do like learning new things.
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The real reasonA source for this would be lovely. I do like learning new things.
2mm of medieval plate armor could resist any mas portable medieval arrow or crossbow even at extreme close-range. Lighter plate thicknesses and chain really depend on range, type of arrow/bolt and type of plate/chain and location [helmets could be twice as thick as legs]. Even if you have a crossbow strong enough to penetrate on a dead on strike, plate tends not to have much to stop a strike from veering off at an angle in a glancing blow if not straight on shot.
It's missing the rest of the text:
Ballistic testing of longbow arrows against plate armour remains controversial. Recent research has confirmed the experiments of the 1970s, that 2mm of medieval plate armour could resist any medieval arrow or crossbow. Our experimental work at Ridsdale in 1996 (Royal Armouries Yearbook 3, 1998, 44-9) supports Peter Jones’s earlier work, and Matheus Bane’s more recent research. To the contrary, much of the work suggesting the longbow arrow could pierce plate is theoretical rather than practical (P. Bourke and D. Wetham’s article in Arms & Armour 4, 2007, 53-81 has been roundly criticised and generally condemned) but work by the highly respected archer and broadcaster Mike Loades, Longbow, Oxford 2013, continues to support the armour piercing longbow theory as do Mark Stretton and his circle (H.D. Soar, M. Stretton and J. Gibbs, Secrets of the English war bow).
The main problem is that this 2mm high-quality armor plate isn't the default at all. Without industrial era standardizations all metalworking are handmade and the armor quality vary too much depending from armor-smith techniques, metal quality and purity, and available time and budget.
For nobles and duel games usually the armors available was way better and maybe able to deal with a longbow/crossbow but during wars armors was more simple and thin allowing longbows and crossbows act effectively, maybe nobles and heavy armored knights that may have armors good enough to prevent longbows and crossbows piercing but even this are questionable due the weight, need of a high number of squires, heat to deal with long march (even mounted is pretty exhaustive doing a march with a too heavy armor) to them deal in a campal battle.Crossbows are so deadly that in 1139 the catholic church "unfit for Christian use -- except against Infidels" (but usually ignored by many kingdoms with some random excuse).
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The main problem is that this 2mm high-quality armor plate isn't the default at all.
According to the Pope, the crossbow was an instrument of Satan, hateful to God and unfit for Christians: what that really meant is that it threatened the feudal system by making it easy to created armies of peasants with simple to use ranged weapons, not they were individually super powerful.
The main problem is that this 2mm high-quality armor plate isn't the default at all
I mentioned that thicknesses varied: it could be under 1mm or as much as 8mm. You have to try tests at some number. Particularly thin/inferior armor of course would perform worse, but so too would inferior arrows and bolts would perform worse. IMO, it's pretty much a push.
Without industrial era standardizations all metalworking are handmade and the armor quality vary too much depending from armor-smith techniques, metal quality and purity, and available time and budget
I've seen period accurate [as close as possible] crossbows shot a period accurate armors [with the same provisos] at extremely close range and the armor was only dented. This is opposed to what I understand was pretty much shooting an arrow shot at the armor on the ground while standing over it.
It's missing the rest of the text:
There IS some controversy but having seen actual tests [and a quick look at the research], I went with what seemed right and the opposing material was longbow focused. I was going for a simple answer but of course here is a more nuanced reply if one wants to dig that far.
You are sure! But when I talk about the quality of the armor, it's not even so much the thickness of the metal, but also the quality of the work in its manufacture (which certainly goes hand in hand with the quality of the arrowheads too, you're right), but mainly the fact that during medieval wars and disputes, outside the castes of knights who basically lived from wars or from the work of protecting territories, the armor available to soldiers in general was much simpler and cheaper (they were basically what we call light and medium armor in the TTRPG), and even knights often ended up in this condition due to the difficulty of maintaining and using heavy armor on the battlefield (in duels, the thing was different). At this point the crossbows were much more dangerous, because they ended up having a very high mortality rate against this type of troop.
Additionally, crossbows were martial weapons (in the sense of access and training, cost and maintenance cost), unlike bows which were much more common and operated as hunting tools as well. This difference in access ended up affecting access as well, as it was much easier for common servants to have their own bows and basic bow training was practically repetition. There wasn't as much of a tactical concern as there was with crossbows due to the long reload and high maintenance.
It's like I said, to me, crossbows are still better suited as martial weapons and not simple weapons.
I am starting to see we could be doing a lot more with proficiency groups. Sounds like a 3e problem. Look how far we have come. Proficiency used to be a tool to make rogues and wizards feel bad about themselves. Hmm, yes I like where this is headed. Which is to say, decidedly off topic.
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You are sure! But when I talk about the quality of the armor, it's not even so much the thickness of the metal, but also the quality of the work in its manufacture (which certainly goes hand in hand with the quality of the arrowheads too, you're right...
Remember that the period and place you're talking about spanned 700 years of time and an entire continent. There were absolutely times and places where good plate armor was relatively cheap and available to the common soldier. As for arrow penetration check these out.
Probably the most thorough and well researched tests on the matter anybody has done so far.