Crossbows

[Demivrgvs]

Moved from main V3 topic.

 

Xbow stats

Good idea, Ardanis. Shorbows and Light Crossbows have 1-handed enchantments, Longbows and Heavy Crossbows got 2-handed. ^^ Those deserve to be more powerfull.

Did he proposed that? Anyway, that's a bad idea imo, as you'd make light xbows outstandingly unappealing without any good reason.

 

And to make it different for heavy and light xbow, I'd prefer to use Attack Speed Factor than another Apr penalties. Everyone will use weapons with more apr, as currently noone uses Longbows (because most of shortbows grants to you sick apr).

I have some doubts on this matter too:

1) shouldn't xbows have faster initiative than bows?

2) why light xbows should fire faster than heavy ones?

 

1) it all depends to another question, do you think the battle starts with the first bolt loaded or not? If yes, then firing it is way faster than taking an arrow from the quiver and fire it. In theory I suppose keeping the bolt loaded is quite common, whereas walking around with a bent (loaded) bow is less common (and doable only for a short amount of time). Then the better apr of bows should kick in indeed, because reloading an xbow is indeed more time consuming.

 

2) what's the difference between the firing process of the two xbows?

[Shaitan]

1) Indeed a xbow should have better initiative.

[yarpen]

Yeah, but then what sort of advantages do we have for crossbows? I'm not sure if they're currently dealing same or more damage than bows. But they should. Or have better chance for critical damage. In some parts of Europe crossbows were illegal and treated as 'unholy weapon' because of it's destructive ability. Also, light crossbows should be use-able without many strenght. 6/8? Then heavy crossbows with 13/14 would be just fine.

 

what the difference between the firing process of the two xbows?

Heavy crossbow is slower because of power needed for loading the bolt. but when this power is unleashed, woah, it should deal serious damage.

 

As some stupid gimmick: my friend Sorrow created mod which grants outstanding +5 Attack Rolls bonus against enemies using armors (he said it's PnP, never tried to find it), it also adds +2 bonus to 2H Swords and Flails.

[Ardanis]

Xbow stats

Demi has managed to talk some sense into me, so I'm inclined now to agree that heavy/light xbow should have identical reload time but instead different STR requirements - strong person will operate heavy xbow just as swiftly as weak person - light one.

I'd then propose the following change - remove the light/heavy prefix completely (except for generic ones maybe) and instead determine the bonus damage by STR required. Say, for each 2 STR after the minimal (8 or 10) the damage goes up by 1.

 

Yes for low initiative, but then I'd vote for global -1/2 ApR on xbows and minor additional (+1 maybe) SF penalty on bows. Especially if eventually more classes will be able to use them, so a crossbowman should be less appealing than a bowman in terms of summary damage output.

 

Giant Hair - well, just raise the STR req to above 20?

[Dakk]

1) it all depends to another question, do you think the battle starts with the first bolt loaded or not? If yes, then firing it is way faster than taking an arrow from the quiver and fire it. In theory I suppose keeping the bolt loaded is quite common[...].

Depends on how prepared (cf. SCS pre-buffing) you want to simulate the x-bow wielder is. Since by having the x-bow constantly wound up would result in the firing mechanism losing tensile strength over time - so you wouldn't.

 

Like the changes so far though =)

[Salk]

I am not so fond of the idea of binding Xbows damage to Strenght.

 

Strenght is already paramount for Melee attacks, making it also so important for ranged attack is really too much.

[Ardanis]

The concept is different here. It's not that user's STR is added to weapon damage, but rather low-STR PC can't properly use it. Same as weak people can't wear plate mail because it would encumber them beyond any acceptable degree.

 

I'd be the first one to tie the reload time to user's STR, but I think this is literally impossible within IE without a serious exe hack.

 

PS while we're here - what about slings? I might be mistaken, but I think they require even more skill than a bow, yet they were arguably the best ranged weapons in vanilla game, and to top it were treated as the most basic - even wizards could use a sling, but not a xbow.

[erik]

PS while we're here - what about slings? I might be mistaken, but I think they require even more skill than a bow, yet they were arguably the best ranged weapons in vanilla game, and to top it were treated as the most basic - even wizards could use a sling, but not a xbow.

You know that all bows have a base of 2 attacks/round, right? Slings/crossbows don't.

 

How do you figure slings are the best ranged weapons in vanilla?

[Salk]

The concept is different here. It's not that user's STR is added to weapon damage, but rather low-STR PC can't properly use it. Same as weak people can't wear plate mail because it would encumber them beyond any acceptable degree.

 

It's not so different. You would exclude the use of the best Xbows to characters with not enough Strenght. I wouldn't stray from the base concept that mainly Strenght affects melee weapons and mainly Dexterity affects ranged weapons.

[Ardanis]

You know that all bows have a base of 2 attacks/round, right? Slings/crossbows don't.

They were receiving damage bonus from enchantment unlike (X)bows, and additionally are 1-handed.

 

It's not so different. You would exclude the use of the best Xbows to characters with not enough Strenght. I wouldn't stray from the base concept that mainly Strenght affects melee weapons and mainly Dexterity affects ranged weapons.

Dexterity is responsible for the accuracy (or crit chance), not for direct damage. But it's STR that matters when drawing a bow - and indeed composite bows allow for STR bonus in PnP.

Obviously, I'm not insisting it's the best way to proceed. Just no better ideas around so far

[Demivrgvs]

Wow, interesting discussion...I'm thinking to move it to a dedicated topic.

 

Xbows

Yeah, but then what sort of advantages do we have for crossbows? I'm not sure if they're currently dealing same or more damage than bows. But they should. Or have better chance for critical damage.

They do slightly more damage, because bolts deal 1d8 instead of arrows 1d6, then heavy xbows have another +2 dmg on top of it. I added a small +1 bonus to hit rolls to simulate that aiming with a xbow is easier (it requires much less skill), and I do proposed a small +5% chance to score a critical hit back then but it seemed most players were against it.

 

Also, light crossbows should be use-able without many strenght. 6/8? Then heavy crossbows with 13/14 would be just fine.

Indeed vanilla's STR requirement were not so wrong. We should keep in mind that medieval xbow's string was pulled back by using a lever or winding a crank on a ratchet, allowing even an untrained and relatively weak person to use and reload it.

 

what's the difference between the firing process of the two xbows?

Heavy crossbow is slower because of power needed for loading the bolt. but when this power is unleashed, woah, it should deal serious damage.

By the mechanical method of 'drawing' the string far more tension could be gained than by muscle power. As long as you have enough strength to use them I don't think there's any "speed factor" or "apr" difference between the two xbows.

 

I'd then propose the following change - remove the light/heavy prefix completely (except for generic ones maybe) and instead determine the bonus damage by STR required. Say, for each 2 STR after the minimal (8 or 10) the damage goes up by 1.

I personally don't like this too much. Anyway, what would it add to the game? We already have two different STR requirements, and we can have different values too when we think it's appropriate (e.g. Giant Hair Crossbow).

 

Yes for low initiative, but then I'd vote for global -1/2 ApR on xbows and minor additional (+1 maybe) SF penalty on bows. Especially if eventually more classes will be able to use them, so a crossbowman should be less appealing than a bowman in terms of summary damage output.

A crossbowman should be slightly less appealing than a skilled bowman yes, but bows already have better apr (@eric, within IR they have +1/2 apr, not +1, for balance purposes as discussed here) thus I don't think we need to lower xbow's apr on top of it.

 

1) it all depends to another question, do you think the battle starts with the first bolt loaded or not? If yes, then firing it is way faster than taking an arrow from the quiver and fire it. In theory I suppose keeping the bolt loaded is quite common[...].

Depends on how prepared (cf. SCS pre-buffing) you want to simulate the x-bow wielder is. Since by having the x-bow constantly wound up would result in the firing mechanism losing tensile strength over time - so you wouldn't.

You do have a point, especially considering xbows used the least elastic fibre possible to raise the kinetic energy impressed on the bolt. That being said, if I'm not wrong you're not ambushed so often within BG, and sometimes even when you are ambushed you are half prepared (e.g. Samia's group ambushes you in the middle of a dungeon, thus I'd guess your crossbow is loaded there). Am I wrong?

 

Looking at vanilla's stats it seems AD&D partially agrees with us because light xbows have better speed factor than any bow, but than heavy xbows have the worst speed factor, and I'm not sure I can understand why.

 

 

Slings

...while we're here - what about slings? I might be mistaken, but I think they require even more skill than a bow, yet they were arguably the best ranged weapons in vanilla game, and to top it were treated as the most basic - even wizards could use a sling, but not a xbow.

Indeed slings should require A LOT more skill than xbows, the proficiency system on this matter makes no sense. That being said I'm not sure they were vanilla's best ranged weapon (though letting the wielder use a shield too is a big plus), bows were much better imo (slightly more dmg, +1 full attack per round!), with xbows being surely the worst.

[yarpen]

They do slightly more damage, because bolts deal 1d8 instead of arrows 1d6, then heavy xbows have another +2 dmg on top of it. I added a small +1 bonus to hit rolls to simulate that aiming with a xbow is easier (it requires much less skill), and I do proposed a small +5% chance to score a critical hit back then but it seemed most players were against it.

I'd suggest changing 1d8 into 2d4, it's going to be a large difference between Bows and Xbows. Bows are faster and allow Dexterity bonus. Crossbows deal very serious amount of damage, but are slower and have lesser attacks per round. That'll be probably fine.

 

Indeed slings should require A LOT more skill than xbows, the proficiency system on this matter makes no sense.

Proficiency system makes no sense. There is no distinction in points cost for Katana and Staff, but hey, you're not going to change a world. I was thinking about little micro-mod or just rule tweak which will limit Fighter's possible proficiency in Exotic Weapons to Mastery.

[Demivrgvs]

Xbows

They do slightly more damage, because bolts deal 1d8 instead of arrows 1d6, then heavy xbows have another +2 dmg on top of it. I added a small +1 bonus to hit rolls to simulate that aiming with a xbow is easier (it requires much less skill), and I do proposed a small +5% chance to score a critical hit back then but it seemed most players were against it.

I'd suggest changing 1d8 into 2d4, it's going to be a large difference between Bows and Xbows. Bows are faster and allow Dexterity bonus. Crossbows deal very serious amount of damage, but are slower and have lesser attacks per round. That'll be probably fine.

I can probably agree to a small increase in dmg output, but I'd say 1d10 instead of 2d4 (high min dmg is for blunt weapons, this is a piercing one in theory). Thus, we'd have:

* bows with +1/2 apr

* xbows with +1 thac0 and +2 dmg (1d10 instead of 1d6 is +2 on average)

* long/composite bows are more or less the equivalent of heavy xbows (higher STR requirement and higher dmg output)

 

Ardanis and I discussed this matter quite a lot (too much actually ), and he even suggests to be more "drastic", lowering xbows apr to 1/2, and raising their dmg output even more (e.g. 2d6). On one hand it really makes sense for xbows to have slower apr than all other weapons, on the other one I personally prefer to not introduce drastic changes unless "necessary". If we can balance such change (I don't know right know which dmg value we should use because -1/2 apr is quite different for a fighter and a non-fighter) the end result should be more or less the same in terms of effectiveness, but I fear many players (including me) could think we'd be ruining "vanilla's feel" or something like that and hate such tweak at first sight.

 

P.S sorry pal for mentioning it before you, but I do have to spend my time on something when I don't sleep!

[Salk]

Lowering any weapons natural APR to less than 1 sounds absurd to me. And I still believe Xbows should be considered 2handed weapons in every respect.

[Dermit]

I thought they were alright the way you had them. Dropping APR would be a mistake imo, since everything is based on the idea of the one minute round (compressed in BG). After a certain point it seems strange to add to the damage of a bolt, does a bolt really do the damage of a slice of a bastard sword? I would think its properties would be better represented by better THACO (as is already the case).