Strength requirements for ranged weapons

jmartkdr said:

Based on my experience with similar rules, I feel that in practice all this does is make weapon-users more MAD, which will have one of a few consequences:

1. Players will stop playing archers and start playing blastlocks, because they're better at shooting, and get magic.

2. Players of archers will have flatter ability score spreads, reducing the variety available.

3. Players of archers will need to dump both intelligence and charisma, giving them a lot fewer options outside of combat, which will in turn make the players push for fewer non-combat encounters.

Making players use more ability scores almost always makes the game worse.

Click to expand...

You're right and wrong.

Basing all damage on Strength doesn't make a game worse. It just shifts the balance away from the lithe popstar ninjas that's popular today back towards the burly heroes of the eighties.

You're correct however you can't just revert back to how 3rd Edition handled damage. That would indeed make Blasters and Smiters look good, even better than today.

Eh, I'd rather just give bonuses for strength. Simpler, does the same job, be done with it.

Let there be bows with greater reach and damage that require a certain strength, if you must, but the simplest thing is to just make them finesse, or allow a strength bonus to damage on top of whatever else you're adding to damage.

I'm probably going to allow all weapon attacks (even the ones that don't really make any sense, like crossbows) to add half strength mod as a bonus to damage, or something. Gotta work out the math, and I don't want pure strength archers to be better archers than dex archers, but it's something to work on.

Yunru said:

Here's the general thought:
A bow or crossbow has a base Strength requirement of 10. If a character wields a bow or crossbow and doesn't meet the Strength requirement, it gains the loading property. If a bow or crossbow has the light property, it's Strength requirement decreases by 3. If a bow or crossbow has the heavy property, the Strength requirement increases by 3. If a bow or crossbow has the loading property, the Strength requirement increases by 5.

And here's how it'd be displayed:
Loading (X) -- Add "unless the wielder has a Strength score of X or higher."

Hand Crossbow: Loading (12)
Heavy Crossbow: Loading (18)
Longbow: Loading (13)
Shortbow: Loading (10)

Click to expand...

Why?

Seriously, a new set of mechanics needs to be assessed in terms of what the goals are.

Mechanics without goals are like directions of travel without a starting point and a destination in mind.

If you dont know where you are going, you are likely to wind up somewhere else.

Seems like this rule would make one subset of characters (strength below 10 and extra attacks) spend to get strength 10 instead of 8 and use shortbow vs longbow but no other major change to them. That seems rather trivial a result all things considered. (Doubt any would see the range and d8 vs d6 worth the 5 strength on a dex build to go that far.) Is the d6 vs d8 and range a huge thing in your game that it should cost 5 ability points from other stuff - would that balance out? If not you seem to be making rules to make very "one choice is the right choice" here.

For others, well if you just got one bow attack, this rule seems much ado about nothing.

Is this rule trying to take aim at the crossbow expert rogue? Is that the why? Cuz its extra attack is limited to hand cross and that particular combo could be seen by some (mistakenly) as raising that to a strength 12 needed. But iirc the loading limit is per attsck, bonus attack, reaction so the attack action (hand cross) plus bonus action (hand cross bow thru CE) is still good at strength 8.

Hard to say without knowing even one single goal but this seems to be a big rule that just shuffles around things to make fewer choices appealing?

Maybe if you reformat with

1 These are things I think are bad.
2 These are rules changes I want to make to get rid of the bad.
3 Thoughts?

The main goals would be thus:
Add another negative to dumping strength.
Add an incentive for ranged attackers to raise strength as well as Dexterity.

Of course, Crossbow Expert would need changing to not totally negate that last point.

Yunru said:

The main goals would be thus:
Add another negative to dumping strength.
Add an incentive for ranged attackers to raise strength as well as Dexterity.

Of course, Crossbow Expert would need changing to not totally negate that last point.

Click to expand...

So without knowing what the change to crossbow expert is, we got no foundation. Ok.

So, ignoring the crossbows entirely then and only looking at bows...

For the subset that have longbows extra attacks and 8 str, those builds vanish... they go away... gone... replaced by builds with short bows and 10 str and 2 less on some other fourth down stat. The penalty is not so much a penalty as making that subset of builds no longer worth even looking at.

So, favorite picked, offending choice being used now de-facto banned cuz nobody with an 8 str multi-shot longbow is gonna drag 5 ability points from elsewhere to keep that when shortbow is almost as good for just 2 pts drag. (Side benefit - gets their weight carried a little more buffer room. Maybe an armor up-tick.)

For the sub-set of longbow using 8 str guys who rely on one shot anyway (rogues delivering sneak maybe) they keep their 8 strength and elven longbows no prob. They did not have more than one bow shot before so loading is irrelevant.

So, is this a success? It drives out dex-based warriors with longbows driving them to shortbows and it lets longbows be the dex weapon of the rogue-based builds (elven weapons for instance)

So, is that success as far as bows is concerned? More warrior shortbowmen and more rogue longbowmen? If so, great - Mission Accomplished.

But if you wanted to make a 13 str vsc8 str longbow dex-heavy fighter a viable trade-off option - make these "tough choices" as to which to choose - nope. You just made that a trap.

5 ability points drag-in to get longbow vs 2 ability drag-in for shortbow is not gonna be measured and found balanced by most anybody. Especially not when sharpshooter eliminates the range penalty so we are seeing 320 ft vs 600 ft as so rarely a factor.

So, the "penalty" really doesn't get played... just one subset abandoned and shifted to different builds.

What if instead, you start everyone at 10 strength? Then you get rid of dump stat bow builds pretty cleanly.

Maybe you let them choose baseline between
Your three physicals are 10 and mental 8.
Your three mental are 10 and your physicals 8.

That way, you eliminated martials dumping strength but leave 8s for the brainy guys.

We can talk crossbows once we have the new cross expert.

jmartkdr said:

Based on my experience with similar rules, I feel that in practice all this does is make weapon-users more MAD, which will have one of a few consequences:

1. Players will stop playing archers and start playing blastlocks, because they're better at shooting, and get magic.

2. Players of archers will have flatter ability score spreads, reducing the variety available.

3. Players of archers will need to dump both intelligence and charisma, giving them a lot fewer options outside of combat, which will in turn make the players push for fewer non-combat encounters.

Making players use more ability scores almost always makes the game worse.

Click to expand...

None of this occurs in our games where we’ve been using the DEX/STR dichotomy since AD&D, and where for a good amount of that time it was RAW if I recall.

Ilbranteloth said:

None of this occurs in our games where we’ve been using the DEX/STR dichotomy since AD&D, and where for a good amount of that time it was RAW if I recall.

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You mean effectively different systems? Well not surprising.

If you add str requirements to bows you should also add a clause that the bow is still usable below the str requirement, you just take a -1 to damage for every 2 str below the requirement you are at.

For crossbows they should simply be unusable without enough str IMO.

Yunru said:

Here's the general thought:
A bow or crossbow has a base Strength requirement of 10. If a character wields a bow or crossbow and doesn't meet the Strength requirement, it gains the loading property. If a bow or crossbow has the light property, it's Strength requirement decreases by 3. If a bow or crossbow has the heavy property, the Strength requirement increases by 3. If a bow or crossbow has the loading property, the Strength requirement increases by 5.

And here's how it'd be displayed:
Loading (X) -- Add "unless the wielder has a Strength score of X or higher."

Hand Crossbow: Loading (12)
Heavy Crossbow: Loading (18)
Longbow: Loading (13)
Shortbow: Loading (10)

Click to expand...

At first it sounded an interesting house rule but then I thought:

- the LOADING property really only negates extra attacks as far as I know
- characters who gain extra attacks are Fighter, Barbarian, Paladin, Ranger, Monk and Bard (Valor)
- Monks are not proficient with any of those weapons

So essentially your house rule punishes the SMALL minority of Rangers and Valor Bards who don't have at least 13 in Strength. Is this what you really want to achieve?

Yunru said:

The main goals would be thus:
Add another negative to dumping strength.
Add an incentive for ranged attackers to raise strength as well as Dexterity.

Click to expand...

This is what I meant in my previous post...

When you mention dumping Strength I immediately think of Rogues and spellcasters, none of which gains Extra Attacks and thus never care for the loading property.

Maybe Rangers are the ones most subject to this penalty, but really how many dump strength completely? And are Rangers overpowered enough to wanting to pick on them?

You might also VERY occasionally get a Fighter with low Strength. You may not like it, but from a different perspective such PC goes against the standard and IMO it's the kind of challenge that should not be hindered.