A way to increase crossbows

[Stalker0]

I was thinking about crossbows and I agree with most people that they are not a real alternative to bows unless someone is RPing a guy with a crossbow.

What if I gave the crossbow a 10 ft threat range for purposing of AOO? Basically, while the crossbow was loaded, the xbowman would be able to take AOO on people as normal. This would not work for flanking.

Since a crossbow is already loaded and only requires a trigger to press, it makes sense that you could take AOO with it, and I don't think it would be an overpowering change.

 

[robgmsft]

I've always thought it would be neat to create mighty crossbows with a winding winch that needed extra time to load, like a +6 mighty xbow that required 3 rounds to winch up regardless of character strength. Would make for a heckuva opening shot. =]

 

[MonkeyBoy]

I altered x-bows to try to make them a more viable alternative, and now I have 2 bow users, and 2 x-bow users in the group.

All I did was raise the damage dice for all crossbows by 1 type (light to D10, heavy to D12 etc)

Makes a bigger difference than it sounds, due to their better threat range...

 

[Kibo]

I think the real failing of Crossbows in Dnd stems from how armor was done. Namely that all weapons should have considerable critical ranges, but that armor should reduce those threat ranges to varying degrees while adding a little bit of armor class. In the end, the lack of such a system leaves the crossbows advantage (simple armor piercing capability) difficult to model and ultimately unrealized. Things like reload times and threatening for AoO start running into believability bumbers, particularly with the heavy crossbows with winches. That said you could do an exotic mighty crossbow option where people with high strength scores could load a heavy crossbow requiring a winch with a spanner giving it the reload time of a light crossbow. (I'd at least initially be inclined to go with a feat for this, but you could just make them roll a strength feat check for every reload too (maybe twice the non-critical maximum damage for the heavy crossbow with a spanner, and just the non-critical maximum damage for a mighty light crossbow)

In general there really isn't a reason you could have mighty crossbows that mimic might bows from a game mechanic perspecitve. More pull does strength bonus damage. Since a persons legs are something like 3x as strong as their arms you could even use 1.5x str modifier for the damage bonus. At low levels, that would be the buff warriors best friend.

Of course this is all my own uninformed opinion.

 

[maddman75]

Steal a rule from 2e combat and tactics.

At short range, crossbows ignore five points of armor or natural armor. At medium range, they ignore two points.

 

[Rackhir]

The problem with these sorts of thread on "Fixing" crossbows, is that they are trying to improve a weapon that is the way it is for good reasons. Unless you are trying to get more characters to use crossbows for flavor reasons, basically a crossbow IS inferior in essentially every aspect to a bow. That is why it is inferior to a bow in the game. Complaining that they are not as good as a bow is like complaining that short swords are not as effective as a 2-handed-sword and trying to "fix them".

A bow is an expert's weapon, the crossbow is essentially an amature's weapon. D&D characters especially figher characters who are specializing in a missile weapon are by definition experts.

To give a more recent example, Unix/Linux vs windows. For real wireheads, there's nothing like U/L. You can essentially build, customize and control your operating system and enviroment to a T. They can make the programs sing, dance and automate most of their work for them and it's essentially bullet proof from system problems. The downside is that U/L is horribly complex and unfriendly to those who lack a considerable amount of experience and who don't understand the logic behind the system and software.

Windows on the other hand, is simple enough that you can train anyone with half a brain to use it and accomplish say 50% of what the expert on U/L can with regards to daily computing tasks and it won't involve 3-5 years of experience. The "Joe" user with windows can't do nearly as much or nearly as quickly as the expert does, but they cost 1/10th as much and you can crank them out by the dozen.

Given a choice the a bunch of U/L experts are clearly superior to the "Joe" windows users, but they

1) Take a long time to train.
2) Cost a lot more to keep
3) Hurt more when you loose one.

Just replace U/L with Archers/Bow and "Joe" Windows with Crosbowman and it's essentially the same situation.

Bows have a vastly higher rate of fire, because in the hands of an expert they DO have a vastly higher rate of fire. They are martial rather than simple weapons, because a bow takes a significant amount of training and expertise to use properly. All you need with a crossbow is to be able to point the thing and pull the trigger, something simple enough that even a mage can do it. A number of missile feats are usless with a crossbow for good practical reasons, even if you don't like "reality" intruding on your game.

Basically, there is no need to "fix" crossbows any more than there is a "need" to "fix" fighters not using magic and wizards not using swords.