Thanee said:
Actually a longbow has about the same penetration as a crossbow. Punches right through medieval plate armor.
A touch attack would be a bit much, however. In another game, these weapons ignore part of the protection armor grants, like half of its base (non-enhanced) armor bonus, which would sound about right, but doesn't fit all too well into the D&D system.
I think part of the problem is that armor AC in D20 right now is lumped together with other types of AC such as dodge.
Things are more clearly resolved, IMO, if armor grants DR. That sort of armor system would be more Rolemaster-ish, where shields protect you from getting hit, whereas armor changes the way you take hits.
Once we move to an Armor as DR system, missile weapon penetration can be implemented as a general Armor Piercing rule for types of weapons including stilettos and picks.
For example, the effective strength bonus (such as the fixed strength behind a crossbow or the strength in a bow) becomes the maximum about of armor DR that can be ignored. We set this amount as the maximum possible instead of a fixed armor penetration to account for hits that are not direct hits (perpendicular to the armor).
We also no longer have the problem of figuring out how much AC to avoid, as armor doesn't grant AC at all.
I would post my house rule, but it's wrapped up in other things in my "total conversion" set of house rules ("D20 Elements" - you can e-mail me at
grail_quest@hotmail.com for a copy of the latest if you'd like to have a look).
Thanee said:
I think the damage of the crossbow is too low, tho, it should be more like 2d6 for the light one and 4d6 for the heavy version. There's quite some power behind those little bolts, and there must be a reason you cannot normally pull back the string without a lever or winch.
Yes and no. Crossbows can have enormous draw weights (some frames are even of metal), BUT compared to a bow, because of the construction of a crossbow, the much higher draw weight does NOT give a directly proportionate increase in power. (I didn't read the full physics of it when I did some light research into crossbow and bows for my house rules, so I can't explain them to you here.)
And remember that a typical soldier might really only have 1d6 to 1d8 hit points. Even at 1d10, which I would consider high-end in my games, considering average hit points, ordinary bows and crossbows as they are could lay someone low and leave them dying with just one shot.
Further, there is the "blowthrough" effect. That is, damage really is localized. Even with lots of behind the shot, the most that would probably happen is the missile would go right through the target, which is not necessarily lots worse than having it stick in the target (and with the innovation of arrow points that point backward, quite often, arrows would be pushed right through in order to get them out of a target anyway--and those people can survive and the subsequent cauterizing of the wound!).
Unless you're looking at missiles that have the power of a .50 cal handgun or an anti-tank gun, you're probably not looking at such immense damage that a target would have body parts blasted off.
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When it comes to drawing bows and reloading crossbows, a table comparing user strength and missile device strength can be made to determine how quickly one can reload and fire. One would be more lenient with crossbows, what with the various gimmicks out there to reload them, but speed would be awfully slow compared to a bow, though.
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