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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nim" data-source="post: 2633679" data-attributes="member: 5684">I like it. It's basically along the lines I was thinking, but it drops the whole idea of having to aim for multiple rounds to get the full bonus. Doing it this way may actually be more realistic; I'm not sure that aiming for more than 3 seconds or so really provides that much in terms of additional benefit. Which actually brings us to non-bow missile weapons. Since people liked the bow stuff, I'll throw this out there as well and see if anyone wants to do anything with it.Taking aim should be possible with a bow or crossbow, but not a sling or thrown weapon. Iterative attacks SHOULD be possible with thrown weapons, so long as the attacker has easy access to projectiles - for instance, holding them in the off hand or storing them in a bandolier. Some DMs require Quickdraw for this, but I think that transfering a weapon from the left hand to the right should be a free action. You'd need to put reasonable limits on what could be held in the off hand, of course. Four or five throwing knives seems perfectly plausible. What few references I've managed to find suggest that ancient slingers actually had a higher rate of fire than archers. Apparently, there's a technique in which the ammunition is held in the left hand while the sling is in the right.  The cast is made overhand, perhaps angled to the side a bit (not swung around in a circle parallel to the ground), and as the now-empty sling comes down after the throw, the slinger holds up a bullet with the left hand. The sling wraps itself around the bullet; the free end of the sling swings back up to the right hand, and the throwing motion continues uninterupted. Apparently, a trained slinger could pretty much cast non-stop until he ran out of bullets in his off hand.To me, that argues for letting slings make full iterative attacks, but perhaps first requiring a feat, like Rapid Reload. That's a pretty specific and un-obvious technique, after all. For crossbows...if you wanted to be really thorough, you'd give each crossbow a strength rating, and then base the reload speed on the relative strengths of the bow and the person loading it.  Just as a simple set, you could have a few possibilities:Hand-spanning: Cocking the crossbow by simply pulling the string back with your hand and then loading it requires a move action (10 shots per minute), and strength equal to the strength of the bow.Belt-hook or lever: With a belt-hook, the bow is braced point-down against the ground (usually via a foot-loop on the front of the bow), and a hook hanging from the character's belt is hooked around the string. This lets the character use their leg muscles (instead of their arms) to bend the bow. This requires a full-round action (5 shots per minute), and a strength within 5 points of that of the  bow.  A lever is different cocking aid (and usually requires the bow to have been designed to use one) that works at a similar speed.Ratchet: Using a hand-ratchet (a geared crank) to arm a crossbow takes two full-round actions (3 shots per minute), and a strength within 10 points of that of the bow. A ratchet must be built into the bow.Windlass: A heavy, two-handed crank system. It requires 4 full-round actions (2 shots per minute), and can be used by any creature of appropriate size, regardless of strength. A windlass must be built into the bow.Then, set a maximum strength for crossbows of a certain size, to avoid any really blatant abuse. The strength limits above (0,-5,-10,unlimited) might need to be changed; I pulled them out of the air.Rapid Reload could be left as-is, or it could give a flat bonus to Strength for the purpose of loading a crossbow.</blockquote>

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