New Weapon Balance Issues. Double Crossbow

[Holy Evil]

Simple enough question. Is this weapon that's been created balanced?

Exotic Ranged Weapon
Double Crossbow
200gp (50 gp less than crossbow, repeating light)
2d4 (small) 2d6 (medium) (1d4 (small) if only 1 bolt, 1d6 (medium) if only 1 bolt)
20/x2 (normally 19-20/x2)
20ft (60 ft less crossbow, light)
8lb, piercing. (2lb more than crossbow, repeating light)

Two crossbow bolts are loaded and cocked into place and fired. Standard action to fire. Move action to reload one bolt, full round to reload both bolts. Need Exotic Weapon Proficiency (Double Crossbow) to fire double-bolt shot otherwise you suffer a -4 to attack rolls. May be fired one handed but suffer -4 penalty on attack roll, regardless of whether 1 or 2 bolts are fired. Precision based damage (such as sneak attack damage) only once, regardless of whether one or two bolts are fired. If you score a critical hit, only one bolt causes critical damage. (Thus is one bolt is fired and critical hit is scored (on medium) does 2d8, if two bolts are fired and critical hit is scored does 3d8). First Range Increment damage is 2d4 (small), 2d6 (medium). In Second Range Increment damaged goes doen to 2d3 (small), 2d4 (medium), one bolt 1d4 (small), 1d6 (medium). Third to Fifth Range increment damage is 1d4 (small), 1d6 (medium). At fourth Range Increment you suffer a -2 penalty to your attack roll, and at fifth Range Increment you suffer a -4 penalty to your attack roll. There is a five range increment maximum (thus maximum range is 100ft).

 

[Hypersmurf]

Whoosh!

And here we are in the House Rules forum...

-Hyp.
(Moderator)

 

[Li Shenron]

It seems weak to me... considering only when used to fire two bolts, it's like a Heavy Crossbow with improved damage (2d6 vs 1d10), but worse critical and much worse range.

Don't try to balance it against a light repeating crossbow, because this is not a repeating crossbow! This new weapon works exactly like a normal crossbow, since you fire both bolts with the same attack*, and the reload time is similar to the heavy crossbow. It has some added flexibility because if you want you can load only 1 bolt at a time to fire more quickly (as a light crossbow), but in that case it deals less damage (1d6).

*to be precise, if you specify that it always takes a standard action to fire, you also rule out the possibility to fire more than once with a full-attack action, with appropriate feats

At least I would suggest not to give the range penalties, which also complicate the thing a lot, the decrease in criticals and the feat cost are already a price enough for the improved damage IMHO.

...I think there was somewhere an exotic Great Crossbow or something, which worked like a Heavy Crossbow with greater damage and some extra penalties (maybe even longer load time), but I don't remember in which book...

 

[Holy Evil]

Originially it was going to be this.

Exotic Ranged Weapon
Double Crossbow
300gp
2d6 (small) 2d8 (medium) (1d6 (small) if only 1 bolt, 1d8 (medium) if only 1 bolt)
20/x2
20ft
10lb, piercing.

Two crossbow bolts are loaded and cocked into place and fired. Standard action to fire. Move action to reload one bolt, full round to reload both bolts. Only move action to reload both bolts if you have Rapid Reload Feat. Need Exotic Weapon Proficiency (Double Crossbow) to fire double-bolt shot otherwise you suffer a -4 to attack rolls. May be fired one handed but suffer -4 penalty on attack roll, regardless of whether 1 or 2 bolts are fired. Precision based damage (such as sneak attack damage) only once, regardless of whether one or two bolts are fired. If you score a critical hit, only one bolt causes critical damage. (Thus is one bolt is fired and critical hit is scored (on medium) does 2d8, if two bolts are fired and critical hit is scored does 3d8). First Range Increment damage is 2d6 (small), 2d8 (medium). At 3rd Range Increment you suffer -2 penalty because of varing difference in direction of bolts* and at 5th Range increment you suffer another -2 penalty (for a total of -4, plus the normal penalty for firing past range increment). Maximum Range is 5 Range Increments.

* >---jy (the > is the direction the two bolts are fired)

That was personally the Crossbow i wanted, but one of my fellow plays said thats probably too powerful. I don't know, what do you think?

As for the balancing against the repeating light crossbow, i just rememberd the stats off my head so i used them, instead of using them off the heavy crossbow.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

I'd put the "more powerful" version into the game as an exotic weapon without any hesitation. Even then, it's not worth the feat since mighty composite longbows are better in just about every way.

 

[jerichothebard]

I rigged up a double crossbow for use with a character once.

We ruled the following (basing it off of rapid shot but with some changes):

identical to light crossbow except as follows:
reduced range (light crossbow - 20')
two attack rolls, same target only
Sneak attack and other 'precision' based attack bonuses only apply to the primary bolt (designate which die is primary before rolling).
-2 on both attack rolls.

If you think about it, this is still inferior to a short bow with Rapid Shot, so charging a feat to use it seems kinda pricey.

This was, btw, 3.0, so Manyshot hadn't been written. I would suggest looking at those rules, as well.


jtb