Sravoff said:
Wy is it utterly worthless to hold a crossbow at somebody?
The hero had just flung open the door to the closet where the Baron was cowering, only to find to his horror it was empty...
"Turn around slowly and make no sudden moves..."
Our hero turns slowly to see the baron, light crosbow in hand smirking at our unfortunate hero... Or is the hero so unfortunate?
Under standard D&D rules, this is absolutly no problem for a character of higher level than say three at most, and most first level fighter types can take the bolt and roceed to give the baron a fight any way.
Has any one come up with any rules governing this?
From a discussion I had a number of years ago:
Assume a fiction-based example of a character who is shanghaied and forced to fight the gladiator pit-fighting champion. In D&D terms the champion is immensely strong, has massive hit-points and is the equivalent of a "high level fighter". His one weakness is gloating over prone opponents before delivering the killing blow. The PC is not a rogue in the D&D sense or highly-skilled. He wins the fight by taking advantage of the champion's weakness. A friend has dropped a dagger into the pit unseen by the champion. The PC, after fighting defensively to exhaustion, feigns defeat, drops his main weapon and collapses to the ground palming the dagger. In D&D terms the champ gloats for a bit and then takes a full-round-action to deliver the coup de grace. The PC takes a readied action against the anticipated attack and slashes the champs Achille's tendon. Champ falls prone, and PC makes the CDG for the big win.
Some ways to "explain" this within existing rules in D&D include:
- The champ had fewer hit points than it seemed.
- The PC really did have lots of rogue levels.
- The champ had actually been "softened up" during the fight.
- The PC has Power Attack and/or similar/additional advantages unseen until the end.
- The PC is a cleric with the "Harm" spell.
However, virtually ANY situation that in fiction is described as a single attack taking an unwounded opponent to helplessness or death is not something that is well-modeled in D&D because one-hit=kill is gritty reality. D&D is definitely not gritty reality. It is epic heroics. One-hit=kill only comes up in D&D when the victim is hopelessly outclassed by the attackers ability to inflict damage (massive damage death save), genuinely helpless (CDG) or the victim is already heavily wounded for some reason.
What might be the best way for D&D to simulate the scenario is to have the PC in a heavily wounded state when the fight begins. One really big hit really
might kill him as would several smaller hits. With the inferior weaponry and armor that the PC has at his disposal in the Arena his best option is to fight completely defensively thus keeping up his otherwise poor armor class. The Champ is played up to be dim but the PC is clever. While he tries to figure out what to do he plays it cool and any small hit he takes he plays up as being much worse than it is. Then at the end he makes his desperation move with a Bluff, cancels out the Champs Dex bonus to AC, and finally makes a stab at him doing enough damage to put the PC in a much better tactical situation. Perhaps then needing only one or two slices of a dagger to win the fight or turning the tables with his own CDG.
Handling it this way enables the PC to actually be much better than the Champ, and thus able to deal out the damage needed when the time comes. He just starts the fight in a highly disadvantaged postion forcing him to alter normal hack and slash tactics to something more cinematic. Adapting the desired situation to the existing rules would seem to me to be a better option in many circumstances than trying to create new rules to
engineer the desired situation.
One thing the DM could do to achieve the desired scenario is to apply specific rules to this encounter. For example, before the fight begins the DM decides that the Champ has more than just a roleplaying flaw, but a genuine combat-rule disadvantage in that if he takes more than x points of damage in a single blow he will be unable to take a Full Attack action on his next turn. Or there's a particularly bloody and slick section of the floor of the pit where the PC might lure the Champ into position, make his Bluff move, require a Dex check from the Champ to keep his feet, and possibly put the PC in position over the Champ who would then have -4 to hit and be at +4 to BE hit. Perhaps that would be good enough to enable the protagonist to cease his defensive actions and go for the kill with a Full Attack with Power Attack and whatever else he can stack into it.
These may not seem quite what is desired though. The situation in the OP where the Baron has the drop on the PC confers no real great advantage because D&D rules assume that there just AREN'T many one-hit-kill-no-save abilities and that PC's in general are WAY above being taken down with just one shot from a crossbow anyway. This is reflected in the fact that the htk/damage system doesn't concern itself with hit location.
In D&D you can't have a PC kill the champ in the manner described, nor have the Baron in the original example meaningfully threaten the PC - at least not in a manner that the PLAYER will be concerned about. You can't kill somebody with a hundred hit-points with a dagger in two strikes, or with a crossbow in one with very few exceptions or highly specific circumstances.
But then if you HAVE a really low-level PC going against a truly, vastly overpowering pit-fighting champion you're already setting up the situation to be one that the rules are geared not to handle well in any way for the weaker PC. If you have the Baron threatening the PC with a mere crossbow when all other factors are equal, by the D&D rules you DON'T yet have the situation you THINK you have. If the PC is heavily wounded and within just a few points of death THEN the Baron can threaten him with just a crossbow and have the desired effect. That is the sort of situation where the heroic stamina and survivability that a character typically has in D&D has finally been reduced to a more normal, gritty-reality level.
In any case, you want to be careful about what it is you want D&D rules to do for you. When you decide that D&D needs to model the situation of the Baron having the drop on the PC and it being a real threat then the reverse is also true - whenever the PC's can get the drop on an opponent then THEY can kill with one shot from a crossbow. That takes D&D in a direction it is just not designed for and it's gonna break down.
