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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cleon" data-source="post: 6292511" data-attributes="member: 57383">That's probably an ahistorical game rule trying to balance the effectiveness of a longbow versus a crossbow.According to Robert Hardy's The Longbow, in late 13th century England, a longbow cost around 13-16 pence - that's silver pennies, so maybe 15 silver pieces in D&D terms.That book also says a crossbow at that time costs something like 3 to 7 shillings, or 36-84 pence, which is roughly three to five times more expensive than a longbow. The ammunition was also more expensive: two dozen longbow arrows cost three pence, while a score of crossbow bolts cost seven pence.Partly that might be due to supply - the economy of England at the time was geared to produce a lot of longbows, after all - but bear in mind a crossbow in an inherently more complicated device.For both a crossbow and longbow the artisans have to make a bow and bowstring, but for the crossbow they also have to make a stock and trigger mechanism. The trigger in particular would be a costly part of the weapon. For a powerful military crossbow, the trigger mechanism needed to be made out of metal, and the precision manufacturing required would not have been cheap with the technology of the time.</blockquote>