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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gort" data-source="post: 3365794" data-attributes="member: 11239">How about, instead of arguing physics until the cows come home, we suggest a few ways to make crossbows more than "that weapon low level mages carry sometimes in case they run out of spells"?Here're my suggestions for making crossbows more worthwhile. 1. Introduce mighty crossbows. Stronger user can operate a more powerful crossbow, makes sense to me.2. Make it take an attack to fire a crossbow, but also an attack to reload it. That way, a crossbowman with four attacks can fire twice in a round. This means that crossbows aren't useless at higher levels, since their rate of fire increases somewhat.3. Make crossbow damage double the damage on bows (including strength bonus). The draw weights on crossbows are far in excess of those on bows (heaviest bow being around 150 pounds while the heaviest crossbows would be around 1200 pounds) and it makes the halved rate of fire worthwhile if you get doubled damage per shot.I'm just going to try and pre-empt some hypothetical balance arguments that the above ideas might give rise to. Firstly, who uses bows and crossbows in D&D?Bow users: Fighters, rangers, rogues, other classes like bards, paladins, and barbarians might carry a bow in case they need to use it, but generally don't use it as a primary weapon.Crossbow users: Low level mages. People without bow proficiency.Of the bow users, who would switch to crossbows if the above changes were made? Well, fighters might, though bows are still a good choice. The crossbow would be good for penetrating DR, since it does more damage per shot, but the bow is less likely to "overkill" opponents. (meaning that if you can kill the opponent in one shot with the bow, you can kill twice as many people in the same time as with a crossbow) Weapon specialisation and elemental damage might make fighters want to stick with bows, however.Rangers would probably stick with bows, since the greater rate of fire allows them to add favoured enemy damage twice. Likewise rogues, except in their case sneak attack is added.Non-specialised bowmen like your average paladin or barbarian might switch to crossbows - they would be good for firing one shot before melee is joined, then switching to a hand-to-hand weapon.I might give these houserules a go in my next game, and see how they go, unless someone sees any huge flaws with them.</blockquote>

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