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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Stormrunner" data-source="post: 1984045" data-attributes="member: 13471">Realistically (Aiiee! No! Not in D&D! Take it away!), a crossbow is simply an especially-Mighty shortbow mounted cross-wise on a stock.  The heavy crossbow allows you to fire a bow much stronger than you could draw by hand.  The main advantage of the light crossbow is that it can be kept cocked and ready to fire for up to several hours (longer than that stretches and weakens the string), whereas even a trained longbowman can only keep a bow at full draw for a few seconds.  The Chinese repeating crossbow allows a high rate of fire but is horribly inaccurate - you're literally shooting from the hip, bracing the stock against your hip while supporting it with one hand and using the other hand to work the lever back and forth: think of firing a pump-action shotgun by bracing the butt on your hip, using one hand to pull the trigger and the other hand to rack the slide as fast as possible.  It was used only by the military, in full-scale battles where you could point the spray of bolts in the general direction of a mass of enemies and be assured of hitting something .  I see 3.5 has introduced the "heavy repeating crossbow", an oxymoron which could only result from ignorance of how the thing works.  (Further evidence of ignorance arises from the illustrations, which either depict the cocking lever as a Gatling-gun type crank, or depict multiple bows stacked up like pancakes, which would be far too heavy and unwieldy.)  By definition, a heavy crossbow is too strong to <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> by hand, even with both hands - and the repeating crossbow, by definition, has to be light enough to <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> with one hand.IMC, a "light" crossbow is simply a crossbow whose Str rating is less than or equal to the user's (and thus can be cocked by hand with a move action).  A "medium" crossbow requires a lever (and a full-round action) to <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />, and can have a Str bonus up to 2 greater than the user.  A "heavy" crossbow requires a crank-and-ratchet mechanism (cranequin) to <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />, requiring a full-round action plus another full-round action for every 4 points (or fraction thereof) of "extra" Str bonus.  And yes, this means that heavy crossbows (and often, medium ones) are treated as one-shot weapons in most D&D combats.</blockquote>

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