Sure would love to see one handed crossbows added in as well.

AIM: GS4Menos

>Here lies the formless world we´re living in
>Gravity is finally giving in
>High altitudes and still upward we go
>I was never meant to lead but to follow

I think a mild overhaul of ranged needs to happen frankly. I'm going to list below a set of problems that stem from my experiences of: playing a ranged sorcerer for 30 levels, playing a sniping gnomish ranger to level 30, and trying to play a dwarven warrior crossbow user (and finding it to be a more or less unviable path).

1.) Ammo - fix the 'anturn' bug and set it up so that the distance from ammo mechanic goes away if there are no more critters in the room. As the previous poster said, it's just a time sink and no longer mechanically relevant, and from a quality of life point of view it makes the hassle of ammo worse.

2.)Bows - Re-visit the RT mechanics of ranged weapons. I started shooting bows when I was about 6 years old. By the age of 13 I could comfortably shoot a bow with the draw weight (70-80 lbs) you would use for most big game. I mean, you can easily kill an elk with an 80 lb. draw weight bow, and I've heard tell of it done with as low as 50. I'm not sure what sort of draw weight ancient martial bows - the kind that could put a triangular 'pile' head through any plate armor at close-to-moderate range - had, but I have a hard time imagining them being much over 80. My grandfather had a friend that hunted elephant with a custom-made longbow with a 120 lb. draw weight, to put in perspective how adequate 80 lbs is.

Now, my point is that if a 13 year old kid can shoot an 80 lb draw weight bow, why does it take a frigging giantman with Mr. Universe physique to shoot a longbow? That would mean that an Elanthian longbow has something like a 200 lb+ draw weight, which would probably be sufficient to kill a small whale if you knew where to shoot. The truth is that bows just aren't that hard to shoot - that's why they're historically so important. The longbow is so amazing precisely because a skinny English peasant with nothing but his freedom could kill a French nobleman wearing a small fortune in armor with two sticks, some cat gut, some feathers, and a piece of metal.

So it doesn't make sense historically. What about in-game? Is it hard as hell for a gnome to shoot a bow because he or she is small? This would make sense since draw length matters quite a bit. But if that were the case, why would a dwarf be a faster shot than an elf? Okay, so it doesn't make sense in game.

What about in terms of balance? Balance usually implies that this character is good at this, this one at that, etc. So why is a giantman, who has a huge advantage with melee weapons, given a huge advantage with bows? Why is a gnome, who suffers a major AS and encumberance penalty, who perhaps is a tiny guy that would want to use ranged weapons, given a penalty with them? And why do races that have lots of association with bows - like elves - have such a major disadvantage compared to a friggin dwarf?

The answer is, none of it makes sense. It is arguably one of the most non-intuitive combat mechanics ever put in the game. Now, I made it work, don't get my wrong. My forest gnome sniper is a killing machine. But to make him playable and fun, he requires my pocket wizard and enhancives that I spent I forget how much on. And this is just so I can use a composite bow, which is classically a bow that is EASY TO SHOOT AND HAS A SHORT DRAW LENGTH AND GREAT POWER.

Solution: Scrap the direct strength bonus to bow RT. I propose two alternatives. The first makes the most sense historically, the second makes the most sense (to me) mechanically in terms of balance.
Drawing a bow and shooting it does not require much strength. It uses odd muscles that might make an 80 lb draw weight bow seem impossible to draw at first, but with practice it becomes pretty easy. What's far more important is your CONSTITUTION and your DISCIPLINE as you pull back, hold and aim your bow. So you could base it on these, but then you would screw elves and make gnomes and dwarves really good. So I suggest we strike a balance between HISTORICAL and BALANCE factors annndd....

Solution 2: Keep the RT reduction based on strength, make it impossible for small races to use longbows (it was silly and absurd from the start), give all elves a racial modifier reducing RT with longbows by 1, and give small races a -1 RT modifier with composite bows since a short draw length bow that retains short to moderate range stopping power is PRECISELY what a composite bow is, historically. This pretty much fixes everything. Unless your an aeletoi, which...well...I hate them so I don't care.

3.) Crossbows - Ahhhhh crossbows. The problem with crossbows is that they suck and hardly anyone uses them. I'm sure some troll will scream "NO! ME USE CROSSBOWS GOOD! ME CAPPED!" but we should all ignore them. They suck and hardly anyone uses them. I tried making a dwarven warrior crossbow user. It was easily the worst hunting concept I've come up with. Ever. My gnome cleric trident wielder is far stronger. My sorcerer crossbow user was 10x as effective (leg, MD a few times, aimed shot to the head to finish). How can we fix crossbows?

Well, for one the firing RT. It's a crossbow guys. You might say "it takes time to aim", and I agree, but so does a bow. In a life or death situation, an expert crossbow user is gonna have the thing shouldered, and is going to track and fire really fast.

Solution: Crossbow firing RT should be one second. End of story. It makes sense both historically and mechanically.

Second problem - Reloading. I'm not sure how to deal with this one. I mean, the truth is if you're re-loading a crossbow you're pretty vulnerable, especially since any crossbow big enough to kill a monster will probably require a windlass, or the belt-hook thingies (forget the name) where you cock it by standing up, thus using your powerful leg muscles to do so. Honestly the loading mechanics are probably okay as is, and I like that small races get a bonus. My only suggestion would be that it be possible to load in 3 seconds with any race provided they have 90+ strength, at least for light crossbows.

Third problem - DS. I think crossbows still have lower DS than bows? What is up with this? It makes no sense from any point of view, unless you were trying to account for the vulnerability one faces while re-loading in a sort of general mechanic. If this is true, however, then a crossbow user gets screwed twice from the long loading RTs as well as a DS penalty. I found that at level 16, fully doubled in dodge, tripled in armor, and using a crossbow, my dwarven warrior was totally un-viable without spells. By this I mean he was not even safe in defensive stance. Now, if a dwarven warrior can't realistically use crossbows without jumping through a lot of hoops, something is wrong.

Solution - get rid of this stupid DS penalty. It never made sense.

Fourth problem - Balance: The problem becomes, how to make crossbows good enough to use without making them a different flavor of the bow. I think one way is to make them less dependent on strength, so as to serve as a viable alternative to bows for weaker characters. However, I think that in order to keep HEAVY crossbows desirable, they need to have a minimum cocking RT as low as light crossbows, but achieving such should require a huge strength (read 30+) bonus. Overall I think crossbows should hit harder and be more cumbersome than bows, and they should retain their AS bonus from kneeling to reflect their ease of use. With their one second firing RT, they would be very attractive to snipers, as they should be. Ever tried hiding in the bushes with a five foot tall longbow trying to draw it, and hold it while staying hidden? Crossbows should (along with short and composite bows) be the more viable alternatives for such things. Which brings us to

4.) Multi-fire: Put a bunch of arrows on a string and fire them? Really? The Legolas triple arrow will go down in history as one of the single most stylistically stupid and physically incorrect moments in cinema. From a physics perspective, bows are pretty simple. If you put three arrows on a bow string and shoot them at once, their momentum is going to be 1/3 that of a single arrow shot from the same bow. This means a radical reduction in penetration power, and an even more radical (inverse square) reduction in total energy delivered to the target (though this isn't the goal with a bow - you want the arrow to go through them, not stop in them). Not to mention, it's stupid and impossible to aim. Furthermore, this CMAN isn't very useful. And it's stupid.

Did I mention that it's stupid?

Solution - Scrap multi-fire. It's stupid. Allow bow users to make use of MoC in precisely the same way melee wielders do. I mean: you wanna tell me...that a giantman wielding a friggin LANCE can run around and smack 4 or 5 guys, but I can't shoot my longbow at 4 or 5 targets in the same amount of time? I know mstrike is a ridiculous 'video game' type ability that was put in for fun and to help balance warriors, but if you're going to have it you really should have it for bows. Just adapt the RT mechanics for bows to the mstrike equations and implement 'mfire'. It wouldn't break the game and it makes sense.

5.) Ranged weapons as melee weapons - This is a kind of quibble, but I think worth fixing. First, using a bow as a quarterstaff? Now why, oh why, would you beat something with your beautiful, relatively slender, bow? You wouldn't. And mechanically, why would you train in two-handed weapons so you could swing one of the worst weapon-bases in the game when you could just pull out another arrow and shoot it? So silly...

That being said. Beating someone with the butt of a crossbow makes perfect sense to me, and I like that it uses a pretty weak weapon base. My dwarven warrior idea was based on this and he was in fact fully doubled in OHB and ranged because I just loved the image of an angry dwarf too pissed to reload and beating his enemy down with his crossbow. The problem? Crossbows are held in your offhand. Now - have you ever beat someone down with a crossbow? I want you to imagine it. Picture it in your head. Yesssss...smack 'em! That rolton insulted your Mama! Yes! Again!! Okay, get the picture? You had the crossbow in both hands didn't you? Is there a way to code crossbows such that when swung they would count as being in your dominant hand for the purposes of AS? Cause that would be awesome.

SO for anyone that has read all this, I thank you. I don't think most of these overhauls would require much drastic re-coding. The system is in place, but it just needs tweaking. I think it's important to diversify the weapon styles in this game, since the truth is that lately it's looking awfully cookie-cutter around here. And why shouldn't it? Hunting is honestly usually a lot more fun when it's effective, and while I'm a big fan of mutant paths, for me they're always secondary to character concepts. I always envisioned my sorcerer as a wanderer, who spent a lot of time in the wastes, searching Elanthia for arcane insights and wisdom. As such, he was 1x in survival and used a crossbow, since he was more rough and tumble than your average sorcerer (but hardly some indelicate, muscle-brained War Sorc). But the truth is, come late 50s that path became a real pain in the butt, primarily due to the crossbow DS penalty. I really wanted to maintain my concept. I have a beautiful crossbow alter, and matching thigh-quiver alters with thematic shows depicting a lone sorcerer fighting hordes of undead and hordes of trolls respectively (the eblade and the blessed quivers you see). But it just became too attractive to go runestaff. And it wasn't because I was being lazy, it was because the penalties for crossbows were too draconian. Same with my dwarven warrior crossbowman concept.

But if you want a horde of longbow wielding giantmen, lance wielding elves, and maul wielding wizards umm...I guess that makes sense? But I jest. I may sound a little tongue-in-cheek, but I think the work that's gone into this game is truly amazing. I view Gemstone as one of the unique achievements of the 90s (when it really came to fruition) - a singular creative endeavor that could only have happened then - and the ongoing changes have been even better (love my 700s list these days). So if I seem a little snarky, it's cause I know you guys rock and are creative and passionate. Maybe with some changes like this we can have more diversity, and allow for some more great character concepts to be viable in game, like a dwarven siege crossbowman named Bergwolt who stands on the parapet as a mountain itself, clad in armor, unmoving and raining death on his enemies (and bashing their brains out if they get too close).

Player of Kilshaar/Zagglewurst/Zeek/Daedelus/etc

<<<1.) Ammo - fix the 'anturn' bug and set it up so that the distance from ammo mechanic goes away if there are no more critters in the room. As the previous poster said, it's just a time sink and no longer mechanically relevant, and from a quality of life point of view it makes the hassle of ammo worse.>>>


Oops, I meant to write something here. I could not possibly agree more. The "anturn" bug drives me craze. The "distance mechanic" is also absurd in an empty room. Please, please fix these.

That is all....

~ H

>>There's another element to this, however, that I think a lot of people miss. Crossbow RT is essentially "front loaded". That is, most of your RT happens before you attack, rather than after. This has some distinct advantages. When you time your shots right, you almost never get caught in offensive (much less kneeling). Why? You prepare your weapon before combat. When you do fire, you're pretty much guaranteed a stun or knockdown, if not an outright kill. Even if you miss, your RT is (at most) 3 seconds. Plenty enough time to stand up and go defensive. If things are really hairy, you can even move to another room, cock your weapon, then come back and repeat. It's not the most efficient means of combat, especially compared to the aforementioned giant with a longbow who's cranking shots out every 3 seconds, or even my short bow toting halfling ranger. But it's quite effective. I would certainly never consider it "unviable".

I've been saying this for years. I'm glad someone else gets it.

That aside, I agree with all the crossbow improvement points made so far. Just because I like how crossbows work now, doesn't mean they can't be better. The difference in DS between Crossbow and Bow always seemed cruel to me. It's not like Crossbow users are going to stand closer for their 'simulated range' DS. They'd stay at the same range as a bow user.

---Mirrami, crossbow empath

My post was actually unrelated to any changes in mechanics, just the addition of a few more varieties of bow that historically existed in the classes we already have. There are at least 4 or 5 more types of bows by name, that could be introduced within the three classes that exist. It was meant to offer more options to offer more variety to meet character needs, such as A Tehir human might love to have a "cable back bow" with the approprate name for the cable: sinew, hemp, palmeto ( you can use palm or palmetto fronds to make vegetable fibers)and the bow it self made of some kind of rib bone or something found in the desert. A giant man or elf might like to have a Flatbow made of some any of a number of woods where the size of the bow can qualify it as performing like a long bow or a composite bow.

However the comments about Crossbows, I agree something should be done with them. The main use I have for them is preloaded kneeling in the shadows, to kill someone in plate. I can hunt just fine with them, but there so slow to deal with. I think the 1 second Rt for firing is fine, but my 2 cents to add to it is Crossbows fire so hard and so fast velocity wize a good hit from any crossbow should knock the average target down, or at the least cause them to reel from the shot. Perhaps the solution is add RT to the target, or the increase the crossbows ability to stun targets.

>But part of the balance to the DF of crossbows is the time it takes to load and fire. Next to DS, RT is definitely the bane of every crossbow user.

Ah, forgot this. This comment implies that heavy crossbows have a significant dF advantage over longbows that somehow needs to be compensated for by the sometimes painfully slow process of re-loading. This is incorrect, and I suggest you examine the ranged weapon dFs - you might be surprised. Heavy crossbows enjoy an academic advantage over longbows. To put it in perspective, the difference between them is overall less than the difference in dF between a one-handed axe and a morning star. Crossbows have a slight AvD advantage across the board, and one should no doubt pay heed to the kneeling AS bonus, but despite this the difference in killing power between the two is slight.

Player of Kilshaar

>Wikipedia has some interesting things to say about long bows, much of which seems to support current game mechanics.

Heh, that brought back memories. I encountered that quote a long, long time ago in a book about archery my Grandpa gave me. I think we're getting away from the point, which is that the level of raw strength an archer of this sort had was not unusual. The typical Englishman of this era was probably less than 5' 6", as humans of the modern age are really quite tall. A human in Elanthia with a strength score of 100 (who, you will note, cannot fire a longbow at its optimal rate) is, presumably, the apex of human muscular physique. We're not talking Arnold, we're talking Brock Lesnar. My Grandfather wrote hunting and outdoors articles for Winchester professionally for 30 years - he didn't make up hunting stories, he made them. They guy he knew that killed elephants with a bow was not a big guy. I'm sorry, but there is no real-world justification for making longbows require a superhuman level of strength in order to fire them quickly. Any justification for this could only be done through a logic of 'game-balance', which is not a problem that Gemstone has historically paid much heed to.

The onerous strength requirements of the longbow, and the clunky use of the crossbow, do nothing but decrease in-game quality of life for archers and encourage three solutions: 1) being almost forced to choose a strong race if you want to use a longbow 2.) resorting to expensive enhancives to 'make it work' (which a lot of players can't afford until much later) and 3.) sucking it up and living with it. Yes you can level with a crossbow. Yes you can hunt with a longbow on your halfling. As I said, I myself have a level 30 forest gnome ranger. His stats are even messed up so that with wizard strength and a weenie strength enhancive he can just barely shoot a composite bow in 5 seconds (7 sniping). As I said he is still effective. My point is that if you waved a magic wand that altered the RT mechanics and gave small races a racial -1 RT with composite bows reflecting their race's archery traditions, nothing would happen. The game would not explode. No one would die. But hunting would simply be smoother and more fun for small archers. Quality of life matters in games. It's why Lich exists, it's why a lot of the changes have been made since I started playing this game in '93. That being said, if no one agrees then sure the dev resources shouldn't be directed here.

Player of Kilshaar

>The onerous strength requirements of the longbow, and the clunky use of the crossbow, do nothing but decrease in-game quality of life for archers
ZENNSUNNI

Fix your stats.

It's not hard. It's not difficult. It's not impossible.

There are plenty of archers of every profession and every race that fire with the lowest RT possible.

>My point is that if you waved a magic wand that altered the RT mechanics and gave small races a racial -1 RT with composite bows reflecting their race's archery traditions, nothing would happen. The game would not explode. No one would die. But hunting would simply be smoother and more fun for small archers. Quality of life matters in games.

My quality of life would drastically improve if I could always have a 4x RPA running. The game wouldn't explode and no one would die. Can we make this happen?

-farmer

I just am replying to the last post on the thread just to post again, not particular to any author.

Going back to my first post, which had nothing to do with mechanics changes.. I offered several versions of historic bows that existed that fit into the existing mechanics..

Would you like to see any of those introduced? I attempted to have one of these brought in through an official Gemstone method and it was denied because its not in there current approved form of bow. The point of the post is providing historic documentation on these bows that were real to get them added to the approved forms of bows IG. As I said this would allow a much greater variety of bow descriptions for archers wanting something more unique to them off the shelf or through alterations.

soo Yes or no on the suggested bow additions? Flatbows, selfbows, cable back bows, and the varieties of those names that existed like a horsemans, a mire bow, that were not R/W named for people or places.? Although I dont see why a Viking bow couldnt be a Krolvin bow..