Crossbow Poll

wherein Ted flies in the face of D&D rules and Co8 conventions alike

As you should know, there are repeating crossbows in the game - well, Wonnilon's, and another I added in DH, and a quest in KotB that was going to involve receiving one as a reward. But they don't work. There is also the capacity to introduce Drow hand-crossbows, which will become increasingly relevant as the number of Drow in the game increase.

They almost certainly could be hacked into the game to work properly, one way or the other. Atm they are expected to use an exotic weapon proficiancy, which is according to the rules. The feat exists but is not 'activated', a .dll hack would be required but would almost certainly be doable (since we have done new feats before - albeit Moebius is not around any more - and adding a proficiency feat for a weapon the game already recognises is surely the easiest .dll hack, as far as these things goes). Actually it would require several .dll hacks, since the game also has room for weapon focus, weapon specialisation etc for these crossbows.

My feelings on the matter are:

Drow hand-crossbows should be exotic weapons, we can give the feat to all the Drow who pass by and if players have a hard time with looted weapons, well bad luck, they can spend a dang feat. These truly are exotic weapons.

Repeating crossbows on the other hand are (imho) meant to save u having to take Rapid Reload, otherwise they are just like normal light crossbows which are simple weapons needing no specific proficiency. So they should (if we can) be hacked in to work without needing a feat.

Now, I know this flies directly in the face of the rules (and the Co8 convention of always observing the rules), but my way of thinking is, no-one is going to take a feat for these - there are not enough in the game, and they don't seem to offer any benefit whatsover that light-crossbow + rapid reload doesn't match. If they do in PnP D&D, well let me know and I will test, but I don't see it.

I think they are a fabulous weapon to add, both for enemies (particularly spellcasters) to use against players and for players to find as loot. Requiring a feat to use them negates this impact (imho) and possibly explains why the feat was dropped and Wonnilon's was left as a normal magical crossbow.

If we do introduce feats, I guess we can go to the other extreme and make them widely available, from shops and such. Thats not a problem, but then I think by their nature they should be rare items. (Yes I know 'rare' implies 'exotic' but now you're being smarmy).

Anyways, vote your little hearts out.

 

Well public opinion is clearly going against me (ungrateful swine! Dire swine! Fiendish dire swine!) and the argument that these are complex mechanisms is a good one. I will restate my position to get this out of my system, and if people still want it by the rules (which I dare say they will, and fair enough) I'll live with it.

Atm there is one of these in the game (2 counting DH which adds one for a reason, 3 counting 0rion's mod which adds the DH one for no apparent reason) and it functions as a normal magical crossbow. I think the purpose of making it repeating should be that it adds something to the game. If we hack Wonnilon's repeater at this point, we will simply take something that is of use to the player (a nice magical Crossbow) and turn it into something that is of less use to the player (they will have a nice magical Crossbow they are suddenly not proficient to use). So adding it atm would be a step backwards, imho. Yes, we could (and in this case, should) add the whole weapon specialisation / focus / finesse (yes its finessable, I have no idea why)

{412}{Weapon Finesse (Hand Crossbow)}
{415}{Weapon Finesse (Repeating Crossbow)}
{417}{Weapon Focus (Gauntlet)}

so if u go that whole route there would be benefit in the feats. But again, it seems common sense to me that u wouldn't, u would just take Rapid Reload and have the same benefits on a normal Crossbow and not have to waste a bunch of feats on something this specific. Otherwise, we flood the game with them, making it worth the players time to get such feats and go that path from the start - since they are readily available - but this clashes RPically with the idea of them being rare, complex mechanisms most people won't have encountered before.

Two questions:

1) If I can find a workaround for it, would people mind me throwing a small number (currently, 2) of magical light crossbows into the game with the repeater function but not called repeaters - called, ummm, not crossbow of speed because it won't double rate of fire when starting a round already loaded, but called something appropriate? They will conform to Kalshane's requirement for them to be magical to circumvent the feat (which I agree is a reasonable requirement).

2) What other 'abilities' does a repeater have that makes it worth spending a string of feats on? Anything?

Spike - I have no idea how to do Speed or Accuracy, but Distance sounds straightforward.

 

They're good points Ug, and I would agree but for the fact the few relevant items turn up in the second half of the game. Bit late to be starting a string of proficiency feats.

You're BANNED! GET OFF MY BOARDS!!! :rant:

Sorry, I seem to have a thing for that smiley lately. :blush:

BUMP! C'mon u rules lawyers, what do these weapons specifically do?

 

Sorry Ted . . . but surely you must have known (somewhere deep inside) how this was going to turn out? They are circling the wagons - the rule set is under attack!