What's the point of the hand crossbow? [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Greywander

2018-08-08, 12:49 AM

I mean, aside from being hella rad, of course. It certainly wins in style points, but mechanically I just find this weapon... confusing.

I was originally going to make a post about the sling after reading this article (http://ludusludorum.com/2016/05/12/a-defense-of-the-humble-sling/), but while they've done a good job of balancing the sling against the bow in their bit of homebrew, they ignored entirely the weapon the sling actually competes with: the hand crossbow. In trying to come up with a way to buff the sling without making the hand crossbow entirely obsolete, I found myself wondering why the hand crossbow even exists.

The entire point of the weapon seems to be that it is a one-handed crossbow. But this isn't entirely correct, as either JC or MM (can't remember) has clarified that any weapon with the ammunition property requires an empty hand to reload it. So if we compare the hand crossbow to the light crossbow, we see that the light crossbow has a greater range and deals more damage. The only real difference is that you need both hands to shoot the light crossbow, while the hand crossbow can be shot with one hand. But since you need a free hand to reload, that means you can only get off one shot and then you may as well throw it away. Now, that's not a terrible concept for a weapon, something you pull out at the start of a fight, shoot off for massive damage, then discard, sort of a "once per battle" type of weapon, but that's not what the hand crossbow is.

Remember, you only need both hands to attack with and load a light or heavy crossbow; any time you're not attacking with it, you can free up one hand for casting spells, grappling, using items, or even draw a melee weapon (although you'll need to free up your hand again if you want to use the crossbow). The hand crossbow basically lets you make one attack and then, because you need a free hand to load it, essentially acts like a regular crossbow thereafter.

So, outside of the Crossbow Expert feat or for pure fluff reasons, when would you actually use a hand crossbow instead of a light/heavy crossbow?

One potential way to improve the hand crossbow is to change the damage die to 1d4, but have it allow you to do sneak attacks for an extra 1d4 damage (making it competitive with the light crossbow, damage-wise). Rogues would add this on to their normal Sneak Attack, while everyone else would act as though they had Sneak Attack with 1d4 sneak attack bonus damage. This would cement the concept of the weapon as a tool for assassins.

Mellack

2018-08-08, 01:05 AM

JackPhoenix

2018-08-08, 01:08 AM

Both the light and heavy crossbow have the loading property. That means they can only be shot once using an action. Anyone who has extra attack is losing out if they use them. Hand crossbow can be shot as many times as you have attacks.

Hand crossbow also has the loading quality.

Point of the hand crossbow is exactly what you've already mentioned, Greywander: a chance to get one shot off before the battle, or in a battle... mostly if you're a drow and the bolt is poisoned. It is also smaller and more concealable than any other ranged weapon (except darts), which may be important in certain scenarios. And then there's the Crossbow Expert feat.

Mellack

2018-08-08, 01:44 AM

Hand crossbow also has the loading quality.

Damn, you are right. Nevermind.

Greywander

2018-08-08, 01:57 AM

Point of the hand crossbow is exactly what you've already mentioned, Greywander: a chance to get one shot off before the battle, or in a battle...
If this is the niche it's meant to fill, then it should look something more like this:

Hand Crossbow
2d8 piercing damage
30/120 range
requires one action to reload

This increases the damage per shot significantly, but needing to use an action to reload pulls its damage back down to on par with a light crossbow but with crappier range. It's great for an opening shot, but then you may as well put it away and pull out a heavy crossbow or longbow, or close to melee. Obviously, it is kind of awkward to imagine a hand crossbow working like this while other crossbows don't, and it's particularly odd that a smaller crossbow would deal so much more damage than a larger crossbow. But if this was the niche the weapon was meant to fill, this would be the proper way to fill that niche. A muzzle-loaded pistol would fit this fluff better, although it would be a noisier assassination tool.

Making it do bonus sneak attack damage instead fills a similar function, since most classes need to use an action to hide, although rogue can do it as a bonus action, and there are ways to qualify for sneak attack without needing to burn any kind of action. Maybe a hand crossbow could allow you to explicitly get advantage (and therefore sneak attack) if you draw and shoot on the first turn of combat, as if you were able to get the shot off before your target saw the weapon.

I mean, as written, the hand crossbow is basically a DEX javelin that requires both hands to pull out the next javelin, and it can't be used in melee.

The only other option that makes sense to me is that, since it is a one-handed weapon, we go ahead and allow you to use it with a shield (the same would apply to the sling, which is historically accurate at least). You might not be able to use another item or weapon in your "off" hand, but a shield is fine.

Exocist

2018-08-08, 02:06 AM

Crossbow Expert, unlike both Light and Heavy crossbow, it's a one-handed weapon, so you can use your bonus action to fire it with Crossbow Expert. it's the only weapon that works with Crossbow Expert's bonus action to fire. CE/SS builds need Hand Crossbows.

Also, it allows rogues to offhand it while mainhanding a rapier/shortsword/scimitar, giving them both a ranged and melee option when required, rather than having to switch out weapons.

Waazraath

2018-08-08, 02:13 AM

Hidden weapons are a thing in some campaigns. Not for your kick in the door dungeon murder rampage, but for a city based adventure, where your party gets invited for a fancy dinner and then gets ambushed, or where it's simply not allowed to walk the streets in full armor and open carrying, there's a thing for it. Depends on the DM if the hand crossbow is really small enough for that.

JackPhoenix

2018-08-08, 02:20 AM

I mean, as written, the hand crossbow is basically a DEX javelin that requires both hands to pull out the next javelin, and it can't be used in melee.

And one that can be used for sneak attack, Sharpshooter, has another feat improving its use (Crossbow Expert), and uses poisons more effectively, as you can poison one weapon, or 3 pieces of ammunition. So nothing like javelin at all. And it's still more concealable.

Greywander

2018-08-08, 02:26 AM

Crossbow Expert, unlike both Light and Heavy crossbow, it's a one-handed weapon, so you can use your bonus action to fire it with Crossbow Expert.
Feats are great, but the weapon should be able to stand on its own without requiring a feat to be viable.

Also, it allows rogues to offhand it while mainhanding a rapier/shortsword/scimitar, giving them both a ranged and melee option when required, rather than having to switch out weapons.
Except they only get one shot. You can off-hand a dagger, or even just carry darts while keeping your off hand free or using a two-handed weapon. Range is worse on daggers/darts, but it's not that much worse. If you're a Strength build, javelins have you covered. If you really need that extra range on a DEX build, it's also viable (if ridiculous) to keep something like 20 loaded slings on your person; pull it out, make the shot, toss away, pick up after the fight. It weighs half as much as the hand crossbow, sans bolts might I add, and costs only 2gp 4cp, compared to the 75 gp cost of a hand crossbow.

I suppose it could kind of work for a rogue. You're either attacking with the rapier or the hand crossbow, so you can use your item interaction to sheathe the rapier while you attack with the crossbow and reload. Next round, draw your rapier again and resume rapier attacks, or make another shot with the crossbow, then draw your rapier. Or you could do the ultimate juggling cheese: drop the rapier on the ground, shoot the crossbow and reload, then use your item interaction to pick up the rapier.

Hidden weapons are a thing in some campaigns. Not for your kick in the door dungeon murder rampage, but for a city based adventure, where your party gets invited for a fancy dinner and then gets ambushed, or where it's simply not allowed to walk the streets in full armor and open carrying, there's a thing for it. Depends on the DM if the hand crossbow is really small enough for that.
Now I'm leaning toward simply dealing an extra 1d6 damage when you draw and shoot the hand crossbow on the first round of combat, as a pseudo sneak attack, or getting auto-advantage instead of extra damage. It's a small tweak, but rogues, especially assassins, would find auto-advantage extremely useful. The balestrino (https://todsworkshop.com/products/17thc-balestrino) might qualify as a concealable hand crossbow, although in real life it was probably too small to be effective.

Exocist

2018-08-08, 03:35 AM

Feats are great, but the weapon should be able to stand on its own without requiring a feat to be viable.

You can say this about a lot of weapons that are even more useless than the Hand Crossbow - Flail, Greatclub, Sickle, Mace, Club, Morningstar & Trident are all examples of weapons that are completely useless without a feat.

A Hand Crossbow, despite it's limited use, actually does do something without a feat (In fact, I use one in addition to 2 Scimitars, 2 Shortswords and a Shortbow on my rogue - all for different situations). Crossbow Expert just makes it a viable option for other Martial Characters to pick up.

You can certainly add whatever you want to the weapons to make them more viable if you want to, I personally am a fan of the AD&D Weapon Mastery Table (http://www.pandius.com/w_mast2.html) but you might have to tone down some of the effects for compatibility with 5e.

Fnissalot

2018-08-08, 05:20 AM

One handed weapons still allow you to use your other hand for different things without sheathing your weapons.

You have a hand free that can for example cast spells, use items, drink potions or pick locks. Shields and off hand weapons are not the only reason to keep a one handed weapon.

On the other hand, I would homebrew a fighting style, feat or item that would allow reloading hand crossbows or slings while wearing a shield. It should be doable.

Greywander

2018-08-08, 05:21 AM

You can say this about a lot of weapons that are even more useless than the Hand Crossbow - Flail, Greatclub, Sickle, Mace, Club, Morningstar & Trident are all examples of weapons that are completely useless without a feat.
Of these, the trident is the most egregious, as it is literally a copypasta of the spear, only more expensive, heavier, and oh yeah, it's a martial weapon.

The rest of these aren't too bad. I'd like to see these weapons made more interesting, but I don't necessarily think having a cheaper but heavier variant of a weapon is a bad idea, especially if you're looking to arm up on the cheap. Maybe you're 1st level, or maybe you're shopping in bulk for that peasant rebellion.

The greatclub, mace, and club could all be left as-is if the quarterstaff were tweaked to have its damage reduced to 1d4/1d6. Quaterstaves can be used one-handed with a shield while still benefiting from Polearm Master, and they can also be arcane foci, and can be used with Shillelagh, giving them plenty of niches to fill. The greatclub is then the only 1d8 simple weapon, the mace is the only 1d6 one-handed bludgeoning weapon, and the club represents basically any improvised bludgeon, as well as being lighter and cheaper than the quarterstaff.

Flails are a cheaper version of the warhammer as long as you never intend to use it two-handed. Apparently, one feature of flails in real life is that they're good at getting around shields, so something like a +1 bonus to attack rolls vs. shields might be interesting.

Many morning stars used historically were two-handed weapons, so make the morning star a versatile weapon. Bam, it's the only versatile piercing weapon. The warpick can be a cheaper rapier for STR builds.

Sickles, hrm... I dunno. If you do need to sponsor a peasant revolt, these are likely to be plentiful, at least.

A Hand Crossbow, despite it's limited use, actually does do something without a feat (In fact, I use one in addition to 2 Scimitars, 2 Shortswords and a Shortbow on my rogue - all for different situations). Crossbow Expert just makes it a viable option for other Martial Characters to pick up.

You can certainly add whatever you want to the weapons to make them more viable if you want to, I personally am a fan of the AD&D Weapon Mastery Table (http://www.pandius.com/w_mast2.html) but you might have to tone down some of the effects for compatibility with 5e.
What confuses me about the hand crossbow is that what seems to set it apart is that it is a one-handed crossbow, but this is subverted by the fact that you need a free hand to load it. If you're going to make a one-handed crossbow, why not go all the way and let you use it with a shield or other weapon?

Greywander

2018-08-08, 05:25 AM

One handed weapons still allow you to use your other hand for different things without sheathing your weapons.
The same is true for two-handed weapons. You can hold a crossbow or greatsword in one hand while you do something with your other hand. You only need both hands when you make an attack. I mentioned this in the OP, but it might have gotten lost in the rest of the post:

Remember, you only need both hands to attack with and load a light or heavy crossbow; any time you're not attacking with it, you can free up one hand for casting spells, grappling, using items, or even draw a melee weapon (although you'll need to free up your hand again if you want to use the crossbow).

Exocist

2018-08-08, 05:48 AM

Of these, the trident is the most egregious, as it is literally a copypasta of the spear, only more expensive, heavier, and oh yeah, it's a martial weapon.

The rest of these aren't too bad. I'd like to see these weapons made more interesting, but I don't necessarily think having a cheaper but heavier variant of a weapon is a bad idea, especially if you're looking to arm up on the cheap. Maybe you're 1st level, or maybe you're shopping in bulk for that peasant rebellion.

The greatclub, mace, and club could all be left as-is if the quarterstaff were tweaked to have its damage reduced to 1d4/1d6. Quaterstaves can be used one-handed with a shield while still benefiting from Polearm Master, and they can also be arcane foci, and can be used with Shillelagh, giving them plenty of niches to fill. The greatclub is then the only 1d8 simple weapon, the mace is the only 1d6 one-handed bludgeoning weapon, and the club represents basically any improvised bludgeon, as well as being lighter and cheaper than the quarterstaff.

Flails are a cheaper version of the warhammer as long as you never intend to use it two-handed. Apparently, one feature of flails in real life is that they're good at getting around shields, so something like a +1 bonus to attack rolls vs. shields might be interesting.

Many morning stars used historically were two-handed weapons, so make the morning star a versatile weapon. Bam, it's the only versatile piercing weapon. The warpick can be a cheaper rapier for STR builds.

Sickles, hrm... I dunno. If you do need to sponsor a peasant revolt, these are likely to be plentiful, at least.

I don't think the Quarterstaff is necessarily too strong (Actually works with their damage formula for weapons), it's that the other weapons I mentioned are too weak.

Greatclub should be a d10 weapon (D10 Base->D8 Simple->D10 Two-Handed)
Mace should be a d8 weapon (D10 Base->D8 Simple), Quarterstaff still has use with Shillelagh and as a focus.
Sickle and Club should move to the "Improvised Weapons" section. Some classes should gain proficiency in Improvised Weapons.
Morningstar could definitely become Versatile, but most fantasy art simply depicts them as being used one-handed with a shield. I would suggest simply increasing the damage to d10, making it the only d10 one-handed weapon, in return for the worst damage typing on physical weapons. S&Bs are likely to use a Rapier anyway.
Trident can increase its damage to d8 and versatile damage to d10, making it a d8 piercing with versatile for d10. The Dagger doesn't have a penalty for Thrown (20/60), which is IIRC the range of improvised thrown weapons, so the Trident shouldn't either.
Flail can gain this benefit from Flail Mastery - "As a bonus action on your turn, you can prepare yourself to extend your flail to sweep over targets' shields. Until the end of this turn, your attack rolls with a flail gain a +2 bonus against any target using a shield.". My reasoning is that Shields only show up on Humanoids, meaning a Flail fighter is less effective against monsters.

But then again, I would simply allow people to use the Weapon creation rules as outlined by the designers. There's nothing too broken about them.

Inb4 "Hey guys, how do you like my new weapon? I call it the Stake Driver (https://bloodborne.wiki.fextralife.com/file/Bloodborne/stake_driver.jpg) - 3d8 Piercing, Two-Handed, Heavy, Ammunition, Special*, Martial Weapon." *Special Penalty, cannot be used to make opportunity attacks.

What confuses me about the hand crossbow is that what seems to set it apart is that it is a one-handed crossbow, but this is subverted by the fact that you need a free hand to load it. If you're going to make a one-handed crossbow, why not go all the way and let you use it with a shield or other weapon?

There's benefit in them being smaller and lighter (as others have noted). Some DMs will also let you pre-load crossbows, which makes the Hand Crossbow slightly better if you only ever intend to loose one shot with it (You don't need to sheathe your second weapon).

I find it hilarious that they're a Light weapon. As per the Light weapon description

Light
A light weapon is small and easy to handle, making it ideal for use when fighting with two Weapons.

Yet you can only two-weapon fight with melee weapons. Can you say designer oversight?

DnDegenerates

2018-08-08, 06:09 AM

Hand crossbows are fine in their current form. They're literally just a smaller crossbow.

Put them side by side on a bench and have a level 1 of any class or even a commoner pick them up and it makes sense.

Items don't need special properties to justify their balancing. They definitely shouldn't be given extra damage that is normally associated with class abilities or skill checks to fill a niche, especially when other weapons are not balanced in this format.

That it has a feat almost of it's own is enough to give it purpose. Granting anything else is in danger of Homebrew fanboyism. But the main benefit that the base weapon holds is that it is smaller and thus easier to conceal, which is a good enough roleplay justification for the style of certain characters.

Citan

2018-08-08, 08:43 AM

I mean, aside from being hella rad, of course. It certainly wins in style points, but mechanically I just find this weapon... confusing.

I was originally going to make a post about the sling after reading this article, but while they've done a good job of balancing the sling against the bow in their bit of homebrew, they ignored entirely the weapon the sling actually competes with: the hand crossbow. In trying to come up with a way to buff the sling without making the hand crossbow entirely obsolete, I found myself wondering why the hand crossbow even exists.

The entire point of the weapon seems to be that it is a one-handed crossbow. But this isn't entirely correct, as either JC or MM (can't remember) has clarified that any weapon with the ammunition property requires an empty hand to reload it. So if we compare the hand crossbow to the light crossbow, we see that the light crossbow has a greater range and deals more damage. The only real difference is that you need both hands to shoot the light crossbow, while the hand crossbow can be shot with one hand. But since you need a free hand to reload, that means you can only get off one shot and then you may as well throw it away. Now, that's not a terrible concept for a weapon, something you pull out at the start of a fight, shoot off for massive damage, then discard, sort of a "once per battle" type of weapon, but that's not what the hand crossbow is.

Remember, you only need both hands to attack with and load a light or heavy crossbow; any time you're not attacking with it, you can free up one hand for casting spells, grappling, using items, or even draw a melee weapon (although you'll need to free up your hand again if you want to use the crossbow). The hand crossbow basically lets you make one attack and then, because you need a free hand to load it, essentially acts like a regular crossbow thereafter.

So, outside of the Crossbow Expert feat or for pure fluff reasons, when would you actually use a hand crossbow instead of a light/heavy crossbow?

One potential way to improve the hand crossbow is to change the damage die to 1d4, but have it allow you to do sneak attacks for an extra 1d4 damage (making it competitive with the light crossbow, damage-wise). Rogues would add this on to their normal Sneak Attack, while everyone else would act as though they had Sneak Attack with 1d4 sneak attack bonus damage. This would cement the concept of the weapon as a tool for assassins.
Why use hand crossbow instead of "regular" one?

I see many potential reasons.
1) You don't need extra range because you fight mainly indoors.
2) Hand version is much easier to carry and hide.
3) You can wield it altogether with a one-handed melee weapon for easy switch of priorities:
- sheathe/drop/throw it when you know you won't need it but want to free one hand for ammunition.
- or draw it near end of turn so you can get OA or use finesse/weapon-related defensive feature off-turn.
4) Easier casting / use of focus management (yeah, I know WoTC made the -imo stupid- ruling about two-handed, heavy weapons needing two hands only for attacks, so per RAI you can move and act normally while carrying such weapon with only one hand. I ditched it in my games though and my players are fine with it, as it seemed as glitchy to them as to me).
5) Ability for some classes to use one hand freely outside of plain attacks for something useful (Rogue/Fighter Grappling/Shoving an opponent, Thief using items, etc).

All above is especially true for gishes that want to use magic weapons, as there are (imhx) many more magic melee weapons than magic ranged weapons. :)

Everything is indeed also working per RAW with regular crossbow though...

dejarnjc

2018-08-08, 09:32 AM

I was originally going to make a post about the sling after reading this article, but while they've done a good job of balancing the sling against the bow in their bit of homebrew, they ignored entirely the weapon the sling actually competes with: the hand crossbow. In trying to come up with a way to buff the sling without making the hand crossbow entirely obsolete, I found myself wondering why the hand crossbow even exists.

Link doesn't seem to work btw.

LordEntrails

2018-08-08, 09:44 AM

What's wrong with fluff?

Not every weapon (feat, skill, trait, etc) has to be perfectly balanced with every other weapon. Sure, there should be a top end performance level, but having options that are less than that, so that those people who actually like to ROLE play can do so with flavor and fluff. A lot of players don't give a rats tail if their damage output is a point or two lower than what they could do.

Corsair14

2018-08-08, 09:49 AM

PhoenixPhyre

2018-08-08, 10:20 AM

It's also a sacred cow--it's a drow thing, and has been since there were drow. So :shrug:

Willie the Duck

2018-08-08, 10:44 AM

I find it hilarious that they're a Light weapon. As per the Light weapon description
...
Yet you can only two-weapon fight with melee weapons. Can you say designer oversight?

4) Easier casting / use of focus management (yeah, I know WoTC made the -imo stupid- ruling about two-handed, heavy weapons needing two hands only for attacks, so per RAI you can move and act normally while carrying such weapon with only one hand. I ditched it in my games though and my players are fine with it, as it seemed as glitchy to them as to me).

My personal theory is that up until very late in the design process, two handed weapons were going to be such that you could not take a hand off of them to cast a spell on your turn. It would explain why quarterstaves, as iconic wizard weapons, are versatile (other than them wanting shield and PAM-shillelaghed quarterstaff nuttiness, which I'd like to think was accidental). It would explain what role versatile longswords and the like were going to serve -- (most fighters would wield greatsword/halberd/etc or two scimitars/shortswords or sword&shield, but the Eldritch Knight would be wield his longsword 2-handed, such that they could cast spells). And it would make the hand crossbow the weapon of choice for the spellcasting ranged character. If this theory is correct, I think a significant level of re-balancing the weapons (and thinking about who would use each one, how much) after they changed gears simply didn't happen.

Feats are great, but the weapon should be able to stand on its own without requiring a feat to be viable.

I agree with the sentiment, but it doesn't really seem to be the case in the game we were given. Overall, I would prefer a game where specializing in the use of very specific weapons (beyond choosing Str-, or Dex-based ones based on your attributes) was not encouraged. However, Fighter fighting styles and the best combat feats in the game actively fight that. I get it. Weapon Specialization was one of the first things to get added to the fighter repertoire, and the primary reason to be good with a variety of weapons (the oD&D/1e Weapon Vs Armor chart) was one of the least-used parts of the early games. Still, they could have made feats/fighting styles more of choosing defense vs. offense, or charging vs shield walls or the like, but they didn't.

Point is this is a reasonable position I personally like, but it doesn't match what we got as a game.

I don't necessarily think having a cheaper but heavier variant of a weapon is a bad idea, especially if you're looking to arm up on the cheap.

I am curious on why that is okay, but a weapon that only serves the purpose of 'single shot ranged attack weapon you hold onto while fighting with a one-handed melee weapon' isn't? Both are entirely realistic in the D&D world-at-large, but relatively un-useful to most PCs in that world (who usually have a fair bit of money after a few levels, and rarely only need to shoot at range once per combat).

Tetrasodium

2018-08-08, 10:45 AM

I mean, aside from being hella rad, of course. It certainly wins in style points, but mechanically I just find this weapon... confusing.

I was originally going to make a post about the sling after reading , but while they've done a good job of balancing the sling against the bow in their bit of homebrew, they ignored entirely the weapon the sling actually competes with: the hand crossbow. In trying to come up with a way to buff the sling without making the hand crossbow entirely obsolete, I found myself wondering why the hand crossbow even exists.

The entire point of the weapon seems to be that it is a one-handed crossbow. But this isn't entirely correct, as either JC or MM (can't remember) has clarified that any weapon with the ammunition property requires an empty hand to reload it. So if we compare the hand crossbow to the light crossbow, we see that the light crossbow has a greater range and deals more damage. The only real difference is that you need both hands to shoot the light crossbow, while the hand crossbow can be shot with one hand. But since you need a free hand to reload, that means you can only get off one shot and then you may as well throw it away. Now, that's not a terrible concept for a weapon, something you pull out at the start of a fight, shoot off for massive damage, then discard, sort of a "once per battle" type of weapon, but that's not what the hand crossbow is.

Remember, you only need both hands to attack with and load a light or heavy crossbow; any time you're not attacking with it, you can free up one hand for casting spells, grappling, using items, or even draw a melee weapon (although you'll need to free up your hand again if you want to use the crossbow). The hand crossbow basically lets you make one attack and then, because you need a free hand to load it, essentially acts like a regular crossbow thereafter.

So, outside of the Crossbow Expert feat or for pure fluff reasons, when would you actually use a hand crossbow instead of a light/heavy crossbow?

One potential way to improve the hand crossbow is to change the damage die to 1d4, but have it allow you to do sneak attacks for an extra 1d4 damage (making it competitive with the light crossbow, damage-wise). Rogues would add this on to their normal Sneak Attack, while everyone else would act as though they had Sneak Attack with 1d4 sneak attack bonus damage. This would cement the concept of the weapon as a tool for assassins.

Pretty much [url="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._A._Salvatore"]Salvatore (]this article[/url). It got popularized & made an "iconic" aspect of a particular style of drow so now every setting needs to have its odd status as a dubious assassin's concealable curiosity handwaived away. In eberron there are a number of unique weapons that couldn't fit in the phb alongside all the setting specific lore they chose to include instead. I'm sure the same applies to other settings have some as well. Here are the ones in the 3.5 ECS

Boomerang. Talenta: The halflings of the Talenta Plains use traditional boomerangs—simple curved. polished sticks designed to return to the thrower.
Boomerang. Xen’drik: The drow of Xendrik use three pronged boomerangs to hunt prey. Some adventurers and explorers learn to use the weapon while operating in the Xen’driik jungles. but few outside the draw communities ever master the intricacies ofthe Xen‘drilt boomerang.
A boomerang of any sort returns to its thrower when it misses its target. To catch a returning boomerang. the thrower must make an attack roll (as if he were throwing the boomerang) against AC 10. Failure indicates that the boomerang lands 10 Feet away from the thrower in a random direction.
Scimitar. Valenar Double: The elves of Valenar use a dangerous and exotic double weapon with curving scimitar blades on each end. You can fight with a double weapon as if fighting with two weapons. but if you do. you incur all the normal attack penalties as if using a one-handed weapon and a light weapon. A creature using a double weapon in one hand. such as a Large creature using a Medium double scimitar. can't use it as a double weapon.
Sharrash. Talenta: Similar to a scythe. the Talenta sharrash developed by the halflings of the Plains consists of a sickle like blade at the end of a long pole. A sharrash has reach. You can strike opponents 10 feet away with it. but you can‘t use it against an adjacent foe.
Because of a sharrash's curved blade. you can also use it to make trip attacks. ”you are tripped during your own trip attempt. you can drop the sharrash to avoid being tripped
Tangat. Talenta: The tangat. developed by the halflings of the Talenta Plains. features a curved blade (like a scimitar's) mounted on a short halt.

Wayfinders guide (https://www.dmsguild.com/product/247882/Wayfinders-Guide-to-Eberron-5e?src=KBBlog) has rules for the double bladed scimitar, with any luck the others will follow suit in the future.

MaxWilson

2018-08-08, 10:48 AM

So, outside of the Crossbow Expert feat or for pure fluff reasons, when would you actually use a hand crossbow instead of a light/heavy crossbow?

Maybe for the same reason you'd carry a handgun in public instead of a machine gun?

After all, machine guns are better at killing people in almost every conceivable way. And yet police don't commonly walk around in public with machine guns, because handguns make a less aggressive statement. They keep their machine guns locked away for when heavy weapons are really needed.

It could be that hand crossbows fill a similar social niche: a weapon, yes, but a less openly-aggressive one than a heavy crossbow or a longbow. Can you imagine bringing a longbow to a social gathering? (If so you might be a murderhobo.)

Anonymouswizard

2018-08-08, 10:54 AM

Its a small dart shooter thats easily hidden under a cloak and its main purpose is for shooting someone with poison bolts. Like a blow gun, its not meant to deal much damage and with the size of the prod, would not be able to penetrate armor heavier than padded. Its an assassins weapon, not a front line fighters weapon.

This. As I remember it was originally meant as a drow weapon, and so it's also a ranged weapon that's easier to use in cramped tunnels, but this is secondary to it being a relatively easy to conceal ranged weapon.

Now if you're running a campaign where carrying weapons is a big no no (in which case you should probably drop all damage cantrips by a die size or two), the hand crossbow suddenly becomes too good. Here's a ranged weapon you can carry and conceal, so I'd recommend making setting up a hand crossbow more intensive in this case (either make it take longer to load, in which case you could probably fluff it as a torsion weapon, or make it so you have to take the weapon apart to easily conceal it). But the general idea is that it's the weapon that you sneak into the ball, use to fire a couple of poisioned bolts at your target, then disappear into the crowd, potentially disposing on a weapon in a way that makes it hard to be traced back to you (you did use sympathetic magic to link the weapon to somebody else, right?).

Plus, IIRC the loading quality only stops you from firing more than once per round RAW. So a Rogue, who only gets one attack per round anyway, can hold one in their off hand and make a ranged attack every round no matter what's in their primary hand (sure, maybe not RAI, but it's one of those cases where rules patches probably aren't meant to stop it either).

Tetrasodium

2018-08-08, 10:56 AM

Maybe for the same reason you'd carry a handgun in public instead of a machine gun?

After all, machine guns are better at killing people in almost every conceivable way. And yet police don't commonly walk around in public with machine guns, because handguns make a less aggressive statement. They keep their machine guns locked away for when heavy weapons are really needed.

It could be that hand crossbows fill a similar social niche: a weapon, yes, but a less openly-aggressive one than a heavy crossbow or a longbow. Can you imagine bringing a longbow to a social gathering? (If so you might be a murderhobo.)

on the "social niche" comment, no not really. You'd be more acceptable with a longsword/rapier/mace/etc strapped to your hip than an assassin's weapon. Then there are settings where that less aggressive stance ranged weapon that you are aiming at would be in the form of a cantrip wand rather than a rod or staff with a leveled spell in it/full sized crossbow.

Willie the Duck

2018-08-08, 11:34 AM

on the "social niche" comment, no not really. You'd be more acceptable with a longsword/rapier/mace/etc strapped to your hip than an assassin's weapon.

I think in this scenario the hand crossbow would have to be "an item of personal protection" rather than "an assassin's weapon." I.e. something you were allowed to carry around with you, for personal protection and thus it was considered reasonable to have on your person. Something that would be relatively useless on the battlefield, but a lot better than the fists/knife/nothing you'd otherwise be allowed to carry. The handgun analogue is different in that handguns have two features machinguns don't--social acceptability different from a weapon of war AND concealability. Hand crossbows (in the scenario I think MW is putting forth) only would have the social acceptability. Since they came into fantasy conception, lots of hand crossbows have been produced, and it's pretty clear you'd have to be wearing a Carmelite nun's habit to conceal one in your clothes (but then again, this is fantasy, not reality, we are talking about). So it really isn't very good as a bone fide assassin's weapon anyways.

Nifft

2018-08-08, 11:39 AM

It's also a sacred cow--it's a drow thing, and has been since there were drow. So :shrug:

Sure, but being able to dual-wield and attack twice as often used to be a Drow-specific sacred cow.

Then 2e got all confused and thought that was a Ranger-specific cow.

Now we're stuck with dual cows.

Willie the Duck

2018-08-08, 11:44 AM

Sure, but being able to dual-wield and attack twice as often used to be a Drow-specific sacred cow.

Then 2e got all confused and thought that was a Ranger-specific cow.

Now we're stuck with dual cows.

3e was the apex where the double-headed dire cow could be wielded with exotic weapon proficiency (but no one was clear how that was supposed to work, physically, without hitting yourself). It was an odd time.
:smallbiggrin:

Nifft

2018-08-08, 11:48 AM

3e was the apex where the double-headed dire cow could be wielded with exotic weapon proficiency (but no one was clear how that was supposed to work, physically, without hitting yourself). It was an odd time.
:smallbiggrin:

The writers were flailing about in a cow-ardly manner.

But yeah it was odd. 3.5e butchered plenty of other delicious sacred cows.

Waterdeep Merch

2018-08-08, 11:51 AM

The point is at the far end of the bolt.

Thank you, you've been a terrific audience. Tip your waiter.

I feel you, though. Any time I think to add hand crossbows to a character, I end up getting underwhelmed. I know it's because I don't take crossbow expert, but a weapon that only functions well with a feat is kind of a terrible weapon.

Demonslayer666

2018-08-08, 11:57 AM

Tetrasodium

2018-08-08, 11:59 AM

I think in this scenario the hand crossbow would have to be "an item of personal protection" rather than "an assassin's weapon." I.e. something you were allowed to carry around with you, for personal protection and thus it was considered reasonable to have on your person. Something that would be relatively useless on the battlefield, but a lot better than the fists/knife/nothing you'd otherwise be allowed to carry. The handgun analogue is different in that handguns have two features machinguns don't--social acceptability different from a weapon of war AND concealability. Hand crossbows (in the scenario I think MW is putting forth) only would have the social acceptability. Since they came into fantasy conception, lots of hand crossbows have been produced, and it's pretty clear you'd have to be wearing a Carmelite nun's habit to conceal one in your clothes (but then again, this is fantasy, not reality, we are talking about). So it really isn't very good as a bone fide assassin's weapon anyways.
Modern clothing is significantly more form fitting than in in the past. Those poofy bits & lace/frills were fairly common in addition to things like weskit, longcoat, actual cloaks, etc in that period. The hand crossbow itself is something that can be quickly disassembled & reassembled. Simply having the bow arm detach & reattach to the body would be something that would make it rediulously concealable in outfits like these (http://www.cobbcreek.com/mens_clothing.htm) (check out the sleeves on the downright dressy 5th one down with the weskit & tricorn hat) with only a few seconds needed to draw & reassemble it.
The problem with the hand crossbow is that it is an assassin's weapon. This (https://www.chkadels.com/ProductDetail.aspx?itemno=36%20UC2970&sourcecode=GOCHPL&gclid=CjwKCAjwqarbBRBtEiwArlfEIDoVcIpdd2YyaR5EgkWV bw0KqlJYEE_BQcQFjwnyM3peONR015smKxoCWm0QAvD_BwE) is perfectly acceptable to limp into nearly any courthouse with, but an unusually long car key is going to get some scrutiny. A CCw might get your 22 in a lot of places, but a derringer is not likely to be given the same pass. The social stigmas & traditional use cases of attached to a weapon are extremely important when talking about how a weapon is socially accepted. to quote a section of wgte 23
Who still uses a bow when you could use a wand? “Sovereigns above, Wyllis. We’re days away from the Eleventh Century and you’re still shooting people with pointed sticks?” not every setting would consider them anything but athe assassins weapon they are

Corsair14

2018-08-08, 12:44 PM

Willie the Duck

2018-08-08, 12:55 PM

This is why in reality, the standard 'for personal protection' weapons of the pre-gunpowder era (actually pre-Wheellock era of firearms, but lets not get technical) were knives and swords. But then again the hand crossbow is not a real world weapon, so this is all an exercise in where one's suspension of disbelief lies.

N810

2018-08-08, 01:09 PM

I found some interesting forum topic on historic Pistol Crossbows.
http://myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=19163&highlight=ballestrino

Citan

2018-08-08, 05:23 PM

No crossbow would work as a personal protection weapon like say a pistol does in RL. For one, just like a bow, you dont leave it strung, unless you want a weak weapon reduced further in power over time. No way you could fire and reload with one in each hand. An initial volley, no problem then you would drop down to one per round. Its greatly easier to bend back a small prod like this over a heavy crossbow, but its still ungainly and take one hand to hold it and one to pull the string back to the trigger and insert a new bolt. Again, its not meant to cause damage, no matter what feats or proficiencies or how much you want it to. It is entirely meant to be used to inject poison into the target either to put them to sleep, hinder, or kill them.
Probably stupid idea, but would you think reasonable for someone owning a Familiar with sufficiently adequate limbs to get DM to allow "familiar reloading crossbow (obvious consequence, familiar has to Ready for that the first time to synchronize Initiative and spends his action and free interaction on this)?

@Willie the Duck: 100% behind your analysis of design history.

Greywander

2018-08-08, 05:56 PM

Link doesn't seem to work btw.
Whoops, fixed.

Greatclub should be a d10 weapon (D10 Base->D8 Simple->D10 Two-Handed)
The great club is the only simple weapon (except the light crossbow) that deals 1d8 damage, so I'm not sure why you'd think that 1d8 is the "default" damage for simple weapons. I've come up with a system to create new weapons, and, off the top of my head, the rules seem to be that simple weapons default to 1d6, martials to 1d8, and adding certain beneficial properties reduces the damage die one step while adding certain negative properties (two-handed being a notable one) increases the damage die one or two steps. Some properties don't affect the damage.

I wasn't aware that any kind of official weapon design guide had been released by WotC, but I'd be interested in seeing it to see how their method compares to my observations.

I don't necessarily think having a cheaper but heavier variant of a weapon is a bad idea, especially if you're looking to arm up on the cheap.

I am curious on why that is okay, but a weapon that only serves the purpose of 'single shot ranged attack weapon you hold onto while fighting with a one-handed melee weapon' isn't? Both are entirely realistic in the D&D world-at-large, but relatively un-useful to most PCs in that world (who usually have a fair bit of money after a few levels, and rarely only need to shoot at range once per combat).
Well, I gave a couple of example of when that would be useful.

Maybe you're 1st level, or maybe you're shopping in bulk for that peasant rebellion.
I suppose they're also useful to arm up enemies with, as you can give those goblins sub-par weapons so they don't butcher the PCs. PCs can then loot and use those weapons, but since they're not as good they'll probably just sell them back in town.

My complaint with the hand crossbow is that it presents itself as a one-handed weapon even though it still requires two hands to operate. It doesn't have enough punch to be a "one shot and drop" weapon (muzzle loaded pistol would fit the concept better, requiring two hands and an action to reload but dealing much higher damage per shot). A hand crossbow also isn't a cheaper, less effective crossbow, it is the most expensive weapon on the equipment list at 75 gp while being less effective than a light crossbow for 25 gp. Also, very few classes get hand crossbow proficiency, while all of them get light crossbow proficiency.

It seems like it's a weapon meant specifically for making a shot at close range to poison a target, and while this may be the intention, I don't buy that the hand crossbow is actually uniquely useful for this. The sling has the same range, and even if it's a bit weird there's actually nothing in the rules saying you can't poison a sling bullet. It also makes more sense to be walking around with a loaded sling as there's no bowstring or prod to wear out if you keep it loaded. Slings are also easy to conceal, much cheaper, and everyone has proficiency in them. If you step a few feet closer, almost any thrown weapon will do the same trick (although someone did mention that you can poison one weapon or three pieces of ammunition, so that might matter) and it only takes one hand.

They're not useless, but they just seem incredibly niche, more so than even something like the net or whip or lance. It just seems like there would be very few situations where you couldn't either pull out a light crossbow or step a few feet closer and throw a dagger. A sling is nearly identical, and if the goal is to poison then the lower damage die isn't important. Your DM might rule that sling bullets can't be poisoned, which makes the hand crossbow a bit more useful, but from what I've heard, poison is actually kind of crap in 5e anyway.

Exocist

2018-08-08, 07:15 PM

Whoops, fixed.

The great club is the only simple weapon (except the light crossbow) that deals 1d8 damage, so I'm not sure why you'd think that 1d8 is the "default" damage for simple weapons. I've come up with a system to create new weapons, and, off the top of my head, the rules seem to be that simple weapons default to 1d6, martials to 1d8, and adding certain beneficial properties reduces the damage die one step while adding certain negative properties (two-handed being a notable one) increases the damage die one or two steps. Some properties don't affect the damage.

I wasn't aware that any kind of official weapon design guide had been released by WotC, but I'd be interested in seeing it to see how their method compares to my observations.

Your assessment is spot on but iirc the base damage starts at 1d10 for martial weapons and 1d8 for simple weapons (simple is treated as an ordinary benefit).

I do remember it being in a designer talk somewhere on how they drowned weapons but I can’t seem to find it.

There is also a penalty that increases dice size by 2 - the lance’s special penalty (1d10->1d6 (Reach)->1d8 (Two Handed)->1d12 (Special) )

Thrudd

2018-08-08, 09:31 PM

Probably stupid idea, but would you think reasonable for someone owning a Familiar with sufficiently adequate limbs to get DM to allow "familiar reloading crossbow (obvious consequence, familiar has to Ready for that the first time to synchronize Initiative and spends his action and free interaction on this)?

@Willie the Duck: 100% behind your analysis of design history.

I don't see how that could possibly work, since they aren't going to have the strength to span it. If the thing is easy enough to span that a small animal can do it, it wouldn't have the power to throw a nerf dart straight.

Frankly, for a weapon of the size depicted in the PHB, they would need to be constructed of modern materials to both generate the kind of power they are meant to have relative to other weapons in the game, and to be as easy to span/load as the game would have it.

Derpaligtr

2018-08-08, 09:45 PM

Feats are great, but the weapon should be able to stand on its own without requiring a feat to be viable.

I think weapons and the attack action should have just as much love as the spellcasting section.

At the very least make weapons a bit more distinct from each other.

And even if they were going with "simplicity" with 5e... Spellcasting threw that out the window.

MeeposFire

2018-08-08, 10:07 PM

You can say this about a lot of weapons that are even more useless than the Hand Crossbow - Flail, Greatclub, Sickle, Mace, Club, Morningstar & Trident are all examples of weapons that are completely useless without a feat.

A Hand Crossbow, despite it's limited use, actually does do something without a feat (In fact, I use one in addition to 2 Scimitars, 2 Shortswords and a Shortbow on my rogue - all for different situations). Crossbow Expert just makes it a viable option for other Martial Characters to pick up.

You can certainly add whatever you want to the weapons to make them more viable if you want to, I personally am a fan of the AD&D Weapon Mastery Table (http://www.pandius.com/w_mast2.html) but you might have to tone down some of the effects for compatibility with 5e.

That is some unholy (joking) combination of the AD&D weapon mastery rules and the D&D weapon mastery rules that you would find in the rules cyclopedia. It seems more influenced by the D&D weapon mastery rules except the attacks per round and how it uses the attack bonuses (the attack bonuses in the D&D version involved what target you used it against some weapons were better against weapon users, others were better against monsters, and some were just as good against both).

That is quite a bit different from the version found in the AD&D versions found in the original UA (1e) and Combat and Tactics (2e). Where did you get that one? It appears on a site devoted to Mystara which was the default setting in D&D though it did get a late version for AD&D. I am just wondering if that was somebody taking it upon themselves to port over the D&D weapon mastery rules to AD&D or if there was a random Mystara AD&D product that ported the rules over to compete with the standard weapon mastery rules.

JackPhoenix

2018-08-08, 11:55 PM

It seems like it's a weapon meant specifically for making a shot at close range to poison a target, and while this may be the intention, I don't buy that the hand crossbow is actually uniquely useful for this. The sling has the same range, and even if it's a bit weird there's actually nothing in the rules saying you can't poison a sling bullet. It also makes more sense to be walking around with a loaded sling as there's no bowstring or prod to wear out if you keep it loaded. Slings are also easy to conceal, much cheaper, and everyone has proficiency in them. If you step a few feet closer, almost any thrown weapon will do the same trick (although someone did mention that you can poison one weapon or three pieces of ammunition, so that might matter) and it only takes one hand.

Rules actually say that injury poison needs to be applied to slashing or piercing weapon. So hand crossbow *is* uniquely suited for the role of ranged poison delivery device.

LordEntrails

2018-08-09, 12:03 AM

3e was the apex where the double-headed dire cow could be wielded with exotic weapon proficiency (but no one was clear how that was supposed to work, physically, without hitting yourself). It was an odd time.
:smallbiggrin:

4E I had a githyanki ranger dual wielding bastard sword...

(I'm not sure I should have ever admitted that in public...)

Greywander

2018-08-09, 01:07 AM

Rules actually say that injury poison needs to be applied to slashing or piercing weapon. So hand crossbow *is* uniquely suited for the role of ranged poison delivery device.
I suppose this depends on how the rules are read. Specifically, it says, "You can use the poison in this vial to coat one slashing or piercing weapon or up to three pieces of ammunition."

The way it's written, RAW seems to be "(one slashing or piercing weapon) OR (three pieces of ammunition)". Under this interpretation, only a poisoned weapon needs to be slashing or piercing, ammunition has no such restriction.

That said, it's very possible that RAI is "slashing or piercing (one weapon OR three pieces of ammunition)", applying the slashing or piercing restriction to ammunition. Now I'm curious if there are any historical examples of poisoned blunt weapons, especially sling bullets. Sling bullets would at least be able to penetrate into the body, possibly even through armor.

War_lord

2018-08-09, 01:25 AM

JackPhoenix

2018-08-09, 01:52 AM

I suppose this depends on how the rules are read. Specifically, it says, "You can use the poison in this vial to coat one slashing or piercing weapon or up to three pieces of ammunition."

The way it's written, RAW seems to be "(one slashing or piercing weapon) OR (three pieces of ammunition)". Under this interpretation, only a poisoned weapon needs to be slashing or piercing, ammunition has no such restriction.

That said, it's very possible that RAI is "slashing or piercing (one weapon OR three pieces of ammunition)", applying the slashing or piercing restriction to ammunition. Now I'm curious if there are any historical examples of poisoned blunt weapons, especially sling bullets. Sling bullets would at least be able to penetrate into the body, possibly even through armor.

DMG p. 257: "Injury: Injury poison can be applied to weapons, ammunition, trap components, and other objects that deal piercing or slashing damage and remains potent until delivered through a wound or washed off. A creature that takes piercing or slashing damage from an object coated with the poison is exposed to its effects."

Exocist

2018-08-09, 01:56 AM

That is some unholy (joking) combination of the AD&D weapon mastery rules and the D&D weapon mastery rules that you would find in the rules cyclopedia. It seems more influenced by the D&D weapon mastery rules except the attacks per round and how it uses the attack bonuses (the attack bonuses in the D&D version involved what target you used it against some weapons were better against weapon users, others were better against monsters, and some were just as good against both).

That is quite a bit different from the version found in the AD&D versions found in the original UA (1e) and Combat and Tactics (2e). Where did you get that one? It appears on a site devoted to Mystara which was the default setting in D&D though it did get a late version for AD&D. I am just wondering if that was somebody taking it upon themselves to port over the D&D weapon mastery rules to AD&D or if there was a random Mystara AD&D product that ported the rules over to compete with the standard weapon mastery rules.

I don't remember exactly where it is ported from, but the original version looks like Egyptian Hieroglyphics denoting the bonuses each weapon had at each level of mastery. It used a lot of symbols for each separate ability, so it was difficult to read. This version just converted that into text so it's easier for someone to actually read and use the table.

EDIT: Clicking the about tab says "The Red Curse and Savage Coast" so my guess is it's from Birthright or Savage Coast campaign setting.

Greywander

2018-08-09, 06:04 AM

Slings are hopeless against even thick padded armor, which is part of the reason they fell out of favour as battlefield weapons in the middle ages.
Source? I've read that the Spanish conquistadors didn't fear the Native American's arrows, it was their sling bullets they feared. Apparently they had a similar effect on armor that a bullet from a gun did.

Although, extra thick padded armor would probably be the best for stopping sling bullets, which is why we use basically the same thing in modern bullet proof vests.

Spacehamster

2018-08-09, 07:01 AM

I mean, aside from being hella rad, of course. It certainly wins in style points, but mechanically I just find this weapon... confusing.

I was originally going to make a post about the sling after reading this article (http://ludusludorum.com/2016/05/12/a-defense-of-the-humble-sling/), but while they've done a good job of balancing the sling against the bow in their bit of homebrew, they ignored entirely the weapon the sling actually competes with: the hand crossbow. In trying to come up with a way to buff the sling without making the hand crossbow entirely obsolete, I found myself wondering why the hand crossbow even exists.

The entire point of the weapon seems to be that it is a one-handed crossbow. But this isn't entirely correct, as either JC or MM (can't remember) has clarified that any weapon with the ammunition property requires an empty hand to reload it. So if we compare the hand crossbow to the light crossbow, we see that the light crossbow has a greater range and deals more damage. The only real difference is that you need both hands to shoot the light crossbow, while the hand crossbow can be shot with one hand. But since you need a free hand to reload, that means you can only get off one shot and then you may as well throw it away. Now, that's not a terrible concept for a weapon, something you pull out at the start of a fight, shoot off for massive damage, then discard, sort of a "once per battle" type of weapon, but that's not what the hand crossbow is.

Remember, you only need both hands to attack with and load a light or heavy crossbow; any time you're not attacking with it, you can free up one hand for casting spells, grappling, using items, or even draw a melee weapon (although you'll need to free up your hand again if you want to use the crossbow). The hand crossbow basically lets you make one attack and then, because you need a free hand to load it, essentially acts like a regular crossbow thereafter.

So, outside of the Crossbow Expert feat or for pure fluff reasons, when would you actually use a hand crossbow instead of a light/heavy crossbow?

One potential way to improve the hand crossbow is to change the damage die to 1d4, but have it allow you to do sneak attacks for an extra 1d4 damage (making it competitive with the light crossbow, damage-wise). Rogues would add this on to their normal Sneak Attack, while everyone else would act as though they had Sneak Attack with 1d4 sneak attack bonus damage. This would cement the concept of the weapon as a tool for assassins.

Why the best ranged weapon is in the game? Not sure if this is a joke post, but barring spells it’s the only ranged weapon that you can do a bonus action attack with, this giving you another attack to use sharpshooter +10 damage with. :)

Fnissalot

2018-08-09, 07:14 AM

There are historical accounts of sling bullets piercing armor and burying themselves in the internal organs of the victims. Proper crafted lead sling bullets were slightly oval and pretty small and heavy. There are records of swords being broken by sling bullets. They probably could pierce armor and flesh and would therefore be able to deliver poisons.

That said, there are equally many sources online that would argue against this. Very few actual slings have been found and historical records are unanimous in that slings were harder to properly use than a bow. Multiple records mention how expert slingers could outrange early archers and that slingers need med to practice their whole life. These sources are more unanimous about slings breaking swords than if they could pierce armor which is weird.

There are also historical sling bullets with holes in. Some historians believe that they carried poisons while other thought that they were used for the sound they created.

Sources:
http://ludusludorum.com/2016/05/12/a-defense-of-the-humble-sling/
https://youtu.be/Tpu-BCSfJ2c
http://slinging.org/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1259526593
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sling_(weapon)
http://www.chrisharrison.net/index.php/Research/Sling

Willie the Duck

2018-08-09, 07:24 AM

Why the best ranged weapon is in the game? Not sure if this is a joke post, but barring spells it’s the only ranged weapon that you can do a bonus action attack with, this giving you another attack to use sharpshooter +10 damage with. :)

It has been pointed out multiple times what including crossbow expert (or crossbow expert and sharpshooter) does to this weapon. It has been posited that if you need 1-2 feats to make a weapon viable (even if those feats actually make it springboard to the lead), it is still suboptimal design. I'm not sure I agree, but within said framework, the critique is valid.

Maelynn

2018-08-09, 07:48 AM

even if you are an assassin and you have a lethal poison, slipping it into their food is much safer then stabbing them with a poisoned dagger.

Poisons have varied application needs. Some only work when ingested, others have to be inhaled, and those you coat an arrow with need to be added to a wound.

Spacehamster

2018-08-09, 07:51 AM

War_lord

2018-08-09, 08:03 AM

Source? I've read that the Spanish conquistadors didn't fear the Native American's arrows, it was their sling bullets they feared. Apparently they had a similar effect on armor that a bullet from a gun did.

Although, extra thick padded armor would probably be the best for stopping sling bullets, which is why we use basically the same thing in modern bullet proof vests.

This article I found calculates the 1970 sling record had a departing velocity of 65m/s http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1168&context=nebanthro

This article gives the Muzzle velocity of muskets of various ages at a range of 100m as being between 290m/s and 350m/s https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/MCR/article/view/17669/22312

This thesis I found cites an experiment (on page 55), that gives the western medieval longbow a velocity of between 37 m/s and 53 m/s http://www.tara.tcd.ie/bitstream/handle/2262/7739/Stuart%20Gorman%20Thesis.pdf?sequence=1

You'll have to forgive the eclectic nature of the sources, I'm not an academic with shelves full of journals. I'd also like to make the point that I was talking about European knights in full plate with a layer of chain mail and then a padded jacket underneath. As I understand it most of the rank and file Spanish conquistadors wore relatively light armor, due to both finances and the climate in Central America.

There's also an element of deduction, if the sling was a magic solution to plate armor (that is, if the blunt force transmitted was enough to bypass layered armor), it would not have been abandoned as a battlefield weapon.

Poisons have varied application needs. Some only work when ingested, others have to be inhaled, and those you coat an arrow with need to be added to a wound.

If you plant (or have a minion plant) a poison that kills when they inhale or ingest it, you avoid having to physically confront or attack the target. It's safer and gives you distance from the crime. If you're stabbing someone to death, you don't gain any advantage from poison unless you're a suicide attacker who doesn't care if they die before the target. Historical Chinese and Venetian Hand crossbows had such low draw weight they were basically bolt guns.

Fnissalot

2018-08-09, 11:28 AM

This article I found calculates the 1970 sling record had a departing velocity of 65m/s http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1168&context=nebanthro

This article gives the Muzzle velocity of muskets of various ages at a range of 100m as being between 290m/s and 350m/s https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/MCR/article/view/17669/22312

This thesis I found cites an experiment (on page 55), that gives the western medieval longbow a velocity of between 37 m/s and 53 m/s http://www.tara.tcd.ie/bitstream/handle/2262/7739/Stuart%20Gorman%20Thesis.pdf?sequence=1

This source mentions muzzle velocities of 90m/s for slings used by experienced slingers. http://www.chrisharrison.net/index.php/Research/Sling

Tetrasodium

2018-08-09, 12:00 PM

The point of the Hand Crossbow is that the Rogue or Drow with a Hand Crossbow and a melee weapon is a D&D staple, to the point that other TRPG's, even GURPS, has them. If they had have removed it people would probably have complained. And 5th edition is the nostalgia edition. Alas what progress had been made in pruning the weapons table of silly cruft has been reversed with the reintroduction of the accursed double bladed sword (it's was a dumb idea 12+ years ago, it's dumb now).

We'll probably have the spiked chain back before long.

Slings are hopeless against even thick padded armor, which is part of the reason they fell out of favour as battlefield weapons in the middle ages. Poison weapons weren't used much for several reasons. It requires careful handling, in a fight it's only good for one application, most poisons won't kill your enemy until after he has had a chance to kill you. Aside from all that, throughout most of human history the state of medical understanding was such that a major wound to a foe was likely to kill through infections or complications anyway.

Poison is the stereotypical tool of assassins for a reason. And even if you are an assassin and you have a lethal poison, slipping it into their food is much safer then stabbing them with a poisoned dagger. And if you're going to stab them, the poison is somewhat extraneous to the punctured artery.

Because there are a lot of people who have never seeen or heard of GURPS, I think it's imoportant to point out that inclusion in the GURPS weapons list (like this (https://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/GURPS_Weapons) partial one) does very little to defend the status of Salvatore's spawn in 5e given that gurps almost certainly has a light saber/laser sword & everyone knows kirk would beat young skywalker in a fight to the death on vulcan.

The weapons table getting pruned to snip all the historical variants of the various weapons is a very different thing than the weapons unique to all but one setting also getting pruned, there is nothing wrong with settings putting their unique weapons back in given that the hand crossbow & all other weapons should have been a section of "exotic unless native then $whatever" with special mechanic as of their own in either the phb or dmg to start off

Tanarii

2018-08-09, 01:25 PM

Same purpose as the Blowgun: its a relatively small and easily concealed missile weapon, that can be used to deliver poisons. And in D&D, sneak attacks.

Shuriken (Darts in 5e) serve the same purpose except they are thrown.

KorvinStarmast

2018-08-09, 01:55 PM

The original reason for the hand crossbow in Descent into the Depths module (D1) was for the drow to shoot you in the face, or shoot you with poison.

xroads

2018-08-09, 03:42 PM

Plus, IIRC the loading quality only stops you from firing more than once per round RAW. So a Rogue, who only gets one attack per round anyway, can hold one in their off hand and make a ranged attack every round no matter what's in their primary hand (sure, maybe not RAI, but it's one of those cases where rules patches probably aren't meant to stop it either).

Actually, I was wondering the same thing. Nowhere does it say that you can't load if both of your hands are occupied. And the fact that the hand crossbow is stated as being a light weapon, seems to imply that you can wield a hand crossbow in one hand, a short sword in the other, and still be able to use both effectively without having to drop either.

leogobsin

2018-08-09, 03:48 PM

Actually, I was wondering the same thing. Nowhere does it say that you can't load if both of your hands are occupied. And the fact that the hand crossbow is stated as being a light weapon, seems to imply that you can wield a hand crossbow in one hand, a short sword in the other, and still be able to use both effectively without having to drop either.

PHB errata, Ammunition: "Loading a one-handed weapon requires a free hand."

Wardog

2018-08-09, 04:56 PM

Surely the most obvious advantage of a hand crossbow is that you can fire it while swing on a rope, holding on to a ladder, etc.

Derpaligtr

2018-08-09, 06:15 PM

Surely the most obvious advantage of a hand crossbow is that you can fire it while swing on a rope, holding on to a ladder, etc.

You can throw a dart, javelin, goblin, trident, or dagger too.

Though, I guess you won't look as cool...

Citan

2018-08-09, 06:26 PM

You can throw a dart, javelin, goblin, trident, or dagger too.

Though, I guess you won't look as cool...
It makes no difference per RAW but as a DM I would certainly consider putting the shot at disadvantage or requiring an Acrobatics / Athletics check in some cases.
After all, it's hard to make a big movement when you are right besides a vertical rock wall. Especially with bigger throwables like javelins.

Derpaligtr

2018-08-09, 06:55 PM

It makes no difference per RAW but as a DM I would certainly consider putting the shot at disadvantage or requiring an Acrobatics / Athletics check in some cases.
After all, it's hard to make a big movement when you are right besides a vertical rock wall. Especially with bigger throwables like javelins.

Eh, I prefer rule of cool in my games.

Edit

Also, I hope you impose the same sort ofnpenalty for spellcasting while currently doing something other than standing on solid ground, so things are fair.

MeeposFire

2018-08-10, 12:15 AM

I don't remember exactly where it is ported from, but the original version looks like Egyptian Hieroglyphics denoting the bonuses each weapon had at each level of mastery. It used a lot of symbols for each separate ability, so it was difficult to read. This version just converted that into text so it's easier for someone to actually read and use the table.

EDIT: Clicking the about tab says "The Red Curse and Savage Coast" so my guess is it's from Birthright or Savage Coast campaign setting.

Hmm what you are descibing sounds very much like the table that you would find in the Rules Cyclopedia which was a D&D book. I wonder if one of those other books reprinted it and modified it for AD&D or if somebody from that site modified one of the versions for D&D for AD&D? I guess I will probably never know.

Mordaedil

2018-08-10, 01:11 AM

It has been pointed out multiple times what including crossbow expert (or crossbow expert and sharpshooter) does to this weapon. It has been posited that if you need 1-2 feats to make a weapon viable (even if those feats actually make it springboard to the lead), it is still suboptimal design. I'm not sure I agree, but within said framework, the critique is valid.
I disagree with such an assesment. For it to be sub-optimal, it would mean that other weapons, given 1-2 different feats, can exceed the efficiency of the given weapon compared directly. If they can, then yes, it is sub-optimal, if they can't, it's a worthy investment for those who opt to go that route. "Feats better spent elsewhere" only applies if said feats can actually make such a huge difference that the other weapon becomes less powerful.

The hand crossbow thus is in a unique position where it is a normally underserviced weapon in the hands of an amateur, but in the hands of an expert at its use, it is a truly lethal weapon. If taking 1 or 2 feats is all it takes, that is a significant investment, but you can't argue the results if it pays out.

Citan

2018-08-10, 03:59 AM

Eh, I prefer rule of cool in my games.

Edit

Also, I hope you impose the same sort ofnpenalty for spellcasting while currently doing something other than standing on solid ground, so things are fair.
Thank you very much for the useless implied judgement. Very helpful.
Especially when I said *some* cases. Wouldn't you find natural to give a little difficulty to a Barbarian (STR first), suspensed a few inches from concrete wall, that wants to throw a javelin, unless he's proficient in Acrobatics? I do, and my players do. Because the Barbarian will need to either pull off a sort of jump to gain distance from the wall (provided he's on a rope) or try an improbable position to keep himself griped on the wall while freeing enough space to be able to correctly propel the weapon. Contrarily to a Rogue throwing a dagger (less space needed, plus Rogues are Dextrous and often proficient in Acrobatics anyways, so it's useless to make them roll for something they will succeed with 100% chance) or anyone shooting a hand crossbow (of course they can't shoot repeateadly unless on a rope or they were as smart as finding a way to keep the weapon still while they pick another bolt with the same hand).
It's basic physics here. And my players like physics.
So keep your on-the-fly, unthoughtful preconceptions to you plz.
Building an opinion on someone else's "coolness" without having all elements nor knowing if players enjoy it is honestly stupid.

Also, no, I wouldn't usually impose the same sort of penaly for a spellcaster, unless maybe he's using a staff or having very low Dexterity, or the climbing is hard. A caster is not actually throwing anything physical after all, and many focus are small, so unless the player specifically described his character as doing very big moves / using the whole body / throwing components around, there is no reason why he would have much trouble doing movements with one arm while firmly keeping himself to the wall/rope with the other.

Again, *some* cases.

Asmotherion

2018-08-10, 04:16 AM

It's whole point, as a standalone weapon, is that it can be used with one hand, with an other weapon drawn.

Optimally, it is used with the feat "Crossbow Expert", so that someone who has more than one attacks can ignore it's Loading Property, and fire with it as much as they wish (together with Sharpshooter and the Archery FS, for maximum damage at minimum Accuracy Cost).

To balance out it's lethality, it also uses up costly ammunition (as opposed to almost every other attack in the game that is for free, like sword attacks and cantrips), something the DM will remember when he sees how much damage you deal, and will take your money for it.

It is, overall one of the deadlyest weapons in the game in the right hands, and that is it's purpose; To either take it and optimise around it, or leave it.

Willie the Duck

2018-08-10, 06:44 AM

I disagree with such an assesment. For it to be sub-optimal, it would mean that other weapons, given 1-2 different feats, can exceed the efficiency of the given weapon compared directly. If they can, then yes, it is sub-optimal, if they can't, it's a worthy investment for those who opt to go that route. "Feats better spent elsewhere" only applies if said feats can actually make such a huge difference that the other weapon becomes less powerful.

The hand crossbow thus is in a unique position where it is a normally underserviced weapon in the hands of an amateur, but in the hands of an expert at its use, it is a truly lethal weapon. If taking 1 or 2 feats is all it takes, that is a significant investment, but you can't argue the results if it pays out.

It's certainly well within reasonable design decisions. I'm not sure if I think it is a good or bad decision. I rather dislike that the game seems fairly weighted towards the idea that CE+SS hand crossbow ranged fighters and PAM/GWM/Sentinel halberd melee fighters are one's go-to option for successful martial character, but this feat isn't the linchpin of that issue (how SS/GWM synergize with relatively easy was of getting to-hit bonuses or advantage on attacks being the primary one there).

Part of me wants the decision (at ASI-spending time) between +2 to your primary combat stat and a combat feat to be a really tough decision. And part of me also wants generalist martials not locked-in to a specific weapon to make their 'build' work to be, if not the norm, at least competitive. Those horses have already left the barn, though.

Certainly, given other feats like PAM (which isn't quite identical, in that a halberd isn't strictly suboptimal compared to say a great sword, since it has reach), CE is not out of bounds with the rest of the system, as it stands.

Tanarii

2018-08-10, 09:01 AM

I rather dislike that the game seems fairly weighted towards the idea that CE+SS hand crossbow ranged fighters and PAM/GWM/Sentinel halberd melee fighters are one's go-to option for successful martial character,
Personally I'd be fine if the optimal mechanical combat styles were ones that were somewhat reasonably optimal IRL for individual or small squad skirmishing. Or at least common for it in popular perspective of how people fought historically, which almost certainly has nothing to do with reality. :smallbiggrin:

I've always gotten the impression that Hand Crossbow popularity is a function of people really wanting to make a not so anachronistic D&D pistolier/gunslinger. Wands are another common approach for that, especially MM wands.

KorvinStarmast

2018-08-10, 09:22 AM

I've always gotten the impression that Hand Crossbow popularity is a function of people really wanting to make a not so anachronistic D&D pistolier/gunslinger. Wands are another common approach for that, especially MM wands. That too. :smallsmile:

Willie the Duck

2018-08-10, 09:22 AM

Personally I'd be fine if the optimal mechanical combat styles were ones that were somewhat reasonably optimal IRL for individual or small squad skirmishing. Or at least common for it in popular perspective of how people fought historically, which almost certainly has nothing to do with reality. :smallbiggrin:

People fought historically in crimes, police actions, and war, just like now. Very different from what most D&D characters do. Still, I agree that--historically, knife/sword, axe, spear/slight variation on spear, and club/mace were used in 90%+ of all combat because they worked, it's a little annoying when recent editions have tended to favor imaginary weapons like spiked chains and hand crossbows. Halberds at least are real and are cool weapons, so half of 5e's optimization curve is acceptable to me :smallbiggrin:.

But honestly, I wish the weapon choice was not the biggest factor in how powerful your martial was. Maybe yes have to decide at character creation if you were headed towards Str-based vs. Dex-based (or deliberately switch-hit between), but if you ended up finding first a +1 pike at 4th level and a +2 battle axe at 8th and a pair of +3 scimitars at 20th, that you wouldn't have felt incentivized to make an exclusive specialization decision from early in your character's career. Such was not to be, I guess.

JackPhoenix

2018-08-10, 09:30 AM

Greywander

2018-08-10, 01:49 PM

Considering that melee weapon + hand crossbow seems to be the particular niche that the hand crossbow is designed for, is there any problem with allowing a character to load the crossbow while wielding a weapon in their other hand? Slings have a similar issue; historically they were used with shields, but adding this to the sling without changing the hand crossbow makes the sling much more appealing. So what if we did something like this:

Sling. A sling may be reloaded even when holding a shield in your other hand.

Hand Crossbow. A hand crossbow may be reloaded even when holding a weapon or item in your other hand.

This creates a distinction between the sling and the hand crossbow (where before the hand crossbow was basically a sling that did 1d6 piercing instead of 1d4 bludgeoning) where each weapon has it's own niche. It also prevents any hand crossbow + shield + Crossbow Expert cheese. Slings become more appealing to classes that use shields (clerics, in particular, come to mind) while the hand crossbow is more appealing to rogues, who can't use shields anyway, but who do like to dual wield or use items.

I'd like to find a way to work the hand crossbow into the dual wielding rules, considering it already has the light property, but I think doing so would negate one of the benefits of the Crossbow Expert feat. One possibility might be to allow you to make an opportunity attack with a hand crossbow when someone misses you with an attack. This would make it even more appealing to rogues, but would only come up when they get attacked (which they generally want to avoid).

Willie the Duck

2018-08-10, 02:19 PM

Corsair14

2018-08-10, 02:21 PM

Never seen any reference myself of a slinger carrying a shield. If anything it would have been a small buckler strapped to the arm to give freedom of movement. Certainly not a larger shield that would get in the way.

I dont think there is any way to get around the whole needing two hands to load it. In use you could have one in one hand and a melee weapon in the other, but after the first shot you would have to drop or sheath the melee weapon to reload it or just fire the bow and go full melee. Again this is not a weapon meant to cause damage. It was meant to shoot someone with a poison and let the poison do the work. Even the drow use it for their sleep darts primarily. I do remember somewhere them having special bolts with either continual light or continual darkness on them to screw with their opponents during ambushes. They didnt keep them in their hands when they got into the fight though.

Greywander

2018-08-10, 02:51 PM

Modern D&D can't seem to decide how abstract it wants its combat to be. If you stretched the combat to 10-12 seconds or more, made it more clear that the movement was net movement including some back-and-forth, didn't count the drawing of every weapon as a item-manipulation action, and otherwise acknowledged that we were only seeing the high-points of the combat (so like it theoretically was back in TSR-D&D), this would certainly fit. Heck, if you could assume that (unless you were like flying X feet up in the air or the like) you could probably put your off-hand weapon down for a second to reload your crossbow, that would work too.
I think 5e has already jumped the gun on this. Wikipedia has this to on what I presume would equate to a heavy crossbow:

Usually these could only shoot two bolts per minute versus twelve or more with a skilled archer
A fighter (with Crossbow Expert) can, by burning their Action Surge, shoot a heavy crossbow 8 times in 6 seconds. Without Action Surge, they still average 40 shots per minute, if a round is 6 seconds. Even at 1st level, they can shoot a crossbow 10 times per minute, far faster than what is realistic.

I'm all for realism, but at some point you have to consider what makes sense mechanically, and the hand crossbow as written doesn't make sense. Letting you reload while dual wielding might not be the most realistic, but it's what makes the weapon functional within the rules. Fluff it however you like, maybe you flip the crossbow in the air, grab a bolt, catch the crossbow by the string and sling it back to span it, flip it again to settle the bolt in place, then do one more flip to grab it by the handle. When you think about it, it's kind of a ridiculous weapon, so you might as well ham it up while using it. Realistically, it's just a small crossbow, a toy more than a weapon.

Never seen any reference myself of a slinger carrying a shield. If anything it would have been a small buckler strapped to the arm to give freedom of movement. Certainly not a larger shield that would get in the way.

I dont think there is any way to get around the whole needing two hands to load it. In use you could have one in one hand and a melee weapon in the other, but after the first shot you would have to drop or sheath the melee weapon to reload it or just fire the bow and go full melee. Again this is not a weapon meant to cause damage. It was meant to shoot someone with a poison and let the poison do the work. Even the drow use it for their sleep darts primarily. I do remember somewhere them having special bolts with either continual light or continual darkness on them to screw with their opponents during ambushes. They didnt keep them in their hands when they got into the fight though.
Loading a sling while using a shield (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXiUDJRgiUc)

From the Darien Exploring Expedition (1854):
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/DEE_D026_slinger.png (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DEE_D026_slinger.png)

Loading a sling from behind a shield would probably have been slower, but as pointed out above it's already possible in D&D to shoot a crossbow at ridiculous speeds, even at 1st level. I don't think loading a sling while holding a shield would be that much further of a stretch.

Fnissalot

2018-08-10, 03:19 PM

Loading a sling while using a shield (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXiUDJRgiUc)

From the Darien Exploring Expedition (1854):
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/DEE_D026_slinger.png (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DEE_D026_slinger.png)

Loading a sling from behind a shield would probably have been slower, but as pointed out above it's already possible in D&D to shoot a crossbow at ridiculous speeds, even at 1st level. I don't think loading a sling while holding a shield would be that much further of a stretch.

Lindybeige brings up a lot of interesting things about slings in that and other videos he has made.

Derpaligtr

2018-08-10, 05:08 PM

I think 5e has already jumped the gun on this. Wikipedia has this to on what I presume would equate to a heavy crossbow:

A fighter (with Crossbow Expert) can, by burning their Action Surge, shoot a heavy crossbow 8 times in 6 seconds. Without Action Surge, they still average 40 shots per minute, if a round is 6 seconds. Even at 1st level, they can shoot a crossbow 10 times per minute, far faster than what is realistic.

I'm all for realism, but at some point you have to consider what makes sense mechanically, and the hand crossbow as written doesn't make sense. Letting you reload while dual wielding might not be the most realistic, but it's what makes the weapon functional within the rules. Fluff it however you like, maybe you flip the crossbow in the air, grab a bolt, catch the crossbow by the string and sling it back to span it, flip it again to settle the bolt in place, then do one more flip to grab it by the handle. When you think about it, it's kind of a ridiculous weapon, so you might as well ham it up while using it. Realistically, it's just a small crossbow, a toy more than a weapon.

Loading a sling while using a shield (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXiUDJRgiUc)

From the Darien Exploring Expedition (1854):
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/DEE_D026_slinger.png (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DEE_D026_slinger.png)

Loading a sling from behind a shield would probably have been slower, but as pointed out above it's already possible in D&D to shoot a crossbow at ridiculous speeds, even at 1st level. I don't think loading a sling while holding a shield would be that much further of a stretch.

My favorite shields are in Final Fantasy XIII-Lightning Returns. Her shield hand is mostly free.

Asmotherion

2018-08-10, 05:25 PM

Someone with CE can ignore the Loading property, but Loading property limits the number of times you can shoot it in a turn. It doesn't remove the Ammunition property, which require you to have free hand to reload it. So even with Crossbow Expert, you'll have just one shot, if you hold something in your other hand.

Yes, didn't imply otherwise.

As a Non Crossbow Expert:
Let's suppose you have one at hand, and have put a poisoned arrow in it. Then Draw a Rappier. If the Enemy you're fighting happens to take a Disengage Action, you can still Fire a Poisoned Arrow at them. That I believe is it's Tactical Point as an off-hand weapon.

As a Crossbow Expert, you don't use a melee weapon. You just spam Arrows.

Thrudd

2018-08-10, 05:54 PM

Personally I'd be fine if the optimal mechanical combat styles were ones that were somewhat reasonably optimal IRL for individual or small squad skirmishing. Or at least common for it in popular perspective of how people fought historically, which almost certainly has nothing to do with reality. :smallbiggrin:

I've always gotten the impression that Hand Crossbow popularity is a function of people really wanting to make a not so anachronistic D&D pistolier/gunslinger. Wands are another common approach for that, especially MM wands.

I agree. Unlike most of the other mundane weapons, the hand crossbow only functions as depicted if it is magical or some form of anachronistic technology (anachronistic even for D&D's normal degree of anachronism). For that matter, the same goes for the way they allow all the crossbows to work - but at least the others start out as something more realistic (before you apply the feat that allows your crossbows to magically span themselves).

It should be fine in a magi-tech setting like Eberron, in which case you could as easily depict it as some kind of ray gun or blaster, which would seem cooler to me than a magical crossbow with some sort of enchanted string that can produce a much higher than normal amount of velocity over its tiny powerstroke, that for some reason is not used on larger crossbows. Just replace all crossbows with Barsoom-style guns or magic ray/blaster guns that take time to charge in between shots and require consumable ammo or energy packs.

War_lord

2018-08-10, 11:06 PM

Because there are a lot of people who have never seeen or heard of GURPS, I think it's imoportant to point out that inclusion in the GURPS weapons list (like this (https://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/GURPS_Weapons) partial one) does very little to defend the status of Salvatore's spawn in 5e given that gurps almost certainly has a light saber/laser sword & everyone knows kirk would beat young skywalker in a fight to the death on vulcan.

The weapons table getting pruned to snip all the historical variants of the various weapons is a very different thing than the weapons unique to all but one setting also getting pruned, there is nothing wrong with settings putting their unique weapons back in given that the hand crossbow & all other weapons should have been a section of "exotic unless native then $whatever" with special mechanic as of their own in either the phb or dmg to start off

The Hand crossbow shows up in the 4th edition Low Tech book, which is historically orientated. Justified by the existence of Chinese models, although they give it fantasy level damage totals. That's very different to the inclusion of Force Swords in Ultra tech because Low Tech doesn't deal in hypotheticals (leaving aside that one of the criticisms of ultra tech 4th is how it uses concepts ripped directly from sci-fi movies without technical explanation).

I'm not sure why you're on about Salvatore again given that Drow are a Gygax invention and used hand crossbows back then as well. Well, I am sure, but I get mods after me and butt hurt PMs every time I talk about the motives behind certain posters using this rhetorical tactic.

The difference between the Hand Crossbow and the double weapon, is that a Hand Crossbow is defeated by physics, but this can be handwaved in High Fantasy making it somewhat useful. The double weapon fad of the early 2000's is just stupid. A sword blade on the end of a haft is a decent pole arm, sticking another full sized sword blade on the other end just makes it useless as polearm and as a sword. It's now the length and maneuverability of a polearm with the reach of a sword, and you can't even carry it around. You can't rest it like a staff like you can with a spear, because you'd ruin one of the blades. You can't carry it in a sheath, you'd have to use axe style leather covers for each blade, which also means you can't bring it into action quickly. It also costs as much as two good swords. And for all that the only advantage you could possibly get, even with super powers is "it looks cool".

trctelles

2018-08-11, 09:31 AM

I'll start my post by saying that I'm a BIG TIME lover of the Hand Crossbow in D&D 5e. At first, I liked it by the mechanics, but physichs made me grim a little bit at it. I had the same problem most people have with it. It felt REALLY clunky to shoot once and then proceed to reload the hand crossbow every time you fire it again. High-level fighters with their 8 shots with action surge made it really hard to imagine a person doing it in 6 seconds.
After doing some research, I've found some youtube videos about Pump Action crossbows and Repeating crossbows, and it changed the way I see crossbows in D&D. Those videos made a HUGE difference in the way I imagine my fighter using his hand crossbow. I've selected a few videos to share here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAnJZiGy8wU ,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SSWweQDq_I ,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcrNP0giWv8 ,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug4HR-3CJqU ,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNTerJh1ntQ ,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eu_kbfr_tdU ,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEuIwpYv3P0&feature=youtu.be .

Almost all of these videos are DIY or Home Made videos on how to build the crossbow, so it wouldn't be too absurd to imagine it being possible on a D&D setting (Well, at least I think that a world where things like Artificers and Gunslingers are possible, someone could do a repeating crossbow like the ones in the videos.)

Anyway, I just wanted to share the videos, cause they really made a difference for me. I can now play with a Crossbow character in my games and don't worry on how the hell does he shoot so many times in 6 seconds.

War_lord

2018-08-11, 10:06 AM

Nifft

2018-08-11, 10:36 AM

You just need to add an alchemical explosive to rapidly reset the arming mechanism.

Maelynn

2018-08-11, 10:57 AM

You just need to add an alchemical explosive to rapidly reset the arming mechanism.

Or just go Discworld style and attach a small imp to the bow, that can pull back the mechanism after every release.

trctelles

2018-08-11, 11:04 AM

So your answer is to take all of the feasibility problems of the hand crossbow... and add all the problems of the repeating crossbow. Pistol Crossbows are notoriously underpowered, repeating crossbows are notoriously underpowered (hence why they never caught on outside of china), combining the two would be laughable. In contrast absurd reloading times aren't an issue because D&D characters don't generally have normal agility or strength.

As you stated yourself on a previous post, other weapons have the same feasibility problem, like the double scimitar, and the "rule of cool" enters and most people go with the "I'm ok with that, it's feasible and looks cool". To me, it's easier to IMAGINE the action of firing multiple times in 6 seconds with a repeating crossbow/pistol crossbow combo than it is to imagine someone firing, bracing it in the ground and pulling the string with the windlass 8 times with ridiculous speed. It SEEMS clunky, don't you agree?

The way I see it, the fact that the repeating crossbow is a real thing adds a bit more likelihood than saying "My crossbow reload with magic strings", but YMMV. Magical worlds like D&D have lots of things that don't actually work in the real word, but if you force your mind a little bit you can accept it (Like forging a sword from a meteor. It IS possible with nowadays techniques, but the iron and steel that you obtain from pure meteors is not that good. Or Obsidian X weapon. We know obsidian is just glass, and as far as we know today, it's impossible to forge a sword or whatever that would work more than once).

I own a couple of crossbows myself, and I do know that in the real world, the ones I showed in the videos pale in comparison to a composite or just a normal crossbow.

Tetrasodium

2018-08-11, 11:21 AM

As you stated yourself on a previous post, other weapons have the same feasibility problem, like the double scimitar, and the "rule of cool" enters and most people go with the "I'm ok with that, it's feasible and looks cool". To me, it's easier to IMAGINE the action of firing multiple times in 6 seconds with a repeating crossbow/pistol crossbow combo than it is to imagine someone firing, bracing it in the ground and pulling the string with the windlass 8 times with ridiculous speed. It SEEMS clunky, don't you agree?

The way I see it, the fact that the repeating crossbow is a real thing adds a bit more likelihood than saying "My crossbow reload with making strings", but YMMV. Magical worlds like D&D have lots of things that don't actually work in the real word, but if you force your mind a little bit you can accept it (Like forging a sword from a meteor. It IS possible with nowadays techniques, but the iron and steel that you obtain from pure meteors is not that good. Or Obsidian X weapon. We know obsidian is just glass, and as far as we know today, it's impossible to forge a sword or whatever that would work more than once).

I own a couple of crossbows myself, and I do know that in the real world, the ones I showed in the videos pale in comparison to a composite or just a normal crossbow.

Correct & agreed. The problem is less "it's not feasible without rule of cooling it" than the simple fact that it is a symptom of a larger problem where ther lore, fluff, & historical tidbits of every other setting are shouldered aside to make room for those of one particular setting in the adventures & core books. Thankfullt, WotC seems to have recognized that error (http://dndadventurersleague.org/in-which-we-talk-about-factions/) & confirmed they won't be repeating at least some of it (https://twitter.com/DnD_AdvLeague/status/1028127164003229697). With any luck the realization continues & we can stop having threadslike this in favor of ones about the style/lore/flufff/etc of the various setting specific weapons

War_lord

2018-08-11, 11:33 PM

As you stated yourself on a previous post, other weapons have the same feasibility problem, like the double scimitar, and the "rule of cool" enters and most people go with the "I'm ok with that, it's feasible and looks cool". To me, it's easier to IMAGINE the action of firing multiple times in 6 seconds with a repeating crossbow/pistol crossbow combo than it is to imagine someone firing, bracing it in the ground and pulling the string with the windlass 8 times with ridiculous speed. It SEEMS clunky, don't you agree?

Hand Crossbows don't have windlasses, it is a simple pullback system. The issue here is that you don't have a clue what you're talking about. And no, the point I was making was that the hand crossbow is infeasible but theoretically useful, some historical examples even exist (although they're basically melee weapons for all the power they have). The double scimitar is just unjustifiably stupid, it physically doesn't work as a weapon, and if you look at 3.5 illustrations of characters carrying the thing, every artist gave up and just had them pose with it awkwardly. Even if you know nothing about weapons, you just have to picture someone trying to swing the thing with any kind of intent or force to work out why it's a physically stupid concept. So the only people who could possibly have any time for the double Scimitar are people who are incapable of basic critical thinking.

See, the hand crossbow is like fantasy versions of dual wielding. Not how it works in real life, but it's a reasonable enough heroic exaggeration to suspend disbelief. Or oversized Warhammers, reasonable heroic exaggeration of something that did exist. Using the double scimitar as an actual combat weapon is physically impossible unless you're fighting a child, which is the exact audience the Phantom Menace was aimed at when it inflicted double weapons upon the world.

Correct & agreed. The problem is less "it's not feasible without rule of cooling it" than the simple fact that it is a symptom of a larger problem where ther lore, fluff, & historical tidbits of every other setting are shouldered aside to make room for those of one particular setting in the adventures & core books. Thankfullt, WotC seems to have recognized that error (http://dndadventurersleague.org/in-which-we-talk-about-factions/) & confirmed they won't be repeating at least some of it (https://twitter.com/DnD_AdvLeague/status/1028127164003229697). With any luck the realization continues & we can stop having threadslike this in favor of ones about the style/lore/flufff/etc of the various setting specific weapons

The Hand crossbow is not a setting specific weapon.

Tetrasodium

2018-08-12, 04:36 AM

The Hand crossbow is not a setting specific weapon.

Drizzt, Lolth, & the like are however. The hand crossbow had to survive the weapon pruning because fans of Salvatore like to pretend that his children & their deeds apply to every setting as evidenced by things like humans of the forgotten realms & all the drizzt/lolth fanservice in the core books. The hand crossbow is effectively setting specific because there is only one group who uses it & that group is Salvatore's drow.

Theoboldi

2018-08-12, 07:31 AM

Drizzt, Lolth, & the like are however. The hand crossbow had to survive the weapon pruning because fans of Salvatore like to pretend that his children & their deeds apply to every setting as evidenced by things like humans of the forgotten realms & all the drizzt/lolth fanservice in the core books. The hand crossbow is effectively setting specific because there is only one group who uses it & that group is Salvatore's drow.

That statement is either a wilful lie for the purposes of bashing a setting you don't like, or you claiming your own beliefs as facts despite being completely ignorant to the actual truth. Drow have been using Hand Crossbows since their very first appearance, which was in the Hall of the Fire Giant King module. Which was written by Gary Gygax in 1978 as part of the Greyhawk setting.

To quote the relevant part:

As described, all Drow move silently and with graceful quickness, even wearing their black mesh of armor. Each Drow carries a small amount of personal wealth in a soft leather bag worn around the neck with his or her mail. In addition, they arm themselves with long dagger and short sword of adamantite alloy ( + 1 to as high as +3 or +4 borne by noblefolk), 50% or more carry small crossbows which are held in one hand (6" range light crossbow) and shoot dart coated with a poison which makes the victim unconscious. Save is at -4. They inflict 1 to 3 hit points of damage in addition. Some few Drow also carry adamantite maces ( +1 to +5) and/or small javelins (also poisoned) with atlatis (9" range, +3/+2/ +1 to hit at short/medium/ long range).

Relevant part highlighted.

FYI, I don't care for the Forgotten Realms setting. I've never used it aside from one adventure I ran that was set in it, and I've never read any of the novels. However, I do dislike the spreading of misinformation.

And just to dissuade any claims that these were based on Salvatore's creations, seeing as how Wikipedia claims he had been working on the Forgotten Realms since 1967, here's a quote from Gary Gygax himself from this old ENworld thread. (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?208804-Gygaxian-Monsters/page4&p=3813928#post3813928)

While a few of the critters in questions are purely products of my own imagination--carrion crawler, gelatinous cube, roper for instance--there were many sources of inspiration for the majority of the monsters, and I will name a few:

Drow: A listing in the Funk & Wagnall's Unexpurgated Dictionary, and no other source at all. I wanted a most unusual race as the main power in the Underdark, so used the reference to "dark elves" from the dictionary to create the Drow. (And nary a one has crow's feet).

Also, Lolth showed up in the very same adventure path as Hall of the Fire Giant King, only a few modules later. She's not a Salvatore creation either.

War_lord

2018-08-12, 07:34 AM

The hand crossbow is effectively setting specific because there is only one group who uses it & that group is Salvatore's drow.

The hand crossbow, or at least Drows using it, first appears in "G3: Hall of the first giant king" in 1978, nine years prior to the release of the Forgotten Realms and eleven years prior to the release of "The Crystal Shard". And it was also the first stat-ed appearance of the Drow. so your claim here is totally divorced from any kind of reason. Unless R.A. Salvatore is a time traveler and Gygax a liar your claim isn't a matter of opinion here, it's simply wrong.

Care to retract?

That statement is either a wilful lie for the purposes of bashing a setting you don't like, or you claiming your own beliefs as facts despite being completely ignorant to the actual truth.

Or it's both, and Tetra is so ignorant of D&D history that he thought the lie was credible.

Tetrasodium

2018-08-12, 10:48 AM

That statement is either a wilful lie for the purposes of bashing a setting you don't like, or you claiming your own beliefs as facts despite being completely ignorant to the actual truth. Drow have been using Hand Crossbows since their very first appearance, which was in the Hall of the Fire Giant King module. Which was written by Gary Gygax in 1978 as part of the Greyhawk setting.

To quote the relevant part:

Relevant part highlighted.

FYI, I don't care for the Forgotten Realms setting. I've never used it aside from one adventure I ran that was set in it, and I've never read any of the novels. However, I do dislike the spreading of misinformation.

And just to dissuade any claims that these were based on Salvatore's creations, seeing as how Wikipedia claims he had been working on the Forgotten Realms since 1967, here's a quote from Gary Gygax himself from this old ENworld thread. (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?208804-Gygaxian-Monsters/page4&p=3813928#post3813928)

Also, Lolth showed up in the very same adventure path as Hall of the Fire Giant King, only a few modules later. She's not a Salvatore creation either.

It is neither, but you prove my point in your own poor understanding of settings incompatible with Salvatore's work. The drow of dragonlance, darksun, & eberron are wildly different, dead or wildly different, & wildly different respectively... The same applies to many of the deities included in Salvatore's work. Fans of Salvatore's work will point to ancient modules like the one you note to either disown or just defend the virulent infection of lore from his work & the setting it uses into other settings even when it displaces & contradicts the lore & fluff of those other settings. The existence of a forty year old module does not override the setting specific lore of more recent settings. The 5e core books should have accepted that as an obvious no brainer & avoided presenting the lore from one setting in a way that implies it applies to all settings while excluding lore from any setting that might conflict... Instead, we got fan service to Salvatore's children who have fans that refuse to believe that other settings might be incompatible. Before you deny it, I encourage you to look at the wording in the sidebar on PHB24. I have no problems with forgotten realms in the forgotten realms, my problem is that it has not stayed that way in 5e & is only starting to change.

QuickLyRaiNbow

2018-08-12, 11:11 AM

It is neither, but you prove my point in your own poor understanding of settings incompatible with Salvatore's work.

So, uh, what is it? Were you simply mistaken? Would a mea culpa kill you?

The drow of dragonlance, darksun, & eberron are wildly different, dead or wildly different, & wildly different respectively...

No one denies this. (Also, Dragonlance doesn't have drow. They're not wildly different; they're non-existent. Dark elves are just elves who don't have a G in their alignment.)

Tetra, you'd get a better reaction if you stopped acting like you're all-knowing while telling us that Harrison Ford is a CIA agent out to irradiate our brains with microwaves. Your problem is the homogenization of lore. I sympathize. I don't like the way the PHB works either. That sidebar is dumb. The human names entry is dumb. I get it, I really do. I had hoped, though, that the publication of a dedicated Eberron Campaign Setting might have helped calm your blood-rage, especially since it specifically says that some of the bits you find so problematic don't apply to the ECS.

Instead of telling us what your problems are with the 5E metasetting, you're telling us that Author Man is responsible for things that occurred before he ever picked up a pencil, that Author Man is some sort of Sauron in the Middle-Earth of canon. Salvatore is an author who's written a lot of books, but he's only a quite little fellow in a wide world.

War_lord

2018-08-12, 12:01 PM

It is neither, but you prove my point in your own poor understanding of settings incompatible with Salvatore's work. The drow of dragonlance, darksun, & eberron are wildly different, dead or wildly different, & wildly different respectively...

The Drow of darksun and Eberron are wildly different from the Drow of the rest of D&D (they don't exist in Dragonlance). The Drow of Greyhawk are the originals and those are the ones that carried into Forgotten Realms Nentir Vale and into the core assumed setting of 5th edition. I understand that the Drow of Darksun and Eberron are different, but that's their problem and the core books shouldn't and don't have to spend page time needlessly confusing new players by talking about exceptions to the normal rules that aren't going to be relevant to the majority of them. That's what setting books are for, to explain how a given world departs from the generic assumed setting.

The same applies to many of the deities included in Salvatore's work. Fans of Salvatore's work will point to ancient modules like the one you note to either disown or just defend the virulent infection of lore from his work & the setting it uses into other settings even when it displaces & contradicts the lore & fluff of those other settings. The existence of a forty year old module does not override the setting specific lore of more recent settings.

Except that your specific claim was that Drow and Lolth and the hand crossbow were quote "effectively setting specific because there is only one group who uses it & that group is Salvatore's drow." when that's just wrong. The guy and fanbase you're going after so hard because you don't like how Drow are depicted in mainline D&D had nothing to do with that depiction. Your statements about Salvatore would be overly emotional even if they were true. As it stands everything you've claimed in this thread is objectively a falsehood, and you just refuse to admit that. I'm not sure how you expect anyone to engage with you on a serious level when you, frankly, show disinterest in even the appearance of rationality.

The 5e core books should have accepted that as an obvious no brainer & avoided presenting the lore from one setting in a way that implies it applies to all settings while excluding lore from any setting that might conflict...

See, if your posts were just "I am concerned that 5th edition suffers from overly homogenized lore", people would have less of an issue with your posts. The problem Tetra, is that it doesn't stop there and you've spent several years now, here and on other forums, anger ranting against a particular corner of the fandom because you've decided that they're responsible (in some cases you accuse them of personal responsibility) for everything you dislike in D&D.

Instead, we got fan service to Salvatore's children who have fans that refuse to believe that other settings might be incompatible. Before you deny it, I encourage you to look at the wording in the sidebar on PHB24. I have no problems with forgotten realms in the forgotten realms, my problem is that it has not stayed that way in 5e & is only starting to change.

It's a little hard to take claims you have no problem with the Forgotten Realms when you pepper your posts with angry accusative terms like " Salvatore's children" and "fans that refuse to believe that other settings might be incompatible.". It's a little hard to believe when even after it's pointed out that the lore you're so angry about has nothing to do with the Forgotten Realms you still keep asserting that it's somehow R.A. Salvatore's fault. Logically it's Gygax you should be angry at, that's who actually created the Drow, Drizzt and the general idea of redeemable Drow is the only real Salvatore/Greenwood contribution to the formula. Drizzt wasn't even meant to be a main character in those books, he just caught on with the (mostly teenage) readership.

EDIT: I'm also going to say that you're allowed hate the metasetting if you want. Just admit it's the metasetting you hate and be honest about that instead of going after visible figures who literally weren't with TSR when these creative or business decisions were made.

Tetrasodium

2018-08-12, 12:22 PM

So, uh, what is it? Were you simply mistaken? Would a mea culpa kill you?

No one denies this. (Also, Dragonlance doesn't have drow. They're not wildly different; they're non-existent. Dark elves are just elves who don't have a G in their alignment.)

Tetra, you'd get a better reaction if you stopped acting like you're all-knowing while telling us that Harrison Ford is a CIA agent out to irradiate our brains with microwaves. Your problem is the homogenization of lore. I sympathize. I don't like the way the PHB works either. That sidebar is dumb. The human names entry is dumb. I get it, I really do. I had hoped, though, that the publication of a dedicated Eberron Campaign Setting might have helped calm your blood-rage, especially since it specifically says that some of the bits you find so problematic don't apply to the ECS.

Instead of telling us what your problems are with the 5E metasetting, you're telling us that Author Man is responsible for things that occurred before he ever picked up a pencil, that Author Man is some sort of Sauron in the Middle-Earth of canon. Salvatore is an author who's written a lot of books, but he's only a quite little fellow in a wide world.

Nah I level criticism at fans of his work because its treatment in 5e is a continuation of what started (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/368466-Why-Lolth) in 4e & ddo to appease their cries for it to be more like the realms. You are correct that wgte has a good bit of in setting lore developed top protect it from the fans I mentioned along with a pretty significant number of callouts to specific examples that no sane person would have figured that settings would need to defend their lore from tsr/WotC itself deciding that another setting should contradict & ignore the lore of a setting they were writing. "Homogenization of lore" is indeed the problem, but you can not deny that the choices wotc made in that homogenization of lore were basically 100% in favor of one particular setting that one particular author wrote for. I get the feeling that you take offense over my not allowing warlord & Theoboldi to distance those choices, forgotten realms, & fans of Salvatore by pointing at an ancient obscure module written 4 decades ago.

As for thew "blood-rage" you mention, I literally said "The weapons table getting pruned to snip all the historical variants of the various weapons is a very different thing than the weapons unique to all but one setting also getting pruned, there is nothing wrong with settings putting their unique weapons back in given that the hand crossbow & all other weapons should have been a section of "exotic unless native then $whatever" with special mechanic as of their own in either the phb or dmg to start off" (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23286542&postcount=56) while dismissing the relevancy of it being included in GURPS along with every other weapon in existence only to have warlord come along attacking content in wgte while suggesting (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23291915&postcount=0) that the hand crossbow is not an important bit of the lore to drow in one particular setting where drizzt happens to exist in, along with a 40 year old module.

I suppose that you are right though. The following posts in this thread should have included words along the lines of "and an module old enough to have kids who are themselves old enough to legally drink in most states",but really that gets to be silly... especially if we are only including content that supports one particular setting over all others. I don't like the fact that wotc tried to homoginize the lore, but that is a different matter than fans of one particular setting presenting the lore of that setting as being more than it is & WotC listening to them because nobody bothered to argue otherwise out of politeness.

20 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23284087&postcount=20)
22 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23284127&postcount=22)
27 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23284247&postcount=27)
45 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23285736&postcount=45)
56 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23286542&postcount=56)
58 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23286759&postcount=58)
so on & so forth

edit: apparently I have a dopppelganger who has been posting about this kind of thing far longer than I have been. I didn't post about it back in 3.5 because there was no reason to. I skipped 4e because it made my eyes bleed. When I was playing ddo, my posts were more about game issues within ddo than lore. I only came back to d&d with 5e when stk mistakenly made me think that eberron might be coming sooner than it was. At least if warlord's revisionism & reattribution of the posts other fans of eberron have made over the last several years is to be believed.

War_lord

2018-08-12, 12:45 PM

Nah I level criticism at fans of his work because its treatment in 5e is a continuation of what started (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/368466-Why-Lolth) in 4e & ddo to appease their cries for it to be more like the realms.

Lolth originated in Grayhawk and has been part of the generic metasetting since 1980. Lolth and the Drow have nothing to do with FR specifically.

"Homogenization of lore" is indeed the problem, but you can not deny that the choices wotc made in that homogenization of lore were basically 100% in favor of one particular setting that one particular author wrote for.

Except that you just had two separate people just show you that the stuff you're complaining about predates that author and setting by around a decade.

I get the feeling that you take offense over my not allowing warlord & Theoboldi to distance those choices, forgotten realms, & fans of Salvatore by pointing at an ancient obscure module written 4 decades ago.

Firstly, Against the Giants is not an obscure series of modules, it's one of the most famous AD&D modules and the inspiration for Storm King's Thunder. And for that matter neither is its direct sequel series Queen of the Spiders which, as the name suggests deals directly with a campaign against Lolth. Secondly, the reason it was brought up in the first place is because you made a really stupid claim out of ignorance that everyone reading this thread can see you failing to row out of because you just can't admit to not being all knowing.

The hand crossbow is not an important bit of the lore to drow in one particular setting where drizzt happens to exist in, along with a 40 year old module.

The specific claim you made was that the Drow Hand crossbow was specific to the Forgotten Realms when it's a racial weapon of the Drow since their first appearance right up till the 5th edition monster manual. You still haven't retracted your daft statement.

I suppose that you are right though. The following posts in this thread should have included words along the lines of "and an module old enough to have kids who are themselves old enough to legally drink in most states",

So remind me how the age of a module effects the fact that you're wrong about the creator of a given element of the fiction?

but really that gets to be silly... especially if we are only including content that supports one particular setting over all others. I don't like the fact that wotc tried to homoginize the lore, but that is a different matter than fans of one particular setting presenting the lore of that setting as being more than it is & WotC listening to them because nobody bothered to argue otherwise out of politeness.

The Drow and Lolth predate the Forgotten Realms by 9 years. Are you arguing they're favoring Greyhawk over all others? You know, you're certainly not the first person to not have a clue about the history of the game, and you're not the first to say something dumb out of ignorance either. But you're maybe the first to be this unable to admit to being wrong about something so obvious. Most folks know when they've been caught out on talking BS, but not Tetrasodium.

Tetrasodium

2018-08-12, 01:05 PM

The Drow and Lolth predate the Forgotten Realms by 9 years. Are you arguing they're favoring Greyhawk over all others?

No, I'm quite sure that greyhawk's lore would be pushed aside by the canon FR novels if there were contradictions given the trends of the last several years that only recently seem to be tepidly reversing.

War_lord

2018-08-12, 01:12 PM

No, I'm quite sure that greyhawk's lore would be pushed aside by the canon FR novels if there were contradictions given the trends of the last several years that only recently seem to be tepidly reversing.

But Drow and Lolth originate in Greyhawk, so if they're getting "pushed" on Eberron, why are you blaming R.A. Salvatore? All he did was write novels for an existing popular setting, which itself heavily borrowed from Gygax's work on both Greyhawk and the meta setting.

Tetrasodium

2018-08-12, 01:22 PM

But Drow and Lolth originate in Greyhawk, so if they're getting "pushed" on Eberron, why are you blaming R.A. Salvatore?

these (https://www.amazon.com/Legend-Drizzt-Forgotten-Salvatore-Collection/dp/B00N48S1P6) are cannon to FR & probably not the extent of his work (but I'm not bothering to check if that is his entire publishing history). It's not fans of greyhawk pushing for their inclusion everywhere else, it's fans of the works that developed them as a race. and I've said repeatedly in this & other threads that the trend of doing so appears to have been recognized by wotc as problematic. That recognition is a great thing, but that does not mean fans of his work should be allowed to encourage wotc to resume the trend by claiming it to be some core defining element of d&d itself rather than part of specific setting(s) & a 40 year old module without being challenged.

War_lord

2018-08-12, 01:29 PM

these (https://www.amazon.com/Legend-Drizzt-Forgotten-Salvatore-Collection/dp/B00N48S1P6) are cannon to FR & probably not the extent of his work (but I'm not bothering to check if that is his entire publishing history). It's not fans of greyhawk pushing for their inclusion everywhere else, it's fans of the works that developed them as a race.

They were developed as a race by Gary Gygax in 1978, we've just been through that discussion.

and I've said repeatedly in this & other threads that the trend of doing so appears to have been recognized by wotc as problematic. That recognition is a great thing, but that does not mean fans of his work should be allowed to encourage wotc to resume the trend by claiming it to be some core defining element of d&d itself rather than part of specific setting(s) & a 40 year old module without being challenged.

It is a core defining element of D&D, it has been a core defining element of D&D since 1978, that's why they were included in the Forgotten Realms in the first place, because they're so memorable. Of course other settings can exist, but there as been an assumed "core" D&D setting since OD&D.

Theoboldi

2018-08-12, 01:36 PM

At this point, I should probably mention that I personally think that, given its mechanics and historical precedence, the purpose of the hand crossbow is indeed as a concealable weapon that is capable of delivering poison, but can be upgraded into a sort of D&D gun substitute with feat support.

The reason it's in the game specifically is because it's one of those D&D things that were invented at some point in the game's history, are unique to it, and are kinda cool to some people, like Beholders and Paladins.

As for whatever you are trying to say, Tetra, I have no idea. It might be because it's late in the evening and I am too tired, but your posts are altogether too rambling and disjointed for me to follow what you are saying.

All I can tell is that your posts contain faulty information and heavily charged language, which is altogether a dangerous combination. Nobody should trust what you are saying in this thread.

War_lord

2018-08-12, 01:44 PM

The reason it's in the game specifically is because it's one of those D&D things that were invented at some point in the game's history and are kinda cool to some people, like Beholders and Paladins.

Or Drow. I think Tetra's main problem, anger and fixation issues aside, is that he seems to believe that every specific detail in D&D must to uniquely "owned" by a certain setting, so the Drow are "owned" by the Forgotten Realms and them showing up in the Monster Manual is the "FR" Drow being "pushed" on him. When that's not the case, most of the things Gary created for Greyhawk were genericised for people to use in home settings, and the Forgotten Realms used a lot of that generic stuff (Many of FR's gods came from Ed Greenwood flipping through Deities and Demigods.) for the first published edition if that setting.

Generic Drow are Lolth worshiping Underdark dwelling evildoers. Of course a creator can choose to deviate from that, but the Monster Manual (and other core books) is by design a generic rather then specific tome.

Bharg

2018-08-12, 02:13 PM

trctelles

2018-08-12, 02:49 PM

Maybe the conversation has moved way past this, but, to me, the main advantage of the hand crossbow is that it is one handed. Therefore you can use it together with a shield and it gets a bit better using the crossbow expert feat.

I don't think the rules for loading ever specify that or how you actually have to load your weapons. So technically at the beginning of each round, your crossbow reloads and a new bolt from your quiver appears inside.

I'm sorry to inform, but according to this Errata https://media.wizards.com/2015/downloads/dnd/SA_Compendium_1.01.pdf you still need a free hand for the Ammunition property, so using a shield takes away the "free hand" part. I know there are shields that can be strapped into your arm so you can have that free hand part, but you'll have to work it out with your DM to see if he'll allow it (As far as I know, SOME DMs allow you to use a buckler forr +1 AC and still have the hand free for the ammunition part, but this is a personal so YMMV according to the DM rulling).

But after the errata, RAW and RAI are against the Shield+hand crossbow combination.

JackPhoenix

2018-08-12, 03:05 PM

The Drow of darksun and Eberron are wildly different from the Drow of the rest of D&D (they don't exist in Dragonlance). The Drow of Greyhawk are the originals and those are the ones that carried into Forgotten Realms Nentir Vale and into the core assumed setting of 5th edition. I understand that the Drow of Darksun and Eberron are different, but that's their problem and the core books shouldn't and don't have to spend page time needlessly confusing new players by talking about exceptions to the normal rules that aren't going to be relevant to the majority of them. That's what setting books are for, to explain how a given world departs from the generic assumed setting.

Dark Sun had drow? Is that a 4e thing? Because I've never heard about that before.

Maybe the conversation has moved way past this, but, to me, the main advantage of the hand crossbow is that it is one handed. Therefore you can use it together with a shield and it gets a bit better using the crossbow expert feat.

I don't think the rules for loading ever specify that or how you actually have to load your weapons. So technically at the beginning of each round, your crossbow reloads and a new bolt from your quiver appears inside.

You're right that Loading property doesn't specify how you'll have to reload your weapons. However, Ammunition property does require you to have a free hand to reload the next piece of ammunition: that's true for hand crossbows, sling and blowgun, even if they otherwise lack two-handed property bows and bigger crossbows have.

Tetrasodium

2018-08-12, 03:19 PM

Dark Sun had drow? Is that a 4e thing? Because I've never heard about that before.

You're right that Loading property doesn't specify how you'll have to reload your weapons. However, Ammunition property does require you to have a free hand to reload the next piece of ammunition: that's true for hand crossbows, sling and blowgun, even if they otherwise lack two-handed property bows and bigger crossbows have.
I don't think they did, but being dead or not even numerous enough to be considered a distinct species is pretty different :smallbiggrin:

Or Drow. I think Tetra's main problem, anger and fixation issues aside, is that he seems to believe that every specific detail in D&D must to uniquely "owned" by a certain setting, so the Drow are "owned" by the Forgotten Realms and them showing up in the Monster Manual is the "FR" Drow being "pushed" on him. When that's not the case, most of the things Gary created for Greyhawk were genericised for people to use in home settings, and the Forgotten Realms used a lot of that generic stuff (Many of FR's gods came from Ed Greenwood flipping through Deities and Demigods.) for the first published edition if that setting.

Generic Drow are Lolth worshiping Underdark dwelling evildoers. Of course a creator can choose to deviate from that, but the Monster Manual (and other core books) is by design a generic rather then specific tome.

It's more the conceit that because FR & greyhawk are practically palette swaps when it comes to things like Salvatore's cannonized novels that every other setting can & should be treated as his work also applying. Your attempt to suggest that the drow presented in his cannon forgotten realms novels, the drowthat literally came through a portal from faeun in ddo, or the "in the forgotten realms" & drizzt ones in the core books rings hollow when those core books also take pains to avoid mentioning any setting specific differences. MtoF kinda took the cake in that regard by presenting cultural aspects & creation myths from those palette swap settings as something that applies to the entire "shared multiverse".

Greywander

2018-08-12, 03:24 PM

We're still talking about hand crossbows, right?

...you still need a free hand for the Ammunition property...

But after the errata, RAW and RAI are against the Shield+hand crossbow combination.
I mentioned this earlier, but juggling cheese does exist, maybe we should codify it into something less ridiculous that gives the same benefit.

For reference, what I'm referring to is when you drop your weapon (free action), do something that requires an empty hand, then use your item interaction to pick up your weapon. The only times you can't do this are when you are dual-wielding shields (doff/don time is 1 action each, rather than free action + item interaction) (of course, why would you dual-wield shields? You get no benefit from the second shield) or when you are wielding a shield while grappling (or grappling with each hand) (you can release the grapple as a free action, but regrappling requires an attack action).

So, we could just say that as long as you aren't either wielding a shield or grappling with both hands, you can (on your turn, RIP reactions) burn your item interaction to allow you to perform actions aside from grappling that normally require a free hand. Mechanically, this would be the same as mentioned above: dropping your weapon, performing the action, then picking your weapon back up. All we're doing is streamlining it and making it a bit less silly.

Now, it's debatable if this would even work to reload a hand crossbow, since you presumably need to be holding it in your hand while you reload it (i.e. you need to be holding it in one hand and have a free hand, which sounds a lot like a two-handed weapon to me), so dropping the weapon and then using your now-vacant hand to reload it wouldn't work. If you're concerned about this, we can go back to another idea I suggested earlier: let slings be reloadable while using a shield (Crossbow Expert does not apply) and hand crossbows be reloadable while holding another weapon or item (great for melee weapon + hand crossbow).

Mechanically, I don't really see a problem with allowing someone to reload a sling or hand crossbow one-handed. These are meant to be one-handed, so it seems counter-intuitive to require a free hand to load it. And both these weapons compare reasonably well with other weapons you could be using. Both are one damage die step down from the best one-handed melee weapons (in their category) you can wield, and two steps down from the best ranged weapons. They both have slightly better range than most thrown weapons, and are matched by the javelin, while having much worse range than any of the two-handed ranged weapons. In the end, you're trading range and damage in order to use it with one hand, which seems fair to me. Compare it with the javelin, which does the same damage as a hand crossbow, and can be used in melee, but uses STR instead of DEX.

The only thing I'd be concerned about is using a shield with Crossbow Expert to spam attacks while using a shield, but I'm not sure if that's worth worrying about. You can do more or less the same thing in melee using a quarterstaff with PAM.

War_lord

2018-08-12, 11:54 PM

It's more the conceit that because FR & greyhawk are practically palette swaps when it comes to things like Salvatore's cannonized novels

Things from those novels only applies to the the Forgotten Realms, not Grayhawk or Homebrew worlds within the multiverse. So no, they're not "palette swaps" and your attacks on Salvatore over the the existence of Lolth and the Drow are aimed at the wrong person, because Salvatore didn't create any of that.

that every other setting can & should be treated as his work also applying.

Settings like Dark Sun or Eberron or hell even Dragonlance either ddon't have Dark Elves or don't have traditional D&D Dark Elves. And that's fine. But you're ignoring the fact that the vast majority of people who play the game are either playing a homebrew world of their DM's design based on the generic high fantasy setting conveyed through the PHB, DMG, MM, VG and MToF or are playing in the Forgotten Realms. Eberron is only the third most popular option, and the remaining Dark Sun fanbase is negligible. The stuff you hate so much ISN'T SALVATORE'S WORK, IT'S GYGAX'S.

Your attempt to suggest that the drow presented in his cannon forgotten realms novels, the drowthat literally came through a portal from faeun in ddo, or the "in the forgotten realms" & drizzt ones in the core books rings hollow when those core books also take pains to avoid mentioning any setting specific differences.

Because the Monster Manual and the PHB aren't setting books for Eberron, or for Dark Sun. They're for generic metasetting D&D, which is heavily based on Greyhawk. The Forgotten Realms boxset took a lot of its inspiration from the same source and the Forgotten Realms is now the most popular published setting so a fair number of people who came in during the dark days of 3.5 (obsessive focus on "optimization", disrespect for the past, employing writers who could only deal in vapid hipsterism) think the Drow originate there. But I've just demonstrated that that isn't the case. Yet you're still here repeating things you know aren't true yet won't retract.

MtoF kinda took the cake in that regard by presenting cultural aspects & creation myths from those palette swap settings as something that applies to the entire "shared multiverse".

Because most players don't give a **** about any of the published settings, and I don't either. What most DM's do is take all of the lore from the generic meta setting books they think is cool, and change anything they don't like. And the shared multiverse provides a canon explanation for that borrowing, while allowing for crossover arcs with established settings.

Yeah, that's going to piss off people like you who are fixated on one particular published setting to an unhealthy degree, but the sales of 5th edition and the types of 5e games ran on virtual table tops show that ignoring you has zero effect on the bottom line. Most new players don't know anything about FR, never mind Eberron, and have little interest in pouring over 200+ page setting guides. If setting books was what WoTC thought players wanted, we wouldn't be four years into the game's life with a grand total of one slim book on the Sword Coast, a crossover with a card game, and an Eberron "book" that's basically premium UA. To me, that says not a priority. Contrast with the number of adventures they've published. Those clearly sell.

Mordaedil

2018-08-13, 01:31 AM

Tanarii

2018-08-13, 09:32 AM

Tetrasodium

2018-08-13, 09:58 AM

It's absolutely hilarious to me that even now in 2018 there are people incredibly salty about RA Salvatore and his infamous good-natured drow. It made more sense to me during 2nd and 3rd editions of D&D when he was at the height of popularity, but now? I haven't seen a Drizzt-clone in years, most people seem content to make their own machinations instead of dragging up popular fantasy fiction (or if they do want to do fiction, it's usually drawing upon some famous anime, from Naruto or Bleach to Overlord's Ainz Ooal Gown, not Drizzt anymore)

It just seems like a really childish thing to be mad about anymore, like if I saw someone roll up a gods-honest Drizzt I'd probably just laugh and let them.

As for the discussion, RA Salvatore didn't really invent much in the way of drow, though he did popularize them. And it's not very hard to see how he did it if you compare a lot of the Forgotten Realms novels, things like Elminister in Hell is practically unreadable due to how cheesy it is. Prior to his books, drow had basically no characterization and were lifted wholesale from Greyhawk to fit into Forgotten Realms, and his stories kinda chiseled them to fit in.

This in turns eventually lead to the wonderful dwarf society presented in Dragon Age: Origins, so there's that.

The answers to your post require a bit of history, both d&d as well as the thread

On the topic of the thread, it started with the question of why the cool but mechanically hamstrung hand crossbow is a thing when it needs a feat to really even be useful.. multiple people pointed out the obvious links to the drow in past editions & how they are important to the drow of particular settings. Rather than entice a certain gaggle of trolls who show up whenever I mention forgotten realms or faerun, I chose to go with "because salvatore". Unexpectedly, that gaggle chose to disown him & try to attribute the last 30 years of his work popularizing drow counting as cannon FR sources were really greyhawk that should not be attributed to a setting known for being loredumped into incompatible settings by Wotc... Oh and some attacks on eberron by that gaggle, even though the prior mentions of it were pretty much how the hand crossbow is one of several weapons tied to setting specific fluff & that they should have all been included in a table somewhere.

On the subject of d&d history, WotC released ddo several years ago set in eberron, fans of that setting were thrilled. It wasn't perfect & some old forgotten realms/greyhawk modules were included as is, but it was good & people were happy; unfortunately there was a vocal chorus of former drizzt clones continually calling for it to be more like the forgotten realms. When 4e ca,e along, WotC decided to replace eberron lore with the lore of another setting in eberron sourcebooks even though that replaced lore was often duplicative, conflicting, & otherwise problematic with the lore of eberron (even if you only looked at 4e content).That was enough to start turning the dial on ddo from eberron to faerun. Multiple faerunisms (faerun style gnolls, faerun style drow, & more) were introduced to eberron even though eberron had their own unique conflicting style of each. This continued until they quite literally introduced the drow of forgotten realms invading eberron from a literal portal leading between eberron & faerun... complete with eleminster (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTvtFJLn6oA) to guide you rather than any eberron groups/individuals that would be there managing the mercenaries in such a situation. Still not appeased, the former drizzt clone players eventually got an expansion to the eberron ddo set in forgotten realms. In the 5e core books & up till now every hardcover adventure was heavily flavored if not devoted to forgotten realms once more, even going as far as things like the pota localization section that talks about how to make eberron groups with roles, lore, & fluff of their own to be more like the faerun specific AL factions. That gaggle I mentioned will regularly point at the status of being an older legacy setting as justification for wotc to take its lore & fluff to shoulder aside the lore & fluff of settings that conflict.

While I don't particularly like forgotten realms, I don't have any especially strong feelings towards it as long as it remains within the forgotten realms rather than presenting itself as the gold standard & there is not the best track record of it doing so.. even the 5e ravenloft Cos has pages 18-22 various scrolls, potions, and silvered weapons as rewards for adventure hooks starting in daggerford before the mists grab you even though ravenloft's whole thing is that it grabs people unprepared. The adventure could have been improved by shifting those rewards away from being $faction to working with/for various groups & individuals present in ravenloft as another example of faerun's needless insertion into other settings. Thankfully wotc has accepted that such a course was a mistake & is taking steps (http://dndadventurersleague.org/in-which-we-talk-about-factions/) to avoid repeating it.

QuickLyRaiNbow

2018-08-13, 10:38 AM

On the topic of the thread, it started with the question of why the cool but mechanically hamstrung hand crossbow is a thing when it needs a feat to really even be useful.. multiple people pointed out the obvious links to the drow in past editions & how they are important to the drow of particular settings.

And because people would ask for a one-handed ranged weapon. Filling that mechanical niche with something that's been part of D and D for a long time seems pretty reasonable, and there it should have ended.

Rather than entice a certain gaggle of trolls who show up whenever I mention forgotten realms or faerun, I chose to go with "because salvatore".

Intentionally misrepresenting the origin of something in order to simultaneously distract people who disagree with you and bash one of your favorite bash-ees? That's a bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see how it works out for you.

You say it's unexpected what happened, as if this dance hasn't played out a thousand times. Literally no one who posts on these boards cares about R.A. Salvatore the way you do. I, and I think I speak for a fair few posters, regard his work with something between bemusement and dismissal. He is a peripheral figure at best in the way we tell stories, create characters and play Dungeons and Dragons, even in games set in Faerun, even in games set in the Underdark. Salvatore wrote about a dark elf named Drizzit in the Underdark with all the particular tropes you've identified because they were already there. He didn't invent anything; it was all already there. All he had to do was blow a bit of dust off and put the words on the paper.

On the subject of d&d history,

History didn't start in 2006. DDO isn't canon. It's a video game.

Tetra, the reason published adventures have faction instructions is because the factions are part of the adventures. There are NPCs who will only interact with members of particular factions. The factions exist entirely to give DMs a way to hook new players into the game and to protect established, cherished characters from permanent death. It's all gameist mechanics. So the adaptation instructions offer factions from different settings so that the adventure can be portable without losing mechanics that might be important. The reason they need to be portable is because Wizards is doing DMs who don't play AL a favor. All the published adventures so far are for AL play, and AL is set in Faerun.

And it's not just Eberron that has changes to accommodate that system. The Harpers of 5E aren't the bloody-minded balance-at-all-costs do-good/neutralers of editions past. They're basically Neutral Good: The Faction now. The Zhentarim, rather than being Mordor But Humans, are now twinkly-eyed smugglers and crooks. These are pretty major departures from tradition.

Willie the Duck

2018-08-13, 10:51 AM

Intentionally misrepresenting the origin of something in order to simultaneously distract people who disagree with you and bash one of your favorite bash-ees? That's a bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see how it works out for you.

There seems to be a behavior pattern, not with Tetra in particular, but overall amongst the forum-goers who tend to end up in verbal combat with the rest of thread. The defining factor seems to be that everyone else agreeing that they aren't being honest with what went down in the thread, and that they didn't make their case, only makes them feel more validated. I've likened it before to an, "no, I had the more convincing argument, my audience just doesn't realize it" mentality, but maybe it's a literal force of will thing ("If I just insist that my opposition is the bad actors in this situation, they will get tired of the discussion and I can declare victory to myself").

I don't think it matters at this point. The thread has been thoroughly disrupted. No one has "won" the thread, but everyone certainly has lost. If the goal was to play spoiler, Tetra has certainly succeeded.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-08-13, 10:52 AM

Tetra, the reason published adventures have faction instructions is because the factions are part of the adventures. There are NPCs who will only interact with members of particular factions. The factions exist entirely to give DMs a way to hook new players into the game and to protect established, cherished characters from permanent death. It's all gameist mechanics. So the adaptation instructions offer factions from different settings so that the adventure can be portable without losing mechanics that might be important. The reason they need to be portable is because Wizards is doing DMs who don't play AL a favor. All the published adventures so far are for AL play, and AL is set in Faerun.

And it's not just Eberron that has changes to accommodate that system. The Harpers of 5E aren't the bloody-minded balance-at-all-costs do-good/neutralers of editions past. They're basically Neutral Good: The Faction now. The Zhentarim, rather than being Mordor But Humans, are now twinkly-eyed smugglers and crooks. These are pretty major departures from tradition.

And note that with Season 8, the factions are going away (in mechanical terms at least). Specifically because they didn't do what they were intended to do (give the players a stake in the world and provide roleplaying aids). So if an AL game is ever set in Eberron, factions won't be a big deal. Because they're not, anymore. You have to intentionally choose a particular background feature to even be a part of them any more, and that background feature is generic to all possible factions.

QuickLyRaiNbow

2018-08-13, 10:58 AM

I don't think it matters at this point. The thread has been thoroughly disrupted. No one has "won" the thread, but everyone certainly has lost. If the goal was to play spoiler, Tetra has certainly succeeded.

I don't know, really. What was spoiled? The disruption seemed pretty well timed; I felt like the thread was basically over.

JackPhoenix

2018-08-13, 11:12 AM

History didn't start in 2006. DDO isn't canon. It's a video game.

It wasn't made by WotC either. WotC sold the licence to make the game to Turbine. It's like saying that Tolkien (who, to remind you, is long dead) is responsible for fire and lightning-shooting mages being playable in LotrO. Or any of the crap in Shadow of Mordor.

But, you know, arguing with Tetra...

Tetrasodium

2018-08-13, 11:43 AM

It wasn't made by WotC either. WotC sold the licence to make the game to Turbine. It's like saying that Tolkien (who, to remind you, is long dead) is responsible for fire and lightning-shooting mages being playable in LotrO. Or any of the crap in Shadow of Mordor.

But, you know, arguing with Tetra...

it sold the license to turbine to make an eberron game. the borehole was timed to coincide with rise of the underdark (http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Rise_of_the_Underdark). Wotc later chose to use ddo as a platform to promote faerun content after the initial release of it as a game set in eberron. A better analogy would be if CBS or Disney were merge & license star trek/star wars to netflix for a series that they later turn to netflix to license the other for use in that same series.

As to quickly's assertion that calling Salvatore's work synonymous with the drow or the drow of faerun being an intentional misrepresentation, it's a little hard to take that claim as assertion other than willful ignorance given the fact that Drizzt is on the cover of mtof, has a sidebar on phb24 that outsizes the drow flavortext itself, gets mentioned in the dwarf entry, & basically every writeup about drow describes the drow in 5e core books includes the words "in the forgotten realms".

I will give wotc credit & again say that the vulkoor entry in mtof is well done in that it describes vulkoor in faerun, a few traits common to eberron's drow, and a bunch of stuff that should discourage Salvatore & any other aspiring forgotten realms author from developing something from another setting.... Of course, I'd not be surprised to see him or someone else release a book about a cult of Vulkoor worshippers in the forgotten realms after Keith Baker or someone else releases some more developed 5e stuff on the drow of xendriik.

PastorofMuppets

2018-08-13, 12:56 PM

I think the whole point of it is to apply poison to a distant target, paralysis or sleep hitting a caster as he hides behind his tanks or to more safely take down a sentry for a safer approach

QuickLyRaiNbow

2018-08-13, 01:53 PM

It wasn't made by WotC either. WotC sold the licence to make the game to Turbine. It's like saying that Tolkien (who, to remind you, is long dead) is responsible for fire and lightning-shooting mages being playable in LotrO. Or any of the crap in Shadow of Mordor.

But, you know, arguing with Tetra...

Exercise in futility, I know.

As to quickly's assertion that calling Salvatore's work synonymous with the drow or the drow of faerun being an intentional misrepresentation, it's a little hard to take that claim as assertion other than willful ignorance given the fact that Drizzt is on the cover of mtof, has a sidebar on phb24 that outsizes the drow flavortext itself, gets mentioned in the dwarf entry, & basically every writeup about drow describes the drow in 5e core books includes the words "in the forgotten realms".

Tetra, you have to stop lying about what people say. You do it all the time, and it's frankly disgusting. You chose, apparently knowingly, to misrepresent the origin of handcrossbows and their linkage with the drow. Why you made that decision, I can't speculate, save to note that it's entirely in keeping with your normal reaction to anything that doesn't conform to your exact personal preferences.

Drizzt isn't on the cover of Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes. He's one of ten characters on the alternate, brick-and-mortar-exclusive preorder cover. This is hardly the end of the world. The writeups about the drow that include the words "in the Forgotten Realms" do so because they are making it clear that that lore is FR-exclusive. The writers are throwing you a bone here, you absolute wanker. They are specifically saying that the parts you find problematic are setting exclusive. That they are not part of your setting.

I think the whole point of it is to apply poison to a distant target, paralysis or sleep hitting a caster as he hides behind his tanks or to more safely take down a sentry for a safer approach

Which is weird, though - wouldn't a regular crossbow work better for this? The hand crossbow is smaller, so it has a smaller damage dice. In 3rd edition, that was a bonus (even though it wasn't good enough), because a regular crossbow had a decent chance to kill a level 1 NPC rather than just inflicting sleep or paralysis poison.

Tetrasodium

2018-08-13, 02:11 PM

Exercise in futility, I know.

Tetra, you have to stop lying about what people say. You do it all the time, and it's frankly disgusting. You chose, apparently knowingly, to misrepresent the origin of handcrossbows and their linkage with the drow. Why you made that decision, I can't speculate, save to note that it's entirely in keeping with your normal reaction to anything that doesn't conform to your exact personal preferences.

Drizzt isn't on the cover of Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes. He's one of ten characters on the alternate, brick-and-mortar-exclusive preorder cover. This is hardly the end of the world. The writeups about the drow that include the words "in the Forgotten Realms" do so because they are making it clear that that lore is FR-exclusive. The writers are throwing you a bone here, you absolute wanker. They are specifically saying that the parts you find problematic are setting exclusive. That they are not part of your setting.

Which is weird, though - wouldn't a regular crossbow work better for this? The hand crossbow is smaller, so it has a smaller damage dice. In 3rd edition, that was a bonus (even though it wasn't good enough), because a regular crossbow had a decent chance to kill a level 1 NPC rather than just inflicting sleep or paralysis poison.

I'm not the one that took offense with "because salvatore" or tried to claim his work is not well known & drow are something associated with it. I mean, he did write one of the books in the rise of the underdark (http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Rise_of_the_Underdark) cannon FR novels & that whole rise of the underdark thing was why the drow of forgotten realms were added to ddo instead of the drow of eberron being developed. I know you want to suggest that they are not a forgotten realms thing, but there are like 30 salvatore books with forgotten realms on the cpver & every one of them is cannon. Not only that, there are several Forgotten realms books in that rise of the underdark series. Stop trying to claim that drow & salvatore are not an FR thing just because slightly less virulent drow that still resemble but are legally distinct (http://www.cc.com/video-clips/b1vw6f/futurama-leela-s-oz)

Yes a regular crossbow would work better, but the default setting of totally not forgotten realms plus greyhawk and a forty year old module has the hand crossbow as a strong historical theme to one version of a race with blinkered fans that insist all other versions are badwrongfun that must conform.

JackPhoenix

2018-08-13, 03:41 PM

Which is weird, though - wouldn't a regular crossbow work better for this? The hand crossbow is smaller, so it has a smaller damage dice. In 3rd edition, that was a bonus (even though it wasn't good enough), because a regular crossbow had a decent chance to kill a level 1 NPC rather than just inflicting sleep or paralysis poison.

You can fight with a melee weapon and have the crossbow ready in your other hand until you need it. Or, if you have something to hold the bolt in place, you can keep it loaded on your belt and draw it quickly (sort of like in this picture (https://orig00.deviantart.net/b0ff/f/2011/248/7/9/mtg__elite_inquisitor_by_algenpfleger-d48xb0m.jpg), but imagine the crossbow would actually work, neither of the two in the pic would). Keeping a crossbow drawn and loaded at all times is a bad idea, but it won't affect hand crossbow with a low draw weight as much... it's pretty weak in the first place. You can't really do that with a proper crossbow.

Also, if you're using sleeping poison, you want the target alive... lower damage die is better in that case.

bluedogz

2018-08-13, 06:31 PM

Exocist

2018-08-13, 07:41 PM

Has it not occurred to anyone that y'all are debating how "realistic" and "plausible" certain devices are in a world populated by people who can shoot lightning bolts out of their fingers, or fly? Where dragons talk and elves exist?

I get it- I've seen the Arms & Armor museum in New York. Some things existed and some things didn't. But, really?

The martial vs caster argument always comes down to this. Unless specifically noted otherwise, the martial is bound to the rules of the real world, while the caster is not because magic.

Plenty of fantasy tropes involve preloaded crossbows, but the rules of the game say it doesn’t work and it also doesn’t work in the real world.

But the ability to shoot fire out of your hands is also a fantasy trope. It also doesn’t work in the real world, yet because the rules allow you to do that, it’s perfectly reasonable,

Tetrasodium

2018-08-13, 08:11 PM

The martial vs caster argument always comes down to this. Unless specifically noted otherwise, the martial is bound to the rules of the real world, while the caster is not because magic.

Plenty of fantasy tropes involve preloaded crossbows, but the rules of the game say it doesn’t work and it also doesn’t work in the real world.

But the ability to shoot fire out of your hands is also a fantasy trope. It also doesn’t work in the real world, yet because the rules allow you to do that, it’s perfectly reasonable,

the fact that it is silly is irrelevant to the fact that it's a weapon somewhat tied to specific setting elements (one type of drow) that should have had a special tag with mechanics that make it good for its intended goals. Some possible examples:

you have advantage on checks made to hide it from standard inspection if the hand xbow is collapsed & can later reassemble it in a hurry as a bonus action
reloading it can be done one handed with a dc10 dex slight of hand check bonus action by hooking it on a belt or between your teeth. Failure to meet dc10 results in reloading but inflicting damage to yourself equal to 1d4 plus any poison applied to the bolt
the hand crossbow uses specialized bolts that are designed to keep a poison fresh for x hours/days/etc
The hand crossbow has advantage on attack rolls made within 20 feet on a target unaware of the attack being made
so on & so forth

Mordaedil

2018-08-14, 01:05 AM

I see them several times a year. From college-age kids no less.

Also, keep in mind it's still so popular that 5e included Drow as a variant elf race in the PHB.

I wouldn't be so salty if he wasn't in the top three worse writers I've ever read. The other two being Greenwood and Gibson. It boggles my mind that any of these guys can sell books. I mean, TSR spent years hiring hack writers to spew out Dragonlance and FR novels. And those three are worse than those hack writers. That takes a special talent.

But that doesn't change that hand crossbows have nothing to do with Salvatore or nor Forgotten Realms. They've been a staple since 1e Unearther Arcana. Which also introduced Dark Elves, who must be outcasts from their society, have no penalty with two weapon fighting, and can be (good aligned) cavaliers.

(I should probably note that despite loathing Greenwood and Salvatore's so-called "writing", I love using the FR setting as a backdrop for campaigns.)
I dunno if I agree with this, I've read far worse or more offensive writing, especially from video game writers. The various Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Baldur's Gate novels are far worse tripes than most of Salvatore's and Greenwood's writing (never read Gibson, so I reserve my judgement on it) albeit their worst books can match the previous entries I mentioned. (I'll note that I stopped with the aforementioned Elminster in Hell and the Thousand Orcs book, so I guess my impression of their writing is incomprehensive, ergo maybe their other works drag them down excessively, but that is kind of to be expected when you write for years and years past your original inspiration ran its course.)

Willie the Duck

2018-08-14, 06:49 AM

The Shadowrun, MechWarrior/Battletech, and World of Darkness novels are also equally mostly-miss on the hit-or-miss chart. Sturgeon's Law on a practical level.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-08-14, 07:02 AM

The Shadowrun, MechWarrior/Battletech, and World of Darkness novels are also equally mostly-miss on the hit-or-miss chart. Sturgeon's Law on a practical level.

Having read basically every fantasy/sci-fi novel I could get my hands on (which meant a lot of these types), I'd say that this goes for every shared-world or franchise-world fiction. And most fiction in general, to be quite honest.

Just look at the WH/WH40K books. They're mostly drek with a few standouts. Or the Star Trek or Star Wars novels. Etc.

So yeah, 90% of everything is crap as Sturgeon said.

QuickLyRaiNbow

2018-08-14, 07:43 AM

You can fight with a melee weapon and have the crossbow ready in your other hand until you need it. Or, if you have something to hold the bolt in place, you can keep it loaded on your belt and draw it quickly (sort of like in this picture (https://orig00.deviantart.net/b0ff/f/2011/248/7/9/mtg__elite_inquisitor_by_algenpfleger-d48xb0m.jpg), but imagine the crossbow would actually work, neither of the two in the pic would). Keeping a crossbow drawn and loaded at all times is a bad idea, but it won't affect hand crossbow with a low draw weight as much... it's pretty weak in the first place. You can't really do that with a proper crossbow.

Also, if you're using sleeping poison, you want the target alive... lower damage die is better in that case.

Yeah, but the damage die is still too high in third edition. You'd really want something like a blowgun, which just does 1 damage. The game management philosophy of 5th seems to be that you'd shoot the guy out of combat and the poison would work; you'd never roll for damage.

Having a primed ranged weapon is helpful, and you can only do that if it's one-handed. So there's a niche there that has to be filled by something, and it might as well be this.

Corsair14

2018-08-14, 11:17 AM

QuickLyRaiNbow

2018-08-14, 11:51 AM

You can do more damage with a light crossbow. This is absolutely correct. The point of a hand crossbow IS NOT to cause damage, it is to inflict poison of some sort. The original race that used them was a slave trading race. They WANTED prisoners, not dead bodies. If they did want them dead, then its easier to kill a sleeping or paralized victim than it is someone up and fighting. People are trying to take a weapon that isnt meant to do damage and make it make damage and be useful in combat for more than it was ever meant to. Its like a dart at close range. We arent talking lawn dart, it a dart like you throw at a dart board. Have you ever been hit by one? I have, it was more annoying than anything else along with the shock factor of "Holy crap, theres a dart sticking out of me." Thats a hand crossbow at a little longer range.

Right, I get that that's the intent. It's just badly supported, because poison is always badly supported as a player tool. It's expensive and inefficient. It's a tool for DMs, not players.

Of course, the damage difference between a hand crossbow and a light crossbow isn't that meaningful. Assuming we want the lowest possible damage to ensure we aren't killing off our dudes when we inflict the poison, we're much better off with a blowgun - it deals 1 damage, rather than 1d6. Even a thrown dagger is better. A hand crossbow is 3.5 damage average; a light crossbow is 4.5. For that one less damage, our hypothetical kidnappers are giving up a lot of range. That one damage isn't, I don't think, the difference between killing something outright and not, assuming only a single hit. So as a weapon for taking captives, I don't know that it accomplishes the goal. As a one-hand ranged weapon for combat, 1d6+ability mod is adequate, especially if you're getting an extra attack with Crossbow Expert, which turns you into something basically like a shoot-from-the-hip gunslinger.

Corsair14

2018-08-14, 12:53 PM

QuickLyRaiNbow

2018-08-14, 01:18 PM

Oh wow, they bumped the damage to d6? If memory serves it used to be a d4. In past editions poisons were much deadlier and more effective. Most DMs I know in past editions limited poison use just because of how deadly they were. I remember many save or die poisons from creatures and traps from the edition where hand crossbows really were relevant.

Yeah, the problem with poisons is that they're either bad or too expensive. Without an accommodating DM, it's hard to have a cost-effective supply. Too, they target what is often the highest save of monsters, and poison immunity is fairly common. For a DM, of course, this isn't much of a problem.

KorvinStarmast

2018-08-14, 01:35 PM

Oh wow, they bumped the damage to d6? If memory serves it used to be a d4. Yes.

Crossbow, hand 75 gp 1d6 piercing 3 lb. Ammunition (range 30/120), light, loading
To me, the 1d6 is part of the problem.
IMO, hand crossbow needs to have 1d3 or 1d4 damage, max.
As I noted, and as others have mentioned, its original purpose was to deliver poison and such ...

If you have high enough dex, dropping the damage to 1d4 isn't a problem. (Damage mod for 20 dex is +5)

5 + 2.5 versus 5 + 3.5. Is it really that big of a difference is you max out your dex?
No.

Willie the Duck

2018-08-14, 02:11 PM

If you have high enough dex, dropping the damage to 1d4 isn't a problem. (Damage mod for 20 dex is +5)

5 + 2.5 versus 5 + 3.5. Is it really that big of a difference I[f] you max out your dex?
No.

Well then it really shouldn't be that big of a difference the other direction, should it? I never really considered the damage dice to be the big deal. Feat-derived bonus-action-attack and Rogue/Sharpshooter damage-add is where the weapon becomes problematic from a damage standpoint.

Tanarii

2018-08-14, 03:30 PM

Its like a dart at close range. We arent talking lawn dart, it a dart like you throw at a dart board. Have you ever been hit by one? I have, it was more annoying than anything else along with the shock factor of "Holy crap, theres a dart sticking out of me." Thats a hand crossbow at a little longer range.
What do game darts have to do with the price of milk? You know hand crossbow darts are many times heavier than a game dart, right? If you got hit with one, I garuntee you'd be having serious health issues. They can punch right through plywood at 40ft.

Corsair14

2018-08-14, 07:02 PM

Um no. You would be really lucky to get through leather armor with a hand crossbow. Damage of d4 is high, d6 is silly. It is a close range poison doser not damage dealer. It has nowhere near the damage ability of even a light crossbow. And once again doing damage would defeat its purpose. The bolt size is likely almost the same between a game dart and a hand crossbow bolt at 4-5" and about the same diameter as a nail and a dart is probably heavier. Very likely extrodinarily inaccurate to the point of you might as well be using a matchlock pistol which also existed at the same time historically and had actual penetrative power. Quit trying to make the hand crossbows deal damage thing happen. Its bad enough they raised the damage this edition. In real life no one has really figured out what the hell they were even for due to what poor weapons they made. Sport and games for rich people is seeming to be the most common theory. We know there was a prince who reportedly made sport of shooting at people passing his window in Venice and thats the only historical usage I could find.

Greywander

2018-08-14, 08:22 PM

trctelles

2018-08-14, 08:45 PM

I'm not of a conspiracy theory guy, BUT, I have one. When I think of a crossbow expert build, or watch a video about it (at least before the errata that made 2 hand crossbow wielding "impossible" because of the ammunition property) I remember the Demon Hunter from Diablo III. If you go by the release date, Diablo III came 2 years before the release of D&D 5e. NOW, CALM DOWN ANGRY STICK MAN! I'm aware that hand crossbow was already a thing before Diablo III or 5e. Jeez.

Anyway, moving forward. Maybe, JUST MAYBE, when the 5e developers where writing the feats and what not they saw/played Diablo and thought "Huh, this Demon Hunter guy does look quite cool shooting these little crossbows and killing everything. Maybe we should add this to our game?!"
Aside from that, I can't imagine what they were thinking when they made Crossbow Expert + Sharpshooter possible. It's just a theory, but I think it's plausible.

Boci

2018-08-14, 09:13 PM

Anyway, moving forward. Maybe, JUST MAYBE, when the 5e developers where writing the feats and what not they saw/played Diablo and thought "Huh, this Demon Hunter guy does look quite cool shooting these little crossbows and killing everything. Maybe we should add this to our game?!"
Aside from that, I can't imagine what they were thinking when they made Crossbow Expert + Sharpshooter possible. It's just a theory, but I think it's plausible.

4th edition had Two-fisted shooter, which was one of the more powerful feats of the game, and made you better at wielding two hand crossbows, so its unlikely.

Arsonist

2018-08-14, 09:32 PM

JackPhoenix

2018-08-14, 10:07 PM

Tanarii

2018-08-14, 11:34 PM

War_lord

2018-08-15, 01:36 AM

This just tells me you've never used a real hand crossbow IRL.

I'm not sure how accurate any claims are. But I will point out that a modern crossbow of any kind isn't a good analogue for late medieval crossbows because the modern ones benefit from advanced materials and advanced knowledge of metallurgy. A genuine medieval one is going to be much less powerful because of those factors. Although, saying it won't go through "leather armor" is kind of absurd given that D&D's traditional idea of leather armor is glorified motorcycle leathers.

Greywander

2018-08-15, 02:38 AM

Although, saying it won't go through "leather armor" is kind of absurd given that D&D's traditional idea of leather armor is glorified motorcycle leathers.
A gambeson (e.g. "padded armor") is capable of stopping arrows under certain conditions. I think this depends more on the type of arrowhead used and the angle at which it strikes the wearer. A brigandine (e.g. probably "studded leather") is actually a type of plate armor, so arrows would likely bounce right off until they managed to pass between the plates.

I think crossbows were capable of penetrating plate armor, but only at close range with a powerful crossbow.

A hand crossbow would realistically lack the power to do real damage, but I think with the right type of head it could still penetrate through fabric or leather armor (or mail!) and into the skin. Which is great if you're trying to deliver a poison, less so if the bolt itself is meant to cause damage.

Also, fun fact, but leather armor was actually a real thing. However, it seems to have been used more as an alternative to plate armor, not cloth armor, and seems to have been used by wealthier knights instead of peasants. Good, armor-quality leather was hard to get, and leather had a lot of uses, and still does today.

War_lord

2018-08-15, 03:20 AM

There is multiple types of historical leather armor. But single sheet leather is never going to be much more protective then fur. Layered leather was a thing in some places where metal armor wasn't available, but multiple layers are obviously stiff enough that you'll essentially be wearing a cuirass. The stuff you're referring to is Cuir bouilli, which was essentially plate made of shaped boiled leather.

The whole issue of who used it is a bit of a thorny one (because most medieval art was bad at distinguishing what kind of material is being worn, and there's a lack of archeology because leather and cloth tend to rot away). Personally I would agree that the need to slaughter a good sized cow for a cuirass of the stuff would have put it beyond the price point of the average conscript/mercenary.

Willie the Duck

2018-08-15, 07:28 AM

If the 5e SRD is to believed, then 5e leather is, "The breastplate and shoulder protectors of this armor are made of leather that has been stiffened by being boiled in oil. The rest of the armor is made of softer and more flexible materials." So, at the very least, we are talking Cuir bouilli, and not biker leathers. But then again, exactly what a given editions equipment list says something is, and how people picture it, are rarely strongly correlated.

But we all know this crap by now. Gary and co were working off some unhelpful literature when they were crafting Chainmail and made the major armor distinctions Leather, Chain, and Plate (and even more so with AD&D, leading to studded leather, ringmail, etc.). Good. Acknowledged. Everyone is aware that leather armor may or may not have had much battlefield use (and certainly less than gambesons)-- that most people during any given era would probably have been wearing more or less the same thing, just better or worse made, and with more or less of it-- and that there really is no such thing as 'light' armor (but, conversely, one totally can sneak and tumble in most armor types)? Good. We can move on.

As to hand crossbows, I agreed with War_lord. Playing around with a modern crossbow tells us little about hand crossbows from history (what few we think there might have been). What it tells us about D&D hand crossbows depends entirely on what those are (or what we'd prefer them to be, depending on what question we are asking). The one's in the book (with the associated feats available) seem to me to be merely pistol-analogues. They are for the guy who wants to sink two feats into a character and turn them into a pre-gunpowder gun-fu master. Sounds great (not personally, but at least then we know what it is for). If we instead want a poison-delivery weapon, then it should be closer to a blowgun. Give each one a thing it is better at (maybe more range on the hand xbow, but has the loading property), and then have two 1pt damage attack weapons you only use when you have some horrific toxin or sleep attack poison or the like. Having one weapon carrying both roles does seem odd (in the kill-the-guy-you-were-trying-to-just-knock-out variety).

Wardog

2018-08-15, 01:10 PM

If the purpose of the hand crossbow is as a poison delivery system, then that needs to be made clear, because that's not how it's presented. It's presented as a one-handed ranged weapon. If it's just a poison delivery system for assassins, then it needs to be condensed in with the blowgun and given a special property that actually helps it as a poisoning device:

Dart Thrower - A blowgun or small crossbow, to be used as a toy or for shooting poisoned darts.
Damage: 1
Range: 30/120
Ammunition, Loading
Special: When you draw and attack with this weapon on the same turn, you gain advantage on your attack roll.

If it's meant for "sword n' gun" style combat, then I suggest allowing a user to reload it while holding a weapon or item in their other hand.

That assumes all "poison delivery systems" have the same purpose. I could easily imagine a blowpipe and a hand crossbow serving different purposes. E.g:

Blowpipe: designed for drugging/tranqualizing people, for ease of capture. Deals negligible physical damage - the poison is what mkes it count. (Can be used for killing people, if you use lethal poison, but that's not the primary purpose).

Hand crossbow: designed for murdering people, in locations that you can't easily smuggle a better weapon. Usually used with poisoned bolts, to make up for the fact that its weaker than a normal bow or crossbow and so can't reliably one-shot people with the an unpoisoned bolt. (Can be used for drugging/tranquilizing, but only if you don't mind causing nasty injuries).

War_lord

2018-08-15, 02:22 PM

QuickLyRaiNbow

2018-08-15, 02:31 PM

The problem with this particular line of discussion is that A. RAW poisons are largely ineffective damage dealers and B. Even if they were worth using, a huge chunk of the enemy/monster list is totally immune to poison.

I think it's a more narrow conversation. It's just not cost-effective to use poisons in everyday adventuring. So the discussion has to take place around 1) poisons being used against PCs and 2) poisons being used selectively by PCs against enemies you don't want to kill. Because yeah, as you say, poisons aren't that effective at dealing damage. So you're using them to paralyze or put to sleep. If you want to kill someone, you use a level 3 assassin rogue.

JackPhoenix

2018-08-15, 02:38 PM

The problem with this particular line of discussion is that A. RAW poisons are largely ineffective damage dealers and B. Even if they were worth using, a huge chunk of the enemy/monster list is totally immune to poison.

While expensive, 3x (oh hey, there's an advantage to using weapon with Ammunition property) 12d6 damage at DC 19 isn't exactly ineffective. It's enough to pretty reliably kill the strongest MM NPC, Archmage, who's resistant to damage from spells and non-magical physical weapons, but doesn't have any special defenses against poisons.

Willie the Duck

2018-08-15, 02:40 PM

The problem with this particular line of discussion is that A. RAW poisons are largely ineffective damage dealers and B. Even if they were worth using, a huge chunk of the enemy/monster list is totally immune to poison.

? Do you mean for the cost? Because poison usually does d12s to other elements' d6s. 8s, or at most 10s. Yes, there are a number of creatures out there with poison resistance or immunity, so don't build a character around it. But if you run up against a mortal creature, and have money to burn (say, if you are an assassin and they are a high value target), other than it being the first thing they would expect, it seems like a valid method of upping your per-attack damage output.

In a campaign where money was no object, I had a fellow party member 8th level ranger nearly take down an ancient white dragon with just himself and his assassin (MM variety) bodyguard in the surprise round + winning initiative by each of them pumping Purple Worm Poison-coated arrows into the thing. Admittedly, if the DM allows you to buy Purple Worm Poison (and the money to buy it), then maybe that's the issue at hand, but still poison works when it works...

Boci

2018-08-15, 02:50 PM

? Do you mean for the cost? Because poison usually does d12s to other elements' d6s. 8s, or at most 10s.

They mean poison applied to weapons, not spells that deal poison damage. You seem to realize this because you address it later in the post, but if so I don't know what you're comparing poison to since you cannot add other energy damage to your weapons.

Willie the Duck

2018-08-15, 09:07 PM

They mean poison applied to weapons, not spells that deal poison damage. You seem to realize this because you address it later in the post, but if so I don't know what you're comparing poison to since you cannot add other energy damage to your weapons.

There were two claims, 1. poisons largely ineffective damage dealer, 2. lots of things immune. I believe poison has a real problem with the immunity part. But, the first claim I only find true because of the second. It is ineffective because of the immunities. But without the immunities, it is a great damage dealer, dealing multiple large dice worth. It's actually a pretty substantive boost to an individual weapon hit... unless you look at it on a per-GP basis, in which case I understand. Poison is crazy expensive. This is my central point of confusion.

Boci

2018-08-15, 09:10 PM

There were two claims, 1. poisons largely ineffective damage dealer, 2. lots of things immune. I believe poison has a real problem with the immunity part. But, the first claim I only find true because of the second. It is ineffective because of the immunities. But without the immunities, it is a great damage dealer, dealing multiple large dice worth. It's actually a pretty substantive boost to an individual weapon hit... unless you look at it on a per-GP basis, in which case I understand. Poison is crazy expensive. This is my central point of confusion.

Could also depend which poisons you have access to. Theres only one in PHB, which is what, 100 gold for 2d4 damage I think. Where are the bigger poisons? DMG? Xeniarts (sp)?

Exocist

2018-08-15, 11:59 PM

Could also depend which poisons you have access to. Theres only one in PHB, which is what, 100 gold for 2d4 damage I think. Where are the bigger poisons? DMG? Xeniarts (sp)?

DMG I think (https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Poisons#content), Purple Worm poison costs 2K a pop, but it's a DC 19 CON save vs 12d6 damage (save for half). Torpor and Malice are only DC 15 CON saves, but lethal if they fail the save (However, a bit harder to apply, due to being Ingested and Inhaled respectively.)

War_lord

2018-08-16, 01:50 AM

Well yeah, cost is an issue (assuming that your DM doesn't throw gold at you), availability of those super lethal poisons is an issue (they're DMG items, so the DM is under no obligation to offer them to you), Immunity is an issue (in the MM alone almost 21% of the monsters are unaffected by poison entirely.) Most of them have entirely makeable saves to resist. And you need to apply it with an action, so it bites into the action economy.

So yes, the raw damage numbers are good, assuming you get access to DMG poisons (which, again, you're not entitled to by RAW), but I feel comfortable in saying that in real play, with an expected encounter budget, they're not a good damage dealer.

Boci

2018-08-16, 03:44 AM

DMG I think (https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Poisons#content), Purple Worm poison costs 2K a pop, but it's a DC 19 CON save vs 12d6 damage (save for half). Torpor and Malice are only DC 15 CON saves, but lethal if they fail the save (However, a bit harder to apply, due to being Ingested and Inhaled respectively.)

Is the fact that it was printed in the DMG and not the players handbook possibly an indication that players shouldn't count on having access to it?

Willie the Duck

2018-08-16, 07:33 AM

Honestly, players shouldn't count on having access to anything. Healing potions are in the equipment guide, yet both as a DM and as a player I expect a given town/area to only have so many available at any given time.

Regardless, poison in D&D has never been one of those things that you always had, and always could use. I'm not sure that's a bad thing. 5e, what with a pretty strong DM gatekeeping mechanism on buying magic items, does a pretty good job of keeping decisive victory on the combat pillar of the game not be a matter of looking at your character's equipment list for be-all, end-all answers (exploration it can be a different matter, but that's probably a good thing--you want one's success at mountain climbing to be dependent on remembering to bring rope).

What annoys me is that, since poison in the 'purchased encounter-winner' variety is pretty hard to routinely do, everything in the MM doesn't need to be immune/resistant to poison. Therefore, all that actually having ~20% of the MM immune to poison does is hose the spellcaster (druid, green dragon sorcerer, etc.) who chooses that as the element of choice.

Bringing this back to hand crossbows, poison is clearly a thing one can use a hand crossbow for, but other than the theoretical idea that hand crossbows are easier to hide under a cloak (or maybe disassembled and snuck in somewhere), they aren't specifically good at it. A blowgun is better (in that it won't kill your target if you are trying not to, yet the damage dice difference is nominal compared to poison/SA/just adding dex on top if you are trying to kill them). Therefore I at least understand why, if they wanted to keep the hand crossbow in the game, they instead chose to make it the preferred choice of low-damage-attack-spam ('machine gun'-ing).

Boci

2018-08-16, 07:51 AM

Honestly, players shouldn't count on having access to anything.

I'd call BS after the third city I visited in a land with regular level of civilization didn't have any healing potions or greatsword, but I wouldn't mind not finding purple worm poison.

greenstone

2018-08-18, 09:56 PM

It is easier to conceal that a normal crossbow.

In my games, I rule that things with the light keyword are easier to hide or conceal. So, a rogue can smuggle a hand crossbow under a cloak or robe a lot easier than a normal crossbow or a bow. Of course, they could also smuggle a sling, but slings suck at delivering poison.

Greywander

2018-08-19, 02:49 AM

The problem with this particular line of discussion is that A. RAW poisons are largely ineffective damage dealers and B. Even if they were worth using, a huge chunk of the enemy/monster list is totally immune to poison.
Something occurs to me regarding that second point.

Firstly, most of the monsters that are immune to poison are... what? Undead? Fiends? If you're an assassin, these aren't likely targets that you'll be taking out. Now, if you're an adventurer, you'd probably want to use poisons against these monsters if you were able to, but most assassins wouldn't need to concern themselves with this, unless their target happens to be a vampire or succubus in disguise.

Second, RAW, these creatures aren't actually immune to poison, what they are immune to is poison damage and the poisoned condition. In other words, poisons that do something other than inflict damage or the poisoned condition (sleep poison, paralysis poison, etc.) would still be able to function. Now, particularly in the case of undead and fiends, you could make an argument that their biology makes any kind of poison ineffective, regardless of what the poison actually does, and I suspect this is actually RAI. Furthermore, many of the poisons in the DMG seems to state, even if the poison doesn't inflict the "poisoned" condition, "the poisoned creature is paralyzed/unconscious/blinded," etc. Since undead and fiends are immune to the "poisoned" condition, they would arguably never count as "poisoned", and thus the effect of that poison would never apply.

Still, even if immunity to poison damage and the poisoned condition counts as immunity to poison in general, my first point still applies. An awful lot of creatures you'll be encountering have no such immunity.

Personally, I feel like rogues (especially assassin rogues), as well as possibly rangers or even druids, should have gotten poison as a class feature. Other classes would have to pay for it, but rogues would be able to apply it for free, either because they craft it, steal it, or are presumed to obtain it during downtime. This would allow poisons to actually come in to regular play, instead of being more of an afterthought that had to be nerfed because it shifted the balance too much. Lower rogue Sneak Attack damage and give them extra poison damage instead, and the balance is maintained. Or just give them one dose of poison that can be applied every long rest. Or something, I don't know.

War_lord

2018-08-19, 03:07 AM

Something occurs to me regarding that second point.

Firstly, most of the monsters that are immune to poison are... what? Undead? Fiends? If you're an assassin, these aren't likely targets that you'll be taking out. Now, if you're an adventurer, you'd probably want to use poisons against these monsters if you were able to, but most assassins wouldn't need to concern themselves with this, unless their target happens to be a vampire or succubus in disguise.

How often does an entire game revolve around one player in that game having Assassin as their job? The problem with poisons in D&D is that the whole point of the game is going out and adventuring and killing hordes of monsters. So, even an "assassin" player does need to concern themselves with this, because unless the party is okay with one player steering the entire tone of the game, they're not going to get to opt out of fighting undead foes.

Second, RAW, these creatures aren't actually immune to poison, what they are immune to is poison damage and the poisoned condition. In other words, poisons that do something other than inflict damage or the poisoned condition (sleep poison, paralysis poison, etc.) would still be able to function. Now, particularly in the case of undead and fiends, you could make an argument that their biology makes any kind of poison ineffective, regardless of what the poison actually does, and I suspect this is actually RAI. Furthermore, many of the poisons in the DMG seems to state, even if the poison doesn't inflict the "poisoned" condition, "the poisoned creature is paralyzed/unconscious/blinded," etc. Since undead and fiends are immune to the "poisoned" condition, they would arguably never count as "poisoned", and thus the effect of that poison would never apply.

Still, even if immunity to poison damage and the poisoned condition counts as immunity to poison in general, my first point still applies. An awful lot of creatures you'll be encountering have no such immunity.

As a DM I wouldn't accept that reasoning, it seems like an absurdly tortured reading of the rules, and you yourself admit it's very probably not the game's intent. Unless the poison works by magical means, I would maintain that poison immune creatures are immune either because they lack a natural biology, or because their biology is especially resilient. Unfortunately 5e doesn't have the granularity of something like GURPS to distinguish between the two. You shouldn't read the rules based on what they don't say.

Personally, I feel like rogues (especially assassin rogues), as well as possibly rangers or even druids, should have gotten poison as a class feature. Other classes would have to pay for it, but rogues would be able to apply it for free, either because they craft it, steal it, or are presumed to obtain it during downtime. This would allow poisons to actually come in to regular play, instead of being more of an afterthought that had to be nerfed because it shifted the balance too much. Lower rogue Sneak Attack damage and give them extra poison damage instead, and the balance is maintained. Or just give them one dose of poison that can be applied every long rest. Or something, I don't know.

The Rogue's signature sneak attack is already essentially unlimited saveless direct damage poison. It just isn't called that or given a damage type, because as they learned from 3.5, making one of a class's key abilities useless against common kinds of creature might make simulationist sense, but it's bad for the player experience.

Greywander

2018-08-19, 06:10 AM

How often does an entire game revolve around one player in that game having Assassin as their job? The problem with poisons in D&D is that the whole point of the game is going out and adventuring and killing hordes of monsters. So, even an "assassin" player does need to concern themselves with this, because unless the party is okay with one player steering the entire tone of the game, they're not going to get to opt out of fighting undead foes.
They don't need to rely solely on poison to do their job, it's just one tool in their arsenal. Every class has situations in which they excel and situations in which they aren't well suited, this is part of why a well-balanced party is generally a good thing. Paladins and cleric excel against fighting undead, but no one complains that they're ineffective against non-undead. An assassin player who used poisons would simply need to adapt and use other tools available to them when fighting against poison-immune monsters. 5e characters are actually pretty good about being adaptable generalists instead of crippled specialists, to the point where a mono-class party can still be pretty versatile.

As a DM I wouldn't accept that reasoning, it seems like an absurdly tortured reading of the rules, and you yourself admit it's very probably not the game's intent. Unless the poison works by magical means, I would maintain that poison immune creatures are immune either because they lack a natural biology, or because their biology is especially resilient. Unfortunately 5e doesn't have the granularity of something like GURPS to distinguish between the two. You shouldn't read the rules based on what they don't say.
Agreed, it's kind of a mess. What if someone/something is immune to poison damage, but not the poisoned condition? What if they're immune to the poisoned condition, but not poison damage? What if they're immune to both, but could conceivably be affected by, say, a paralysis poison (i.e. they have a natural biology)? What if the lore specifically calls out another creature as a natural predator that uses a poison attack that inflicts neither poison damage nor the poisoned condition? Seems like it's ultimately up to DM fiat.

The Rogue's signature sneak attack is already essentially unlimited saveless direct damage poison. It just isn't called that or given a damage type, because as they learned from 3.5, making one of a class's key abilities useless against common kinds of creature might make simulationist sense, but it's bad for the player experience.
True, it would need to be more like a cleric's Turn Undead, which is largely useless except against a particular type of monster. Except, maybe the reverse. Something that's slightly effective against most enemies, except for a few. I feel like a once per day poison would work; it's almost a ribbon, but it would give a bit of extra damage on the first attack you make and maybe give the poisoned condition on a failed save. Higher levels might add sleep or paralysis poisons, more useful than a simple damage poison, but still not a cornerstone class feature.

It's just that I've seen several people say, here and in other threads, that poison seems to be neglected in 5e. Although we're past this point, if it had been built in as a class feature for one or more classes from the get-go, I think it would have gotten more consideration for how it fits into the overall rules. It certainly is a balancing act: if poison is too strong, it becomes gamebreaking, if it's too weak, then what's the point?