Hand Crossbows: Kill monsters with a Nerf gun!

[Nerwen]

I do know that this is a fantasy game but these are ridiculous!!! These pretend to be real, not magic, so are targets for reality arguments. I have a massive problem with these not just because RAW they are ludicrous and have no relationship to reality but just hearing "hand crossbow" destroys my immersion (therefore enjoyment) of the game. Saying 'just ignore it' is asinine. Could you ignore it if the party was the Fellowship of the Ring with one added character: Bozo, the uber-clown with his vorpal rubber chicken of death, who is the most powerful character in the party and who will dominate the narrative? Would that be a good game for you? You could just ignore it, right? That's kinda what you are asking of me.

PROBLEMS:
1) These never existed as a weapon.
2) They are physically impossible for them to exist with pre 20th century materials
3) THE ONES YOU HAVE SEEN ARE TOYS. Seriously not serious.

Any example you have seen (pre 1980s) are toys used by nobles who set up targets in their gardens during the renaissance. There is no battlefield weapon example because that is impossible using medieval materials. Not unlikely, impossible. Not "well, no one had the imagination" but utterly impossible based on simple basic physics. It is the utter lack of appropriate materials so not something you can otherwise overcome. Any bow-type weapon relies on the bow's draw weight and draw length to develop power. A real crossbow has a draw weight greater than a longbow but a shorter draw length so the energy imparted to the arrow / bolt is about the same. A diminutive crossbow has neither weight or length. It can not develop enough power for any real use. So using the hand crossbow, not A crossbow but THE crossbow of DnD, is very much the equivalent of fighting with a nerf gun, but actually doing lots of damage. Next character I build will have a summon teddy bears spell more powerful than Summon Woodland Beings. Sure you could make it with magic but we are supposed to be discussing non-magic items now.

At it's fastest a medieval crossbow would take 4-5 rounds to load if you had expertise, no other movement or activities allowed. To make it a viable weapon choice for those with that fantasy I have no problem using the reload RAW in DnD despite no basis in reality. As DM I definitely allow you to load a crossbow right before a combat. Keep it loaded? No. So any combat that does not give the ability to preplan the battle means no preloaded crossbows. And aim away, the vestigial fletching on a medieval crossbow bolt meant the crossbow was intrinsically inaccurate. Like the smoothbore firearm that replaced it, the crossbow was effective against large (really large not DnD large) targets like lines of troops. Ever see an account of someone going hunting with a crossbow in medieval times? They used bows which you could aim.

Another thing, you can NOT leave a medieval crossbow drawn, the natural materials would rapidly deform and become useless. Any natural material would stretch. Any mechanism of keeping the bolt in place would rip the fletching off when fired, destroying the bolt.

So yes, I find them stupid. In fact I hate them because they immediately take me out of the game. Any crossbow would be a terrible weapon in the situations found in DnD. Nonetheless I don't object to them making crossbows viable. What I strongly object to them making crossbows by far the ranged weapon of choice. I don't want to be an optimizer but I also don't want to be penalized by taking the option that actually makes sense over the option that is utterly ridiculous. If one option is spectacularly more powerful than the other you really have no option unless you want to let down your party and feel like an idiot while letting your friends die.

I have seen pics of modern crossbows (with very different materials) used as examples. Another bit of trivia; anything you see with a pistol grip is from the late 1600s or after. Pistol grips were not used prior to that. Not even pistols had pistol grips. Search "wheel-lock pistol" if curious. One shot then pistol whip with the mace end.

I keep reading about how people use these in the game and everyone who does breaks the rules. LOADING is the property which limits the use of the weapon to once per turn. AMMUNITION is the property that requires a free hand so makes it a two handed weapon even without TWO HANDED if you want more than one shot. You can fire with one hand but need a free hand to draw the ammo. Crossbow Expert allows you to ignore LOADING but not AMMUNITION. Ranged has an enormous advantage because no one wants to count the arrows / bolts, but you should not ignore the rest of the rule ever. If your DM allows hand crossbows to be used one handed, insist you can take a greatsword or polearm and a shield, or can wield a long bow in one hand and a hand crossbow in the other (or maybe 2 long bows as that makes more sense than the hand crossbows anyway), or have a sword and shield but can use your focus from the bag of holding. Maybe two swords and a shield since the characters can do things that normally are limited by the NUMERIC properties of hands and we are ignoring that. Either that or every player gets a magic weapon at start, not just the hand crossbow player. Or make up your own feat with much more than double the power of the Crossbow expert feat. The players should not have massive power differences baked in.

[PhoenixPhyre]

While I agree that hand crossbows are absurd both mechanically (entirely due to Crossbow Expert) and historically/realistically...

They also fit both a major legacy factor--they're the traditional weapon of the drow since...well...the very beginning of that race--and a major thematic/trope element. The "crossbow/pistol and sword" aesthetic as well as (in principle) the "guns akimbo" aesthetic. It's heavily tied to rogues and other "shadowy" elements.

Beyond that, I'm totally not affected by arguments from historicity or realism when it comes to weapons. Especially historicity--the fictional world has a completely different history. D&D is not a "medieval simulator"--it's an intentionally anachronistic (from the real-world perspective) melange of time-periods. Which makes sense, because our real world time periods are contingent on the actual history of our world. Even if you didn't have magic but altered key events in the history of our world, you'd end up in a radically different place.

[kazaryu]

I do know that this is a fantasy game but these are ridiculous!!! These pretend to be real, not magic, so are targets for reality arguments. nothing in dnd should be a target for a reality argument...dnd isn't simulationist. it doesn't advertise itself as being realistic. it doesn't TRY to be realistic. this is 100% a problem of expectations. you're expecting dnd to be something it isn't, nor ever was. DnD is about fantasy, that extends to its settings and even the 'mundane' parts of the game. if you want to make a 'its not realistic' argument you first need to prove that the game itself should strive for realism.



PROBLEMS:
1) These never existed as a weapon. so?


2) They are physically impossible for them to exist with pre 20th century materials
1. this is irrelevant. dnd =/= medieval times. in fact many settings are basically the modern world with a medieval aesthetic. not even medieval really, a good portion of the aesthtic is even taken from the renaissance period. and you're specifically talking about materials? mithril...adamantine..ironwood...at most you can argue the the hand cross should be significantly harder to make/be made out of special materials and therefore be significantly more expensive than the rest....oh...wait, its the most expensive weapon on the phb list, with its next closest competition being 2/3 its price? it costs half again as much as a health potion, something that is explicitly magical? seem pretty reasonable to me

2. you're just...wrong. if they had the materials to make larger crossbows, they had the materials to make hand crossbows...thats just basic logic. Now, it may not have been *worth* making hand crossbows. they may not have been effective enough to not spend the extra materials making them bigger. or possibly they would have been too unwieldy for what they did. it may have been significantly harder, to the point that noone could figure out how to downsize the design of the crossbow... none of that means they lacked the material to make them. thats just silly.


3) THE ONES YOU HAVE SEEN ARE TOYS. Seriously not serious. the vast majority of...all weapons that i've seen have been toys...



So using the hand crossbow, not A crossbow but THE crossbow of DnD,...there are 2 other crossbow types...and its not a result of the hand crossbow that makes it prevalent in optimized ranged characters...its a result of the crossbow master feat, a feat that was clearly meant to have allow you to use a one handed melee weapon (shortsword or rapier probably being the most...on the nose as far as the fantasy is concerned) and a hand crossbow in the other. sort of like a pirate with a cutlass and pistol. (yes, im aware that per the rules you'd need to sheath your sword in order to reload. that isn't my point).


Sure you could make it with magic but we are supposed to be discussing non-magic items now. so if its made with magic, it must be magical? people aren't allowed to have magical tools that allow them to help shape various materials as necessary without hte added time/expense of imbuing those materials with magic?



At it's fastest a medieval crossbow would take 4-5 rounds to load if you had expertise, no other movement or activities allowed. To make it a viable weapon choice for those with that fantasy I have no problem using the reload RAW in DnD despite no basis in reality. As DM I definitely allow you to load a crossbow right before a combat. Keep it loaded? No. So any combat that does not give the ability to preplan the battle means no preloaded crossbows. And aim away, the vestigial fletching on a medieval crossbow bolt meant the crossbow was intrinsically inaccurate. Like the smoothbore firearm that replaced it, the crossbow was effective against large (really large not DnD large) targets like lines of troops. Ever see an account of someone going hunting with a crossbow in medieval times? They used bows which you could aim.
look, noone is telling you you can't run a TTRPG game with as much realism baked in as possible. but if you want that game to be DnD, you're going to have to make significant changes, to the point that the game becomes an entirely different game (arguably you'd want an entirely different system, since a d20 system doesn't lend itself well to realism). but DnD has never (afaik) advertised itself as being super realistic.



I keep reading about how people use these in the game and everyone who does breaks the rules. LOADING is the property which limits the use of the weapon to once per turn. AMMUNITION is the property that requires a free hand so makes it a two handed weapon even without TWO HANDED if you want more than one shot. You can fire with one hand but need a free hand to draw the ammo. Crossbow Expert allows you to ignore LOADING but not AMMUNITION. Ranged has an enormous advantage because no one wants to count the arrows / bolts, but you should not ignore the rest of the rule ever. If your DM allows hand crossbows to be used one handed, insist you can take a greatsword or polearm and a shield, or can wield a long bow in one hand and a hand crossbow in the other (or maybe 2 long bows as that makes more sense than the hand crossbows anyway), or have a sword and shield but can use your focus from the bag of holding. Maybe two swords and a shield since the characters can do things that normally are limited by the NUMERIC properties of hands and we are ignoring that. Either that or every player gets a magic weapon at start, not just the hand crossbow player. Or make up your own feat with much more than double the power of the Crossbow expert feat. The players should not have massive power differences baked in.

so enforce the rules...why are you so angry that people (who aren't your players, or in your group) aren't using the rules correctly? do you make sure that your players follow the rules? if yes, then whats the big deal if other groups decide its more fun to let a person reload their xbow one-handed? now if they're a DM talking about how busted hand crossbows are and how they have a player thats using a hand crossbow+spear then feel free to point out the rules violation...not that it'd change much since a handcrossbow by itself is usually what most people are talking about when they discuss the SS/XBE combo. so they *do* have 1 hand free to reload the crossbow.


that said, you can, according to the rules, wield a weapon+crossbow using XBE. say spear+crossbow. here's how your turn would look.
action: attack with spear
no action: drop spear
bonus action: load and fire xbow (XBE)
movement: pick up spear as part of movement. (yes, thats how the rules phase it. the 'object interaction' is done as part of your action or movement.)

100% legal, if a bit clunky. so maybe those groups have already discussed this, and so don't bother communicating it every turn...they just do it.

[Nerwen]

First, my arguments did not stem from knowlegde of history alone but mainly from basic physics. Selectively enforcing physics between characters is wrong. IMHO anything that systematically gives one player advantage over another is bad. This is not a competitive game but players should not be forced to take characters who are second class. Second, the drow argument only works if that is your fantasy. My fantasy games have not had drow so we are not stepping on their toes. As a DM I would want all my players to play their fantasy without destroying the other players game. Is it OK to insist some players need access to something because one of their potential options requires it at the expense of destroying the immersion of another player? If everyone is OK with it great! Hand crossbows ignoring AMMUNITION is not even an official option in the game so any player should be able to veto this.
While I agree that hand crossbows are absurd both mechanically (entirely due to Crossbow Expert) and historically/realistically...

They also fit both a major legacy factor--they're the traditional weapon of the drow since...well...the very beginning of that race--and a major thematic/trope element. The "crossbow/pistol and sword" aesthetic as well as (in principle) the "guns akimbo" aesthetic. It's heavily tied to rogues and other "shadowy" elements.

Beyond that, I'm totally not affected by arguments from historicity or realism when it comes to weapons. Especially historicity--the fictional world has a completely different history. D&D is not a "medieval simulator"--it's an intentionally anachronistic (from the real-world perspective) melange of time-periods. Which makes sense, because our real world time periods are contingent on the actual history of our world. Even if you didn't have magic but altered key events in the history of our world, you'd end up in a radically different place.

[Nerwen]

nothing in dnd should be a target for a reality argument...dnd isn't simulationist. it doesn't advertise itself as being realistic. it doesn't TRY to be realistic. this is 100% a problem of expectations. you're expecting dnd to be something it isn't, nor ever was. DnD is about fantasy, that extends to its settings and even the 'mundane' parts of the game. if you want to make a 'its not realistic' argument you first need to prove that the game itself should strive for realism.
The game SHOULD strive for ability to suspend disbelief and player equality and consistency. Saying we can ignore reality does not lessen my argument one iota. We can ignore all sorts of reality. Are you going to selectively let certain players ignore the rules but not others?

[False God]

The game SHOULD strive for ability to suspend disbelief and player equality and consistency. Saying we can ignore reality does not lessen my argument one iota. We can ignore all sorts of reality. Are you going to selectively let certain players ignore the rules but not others?

But it's asking you to suspend your disbelief about a fantasy world with fantasy races with fantasy materials and magic, other races, aliens and gods.

It's decidedly NOT asking you to suspend your disbelief about a fantastical IRL middle ages.

[JonBeowulf]

I can't stand them. I think they're dumb. None of my characters have ever used one. I respect players who choose to equip their character with them, but I don't respect their character.

Drop the range a bit and reduce it to 1d4, then we'll talk.

[PhoenixPhyre]

First, my arguments did not stem from knowlegde of history alone but mainly from basic physics. Selectively enforcing physics between characters is wrong. IMHO anything that systematically gives one player advantage over another is bad. This is not a competitive game but players should not be forced to take characters who are second class. Second, the drow argument only works if that is your fantasy. My fantasy games have not had drow so we are not stepping on their toes. As a DM I would want all my players to play their fantasy without destroying the other players game. Is it OK to insist some players need access to something because one of their potential options requires it at the expense of destroying the immersion of another player? If everyone is OK with it great! Hand crossbows ignoring AMMUNITION is not even an official option in the game so any player should be able to veto this.

Sure. I agree that Crossbow Expert is a bad feat. And personally, in my 5e hack, I've altered the hand crossbow (d4 damage, among other things) and removed the feat (because I've removed feats entirely). If you don't like them, just don't include them. Done. That's well within the rights of a DM, given table agreement.

But arguments from physics also are hollow...because fantasy worlds will intrinsically have different physics. Or else be incoherent (physically speaking), which also obviates your point. Anyone, even your STR 8 wizard, can shoot any crossbow once per six seconds. That's already so far beyond what's "realistic" as to make any such things an obvious mockery.

[Nerwen]

But it's asking you to suspend your disbelief about a fantasy world with fantasy races with fantasy materials and magic, other races, aliens and gods.

It's decidedly NOT asking you to suspend your disbelief about a fantastical IRL middle ages.

Humans can't fly and shoot deadly boogers from their nose but this is magic, not fantastical middle ages so I should be able to build such a character. I know I'm being ridiculous but you've opened up a can of worms with your argument. If we should not let reality shape our discussion at all, I'll open up my imagination to the point of making **** everyone will hate. I don't care if you don't want Bozo in your fantasy world, this is my fantasy. And bozo can walk through walls because not walking through walls is a reality argument. No where in the rules does it say Bozo can not walk through walls.

You are selectively using the anti-reality argument. "You can not argue from reality" is a ridiculous position because A)Reality is what you know B)Ultimately reality WILL shape your game. There are basic assumptions about how the world works that you need. You are trying to shut down the discussion before it begins.

[kazaryu]

Humans can't fly and shoot deadly boogers from their nose but this is magic, not fantastical middle ages so I should be able to build such a character. I know I'm being ridiculous but you've opened up a can of worms with your argument. If we should not let reality shape our discussion at all, I'll open up my imagination to the point of making **** everyone will hate. I don't care if you don't want Bozo in your fantasy world, this is my fantasy. And bozo can walk through walls because not walking through walls is a reality argument. No where in the rules does it say Bozo can not walk through walls. this isn't a game rules complaint...its a table complaint. people coming to the table with different expectations. this is the type of thing that should be discussed before gaming starts. like session 0 tell your players that you don't allow hand crossbows. the 'fantasy' being fulfilled at the table isn't exclusively derived from the individual players. as a group you should decide what you're looking to get out of the game, and if its not compatible...then either compromise, or don't play that game.

but either way this isn't a rules problem. its a table one. the rules enable the hand crossbow fantasy. doesn't mean all tables have to support it....




You are selectively using the anti-reality argument. "You can not argue from reality" is a ridiculous position because A)Reality is what you know B)Ultimately reality WILL shape your game. There are basic assumptions about how the world works that you need. You are trying to shut down the discussion before it begins.

mmmm...this is kind of true. but its flipped things around a bit.

your initial argument was 'this isn't realistic to our world, and therefore shouldn't exist'.

in reply we said 'what is realistic in our world, isn't the design backing for the rules. therefore its perfectly fine to have exceptions to reality'

in other words, just because at your table you might use reality as a litmus test for how to adjudicate certain interactions...doesn't mean that you must use reality to adjudicate literally everything.


The game SHOULD strive for ability to suspend disbelief and player equality and consistency.... Are you going to selectively let certain players ignore the rules but not others?

its not the game designers fault you can't suspend your disbelief on this

and what rules are you referring to that hand crossbow users are ignoring? did you not read the rest of my statement, specifically the part where i talked about how...hand crossbow users can follow the rules?

at this point i don't even know what is upsetting you. you claim that hand crossbow users ignore ammunition property...and you're right, some of them do. but most of those are relatively new to the game and get corrected. and they may more may not continue to use them...but now they're doing them in a way that basically doesn't change their effectiveness, but are following the rules...

idk. one thing you definitely seem upset about is XBE, and i'll agree they did drop the ball by not setting the feat up in such a way that


Saying we can ignore reality does not lessen my argument one iota your entire opening argument was 'because hand crossbows are mundane, they must follow the laws of reality. so...yes, the fact that we're not bound by realistic history, materials, or even physics (even for mundane objects) absolutely lessens your argument. in fact it removes it altogether. unless you can prove in some way that everything in DnD should follow reality.


We can ignore all sorts of reality. exactly...now you're getting it.

[stoutstien]

Plenty of systems take more time to try to model more realistic components of weapons but this is DnD where *everything* is magical to some extent so meh.

Don't use them if you don't like them. It's an opt in systems after all.

I would be hard pressed to believe that in the history of mankind someone didn't get assassinated by a small crossbow. Range would have been feet or even inches but the principal would be the same of the firearm versions that still exist today. Basically an Apache revolver or OSS glove.

Also Leonardo design has been made reality and IT does work. Scary if anyone would have implemented that back then.

[Sigreid]

I'm in the if it bothers you, just don't have hand crossbows be a thin in your world.

[Thrudd]

Change crossbows to single shot magic rayguns with magic energy cannisters or crystals that need to be loaded after each shot. You can have little ones, bigger ones, repeating ones, etc. The more powerful types just cost a lot and are rare, not a lot of people know how to craft the tech. There's special guilds of crafters who jealously guard the secrets of manufacture. You might have some shenanigans with blowing up crystal ammo cannisters (or maybe that isn't how they work, and will only activate by whatever mechanism is inside the gun), and danger if players want to try reverse engineering and crafting their own, failure can result in crystals blowing up in your face and destroying your weapon. This is the only piece of magic tech that is ubiquitous enough to be offered as a default character weapon. I think this is a better option than saying "all crossbows are made with magic". Just invent an actual magical pistol that does the damage of a crossbow, so you can have that "rapier and pistol" aesthetic.

Or, just say hand crossbows don't exist in your world, if you're going for only medieval tech and rare magic. The best I can see a hand crossbow being used for would be ranged delivery of small poison darts. No piercing damage, only poison damage. It would be an assassin device normally used from hiding.

[Nerwen]

its not the game designers fault you can't suspend your disbelief on this
yes it is!

[False God]

Humans can't fly and shoot deadly boogers from their nose but this is magic, not fantastical middle ages so I should be able to build such a character. I know I'm being ridiculous but you've opened up a can of worms with your argument. If we should not let reality shape our discussion at all, I'll open up my imagination to the point of making **** everyone will hate. I don't care if you don't want Bozo in your fantasy world, this is my fantasy. And bozo can walk through walls because not walking through walls is a reality argument. No where in the rules does it say Bozo can not walk through walls.

You are selectively using the anti-reality argument. "You can not argue from reality" is a ridiculous position because A)Reality is what you know B)Ultimately reality WILL shape your game. There are basic assumptions about how the world works that you need. You are trying to shut down the discussion before it begins.

No, I'm not. D&D has pretty well defined fantasy worlds and in them hand crossbows are regularly built and employed, particularly by a fantasy race known for its magic and violence.

Also, you can be a sorcerer with Orb of Acid (or Grease, but you said lethal) and the Fly spell and perfectly emulate the "flying human who shoots deadly boogers".

I'm sorry to hear that the real world makes it hard for you to enjoy fantasy. But that's a YOU problem.

[Battlebooze]

I'm kinda torn by hand crossbows. They are neat in a fantasy gadget kinda way and mechanically I don't think they are unbalanced.

Outside of the fantasy, hand crossbows are very weak, but then again, so are shuriken and they are a long standing staple of martial art fantasy as well. In a realistic world, a hand crossbow should be something sad like a 1d3 damage weapon, a shruriken a 1 point weapon. They still might be useful to deliver poison though.

I guess I have bigger problems with the game than hand crossbows, so I don't really care? I have used them before without being bothered.

[Willie the Duck]

I am going to try a different tack than others have. One related to the framing of arguments.
OP, let's talk not about hand-crossbows, but about pistols. In particular, the two-dollar pistol you started off hotter than when you started this thread (and commented in the now-closed thread necro). Throwing around exclamation marks and all-caps and words like ridiculous, stupid, and asinine just makes it seem like you are throwing a fit. In particular when this isn't in response to a specific recent publication or (to our knowledge) something someone has done in your gaming group. Thus it seems like someone pitching a fit at the universe at large over the fact that not everything in it matches their expectations. People tend to quite reasonably give people doing so wide birth. It's because your overall premise (minus presentation and quite a bit of the arguments brought forth) being so reasonable that people are engaging at all. Plenty of people also dislike the hand crossbow -- that it exists in the game, or more prevalently just that synergies with feats and abilities to be a strictly-best-option for a large number of character types. Disappointment with this state of affairs is a non-controversial and frequently-held position.


I do know that this is a fantasy game but these are ridiculous!!! These pretend to be real, not magic, so are targets for reality arguments. I have a massive problem with these not just because RAW they are ludicrous and have no relationship to reality but just hearing "hand crossbow" destroys my immersion (therefore enjoyment) of the game. Saying 'just ignore it' is asinine. Could you ignore it if the party was the Fellowship of the Ring with one added character: Bozo, the uber-clown with his vorpal rubber chicken of death, who is the most powerful character in the party and who will dominate the narrative? Would that be a good game for you? You could just ignore it, right? That's kinda what you are asking of me.
Okay, serious question, who is 'you?' As in, who is it with whom you think you are having an argument? Since you included this before anyone could have possibly asked you to just ignore hand crossbows, much less a vorpal-chicken clown who dominates a narrative*, this just reinforces to the rest of us a notion that we are not party to the entire discussion, and possibly paying for the perceived transgressions of people we have not met.
*should probably circle back to whether you have had someone dominate the game narrative with a hand crossbow build. Honestly if someone is dominating a narrative just by being the best combatant, there might be other fundamental issues with the campaign.



PROBLEMS:
1) These never existed as a weapon.
2) They are physically impossible for them to exist with pre 20th century materials
3) THE ONES YOU HAVE SEEN ARE TOYS. Seriously not serious.

Any example you have seen (pre 1980s) are toys used by nobles who set up targets in their gardens during the renaissance. There is no battlefield weapon example because that is impossible using medieval materials. Not unlikely, impossible. Not "well, no one had the imagination" but utterly impossible based on simple basic physics. It is the utter lack of appropriate materials so not something you can otherwise overcome. Any bow-type weapon relies on the bow's draw weight and draw length to develop power. A real crossbow has a draw weight greater than a longbow but a shorter draw length so the energy imparted to the arrow / bolt is about the same. A diminutive crossbow has neither weight or length. It can not develop enough power for any real use.
This is an extrapolation of what is known*. There are a handful of IRL historic examples of things which fit the basic D&D hand crossbow description -- pistol-sized crossbows -- and they certainly don't have the performance necessary to be a weapon of war. It's hypothesized that they must be toys (children's or executive (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_toy)) because, well, what else were they for**? Whether it would be possible to up-engineer such a thing to be readily person-deadly using medieval/renaissance technology is something I think would require some additional experimental archeology. It certainly wasn't cost-effective for them to do so, since they didn't (but also didn't have a significant incentive to do so, since a pistol-sized crossbow is not clearly a goal anyone would have had).
*Rest assured: a good 51-99% of everyone here has seen the same Youtube videos where I suspect you saw this topic covered.
**Assassins wouldn't actually want highly-conspicuous weapons with no other use, and better weapons already existed specifically for hunting birds, small pests, etc.

The question I have is whether these few historic curiosities are really 'D&D hand crossbows' at all. As in, were they the inspiration? We know hand crossbows came into the game from Gygax with the drow adventures. We also know much of the historic material available to him (and how he made errors like his interpretations of ring mail and studded leather). To the best of my knowledge, these historic pistol-sized crossbows wouldn't have been in the material he used. It's entirely possible that he invented his drow hand crossbows (because they fit the theme he had envisioned for his fantasy antagonists) completely distinct from these historic examples.


So using the hand crossbow, not A crossbow but THE crossbow of DnD, is very much the equivalent of fighting with a nerf gun, but actually doing lots of damage. Next character I build will have a summon teddy bears spell more powerful than Summon Woodland Beings. Sure you could make it with magic but we are supposed to be discussing non-magic items now.
So this seems to be a pretty clear line you are drawing. Things in D&D not specifically listed as magical should be subject to their realistic limitations. Completely avoiding the issue of what happens when someone disagrees with the initial premise, my question is how do you feel about all the other exceptions? The studded leather* and ring mails? The 10' pikes**? The giants who violate the squared-cube law, the dragons that should have block-long wingspans? Bringing unarmed martial artists and lightly armored swashbucklers to the same battlefield as viking era swords, mail and shields or full harness and greatswords? Wearing any of this stuff while doing overland travel without a retinue of squires and helpers, much less doing so while investigating convenient treasure-filled holes in ground filled with monsters and traps?
*which either is ahistoric/would not be good protection, or if we give it the benefit of the doubt and rule it to be mis-characterized brigandine, would not be light.
**which, if they are mischaracterized longspears, why do they still weigh as much as a real 25' one?

D&D has always been a hodge podge of realism, partial realism, complete fantasy (of the pre-existing variety), and stuff made up from whole cloth. It is perfectly reasonable to not want such and such in your own games because they violate either your preferred tone/theme/trope preferences, or because you can't abide their specific dis-reality. However, when the argument becomes that such a thing shouldn't exist in D&D because it isn't realistic/wasn't historic, it's also reasonable that others to ask, effectively, 'yes, and?'


The game SHOULD strive for ability to suspend disbelief and player equality and consistency. Saying we can ignore reality does not lessen my argument one iota. We can ignore all sorts of reality. Are you going to selectively let certain players ignore the rules but not others?
This is advice you can take or leave as you see fit. Only know that it is genuine, and that I think it will help you to convince more people when you argue for your positions. Your audience tells you whether your argument is effective. Everyone here has run into people who have spent pages and pages of digital ink utterly convinced that their arguments are brilliant and the only reason no one agrees is because of some innate bias, or that these others aren't capable or recognizing the argument's brilliance. At the end of the day, they still walk away having changed no minds.


First, my arguments did not stem from knowlegde of history alone but mainly from basic physics. Selectively enforcing physics between characters is wrong. IMHO anything that systematically gives one player advantage over another is bad.
I think the counter-argument is that selectively enforcing pre-determined game rules between characters is inadvisable, and those game rules should reflect reality only as much as everyone preemptively determined that to be a priority in their gaming. Physics isn't a sacrosanct, inviolate quality of a game unless it was preemptive agreed upon as being a priority. This is clearly important to you. hope that in all your games, this is made clear during session 0- and that you have session 0s; such that everyone can bring forth their primary concerns, preferences, and things they cannot abide to a common discussion and negotiation about what kind of game you wish to play.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

I can't stand them. I think they're dumb. None of my characters have ever used one. I respect players who choose to equip their character with them, but I don't respect their character.

Drop the range a bit and reduce it to 1d4, then we'll talk.

That's pretty much where I'm at. Players have the right to do it and I try not to cringe too much when I'm DMing for one.

[JNAProductions]

yes it is!

Then how come lots of other people don't have an issue with them?

Hand Crossbows weren't a thing in real-world medieval era. Neither was magic, or dragons, or elves, or... Well, the vast majority of D&D.

D&D is "like reality on the surface level, except where noted as an exception" and one of those exceptions is the Hand Crossbow. Another thing is HP-realistically, being hit with a maul should break bones. And yet not only do PCs feel perfectly fine with a night of rest after taking four maul hits (say, a 5th level Fighter with 16 Con, for 49 HP), they're literally unimpeded in ability to fight at all until they hit 0 HP.

If you want a more realistic system, have you tried GURPS?

[stoutstien]

Then how come lots of other people don't have an issue with them?

Hand Crossbows weren't a thing in real-world medieval era. Neither was magic, or dragons, or elves, or... Well, the vast majority of D&D.

D&D is "like reality on the surface level, except where noted as an exception" and one of those exceptions is the Hand Crossbow. Another thing is HP-realistically, being hit with a maul should break bones. And yet not only do PCs feel perfectly fine with a night of rest after taking four maul hits (say, a 5th level Fighter with 16 Con, for 49 HP), they're literally unimpeded in ability to fight at all until they hit 0 HP.

If you want a more realistic system, have you tried GURPS?

I've ran into this in my homebrew setting that makes heavy use of bellow pistols/rifles.

In reality they were parlor toys but reality takes a back seat to how cool they with a little artistic liberty.

[Amechra]

To repeat myself from the necro'd thread:


Hand crossbows are stupid because they have the light property for no good reason.

Now, what probably happened is a communication failure - the obvious intent is that hand crossbows are ranged weapons for dual-wielders. Rapier+crossbow is a cool visual, after all!

But then, at some point, someone noticed that that didn't actually work, because the two-weapon fighting rules specify that both weapons have to be melee weapons. I'm guessing that it was pretty late in playtesting, since their response seemed to be "slap on a feat that lets you TWF with hand crossbows" (Crossbow Expert) instead of, you know, crossing out one instance of the word "melee".

And the end result is that the hand crossbow is basically the closest thing the game has to a machine pistol because of some loose wording. Oops!

If it feels like I'm harping on this... I kinda am? But that's because making the following changes removes most, if not all, of the screwiness with hand crossbows:



Delete the word "melee" from the two-weapon fighting rules. It's a light weapon? Cool, you can TWF with it.
Delete the clause requiring a free hand to reload one-handed weapons with the Ammunition property. It doesn't make sense with two out of the three weapons it applies to anyway.
Replace the text of the Loading property with "Because of the time required to load this weapon, reloading it counts as your item interaction for the turn".
Dual Wielder lets you draw and/or reload two weapons as part of the same item interaction.
Scrap Crossbow Expert as a feat.


There, done!

[sithlordnergal]

So, most of the people already covered what I would generally cover, and I agree with them. I do have one thing to say though:

On its own, the Hand Crossbow is not a good weapon in 5e. Its a ranged weapon that only deals 1d6 damage, can only be fired once, can't be properly dual wielded like other Light weapons, has a short range, and is the most expensive weapon in the PHB. On its own, it is substantially worse than the Light Crossbow, Heavy Crossbow, Shortbow, and Longbow.

The reason the Hand Crossbow gets so much attention is because of Crossbow Expert. That's it, that's the only reason its considered amazing. If Crossbow Expert didn't allow you to make a Bonus Action Attack with a Hand Crossbow, I can guarantee that you'd never see it in use unless someone wanted to play a Drow and lean into the rp side of things. Rogues would use Light Crossbows, and everyone else who could use the Hand Crossbow would use Heavy Crossbows.

[Unoriginal]

First, my arguments did not stem from knowlegde of history alone but mainly from basic physics.

D&D does not follow any real-world physics, basic or otherwise.



Selectively enforcing physics between characters is wrong.

Alright. Then no class has access to anything magical or fantastical.

[Kane0]

The hand crossbow isn't the problem, the Crossbow Expert feat is.

[diplomancer]

"Guy that can accept a 40 pound 3 foot halfling having the same strength modifier and carrying capacity of a 250 pound 6'6" tall half-orc complains about irrealistic crossbows".

[Schwann145]

If you think hand crossbows are ridiculous, wait until you hear about the Monk! You're expected to... get this... win boxing matches with dinosaurs, demons, and dragons! Hah!

(Side note towards the Drow arguments: Drow use hand crossbows as a poison delivery method, not like a substitute for 9mm handguns the way 5e characters use them!)


D&D does not follow any real-world physics, basic or otherwise.
Of course it does. This position always comes across as silly. Or do your Human characters have default fly speeds, breath weapons, teleporting abilities, etc?

[sithlordnergal]

(Side note towards the Drow arguments: Drow use hand crossbows as a poison delivery method, not like a substitute for 9mm handguns the way 5e characters use them!)


Pretty much this. Its basically useful to deliver poison, and maybe have an easier time hiding it on your person than a Shortbow. But the Hand Crossbow on its own? Not a great weapon in 5e.

Its only great because Crossbow Expert lets any old Martial class make up to three attacks with it for free, and you can apply Sharpshooter to all three attacks.

[Leon]

magic is realty warping powerhouse for free but nope its all wrong at a tiny crossbow

[Skrum]

My problem with the hand crossbow is the likelihood it causes people to break the rules via reloading it. The CBE feat encourages this - it implies the image of a character using 2 hand crossbows, or a sword and a crossbow. But you can't do that cause even though the crossbow can be FIRED with one hand, you need two hands to reload it. The actual mechanics of the feat work best using 1 hand crossbow, and then firing the same crossbow again using the feat. Rapid-fire pistol, basically.

It's a dumb weapon and a dumb feat. But it's also one of the few weapons with actual flavor, which is in stark contrast to the majority of the weapon choices.

[kazaryu]

My problem with the hand crossbow is the likelihood it causes people to break the rules via reloading it. The CBE feat encourages this - it implies the image of a character using 2 hand crossbows, or a sword and a crossbow. But you can't do that cause even though the crossbow can be FIRED with one hand, you need two hands to reload it. The actual mechanics of the feat work best using 1 hand crossbow, and then firing the same crossbow again using the feat. Rapid-fire pistol, basically.

It's a dumb weapon and a dumb feat. But it's also one of the few weapons with actual flavor, which is in stark contrast to the majority of the weapon choices.

you actually can wield a hand xbow alongside a secondary weapon. so long as that weapon isn't a crossbow. its just clunky. and technically requires your table to run with 'dropping something' as being entirely a free action...which RaW i can't find a source for. but it is an incredibly common ruling, at the very least.

basically you just use your action to attack (with your melee weapon) then drop said weapon so you can load/fire your xbow. then pick up your weapon as your 'object interaction'.

[Skrum]

you actually can wield a hand xbow alongside a secondary weapon. so long as that weapon isn't a crossbow. its just clunky. and technically requires your table to run with 'dropping something' as being entirely a free action...which RaW i can't find a source for. but it is an incredibly common ruling, at the very least.

basically you just use your action to attack (with your melee weapon) then drop said weapon so you can load/fire your xbow. then pick up your weapon as your 'object interaction'.

Yes, it's possible, and RAW, but I hate it with the passion of a thousand suns. It's a total loophole. Dropping your weapon constantly? Not heroic. YMMV lol.

[kazaryu]

Yes, it's possible, and RAW, but I hate it with the passion of a thousand suns. It's a total loophole. Dropping your weapon constantly? Not heroic. YMMV lol.

oh its definitely a goofy way of fighting. but you can always flavor it as doing a fancy flourish with your weapon without *actually* dropping your weapon. the semi-important thing (mechanically) is that you are using your object interaction every turn maintaining it. not that you are physically dropping your weapon

[Dork_Forge]

This seems like a really odd line in the sand to draw, but sure:

'Hand crossbows would be too weak for war'

Then being weaker is intuitive, hence why they have the lowest damage die and shortest range of the crossbows. Them being a weapon is a trope, ime a pretty popular one too.

'They wouldn't have the materials to make a hand crossbow!'

As already pointed out, of course they would just based on having full sized ones. You could argue that they'd be too weak to use, that's suspension of disbelief. You could just as easily saw they require special design consideration or materials, which would explain their astronomical cost compared to other weapons.

'But physics!'

You seem to be taking the 'if it's not magical it has to be like our world' approach, and that is heavily flawed.

IRL humans can't lift and carry the weights dnd characters can, for the duration they can, especially without suffering fatigue.

I cut my finger the other day and it's still a visible wound that's a slight nuisance, it was barely bigger than a paper cut and I have slept at least twice. A D&D human can fully heal from nearly dying several times with a good night's sleep.

I guess physics would have a stronger bearing if the game actually emulated it, but up until this edition the universe has been a bunch of crystal spheres floating around in space napalm and now space involves inter dimensional travel. I'm really not sure why you'd look at dnd and argue for real world physics.

[Unoriginal]

Of course it does. This position always comes across as silly. Or do your Human characters have default fly speeds, breath weapons, teleporting abilities, etc?

D&D humans have the limits of D&D humans, meaning that only *some* of them have innate fly speeds, breath weapons and teleporting abilities.

The fact is that, like all matter on the Material Plane, D&D humans are made out of the elemental forces of Earth, Fire, Air and Water, combining in funny ways.

Those are *not* real-world physics.



I guess physics would have a stronger bearing if the game actually emulated it, but up until this edition the universe has been a bunch of crystal spheres floating around in space napalm and now space involves inter dimensional travel. I'm really not sure why you'd look at dnd and argue for real world physics.

Exactly. Now the universe is a bunch of crystal spheres floating around in thoughts.



Sure, hand crossbows are unrealistic, ahistorical, and ridiculous.

Because D&D is unrealistic, ahistorical, and ridiculous, and I love it for that.

[Damon_Tor]

Everything I post below should come with the context that I have actually shot and killed things with a crossbow. As well as all sorts of bows (modern compound bows to more archaic ones) and all sorts of firearms.

A "hand crossbow" should be understood to be big: 3 pounds is big. For contrast, a warhammer is two pounds. This is not a nerf gun. The standard light crossbow weighs 5 pounds. That two pounds of difference is likely chiefly in the loss is of the stock (the part that braces against your shoulder on a two-handed weapon) and only partially because the bow itself is reduced in size. In short, it is best to think of a hand crossbow as a standard light crossbow which has been modified to be fired with one hand.[\b]

IE this: https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/dungeons/images/b/b1/Drow.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20091008235712
not this: https://www.kryxrpg.com/static/a6a8b06342a9ac61a896af8f0dc90261/dcb78/drow.png

[B]All weapons should be fired two-handed. Even a little <one-pound Glock should be held in both hands when you fire it or you lose accuracy and rate of fire. This is because a triangle is a stable shape and when you fire a weapon you are resisting the force of the weapon moving backwards (and usually up or down) as the weapon receives equal and opposite force from the projectile. Firing a weapon with one hand requires training, and even then it's never as good as using it in two hands.

Does a hand crossbow model this problem? Well, yes. It's harder to use (a martial weapon compared to a simple one) and it has a greatly reduced effective range (30 ft vs 80). Which is exactly what you would expect.

If I were to complain about the hand crossbow as written, I would give it the versatile property: no added damage, but double range when wielded in two hands instead. But that's neither here nor there.

The major problem with the hand crossbow is the problem with ALL crossbows in 5e: the loading time is unrealistic even by default, but I can accept it for the sake of usability. The crossbow expert feat just makes the problem worse by removing the loading time AND letting them use a bonus action to fire the thing. The feat is the problem, not the weapon itself.

[Arkhios]

I'm truly sorry, but the "Just ignore it" is an astute statement.

First, the problem is (mostly) in your head, because (5th edition) D&D is NOT a real life simulation, and doesn't follow the same laws of physics and/or scientific facts (three words: magic is real) as we do.

Second, as said above, the Crossbow Expert feat is what makes the weapon "problematic" by letting one basically ignore the Loading property, not the weapon itself. Without the feat, Loading property forces you to use an Action or a Bonus Action to load new ammunition, essentially making it impossible to attack multiple times — or at least more than twice — in a full round. Unless, of course, you or your DM is handwaving the Loading property anyway.

[Imbalance]

In real life, I have effectively killed a monster with a literal Nerf gun.

[Atranen]

I can't stand them. I think they're dumb. None of my characters have ever used one. I respect players who choose to equip their character with them, but I don't respect their character.

Drop the range a bit and reduce it to 1d4, then we'll talk.

I'm here as well. I like powerful and creative builds, but there are some that push the rules just a little too hard, to the extent that they feel cheesy rather than interesting and flavorful. Nuclear wizard, spirit guardians + telekinetic + thorn whip cleric, hexblade paladin all fit the bill. So does hand xbows sharpshooter.

Light or heavy xbows sharpshooter, on the other hand, is great fun. Imo.


The hand crossbow isn't the problem, the Crossbow Expert feat is.

You'd think they'd have fixed it by now. I recall JC saying it was on a shortlist some years ago.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

Is it just me or does anyone else have an issue with XBE removing the disadvantage from 5'? That's the bit of the feat that grinds on me the most in terms of immersion. It also facilitates ranged martials never doing anything else other than using the Xbow; I tend to like martials that have a bit of a toolbox to deal with different combat circumstances.

[Dork_Forge]

Is it just me or does anyone else have an issue with XBE removing the disadvantage from 5'? That's the bit of the feat that grinds on me the most in terms of immersion. It also facilitates ranged martials never doing anything else other than using the Xbow; I tend to like martials that have a bit of a toolbox to deal with different combat circumstances.

I think this comes from gun-fu and trying to emulate that Hard Boiled/John Wick style of combat. Whilst I get where you're coming from, a Xbow user would be Dex-focused anyway so it would just involve pulling a rapier and going to town. There isn't a change in build needed, unlike Str covering ranged, so I don't really see it being more interesting to remove the 5' benefit.

[DammitVictor]

Allowing characters to reload and fire a heavy crossbow or a muzzleloader every round breaks my teeth, but I can just about accept it in terms of playability-- but my suspension of disbelief will not stretch to cover firing one multiples times per round, or dual-wielding them. It snaps like a rubber band and I can no longer accept that the game rules are reflecting... anything, really.

Bad enough people insist on having rules for dual-wielding modern cartridge handguns.

I tried to fix this recently. It didn't go well.

[Sigreid]

As I recall in 1e the hand crossbow of the drow did crap damage and was mostly a poison delivery system.

[Dork_Forge]

Allowing characters to reload and fire a heavy crossbow or a muzzleloader every round breaks my teeth, but I can just about accept it in terms of playability-- but my suspension of disbelief will not stretch to cover firing one multiples times per round, or dual-wielding them. It snaps like a rubber band and I can no longer accept that the game rules are reflecting... anything, really.

Eh, they're meant to reflect a heroic mish-mash of tropes that makes a player feel cool and powerful. A quick google shows that the British army standard was four shots a minute from a muzzle loader, given that's the standard expectation from a trained soldier, it's not unreasonable to think a particularly deft/experienced one would hit what we call 1 a round in 5e.

Multiple times a round sounds less ridiculous when you take the fact that a normal human could potentially do one a round, and then consider that adventurers are basically super human in stats with remarkable talent (both muzzleloaders and crossbows require a feat to fire more than once) it's not really that bad.

It's even more reasonable when you add on top that it's a game and leaning on the side of fun rather than emulation is typically important.


Bad enough people insist on having rules for dual-wielding modern cartridge handguns.

This one I really don't get. Why is this bad? Dual-wielding pistols is a trope that can be found in pretty much every kind of fiction and has persisted for decades.

[DammitVictor]

Eh, they're meant to reflect a heroic mish-mash of tropes that makes a player feel cool and powerful.

Imagine Orlando Bloom doing it in either Lord of the Rings or Pirates of the Caribbean. It's ridiculous.


It's even more reasonable when you add on top that it's a game and leaning on the side of fun rather than emulation is typically important.

No, I disagree with this entirely. Any action in a roleplaying game, like a movie or any other narrative, is only cool or fun in the context of the narrative; if the narrative doesn't have a coherent tone or rules, all the cinematic action scenes are just meaningless filler.


This one I really don't get. Why is this bad? Dual-wielding pistols is a trope that can be found in pretty much every kind of fiction and has persisted for decades.

I do not Aim with my Hand. He who Aims with his Hand has forgotten the face of his Father. I aim with my Eye.

[Dork_Forge]

Imagine Orlando Bloom doing it in either Lord of the Rings or Pirates of the Caribbean. It's ridiculous.

You're holding those movies up as things that are not ridiculous? I've seen legolas ride a shield like a skateboard and his character in PotC was a skilled swordsman despite the fact that he never had any training or sparring experience.

In comparison an exceptionally talented and skilled game character shooting a bunch seems okay...


No, I disagree with this entirely. Any action in a roleplaying game, like a movie or any other narrative, is only cool or fun in the context of the narrative; if the narrative doesn't have a coherent tone or rules, all the cinematic action scenes are just meaningless filler.

I don't necessarily disagree with this, I'm just missing the party where the rate of fire of crossbows and guns in 5e is not coherent with the tone and rules of 5e?

Considering an Epic Fighter can make 9 attacks in 6 seconds, I'm really not sure what part of this is clashing with the game itself. It more just feels like you don't like it because it's 'unrealistic,' with is fine as a personal taste, but D&D isn't and as far as I'm aware, was never realistic.


I do not Aim with my Hand. He who Aims with his Hand has forgotten the face of his Father. I aim with my Eye.

With the help of Google I am thoroughly confused why you've taken a partial quote from the gunslinger character of the Dark Tower series to answer why dual-wielding pistols is unreasonable.

I've not (and won't) read the Dark Tower series, but I did see the movie, and the kind of shooting that character pulls off leaves a lot to be desired as a yardstick of reality.

Is the intent here that you can only look at one thing at a time to aim or something?

[DammitVictor]

You're holding those movies up as things that are not ridiculous?

No, I'm holding them up as examples of things that people regularly complain about while refusing to see the problem with people dual-wielding/rapid-firing crossbows and firearms.


I don't necessarily disagree with this, I'm just missing the party where the rate of fire of crossbows and guns in 5e is not coherent with the tone and rules of 5e?

Just take a second and imagine an elf firing 6 shots from a longbow in 6 seconds. Picture it in your mind.

I don't understand how some people can imagine a crossbow or a muzzle-loader working the same way unless they're trying very hard not to imagine it at all.



With the help of Google I am thoroughly confused why you've taken a partial quote from the gunslinger character of the Dark Tower series to answer why dual-wielding pistols is unreasonable.

I've not (and won't) read the Dark Tower series, but I did see the movie, and the kind of shooting that character pulls off leaves a lot to be desired as a yardstick of reality.

Is the intent here that you can only look at one thing at a time to aim or something?

I got through the entire movie okay, except for the scene where Roland was reciting that creed while shooting at an enemy with his eyes closed and the ending where Roland fired a bullet to alter the trajectory of a bullet he'd already fired. Maybe I could accept the latter, spoilered issue if the movie had done a better job establishing it beforehand... I was fine with reloading a single-action revolver by running the cylinder across the outside of his gunbelt.

Fundamentally, there are reasons to fence with a weapon in your off-hand. The only reason to carry a gun in each hand is to have more ammunition accessible, and most gunfighters would pull a border switch instead of shooting with their off-hand. Firing a pistol in each hand is less effective than firing a single pistol and reloading it when necessary... something that is not physically possible while holding and firing another pistol in your other hand. **coughcoughhandcrossbowscough** It's stupid and the only reason people think it looks cool is because they haven't tried it.

[Imbalance]

Such a sore lack of imagination befuddles me when the very first piece of art most players see depicts two adventurers - some kind of mage with a wonky staff and a glowy hand and a fighter carrying a longbow with about six arrows and sword brandished - coming face-to-face with the huge king of the fire giants in his dragon skull cap, slamming a weapon bigger than both humanoids put together, and his horse-sized hell hounds in his throne room inside a volcano. If this alone doesn't tell you that we're far, far beyond medieval fantasy, whatever that even means, there's still an abundance of flavor text between the cover and the page with the equipment list to adequately spell out that the source material takes no reality to heart. If you've actually read any of it, but the stupid crossbow or dual wielding or any other singular hangup is the one thread of untruth that is still breaking the immersion for you, the book, the game, the rules, the system, nor the world are the problem.

Burdensome disbelief seems incompatible with fun.

[Unoriginal]

Such a sore lack of imagination befuddles me when the very first piece of art most players see depicts two adventurers - some kind of mage with a wonky staff and a glowy hand and a fighter carrying a longbow with about six arrows and sword brandished - coming face-to-face with the huge king of the fire giants in his dragon skull cap, slamming a weapon bigger than both humanoids put together, and his horse-sized hell hounds in his throne room inside a volcano. If this alone doesn't tell you that we're far, far beyond medieval fantasy, whatever that even means, there's still an abundance of flavor text between the cover and the page with the equipment list to adequately spell out that the source material takes no reality to heart. If you've actually read any of it, but the stupid crossbow or dual wielding or any other singular hangup is the one thread of untruth that is still breaking the immersion for you, the book, the game, the rules, the system, nor the world are the problem.

Burdensome disbelief seems incompatible with fun.

Indeed.

If any reality was applied, the Giant would be unable to exist due to the square-cube law indicating their muscles wouldn't be able to handle their own body's weight, let alone the weight of a weapon of that size. And while a horse-sized canine is theoretically possible, it would require a type of atmosphere, climate and prey abbundance that would make such a being living at the same time as tool-using humanoids impossible (unless the humanoid traveled to another world, traveled through time, or the horse-sized canine was deliberately created artificially and kept alive in a tailored environment by caretakers).

Not to mention the other two corebooks, depicting respectively a couple of leather-wearing individuals being scared by a levitating, orb-shaped creature with eyestalks, a big central eye and a huge maw, while in a storm and some kind of armored warrior kneeling while what is clearly an animated dead person performs some kind of glowing magic on them.

D&D is unrealistic.

D&D is ahistorical.

D&D is ridiculous.

And D&D is great *because* it is those things.

D&D is an angry guy in a loincloth wrestling a dinosaure in one hand and a tentacled alien in the other, while his friend the robe-clad dragon-person uses the power of their mind to conjure flames to keep the sky pirates at bay and his other friend the 17yo elven-chainmail-armored lady (whose grandfather was a literal anthropomorphic personification of evil and law) demonstrates the result of her training by shooting the tentacled alien six times in six seconds with a single-shot flintslock pistol.

While on top of a jungle pyramid shooting a vortex of light into the sky.


If you do not like that kind of pulpy nonsense, more than fair. But it is not D&D's fault.

D&D 5e is what it intends to be. You cannot fault a shovel for being a bad tool if you want to nail a painting to your door, nor can you fault a hammer for being a poor tool to dig holes

[kazaryu]

No, I disagree with this entirely. Any action in a roleplaying game, like a movie or any other narrative, is only cool or fun in the context of the narrative; if the narrative doesn't have a coherent tone or rules, all the cinematic action scenes are just meaningless filler. this is true...at least for the narrative focused games that it applies to...but you've failed to indicate why actual reality is the lense through which all games should be coherent with. Thats the problem with this. you seem to want DnD to be realistic...but you aren't proving why it should be. you have a few avenues to do that. you could
1: show evidence that people would have more fun playing dnd using realistic rules for literally everything, compared to how they play it now which is by ignoring reality in favor of fantasy
2: show evidence that one of DnD's design philosophies was 'realism'
3: show that DnD was marketed as being based on reality

any of the three would work to establish your premise. not prove your premise, necessarily. But at the very least then your argument would have some kind of foundation.




I do not Aim with my Hand. He who Aims with his Hand has forgotten the face of his Father. I aim with my Eye. love that dark tower quote...but its also something that is only applicable to the fantasy of dark tower, and maybe the real world. in DnD you actually DO explicitly aim with your hand...ranged weapons attacks are dex attacks, not wis. so....whats your point?


You're holding those movies up as things that are not ridiculous? I've seen legolas ride a shield like a skateboard and his character in PotC was a skilled swordsman despite the fact that he never had any training or sparring experience. while we never learn the extent of will's training/experience in combat, we do know that will practices with his swords 3 hours per day. and the fact that his footwork was solid and he's, generally, skilled, implies that he has indeed had some level of training. i mean...to be fair.





Just take a second and imagine an elf firing 6 shots from a longbow in 6 seconds. Picture it in your mind.

I don't understand how some people can imagine a crossbow or a muzzle-loader working the same way unless they're trying very hard not to imagine it at all. generally if i really care enough to try to figure out how it could actually work, even sort of, its by imagining people using multiple bolts/arrows per shot. with the bows being designed to allow for that if you're a particularly skilled fighting. But i also just...don't need to imagine it to enjoy the fantasy.






Fundamentally, there are reasons to fence with a weapon in your off-hand. The only reason to carry a gun in each hand is to have more ammunition accessible, and most gunfighters would pull a border switch instead of shooting with their off-hand. Firing a pistol in each hand is less effective than firing a single pistol and reloading it when necessary... something that is not physically possible while holding and firing another pistol in your other hand. weird...the rules...don't allow you to reload a pistol...or hand crossbow with another weapon in your hand...so your complaint is that some people misunderstood the rules? or decided that itd be cool to allow it anyway? if its the latter, then why do you care if it isn't your talbe. if its the former, then this is something you should discuss with your group...


[/i] It's stupid and the only reason people think it looks cool is because they haven't tried it. or...people think it looks cool because they think it looks cool. its ok for you to base what you think is cool on reality...that doesn't mean every does, or should. i've seen equilibrium, Christian bale looked like a badass dual wielding his pistols...in melee. in my opinion, of course. i don't need to try it myself to understand that its unrealistic. it still looks cool, and i fully support anyone that chooses to allow it in their games.

[Schwann145]

Considering an Epic Fighter can make 9 attacks in 6 seconds...
Can they though? Are we sure those 9 attacks aren't actually an abstract of 1 or 2 particularly well-placed attacks? And is 6 seconds a hard/fast rule, explicitly called out anywhere?


It's stupid and the only reason people think it looks cool is because they haven't tried it.
You're missing the obvious. It's easy and makes sense to dual-wield hand crossbows when you consider that your character can just have four arms. With those extra arms, reloading and such is a breeze. It's a fantasy game, after all - there's mages and s#!t! Anything goes!
Why does your character have four arms? Who cares! Don't think too hard about it!
#definitelyabusingruleofcool

[JNAProductions]

Can they though? Are we sure those 9 attacks aren't actually an abstract of 1 or 2 particularly well-placed attacks? And is 6 seconds a hard/fast rule, explicitly called out anywhere?


You're missing the obvious. It's easy and makes sense to dual-wield hand crossbows when you consider that your character can just have four arms. With those extra arms, reloading and such is a breeze. It's a fantasy game, after all - there's mages and s#!t! Anything goes!
Why does your character have four arms? Who cares! Don't think too hard about it!
#definitelyabusingruleofcool

The Fighter can make 9 attacks in 6 seconds, since they can take out nine different people in entirely different relative places from them.

And there's a difference between "I don't like the fantasy of a hand crossbow/dual-wielding hand crossbows, so I don't have it in my game," and "No one should like the fantasy of hand crossbows/dual-wielding hand crossbows, so they shouldn't be in the game ever."

[Waterdeep Merch]

Art and unusually low weight aside, why not just say a hand crossbow is a latch crossbow, or any other historical form that was able to be fired one-handed?

And if the super small ones bug you, perhaps you could explain it away by saying it's unusually large price tag (75 gp, in this economy?) is thanks to the prod and/or string being made out of rare and expensive materials like adamantine and woven chimera mane? And if *this* bothers players that think then the same materials would make a superior light or heavy crossbow, it's easily explained that sizing it up would make the required strength to draw it completely unfeasible (or even something you can offer to players as an option if they've got high Strength later!).

[Amechra]

Maybe I could accept the latter, spoilered issue if the movie had done a better job establishing it beforehand... I was fine with reloading a single-action revolver by running the cylinder across the outside of his gunbelt.

As someone who read some of the Dark Tower books... Roland's guns were literally made from his world's equivalent of Excalibur, and he's noted to be superhumanly good at both reloading and aiming his guns. It's gun magic.

Like, I get your complaint about how unrealistic a lot of weapon-related tropes are, but I'm not sure you could've picked a worse example than Roland Deschain.

[Spiryt]

Ever see an account of someone going hunting with a crossbow in medieval times? They used bows which you could aim.



Well, yes, there were entire books about it, lol.

For someone who goes on a rant about realism in D&D you form plenty very dubious or straight out wrong statements.

Crossbows were very popular hunting weapons, and in fact hunting is where they persevered well into 18th century, long after they've become obsolete as battlefield weapons.

https://c8.alamy.com/comp/P50F7A/le-livre-de-chasse-book-of-the-hunt-by-gaston-phobus-1331-1391-written-around-1387-1389-book-dedicated-to-philip-the-bond-duke-of-burgundy-illuminated-manuscript-15th-century-hunting-scene-with-bow-and-crossbows-conde-museum-chateau-of-chantilly-france-P50F7A.jpg


https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2008BU3737/full/735,/0/default.jpg

https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O97580/hunting-crossbow-unknown/

There's nothing inherently less accurate about crossbow than a bow, if anything, they're bit more accurate due to lesser archer paradox.

And the fact that you can hold the bow steady and aim as you like is big advantage too.

[Dork_Forge]

while we never learn the extent of will's training/experience in combat, we do know that will practices with his swords 3 hours per day. and the fact that his footwork was solid and he's, generally, skilled, implies that he has indeed had some level of training. i mean...to be fair.


I don't think it's ever touched on in the movies and a quick google keeps referring to him as 'self taught' so I guess we're meant to assume it's a result of natural talent and hard work.

That doesn't change the fact that being very good at a form of contact combat without training or sparring is incredibly unrealistic and that's the point being made. Pointing to something that is unrealistic as a bar when complaining about realism in D&D.



Can they though? Are we sure those 9 attacks aren't actually an abstract of 1 or 2 particularly well-placed attacks? And is 6 seconds a hard/fast rule, explicitly called out anywhere?

The game explicitly says you make multiple attacks and you can target different creatures and move between attacks, so yes, epic Fighters can make 9 attacks in 6 seconds.

As for the time thing it's stated (maybe elsewhere but this is where I found it first within 20 seconds of looking) in the Order of Combat section of Chapter 9 in the PHB.

Which is pretty important, since the game operates on turns but mechanics beyond 1 round later operates in time. I'd assume it's 6 seconds because that makes a minute spell/effect ten rounds to be a round number and comfortably cover the entirety of most combats.



As someone who read some of the Dark Tower books... Roland's guns were literally made from his world's equivalent of Excalibur, and he's noted to be superhumanly good at both reloading and aiming his guns. It's gun magic.

Like, I get your complaint about how unrealistic a lot of weapon-related tropes are, but I'm not sure you could've picked a worse example than Roland Deschain.

When googling it I saw Roland needed to wear gloves to avoid burning his fingers because he reloads that fast and that his firing of revolvers resembles a machine guns rate of fire.

So yeah, basically superhuman gun magic.

[Waterdeep Merch]

There's nothing inherently less accurate about crossbow than a bow, if anything, they're bit more accurate due to lesser archer paradox.

And the fact that you can hold the bow steady and aim as you like is big advantage too.

Generally speaking, they are both more accurate and have greater penetrative power (roughly double, in fact) thanks to their operation. Some of them have absolutely absurd draw weights that you could just never get away with on a normal bow, since you only need to get the string to the nut before you can release it, add your quarrel, aim, and fire. And this is before we factor in the use of winches and other spanners to afford particularly crazy draw weights, like the windlass pulley.

This is actually necessary to compensate for the shorter draws compared to bows. The prod needs to generate roughly twice as much power to give their quarrels the same speed as an arrow being loosed by a bow. While this means both shoot at the same general speeds, there's twice as much power behind the quarrel- very useful for, say, punching through plate armor. Or downing a deer in a single shot. It also means the quarrel flies straighter for longer, indeed making it better for picking off a singular target at distance.

The advantage of a traditional bow is in its speed. Even a lever spanner would take so long to engage that any halfway decent archer could have loosed three or more arrows in that same time. There's also an issue of trajectory in certain warfare scenarios, since the power behind a quarrel makes it poorly suited to volley fire. It just flies too straight for that. There's a reason both forms of weaponry survived side by side for centuries, they accomplish different things.

[Tanarii]

This is actually necessary to compensate for the shorter draws compared to bows. The prod needs to generate roughly twice as much power to give their quarrels the same speed as an arrow being loosed by a bow. While this means both shoot at the same general speeds, there's twice as much power behind the quarrel- very useful for, say, punching through plate armor. Or downing a deer in a single shot. It also means the quarrel flies straighter for longer, indeed making it better for picking off a singular target at distance.Crossbow effective range was less than a bow. The velocity drops off much faster, and penetrating power is mass (which is higher for a bolt) times velocity squared (which starts higher but far more rapidly drops for a bolt compared to an arrow). (Ref: Mike Loades)

So at shorter ranges they're far more powerful. But they have much shorter effective distances, depending on the armor they're needing to penetrate. (Unarmored I'd hazard a guess it's probably not significantly different, I doubt penetrating an unarmored human requires that much penetration power and it's more about hitting the target. :smallamused:.)

[Witty Username]

I don't think it's ever touched on in the movies and a quick google keeps referring to him as 'self taught' so I guess we're meant to assume it's a result of natural talent and hard work.

That doesn't change the fact that being very good at a form of contact combat without training or sparring is incredibly unrealistic and that's the point being made. Pointing to something that is unrealistic as a bar when complaining about realism in D&D.


I don't blame anyone for missing that, but in the first movie, it comes up in conversation between Jack and Will (because fighting in movies is a conversation with a winner and loser). And it is to explain why he is able to keep up with Jack specifically, who is recently shipwrecked so is likely not doing so good, and as pointed out by other people is using a sword that is good on ships but not great for deuling in a general sense.

Not that any of this has anything to do with realism, I just care about pirate movies more than this conversation.

I don't mind hand crossbow from realism, so much as favoritism, why can't shortbow? Balance, not really, realism, not really, themes, also not really. I personally would like feats for different weapons that makes them more distinct (or masteries, that actually is pretty close to what I want).

--
Rapid shooting at an arrow a second or faster is a thing in reality, it has come up in a few historical contexts. The issue is that it tends to mean less-zero time to aim, which means that accuracy is much less. Which reduces effective range, outside of volley firing. Shortbow range in d&d is something like 80ft, which is a pretty small range in archery (for better people with a better bow than me anyway), rapid shooting should be pretty duable for a master of warfare like D&Ds fighter.

[Sigreid]

I don't blame anyone for missing that, but in the first movie, it comes up in conversation between Jack and Will (because fighting in movies is a conversation with a winner and loser). And it is to explain why he is able to keep up with Jack specifically, who is recently shipwrecked so is likely not doing so good, and as pointed out by other people is using a sword that is good on ships but not great for deuling in a general sense.

Not that any of this has anything to do with realism, I just care about pirate movies more than this conversation.

I don't mind hand crossbow from realism, so much as favoritism, why can't shortbow? Balance, not really, realism, not really, themes, also not really. I personally would like feats for different weapons that makes them more distinct (or masteries, that actually is pretty close to what I want).

--
Rapid shooting at an arrow a second or faster is a thing in reality, it has come up in a few historical contexts. The issue is that it tends to mean less-zero time to aim, which means that accuracy is much less. Which reduces effective range, outside of volley firing. Shortbow range in d&d is something like 80ft, which is a pretty small range in archery (for better people with a better bow than me anyway), rapid shooting should be pretty duable for a master of warfare like D&Ds fighter.

In most cases, but proper training, practice and talent and some people can shoot very accurately very, very quickly. They tend to not be sighting in the normal way though. Heck, historical accounts indicated that Wild Bill was able to shoot with deadly accuracy when his vision had degraded until he was effectively blind, seeing only silhouettes.

[Arkhios]

Well, yes, there were entire books about it, lol.

For someone who goes on a rant about realism in D&D you form plenty very dubious or straight out wrong statements.

Crossbows were very popular hunting weapons, and in fact hunting is where they persevered well into 18th century, long after they've become obsolete as battlefield weapons.

https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O97580/hunting-crossbow-unknown/

There's nothing inherently less accurate about crossbow than a bow, if anything, they're bit more accurate due to lesser archer paradox.

And the fact that you can hold the bow steady and aim as you like is big advantage too.

Indeed. Crossbow was very easy to learn to use, since the skill required to point and shoot one is much lower than for a bow, and much more common in continental europe in medieval times than a plain bow and string (because, well, a crossbow was a technologically more advanced and preferable choice over the more primitive bow, and because it's not as simple to draw the string and hold it as you might think. For one, it takes a lot of strength to first draw it and then keep it still while also taking an aim before you let the arrow loose). Crossbows were used by peasants and soldiers alike, and frankly aren't very difficult to manufacture, if you know anything about carpentry and fletching. Which were quite common skills back then. Nowadays, not so much.

Also, crossbow is literally more effective than a bow. Crossbows packed a lot more punch and were more capabable to pierce plate armor, unlike a bow, which was a huge advantage when it was invented, slowly paving way to warfare to abandon heavy steel armor because it didn't give that much of a protection against crossbows to be worth it; Crossbows are definitely slower to load, but are more deadlier, so mobility in combat became more valuable for protection.

Edit: I stand corrected by Unoriginal. It seems I "may" have confused crossbows and firearms in regards to piercing plate effectively enough for it to be meaningful. And it also seems that I was less than informed of the actual time period of when crossbows emerged in history. Oops. :smallredface:



That said, common knowledge as well as advanced knowledge of humanities and/or science from real world is all good to know, but trying to forcibly implement said real world knowledge into a game which may or may not follow same logic will cause people go grey decades before their time. In short, why bother?

[kazaryu]

I don't think it's ever touched on in the movies and a quick google keeps referring to him as 'self taught' so I guess we're meant to assume it's a result of natural talent and hard work.

That doesn't change the fact that being very good at a form of contact combat without training or sparring is incredibly unrealistic and that's the point being made. Pointing to something that is unrealistic as a bar when complaining about realism in D&D.



oh absolutely, i agree that DnD character get better unrealistically fast. i was just pedantically pointing out that Will isn't untrained. he may not have had formal training, but even self taught at 3 hours per day is hardly comparable to 'no training'. assuming of course that those 3 hours were quality hours, which we can assume they were since...well, it worked. but yeah, i agree that it doesn't change your ultimate point

[Waazraath]

Can they though? Are we sure those 9 attacks aren't actually an abstract of 1 or 2 particularly well-placed attacks? And is 6 seconds a hard/fast rule, explicitly called out anywhere?


You're missing the obvious. It's easy and makes sense to dual-wield hand crossbows when you consider that your character can just have four arms. With those extra arms, reloading and such is a breeze. It's a fantasy game, after all - there's mages and s#!t! Anything goes!
Why does your character have four arms? Who cares! Don't think too hard about it!
#definitelyabusingruleofcool

Jest all you want, my 3.5 4 armed handcrossbow wielder build could make 30 attacks per turn at high levels :) Long live wacky builds.

[Unoriginal]

Indeed. Crossbow was very easy to learn to use, since the skill required to point and shoot one is much lower than for a bow, and much more common in continental europe in medieval times than a plain bow and string (because, well, a crossbow was a technologically more advanced and preferable choice over the more primitive bow, and because it's not as simple to draw the string and hold it as you might think. For one, it takes a lot of strength to first draw it and then keep it still while also taking an aim before you let the arrow loose). Crossbows were used by peasants and soldiers alike, and frankly aren't very difficult to manufacture, if you know anything about carpentry and fletching. Which were quite common skills back then. Nowadays, not so much.

Also, crossbow is literally more effective than a bow. Crossbows packed a lot more punch and were capabable to pierce plate armor, unlike a bow, which was a huge advantage when it was invented, slowly paving way to warfare to abandon heavy steel armor because it didn't give that much of a protection against crossbows to be worth it; Crossbows are definitely slower to load, but are more deadlier, so mobility in combat became more valuable for protection.


Crossbows already existed centuries before plate armor.

Crossbows had nothing to do with the decline of heavy armor, people vastly overestimate how well a bolt can penetrate plate (it was possible, but rare, and even if it did pierce the steel there was no guarantee it would still have enough force to be lethal).

Keep in mind that armorers used to shoot plate armors with guns, leaving the bullet mark to prove how effective it was (hence the term "bulletproof"). It took a long while for gun-makers to make a gun that couldn't be armored against without making the armor cartoonishly heavy.



That said, common knowledge as well as advanced knowledge of humanities and/or science from real world is all good to know, but trying to forcibly implement said real world knowledge into a game which may or may not follow same logic will cause people go grey decades before their time. In short, why bother?

Pretty much, but I'll go further: trying to forcibly implement real world knowledge is working against the game.

[Arkhios]

Crossbows already existed centuries before plate armor.

Crossbows had nothing to do with the decline of heavy armor, people vastly overestimate how well a bolt can penetrate plate (it was possible, but rare, and even if it did pierce the steel there was no guarantee it would still have enough force to be lethal).

Keep in mind that armorers used to shoot plate armors with guns, leaving the bullet mark to prove how effective it was (hence the term "bulletproof"). It took a long while for gun-makers to make a gun that couldn't be armored against without making the armor cartoonishly heavy.

I stand corrected. I'm not an actual historian myself, only interested in bits of here and there, and apparently I confused crossbows and firearms in regards to effectiveness against plate armor. But the point still stands that crossbow is more deadlier than a bow, and relatively simple to use so that practically anyone could learn it with ease.




Pretty much, but I'll go further: trying to forcibly implement real world knowledge is working against the game.

case closed/end of thread. :smallbiggrin:

[KorvinStarmast]

I do know that this is a fantasy game but these are ridiculous!!! These pretend to be real, not magic, so are targets for reality arguments. I have a massive problem with these not just because RAW they are ludicrous and have no relationship to reality but just hearing "hand crossbow" destroys my immersion (therefore enjoyment) of the game. Saying 'just ignore it' is asinine. I'd drop the damage to 1d4 for a start. But I'd also be fine with them being removed from the game.

[Tanarii]

Crossbows already existed centuries before plate armor.

Crossbows had nothing to do with the decline of heavy armor, people vastly overestimate how well a bolt can penetrate plate (it was possible, but rare, and even if it did pierce the steel there was no guarantee it would still have enough force to be lethal).

Keep in mind that armorers used to shoot plate armors with guns, leaving the bullet mark to prove how effective it was (hence the term "bulletproof"). It took a long while for gun-makers to make a gun that couldn't be armored against without making the armor cartoonishly heavy.
Slight modification: Crossbows weren't very effective against what we call full plate (articulated plate harness with padding underneath) beyond a certain range. And that range was very short.

Of course, the same was true to Longbows. The English didn't defeat the French at Agincourt by punching arrows directly through their full plate at long range.

Vastly more effective against Chainmail however. As were arrows.

And of course you always might hit a weak spot.

[Willie the Duck]

Regarding the 'shooting X times in Y seconds' issue -- I think the largest issue here is mostly that I think the game changed from 1 minute rounds in AD&D to 6 second rounds in 3e+ without a huge amount of thinking about the ramifications. Certainly all the discussions about the movement rates possible from this (compared to even regular athletes, and flying animals having max speeds below their reasonable stall speed, etc.) suggests that this is part of the game that was not intended to be subject to rigorous scrutiny. In my mind, a round isn't specifically 6 seconds, so much as it is approximately how long it takes to do something interesting in a battle. Yes, this is part of the whole 'abstraction' thing that drives the occasional individual nuts, but in the end I think it is a part of the game that is loosely gimballed to the hard realism numbers and measurements and trying to tighten it down won't actually make anyone more satisfied with the results.

Hand crossbows specifically -- I think it's really just a part of what genre-tropes you do or do not want in your game. If you want quasi-medieval pistol analogs (but not actual firearms) in your game, they work well. Same if they are specifically skulking assassin (such as drow) weapons, and used most often to deliver poison. If not, by all means don't include them. It's just hardly a singular example in the game. Another one that comes to mind are scythes -- 5e doesn't have them*, but plenty of other editions did. Certainly some weapons realist would be upset about their presence, but it facilitated things for the player who wanted their death-cleric to have a Grim Reaper theme. In 3e, they were an optimal choice for crit-fisher builds, and I think that's similar to how 5e hand crossbows interact with XBE (or spiked chains, also in 3e) -- it's perhaps not the best that a oft-strictly-best option also be one people might object to on thematic reasons. I certainly hope that in the 2024 rules, it's less frequent that hand crossbows (and one-handed quarterstaves and shields, to name my sets-teeth-on-edge instance) are the optimal build choice.
*specifically, yes they probably fit well within the re-skin rules.


Of course it does. This position always comes across as silly. Or do your Human characters have default fly speeds, breath weapons, teleporting abilities, etc?

If a game isn't something (such as a physics emulator), all things made possible by it not being so do not have to be present, it only means that they could be. Or maybe to qualify, you need at least some examples of those things not possible if it were something. We certainly have seen things in D&D that would not be possible in a (rigorous) physics emulator -- such as the eternally discussed high-level fighter who can fall hundreds of feet and walk away in fighting shape (repeatedly).

And perhaps that's a better descriptor: D&D is not a rigorous physics emulator. Things still fall downwards, it just doesn't do do so at d= 1/2 x g x t^2. Characters die when stabbed, just not in a realistic blood-loss and diminished-fighting-capacity-as-one-is-wounded fashion. Characters can carry around a relatively high weight load nearly indefinitely, but can't approach the max lifts people have achieved IRL. D&D at one time had a (semi-)accurate inter-relation between weapon used and target armor, with various weapons being relatively better against plate, mail, or cloth armors; but people found that to be complex realism in search of a game purpose and it was dropped.


Is it just me or does anyone else have an issue with XBE removing the disadvantage from 5'? That's the bit of the feat that grinds on me the most in terms of immersion. It also facilitates ranged martials never doing anything else other than using the Xbow; I tend to like martials that have a bit of a toolbox to deal with different combat circumstances.

I have a problem with it as part of a larger category of abilities which I will call 'being good at something is done by making limitations on the thing go away, instead of being good at resolving them.' Sharp Shooter honestly miffs me more, as it would be easy to have it halve the penalties granted by cover or by doubling a weapons normal range (but instead, the penalties are just eliminated). Having a feat that reduces the penalty of shooting while in melee at least is a more complex issue (one where 'you just don't') makes more sense; although I would have loved it if instead the feat made 'disengage + 1/2 move + shoot' be a thing (or just make you really good at smacking people with the butt end of a crossbow).

[KorvinStarmast]

FWIW, the hand crossbows in First Knight (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Knight) (an Arthurian tale with Richard Gere as Lancelot) was wielded by Mordred Malagant (Ben Cross) and his faction; it was very short range, and I'll offer that it was shorter range than the HCB offered up in the PHB.

[Dr.Samurai]

@OP: You are spot on. The Hand Crossbow increases the cringe of any game it's in a hundredfold, unless it's in the hands of drow enemies (who themselves introduced cringe to D&D when they got their Lolth Menzo treatment).

I love that at level 5 a sword and board fighter with a 3ft piece of sharpened steel can deal 1d8+6 x2, and the guy with the little pocket crossbow is dealing 1d6+13 x3. It's 2 kewl for wordz.

Knight: How did you do that?

XBE: I would tell you, but the story of how I gained my abilities is so tragic, it has been known to make grown men sob, and women faint. *I pull my hair out of my eyes, revealing a scar of some unknown, but soon to be known, tragedy that befell me*

DM: Sure, ok, what do you guys do now?

Knight: I wipe the blood off my sword.

XBE: I take another magazine of bolts from my thigh brace and load it into my hand crossbow.

DM: Your what?

XBE: Remember? I told you I have crossbow bolts on multiple bandoliers and on like wraps all around my arms and legs. And also I have a pack attached to the top of my fingerless gloves.

DM: I don't think that's how that works though with the magazine.

XBE: This is a modern world with medieval trappings though. *I look to the knight and say "Hop in!"*

Knight: Oh my! What type of wagon is this?

XBE: It's called a sports car, in cherry red, but with a button I can make it midnight black.

Knight: How fast can it go?

XBE: Brace yourself. DM, I push a button and the car phases into the earth.

DM: Wait, what?

XBE: This is D&D dude, not a simluation. Anything goes in this game, it doesn't try to map to reality in anyway. Leave your expectations at the door, you're bogging the game down by thinking that there's any semblance of reality to this. To the knight I say "I suppose the story begins when I was orphaned at the young age of 1 year old, my parents slaughtered before me. I tried to save them, but the enemy bested me, and I was forced to escape and raise myself in the slums of Waterdeep, where the leader of the fiercest Thieves' Guild took notice of my superb talents..."

[kazaryu]

@OP: You are spot on. The Hand Crossbow increases the cringe of any game it's in a hundredfold, unless it's in the hands of drow enemies (who themselves introduced cringe to D&D when they got their Lolth Menzo treatment).

I love that at level 5 a sword and board fighter with a 3ft piece of sharpened steel can deal 1d8+6 x2, and the guy with the little pocket crossbow is dealing 1d6+13 x3. It's 2 kewl for wordz.

Knight: How did you do that?

XBE: I would tell you, but the story of how I gained my abilities is so tragic, it has been known to make grown men sob, and women faint. *I pull my hair out of my eyes, revealing a scar of some unknown, but soon to be known, tragedy that befell me*

DM: Sure, ok, what do you guys do now?

Knight: I wipe the blood off my sword.

XBE: I take another magazine of bolts from my thigh brace and load it into my hand crossbow.

DM: Your what?

XBE: Remember? I told you I have crossbow bolts on multiple bandoliers and on like wraps all around my arms and legs. And also I have a pack attached to the top of my fingerless gloves.

DM: I don't think that's how that works though with the magazine.

XBE: This is a modern world with medieval trappings though. *I look to the knight and say "Hop in!"*

Knight: Oh my! What type of wagon is this?

XBE: It's called a sports car, in cherry red, but with a button I can make it midnight black.

Knight: How fast can it go?

XBE: Brace yourself. DM, I push a button and the car phases into the earth.

DM: Wait, what?

XBE: This is D&D dude, not a simluation. Anything goes in this game, it doesn't try to map to reality in anyway. Leave your expectations at the door, you're bogging the game down by thinking that there's any semblance of reality to this. To the knight I say "I suppose the story begins when I was orphaned at the young age of 1 year old, my parents slaughtered before me. I tried to save them, but the enemy bested me, and I was forced to escape and raise myself in the slums of Waterdeep, where the leader of the fiercest Thieves' Guild took notice of my superb talents..."

cute. a bad comparison but cute.

noone is claiming that anything goes, all at the same time. the point is that anything *can* go..its a fantasy setting. the argument about it not being simulationist isn't that nothing coincides with reality...its that the decision on what exists aren't based on historical accuracy or real world physics. its based on what is cool in the fantasy. sometimes that means pulling actual things from the real world, often it means taking things from the real world and recontextualizing them for DnD. using them in ways they weren't irl. for example longbows being used at short range or in tight quarters.

and probably the silliest thing about your analogy is the car. which you try to justify it with the line 'his is a modern world with medieval trappings' and then immediately describe something that is...explicitly not medieval trappings. what might a car look like in dnd? a horseless carriage, or perhaps a summoned steed with speeds that far exceed normal horse. or if you want to get even more fancy a carpet that can fly via magic....any of that sound familiar to...any of the fantasy tropes you've seen or heard of? DnD literally already has things that fill the same function as cars...the thing you tried to pass off as being anachronistic and ridiculous in order to make the point that fantasy isn't what was described.

now, to your point, it is true that not everything maps perfectly, not all technologies are transferred across as readily or as commonly. for example it is truly expensive to acquire DnD's equivalent of a car. So when we say 'its not medieval, its the modern world with a medieval aesthetic you're correct that that isn't literally true. it is a slight exaggeration' but that doesn't make it suddenly a pure medieval world either. the fantasy world still has access to materials that far exceed anything that was available in medieval europe. many technologies exist, through magic rather than mundane means, that we don't even have today...much less in medieval Europe.

so if you're going to try to argue that its 'ridiculous' for us to claim that the hand xbow is fine because its fantasy and moreover its fantasy that doesn't try to imitate irl, then you're going to need more than hollow parody.

[Imbalance]

The sports car is an Illithid make, but the color changing aspect and phasing are Netherese aftermarket bolt-ons. It uses crushed diamonds for fuel, but gets stellar mileage. It comes standard with a table of adverse effects to roll on once for every five miles of travel through solid material.

Thing is, this example has less to do with wacky items in game than it does player entitlement. You don't just get to declare an item like that, but I can definitely see it as a quest reward.

[Willie the Duck]

and probably the silliest thing about your analogy is the car.

IMO, the silliest thing about their analogy is that it was framed as a rebuke of hand crossbows, but devoted 90% of the text the pearl-clutching about edgelordism.

[Dr.Samurai]

The sports car is an Illithid make, but the color changing aspect and phasing are Netherese aftermarket bolt-ons. It uses crushed diamonds for fuel, but gets stellar mileage. It comes standard with a table of adverse effects to roll on once for every five miles of travel through solid material.
Lol, a Bugattiloid :smallcool:

[Mastikator]

Personally I like to think that all crossbows are a little bit magi-tech. I mean reloading an shooting a heavy crossbow once per 6 seconds is not remotely realistic unless you have some kind of modern pump action crossbow.

Also I'm definitely making a homebrew self-driving carriage with a burrow speed now. And by definitely I mean probably not, but maybe

[JackPhoenix]

Also I'm definitely making a homebrew self-driving carriage with a burrow speed now. And by definitely I mean probably not, but maybe

Just port Tumbler from 3.5's Eberron. Magic of Eberron, IIRC.

[Dr.Samurai]

so if you're going to try to argue that its 'ridiculous' for us to claim that the hand xbow is fine because its fantasy and moreover its fantasy that doesn't try to imitate irl, then you're going to need more than hollow parody.
Well, slight exaggeration (as you put it) can be met with slight exaggeration, no?

I'm not trying to argue against you, I don't think I have to. I think it's plain as day that the "it's not a simulation"... commentary, let's say (it isn't an argument), is completely irrelevant and dismissive.

D&D does map to the real world, and tries to at the same time that it tries to create rules and an enjoyable game. So it's of course not a 1 for 1 representation of our world. But to say things like "it doesn't try" or "it has different physics" etc is just silly. There's a reason you take damage when you fall. There's a reason your movement can be limited by any number of things. Why weapons deal damage in the first place, and the biggest ones deal the most damage.

In fact, 5E is so light on rules and rulings that the DM has to adjudicate a lot of it. How does the DM do that? I'll give you a hint, it isn't by imagining made up alien physics and throwing a dart at the wall about "how things work in D&D land".

All to say that if someone thinks the crossbow is a silly weapon because it isn't at all realistic, grandstanding that D&D takes place in an alien universe with its own set of physics that defy understanding is inappropriate. D&D isn't the Far Realm.

@Willie the Duck: They are one and the same :smallwink:

@Mastikator: JackPhoenix is correct that the Tumbler is a vehicle that burrows through the earth in Eberron. However, you can't put the top down while it is in motion so... I'm not sure how you're going to shoot your hand crossbow during the high speed chases.

[Unoriginal]

D&D 5e has Mad Max/Whacky Races-style cars.

Powered by burning mortal souls, if I might add.



D&D is s silly game happening in a silly setting. If you don't like it, fair, but you can't make D&D less silly, you can only decide if you play it or not.

[Ganryu]

I'm legit curious of OP's opinion of 'leather armor' (especially studded) and the lack of gambeson in the game.

[Mastikator]

@Mastikator: JackPhoenix is correct that the Tumbler is a vehicle that burrows through the earth in Eberron. However, you can't put the top down while it is in motion so... I'm not sure how you're going to shoot your hand crossbow during the high speed chases.

Using the Tumbler was JackPhoenix's idea. I'm homebrewing a wooden wagon, and a wheelbarrow version that fits only one person. If witches can fly on brooms then fighters can ride wheelbarrows. Not the hill I expected to die on but here I am :smallbiggrin:

[Dork_Forge]

I'm legit curious of OP's opinion of 'leather armor' (especially studded) and the lack of gambeson in the game.

I thought gambesons and other padding were implied in other types of armor?

[Enixon]

With some of the.. let's be polite and say "incredibly passionate" complaints I regularly see here when something in D&D isn't 1:1 with real word medieval history, I have to wonder how many folks here had a mental breakdown and threw their book or dvd into the fire while reading/watching Lord of the Rings and potatoes got mentioned.

[diplomancer]

With some of the.. let's be polite and say "incredibly passionate" complaints I regularly see here when something in D&D isn't 1:1 with real word medieval history, I have to wonder how many folks here had a mental breakdown and threw their book or dvd into the fire while reading/watching Lord of the Rings and potatoes got mentioned.

Or tobacco. Though Tolkien took great pains to explain that one, saying it was not actually tobacco but a variant of it. Though he slipped at least once in the Lord of the Rings and just plain called it tobacco (The Hobbit is deliberately a collection of anacronisms, so I'm not criticizing it for that).

[Snowbluff]

https://youtu.be/XXRFDdlkEzw

Apparently these sorts of things existed and could injure someone. Of course, being a crossbow it takes longer to draw than you would think in DnD, but that would apply to all crossbows. I don't find the "it's a toy" as a compelling argument against it being potentially useful as a lethal weapon. Lawn darts are a "toy" but people still got injured or killed by them.

Mind you the best weapon in 4e is a shovel with extra points, and the best weapon in 3.5 is a chain that is more likely to get snagged than normal.

[kazaryu]

Well, slight exaggeration (as you put it) can be met with slight exaggeration, no? your post wasn't slight exaggeration. it was a mish mash of straw-men and inconsistencies.


I'm not trying to argue against you, I don't think I have to. I think it's plain as day that the "it's not a simulation"... commentary, let's say (it isn't an argument), is completely irrelevant and dismissive. yeah, imagine being dismissive of an argument that was never given any logical backing. but irrelevant?...the dude was trying to argue on the basis of whats realistic in the real world....the degree to which the DnD rules care about the real world seems...fairly relevant.



D&D does map to the real world, and tries to at the same time that it tries to create rules and an enjoyable game. So it's of course not a 1 for 1 representation of our world. But to say things like "it doesn't try" or "it has different physics" etc is just silly. There's a reason you take damage when you fall. There's a reason your movement can be limited by any number of things. Why weapons deal damage in the first place, and the biggest ones deal the most damage. DnD borrows concepts from the real world, you're right. but that isn't the same as dnd being designed to simulate the real world. falling does damage...but falling 200 feet does the same damage as falling a mile and its not enough to mid-high level characters (or even particularly tanky low level characters). the biggest weapons deal the most damage...but the greatsword is at the peak of that chart, as opposed to the halbeard or some kind of axe. there's also a greataxe, which is commonly described as having a massive 2 sided head. not always of course. but the fantasy of the greataxe is almost exclusively fantasy. not a realistic war axe. the point being that even when the game borrows from the real world, it often changes how they work to make more sense in the setting/rules. this isn't an argument for simulationism...its just demonstrating that trying to wholesale re-invent physics is just...not worth doing, nor is it really what people are looking for in a fantasy game.


In fact, 5E is so light on rules and rulings that the DM has to adjudicate a lot of it. How does the DM do that? I'll give you a hint, it isn't by imagining made up alien physics and throwing a dart at the wall about "how things work in D&D land". that is...actually very similar to how i make my rulings, and every DM i've played with/seen playing. not the dart part...but they make their rulings based on the world they're playing in and whats true about it, not just whats realistic in the real world. even to the point of straight up making a ruling that straight up contradicts the real world. comments like 'well sure but it isn't the real world' are common. of course i don't know that my experience is the same as everyones...but you also don't know that your experience is the same as everyone's. what i do know is that DnD wasn't designed to be a perfect illustration of the real world...it was designed to simulate a fantasy realm.

.
All to say that if someone thinks the crossbow is a silly weapon because it isn't at all realistic, grandstanding that D&D takes place in an alien universe with its own set of physics that defy understanding is inappropriate. D&D isn't the Far Realm. it doesn't have to be the far realms to be an alien universe with its own set of physics. it just has to be different enough to make the hand xbow feasible.

and again, noone is claiming that the DnD fantasy world wouldn't have things that were recognizable in the real world. the point is that when the writers were deciding what to include and how to include them, 'real world physics and history' was obviously not the most important factor, if it was considered at all. crossbows have a slight nod to real xbows in the loading property. but the writers aren't stupid enough to think that it was, in any way, 'realistic'.

if you want to not include xbows in your game, thats fine, nothing wrong with that. what we're objecting to is someone coming out and claiming that the hand xbow shouldn't be in the game at all because of realism. In fact, i also specifically objected to the logic that 'because the hand xbow is a mundane item, its totally valid to attack it purely on the basis of realism'. both points are ridiculous unless you can provide evidence that DnD5e had simulationism as a primary goal. and since no such evidence has been provided...well, then of course we're going to point out the obvious truth...that DnD wasn't meant to be realistic, and treat those arguments dismissively.

[Unoriginal]

With some of the.. let's be polite and say "incredibly passionate" complaints I regularly see here when something in D&D isn't 1:1 with real word medieval history, I have to wonder how many folks here had a mental breakdown and threw their book or dvd into the fire while reading/watching Lord of the Rings and potatoes got mentioned.

Don't forget that the actual English plural form of "dwarf" is "dwarfs", and Tolkien just messed up so many times by the time he realized his mistake he just rolled with it.

[Doug Lampert]

Mind you the best weapon in 4e is a shovel with extra points, and the best weapon in 3.5 is a chain that is more likely to get snagged than normal.

Shovels are dangrous, even without extra points, see this (https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20070907) Girl Genius comic.

[Dr.Samurai]

I thought gambesons and other padding were implied in other types of armor?
If you look at the Armor of Invulnerability, there appears to be a gambeson beneath the metal plates.

your post wasn't slight exaggeration. it was a mish mash of straw-men and inconsistencies.
Sure sure, I see it really got to you.

Meanwhile, you will keep arguing that D&D doesn't try to and doesn't perfectly simulate the real world, meanwhile I haven't seen anyone argue that point, nor have I seen you argue that the game must perfectly simulate the real world in order for someone to make arguments that appeal to realism.

You're basically saying "What about terminal velocity?!?! Your comment is invalid."

yeah, imagine being dismissive of an argument that was never given any logical backing. but irrelevant?...the dude was trying to argue on the basis of whats realistic in the real world....the degree to which the DnD rules care about the real world seems...fairly relevant.
Sure, to which you and others responded "the degree is 0", which is laughably false, and also not a "slight exaggeration".

DnD borrows concepts from the real world, you're right.
No no. The foundation of the game rests atop the real world. It goes far beyond "borrowing" concepts.

but that isn't the same as dnd being designed to simulate the real world. falling does damage...but falling 200 feet does the same damage as falling a mile and its not enough to mid-high level characters (or even particularly tanky low level characters). the biggest weapons deal the most damage...but the greatsword is at the peak of that chart, as opposed to the halbeard or some kind of axe. there's also a greataxe, which is commonly described as having a massive 2 sided head. not always of course. but the fantasy of the greataxe is almost exclusively fantasy. not a realistic war axe. the point being that even when the game borrows from the real world, it often changes how they work to make more sense in the setting/rules. this isn't an argument for simulationism...its just demonstrating that trying to wholesale re-invent physics is just...not worth doing, nor is it really what people are looking for in a fantasy game.
I understand what the game is about and what it is setting out to do. That's why I don't mind a grumble about some weapon being unrealistic. It doesn't offend me and I don't feel a need to rush to the battle lines and type out "it's not based on reality there's no physics here, I can't even hear your argument because nothing vibrates in fantasy land".


that is...actually very similar to how i make my rulings, and every DM i've played with/seen playing. not the dart part...but they make their rulings based on the world they're playing in and whats true about it, not just whats realistic in the real world.
"based on the world they're playing in"

Sure. If it's an alien world, that makes sense.

But every D&D world to date has gravity, weather, hot and cold, air that living organisms need to breathe to survive, sleep, sunlit skies during the day, and darkness at night, etc etc etc etc etc etc. Literally everything you point at in the game is based somehow on reality. It matters not one iota that it doesn't perfectly map to reality.

what i do know is that DnD wasn't designed to be a perfect illustration of the real world...it was designed to simulate a fantasy realm.
A fantasy realm... itself based on reality. Sure, I can agree with that. "D&D is designed to simulate a fantasy realm based on reality."

and again, noone is claiming that the DnD fantasy world wouldn't have things that were recognizable in the real world. the point is that when the writers were deciding what to include and how to include them, 'real world physics and history' was obviously not the most important factor, if it was considered at all. crossbows have a slight nod to real xbows in the loading property. but the writers aren't stupid enough to think that it was, in any way, 'realistic'.

You're bringing up the very things that make your dismissive claims wrong, and downplaying them or hand-waving them away.

OBVIOUSLY the loading property is based on reality. The designers can choose how much they want to map to reality or not. In this case, they decided to keep the notion of loading a crossbow in the game, but they severely shortened the length of time to do it in. What you are ignoring is that there are degrees to how accurately things map to reality. None of them perfectly map, nor should we expect them to. The OP is complaining because this particular example, in their opinion, maps really really poorly to reality.

The response is either an erroneous "D&D doesn't care about how the real world works" or an irrelevant "but these vehicle things in fantasy hell are fantastical, so it doesn't matter".

[diplomancer]

I do find the claims of "muh realism" misguided, at least for 5E. This is a game where a 3' halfling can beat a 9' ogre in a Str contest, and carry around a dead lioness in his shoulders with no movement penalty while beating said ogre in the Str contest. Talking about the resistance of materials and the penetration force of a bolt really are not very convincing, once you grant the other stuff.

Not to mention that the problem with the Hand Crossbow is not even the weapon itself, but the fact that it synergizes very well with two very strong feats. That is not really the fault of the weapon, and instead of complaining about it, it would make more sense to want good feats for more traditional weapons.

[Spiryt]

https://youtu.be/XXRFDdlkEzw

Apparently these sorts of things existed and could injure someone. Of course, being a crossbow it takes longer to draw than you would think in DnD, but that would apply to all crossbows. I don't find the "it's a toy" as a compelling argument against it being potentially useful as a lethal weapon. Lawn darts are a "toy" but people still got injured or killed by them.

Mind you the best weapon in 4e is a shovel with extra points, and the best weapon in 3.5 is a chain that is more likely to get snagged than normal.

Crossbow spanned with some kind of belt and hook system really can be spanned in few seconds by experienced shooter.


And if shooter is strong enough and experienced enough, such crossbow can have pretty impressive energy.

Thread starter messed up plenty of things up, but he's definitely correct that hand crossbows cannot in any sensible way work the way they can work in 5e.

And the problem with this kind of 'assassin crossbow" is that if regular crossbow is doing 1d8 damage, it realistically should be doing 1d2, or something, if not less.



Crossbow effective range was less than a bow. The velocity drops off much faster, and penetrating power is mass (which is higher for a bolt) times velocity squared (which starts higher but far more rapidly drops for a bolt compared to an arrow). (Ref: Mike Loades)

So at shorter ranges they're far more powerful. But they have much shorter effective distances, depending on the armor they're needing to penetrate. (Unarmored I'd hazard a guess it's probably not significantly different, I doubt penetrating an unarmored human requires that much penetration power and it's more about hitting the target. :smallamused:.)



Many of people claim such a thing, but there doesn't seem to be any hard evidence.

Crossbow bolt of the same weight as average arrow for 28 inch draw length bow should theoretically be much thicker, and therefore experience more drag.

On the other hand though, it's going to be much stiffer, so less energy will be robbed by osculations, especially that crossbow bolts doesn't experience archer's paradox nearly as much.

Arrows specialized for flight shooting at extreme distances are very short for this very reason, stiffer is good. They come together with devices that actually allow to shoot very short arrow from regular bow.

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_BTxj12QWUhg/TPBFUQXmKMI/AAAAAAAAHas/Vikokov8G-M/s1600/Turkishflightarchery.JPG

[stoutstien]

Completely irrelevant but stonebows have always been small and can pack a punch. Even at ~60 lb pull weight it would definitely wouldn't be like getting hit by a nerf gun at short ranges. The Italians love to make small ones.

[Snowbluff]

Completely irrelevant but stonebows have always been small and can pack a punch. Even at ~60 lb pull weight it would definitely wouldn't be like getting hit by a nerf gun at short ranges. The Italians love to make small ones.

I don't think it's really off topic. An english longbow has a draw weight of 100 pounds, it's pretty deadly. The handcrossbow Tod demonstrates above is 200 pounds (90 kilograms) of draw weight. It's demoed to punch through meat and embed in wood. There are plenty of places on your body where it would kill you if it hit, like your neck, your leg, your skull etc.

To Spiryt's point, however, this isn't nearly as powerful as a heavy crossbow. I think this is more of a problem of the heavy crossbow doing too little damage rather than the handcrossbow doing to much, however. An average hit die is a d8, a little d6 handcrossbow is unlikely to kill in a single shot. Maybe move the heavy crossbow to a d12 and the handcrossbow to a d4, perhaps.

Personally, I am curious what a non-cranked (drawn by hand onto the trigger), 100 pound handcrossbow would be capable of. It would probably be pretty stiff to draw as imagined, however.


Shovels are dangrous, even without extra points, see this (https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20070907) Girl Genius comic.

Indeed you can pummel someone with a shovel. My question is "what kinda nonsense do you have to invent to give a shovel 2d6 damage that you reroll on a 1?"

The same goes for the spiked chain. Wouldn't just giving the ends flanges or littler spikes make it more effective? At least the tripping benefit makes sense, you're supposed to tangle people with it, but how do you untangle someone from it?

[Tanarii]

Many of people claim such a thing, but there doesn't seem to be any hard evidence.
I cited my source. Mike Loades. What's yours?

[Sorinth]

https://youtu.be/XXRFDdlkEzw

Apparently these sorts of things existed and could injure someone. Of course, being a crossbow it takes longer to draw than you would think in DnD, but that would apply to all crossbows. I don't find the "it's a toy" as a compelling argument against it being potentially useful as a lethal weapon. Lawn darts are a "toy" but people still got injured or killed by them.

Mind you the best weapon in 4e is a shovel with extra points, and the best weapon in 3.5 is a chain that is more likely to get snagged than normal.

The person in the video concluded that the real world crossbows like that were most likely a toy. So it's a little strange to say you don't find it a compelling argument. That said in a fantasy game I don't mind that they exist and are not representative of the real life versions. I do prefer them to be a delivery system for poison so dropping them to 1d4 would be nice in my mind.

[Snowbluff]

The person in the video concluded that the real world crossbows like that were most likely a toy. So it's a little strange to say you don't find it a compelling argument. That said in a fantasy game I don't mind that they exist and are not representative of the real life versions. I do prefer them to be a delivery system for poison so dropping them to 1d4 would be nice in my mind.

I didn't say that was or wasn't a toy. I said that being considered a toy didn't preclude lethality. Would it be ahistorical to use it as a weapon? Perhaps. Would it be dangerous when used as such? Definitely. A nerf gun this is not.

[Dork_Forge]

The person in the video concluded that the real world crossbows like that were most likely a toy. So it's a little strange to say you don't find it a compelling argument. That said in a fantasy game I don't mind that they exist and are not representative of the real life versions. I do prefer them to be a delivery system for poison so dropping them to 1d4 would be nice in my mind.

Whilst in the video he concludes that it was likely an 'executive's toy/gadget' and best used for poison delivery, I feel you're writing off (as was he a bit tbh) what the video showed. The bolt happily pierced three layers of clothing material, it went fletching deep into a pork loin and embedded deep enough in solid wood that it didn't seem trivial to remove.

That all adds up to nontrivial wounds on a person, shooting someone centre mass isn't going to kill them with trauma alone, but burying a bolt in the carotid artery? The throat, where it would receive significantly less resistance than the tests? Or direct impact to a skull? When you combine a D&D character's aim with what the video showed, and I imagine an actually skilled user irl, then they certainly could prove lethal.

[OvisCaedo]

I don't really see much reason for a hand crossbow to be particularly more absurd than any other fantasy drawstring weapon. They all seemingly are way easier to pull back than you'd expect for the lethal force that'd produced for the shot. Look at how effortlessly scrawny fantasy characters rapid fire longbows.

An 8 strength archer in 5e has no problem grabbing a longbow and casually firing off a shot that's still of deadly velocity at 600 feet (though of course their aim might suffer). A compact hand crossbow might still have a pretty hefty draw weight depending on design and materials, but high tension strings are apparently easy to pull back everywhere else, too.

the real sticker is just the feat somehow making it faster than every other drawstring weapon, but I think that's mostly a result of the feat being very poorly written and the writers doubling down on it instead of admitting it didn't really work how it was probably meant to. The language used feels way more like it's meant to imply using an offhand crossbow for a quick shot, but accidentally is still terrible for that since you can't actually reload it, and then accidentally again technically allows using nothing but the crossbow

[kazaryu]

Sure sure, I see it really got to you. well yes, illogical arguments that are being touted as rooted in logic are a pet peeve of mine. especially when people misinterpret my arguments and then try to claim they've 'disproven' them.



Meanwhile, you will keep arguing that D&D doesn't try to and doesn't perfectly simulate the real world, meanwhile I haven't seen anyone argue that point, op literally argued that because hand crossbows are mundane, they are 'pretending to be real'. in order for that to be true, the system has to be built on a foundation of simulationism. otherwise there's no reason to conclude that 'mundane=real'.


nor have I seen you argue that the game must perfectly simulate the real world in order for someone to make arguments that appeal to realism. well no..i haven't been arguing that...because that isn't the point i've been making. Nothing i've argued has been about how successful the game is at simulating the real world....my arguments are focused on how much the game *tries* to simulate the real world. and my conclusion is that...it doesn't, not very hard anyway. and that isn't just about the rules. at not point (that i've seen) was 5e advertised as being simulationist. nor was it



You're basically saying "What about terminal velocity?!?! Your comment is invalid." no, im pointing out that there are ways for them to have simulated far more realisitic gravity...like they could have at LEAST made it deadly to any character if you fall from high enough...they didn't. they capped it at ~70 damage. why? i don't know, but it sure wasn't because they were trying to make it realistic. even if they didn't try to get you to do calculations with a realsitic gravity forumula, they clearly didn't care about realism. including gravity because its what people expect isn't the same as trying to make the game realistic. Its just practical to alter the existing world, as opposed to trying to come up with entirely new physics. arguably they try to change whatever they can get away with.
Sure, to which you and others responded "the degree is 0", which is laughably false, and also not a "slight exaggeration".



No no. The foundation of the game rests atop the real world. It goes far beyond "borrowing" concepts. only insofar as it creates an easy to understand cohesive world that they can fill with whatever they want regardless of reality..sure. its like you're trying to argue that 'because the writers include warped copies of these fundamental things, like light and gravity, humans understand inherently, its fair to say that they were trying to make the world as realistic as possible. or maybe 'because they only made slight alterations to reality in some aspects, that must apply to all aspects of reality and history' which....idk both of those are just so obviously incorrect. the entire way the game is designed is contradictory to that notion.



I understand what the game is about and what it is setting out to do. That's why I don't mind a grumble about some weapon being unrealistic. It doesn't offend me and I don't feel a need to rush to the battle lines and type out "it's not based on reality there's no physics here, I can't even hear your argument because nothing vibrates in fantasy land". so...you're upset that people would come in and contradict someones opinion...in a forum...designed to have discussions about the game? so any time anyone posts a thread, the only people that should reply to that thread are the ones that agree with the OP? how boring do you want this forum to be?



"based on the world they're playing in"

Sure. If it's an alien world, that makes sense.

But every D&D world to date has gravity, weather, hot and cold, air that living organisms need to breathe to survive, sleep, sunlit skies during the day, and darkness at night, etc etc etc etc etc etc. Literally everything you point at in the game is based somehow on reality. It matters not one iota that it doesn't perfectly map to reality. see this is exactly the

A fantasy realm... itself based on reality. Sure, I can agree with that. "D&D is designed to simulate a fantasy realm based on reality."[/quote]starting with something as a base doesn't mean you're trying to simulate that thing. it can be done for several reasons...one of which being that trying to re-create all aspects of that things would be so impractical that it isn't worth doing. there's no reason to try to reimagine things like gravity and light when we have a perfectly working model that nearly everyone understands in the real world. the difference is that for 5e its 'we have the real world except here's how its different'. one of those differences being that hand xbows work and are common enough to be a piece of gear thats relatively generally accessible. expensive, but not super esoteric. and the reason that that is ok, is that DnD isn't trying to be realistic. its trying to be a fantasy world. At this point i truly don't know how i can say that any more clear...its not about how different it is from the real world..its about how much it cares how different it is.



. The OP is complaining because this particular example, in their opinion, maps really really poorly to reality. no, the OP is complaining that DnD is somehow wrong, because the hand xbow doesn't map to reality. they didn't just say 'i don't really like the hand crossbow and don't wanna include it in my game'. they explicitly made the general assumption that 'mundane=pretending to be real' which is the notion that i've responded to this whole time.

[Sorinth]

I didn't say that was or wasn't a toy. I said that being considered a toy didn't preclude lethality. Would it be ahistorical to use it as a weapon? Perhaps. Would it be dangerous when used as such? Definitely. A nerf gun this is not.



Whilst in the video he concludes that it was likely an 'executive's toy/gadget' and best used for poison delivery, I feel you're writing off (as was he a bit tbh) what the video showed. The bolt happily pierced three layers of clothing material, it went fletching deep into a pork loin and embedded deep enough in solid wood that it didn't seem trivial to remove.

That all adds up to nontrivial wounds on a person, shooting someone centre mass isn't going to kill them with trauma alone, but burying a bolt in the carotid artery? The throat, where it would receive significantly less resistance than the tests? Or direct impact to a skull? When you combine a D&D character's aim with what the video showed, and I imagine an actually skilled user irl, then they certainly could prove lethal.

A sharp stick or a small rock can also be lethal. If when comparing lethality of that weapon then yeah a nerf gun is a big exaggeration, but so is the handcrossbow doing a d6. Are we really saying it's comparable to being stabbed by a short sword. It should probably be with the blowgun doing 1 point of damage, but because of the fantansy tropes people want to play bringing that up to a d4 makes some sense.

[Tanarii]

For comparison purposes, it might help to think of d6 weapon as 50% chance of one commoner killing a commoner if it does HP damage. D4 weapon, 25%.

I don't have a horse in the appropriate damage die based on that though, because IMO the problem with hand crossbows has nothing to do with the damage die. It's purely XBE and SS that are the problem. As always. Those two feats are a blight on the game, along with PAM and GWM.

[sithlordnergal]

For comparison purposes, it might help to think of d6 weapon as 50% chance of one commoner killing a commoner if it does HP damage. D4 weapon, 25%.

I don't have a horse in the appropriate damage die based on that though, because IMO the problem with hand crossbows has nothing to do with the damage die. It's purely XBE and SS that are the problem. As always. Those two feats are a blight on the game, along with PAM and GWM.

I mean, I personally wouldn't call them a blight. If anything, the only change I'd make is allow you to make bonus attacks with any Crossbow...though given Heavy Crossbows are a d10, that might be unbalanced. But you're right that the only reason the Hand Crossbow is widely used is because of XBE and Sharpshooter.

Heck, I think we can even remove Sharpshooter from the equation. Sharpshooter on its own gives the Hand Crossbow a range of 60, and have the -5/+10 property, but you'd only be able to fire it once. People would just use Light/Heavy Crossbows, or use Shortbows and Longbows to get Extra Attack. XBE is the crux of the issue since it not only lets you use Extra Attack, but gives you a Bonus Action Attack that only works with Hand Crossbows.

[stoutstien]

Honestly different size damage dice aren't a good model for anything besides internal balance in relationships with HP.

[False God]

Honestly different size damage dice aren't a good model for anything besides internal balance in relationships with HP.

As I've moved away from D&D as my core game, I've really grown to love flat damage with increased damage for more success.

[Snowbluff]

A sharp stick or a small rock can also be lethal. If when comparing lethality of that weapon then yeah a nerf gun is a big exaggeration, but so is the handcrossbow doing a d6. Are we really saying it's comparable to being stabbed by a short sword. It should probably be with the blowgun doing 1 point of damage, but because of the fantansy tropes people want to play bringing that up to a d4 makes some sense. Given that there are tiny creatures like bunnies that have survived being blowgunned, I think hand xbow and blowgun having the same damage would offer less verisimilitude, not more.

[Brookshw]

As I've moved away from D&D as my core game, I've really grown to love flat damage with increased damage for more success.

Agreed, I'm shifting my group to WFRP slowly. If I ever start a new D&D campaign it'll be heavily house rules to change how damage works.

[False God]

Agreed, I'm shifting my group to WFRP slowly. If I ever start a new D&D campaign it'll be heavily house rules to change how damage works.

I've been running flat damage on monsters in D&D for a long time. I know most folks like to roll the dice as players, and I'm fine with that, they always have the option to take 1/2 flat damage instead of rolling. It's a LOT less work to DM just not having a half dozen NPCs all with their own special dice and modifiers.
"Oh bandit #5 with the short sword is attacking? That's 5 damage." and move on.
However, flat damage can be low for big monsters, and often come across more as punching bags than threats. Anything deemed "dangerous" gets 3/4ths damage, and the occasional "BBEG" gets max damage.
Crits double as usual.

[Brookshw]

I've been running flat damage on monsters in D&D for a long time. I know most folks like to roll the dice as players, and I'm fine with that, they always have the option to take 1/2 flat damage instead of rolling. It's a LOT less work to DM just not having a half dozen NPCs all with their own special dice and modifiers.
"Oh bandit #5 with the short sword is attacking? That's 5 damage." and move on.
However, flat damage can be low for big monsters, and often come across more as punching bags than threats. Anything deemed "dangerous" gets 3/4ths damage, and the occasional "BBEG" gets max damage.
Crits double as usual.

I don't mind dice rolling or consider it a lot of work, but prefer that the degree of success (I e., How much you beat the target by) is relevant.

As to big monsters, if you're finding their damage to be too low, consider giving them x2 damage against anything two size categories smaller than them.

[Dr.Samurai]

For comparison purposes, it might help to think of d6 weapon as 50% chance of one commoner killing a commoner if it does HP damage. D4 weapon, 25%.

I don't have a horse in the appropriate damage die based on that though, because IMO the problem with hand crossbows has nothing to do with the damage die. It's purely XBE and SS that are the problem. As always. Those two feats are a blight on the game, along with PAM and GWM.
I agree with this in part (the bigger issue with hand crossbow is the bonus action attack), but I think the bonus damage form sharpshooter and GWM should be available to more or all weapons, and not pigeonhole martials to one or two weapons if they want to be damage dealers.

I mean, I personally wouldn't call them a blight. If anything, the only change I'd make is allow you to make bonus attacks with any Crossbow...though given Heavy Crossbows are a d10, that might be unbalanced. But you're right that the only reason the Hand Crossbow is widely used is because of XBE and Sharpshooter.

Heck, I think we can even remove Sharpshooter from the equation. Sharpshooter on its own gives the Hand Crossbow a range of 60, and have the -5/+10 property, but you'd only be able to fire it once. People would just use Light/Heavy Crossbows, or use Shortbows and Longbows to get Extra Attack. XBE is the crux of the issue since it not only lets you use Extra Attack, but gives you a Bonus Action Attack that only works with Hand Crossbows.
Yeah, Sharpshooter still gives too much IMO. Cover would be such a large part of a ranged attacker's adventuring life if not for the fact that the big damage boost feat also happens to let you completely ignore it (short of total cover). Those are two giant benefits wrapped up in one neat little feat.

[stoutstien]

As I've moved away from D&D as my core game, I've really grown to love flat damage with increased damage for more success.

I don't mind dice for damage but it just doesn't handle the difference between a solid hit vs a glancing blows of a mace compared to a rodel dagger in the armpit vs a slash against the arm. It's mostly HPs fault really as damage has to be modified to address the idea you can elbow drop a stone golem from space and be fine after a nap but getting poked a few times *should* somehow be deadly.

[False God]

I don't mind dice rolling or consider it a lot of work, but prefer that the degree of success (I e., How much you beat the target by) is relevant.

As to big monsters, if you're finding their damage to be too low, consider giving them x2 damage against anything two size categories smaller than them.

I haven't been playing in the D&D scene much these days, but outside of it I've got a basic incremental "As relative size diverges, smaller things deal less damage, and get harder to hit; while big things deal more damage, and are easier to hit."

On a D&D scale it looks something like +2/-2 for each full size difference. In more granular games, it's +1/-1 for about every 3ft in difference. In my last testing with humans vs dragons in D&D, it meant dragons got +6(H) to +8(G) to damage, but -6 to -8 to hit; while the humans took the same penalties to damage, but gained the same bonuses to hit. Incremental successes were a simple +1 for each point you went over the target's AC. Character damage was slightly lower (about 3/8ths) than flat half damage. Dragons were much less likely to hit, but much more likely to splatter a character, particularly if they crit. Which I felt was closer to what I wanted.

I mostly run WoD die-pool systems these days where additional successes add full additional damage.


I don't mind dice for damage but it just doesn't handle the difference between a solid hit vs a glancing blows of a mace compared to a rodel dagger in the armpit vs a slash against the arm. It's mostly HPs fault really as damage has to be modified to address the idea you can elbow drop a stone golem from space and be fine after a nap but getting poked a few times *should* somehow be deadly.
Yeah, one thing I'll give the d20(or similar such ways of rolling) is that you can implement incremental failure more easily. Miss by 1 point? Glancing blow, -1 damage.(or something) It's a feature I'd like to have in WoD, since it does incremental success just fine. The way HP works and the way many non-combat-damage effects interact with it in D&D is just silly.

My preference is actually to have low/flat HP and use a body chart.

[Spiryt]

I cited my source. Mike Loades. What's yours?

Well, what's Mike Loades' source then?

His series about weapons were great as far as TV stuff goes, and he's certainly very knowledgeable, but I don't think that he did any real ballistic experiments, or whatever.

Incidentally, here's Mike Loades posting about Joe Gibbs' distance record.

https://www.facebook.com/mikeloades/posts/congratulations-to-joe-gibbs-of-the-english-warbow-society-he-has-yet-again-smas/727946613910625/

63.5 gram arrows went 210 feet per second, (~125 J) initially, and achieved about 292 yards or 267 meters.

Here's Tod from Tod's Workshop using 67 gram arrow, almost identical in weight, and they went only about 242 yards, which is way lower, but those bolts had only about 55 m/s of initial velocity. Direct comparison cannot be made because that crossbow performed way worse with that weight, but it really seems that distance would be pretty similar with same velocity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTW0CrXugdQ&t=394s


Here, Andreas Bichler shoots bolts from his composite crossbows :

https://web.archive.org/web/20171104075534/http://www.historiavivens1300.at:80/biblio/beschuss/beschuss1-e.htm

Reports distance from 260 to 300 meters for heavier one, which matches the 170 pound longbow.

Though the initial performance (KE) of bolts is actually worse (only the heaviest bolt could approach 120J, not the 63 g one), so it would actually suggest that ballistic performance of the bolts was actually better, if they've reached the same distance, or greater one, with less velocity for given mass.

Though obviously there's so many factors that one cannot form too bold conclusions from this.

But generally it seems that if bolt and arrow have similar/same mass and velocity, they'll reach about the same distance, despite the different proportions.

[Bohandas]

2) They are physically impossible for them to exist with pre 20th century materials

I know that at least in 3.5e they're twice as expensice as a heavy crossbow, which could easily be interpreted as the limb/prod/lathe being made out of mithril

[Duff]

If you want some realism, suppose the Drow have advanced their materials science enough to make a working hand crossbow.
Maybe their metallurgy’s streets ahead of anything before the industrial age
Or they have a technique to form Giant Spider carapace into super springy crossbow limbs
Or they grow “Crossbow mushrooms” with strong and springy stems

And then consider how this material might be used in the D&D world you’re in.

With as much or as little homebrew to make the rules describe what you feel is a more plausible

[Spiryt]

If you want some realism, suppose the Drow have advanced their materials science enough to make a working hand crossbow.
Maybe their metallurgy’s streets ahead of anything before the industrial age
Or they have a technique to form Giant Spider carapace into super springy crossbow limbs
Or they grow “Crossbow mushrooms” with strong and springy stems

And then consider how this material might be used in the D&D world you’re in.

With as much or as little homebrew to make the rules describe what you feel is a more plausible

The problem is not really in materials though, but in simple physics.

You can have super materials to make 300 pounds hatchback car that somehow doesn't fall apart, but it's not going faster than like 15 mph if you just have 5 HP engine in it.

So the problem with hand-crossbow, is that no matter of material, it's hard to expect such a tiny spring, that can be instantly pulled to shoot with one hand (or however is it supposed to work if you two of them) would store rather low amount of energy, even if the wielder is strong as nuts.

[Unoriginal]

The problem is not really in materials though, but in simple physics.

You can have super materials to make 300 pounds hatchback car that somehow doesn't fall apart, but it's not going faster than like 15 mph if you just have 5 HP engine in it.

So the problem with hand-crossbow, is that no matter of material, it's hard to expect such a tiny spring, that can be instantly pulled to shoot with one hand (or however is it supposed to work if you two of them) would store rather low amount of energy, even if the wielder is strong as nuts.

And in simple physics, neither the dragon nor the giant you were aiming the hand-crossbow at doesn't exist, because physics do not allow it.

[DammitVictor]

So the problem with hand-crossbow, is that no matter of material, it's hard to expect such a tiny spring, that can be instantly pulled to shoot with one hand (or however is it supposed to work if you two of them) would store rather low amount of energy, even if the wielder is strong as nuts.

That's where the material science comes in-- and pardon me if I use every word wrong, I am not an educated person-- is that it allows a stronger person (or a person with more leverage) to store more energy in the bow part of the crossbow. A weaker person/tool cannot **** a more powerful crossbow, while a stronger person can only convert as much energy as a weaker crossbow allows.

So with the same volume and less mass, a mithril crossbow would allow a stronger arbalist to fire a similar missile with more force than a steel crossbow, but would require a stronger arbalist (and/or assistive technologies) to operate. It's a good enough reason to explain how a silly toy can deal damage like an actual weapon, even if I'm not going to budge on how often even a supernaturally strong/fast character can fire a single crossbow.

edit: I could fix it. I could, but I won't.

[Kane0]

And in simple physics, neither the dragon nor the giant you were aiming the hand-crossbow at doesn't exist, because physics do not allow it.

Yeah once you get to the square-cube law I think thats where d&d largely doesnt bother modelling our world. It really only worries about the surface level stuff, the deeper workings just get handwaved in order to accomodate fun adventures in fantasyland.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Yeah once you get to the square-cube law I think thats where d&d largely doesnt bother modelling our world. It really only worries about the surface level stuff, the deeper workings just get handwaved in order to accomodate fun adventures in fantasyland.

<hobby-horse time>Heck, just the presence of magic guarantees that D&D isn't modeling our world beyond the surface level stuff.</>

[Unoriginal]

D&D humans have bodies that are made of fire, earth, water and air (coming from the Inner Planes) assembled in a specific way.

With a mind that is connected to all minds that are, were or will be, aka the Astral Plane.

The Astral Plane, where float the crystal spheres containing the D&D worlds.

They also have objectively existing souls that, unless captured or destroyed, will travel through the Astral until they reach the Outer Plane that is the most similar to them.

The only ressemblances with real life humans are aesthetic ones.

[Bohandas]

And in simple physics, neither the dragon nor the giant you were aiming the hand-crossbow at doesn't exist, because physics do not allow it.

Hmmm... Maybe the crossbow's components are made out of dragonhide

[Sorinth]

Given that there are tiny creatures like bunnies that have survived being blowgunned, I think hand xbow and blowgun having the same damage would offer less verisimilitude, not more.

Doesn't really mean much though since a badly thrown dagger or dart also might not kill a rabbit. And if using small animals as a judge then surely the handcrossbow shouldn't be on par with being stabbed by shortsword.

[JackPhoenix]

So the problem with hand-crossbow, is that no matter of material, it's hard to expect such a tiny spring, that can be instantly pulled to shoot with one hand (or however is it supposed to work if you two of them) would store rather low amount of energy, even if the wielder is strong as nuts.

"Can be instantly pulled to shoot with one hand" applies to light and heavy crossbows too, when you have Crossbow Expert. And no, it does not work if you have two hand crossbows, unless you're a giant mantis-man (or have other means of getting an extra free hand).

[Schwann145]

And in simple physics, neither the dragon nor the giant you were aiming the hand-crossbow at doesn't exist, because physics do not allow it.
The square-cube law disallows for humans of a giant size.
Giants and Dragons are not humans, they have their own distinct physiology and therefore do not violate the law.

Square-cube law gets thrown out *way* too often around here, IMO.

[Bohandas]

The square-cube law disallows for humans of a giant size.
Giants and Dragons are not humans, they have their own distinct physiology and therefore do not violate the law.

Square-cube law gets thrown out *way* too often around here, IMO.

On the other hand, it does rule out most of the vermin/bug monsters, as most of these are explicitly and specifically things like "giant ants" "giant bees" "giant praying mantises" etc

[Unoriginal]

The square-cube law disallows for humans of a giant size.
Giants and Dragons are not humans, they have their own distinct physiology and therefore do not violate the law.

The square-cube law is that the muscle's strength is determined by its surface, while its weight is determined by its volume.

In other word, bigger organisms are proportionally weaker than smaller ones, because bigger organisms first have to handle their own weight.

A D&D Giant may not be 1:1 similar to an humanoid internally, but they are still four-limbed bipeds with two limbs connected to the abdomen, which they use to walk, and two limbs connected to the torso.

This means that if a Giant lifts a leg to walk, their other leg would have to support the full weight of their body, on a surface that is proportionally unable to do so.

The only way you can explain that as "different physiology" while following real-life physics is if the Giant is mostly an empty balloon-like sack of flesh that is inflated (for intimidation purpose, most likely), providing the volume for less weight.

As for Dragons, while it is technically possible to make a being fitting the description with real-life physics, the D&D version is not one of them. Any adult dragon would simply weight too much for its limbs, especially when the arms/legs are hindered by the wings' size and weight, while the wings are too small to allow flight or even glide.

And that is not going into the quantity of food those beings would need to ingest and excret on a daily basis.



Square-cube law gets thrown out *way* too often around here, IMO.

Squate-cube law gets ignored way too often around here. Only logical peopoe get reminded.

[Schwann145]

And yet, there is *plenty* of evidence of giant-sized creatures in real world history and archeology, some of which are even bipedal.

Again, thrown around way too often (especially by lay-people).

[JNAProductions]

And yet, there is *plenty* of evidence of giant-sized creatures in real world history and archeology, some of which are even bipedal.

Again, thrown around way too often (especially by lay-people).

Er...

I don't recall any facts about 20' tall people. Myths and stories, yes. But not any actual facts.

You got any sources to back yourself up?

[stoutstien]

And yet, there is *plenty* of evidence of giant-sized creatures in real world history and archeology, some of which are even bipedal.

Again, thrown around way too often (especially by lay-people).

The cube-square law only applies to scaling up/down an existing thing not comparing to to something with a completely different material or design.

Also the cube-square law IS the layman's version. The reality is much more difficult to grasp because once stuff starts moving around the math gets bonkers.

[Brookshw]

Er...

I don't recall any facts about 20' tall people. Myths and stories, yes. But not any actual facts.

You got any sources to back yourself up?

Would a T-rex qualify?

[False God]

Er...

I don't recall any facts about 20' tall people. Myths and stories, yes. But not any actual facts.

You got any sources to back yourself up?

Seconded, unless he's talking about dinosaurs, which I'm not certain that counts. Yes they held themselves up on 2 legs, but they were built in the same manner as chickens, not people.

[JNAProductions]

Would a T-rex qualify?

Nope! Built very differently from a human.

A Storm Giant is (sans magic) basically just a scaled-up person. A T-Rex is not.

[Bohandas]

The square-cube law is that the muscle's strength is determined by its surface, while its
weight is determined by its volume.

IIRC the strength is determined by the cross-sectional area, not surface area

[Schwann145]

Yes, when I mentioned bipedals, I was considering dinosaurs.

We also live in a world where a housecat can stand next to a tiger and the tiger won't be collapsing under it's own weight, despite having essentially the same proportions as the housecat.
There is a *ton* of room for things to work without violating this law.


Nope! Built very differently from a human.

A Storm Giant is (sans magic) basically just a scaled-up person. A T-Rex is not.

Bold claim. Sounds more like conjecture than anything backed up by a source, though.

[Dr.Samurai]

Lol... all of this whataboutism to try and dismiss a complaint about hand crossbows.

Yes... a giant wouldn't be able to stand up in the real world.

But for some reason it can suffocate in D&D, has to eat food and drink water or will die, has two legs and two arms, will die if it gets decapitated, has to sleep or suffer exhaustion, can get exhausted!, mates with a husband or wife, has children, is bound to Earth by gravity, throws rocks through skeleto-muscular force, etc etc etc etc etc etc.

Ironically, "Look at this big make believe thing in D&D, therefore it's not based on reality" also doesn't have legs to stand on.

[stoutstien]

Yes, when I mentioned bipedals, I was considering dinosaurs.

We also live in a world where a housecat can stand next to a tiger and the tiger won't be collapsing under it's own weight, despite having essentially the same proportions as the housecat.
There is a *ton* of room for things to work without violating this law.



Bold claim. Sounds more like conjecture than anything backed up by a source, though.

Tigers have about 4 times the muscle density of a house cat and are actually much weaker and less agile than the house cat id you did a ratio conversion. They also have skeletal structural differences. Heck there are big differences between subspecies of tigers due to size.

As for humans there has been about 100 studies and studies of those studies that can actually graph your height and the increased risk of problems. Athletics are a key example since we are probably talking about being in motion. It's built into the drafting for the NBA now as a risk factor.

[Brookshw]

Lol... all of this whataboutism to try and dismiss a complaint about hand crossbows.


Oh, no, we don't need whataboutism to dismiss the complain, "don't like them, just don't use them", BAM, done!

But people like killing catgirls.

[Dr.Samurai]

Oh, no, we don't need whataboutism to dismiss the complain, "don't like them, just don't use them", BAM, done!

But people like killing catgirls.
Lol fair enough :smallbiggrin:

[Schwann145]

Tigers have about 4 times the muscle density of a house cat and are actually much weaker and less agile than the house cat id you did a ratio conversion. They also have skeletal structural differences. Heck there are big differences between subspecies of tigers due to size.

That's exactly my point though!

They look the same at a cursory glance, just one is much bigger than the other.
Well, Giants and Humans look the same at a cursory glance, just one is much bigger than the other.
Same situation. Same considerations can be safely made.

[PhoenixPhyre]

That's exactly my point though!

They look the same at a cursory glance, just one is much bigger than the other.
Well, Giants and Humans look the same at a cursory glance, just one is much bigger than the other.
Same situation. Same considerations can be safely made.

Well, not really. Because we know the maximum strength/area curve of bone and muscle (no matter how you configure it). And a 20-30-ft tall humanoid-stance creature? Yeah, that's outside of it. Housecats to tigers are still barely within it.

[kazaryu]

Lol... all of this whataboutism to try and dismiss a complaint about hand crossbows.

Yes... a giant wouldn't be able to stand up in the real world.

But for some reason it can suffocate in D&D, has to eat food and drink water or will die, has two legs and two arms, will die if it gets decapitated, has to sleep or suffer exhaustion, can get exhausted!, mates with a husband or wife, has children, is bound to Earth by gravity, throws rocks through skeleto-muscular force, etc etc etc etc etc etc.

Ironically, "Look at this big make believe thing in D&D, therefore it's not based on reality" also doesn't have legs to stand on.

your inability (more more likely unwillingness) to understand that difference between 'uses many basic fundamentals of reality because its WAY easier than trying to completely reinvent all of human history and physics' and 'is actively trying to emulate all aspects of reality' doesn't mean that the difference exists and is applicable to this conversation.

you've not only failed to demonstrate that the game attempts to match real world physics/history (as opposed to just using some of its fundamentals as a basis, see the above difference). you've not ever tried to demonstrate that it should, or that it pretends to. you just started with the assumption that because some things aesthetically match reality (because yes, its mostly just aesthetics: gravity doenst work how it does in the real world, eating and drinking (and their relative necessity) doesn't work the same as the real world, sleep/exhaustion don't match the real world, even biological mating doesn't explicitly match the real world. most people treat it like it does because...why not? but nothing in the books says it does. and if some source book were to come out that changed it most people would be like 'oh, neat. works for me' especially if that change had an actual impact on the fantasy in some way. if it didn't it would, at worst, be filed under 'huh, weird detail to include but...whatever' not 'OMG procreation works DIFFERENTLY?! my verisimilitude is RUINED!'

so yeah, things like gravity and light and language are present, because they exist in the real world. some of them even actually do approach realism...like languages. but that doesn't mean the rules explicitly are bound by the real world. going back to my previous example, procreation is 'realistic' by default...but thats just a default. there's not really a reason to change it, so its left alone. things like gravity and light are changed...they're specifically chagned to facilitate simple easy to understand mechanics and to more easily allow them to be interacted with mechanically. then things like the hand xbow which exists as a legitimate weapon...and they exist to fit a particular fantasy. it doesn't matter that they're a-historical...thats the point we've been making. when we say 'its a fantasy world'. its not 'everything is different from the real world'. its 'everything *could* be different from the real world, if thats what we want.' the point isn't to make the world unrecognizable, its to ignore the need for a realistic or historical justification. hand crossbows exist and are deadly because its a fantasy world, and thats ok. its ok to not like it, its ok to prefer a more grounded world. but that isn't a problem with DnD.

Had OP just said something like 'i get that its a fantasy world and all, but i just don't like hand xbows'. thats fine. they're expressing an opinion. but they didn't. they said that because hand xbows are mundane that they 'pretend to be real' and then used that as a justification to argue that because they weren't real in the real world, they shouldn't be in the game. the problem is....hand xbows don't pretend to be real. the game isn't pretending that there were tons of people running around with hand xbows in medieval Europe. nothing about the game is pretending 'this is how it was in the real world'. even the concepts that are superficially borrowed aren't meant to be representations of how they actually work in the real world. they're only their because people expect them to be there. because trying to build an entire fantasy setting without fundamental concepts like light and gravity would be hard, and would overly complicate things.


Well, not really. Because we know the maximum strength/area curve of bone and muscle (no matter how you configure it). And a 20-30-ft tall humanoid-stance creature? Yeah, that's outside of it. Housecats to tigers are still barely within it.
the problem with applying the square-cube law to DnD is that there's no reason to assume that even the humans in DnD are biologically identical to real world humans....much less to assume that the giants in DnD are made up of exactly the same thing as the various sapient races in the setting itself. especially when we know that there are actual materials in the setting that don't exist in the real world. similarly there's no reason to assume that, for example the giant elk bones are exactly the same as elks. or any of the giant flying things (although the giant flying creatures actually might be able to, since apparently hollow bones is how dinosaurs were able to be as large as they are. According to a 5 minute google search that i didn't do much to check the voracity of).

the fact of the matter is we know of creatures that existed in our very real world that reached those sizes.

[stoutstien]

That's exactly my point though!

They look the same at a cursory glance, just one is much bigger than the other.
Well, Giants and Humans look the same at a cursory glance, just one is much bigger than the other.
Same situation. Same considerations can be safely made.

Not quite. Tigers still fall within the realm of possibilities for what bones and muscles can handle assuming normal conditions. You applied the same ratio to a human they would go way outside of it. Even I they could exist they would be in fear of a simi stiff gust of wind knocking then over like a sail boat with no keel or a tree with no roots.

Giants exist in DnD because they do just like hand crossbows do. Though I just finished a plan that I think would allow a version of a single handed charged crossbow to fire with enough energy to be a weapon. I like making weird stuff.

[Dr.Samurai]

Not quite. Tigers still fall within the realm of possibilities for what bones and muscles can handle assuming normal conditions. You applied the same ratio to a human they would go way outside of it. Even I they could exist they would be in fear of a simi stiff gust of wind knocking then over like a sail boat with no keel or a tree with no roots.

Giants exist in DnD because they do just like hand crossbows do. Though I just finished a plan that I think would allow a version of a single handed charged crossbow to fire with enough energy to be a weapon.
I like the idea of lumbering gentle giants slowly making their way to a new village, and the humans are like "OMG monsters!" and the warriors rush forward and attack, and all the giants are like Mr. Glass from the Unbreakable Universe lol.

[stoutstien]

I like the idea of lumbering gentle giants slowly making their way to a new village, and the humans are like "OMG monsters!" and the warriors rush forward and attack, and all the giants are like Mr. Glass from the Unbreakable Universe lol.

Would be fun to math out how fast they could move before wind resistant took them over...oh fun ..how would they stop?

[PhoenixPhyre]

the problem with applying the square-cube law to DnD is that there's no reason to assume that even the humans in DnD are biologically identical to real world humans....much less to assume that the giants in DnD are made up of exactly the same thing as the various sapient races in the setting itself. especially when we know that there are actual materials in the setting that don't exist in the real world. similarly there's no reason to assume that, for example the giant elk bones are exactly the same as elks. or any of the giant flying things (although the giant flying creatures actually might be able to, since apparently hollow bones is how dinosaurs were able to be as large as they are. According to a 5 minute google search that i didn't do much to check the voracity of).

the fact of the matter is we know of creatures that existed in our very real world that reached those sizes.

Yes, we know of creatures that existed in our very real world that reached those sizes with very different configurations!. Posture makes a huge difference, as does leg-bone size (relative to the rest of them. So if you're willing to have giants that look like T-rex's, and oxygen ratios[1] more like the Jurrasic, you can have those. But what you can't have is humanoid-proportion giants and real-world physical limits.

And the limits are on the fundamental properties of the bones themselves. This is material science, so unless you have giants with bones more like carbon nanotube fibers and muscles that work very radically different (at which point you're back to the "it works the same on the surface, but don't use real-world materials for anything meaningful" point made earlier), the limits still apply.

I'm very ok with saying that D&D physics is only surface-level similar to real-world physics. Which means the whole issue is avoided and you can actually do cool things. Like say that giants and/or dragons get a bunch of their energy needs from the elements/background magic field. Which avoids a whole other issue with how much you'd have to feed a 20+ foot tall humanoid or gigantic flying, fire-breathing dragon for them to have a chance of having any ability to get up and walk around.

[Kane0]

I'm very ok with saying that D&D physics is only surface-level similar to real-world physics. Which means the whole issue is avoided and you can actually do cool things. Like say that giants and/or dragons get a bunch of their energy needs from the elements/background magic field.

Dragon scales are miniaturized weave solar panels, headcanon confirmed.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Dragon scales are miniaturized weave solar panels, headcanon confirmed.

:smallsmile:


Giants get their power from the "weave" (equivalent) and the elemental planes via the runes that go into making one a giant[1].

Dragons, on the other hand, get their power from the same sources mediated by their hoards, which are individualized (one particular dragon hoarded butterflies, and another hoards alcoholic beverages. A third hoards stories. But lots hoard more physical things like gold, jewels, etc.). Young dragons are in the process of gathering their hoard and generally need to actually eat food. This drives them somewhat batty, which is why young dragons are the most commonly encountered and most commonly a threat to civilization--they're hungry (well, more like a combination of being starving hungry and super super horny at the same time). Lifecycle changes are due mostly to hoard accumulation--you don't get to be an adult until you have a sustainable hoard. Which means that if an adult loses their hoard...bad things happen. Usually involving lots and lots of death and destruction.

[1] true giants don't reproduce--they're created out of goliaths via runic rewriting. Which is why goliaths are often so competitive--they're competing to be worthy of transformation. The more you can sustain, the higher type of giant you become. Those who fail the transformation process either die or become giant-kin...which by a twist of cruel irony can reproduce normally. So true giants are rare.

[Imbalance]

And now my game needs giants who dual wield hand crossbows. Thanks, thread.

[Dr.Samurai]

And now my game needs giants who dual wield hand crossbows. Thanks, thread.
Yes!

As you sit by the hearth enjoying the food and music, a loud and low THWANG sound interrupts the festivities and what looks to be a fence post with a sharpened metal point smashes through the front entrance of the tavern, skewering the bard. Another THWANG THWANG sounds out and two more sharpened fence posts smash through the front walls, obliterating anything in their paths.

As you run to the gaping holes now deforming the tavern walls, you catch a glimpse of a tall hooded giant loping behind a few buildings and vanishing into the shadows...

[Schwann145]

Yes!

As you sit by the hearth enjoying the food and music, a loud and low THWANG sound interrupts the festivities and what looks to be a fence post with a sharpened metal point smashes through the front entrance of the tavern, skewering the bard. Another THWANG THWANG sounds out and two more sharpened fence posts smash through the front walls, obliterating anything in their paths.

As you run to the gaping holes now deforming the tavern walls, you catch a glimpse of a tall hooded giant loping behind a few buildings and vanishing into the shadows...

"YOU DIDN'T SEE ME!" the Giant Rogue screams for his stealth check.