Another crossbow thread

[Gold Bearer]

Carried and Equipped Items
A character may only equip one single handed weapon and one shield at a time. A torch may be equipped with a shield or single handed weapon. Equipped items are placed in front of your character card. All other items are placed behind your character card. Characters may change equipped weapons once on their turn and only if they haven't used their action. Changing equipped weapons does not constitute an action.

I do that. I worded it a little differently to just say you can't switch weapons after attacking.

Additional situations;
If you are attacked while a bow is equipped, you defend with one less combat die. If you receive damage, you may choose to take one body point less but your bow breaks

Hopefully there's moments where the weapon breaks. I might revise that rule to 'if you receive two hits or more, your bow breaks and reduces the damage by one'. Any thoughts?

I'm not sure bout this one because if you can't automatically reduce damage with an ordinary weapon I don't think you should be able to with a bow.

[Redav]

No but other weapons don't break* like a bow or crossbow might if struck by an axe or sword etc. This is about introducing ambushes, weapon selection and giving Morcar / Zargon a way to reduce the instances where their men are being hosed down from afar before by some heroes running around with strong, ranged weapons before they've had a chance at attacking anyone.

* For the moment, I haven't worried about the catastrophic failures of weapons like others have.

[Gold Bearer]

If you are attacked while a bow is equipped, you defend with one less combat die. If you receive damage, you may choose to take one body point less but your bow breaks

How about this?...

If you are attacked while a bow is equipped and you receive damage your bow breaks.

Or…

If you are attacked while a bow is equipped, you defend with one less combat die. You may choose to defend with the normal amount of combat dice but if you receive damage your bow breaks.

[Daedalus]

Where's the thread that discusses if diagonal squares are included in ranged attacks? In my opinion, they are not, which makes the price relation between longsword and crossbow proportionate enough.

I've got that: How to counter door blocking + Crossbow LoS issues
I agree with knightkrawler.


Now on to Redav's nifty houserule.

No but other weapons don't break* like a bow or crossbow might if struck by an axe or sword etc. This is about introducing ambushes, weapon selection and giving Morcar / Zargon a way to reduce the instances where their men are being hosed down from afar before by some heroes running around with strong, ranged weapons before they've had a chance at attacking anyone....

Nice point about a crossbow not being suited for defense. I like the defense penalty, but like Gold Bearer, I wouldn't include damage reduction. What you cited above doesn't require that property...I'd say simplify and drop damage reduction.

Gold Bearer has some good suggestions. I'll add a more lenient alternative:

You defend with one less combat die when a crossbow is equipped. Roll a seperate combat die for the crossbow. If you roll anything but a white shield, then it is damaged and it's combat strength is reduced by 1. A damaged crossbow may be repaired for half cost.

[Malcadon]

1) The hero using the crossbow switches to a sword for adjacent foes: Changing weapons counts as an action. I was thinking about allowing the crossbow to be used against an adjacent foe as this would will minimize the necessity of having switch weapons, but after reading other comments on this forum I think it make sense to leave this restriction in place for the crossbow.
2) Endless supply of crossbow bolts: I believe Daedalus proposed that a supply of 10 bolts should cost 100 gold coins. I think this is a great idea as the hero will need to be prudent about employing the crossbow (like casting spells) and tracking the bolts would be no more burdensome than tracking Body Points or treasure. I don't want to add rules about reusing bolts which I don't think is very feasible anyway. After the last bolt is spent, the hero will have to expend an action changing weapons...and hope this doesn't occur in a room full of monsters!
3) Picking off monsters at the other end of the corridor: The crossbow has an effective range of 10 spaces. This means it can be used at any monster in the same room but a monster in a corridor has to be within range.

4) Crossbowman or Arbalist?

The former is recognizable to everyone, but it takes up a lot of space on paper. The latter sounds neater and is shorter, but is a highly obscure word, to the point of potentially causing a bit of confusion with newbies.

[Redav]

but is a highly obscure word, to the point of potentially causing a bit of confusion with newbies.

It is a bit, I only know it because I played a lot of Medieval: Total War.

Nice point about a crossbow not being suited for defense. I like the defense penalty, but like Gold Bearer, I wouldn't include damage reduction. What you cited above doesn't require that property...I'd say simplify and drop damage reduction.

Yeah, I'm starting to think the same.

Gold Bearer has some good suggestions. I'll add a more lenient alternative:

You defend with one less combat die when a crossbow is equipped. Roll a seperate combat die for the crossbow. If you roll anything but a white shield, then it is damaged and it's combat strength is reduced by 1. A damaged crossbow may be repaired for half cost.

Both of you do. I'm thinking maybe if you roll a skull, it's damaged and it's attack is weakened as you said but if this happens again, it's unusable until repaired?

[Malcadon]

Gold Bearer has some good suggestions. I'll add a more lenient alternative:

You defend with one less combat die when a crossbow is equipped. Roll a seperate combat die for the crossbow. If you roll anything but a white shield, then it is damaged and it's combat strength is reduced by 1. A damaged crossbow may be repaired for half cost.

Both of you do. I'm thinking maybe if you roll a skull, it's damaged and it's attack is weakened as you said but if this happens again, it's unusable until repaired?

Wait, what? I did not say that!

[Redav]

Haha oops

Fixed (you know how these things go, copy, paste, paste, paste, job done)

[Daedalus]

Gold Bearer has some good suggestions. I'll add a more lenient alternative:

You defend with one less combat die when a crossbow is equipped. Roll a seperate combat die for the crossbow. If you roll anything but a white shield, then it is damaged and it's combat strength is reduced by 1. A damaged crossbow may be repaired for half cost.

Both of you do. I'm thinking maybe if you roll a skull, it's damaged and it's attack is weakened as you said but if this happens again, it's unusable until repaired?

I've been away from this topic for a while, but returning to it: Yeah, making a crossbow unusable after a second instance of damage works just as well as whittling it down to 0 Attack Dice after a third instance.

Have you had a chance to test out your crossbow houserule yet?

[Redav]

Have you had a chance to test out your crossbow houserule yet?

Sadly no and I'm not sure when I will because one group I play with moved 10 hours away so we won't see them much (but they're family so it won't be once every 5 years and we'll smash out a few quests when we do) and the other we see regularly but we don't always play HQ. These two groups are the first time I've played HQ since getting the game as a teen so I started playing through as US and EU vanilla rules to see how they both played.

I should just grab someone and give it a go