by Kurgan » Friday December 10th, 2021 2:16pm
Reading through the various arguments and topics over the years regarding the ranged weaponry in HeroQuest, I can understand the desire by some to introduce new homebrew limitations to de-power them. But if a person is going for "realism" I honestly am convinced they are just fine as is.
Sure, the debate over whether you can hit someone at point blank range rages on. HeroQuest isn't perfectly realistic (Plate Armor shouldn't cut your movement speed/range in half for instance, and Longswords would be two handed, etc. etc). There is still some "game balance" thrown in there for flavor.
But judging by estimates of the size of the board squares (and assuming a generously high ceiling) and looking at world records for throwing axes (or hatchets, tomahawks) and thrown knives, crossbow bolts and bow and arrow... it is plausible that you could hit enemies on the other end of the corridor. These are HEROES after all, exceptionally skilled (probably trained from an early age as many were in the ancient past), not just some guy off the street who is grabbing a weapon for the first time. Sure, they ought to be able to hit someone at close range too, but that limitation is obviously there so you will still want to buy a sword.
The Warhammer fantasy setting which inspired HeroQuest's world has a mixture of different earth time periods, cultures with a healthy dose of pure fantasy sprinkled in there. In real life Pistol crossbows existed which could be fired with one hand. Granted, we've been through the argument that it still required a second hand to load. So whether you want to call it a one or two handed weapon is up to you. I've seen Longswords used with one hand as well even if they were typically used two handed. The rules don't impose those limitations by default however, so it's homebrew if you go beyond that. The real question is why?
To me the four diagonal squares seems like a loophole, and I'd make an executive decision to just disallow the four diagonal close squares (but one square away, no problem, in any direction) just because it makes the already powerful weapon way too powerful.
As for the number of arrows, I didn't find how many crossbow bolts or quarrels were typically carried in war, but for arrows it was something like 20-60 arrows, and yet in major battles they not only had quivers but also arrows stuck in the ground and smiths carrying in litters or even whole wagon loads of new arrows to re-supply the archers. You might not be carrying a literal bottomless bag of arrows/bolts, but you could imagine you have a "big enough" supply that you would not realistically run out in the course of a standard quest (even if you didn't have the ability to retrieve usable projectiles after each fight, which I think typically they didn't in warfare). I forget the details but one of the official expansions had a crossbow you find with very limited ammo but that was a special case (much like the magic bow you get in EQP, super powerful but only a handful of arrows).
But you do what you want in your own game of course! I'm just saying the "realism" argument for knocking down the Crossbow's abilities in HeroQuest doesn't really make much sense to me. Just admit you're changing it for difficulty management and gameplay balance and leave it there. I use NA rules by the way, where the targeting is a little stricter than the EU editions.