Handcrossbow Question

[Trillarel]

It is a light crossbow in the clubs category of weapons.

It can be picked up, held, held in both hands.

It cannot be worn with any other armour.

It is medium in size and would fit any body type.

Whaat? What has a crossbow to do with armour? I hesitate to buy it since I need my armor...

The description is of a titanium handcrossbow in Tlar Quel'tlarn's shop, Menzo.

[Harroghty]

This refers to the fact that it is worn in both hands. You can still, of course, wear armor with it.

[Atraos]

Morning

Just a quick point on this one, not sure myself either way.

Should drow hand cross bows be single handed? I took it from the novels that these were wielded one handed as there were small concealable weapons??

Obviously there is, I would imagine the whole issue around reloading, as this would need to be done two handed and would potentially be open for abuse should these be dropped to one handed?

Just a thought for debate....

Thanks

[Trillarel]

Yeah, I always thought hand crossbows are one-handed. I think they are even one handed in SRD, even though reloading is two handed.

[Trillarel]

This refers to the fact that it is worn in both hands. You can still, of course, wear armor with it.

*cue headscratching*

If it refers to the fact that it is held in two hands, why does the line mention armor at all?

[Enig]

All wear locations can potentially be fitted with three layers of objects, ie: on your body you can wear an undershirt, a suit of armour, and a backpack, all on the same location with:

LAYER_UNDER 11 Worn under armour. Such as padding and under clothes.
LAYER_ARMOR 12 Actual armor. It can have something worn under and over it.
LAYER_OVER 13 Can be worn over armour. Like robes.

The line 'It cannot be worn with any other armour.' refers to the fact that this object cannot be layered with any other object. Thus you can't hold three different weapons in the same hand.

Specifically, this:

LAYER_ALL 10 Nothing else can be worn with the item in the same locations.

Just to pre-empt a little, the line is not set by hand and is instead automatically applied to the object on the basis of what layer the object is set for, ie. under, armour, over, or all. Any change to the message would require a hard code modification and is unlikely to be given priority over more pressing issues for quite a while.

[Gwain]

Should drow hand cross bows be single handed? I took it from the novels that these were wielded one handed as there were small concealable weapons??

I know in the past that all crossbows were made 2 handed by hardcode to avoid abuse. But that was shortly after they were made widely available in the game. Back then crossbows of any type were incredibly expensive weapons. Now they are much more widespread.

[Tarven]

Well, as Atraos suggests, they're -wielded- in one hand. However, technically, so are Bows. It's the act of reloading that requires two hands.

I'm not sure how crossbows are currently coded, as I haven't played with them on FK at all. Normally though, hand cross bows would only get 1 shot per round, as a standard action, and reloading them would be a move action. Light crossbows would be the same, while heavy crossbows would be every other round, as it's a full round action to reload one.

The advantage of hand crossbows in SRD is indeed that they are small and concealable, and that you -can- fire one in each hand, with only normal two weapon penalties. However, the mechanics of crossbows in general don't fit in very well with the FK environment. We're lucky to have bows that work as well as they do.

If anyone is interested, though I doubt it, I could give a small history lesson on crossbows and how they were used. Suffice to say, they're not weapons you would 'duel' with, which is basically what is done in FK/DnD. Large numbers of duels, as opposed to large scale battles.

[Athon]

Here is the D20 quote in favor of how Tarven described it:

You can draw a hand crossbow back by hand. Loading a hand crossbow is a move action that provokes attacks of opportunity.

You can shoot, but not load, a hand crossbow with one hand at no penalty. You can shoot a hand crossbow with each hand, but you take a penalty on attack rolls as if attacking with two light weapons.