Friday, March 18, 2011

Ranged Weapons

I'm not entirely happy with what I have here:

Requires Mastery. This weapon cannot be used untrained and requires 2 proficiency slots (4 total for specialization).


My issue is with the ranges. Now, the first range segment, after which weapons are at -5 to hit, represents a loss of accuracy when targeting a single person in combat. Most of these ranges are essentially the same. On one hand, this makes sense. Sure, weapons differ in accuracy, but the loss of accuracy over distance isn't entirely unique to most weapons. On the other hand, this means that there is little differentiation between weapons.

A similar issue happens at the 2nd range interval. Sure, a longbow could fire a flight arrow to 1000 feet or more. However, the arrow at the end of the flight is bereft of most of its kinetic energy and is primarily delivering a blow through gravity after descending from its arc. It's like dropping an arrow on someone. So really, the maximum range represents a combination of extreme loss of accuracy as well as final penetrating power. Again, the same issue creeps up, most of these weapons tend to max out at around the same range.

So differentiation comes in through damage and reload time. That's ok. It just bothers me that after all of this research into these weapons' ranges, I came to a rather unsatisfying conclusion. Of course the longbow could outdistance a short bow, but at the end of that distance, a flight arrow isn't going to do much damage to even lightly armored foes.

I condensed the values for reload times into a single value even though I previously had it broken down by skill level for firearms. I could have given every weapon similar treatment and allow for more proficient users to cut down on reload time and increase their accuracy range. Instead, I'll keep it simple and maybe throw this aspect back into play when it comes time to work on weapon proficiency and specialization and derive a general rule to apply to all weapons.

I will let this stand as is and maybe I can revisit it over time. I might add a third range category to represent a range that the weapon is only effective in a massed and/or indirect fire role.

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