Longbow vs Crossbow

[Ceronomus]

One of my fellow players who just recently bought the book noticed something a little strange with ranged weapons. Does anyone know why, in DCC, crossbows have a better range than longbows?

[Zenitii]

No idea, but you can change it without problem, just as I do.

[Ceronomus]

Easy enough to change, or ignore, but I was curious if there was a reason for it, or if it was an error that hadn't been caught...

[Zenitii]

Probably an error, I can't think about any specific reason why crossbows should have better range than longbows - it's well known historical fact, that longbows had better range and better rate of fire.

[GnomeBoy]

Maybe in Dccmundia, the atmosphere gets much thicker starting about 20 feet over your head, so longbows having to arc through the air actually don't have the range we're used to thinking of at all.

Or maybe Mr. Goodman just really likes crossbows.

[Zenitii]

Well to be honest I used to think that crossbows were much more powerful than bows, which is not true. They were just really easy to use by an unskilled bowman. Nevertheless this is a game open to houseruling and nothing is written in stone. I enjoy DCC mostly because of it's mood, splendid adventures, inspiring graphics and philosophy. Mechanically it has some faults, mostly because it was done as an old school RPG, and during these times referees were encouraged to houserule a lot. That's what I'm doing as well.

[GnomeBoy]

Mechanically it has some faults, mostly because it was done as an old school RPG, and during these times referees were encouraged to houserule a lot.

I am put in mind of that old line about something not being a bug, but a feature...

[Zenitii]

Yep, that's totally a feature! I'm sick of learning tons of rules and 1 hour long fights. I want to be able to write an adventure with all npcs fast, then resolve all questions in combat on the spot, not by searching in the various supplements for 10 minutes. Not to mention lots of rules usually hinder my imagination. I really like what Goodman Games did here.

[Ceronomus]

I'm not certain I'm sure what you mean by that.

All three items doing the same damage? That's great.
All three items having differing ranges and the item that, IRL, fires further NOT being the weapon that fires furthest? That's a bit of an odd duck.

[jozxyqk]

I'm not certain I'm sure what you mean by that.

All three items doing the same damage? That's great.
All three items having differing ranges and the item that, IRL, fires further NOT being the weapon that fires furthest? That's a bit of an odd duck.

I sympathize with Ceronomus. I think there is a tendency around here to reject any suggestion that the DCC RPG rules are flawed with responses like some posters made in this thread. "You don't like it? House rule it! That's what's great about this game!" Yeah, fine. That's all well and good. But people are usually not asking permission to house rule, they are asking (as Ceronomus did) what, if any, rationale the rule in question has. It is one thing to maintain relatively vague rules to allow for flexibility. That's great. I tend to side with the people who aren't interested in adding, e.g., a great new hand-to-hand combat system or highly specific weapon-by-weapon speed factors to make the game more "realistic."

It's quite another situation, however, where a specific rule actually appears to fail or seems incorrect in some respect. If a rule simply makes no sense, that is not a "feature." It is a problem to be corrected.

I am reminded of an earlier thread where someone pointed out that Lightning bolt (a third level spell) does way less damage than magic missile (first level) and has no greater utility or any other feature. There were nonetheless a ton of responses attempting to rationalize this inconsistency (magic is chaotic, lightning is cooler, etc).

I think we should lose this determined, even joyful, resistance to saying "oh yeah, that's weird and seems wrong. That should probably be changed".

[GnomeBoy]

If a rule simply makes no sense, that is not a "feature." It is a problem to be corrected.

I may mistakenly be taking this as directed at my comment ("not a bug..."), in which case mea culpa, I should have trimmed the quote I pulled even more than I did -- I was referring to the idea of older games featuring a lot of houserules.

As for the range issue, I think we got as close as we're going to get with the first few responses -- unless Mr. Goodman shows up to clarify.

Has any checked the "Stomp the typo" thread about this issue? If it hasn't been covered there, then this issue should be posted there. Probably with more likelihood of being noticed by someone that can actually provide a definitive answer/correction.

[Zenitii]

I'm not certain I'm sure what you mean by that.

All three items doing the same damage? That's great.
All three items having differing ranges and the item that, IRL, fires further NOT being the weapon that fires furthest? That's a bit of an odd duck.

No, my comment didn't concern longbow range. I was responding to GnomeBoy's post about lack of precise rules and complexity as a "feature", not a bug. Longbow's range in my opinion is a bug, but scarcity of rules in general is not.

[Ceronomus]

Has any checked the "Stomp the typo" thread about this issue? If it hasn't been covered there, then this issue should be posted there. Probably with more likelihood of being noticed by someone that can actually provide a definitive answer/correction.

I hadn't looked there. Having checked, it isn't addressed there and so I've asked the question. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.