> Not at a distance, man. Crossbows are "direct fire" weapons, and bows
are
> "indirect fire" weapons. Arrows on the battle field were fired at an
area,
> not necessarily at individuals. Everybody in that targetted area was
> extremely likely to get "hit". Crossbows were designed to be fired at
> individuals. They used the same basic "lever" principle as bows, but a
> mechanical crank was used to pull the string back, rather than raw muscle
> power. Since a bows arrows followed an arc to their target, they
generally
> struck with the same amount of force that they left the bow with.
Crossbow
> bolts did not strike with the same additonal impact force provided by the
> acceleration of gravity. They followed a fairly straight (line of sight,
> almost) trajectory, and dipped earthward at about 10 meters a second per
> second, so you really HAD to be close to your intended target to hit it.
Gravity isn't quite THAT effective. A crossbow bolt with no kinetic
energy(i.e. stationary) will fall at the 10m/sec/sec rate. But one fired
from a crossbow now has oogobs of energy to burn off. gravity will affect
it, no doubt there. But not so effectively as that. It's a formula with
lots of sin(x) and stuff, but it's gotta burn off some enegry that the bolt
got when it was fired. Otherwise, Firearms in real life would SUCK.

>
>
> > Now, if you don't want guns, it would be easy to say that in BR, the
> crossbows are even more penetrating, and can penetrate plate. There
would
> then exist a super-heavy class of crossbows, probably used by pairs of
men,
> that would ignore armor and non-magical protection, dexterity and magic
> would still apply I guess.
>
> Actually, such weapons DID exist at one time, in the AD&D game (im not an
> expert, and cant say whether they existed in the Real World :), and they
> were called "ballista". Ballistae (mangonels, scorpions) fired heavy
spear
> like projectiles. Their hits did 2d6 damage to S/M sized opponents, and
> 3d6 to L-sized opponents. With a crew of 4 men, they fired 1 shot every
> other round, and a crew of 2 men allowed one shot every fourth round.
> Chapter 8 of Comabt & Tactics changes this dramatically, however.

Yeah, they were real. I don't know the exact damage, but they were real.

Darryl Willis