Crossbow thoughts

[Trevor White]

I got a lot of joy out of finding a couple of staves with Ambidex and Dual-wield on them, as it effectively meant that a staff was a viable Rogue weapon again. It took away the feat tax of wielding one, in exchange for not having good combat stats otherwise. Sure, I couldn't Finesse it, but I liked the option of dual wielding for more Sneak Attacks. I've also seen some fantastic crossbows with stats that would make you drool if they were even just on a sling. All are sadly still worse than a mediocre magic longbow, because of only getting a single attack and no Rapid Shot. Plus being three times as heavy.

Which got me thinking. Why not just apply Rapid Reload as an item feat to any crossbow that's not a newbie quest drop?  It doesn't need to be on the basic mundane crossbows, but no matter how many +AB bonuses and the like I see on a Crossbow, it doesn't balance out the huge drawback of "Yes but if I shoot twice, I could do twice as much damage". If Rapid Reload is not available as a general item feat it could be scripted as OnEquip?

The tl:dr is that huge, deadly, crossbows are ironically far worse as a weapon than "Walking up and punching people in the face". Unarmed Strike can be effective and fun, especially on on a focused Rogue or Fighter, as it's not difficult to get +2 or +1d4 on gloves. Then add in your strong perk benefits, extra attack per round, STR bonus, and the fact you're triggering Flame Weapon, Divine Favour etc on 2 attacks a round. But that's only because the DMs put in effort to make a flavourful choice actually a practical one too. It costs one feat of Improved Unarmed Strike, but the extra benefits and good loot compensate. Whereas the only thing to give Crossbows a chance is a Fighter perk which has a slightly worse power than the Bow one and doesn't provide Rapid Reload or anything else to make up for the lack of Rapid Shot.

Obviously, a free Rapid Relaod feat wouldn't make crossbow experts comparable to rapid-shooting longbows, but it would mean that someone who's not a rapid-shot specialist would want to actually use something like the Ratter 1000 as their ranged weapon. Ironically, I've been using a crossbow for a while, but that's only because I'm in a niche situation. I'm playing a rogue. He doesn't have Rapid Shot.  He's not yet L8.  The crossbow's got +1 AB on it, die mephits, die! And all of that is less of a selling point now I can get a shortbow or sling Magic Weaponed up anyway.

Another good change could be to put a high Mighty score on most crossbow drops in addition to Rapid Reload. That way, it operates like the choice between Two-Handed Weapons  (Crossbow) or Dual Weapons (Rapid Shot)" . Do you want more attacks per round, or a bigger punch when you do hit? . I mean, that penalises the theoretical 6 STR Halfling With a  Heavy Crossbow concept but that's it. :P