In my game, I have a crossbow with a maximum range of 80 yards. When I shoot it at something further than 80 yards away, the arrow isn't going to fly exactly 80 yards and drop to the ground. Not anymore than fresh milk would instantly turn sour at 12 midnight on the day it expires. It would keep flying for at least a little while. How is the damage category handled? I know that the damage value drops significantly, but how?
Firing at targets beyond the largest range increment for that weapon is called firing at "extreme long range," and it works against you in two ways. First, anything past long range nets you a damage category penalty - lethal drops to dangerous, dangerous to damaging, and so on. Second, the sit-mod against your attack's success (which limits both your chance to hit and your maximum damage, thanks to relative success damage rules) increases rapidly the farther away your target is. You start out with the -25 you would get for long range (in this case 80 yards), and then for every additional 1% of that distance your shot needs to travel, you increase that sit-mod by -1. Since 5% of 80 yards is 4 yards, you'd get an additional -5 for every four yards over eighty when firing your crossbow.
Let's say you're a 1@3 amateur with that crossbow, with a 2@1 ranged strike value. At twenty-five or thirty yards, you're at medium range, doing dangerous damage with a -10 sit-mod. Your chance of success is somewhere around (68-10=) 58%, and your maximum damage is six intensities. At one hundred yards, you're at extreme range, doing damaging damage with a -50 sit-mod (100/80=1.25, 25 percent over maximum means -25, plus -25 for long). Your chance of success is only 18%, and your maximum damage is one intensity.
That's how. Questions?
What are the damage categories? Isn't it something like Annoying, Damaging, Dangerous, Lethal, Annihilating and Devastating? How many points damage to get get for each one? Thanks.
Also, if there are penalties for shooting at longer distances, are there bonuses for shooting someone at point-blank range?
What are the damage categories? Isn't it something like Annoying, Damaging, Dangerous, Lethal, Annihilating and Devastating? How many points damage to get get for each one? Thanks.
Thats almost right. The categories are Annoying, Damaging, Dangerous, Lethal, Fatal, Annihilating, and Obliterative. Damages are 0-1, 1-5, 1-10, 1-20, 1-50, and 1-100 for Annoying through Annihilative, respectively. An Obliterative attack isn't measured in damage intensities; it's measured purely by area of effect. Anything in that area is obliterated, no questions asked. (This is why it's important that there's a maximum of two upward damage category shifts before we start converting them into damage point bonuses! Something has to be at least Fatal to begin with for it to be capable of reaching Obliterative through your skill and strike value.)
Also, if there are penalties for shooting at longer distances, are there bonuses for shooting someone at point-blank range?
Indeed there is. You get a +10 bonus for firing at point-blank. Short range receives no modifier, medium range gets -10, and long range gets -25. The reason medium range gets a penalty is because that's the range that we assume you practice on when your honing your skill; in combat, things are more difficult than on the practice field, and you want your target to be a bit closer. That's also why a point-blank shot isn't anywhere close to an automatic hit.
Scott has covered it extremely well.
I should mention two things before they become points of confusion.
First, there's a caveat on the point blank range bonus, as applied to certain kinds of thrown weapons: if the weapon can be used for either martial or ranged combat (you can throw a knife or hand axe, but you can also swing it and hit with it), you don't get the bonus on the chance to hit at point blank range--that would mean that you have a better chance to hit (typically 10%, but it depends on the difference between your RSV and your MSV) if you let go of a weapon than if you hang onto it, and that's patently silly. Thus you get that bonus with guns, bows, blowguns, even shurikens, darts, and needles, but not with thrown martial weapons.
Second, it would help to understand the way ranges are determined. For each weapon, the referee (with the help of the player) has to establish these categories on this basis:
- Point Blank: the no-miss range, where the target is visibly on line with the attack in an unmistakable way. This is the equivalent of sticking the barrel of the gun in the target's ribs, but depending on the nature of the weapon can be a bit farther than that. For example, most rifles, because of their long straight barrels, have point blank ranges of ten to twenty feet.
- Short: this is the maximum distance at which you would not bother to put practice targets because you wouldn't get much benefit from them--the range at which hitting a man-sized target in a controlled situation is pretty much a given even for an amateur. Just as there is no point to "practicing" hitting the broad side of a barn, so too there's not much point in practicing hitting man-sized targets at short range.
- Medium: This is the ordinary practice range, where an amateur would benefit from shooting at targets in a controlled situation. Ordinary-sized targets closer than medium range don't offer any challenge; targets beyond that distance are, for the amateur, a waste of ammo.
- Long: This takes the weapon from the ordinary target range to the maximum normal use range, the farthest distance an ordinary user would seriously consider shooting at a target.
- Extreme: This is any shot beyond the normal maximum range of the weapon. Scott has described the math quite well. Of course, if you're shooting at the broad side of a barn--or a giant, or a space ship, or some other extremely large target--you've got size bonuses which can offset distance; that's the key reason for the damage category penalty (which is repeated each time you exceed the long range parameter, so if you're firing your 80' long range crossbow at a giant 161' away you take two damage category penalties, and if he's 241' away you take three). However, if you have a high enough damage category and a large enough target, you can do damage to it at an extremely long distance.
--M. J. Young
What about the gravity factor? Shoot the crossbow into the air, the arrow comes back down. This was a way of getting longer ranges out of bows. It's as though the arrow fell 200 feet, instead of flying. Are there penalties/bonuses for that?
I think that technique is assumed in the skill roll. Your character makes the assessment of whether he needs to do that to score the best hit, and regardless of which decision he makes about how to fire the weapon, the attack roll tells us both if it worked and how well.
OK, thanks Scott.
Actually, that's why it's called "archery"--because the basic technique involves knowing how to "arch" the trajectory of the missile so it will be at the correct altitude when it reaches the target. My understanding is that it is of greater benefit with bows than with crossbows (the greater velocity of the missile creates greater range such that horizontal aim is the more critical factor--as is even more the case with small explosion-driving projectiles, although arching is critical with artillery), but it has some effect with any weapon. However, this being the basic technique, it is assumed in the basic numbers.
The more difficult matter, and one which is left to the discretion of the referee, is that of firing such a weapon down from above. The archer firing off a castle wall, or from the top of an earthen fortification, has the advantage that his missile starts farther above the ground and so will take longer to fall. I suggest a modest sit-mod, such as +10 (depending on height); this does not increase the effective range of the weapon, which is appropriate since the height does not increase the missile velocity significantly (it will have lost speed due to air resistance at the same rate) and does not increase accuracy in targeting, so it's really just a matter of finding a way to compensate for the fact that the arrow need not be arched as high and will thus have a better chance of reaching the medium, long, and extreme range targets. If you're at point blank, you probably don't have a significant advantage for elevation anyway (unless perhaps you are shooting at someone staked to the ground in the bottom of a pit?--in which case there are a lot of other bonuses that are going to be more obvious than altitude) so it wouldn't apply there.
--M. J. Young