Despite being some of history's most deadly inventions, crossbows have not been done justice in Dungeons and Dragons. AD&D had you rolling single d4s for damage, for Sarenrae's sake! 3E+ has made some vast improvements to the concept, but still, the crossbow is the poor cousin to the much greater composite shortbow and longbow, with lower damage potential and far slower reload times.

Well, that's not very much fun. It's something we shall have to remedy.

But First...

I'd like to point out that there's no need for a repeating crossbow to be an exotic weapon, and this only ensures that the characters who would want to use it (weaker characters with more limited weapon proficiencies) will never use it. Is it really that much harder to load a clip of bolts? I can't see the squeezing of the trigger warranting the jump from simple to exotic.

In short, I houserule that repeating crossbows are martial weapons, rather than exotic.

Apparently this movie was really bad.

Historically

Historically, crossbows were bad ass. They were easy to fire and could punch a hole through most armor. Much like guns in feudal Japan, the most powerful crossbows were outlawed for a time as even an untrained commoner (with only one simple weapon proficiency) could slay a trained knight with the squeeze of a trigger.

Unfortunately (or not, depending on your side of the crosshairs) crossbows were also slow to load. A skilled crossbowman could load and fire a crossbow a few times a minute. Arbalests (more advanced versions) could be fired twice in a minute. That would not make for a fun gaming mechanic, and certainly wouldn't endear the crossbow's use in D&D.

Striking a Balance

Education is all well and good, but I'm much more interested in fun than in historical accuracy. Obviously that leaves the reload times firmly in RL, with us adopting similar rules to the current light and heavy crossbows (reloading as a move and full-round action, respectively). However, if we're going to build a better crossbow we need to address its deficiencies—lower damage potential—while not making it so good that the original versions will cease to be useful. Basically, we want composite bow in crossbow form.

My Arbalest

Here's what I came up with. What do you think?

Arbalest (Martial Weapon)

An arbalest is a larger, more advanced crossbow with a steel prod (bow) that provides much greater force with fired bolts. The greater tensile strength and heavier design of the arbalest necessitates a windlass—a cord and pulley device that is wound to draw the bow—to load it. Light and heavy arbalests require a strength of 12 and 14 (respectively) to properly wind the windlass and load the bow, although characters with lower strength are capable of loading it in double the time. It takes a full-round action to load an arbalest. Reload time can be mitigated as normal by the Rapid Reload feat.

Arbalest 200gp 1d10 2d6 x3 150 ft. 10 lbs. Pierce

Bolts, arbalest 2 gp   /  /  /   2lb.  / /

And here are the original crossbow stats.

Crossbow, heavy 50gp 1d8 1d10 19-20/x2 120ft. 8lbs. Pierce

Crossbow, light 35gp 1d6 1d8 19-20/x2 80ft. 4lbs. Pierce

Bolts, crossbow 1 gp   /  /  /   1lb.  / /

Really, pretty straightforward stuff. More damage, better range, different critical modifiers, more weight for the bow and the bolts, strength requirements to load (for a similar penalty as for composite bows), and finally a martial weapon, rather than simple. It would be an easy thing to make repeating versions of the arbalest (a necessity for the character concepts who would want to use it) by adding a few gold to the price and mentioning that it is loaded in clips of 5.

So, what do you think?

Let me know with a comment if you might use this in your Pathfinder game. I intend to this Friday in my Legacy of Fire game.

Thanks for stopping by.