Dungeon Master
Posts: 291
Joined: Wednesday, 6th June 2012, 18:59
Proposal: Hand crossbows and the Thief background
You may have heard of the ranged_combat branch, currently playable on cszo and cbro, in which I'm working on rewriting the entire ranged combat system based partially on the melee combat formulas. One significant aspect of this is that it allows for ranged weapon stabbing (i.e. bonus damage against unaware targets), though this is currently mostly disabled (it's currently used to give blowguns bonuses against unaware targets).
The absence of any damaging weapon here strikes me as a bit of an unexplored design space, and a ranged weapon that would be especially suited for ranged stabbing would help to fill that hole.
I then remembered our old friend, the hand crossbow, which was removed a very long time ago for mostly obvious reasons - under the old ranged combat regime they did pitiful damage and didn't have any obvious long-ranging uses. So here's a use for them - give them a ranged stabbing ability, making them a good utility weapon for stealthy types.
For those of you that remember, the old original Thief background started with a hand crossbow (before they were removed); with the new usable hand crossbows this provides a niche for the Thief class to fill as a ranged stabbing/stealth type of enemy. Alternatively, Assassins could get a choice of starting with a blowgun or a hand crossbow. Either way, starting with a hand crossbow lends itself to a possible new style of play.
tl;dr: Bring back hand crossbows as a ranged stabbing weapon; either bring back hand crossbow Thieves or let Assassins start with the weapon.