[DF] [LT] Crossbow for my Oger/Barbarian

[pjason]

I've been working on an expanded equipment list for our DF game, and there are many characters (Barbarians or Races with ST bonuses) who manage to get up into the 20+ ST range.

My first question is, can they use the Scorpion and Ballista without the tripod realistically? (yes I try to maintain some realism in my DF campaigns, as my group is very simulationist, and I see this as the real strength of GURPS DF over other dungeon crawl systems)

My second question is, a ST 36 Siege Crossbow (shown as an example of a common ST in the description text) seems much more powerful than the equivilant Scorpion/Ballista. It weighs less, costs less, does around the same damage, requires less ST to use, and its ammo costs/weighs a lot less. Any reason for this?

[Walrus]

Originally Posted by pjason

My second question is, a ST 36 Siege Crossbow (shown as an example of a common ST in the description text) seems much more powerful than the equivilant Scorpion/Ballista.

First of all, Scorpion and Ballista are TL2 and Siege Crossbow is TL4.

Campaigns, 412 says that tripod only allows to neglect penalty for insufficient ST. And Low-Tech, 81 says that strong character can use some siege weapons shoulder-mounted.

So, you should thoroughly reread respective places of Basic Set and Low-Tech.

[Bruno]

If the character has the ST for it, I would charge them an arbitrary "Special order" 50% mark up (As recommended in DF1) for "A seige weapon with hand-grips instead of tripod mounts" and call it "good enough".

The hand grips might not cost more, but there won't be many on the market (compared to SM 0 ST 10-13 soldiers, there just aren't that many ST 17-77 guys kicking around ;)

[pjason]

Originally Posted by Walrus

First of all, Scorpion and Ballista are TL2 and Siege Crossbow is TL4.

Thanks for pointing that out. This brings up another question as to how this equipment should get scaled up to TL3 or 4.

Originally Posted by Walrus

Campaigns, 412 says that tripod only allows to neglect penalty for insufficient ST. And Low-Tech, 81 says that strong character can use some siege weapons shoulder-mounted.

Thanks for the page references.

I saw this general rule on B412 but it really seemed to be more geared towards things like guns. And even so, it seems many tripod mounted guns are designed to be fired tripod only (like the xm307). I was wondering if a realistic desgin of the Balista or Scorpion would even allow it to be hand held.

LT81 was a new reference for me (I just got LT a few days ago), and it seems to answer this perfectly... so thanks!

From those rules, it looks the smallest Balista and two smallest Scorpion can be fired just fine with the listed ST. Cool.

Originally Posted by Walrus

So, you should thoroughly reread respective places of Basic Set and Low-Tech.

Thanks again for the page refs. With over 730 pages worth of contect in those two books alone, its nice to be able to get reference pages from these forums.

[Kuroshima]

Why does this thread make me think at this guy?