Bulk and ST for missile weapons

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Gudiomen

It's also weird that there aren't rules for modifying the weight of a bow, whether it be ST10 or ST20... like you said, increasing the limb length adds more material.

I'm almost inclined to go with the Dungeon Fantasy rules for scaling weapons up, going with double weight for double ST (starting with the listed weapon), and then interpolating. But that's including making the whole weapon large (for instance increasing the draw length on a longbow by 50%)... Bleh.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Gudiomen

It's also weird that there aren't rules for modifying the weight of a bow, whether it be ST10 or ST20... like you said, increasing the limb length adds more material. One possible justification is that it's possible to pull this off with changes in angle of the cord, curved design, type of wood, and whatever else is relevant (I don't know much about archery or bow-making/fletching).

Of course, crossbows have additional parts that scale with limb breadth, so even if the difference of weight for limbs is negligible the rest of the paraphernalia will still increase the weight a little.

For crossbows, at least, if you increase the draw weight but don't increase the power stroke (the distance the string travels), you don't add much initial energy to the bolt at all.

That's why my treatment assumes that it's possible to vary prod size relative to ST and thus effiicency. Some steel bows will be extremely ineffient, but the high absolute draw will still allow them to retain effectiveness.

Originally Posted by Gudiomen

While crossbows in history could grow to human-size and needed to be cocked with a stirrup and your foot, I don't think the crossbows in Basic/Martial-Arts get into that, they're just the ordinary 2-handed variety.

I also think that the realistic resolution of these crossbows also reflect the lack of material about them. Sure, we can differentiate the subtleties between several types of rifles, pistols and SMGs, we know a lot about them, and they're produced in series that share common traits. X-Bows weren't and we don't know a lot about them. "Small", "Medium" and "Big" might suffice, and even if you change the statistics a little, it's pretty believable that a crossbow existed with those stats, as they probably varied a lot even in the same place, as crafting wasn't industrialized.

I'm confining myself to handheld weapons usable by SM 0 people. I plan to include tables that allow one to select the desired draw weight, material used for the prod and the approximate size of the prod relative to draw weight.

I'll also include several worked examples and note what ST can easily draw them.

Originally Posted by Gudiomen

I realize that's not what you're looking for, but for now eye-balling is probably going to give you the best results, and even if they're not perfect, there probably were some crossbows around that could perform like that and you can get away with it, unless you're too optimistic (which I don't think is the case).

I think there are too many variables we don't know how to quantify in order to reach a weight, bulk and minST value. I suggest taking the smallest crossbow you can find historically and giving it the lowest weight, bulk and minST value in the rules, likewise for the biggest historical crossbow that could be held, cocked and fired with 2 hands only. Everything else fits in between.

I'm looking for help with eyeballing it. I've already benchmarked -3 Bulk as the handiest possible, now I need a good guess for the 20+ lbs. monsters mentioned above.