Ashwood Repeating Crossbow

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yellowcateyes
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Re: Ashwood Repeating Crossbow

Post by yellowcateyes » Tue May 21, 2019 8:10 pm

Zavandar wrote:
Tue May 21, 2019 7:46 pm
Do we WANT healer paths that can Apache attack helicopter somebody?
I'm unsure about this conclusion, given Divine Might's adjustment and the nerf to top-end slings. If anything, there has been an overall reduction in the damage output of healer path ranged characters.

The repeater crossbow is a new option, but the damage output is overshadowed by Wardbreaker when it comes to any target with AC. Spinneret offers an amazing amount of free sneak attack damage and a free Point Blank Shot feat to make shooting in sneak attack range more potent. Practically, the only change here is that we may see more non-Drow zen archer characters wielding the crossbow, characters that still need to grab an extra feat to make use of the repeater.

While this can circumvented by dipping ranger, that in itself is a sacrifice. A healer path cleric would prefer a single dip monk, to both preserve a high CL and to increase AC significantly. Doing a double dip with monk/ranger means sacrificing CL and the opportunity cost of not having Paladin or BG being your second dip, losing out on saves. Those are non-trivial tradeoffs for doing slightly more damage (and very often less damage than just going Drow).

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Re: Ashwood Repeating Crossbow

Post by Zavandar » Tue May 21, 2019 8:26 pm

yellowcateyes wrote:
Tue May 21, 2019 8:10 pm
If anything, there has been an overall reduction in the damage output of healer path ranged characters.
Not really. They were just given a crossbow with an extra APR and they can negate the AB reduction.
yellowcateyes wrote:
Tue May 21, 2019 8:10 pm
A healer path cleric would prefer a single dip monk, to both preserve a high CL and to increase AC significantly.
A 27/3 healer path with a late epic archer path ranger dip remedies the feat problems.

Your AC is also irrelevant if you play well and just don't get attacked in the first place. Because of the way one-flurrying works with ranged weapons, unless you hit an obstacle or otherwise misplay, or the other person is faster than you, you will never be caught (and it's not like clerics don't have gsanc).
yellowcateyes wrote:
Tue May 21, 2019 8:10 pm
Doing a double dip with monk/ranger means sacrificing CL and the opportunity cost of not having Paladin or BG being your second dip, losing out on saves.

Clerics are more than okay in the saves department being a fort/will class that stacks constitution and wisdom anyway, making paladin/blackguard saves superfluous (not to mention a cleric's ease of gearing because of vestments, SR, and shield of faith). You can get divine might/divine shield as a cleric.

Why have all existing divine archer builds been nerfed to facilitate what looks like a nerf purely intended for an edge case that wasn't accounted for when making crossbows better than longbows?
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Re: Ashwood Repeating Crossbow

Post by yellowcateyes » Tue May 21, 2019 8:40 pm

Though I might be proven wrong by experience, arguments that AC and saves are irrelevant are always a hard sell to me.

Divine Might's 2H bonus was originally intended to apply only to melee weapons. Fixing its unintended application to ranged weapons was on the to-do list for some time.

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Re: Ashwood Repeating Crossbow

Post by Zavandar » Tue May 21, 2019 9:01 pm

yellowcateyes wrote:
Tue May 21, 2019 8:40 pm
Though I might be proven wrong by experience, arguments that AC and saves are irrelevant are always a hard sell to me.
I didn't say irrelevant, I said superfluous. (Edit: Oh, I did say irrelevant regarding AC. I do stand by that. The saves from paladin/BG would definitely be superfluous, as evidenced below)

Here is a gear list that took me about 5 minutes to make. It assumes a starting spread of 10str/8dex/12con/26wis/18int/9cha after gifts and hitting 30.

Image

These are all god-saveable, by the way. No hard 5's, and the uni-save on the crossbow is using its runic property. Maximized zoo buffs and aura of vitality let it hit its soft cap in literally every stat (except int, obviously). The charisma is to increase the duration of their War Domain power. A 27/3 healer path/archer path can do this VERY easily.
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Re: Ashwood Repeating Crossbow

Post by Kenji » Thu May 23, 2019 11:44 am

Peppermint wrote:
Tue May 21, 2019 11:08 am
It wouldn't surprise me to see healer zen archer builds start dipping ranger now that 1) monk speed no longer goes above 50%, 2) -path can be used to take the archer path late into the character's career.

Please also bear in mind that crossbow options are superior to longbows overall, especially for drow. Outside of Rapid Shot, Wardbreaker and Hand Spinneret outperform the competition by a wide margin.
I wholeheartedly agree on this analysis with the introduction of the repeating crossbow. Kobolds are to be considered, as well, even without access to Wardbreaker without heavy investment into UMD.
Peppermint wrote:
Tue May 21, 2019 11:08 am
Furthermore, ease of creation is irrelevant for a one time craft. The comparison to ammunition (which must be crafted repeatedly) is such patent nonsense that I won't even belabor the point, because I'm certain you know it's nonsense.
Please don't make assumptions on my part. If you won't belabor this, then I will. Here are the relevant data and statistics on even getting to obtaining 2 of the 3 crossbows:
NWN Arelith High Tier Launchers Materials
We're looking at 1580 + 1404 = 2984 worth of CP to obtain both crossbows.
Not to mention it also takes dedicated Carpenter, Alchemist, Herbalist, Artist and Blacksmith in order to obtain all of the materials necessary to get the craft going.

With the introduction of Crafting Mastery, however, many of the intermediary crafts are likely reduced by half the necessary CP.
So the new number with that in mind is ~ 1300 + 1152 = 2452 CP
Requiring at least 3 different PCs (Dedicated Carpenter, Blacksmith, and Herbalist)
Alchemy can be bypassed via purchasing Standard Alchemical Catalyst
Art Crafting can be bypassed via getting sapphire from elsewhere, glass variants purchased or dedication of 1 point into Art.

In comparison to Longbow, which is ~964 CP (mastery included)
Requiring 2 Difference PCs (Dedicated Carpenter and Herbalist)

Let's compare all these Ashwood variants to other one-time crafts, Masterly Damask Weapons:
Dedicated Blacksmith, 543 CP.

I don't believe it is nonsense when you're looking at such a high disparity in the total amount of players and crafts involved for distinct "one-time" crafts in this case. To top it off, crossbow users may be facing bag-of-swords problem in this case.

The argument was "crafting" has often played in factor for discouraging particular players going into a particular line of weapon or build specialization. The consumable vs one-time craft part, in this particular case, the Ashwood variant one-time crafts are far more complicated than the other one-time crafts most realize.
Peppermint wrote:
Tue May 21, 2019 11:08 am
Finally, in their current incarnation, repeater crossbows are not "specialized weapons"; or at the very least, that term is meaningless. Every character specializes in a single weapon. Characters that had previously used longbows (aside AAs, obviously) will almost always spend the additional feat on crossbows for more damage and the versatility that the weapon affords.
It is in my belief that melee characters use ranged weapons from time to time.
It is also in my belief that ranged characters with weapon finesse use rapier/short swords from time to time.
To clarify, repeating crossbow offers nothing new to ones who don't have the ranged feats, nor does it power-creep upon any existing crafts as much as many believe. Its introduction seems more towards a QoL improvement for high-end crossbow users than discouraging non-AA ranged builds going for Longbow.

After revisiting the numbers, reducing the Mighty property of repeating crossbow from 5 to 4 will put it exactly on par with longbow. (±0.5%)

Reducing the Mighty property of repeating crossbow from 5 to 3 will put it 2% below Longbow's average damage, further down to 3.5% difference upon vs high AC opponents.

An argument can be made that repeating crossbow's damage should be reduced slightly given its slight overperformance.

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Re: Ashwood Repeating Crossbow

Post by Kenji » Thu May 23, 2019 5:34 pm

Sockss wrote:
Tue May 21, 2019 10:16 am
Additionally the larger crit range ensures you will threaten casters with 100+ conc checks more than the lbow.
Zavandar wrote:
Tue May 21, 2019 7:46 pm
[...], crits more often (which is better for interrupting spells)...
Here's the relevant calculation by hand:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... 1779645606

Under these specific scenarios (per shot)
Mage does not have Premo, has all and only basic 5/- DR, is casting a 9th level spell, has no relevant AC, and has a concentration rank of 47
With 5 Mighty, Repeater XBow has 51.50% of interruption
With 3 Mighty, Repeater XBow has 47.34% of interruption
LBow has 41.41% chance of interruption

Mage has Premo
With 5 Mighty, Repeater XBow has 13.65% of interruption
With 3 Mighty, Repeater XBow has 12.38% of interruption
LBow has 9.41% chance of interruption

TL;DR: XBow has a higher chance of interrupting an unmitigated mage per shot than longbows.
The concern in this regard seems valid.

However, for the purpose of interruption, Gonne might have been a better choice overall.

Edit: Fixed a mistake in unmitigated calculation.
Last edited by Kenji on Sat May 25, 2019 12:01 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Ashwood Repeating Crossbow

Post by malcolm_mountainslayer » Fri May 24, 2019 1:40 am

Kenji is such a range nerd.

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Re: Ashwood Repeating Crossbow

Post by Sockss » Sat May 25, 2019 9:43 am

Have you fiddled ig? It's extremely difficult to time a conc check with a 1 / round damage application.

It's also very difficult to threaten a damage threshold which will worry anyone with a gonne.

They're very different in behaviour, it's like saying "hey use a scim".

But regardless at least we can all agree that the xbow (simple) change had it outperforming bows (martial) and that it could have done with some examination prior to the change.

RIP divine archers and build diversity I guess.
Thankfully this team is no longer being used.

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Re: Ashwood Repeating Crossbow

Post by Kenji » Sat May 25, 2019 12:04 pm

I can understand the need to scrutinize everything before introducing something like the repeating crossbow, and I agree, the release was rather hasty. At the same time, this panic of it changing the meta scene drastically is unnecessary.

Proc'ing a conc check on a hasted caster is already hard, I only bothered with the calculation just so there is a baseline of statistics somewhere. With it, more scenarios and details can be included. An automated calculation process will be done Soon™ and I can then start incorporating APR and whatever you folks can come up with.

Much like the academia in the fields of economics and physics, it always starts from something relatively simple before introducing more nuances and details. Personal experiences vary, opinions can be even more divergent (But not always right or wrong!). Statistics is the only objective truth in this matter.

Using a gonne may not have been the best example since it is comparing oranges to apples, I concede to your point on that.

But I believe there were hardly any crossbow users, to begin with, as contradictory as this statement may sound since I have yet to see any actual statistics in this regard. Almost everyone and most builds have either used longbow or slings for either better QoL or performance. Repeating Crossbow's existence should only encourage further build diversity, not destroy it.

I will gladly concede and be proven wrong again should there be statistics showing that this introduction has discouraged build diversity. And I can start a poll in that regard, even if not everyone participates on the forums. (Again, gotta start somewhere)

Last but not least, Divine archers (via Harper or paladin/BG dip) are still very powerful, on paper, they do have the most DPS and AC compared to other non-Divine archers.

Of course, the follow-up argument would be non-divine archers often opt for hide/MS and HiPS for Ranger Archers whereas divine archers (AAs in particular) often don't have the skill points to specialize into detection and/or survival. Which may be something worth discussing over another thread.

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Re: Ashwood Repeating Crossbow

Post by Peppermint » Sat May 25, 2019 2:31 pm

I'm glad the crossbow has been toned down a touch, though I do wish to raise a couple points:

1) Requiring rapid shot (a bow feat) puts the repeater crossbow in an odd place. It requires the most feats out of all the options, meaning it pretty much has to be best in slot in order to be worthwhile. On the other hand, as a crossbow, it can't be best in slot without bungling things elsewhere (e.g. Healers); a simple weapon should never outperform a martial one.

This requirement gives the crossbow a crisis of identity. I'd consider removing it and balancing it as an upper-mid range weapon.

2) Weapons that are rarely used aren't necessarily bad; they may simply be niche. Historically, crossbows have been best on Healers and Drow, but subpar elsewhere. This is a small portion of characters overall; consequently, crossbows have been rarer than slings and longbows. This is not a bad thing. This is inherent to any design that encourages versatility (i.e. given a sufficient number of weapons, if each weapon fills a role, then at least one of them must fill a niche role).

The quintessential example of this in vanilla NwN is the kama. Not a weak weapon by any stretch, it is nonetheless not a common one, because only monks--and not all monks, but monks built to use it--will equip it. Crossbows are no different.

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Re: Ashwood Repeating Crossbow

Post by Skarain » Wed Jun 05, 2019 7:40 pm

One quick question. Does the Repeater Crossbow make use of the "Repeater crossbow bolts" only, or do any bolts from Iron to Steel to Damask work? Not quite sure if those are a relic of a long lost age or actually a thing.

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Re: Ashwood Repeating Crossbow

Post by Rigela » Wed Jun 05, 2019 7:44 pm

They use your standard bolts.
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Re: Ashwood Repeating Crossbow

Post by Skarain » Thu Jun 06, 2019 6:17 am

Alright. Thanks for confirming.

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Re: Ashwood Repeating Crossbow

Post by Invader_Nym » Fri Jun 28, 2019 8:35 am

The biggest downside to the ashwood repeater in my opinion is that it lacks the versatility of an ashwood longbow in that you can't toggle in and out of rapid shot. Other than that it's a great weapon that finally puts crossbow on par with longbow. That's my take at least. The idea that the cost of building these end-game items is small because they're 1-time deals I don't agree with at all however; that I'll need to make 2 ashwood crossbows certainly isn't small potatoes to me, but this is definitely better than having no crossbow rapid shot equivalent at all.

I have a level 30 archer with 14 base str that can get to 22 strength fairly reliably without using a skleen so the strength requirement I'm not fussing over too heavily.

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Re: Ashwood Repeating Crossbow

Post by Invader_Nym » Sat Jun 29, 2019 5:19 am

Repeaters definitely need to be available at lower levels if we want crossbow to become more widespread. It's at low level when attacks are scarce that you really miss that extra attack. My crossbow guy has not been as fun as my numerous longbow guys, that's for sure.

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Re: Ashwood Repeating Crossbow

Post by Scraps » Sat Jun 29, 2019 6:12 am

To make something clear, as the simple proficiency is thrown around a lot for this topic.

Crossbows require Rapid Reload to become effective, before you get that feat they're fairly objectively the weakest of all the ranged weapons. Yes, the weapon requiring an additional feat should ideally be better -Or at least equal to the ones with easy to access proficiency. (Or even proficiency's easily granted by races)

If healer clerics having access to Crossbows threatens balance, then make the Rapid Reload feat non-functional/non-obtainable to Healers- As is already the case with them gaining Martial and Exotic feats.



-And as a side note, because I see it a lot too. AA far far far outpaces ranger in damage against anything with above-average AC. And does so with no conditional favored enemy requirements while it's at it.

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Re: Ashwood Repeating Crossbow

Post by Invader_Nym » Sat Jul 06, 2019 5:23 pm

I think that rapid shot needs to be a weapon attachment for crossbows, rather than a distinct crossbow. I have to juggle between 3 different crossbows to achieve less than what a bowman achieves with a single bow and a toggleable rapid shot ability. The lost attack really feels like a deal-breaker thus far.

Also the ashwood crossbow is not a huge step up from the grandmaster crossbow. You gain +1ab and your critical hits increase by 2 damage. That's not a screaming deal given the high cost of creating the item. The ashwood crossbow is runic, but the runic property isn't going to increase your power significantly. I'd put +2 strength on the ashwood bow or reduce its production cost to more closely match that of the grandmaster's crossbow. +2 strength isn't really that great since I can already get to 22 str without a big problem.

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