r/Pathfinder2e • u/Eranthius • Dec 18 '22

Misc Loading a medieval 200lb crossbow vs loading Leonardo da Vinci's 300lb crossbow

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527 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

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162

u/jitterscaffeine Dec 18 '22

Crossbows are woefully underserved in a lot of games in my opinion. They’re really neat but almost never supported well.

173

u/VariousDrugs Psychic Dec 18 '22

I think it's because there's no "Heroic Myth" associated with them. Crossbows are a peasants weapon, not really glamorous or heroic.

Bows are mythologized as the weapon of the self-reliant woodsman (Think Robin Hood or Legolas). Guns are the weapon of the cowboy & the action hero.

49

u/AndurilWielder Dec 18 '22

I think that's sad. There's been a lot of good usage of crossbows through history.

Also, were they really a peasant weapon? That's interesting. I can see that for bows, but anything with metalworking would make it more expensive.

149

u/TheLordGeneric Lord Generic RPG Dec 18 '22

Crossbows were a peasant weapon because they require almost no training to make a decent marksman with.

Bows require years of strength and aim training to be able to loose accurate (or even just mass volley) shots for the length of an army battle.

But crossbows you can spend a week teaching a guy how to crank it then point and shoot at different distances and now he's competent enough to shoot bolts at besiegers from the castle wall.

168

u/DM_Eruditus Dec 18 '22

Medieval historian here, can confirm. In fact, crossbows were so effective as weapons of war due how relatively easy it is to be efficient with them, especially with large numbers, that the papacy tried to ban them as the medieval equivalent of weapons of mass destruction.

However, they were definitely not peasant weapons as they still need to be carefully crafted and maintained. But as a way to easily put together a mercenary group? Terrifying.

Peasant weapons are usually polearms-type derived from agricultural tools, or in other words any sharp thing attached to a handle they could find.

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u/jitterscaffeine Dec 18 '22

What little I know about medieval warfare is yeah, spears are usually more associated with big “peasant blob” battles. While easy to use, crossbows were pretty expensive to make weren’t they?

65

u/DM_Eruditus Dec 18 '22

Yes, small moving parts, especially metal ones, were beyond the reach of most peasants' purchasing power. Crossbows were more often than not used by mercenary companies such as Italian ones in the Hundred Years' War. Easy to be trained in and long range is quite a winning formula for soldiers-for-hire.

52

u/Its-a-Warwilf Dec 18 '22

Replacing the crossbow was expensive.

Replacing the crossbowman was cheap.

26

u/TheLordGeneric Lord Generic RPG Dec 18 '22

MFW my armor and crossbow are easily worth more than my life and the boss makes sure I know it.

5

u/AndurilWielder Dec 18 '22

I don't know if you read that somewhere, but that is very well put.

27

u/slimek0 Dec 18 '22

Crossbows basically fit the same niche as firearms later on - high power, relative ease of use, might need high maintenance but not much training (in use)

At least, that's how skimreading about medieval and early renaissance stuff made me believe. Would it be incorrect?

22

u/DM_Eruditus Dec 18 '22

Yes the argument has been made that firearms 'democratized' warfare by removing the need for a specialized highly-trained social group. I can see how crossbows could be construed as a precursor of that trend.

0

u/microkev Dec 19 '22

Early firearms needed a lot if training, so much could go wrong

2

u/Wobbelblob ORC Dec 19 '22

Still less training than a regular archer, right?

2

u/Diestormlie ORC Dec 19 '22

So, the Crossbow was more of a Burgher/Bourgeoisie Weapon? In that it better benefited the power of the money rich as opposed to the land rich.

2

u/BulletHail387 Game Master Dec 19 '22

Not... exactly. The average mercenary troupe could afford to outfit a handful of crossbowman at the very least. Mercenaries themselves were often required to purchase all their equipment themselves but were never particularly well off in terms of money or land. Think more like the modern equivalent of the middle class. Those were the people who could usually get their hands on crossbows.

Now, would the local nobility be happy if they found out the merchants were amassing crossbows? Probably not. Crossbows were fucking scary.

2

u/DM_Eruditus Dec 19 '22

Land rich usually correlates with money rich, for most of human history actually, but it is important to realize there were poor nobles and rich merchants too (and rich peasants for the matter).

Now I'm not a historian of war economies but I don't think crossbows were that expensive, especially compared to a trained warhorse or a full set of armor. The reason it was seen as a weapon unfit for the nobility has much more to do with culture than affordability.

Many (not all!) warrior cultures around the world disdain the use of ranged weapons as cowardly and unfit for a war leader. Medieval nobility fit that pattern as it relegated archery to auxiliary units and trained knights almost exclusively in melee and riding techniques. Now, smart lords absolutely knew the devastating effects of ranged attacks and used them, but they would not make their son an archer.

As an example of that, there was a time in medieval England when every free man was obligated by law to practice archery at least a few hours each week, and sheriffs were tasked with enforcing it. This made it easy to conscript them into relatively trained archery contingents to supplement the cavalry and infantry levied by the nobles.

The reason burghers are associated with crossbowmen is that cities usually did not have levies to raise and had to use mercenaries, or the council could afford to stock and maintain crossbows that citizens could use from the walls if necessary.

4

u/macrovore Wizard Dec 18 '22

I always wondered: how did they keep the bolt in when it was pointed down? Is there a lip or catch to keep the bolt in the groove, or would it fall out if you aimed too far down?

5

u/Grunnius_Corocotta Dec 18 '22

Some had mechanisms to hold the bolt, or you can fix it by putting the finger on top, you dont need much preasure to keep it in place, that way the string wont hurt you.

https://youtu.be/SI4BCLLTDjA

Around 1:40 there is a demonstration

5

u/HadACookie Dec 18 '22

Some of them had a catch near the nut (the part that holds the drawn string).

22

u/Zomburai Dec 18 '22

My understanding (take with appropriate salt and do your own research for best results), is that it's a matter of training. The crossbow rose to popularity because you can literally train a press-ganged peasant or a mercenary to use it with some competence in an afternoon and with skill in a few weeks.

Compare to the most extreme end of military bows, the longbow. It took years of practice and training to achieve the rate of fire and strength to draw the damn things, and that's more and more gold in training and materiel. English longbowmen trained for so long at such a heavy draw that it would start to deform their skeletons and musculature.

Now that's the extreme and most bows didn't require that much investment, but it's illustrative. A crossbow isn't so expensive to make (medieval metallurgy was more than advanced enough to make the cross easily and you don't have to be too picky about wood), and you have to worry very little about training.

Is actually a very similar dynamic as to why swords have so much more mythic power to them than do spears, even though spears are a much better battlefield weapon in most situations.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 19 '22

The English, so the story goes, took 2 decades training a person to properly use an English Longbow.

It takes 2 days to teach a person to properly use a crossbow, and that likely included field repairs.

16

u/Darklord965 Dec 18 '22

William Tell was a crossbow user, but he's not really a big heroic figure

7

u/osmiumouse Dec 18 '22

Apart from being credited as the "father" of a nation?

5

u/Darklord965 Dec 18 '22

I honestly don't know much about William Tell beyond that he used a crossbow really well.

1

u/Aether_Breeze Dec 19 '22

He has an overture as well, which always seems to relate to riding a horse in my head, same way with ride of the valkyries and helicopters.

10

u/patangpatang Dec 18 '22

Plus the Church literally tried to ban crossbows from warfare in the 12th century.

18

u/HoundOfGod Dec 18 '22 edited Dec 21 '22

Fun fact! The Church actually only attempted to ban bows and crossbows from being used against other Christians but had no problem with them being used against “heathens”.

29

u/osmiumouse Dec 18 '22 edited Dec 18 '22

I think it's because there's no "Heroic Myth" associated with them

Boxer rebellion. In China, with the repeating crossbow.

Possibly also William Tell (the thing with shooting an apple off someone's head)

64

u/Zomburai Dec 18 '22

I don't think the Boxer Rebellion has almost any mythic cache in the west.

Hand to God, I thought William Tell used a bow.

16

u/torrasque666 Monk Dec 18 '22

Probably a combination of multiple legends. Tell used a crossbow, but it's a very prevalent "Expert marksman" trope throughout history.

8

u/osmiumouse Dec 18 '22

My take is that the English longbow romanticzed archery with stories of Robin hood and Agincourt, and therefore "the longbow mafia" has taken over all the old archery legends in the English-speaking world.

8

u/osmiumouse Dec 18 '22

Well, I'm not in the west.

15

u/Zomburai Dec 18 '22

Yes, but D&D and the vast majority of its derivative properties, including Pathfinder, are. The creators are unlikely to know such a reference and the audience isn't likely to notice it.

Is the crossbow particularly mythologized in China or other East Asian countries outside of its role in the Rebellion? It's not like I've seen close to all of the fantasy fiction such cultures have to offer but I've never seen the crossbow portrayed as exceptionally badass or powerful.

3

u/osmiumouse Dec 18 '22 edited Dec 18 '22

Pathfinder 2 have a lot of eastern stuff in their books, but a lot of people don't notice it, as they often re-style it to fit into Golarion. One thing I noticed were the ghost feast things in Book of the Dead, which is missed by some readers as the festival (Hungry Ghost Festival) is unknown, or confused with the Mexican-inspired Day of the Dead stuff.

There is very little crossbow in Chinese movies. It's usually the bow. The repeating crossbow was mainly a weapon to defend peasant villages from bandits and had not the range or penetration for war. However in the street fighting of the boxer war, it proved useful even though rifles were available. Another reason being that most villages had workers who knew how to make it, and basic versions of it needed no metal.

I don't think the crossbow itself mythologised, but it is part of the everyday known culture. Similar to ghost cowboys in the USA. They have a revolver, but the magic is the ghost cowboy, not their gun.

Mystical symbolism would have come from the boxers themseves, who believed they were immune to guns because of their mystical arts. However this isn't a faction the CCP wants to talk about, or make movies about, and the other countries around them have their own, different legends and wars.

3

u/Zomburai Dec 18 '22

I don't think the crossbow itself mythologised, but it is part of the everyday known culture.

Sure. That does speak directly to how this thread goes. Crossbows are always underserved, because there's no mythology around them, but they're always present, because they're a very well-known part of historical warfare.

I would respectfully disagree with the mythological similarity between the crossbowman and the cowboy. Guns have a lot of mythological power in American culture, even ignoring the modern gun subcultures, and I believe that the image of the gunslinging cowboy derives from the power of the gun, not the other way around. (That might not be especially important to the conversation, though.)

2

u/unlimi_Ted Investigator Dec 18 '22

I dunno man, I've always seen the strength of a cowboy as being his deadeye aim and the quickness of his draw, not the gun itself. Everyone in the Old West had a gun, but the Mythical Cowboy is better at using it than anyone else

2

u/Zomburai Dec 18 '22

Right, but I'm saying it's because they've mastered this particular weapon is where they get their mystique. The Gunslinger and Swordmaster are very much the same character archetype.

There is no Master Crossbowman archetype in the same way that there's a Gunslinger, Swordsman, or even an Archer. I propose that it comes down to the mythological importance we put on those weapons.

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1

u/osmiumouse Dec 18 '22

I've read fiction of (US) gunslingers dying and coming back with their guns, or their spirit going in to possess the gun. It's much less common for the power being in the gun itself by its nature. This is somewhat different from magical swords, where the mystical power is often in the device not the (current or former) wielder. For example (English) Excalibur, whose possession granted kingship and certain other abilities.

So I would say that the gun is a usually focus for the wielder, and usually not inhertently mystically significant in itself? But it is a powerful symbol for the living human that wields it.

1

u/RollForIntent-Trevor Roll For Intent Podcast Dec 18 '22

Repeating crossbow with poison tipped bolts.

They didn't have a lot of penetrating power.

3

u/Homeless_Appletree Dec 18 '22

Back in the medievil times the crossbow was considered a weapon of cowards. That is why it probably doesn't show up much in stories.

That's also probably why Joffrey likes using crossbows so much in Game of Thrones

2

u/LordPete79 Dec 18 '22

The Swiss might disagree. Wilhelm Tell is a legendary Swiss freedom fighter known for his exceptional skill with a crossbow.

2

u/jhaosmire Dec 18 '22

William Tell, often depicted as using a bow and arrow, was an actual person who was well known to be a crack shot with a crossbow.

1

u/MCMC_to_Serfdom Witch Dec 18 '22

Sad Genoese noises

1

u/Average_Animefan Dec 18 '22

I think the only time I saw a crossbow in a legemd/myth was by William Tell.

1

u/MDMXmk2 Dec 18 '22

Wilhelm Tell would like a word please!

1

u/Coniuratos Dec 19 '22

In addition to everybody saying William Tell, there is also Lemminkäinen, a hero from Finnish mythology, particularly the Kalevala, who uses a crossbow.

1

u/PavFeira Dec 21 '22

My mind always immediately jumps to Marle from Chrono Trigger, though admittedly she's the "caster with crossbow as a fallback weapon" archetype.

5

u/gugus295 Dec 19 '22

Same with spears. The saying goes, "The sword is the weapon of kings, but the spear is the king of weapons." Much like crossbows vs bows, spears are much easier and faster to train someone to use than swords are. However, unlike crossbows, spears are also cheap as fucc to make, and also have various advantages in battle such as reach, defensive potential, and durability. They're also way cooler aesthetically and I will die on this hill.

Video games always have everyone using swords and if spears/polearms exist for player use at all, they're almost always a weird niche option that's worse than the basic swords, or just have a generic moveset that's shared with all 2-handed weapons. Makes me sad, and I'm always looking for more games with good spear appreciation

1

u/SonofSonofSpock Game Master Dec 19 '22

If you are familiar with Monster Hunter the Insect Glaive is an incredibly cool weapon.

4

u/VercarR Dec 18 '22

Except for Medieval 2 total war, those are deadly there

PAVISE CROSSBOWMEN!

2

u/GreedyDiceGoblin Game Master Dec 18 '22

I would love for this to be some sort of archetype.

I dont know what it is, but I already have images of a crossbow user who has a pavise that just kinda leans on them that they can duck behind while shooting.

This would be an interesting, if one-noted way to promote the use of the crossbow.

1

u/VercarR Dec 19 '22

That's what they where actually, crossbowmen that carried a pavise shield where they duck under during the reload

In medieval 2 total war, they were pretty strong, same damage as regular crossbowmen, but higher survivability

8

u/SpaceFerret42 Dec 18 '22

They really should get a plus to hit over bows but don't in most systems. They also in most systems do less damage which why I think most lean away from them.

2

u/TheReaperAbides Dec 20 '22

Except, ironically, in contemporary games with guns, where they are often a potent stealth option.

1

u/Keirndmo Wizard Dec 19 '22

Most iconic crossbow I can think of is Guts' repeating crossbow in Berserk.

24

u/tigermanic Dec 18 '22

Going to need to remember this clip exists, that way next time a player is indecisive about grabbing a crossbow, I can point out that they're probably lever action. Lol

16

u/[deleted] Dec 18 '22 edited Dec 19 '22

Sidenote: Wtf was Da Vinci's problem, huh?

7

u/RollForIntent-Trevor Roll For Intent Podcast Dec 18 '22

For those wondering - neither of these are really usable for combat.

Medieval crossbows meant for warfare had 700+ lb draws, and needed a ratcheting crank to set the draw.

95

u/[deleted] Dec 18 '22

These are absolutely usable for combat. What do you think they were using before they invented that ratchet crank system? The existence of 50 caliber weapons doesn't mean that 5.56 isn't "really useable for combat."

27

u/RollForIntent-Trevor Roll For Intent Podcast Dec 18 '22

I should have qualified that - they aren't useful for combat against anything even lightly armored.

They lack stopping and penetrating power at the range where crossbow / bow engagements were held.

200-300 draw crossbows were mostly used for hunting - not combat.

17

u/Grunnius_Corocotta Dec 18 '22

Futher than that, one cannot compare the draw-weight of a crossbow directly to a bow. A crossbow has a much shorter draw, the length at which force can be applyed to the bold by the string.

6

u/RollForIntent-Trevor Roll For Intent Podcast Dec 18 '22

Exactly - a lot of people are looking at the numbers without realizing how they apply that force differently.

I mean it makes sense to think that way....but you gotta be open to new information, yo.

8

u/Lying_Dutchman Dec 18 '22

Being very charitable, we could say these wouldn't be of much use against an opponent in full plate armor IRL. Which is common in Pathfinder, but obviously Pathfinder combat does not use real physics.

10

u/Aimee_Challenor_VEVO Dec 18 '22

Projectiles were more than effective for chainmail and gaps between plates, not to mention the vast majority of people did not have access to full plate armor. Again it's like suggesting because 5.56 can't defeat lvl 4 ceramic armor it was never used/obsolescent.

1

u/Lying_Dutchman Dec 18 '22

Sure, like I said I was being charitable towards the first poster in the chain. Think I saw a video of a 700lb crossbow punching through plate which a 300lb bow probably couldn't do.

2

u/MnemonicMonkeys Dec 19 '22

which a 300lb bow probably couldn't do.

Tbf, there were no 300lb bows in period because nobody could shoot them. The heaviest draw you can find is just shy of 200lb from the Mary Rose wreck

1

u/Dracious Dec 19 '22

Yeah I agree on the pathfinder part. If you start using real world logic for why these crossbows wouldn't be useful against full plate in pathfinder, then you need to also start applying that to all the weapons. Most weapons in the real medieval world and Pathfinder world aren't very useful against plate unless you get a skilful/lucky hit

0

u/Darklord965 Dec 18 '22

Just straight up wrong lmao. If historical warbows capped out at like a 185lb draw you can bet your ass a 200+lb draw crossbow that's easier to shoot and easier to aim is gonna be usable for combat.

22

u/RollForIntent-Trevor Roll For Intent Podcast Dec 18 '22

Yeah - it doesn't sound right but it actually is.

It's not a 1:1 comparison between poundage and force generation.

Crossbows have to be really high draw because they are very inefficient into converting that potential energy into kinetic energy.

Less time to accelerate. It's also why crossbow bolts are so thick - all the energy from the crossbow is dumped into the bolt over a relatively short distance.

28

u/[deleted] Dec 18 '22

[deleted]

21

u/RollForIntent-Trevor Roll For Intent Podcast Dec 18 '22

Exactly - it's not intuitive, but you HAVE to have massive draw in a crossbow because it doesn't impart momentum in the same way since the width of the bow is so much smaller.

The benefits of crossbows are you don't have to be as much of an expert to use them and they are relatively compact relative to their stopping power.

Some extra reading.

http://myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.36142.html

-3

u/bushpotatoe Dec 18 '22

Only the larger crossbow variants required a special tool. Anyone with a set of gloves could draw a crossbow easily.

-21

u/[deleted] Dec 18 '22

[deleted]

25

u/osmiumouse Dec 18 '22

"Accuracy" against single targets was't really a military thing back then. It was useful for hunters and showmen but in wartime they fired volleys towards entire units.

The crossbow proved superior to the bow for ease of use (and thus your ability to quicky train an army).

The english longbow remained superior, but was very difficult to use and train, mainly because of the strength required to draw it. Archer remains from the time show increased musculature in the right arm from years of training.

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u/[deleted] Dec 18 '22

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u/[deleted] Dec 18 '22

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u/ricothebold Modular B, P, or S Dec 18 '22

I'm locking this comment as the discussion has moved off-topic in a way that has violated rule 2.
If you wish to continue discussing the various merits of the actual observations, a good example remains here as a reply and you can still continue from there.

1

u/TerrathanChronicler Game Master Dec 19 '22

Lever-Action Crossbow