Originally Posted by
Andur
Shooting at point blank range shouldn't really necessitate that much of a tohit penalty, since, they are sorta right there and easy to hit.
You would be massively opening yourself up for attack, so, you would face a massive DV penalty for doing so, and, open yourself up for some additional counterattacks by your opponent.
Plus using a bow and a shield at the same time should really be impossible, that DV/PV should definitely be negated at all times after firing a shot.
Reloading a crossbow realistically should take some time.
And perhaps if you get hit while reloading, you have a chance of screwing up or dropping the ammo or something like that.
How about a new Tactic factor for archery? After all, an archer would have three obvious choices when it comes to firing at a close foe:
1. Shoot fast
2. Shoot well
3. Shoot safely
For the first case, speed would be the priority, allowing them to shoot more arrows. However, this would come with penalties to to-hit and to DV. For the second case, accuracy would be what matters most, and therefore maximise to-hit... but this would result in speed and DV penalties. And finally, shooting safely would place emphasis on safety, thereby maximising DV... but with penalties to to-hit and to speed. Of course, there would also be an option to place the three equally, producing lesser penalties to each of the three.
Obviously, shooting safely is less important for long-distance archery... but when up close, safety becomes a major concern. As with normal Tactics in ADoM, switching archery tactic would take no extra time, so the player can switch to setting 3 if a foe gets too close. And perhaps Archers, at a certain level, get the ability to do two of the three at a time, thereby shooting, say, fast and safely, to the detriment of accuracy.
As for the crossbow issue, I'd definitely like to see a "reload speed" for each type of long-distance weapon. Crossbows should be more powerful, but slower, slings should be almost instantaneous to load but fairly weak. There should also be ego versions of these that modify the reload speed, such as the "Auto-loading Crossbow", which would be quite rapid to reload (still affected by tactics, though). Similar ego versions could also impact tactics, so you might have a "Bow of Focus", which would enable the user to shoot without penalty to accuracy, irrespective of archery tactic - it wouldn't so much increase the to-hit of the bow itself, but would avoid any loss in to-hit if using a different tactic. Obviously, this weapon would be quite a boon for high-level archers, who could choose the appropriate tactic to have zero penalty. Hence, these would be quite rare.