Item for moderation - Verditius crossbow

Verditius crossbow
Desc: based on a cho-ko-nu or repeating crossbow in use in china, this is a verditius enchanted variant made entirely of steel, including the bowstring (a braided set of harp strings is used, as this provides the string with sufficient strength to withstand the rate of fire. Note that the cho-ko-nu could fire a bolt a second easily, and that this device reloads automatically.)

Effect process... 3»2»1»4

effect 1 cock bow
rete P/M/Part
Base 2 +1 metal +1 part
+3 linked trigger
+10 unlimited uses

Effect 2 test is bow cocked
Inte P/M/Part
Base 2 +1part
+3 linked trigger
+10 unlimited uses

Effect 3 is trigger pulled
Inte P/Sun/Part
Base 2 +1 part +2 sun
+3 environmental trigger
+1 2 uses per day

Effect 4 load bow
Rete Touch/Mom/Ind
Base 4 +1 metal +1 touch
+3 linked trigger
+10 unlimited uses per day.

Vis cost=21 terram or vim.

I'm trying to track your numbers. Your vis cost seems high. Did you remember the Verditius vis discount on opening items? Second, the whole item seems over-thought. Since the whole item is steel, it seems to me that one ReTe effect should do what you want, to automatically load and cock the crossbow.

I seem to recall the vis cost being the sale price, but people may want to check the maths.
a single effect simply reloads, with this...
in theory as long as the trigger is held and ammo exists it fires. ie full auto.

ReTe is +2 magnitudes for metal

Taking this into account, we appear to have:
ReTe 18 (=5+13)
InTe 16 (=3+13)
InTe 10 (=5+5)
ReTe 28 (15+13)

which makes about 8 pawns vis (likely Terram) + whatever Vim vis is necessary to open to device to enchantment (likely 15 or depending on size)

PENETRATION!!!! Your magically created bolt needs penetration. Otherwise it will not work against supernatural creatures.

I am assuming that the item as designed can shot a bolt per round, but you seemed to imply otherwise. Any ideas on how will you model the repeating process?

Xavi

Are the Intellego effects really needed?
What they sense are part of the item as a whole anyway and the effects can be chained to the correct sequence without them.

Nope, that's about the only point I see to this item - it appears to use mundane bolts, thus discarding the need for penetration.

Otherwise I'd go for a Crystal Dart Wand everytime.
Much cheaper, easier and can be made as a lesser device - but must penetrate.

Can't have a crystal dart or you can't be Baldin from Hawk the Slayer :slight_smile:

1 Like

You do realize that one could actually modify a mundane crossbow with low level spontaneous magic to produce the same results without the need of vis or lab seasons, right?

Ah, Ezzelino, what about Realm interaction? I don't want to be making a roll every round in a level eight infernal regio.....

As for you, Janus, that's a lot of work for something that's not in the game. There are no rules for "Full Auto". Perhaps if you told us what you expect to get out of "Full Auto", we could help you model it.

Thoughts: Initially I'd consider full auto rules from other rpgs, where either multiple targeting rolls are used, or the degree of success in the targeting roll determines the severity of the impact to the targets and multiple targets are allowed. Those tend to be for firearms which can shoot 6-30 projectiles in a round, so the same logic might not apply. It also greatly changes the base Ars combat too. A problem with both of those approaches in Ars is that it tends to apply a rule saying that we have one damage roll, rather than multiple damage rolls. I came across this guideline when trying to re-work the Crystal Dart to fire using x10 darts at once. The general ruling was that the 10x darts should still resolve as a single damage effect, rather than rolling damage 10x times. It might have affected a narrow cone of area, but still only applied a degree of the overall maximum potential damage. I think that concept has been discussed on the forums here too.

My 2c: as the crossbow fires once per second (roughly) and a combat round is an indeterminate amount of time, perhaps 3-9 seconds, then give the character 4 shots per round if they standing still and shoot only, or 2 shots per round if they also move. A crossbow firing in this manner should be subject to a modifier for re-aiming at multiple targets (say a -2 penalty for each additional target), and each roll should be resolved individually. This contradicts the idea in the thoughts above, but I think it is fair. Yes it will add rolls, but not so much that its game breaking.

I agree with the side topic that its an interesting weapon, but is inefficient in terms of Vis, and also probably not grandly effective against powerful creatures. A creature with a high Soak will not be bothered by it any more than a typical crossbow. Against regular footmen it is a beast.

6s IIRC.

Thaanks Direwolf, yes a combat round is 6 seconds.

Here's the corrected enchantments for the item. (that'll teach me to copy paste from the old file)


effect 1 cock bow
rete P/M/Part
Base 2 +2 metal +1 part
+3 linked trigger
+10 unlimited uses

Effect 2 test is bow cocked
Inte P/M/Part
Base 2 +1part
+3 linked trigger
+10 unlimited uses

Effect 3 is trigger pulled
Inte P/Sun/Part
Base 2 +1 part +2 sun
+3 environmental trigger
+1 2 uses per day

Effect 4 load bow
Rete Touch/Mom/Ind
Base 4 +2 metal +1 touch
+3 linked trigger
+10 unlimited uses per day.


As this crossbow is not designed to be aimed (would be kind of pointless even if you don't believe in recoil), but is designed to be either mounted (as a siege crossbow), or hip fired (as a cho-ko-nu (think short barrelled pump action shotgun)) this does not get any bonuses to attack, if anything it gets penalties for being unweildy and heavy.

The full auto rules I evisaged allowed you to fire ten shots in a combat round, for only one attack.
If fired at one target, roll a d10, and add that much to the damage for one shot.
If fired at mutiple targets (a group), roll a d10, and you hit that many targets.
[ I don't see the point in adding vast quantities of extra rolls to a combat system that is already quite die intensive. ]

Direwolf said :
Are the Intellego effects really needed?
What they sense are part of the item as a whole anyway and the effects can be chained to the correct sequence without them.

I couldn't see any way to do it without the Intellego effects, but then again, I'm an IT geek and tend to think in terms of If/Then/Else statements. Could you show me a way without the In effects?

The purpose of this is to give a non-magus a way to deal with groups of non-magical targets, or low toughness magical beasties.

I must admit, I think that Verditius would tend to be thinking about 1 century ahead of the rest of ME, as they tend to have highly skilled craftsmen and inventive geniuses, so the not in paradim rules are a little more flexible.

Apologies for any spelling errors, my keyboard is dying.

Ok. Given what you want, lets try this.

ReTe(base 4, move metal in slightly unnatural fashion) +1 magnitude (complexity, feeding the bolt and cocking the bow) +1 magnitude (doing it ten times, the guidelines seem to follow a tenfold increase per magnitude) Range: Personal, Duration: Momentary, Target: Individual, Senses: N/A. Item: Effect Frequency, unlimited, +10, Effect Trigger(pulling the trigger), +3. Total for enchantment, 4+1+5+10+3= 18.

This seems to do everything you want, at a vis cost of base metal (5) * size, medium (3) - Craft score (assuming 7) +2 (magnitude of effect) = 10 or 15 if you think the size should be large.

What do you think?

That actually seems to work.
I may have misread the effect trigger section, i ws under the impression that was linked trigger.
Then again, do we really want these in the hands of everyone who cabn afford a few pawns of vis? :wink:

You mean 2 pawns ofcourse? This can be made easily enough as a lesser device, meaning you don't have to open it first.

Rereading the section, what we have is, in fact, just a trigger, a physical action. That's free, so our enchanting total is actually 20(should have been 23 previous post, duh).

Everyone? What Verditius worth his salt would leave this wonder empty? You get to sell one item a year. Make it a good one. Perhaps a ReTe effect to return your steel bolts to the hopper? An effect to deal with the recoil? Perhaps a ReAu effect to protect the owner from return fire? You have 130 levels of effect to fill!

Do/Loop/While/Next? Or maybe it should be Jmp If Brk If Brk Jmp?(it´s about 20 years since i tried machinecode last so i hope you forgive my current ineptude with it).
Sorry couldn´t resist. :stuck_out_tongue:

Anyway as i said, the most extremely basic solution is that you have a switch or something on the crossbow, maybe make the trigger a multiple action one, with the effects activated when the/a switch is activated the correct way.

The simpler way(but less safe) is to simply set up the effects so that if the bow is in forward position (ie it has been fired) then it will automatically load, followed by automatically cocking. That´s basically even at worst linked/environmental triggers(can be argued as normal item triggers as well).
As every effect has something triggering it, you just have to think about how you trigger it. Having In effects do it is perfectly fine by itself, but it´s also completely unnecessary, as long as you´re only dealing with parts of the weapon or something that is on it. You could make one effect happen everytime whoever holds it starts yodeling, or you could make it happen everytime the bowstring is in the loose position.

If there´s any In effect you may want to add, it´s one to sense wether the one holding the weapon is hostile to the makers covenant or something similar(and if so, prevent the other effects from happening).
Another effect that might be good is one strengthening the weapon, such a rapid fire, high tension weapon could be quite dangerous to its user if the bowstring snapped, one of the worse things that can happen a crossbow.

Unless you´re firing very heavy bolts or the bow is very powerful, recoil shouldn´t be a big issue.
Especially not if you make the weapon extra heavy, as that counteracts the recoil.

Why not designed to be aimed? Even absurdly big war crossbows, bellybows or handheld ballista can be aimed fairly well. Unless it weighs more than 8-10kg it can probably be reasonably aimed at least to some degree.

I would certainly add more than 1 per each additional hit. Add at least 2 or 3, and then you could for example modify it by if die roll for number of hits is odd, after any damage reduction split the damage in 2 wounds, with an even roll, all damage to a single wound. To avoid autoscoring superbig wounds.
I´d likely add half the crossbowdamage per extra hit. Or something.

Even if you want to be strict, remember that the dates WE TODAY know something to exist, proves nothing more than reliable mention of the thing in question survived to our day. Most inventions appeared in prototype or as "one-offs" long before they became common or normal.

Or a CrTe one with Diameter(Sun?) duration to create an endless amount? Otherwise, what Range would you use for the ReTe effect?

At just 100 shots per minute, that shouldnt be such a big problem. Each shot wont be close to the energy exchange of a rifle, and an autorifle at 200-300rpm can still be controllable if it´s not the most powerful cartridges at least.

There is a +3 Effect Modification for Environmental Triggers and a +3 for Linked Triggers. Neither seem to apply in this case. Pulling back the crossbow trigger is an example of moving an item in a specific way, which is one of the normal ways items are triggered.

Yes and no, if you want one effect to automatically trigger with a certain timing you might want to use the Linked trigger anyway.
But no it´s not a must as far as i can see either. Might in theory be a bit tricky to set up the sequence properly if the effects get more complex but shouldn´t be an issue here.