Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Help Tips & Tricks Longbows in BG3?

I'm currently playing as a ranged Fighter who is from the RP more a wild ranger type, not a heavy armored soldier. From the background the use of bows would be more appropiate than of crossbows which have a technical "civilized" vibe.

However, what is the advantage of a longbow compared to a heavy crossbow? I'm not am min-maxer but my char already has to suffer from some RP restrictions, so my main weapon should be the best option. Crossbows in BG 3 seemingly are not restricted to one use per turn as in normal DnD. A crossbow is 1d10, a longbow 1d8. Why should I use a longbow?

The Joltshooter

In TT, longbow can utilize extra attacks, crossbow cannot.

In BG3 right now? You can do extra attack with heavy crossbow, so it's flat better.

Good argument ...
But what about: Giantbreaker ?

Indeed, the longbow, with all else being equal, is inferior to the heavy crossbow now. If it makes you feel any better, all ranged weapons are inferior to wielding two hand-crossbows.

Its more situational for Rogue. The hand xbows can eat up extra bonus actions but they also prevent a melee sneak attack and a ranged sneak attack from being performed. They are both good options though. And for any other class they are the best option. There will always be a meta of course.

Heavy XBow
Hide action (BA) (Light/poison action) BA - Fire Heavy Xbow Sneak Attack.

1d10 + 5 + 3d6 + 1d4

Hand Xbows

Hide Action 1 BA / Ignite/Poison action (BA) + fire with sneak attack advantage

1d6 +5 + 3d6 + 1d4

2nd round

1d6 + 5 + 3d6 + 1d4
1d6 + 1d4

That's sad. I hope (not really...) that they balance bows and crossbows better. The Dnd weapon and armor system is of course quite primitiv due to the TT background but BG3 does it even worse right now. That a fat non-magical crossbow can shoot as fast as a bow or that the hand crossbow has the same range as the bigger crossbows and the same damage as a shortbow are truely insults to the tiny bits of realism one can expect even from a high fantasy game. At least I want javelins as ranged weapons, for strength based chars, as compensation.

Well, we actually don't know what the final game will look like. That is a whole separate framework that most of us have not seen yet.

The good news is that this is fairly easy to mod - you could set specific range requirements to bow, and you could add the loading feature for Crossbows with its corresponding Feat for wanting to bypass it.

Crossbow, hand 1d6 piercing (range 30/120), light, loading
Crossbow, heavy 1d10 piercing (range 100/400), heavy, loading, two-handed
Longbow 1d8 piercing (range 150/600), heavy, two-handed
Crossbow, light 1d8 piercing (range 80/320), loading, two-handed
Shortbow 1d6 piercing (range 80/320), two-handed
Sling 1d4 bludgeoning (range 30/120)*

It really DOES feel like excluding the weapon ranges is kind of bullshit honestly. RAW I would take a Longbow over everything else because of that crazy 150 foot range. However, it also clarifies that you could ranged sneak attack to the 80 foot range of Superior Darkvision with anything short of a Sling or Hand Crossbow.

Hand Crossbows end up winning in Bg3 because they get to ignore the range limit AND the reload penalty. Making them ultra broken.

Applying the rules to them correctly would still make them a great thematic weapon - especially for bards or any short range skirmisher, such as possible rogue builds - use BA disengage, pop pop and run away. If someone wanted to play a type of pirate or swashbuckler they are great. The current lack of limitations really kind of ruins them.

RANGE
A weapon that can be used to make a ranged Attack has a range in parentheses after the Ammunition or thrown property. The range lists two numbers. The first is the weapon’s normal range in feet, and the second indicates the weapon’s Long Range. When Attacking a target beyond normal range, you have disadvantage on the Attack roll. You can’t Attack a target beyond the weapon’s Long Range.

Loading
Because of the time required to load this weapon, you can fire only one piece of Ammunition from it when you use an Action, bonus Action, or Reaction to fire it, regardless of the number of Attacks you can normally make.

*No Sling is not in game, but there are rumors it may be in the final release.

Not sure I’m understanding this. Javelins and other thrown range weapons are in the game already and can be used by strength characters. Do you have a problem with the way they are implemented?

(I agree with the points made here about the balance issues with bows of various sorts, btw.)

Explain this
https://baldursgate3.wiki.fextralife.com/Sling

That should be easy ...
That database is working with datamined stuff ... there is several magical artefacts you cant get anywhere in the game.

Problem with datamined stuff is that nobody really know if they get into final release.

What he said. That's why I said there are rumors, because I have not seen it in the EA - AND the proficiency for it is not in the EA either...but the model was datamined a while ago.

I'd like to have javelins as weapons for the ranged slot, usable with shield, very short range, high damage (on par with crossbow). I would like if chars didn't benefit from shields in the melee slot when they have ranged weapons out, and that it would cost something to change the weapon sets (even if that would hurt as one possible char I'm planning is a dex based ranged Battlemaster Fighter). Maybe in a more elaborated system there could be + 2 AC shoulder shields to use with bows (I would like normal shields would give + 4 AC btw).

Ah, okay. On characters benefitting from shields when using bows, when I reported this to Larian support not all that long ago they said it was planned to be fixed for the full release.

Personally, I don’t think use of weapon slots is the right solution for thrown weapons for QoL reasons, unless there’s a significant change to the interface. And javelins can already be used as a ranged weapon with a shield using the Throw option. But I’ll not rehash weapon switching and slots here, as it’s already been discussed relatively recently in https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=840832 and https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=841361.

I agree thrown weapon damage in 5e seems poor compared to bows, given that the majority of the strength-based ones (spear, javelin, hand axe, etc) do just 1d6. But not being a 5e expert I’m very wary of just changing damage on weapons in case it breaks balance in unexpected ways so I’ll let others comment on that.

Upping basic shield AC by +2 really does seem balance breaking even to my inexpert eyes, though. That’s quite a boost.

There seem to be 2 main reasons for this, both involving changes made in 5e from earlier editions (3.5e) that weren't properly accounted for.
1.) Ranged weapons in 5e add their Dex mod to damage. Previously, you didn't add any bonus to normal projectile weapons' damage.
2.) Crossbows in 5e don't cost anything to load. In 3.5e, light crossbows (1d8) took a move action, and heavy crossbows (1d10) took a full-round action.

Both of these changes make projectile weapons (particularly crossbows) stronger. However, the damage table for these weapons has remained the same. In 3.5e, shortspears/javelins dealt 1d6+Str damage when Thrown, while longbows dealt 1d8 damage but had more range. In 5e, longbows deal more damage and have better range.

p.s. In 3.5e, if you had a negative Str mod, it was applied to longbow damage.

Sounds like 3.5e did it much better.

There should also be a min STR requirement for using a heavy crossbow in general IMO.
On the flip side, there should be a min range, or some restriction, for using a longbow. One on one, face to face combat, you would never be able to shoot someone with a longbow. Shortbow, maybe with quick snap shot against a lightly armored opponent, but no plate penetration whatso ever.

It gets even worse ... proficiency was in EA ...
But was removed in later patches, i believe it was either in Barbarian or maybe Sorcerer patch.

But im absolutely certain that my Druid had it!

Really! I recall they had the hand Xbow, and then they didn't and then they did. I totally missed the sling proficiency. Good catch.

I mean, if I were to bet I think we will have Slings, and a few other weapon types not in game. I think Larian is going for total shock on release, even for us old coots who have played too many hours (1,900 and counting)

Well, i certainly hope so ...
Even tho it would be understandable to me, if we dont ... i think main issue with Sligns is lack of usage in combination wiuth special amunition.

Normally i would expect slings to simply prolong the range of throwing ... but concidering how long can we throw with high Str character ... i dont really know. O_o

Thanks for the context!

Yeah, that does sound like a problem, though I admit I’m still not convinced Larian should homebrew a solution. It does make it even more important that they change elements of their existing homebrew that make things worse. And if the shield AC bonus when using a ranged weapon and free swapping between weapon sets after attacking are fixed, then the weaker damage of thrown weapons would at least be balanced by the higher AC of being able to use them with a shield.