Artillery Ranges

According to the Missile Weapon Ranges table on ACKS Core 103, composite and long bows have a maximum range of 210’, crossbows 240’, and arbalests 360’.

According to the Artillery Characteristics table on D@W: Campaigns 44, light and medium ballistas have a maximum range of 200’ and heavy ballistas/light catapults 300’.

Is this accurate? If so, is it intentional that a common[1], easily-used[2], hand-held, man-portable weapon (the arbalest) should outrange every possible ballista? If so, what’s the reasoning for it?

If arbalests have longer range, are more mobile, do roughly half as much damage per hit, have more than double the rate of fire, and can be operated by a single easily-trained soldier rather than a crew of several specialists, then what’s the point of having a ballista? The only advantage I can see of a ballista over an arbalest is the ability to damage wood (med/heavy) or stone (heavy) structures - but, if those structures are guarded by crossbowmen, it’s an irrelevant advantage because the ballista can’t get close enough to attack the structure without first/also allowing the crossbowmen to fire on the ballista’s crew.

(For the sake of completeness, I will also note that ACKS Core 112 lists the maximum range of ballistas as 200 yards rather than 200’, but, according to ACKS Core 93, “all distances are measured in yards rather than feet in the wilderness… Weapon and spell ranges are measured in yards in the wilderness also”, so the arbalest’s maximum range is similarly increased to 360 yards when outdoors, keeping it greater than the maximum range of a ballista.)

[1] Despite the name, crossbowmen use arbalests as their default armament, per ACKS Core 52 and D@W:C 27.

[2] Per the description of Manual of Arms on ACKS Core 62, crossbowmen can be trained in 1 month, the shortest possible training time.

Hm.

Arbalest in D@W:B, pg 21, have a range of 7 hexes vs Foot, 8 hexes vs Mounted.

At 60’ per hex, that’s 420’ and 480’, respectively. (140/160 yards)

D@W:B pg 61 shows a maximum range of 8 hexes, and 10 hexes for Heavy Ballista.

That’s 480’ and 600’, respectively. (160/200 yards)


I’m gonna expect the answer is don’t bring ballista to an arbalest fight; the history of war is one of technology making other technology obsolete or less useful.

Also; medium+ ballista ignore armor class when making attacks against units, and suffer no penalty for target unit movement, and may volley overhead without a penalty - there’s a very D&D corner case where if you know you’re gonna get into it with a number of medium-to-high AC monstrous units, well placed ballista may get them down to where you can cause them to rout before they plow through too many of your infantry.

Now that you’ve brought this up I’m looking at the arbalest and crossbow and wondering if that extra hex of range between the two is worth the extra 1,400 GP of equipment cost per 120 man unit, espc. since they’d be much closer to longbowmen for the cost and still have more range.

Human mounted crossbow would be quite the steal as well compared to horse archers, knocking two months off training times, and near half the training cost.

This would not be the first time that an attempt to have an exhaustive list of “medieval” weapons from different technology eras has resulted in one being obviously better in almost every way.

I’ve run into similar situations in even just the base rules. Longbowmen cost quite a bit more to hire and retain than crossbowmen even though, since they’re all either level 0 or 1, they are functionally very similar.

the history of war is one of technology making other technology obsolete or less useful.

True, but if that were the intent, then I’d expect to also see some other type of direct(ish) fire/anti-personnel artillery listed which is made with technology similar to that used in the arbalest and outranges it.

But, in any case, your D@W:B range numbers suggest that ballistas are intended to outrange arbalests.

Also; medium+ ballista ignore armor class when making attacks against units, and suffer no penalty for target unit movement, and may volley overhead without a penalty

I’m guessing that those effects must be specific to D@W:B (which I really need to get around to reading one of these days…). I can’t find mention of any of them in Core or D@W:C. Which isn’t to say they can’t be adapted, of course, but they aren’t there from the start.

“Is this accurate? If so, is it intentional that a common[1], easily-used[2], hand-held, man-portable weapon (the arbalest) should outrange every possible ballista? If so, what’s the reasoning for it?”

The answer is that the maximum range in D@W represents the maximum “Combat” range, while the maximum range in ACKS Core represents the actual maximum range. It’s the difference between exceptional PCs making one lucky shot, and large numbers of soldiers firing en masse and praying to the law of averages.

I think I have to blame many years misspent on 3E for me just now catching up on this crossbow thing. The “can’t full attack with a crossbow” is dug in somewhere deep in the “D&D combat” portion of the brain.

Crossbows/arbalest in ACKS have fewer cleaves. In D@W, units equipped with them cannot move and fire.

Indeed (limited to 2).

Thank you for the second note - I’d been looking for that earlier in this conversation and must have missed it. (pg 20, Battles, under Declare Method of Attack)

Hmmm, I only read campaigns since that’s what I was more interested in, so I didn’t realize battles differentiated. I’m glad to see they do have a difference in D@W, though, because the cleave limitation only matters for 3rd level and higher characters in the dungeon-scale combat.

Sorry, I don’t buy it. The Maximum Range listed in the Artillery Bombardment table (D@W:C 79) is the same as that given by the Artillery Characteristics table. This table is specifically referring to shooting at castles and the range at which you can target a castle should be equal to the absolute maximum range for the weapon, not the combat effective range, given that you’re firing on a large, stationary target and have the ability to adjust your aim over the course of firing 600 shots (the Artillery Bombardment table covers a full day of bombardment, not firing a single shot).

I also note that the artillery duel rules on D@W:C 80-81 only talk about artillery being outranged by other artillery. There is no mention of hand-held ranged weapons at all, neither to state that they can be used to attack the crews of artillery with shorter range than the hand-held weapons nor that artillery crews are somehow immune to such attacks, which reinforces my suspicion that this is an oversight.

The effective range of artillery very much depends on the weight of the projectile it launches.

The reason an arbalest outranges a ballista is that it is firing a vastly lighter projectile - an arbalest bolt fires a 0.04lb (300 grain) bolt with about 100 joules. A light ballista fires a 1lb bolt with about 450 joules. A medium ballista fires a 3lb bolt with about 1,335 joules.

In theory artillery range will increase up to a point by decreasing the weight of its projectile. For simplicity, however, I made the assumption that artillery firing “non-standard” weight projectiles decrease their maximum range because of scatter, overkill, big spoon/small stone, etc.

I would say a light ballista firing a 1/3lb projectile could deal 1d8 damage with a maximum effective range of 500 yards.

What? No chart?!

…my charts of Greco-Roman artillery don’t go down low enough for most of those ;). The smallest weapon I have information on fires a 2.86 pound stone (and weighs 650 kilograms itself), although stone-throwers were much larger and heavier than bolt-throwers.

When Dietwulf Baatz calculated the range of a 13-kilogram stone-thrower, the maximum range would be at a 43.5 degree angle (due to air resistance, slightly below 45 degrees gives the best range), and would be around 440 meters. However, it would impact with only 2/3 of its launch energy, and would take almost 10 seconds to reach the target. 6 to 10 degree launch angles would reach 100 to 170 meters in less than 2 seconds.