Re: Crossbows

>AD&D is incredibly unrealistic, because if someone sticks a longsword in
>you you take 1d8 damage , but in the real world you just kinda fall over
and
>die. Warcraft is like that too, but it has 256-color graphics. :-)
>HawkAngel

This is probably the only point that I'd say AD&D is realistic on. Let me
explain.
The average person (Soldiers and Men-At-Arms fall into this category as
well) are 0-level and have d4 HP. They do not (generally) have high con.
This gives them an average of 3 (Actually 2.5) HP. Give him +1 for being a
soldier, high con. whatever: 4 (3.5) HP.
A longsword hitting the person for d8 does 5 (4.5) Average damage. The
person is dead, or bleeding to death if you use the "Death's door" rule.
A longbow hits for an average of 4 (3.5) points of damage, again killing the
average soldier on the battlefield.
Now, neither one kills the person (with death's door), but leaves him lying
there dying on the battlefield.
    Now, a character with some HP. Alright, it took something like 21 stab
wounds and 5 musketballs to kill the notorious Blackbeard in real life. The
wounds were caused by rapiers doing a minimum of 1 HP each, and the muskets
doing the same- thus Blackbeard had at least 26 HP. 2nd-3rd level fighter.
    Saying average damages of 3.5 per rapier hit and a like amount of damage
per musketball (too lazy to actually look up the musket's damage) we have
Blackbeard taking 91 points of damage...
    Now Blackbeard was unusual as are PC's, so let's give some credit to
AD&D's viewpoint that some people gain HP's as they get better. This
presumes (As TSR has stated) that HP presume luck, fate, flesh wounds,
better dodging ability, and the ability to block/parry an attack better- all
of these figured into the 1 minute "round" of combat.

Sorry, just had to comment that "Heroic characters" is the problem with
realism. If you want realism, that's not AD&D's fault. Have all of your
characters play the game with only 4 HP's and you've got realism :-)

Just my thoughts on it.

Later.

Jesse.