This post is more my generic house rules of dealing with Missile and Thrown weapons in fantasy role-playing games.
Typically I have found in a lot of RPGs that the ranges on missile weapons tends to be very abstract and/or rather short. While throwing weapons tend to be even shorter often to the point of making them close to pointless when compared to just closing the gap and making a strike with a melee weapon, or worse still, put a character in a position to give their opponent the advantage when closing the gap themselves.
The proposed rules are fairly simple. They use a base distance in which a character suffers no penalty for attacking, a flat trajectory you could say, though in some cases the shot would still travel in a slight arc, and an increment, a distance added to the base distance that the character will suffer a penalty in.
A list of typical fantasy weapons and their respective ranges are given below.
The aspects to the range are as follows (all distances given are in yards):
Short Range is the base distance of how far a missile or thrown weapon will travel without a character suffering any penalties for distance/range to their shot.
Range Increment is an amount that is added to the previous distance but at which a character suffers a penalty. Each additional increment is added to the previous distance and also add additional penalties to the attack roll (and damage if you wish) for the shot.
Typically I don't recommend more than five increments as after this distance the attacker is really just hoping to put the missile in a general area and isn't really subject to any skill on the part of the attacker. If you do wish to keep stacking increments and penalties this is up to the group themselves. Do keep in mind too that anywhere past about 10 increments is likely to be getting beyond the range one can expect the weapon to actually be able to achieve under even the best circumstances.
For example; a longbow has a short range of 50, with an increment of 40. So a longbow has one increment from 51-90 yards (50+40), a second increment from 91-130 yards (50+40+40) and so forth. Thusly a target up to 50 yards away could be attacked without penalty, while a target 120 yards away falls into the second increment (range being more than 90 yards but less than 130 yards) and would suffer two levels of penalties.
Range Penali ties are those that each increment apply. To keep this generic I usually leave penalties to be determined based on the system. One increment would be somewhat challenging while 3 would be difficult and 5 would be exceptionally difficult.
For example a penalty system where typical penalties may be from -1 to -3 may give a -1 to each range increment. Thusly for the example above at 120 yards the attacker with the longbow would be suffering a -2 penalty due to being in the second range increment.
While a system that uses a -1 to -5 as the typical penalties may use -2 penalty per range increment.
Penali ties can be tweaked as well pending on how much the GM or group feels should apply to each increment.
Weapon Ranges: (Short Range / Increment)
Axe,
Thrown: 15 / 5
Blowgun: 20 / 10
Bola: 20 / 6
Bow,
Long: 50 / 40
Short: 30 / 25
Crossbow,
Heavy: 70 / 30
Light: 60 / 20
Meduim: 70 / 30
Dagger,
Normal: 5 / 2
Thrown: 10 / 5
Dart: 10 / 2
Net: 2 / 1
Flask:* 10 / 5
Sling: 25 / 15
Spear: 15 / 10
While the ranges may seem quite large when compared to most RPG ranges, I have done resarch on missile and thrown weapons, so these ranges fit into those that could be considered 'realistic'.
In allot of cases I had to make assumptions, such as allot of resarch into period weapons (such as bows and crossbows) have statements like "expected to hit most of the time" or "expected to hit some of the time" and extrapolated these to where I think on increments these statements would best fit.
As always feel free to alter any ranges you feel need to be changed to suit your own games.
