Thieves using ranged weapons

Gothic

what about gothic?

instead of what? strength?

actually hitting the target is more important than being able to overdraw is it not?

that said

Wait. I'm dumb. Crossbows don't require dex in Gothic.

When you think about it though, bows requiring dex is kind of dumb but it makes sense from a gameplay perspective.

Yes, strength. That's the first requirement for archery.

So lets make every weapon require STR and any non-STR build can go fuck themselves

Realism rarely does gameplay any favors

its the other way around, gameplay is supposed to do realism favors

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just asking

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but bows are actually real, and magic is not. when we see bows being depicted, we actually have something solid to compare it to.

No, it's the assassins that use bows.

no.
like said, thieves don't kill unless they have to.
and assassins either disguised themselves and just stabbed their target in the back when either non one was around or when they were both hidden amongst the crowd.
poison is also way more practical then bows.
the risk of revealing yourself when shooting an arrow is absurd.
plus, medieval bows were complete garbage so no one was as good a shot as them fantasy movies and vidya made it look like.

Bows require strength.

A lot of it.

Actual archerfag here.
If you can't fully draw the bow, you're not going to be accurate. If you use a low draw weight bow because you're a little bitch with no muscles, even if you do hit them the arrow won't go in.
You need strength to keep the bow steady, not dexterity.

Shut your mouth, slave.

Most of the times criminals used clubs because they were the cheapest things around. In truth if you are a thief you don't need a weapon, a simple pocket knife or even a sharpened coin was all he needed to separate you from your purse. They use same methods even today.

Bows and weaponry were kinda expensive, if you are petty thief you couldn't afford much more essential things let alone a bow. Besides bows are used for war and hunt, not stealing shit.
Highwaymen and road bandits appeared only with advancement of weapons. The only ones who robbed people on the road in middle ages were actually nobles who owned the land and needed some "road tax" for their private funds.

Lovecraft ain't got shit on the deep sea.

The best thief doesn't get caught. One would probably still carry something lightweight, sharp and useful for stabbing and getting the fuck out there.

I highly doubt it. Bows are just easy to depict as silent, and in old rpgs the thief/rogue/etc was usually squishy as fuck so they had to go ranged.

They aren't even silent.

Thats why I said depict. It's sort of like how drawing a sword in pretty much everything has a loud grinding noise.

the best thief actually goes stops time, throw knives and then throw a truck on someone

If you are extremely agile you shouldn't be relying on weapons, you should be using it to avoid fighting.

Criminals generally used clubs that could be hidden or discarded without raising suspicion.

in victorian england, criminals only started using clubs when knives became illegal

Clubs were used since ever. One of the most common middle ages weapon along the spear were club and bludgeons.

Oh and also cudgel, English terms elude me. But it was poor man's weapon of choice.

thieves carried knives or a bludgeon for emergencies and b&e
cutt-throats and muggers used knives frequently, stagecoach robbers would be armed with guns and bludgeons
in ancient times no thief would use anything like a bow, and bows were almost exclusively for mass volleys and hunting, rarely precision- simply put, generals and notables would never get in range for a bow, so it even assassins would not touch them. In contrast, robbery targets would be too close to be more effective with a bow than a knife.

It probably has to do with early rogues being depicted using crossbows, which were weapons any retard could quickly learn to use and I believe were outlawed once for that exact reason.
Then retards forgot that and started depicting rogues with bows because crossbows and bows are exactly the same right guys, who cares about that nerd shit. #bazinga

The only thing thieves should be doing is stealing shit and stealing it good.
The best thieves steal abilities.

how the hell do you steal an ability?

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By looking at it, baaka.

daggers would be the "accurate" weapon.

More like the people who visualize Lovecraft horrors are shit.

The meta problem here is that most games are based entirely around combat, and rather than accommodate for alternative playstyles, they hammer every character into a fighter-shaped hole.

The classic example is that almost no MMOs (or even RPGs) allow you to play purely as a crafter, or have crafting systems anywhere close to being entertaining enough that you would want to do so.

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Highwaymen would definitely use slings if working in a group (which any moderately successful one would)

I thought criminals would be the only ones to use them.

When you can ride a horse and shoot a bow accurately at the same time, you can talk trash.

Character classes don't exist in real life.

do you need that strength to draw a composite or short bow ?

I think a large part of the problem is dexterity (hand-eye coordination) very often being conflated with agility (nimble and precise control over one's limbs)

They really should be two different stats representing two different characteristics.

All of medieval ranged warfare was based on "Let's fill the air with so many arrows that something is bound to get hit!". Big surprise, shooting in the vague direction of a big-ass army doesn't require excellent marksmanship

If you do that, you'll end up with two underpowered stats. DEX should determine the accuracy while strength would increase damage

I dunno, seems unnecessary, they're similar enough. This is like saying we need 2 different strength stats, one for the upper body and one for the lower body.

Steppe horse-archers would ride up close to infantry to get accurate shots. At the Battle of Carrhae Parthian horse-archers shot the exposed arms and legs of Roman legionnaires.

But we do.
It would be even better if we could have a core strength stat.

Actually, crossbows were outlawed because they had insane range (compared to bows) and armor penetration. You could hit a knight in full armor from a very long distance and kill the fucker with a single shot.
They were considered horrible weapons because they were essentially bows with the strength of an incredibly tough man giving it punch and range, and yet you could aim it for hours without tiring yourself. Anyone standing on a tower or roof could fire a single bolt and perfurate steel armor, especially with decent quality bolts, and if you get 5 people to fire a volley, that's a garanteed kill. Those were the tools of assassins that couldn't get close, that's why they were banned.

This is actually the whole point. Because you mostly gain XP and loot from killing things, having a class dedicated to steal things isn't gonna work. Rogues, the catch-all term for thieves, assassins, spies and sometimes even rangers, has to win XP as well so they come up with dumb ways to make them on par with the other classes. He is either the ranged specialist or gets a lot of DPS and critical hits (nevermind nobody even knows what a critical hit actually is anymore) while being very squishy for balance reasons.

Take WoW for instance, where the rogue does get a "steal" ability but it can't be used to get quest items in most quests that involve looting mobs after they are dead. Sure, stealing teeth from wild animals doesn't make sense (if you hate fun) but stealing macguffins from humanoid mobs does and the rogue could have that being his way to handle that quest, but the only option is to murder everything.

Even games that feature alternative ways to get experience punish you for not picking a single combat skill and be proeficient in it. Oblivion can be mostly run without ever even killing anyone. Just sneak, pickpocket and pick every lock and you can loot an entire dungeon without a single fight. Even better if you use Illusion.
But you try to do any quest not related to the Thieve's Guild and at some point you're gonna have mandatory fights, especially in the main quest.

I think it makes sense if you have Strength and Constitution as two stats managing two different things.

All these niggas did was ride and shoot, how could they not shoot accurately?

Just shooting on a horse requires considerable amounts of agility on top of the strength required for bow shooting.

[Citation Needed]
And no D&D manuals don't count.

at that point, we should separate intelligence into 'creative intelligence', and 'learning intelligence'.

Knives, you can't cut a purse with a bow.

All those niggas were born and lived on horse back.

Not him, but Pope Innocent III did banned the us of crossbows on christians because they were that powerful.

use*

We usually already separate it into Intelligence and Wisdom

wisdom needs to be separated into 'situational awareness' and 'knowledge'

I once palyed a MUD with the following stats.

Charisma
Wisdom
Intelligence
Agility
Speed
Dexterity
Acuity
Coordination
Strength
Endurance
Luck
Pisonics

It was a cool system, but the arches were all complete powertripping assholes.

You're being intentionally obtuse for no reason

that's because fragmenting stats more than they need to be is obtuse and it would necessitate the fragmenting of all the other stats into equally small fragments for the sake of balance. And before you know it, you get an annoying system like this

Early DnD wins again, It's an easy fix if you don't make everyone level at the same rate.

Here in my country they used to knock someone unconscious with a blunt object and throw the poor sucker into a canal or river. Especially easy when the victim is already drunk. Even today every year a few tourists are fished out of the water.

Why overcomplicate things?

why throw him on the water if the victim is unconscious?

to kill them via drowning, obviously

but why? the thief already got it's stuff

Said the person who is just talking out his ass.

I opened this thread for this opposite of reality shitpost.

I'd say bows are bandit's tool, thieves and city muggers would use more clubs, knives etc.

That's not a fix, that's a crutch. You still need to gain experience.
A better system is one that gives you XP for solving situations or even just make it alive anothre day. Wether you fight to survive or avoid the fight, the outcome is the same, you passed the obstacle so you get XP. That's the superior solution.

World of Darkness actually handled that fairly well.

You had 3 stats for Phyical ability, 3 for Mental Ability and 3 for Personality.
They were Strength, Dexterity and Endurance, Inteligence, Wits and Focus, Composure, Beatury and Charisma.

The interesting thing is that every 3 stats had a purpose in their specific place that often had something in common with another stat.
Inteligence is Mental Strength, while Beauty is Personality Strength. You use it for raw competitions.
Wits is Mental Dexterity while Charisma is Personality Dexterity. You use it in unconventional ways or to "improve you aim".
Focus is Mental Endurance while Composure was Personality Endurance. You use it to resist effects.

An alternative is GURPS that handles only 4 stats and pretty much everything else is either a trait or a skill, like Beauty or Ancient Wisdom.

You opened this thread specifically to shitpost. Okay.
Did you even read the (compared to bows) part? Crossbows had far more range and penetration than crossbows especially with the later mechanisms that even allowed knights to weild them in horseback.
If you are gonna call shitpost on something, you either prove it or don't even bother posting.

Dear user, you typing something out does not constitute an argument supported by evidence, and certainly does not merit me responding with evidence.

I have a better game for us to play: you provide evidence that crossbows had "more range and penetration" than bows. I will accept historical evidence, and modern reconstruction experiments.

Dear user. You calling something shitpost does not constitute an argument supported by evidence either and making counter-claims does require, (not merit) evidence.
thebeckoning.com/medieval/crossbow/cross_l_v_c.html

You might be thinking about modern compound bows in your comparison, but we are talking medieval bows and crossbows, where the low training required to fire one, the fact you don't have to hold the string before loosing the crossbow and the ability to use cranequins to vastly increase the draw weight (almost 10X) means it is indeed the superior weapon.

You might be inclined to think they aren't as good as bows since bolts are much lighter than arrows. But you are however forgetting the speed they can achieve which is much superior than a bow.

While longbows could penetrate platemail as well, crossbows could achieve the same at a much longer distance as well. And given that the topic of the thread is about thieves, rogues, and regular scoundrel, mentioning how crossbows are quite good at killing people from a farther range than bows seems quite relevant.

Now you. Do you have any evidence that suggests crossbows have any more range OR penetration than crossbows?

And his victim will either report the crime or try to go after him. It's better to just kill him outright and remove all evidence of the crime.

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pay your debts

Hmpf… useless

Ha, I haven't seen that piece of shit posted in such a long time. Honestly, I had thought you had slithered away like 99% of people with your argument, but you really are a special kind of stupid, searching for the one "result" from a dodgy ass website, one table with no methodology from a book that can't be accessed. But, let's not commit the genetic fallacy. From top to bottom, then:

Trivial:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossbow#Comparison_to_conventional_bows

An aside on the sensationalist "outlawing of da crossbows ecks dee":

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossbow#Legal_issues

He supposedly outlawed the use of crossbows, slings and bows against Christians. Another problem to point out with this is the date of the "ban", and the date when crossbows of the variety supposedly mentioned in your link, which at earliest date to around the late 1300s.

themcs.org/weaponry/crossbows/crossbows.htm

Now, the draw weight cited by your shitty link's table was 750 lb. Here is a reconstruction of a 15th century crossbow with 1000 lb draw shooting armor:

youtube.com/watch?v=76mbOMFjlu0

Dents. Neither draw weight nor fps translate into joules and penetration, because they do not account for other factors such as ammunition weight, its distribution, or its application. On the other hand:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_longbow#Armour_penetration

Another reconstructed crossbow vs. armor:

youtu.be/d3yNG8HT6rQ?t=1736

Your shitpost relies on dodgy evidence with misleading metrics, confusing the order of history, and generally misreporting it.

Also very briefly, the range on the 1500s reconstruction with 1000lb draw weight is 332 meters. An English longbow:

History suggests a professional archer could shoot it further, however modern results do fall short, but then the crossbow has always been the "better" weapon solely because any monkey can pick it up and shoot it, less training time meaning more man spam on the battlefield, one of the main reasons they themselves were replaced by guns.

Such as shooting a man with a crossbow, then throwing him off of a wagon?

Premium lel.

You're a big arrow.

If I pulled that helm off, would you die?

tell me about bane! why does he wear the coif?!

Ok well, the thing about thieves is that they would try to knock you out instead of killing you.

However their methods changed from place to place.
Where i live, the streets are tight and with building on each side and that has always been the case all the way to the dark ages, so during that time what thieves would do is lay a sharp string of durable material, and tense it up when a victim was coming.
Then the victim would trip and fall, and they'd bash your head in and take your money and clothes, very straightfoward.

here, they stalk you and check how many people are in the house, sneak in at night, and slit your throat, and then take everything they can from your house and leave.

Disgaea may be a completely different beast from the WRPGs that were made precedent in the OP but… I like the way it handled how damage was calculated by means of an equation that computed both dexterity *and* strength.

Here, they'd sneak in through your house through the front door, offer you a deal too good to be true, and you'd only find out after it was gone that it was.

Swords are really light, though. A baby could wield one. However, they require dexterity to use effectively.

I feel like dark souls does it well, various bows (along with other weapons) have different strength requirements as well dexterity accordingly to size or shape.

Kek OP do you think sneak thieves actually existed? They were highwaymen and they used force. The most sneaky thing that can happen to you is some shitskin pick pocketing you in groups in a foreign country, but that shit is easy to catch if you're aware of it. Houses are burglared from when no one is home, when speed is more important than muh sneaking around.

does the game say it's enchanted with the "who gives a shit" spell? if the game doesn't specify the bow is magic, then don't give me the "b-b-but magic" crap. fantasy settings don't excuse not knowing how real stuff works.

C'mon, user, learn your enantiomorphics.

It makes for some great dickass thieves.

It's because of Robin Hood.

Strength > Dexterity

kek, as much as this is amusing. Thieves are anybody who'd steal shit and finesse was a very distant priority to getting in grabbing shit that looked valuable and getting out, or mugging you because you were alone and they outnumbered you, or pickpocketing you because you looked like you weren't from around here. Thieves as a class instead of just a label for people that steal shit is itself a part of fantasy.

And yes, violence can and will be used. Only if it's more costly to do violence would anybody refrain from doing it when they steal your shit.

That's actually how The Dark Eye (German rip-off homage to Dungeons & Dragons) does it. To make it more useful every skill has up to three stats to check. For example casting a spell might require two checks for intelligence (that's obvious) and one check for dexterity. This way intelligence is still the major factor for casting, but if your fingers are too clumsy to even write your own name you will botch it. The Drakensang games for PC use that ruleset, it's pretty nice.

I was here sitting in my chair thinking to myself:
Are crossbows stronger than bows? It makes sense from a gameplay perspective and crossbows look like they can pack more punch with superior draw weight, but I'm not entirely sure.

So I decided to post it anyway because either I am correct or some bow autist is gonna show up and prove me wrong. Either way, I get to learn the answer to my question without really having to put so much effort in find all that stuff. Thanks for playing user.

In reality, I apreciate autism shows like yours. Shows there's still some people passionate about something. But you could have opened with that post, the previous 2 were completely redundant.
Remenber user: what triggers you, controls you.

That's common thieves, though. Picking pockets and the houses of peasants is one thing. The biggest obstacle you'll find is a wooden door and the strongest person is some serf that might not even be home. You go burglar some nobles mansion and you have proper locks, reinforced doors and bodyguards.
The sneaking about becomes more important if you have some ambition and want better marks.
Otherwise, yeah. Grab a club and beat the crap out of people.

The whole "class" idea is historically inaccurate. People used whatever they could to achieve their goals.

Don't drag realism or accuracy into videogames, nothing good will come out of it.

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You don't burglarize a noble's mansion by yourself and you still concentrate on speed and getting in quickly. Violence is especially necessary and your going top be doing that until you've successfully skipped town because that never goes unnoticed with the small number of people back then. Oh and those reinforced doors? Those don't matter, there is other ways to getting inside a home that doesn't require busting down a door.

Which is an ambition that is held by absolutely nobody except people who pretend that they know what they're talking about when it comes to committing crime. All thieves are either addicts, dirt poor beggars, and bandits. If it's a small community and they don't use violence it's only because they know who you are personally.

*Oh right, forgot to add gang members to that list.

Have you ever tried stealing something from 20 yards away?

Weapons didn't come cheap
If you were rich enough to own one you wouldn't be stealing shit.

The idea is that thieves are "cowardly" and prefer not to expose themselves to danger, hence why a ranged weapon they could use to ambush someone is preferable.

Once he's got an arrow sticking out of his eyesocket it's much easier to loot his corpse.

Are you fucking retarded?

Typically, a thief would use a short, concealable, curved knife, similar to what a modern fruit knife looks like, as it's the perfect tool to cut off a coin pouch.

Also a rope for climbing and lockpicks.

Marx, please.

What about the people that simply aren't strong enough to mug people or break down doors or force locks?
That kind of people is usually to weak for regular labor so they often have to turn into other options for work like stealing and while they'd value speed, I'd say knowing how to pick locks or hide or simply climb walls would be more important to them. And if they can do that, they could easily rob wealthier targets instead of relying in easy but slim pickings on the street where they have to compete against the other thugs who are stronger than he is.

You watch too many movies and play too much assassins creed or something.

Thieves couldn't use bows back in AD&D. That came later when faggots wanted "balance".

No, they should not be using bows. They should use knives and shit, or blunt instruments to knock people out. They should rely on backstabs.

Bows require a lot of training to use effectively. I doubt muggers and the like would bother with one, since their work is up close in the streets.

The same reason you shoot a man before throwing him out of a plane, to make sure they dont come back.

well scene this thread seems to be a decentralized shit thread lets try and get some basics down

historically / game bullshit. thief is a sub class that is part of a larger class of "rouges" or "vagrants" that are simply in the act of stealing something. you where an ex knight that is robbing someone to eat? you are a thief.

so this underclass that is willing to do unsavory things to get by. would probably consist of panhandlers, pickpockets, poachers, on occasion a lord my pay one of these shitheads to kill someone for him and then he would be an assassin.

But those thieves that plagued to upper class robbing form their homes? probably some of the help that got hired out of the lower class that is having trouble feeding her kids, paying off debits, buying boze, or chasing some foolish dream of wealth.

so these lower class "rouges" that fill rpg's lower class thugs that are doing any thing they can to get by. so abandoning any scene of honor or fighting fair. with all means at their disposal. if they could they probably would shoot someone in the back with a bow if they could get away with it. how many assassins creed missions could have been solved with a easy bow/crossbow shot of what 20 meters? 10 meters? rather than jumping on the fucker with a knife surrounded by his guards?

of coerce the biggest flaw with the assassins creed franchise is the fact that no one cares that you carry a small armory with you. witch guess what getting let into a city with a bow/polearm/any heavy weapon/even swords being regularly banned. so the vagrants in the city streets yea they are going to have knives/ whatever they managed to "sneak in/make" so bows spears large clubs kinda out of the question while in the city/ wherever the local lord found it wise to search the peasants homes seizing their weapons and weapon shaped tools. and hanging any vagrants caught with them giving them an instant "5 star ratting" but the bandit camp in the woods? what where those rouges deserters? thieves? get to use whatever the fuck they want/ have access to so you could bet your fucking ass they would use bows, crossbows if they had access to them.

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These things aren't scary to me at all, they're less than a foot long and completely harmless.

I'd say that definition of thief is too broad since it also includes irregulars and mercenaries that no longer have a war to fight.

Usually when people think of thieves, it's someone that's not strong enough to fight, at least a fair fight, and has to use underhanded tactics to get his way.
This includes sneaking around and burglaring places since he ain't strong enough to mug someone.

An interesting case of a "thief" is the Ninjas of Japan.
They are often considered in fantasy to be elite warriors full of tricks, tactics and martial arts but the truth is, they were mostly peasants. The kunai you see often associated with them was actually a work tool for farm work that they'd often use for assassinations because it could be carried around with no explanation gives to anyone.

This is actually why they were so sucessfull. Having the status of peasants, they could travel to any town and pretend to work there while looking for an oportunity to strike. They were also incredibly disposable and most of the methods they used, while somewhat ingenious and sneaky, required no special talent like the classic "slip poison down a thread to the victims mouth while he sleeps".

Even the Jutsu's they used were actually simple technices. A Fire Jutsu was essentialy starting a fire somewhere in your targets house to distract everyone to that location while you sneaked somewhere else. Rock Jutsu was just using a special blanket to hide as a rock in the garden and Water Jutsu was using a straw to breath while submerged, waiting for an oportunity to rise up.

Assassin's Creed was never a good example of assassins though. Any of them can be more easily accepted as a thug than an assassin since you don't hire an assassin to assault your target from the front while fighting all his bodyguards first, something you often had to do in the game. You're better off hiring mercenaries for that. With a good assassin, nobody would even know who did it unlike how in every Assassins creed mission, you always end up with a city-wide chase for you.

Don't need strength to mug people, you simply lie in wait in ambush with as big of a blade as you can then you either ram it into his throat or put them at knife point and ram it into their throat if they make sudden movements. And forcing open a door is a very shortsighted view, forcing open a door is generally one of the less used options since it's better to either go through the lock, pick the lock, go through the window, burn the house down, talk your way in, sit outside in a sort of pseudo siege with the family inside if they were isolated until they caved in, etc., etc.

Hiding is done only when you scope out potential targets for hours, weeks, or even months at a time and after you made your getaway. And if your as much of a pussy as you'd assume then you wouldn't be strong enough to climb a wall anyways let alone have the endurance to leg it.

Christ are you serious? Medieval times means there was no sitting in a chair all day wasting away; even the poor were generally stronger and more durable because there wasn't mechanical devices that made things convenient everything had to be done by hand or operated by hand. Brigands and bandits had to live out in the wilderness because they are outcasts, thieves were desperate beggars and gang members in cities and shit where they will ruthlessly prey on each other as they would anyone else so they'd naturally be stronger.

The only time that shit applied was when your a kid, and you either die or grow up /fit/ to do more then just pickpocket.

If wealthy and noble people could be robbed so easily by one guy then that city/town/village is not a place you want to be in, back then you rob the farmers and you rob the lower classes because they have what you want and what you need. The higher classes were also robbed but it was done by concentrated groups because there is no way in hell a single man would get away with it and live, since you will be made an example of.

Robbing the rich exclusively is a fantasy, and the only time that happens regularly is a raid or societal collapse.

Where did you learn medieval history? Assassin's Creed?