# Bows, Crossbows and Their Balance

**URL:** <https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/bows-crossbows-and-their-balance/17067>\
**Category:** The Drawing Board\
**Created:** [October 19, 2018, 3:37am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/bows-crossbows-and-their-balance/17067 "2018-10-19T03:37:56Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 286

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**Author:** ![Tamior](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/41988e/32.png) [@Tamior](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Tamior)\
**Post date:** [May 26, 2019, 4:00pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/bows-crossbows-and-their-balance/17067/286 "2019-05-26T16:00:22Z")

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> Corrosives and shockers can be mitigated with the right gear,

If you you were lucky enough to find it, sure. But that’s very much pure RNG.

> the feral predator with rollerskates can be flat out outpaced and kited.

Nope. Once you get into the spear range, it can jump and strike in a single turn, and it’s special attack ignores armor.

> If it does benefit from the 18/4/8/4 split, that shows, as people have been pointing out, that the problem is with the stat system not the bows themselves.

I don’t think there is a problem with “the bows” at large. darktoes did a great job with them in general. There is only a problem with ONE particular bow: compound greatbow. And the problem is that it scales it’s damage from strength (from the level of compound bow) at a ratio much higher than melee weapons do.

> My suggestion as far as stats go at least would be the inclusion of a Endurance stat, with HP tied to that along with stamina and resistance to disease/infections etc. That would at least shift away some of the bonuses from going high strength while opening up more options for character building, marathon runner anyone?  
> Maybe there could be a push to tie more things in directly with other stats, moving over rough terrain tied to Dex and spotting range for items tied to Per for example.

There are many good suggestions here and in many other places:

> [@Strength dominating stat value](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/strength-dominating-stat-value/17481/):
>
> Sort of. It’s a problem with stat min/maxing in the sense that there’s a clear optimum path, but THAT is caused by the relative uselessness of the stats other than strength. Whether that’s something that can be easily dealt with is another problem entirely, I agree. Some discussion on Discord has yielded ideas mainly based on improving the combat effectiveness of the other stats, like giving perception a bonus to ranged damage or increased critical chance, things like that.

> [@Side effects of min-maxing stats](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/side-effects-of-min-maxing-stats/17433/):
>
> Assuming we go from normal multi-pool start (all stats at 8 + 6 points to spend). I want to discuss what are the drawbacks of min/maxing stats in the current meta. Normally I play this: Str 13 (pretty much the best stat for actually getting things DONE in the game) Dex 8 Int 8 Per 9 (9 for extra tile of vision in the dark) But the more I think about, the more I feel like I should just min/max even more. So what exactly what be the most obvious side effect of dropping dex and per? I neve…

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