Hello!

I have some questions about reloading in ranged combat. As far as I know most of the ranged weapons like bows don't require a whole combat turn to reload and can be fired and reloaded in the same turn. But then I found the Instant Reload talent which says: "Normal: reloading a weapon takes a Standard Action, but some weapons take longer to reload. Your character must wait until his or her next turn to fire a weapon after reloading it.".
Do I misunderstand something or is it a typo? And if it's a typo - why do goblins have this talent? They only have long bows which don't require a standard action to reload.
And there's another thing that confused me a little bit: Why does a heavy crossbow have a rate of 1/4 at the ranged weapons table? Its description says that it needs two turns to be reloaded. Wouldn't this be 1/3?
I hope you guys can help me with that.


Greetings,
Gilgamesh

I think the honest answer to those questions are: whoops. The instant reload talent is a skill we pulled over from HEX, where has has much more applicablitity to guns.

As written, it really only helps with the reload time of crossbows -which IMO, is not a talent worth taking. But we have also always treated it as a quick draw for archers (which is what was in my mind when added to the goblins). If we ever have a Desolation 2.0, I think the instant reload talent will vanish and goblins will have the quick draw talent.

And you are correct about the heavy crossbow reload time being inconsistent. The table has the typo and the description is correct - it should show a rate of 1/3.

Thanks for the keens eyes...

Thanks for the answers.

EDIT: Well, now I found another interesting thing. At the ranged weapons table there is a footnote that characters with the Instant Reload talent can double the rate of fire for many weapons which normally have a rate of 1. This would mean that with Instant Reload a character would be able to fire a bow two times a round. Is that what it should be? There's nothing like that in the talent's description.

That, again, was legacy from the HEX rules which applied to guns. You should ignore it.

There is not talent that automatically doubles the rate of fire.

Sorry.

Okay, thanks.