heroes

[Ink]

two crossbows (or four) wouldn't be an advantage because it takes one whole body to reload and cock them. If you had two of them you'd spend twice as long getting them both ready to fire again (probably longer, since you'd have to prepare one, set it aside, prepare the other, pick them both up, aim them...). Also, since cocking a crossbow is done by the whole body, having four arms wouldn't help with that at all.

Finally, since there is no known vertebrate with more than four limbs, it is safe to assume that four arms would not, in fact, evolve to be useful.

[rdonj]

Hmm, wasn't there a 4 armed human baby born recently? I don't know if all the arms were fully functional or not, but since then they've had surgery and should only have 2 arms now. Guess we'll never know how useful it would have been.

I agree that it would be hard to use more than one crossbow at a time though, at least without being significantly stronger than a human.

[Calchet]

Originally Posted by Ink

Finally, since there is no known vertebrate with more than four limbs, it is safe to assume that four arms would not, in fact, evolve to be useful.

Just because something hasn't happened to evolve naturally, that doesn't mean it couldn't be useful - evolution, as far as I know, doesn't work with 'what would be useful to aim for' so much as 'what happens to come around and turns out useful', or we might see flying sharks with friggin' lazer beams for eyes. Those would be really useful.

And also really awesome. But I digress.