There’s a good argument for Strength modifying ranged combat, except in the case of crossbows since they are at set pulls. It does seem to be RAW, but I haven’t played that way. I don’t like that adding Strength to non-crossbow ranged weapons really nerfs crossbows compared to bows. What I like even worse is trying to come up with a bunch of house rules to bring crossbows up to par, or adding house rules to make ranged combat more realistic. You could add some of the rules after this paragraph, but I’m afraid that you’d wind up creating “Advanced ACKS” which I wouldn’t want to adjudicate as a DM. I do like rules that allow me to play with how the game is built such as custom character class creation and custom magic rules. However, I don’t want to start complicating the resolution mechanics from where they are now. Sorry if this comes off as a rant. That’s not my intent. It is a bit of a tangent from the focus of this thread, so I aplogize for that.
Some possible house rules that could lead one down the path of the Dark Side:
• Crossbows are built to accomodate various strength modifiers from (-3 to +3). This means that if there is a mismatch between the crossbow and the shooter they can either wind up not being able to fire the crossbow at all, or they fail to take full advantage of their strength.
• Strength could mean that the range increment could be either increased or decreased by 10’ per point of strength modifier at short range, 20’ at medium range, etc.
• Crossbows could be allowed to pierce a set amount of armor. Shouldn’t be as much as a firearm, so maybe 2 points? Maybe crossbows only get this at short range while arbalest get this a medium range as well.