Even if this was a situation in real life, there are just too many factors to make a blanket statement. Whats the terrain? What armour are both participants wearing, whats it made of, how heavy is it and how balanced is it? Does the dwarf still have bolts even if he can't fire them? Is the goblin weapon a spear or something else?
There are plenty of situations where the dwarf gets the short end of the stick. But I can think of many where the dwarf comes out on top. What if a stealthed dwarf hunter with crossbow in tow was hiding in a tree. Lone goblin comes along (for whatever reason) and the dwarf jumps on him. Having an armed and armoured weapon carrying dwarf drop 10+ feet onto your shoulders is not something you can shrug off, so we can reasonably assume that the goblin in this case is knocked flat.
At which point the dwarf is free to stab the prone goblin. Now you could argue at this point that dwarf doesn't need to mount the bayonet onto something before using it. But since the bayonet is mounted on something with enough room for two hands the dwarf can use both arms to power that stabbing tip. Which is handy if the dwarf has to get through plate armour.
I don't really know where to begin here. For starters I was never talking about some rare situation involving a dwarf ambushing with his crossbow from a tree (why would he give up his advantageous position if he had a missile weapon?? Plus i dont think attempting to drop 10 feet onto an enemy whilst holding a crossbow is a good idea for anyone, skilled or unskilled). You keep trying to tell me to consider more factors such as terrain and whatever else but the whole point im trying to get across is that
all else equal, dwarf and goblin, equal fighting ability, one on one, a dwarf with a crossbow should get obliterated 9 times out of 10 by a weapon armed goblin.
You can throw any obscure little factor you want in but the bottom line is this - for the purpose of melee, a dwarf carrying a proper weapon in
any situation should fare a whole heap better than he would carrying a crossbow, bayonet or no. An occasional lucky critical hit here or there should be about it, and probably standard damage even lowered.
An unloaded crossbow with a bayonet attached is nothing less than a short spear with a really big crossguard.
...which would itself be a whole lot more unwieldy than one with a normal crossguard if that statement were even nearly true. You can keep repeating yourself but it doesn't make it the truth. If really big weird crossgaurd spears were the same thing as normal corssguard spears, why not put really big weird crossguards on all spears? In fact, why not just make all spears be able to shoot bolts while we're at it...
Utter bs. Dwarves have the manufacturing skill to make a chain with a hammer and anvil. A 2 foot spike of metal is easy cake. And the mounting mechanism is probably less complex than the one that powers the crossbow trigger. People have been using rifle bayonets for hundreds of years now, and they still do. Spears were probably invented before FIRE. Its not rocket science.
Yeah im not so sure. Crossbows were invented sometime around the 4th century or before, and bayonets didn't make it in till around the 16th century. I guess this is pretty subjective with DF, but personally I just feel that considering the other technology a quickly unmountable bayonet doesn't fit.
Are you joking? The fact that it DOESN'T have a rifle grip makes it even easier. A bayonet is not a cake spatula. Put a spike bayonet on the end of something heavy which you can thrust with BOTH ARMS and you can defeat plate armour quite handily.
Just go and look at some pictures of early crossbow designs. They just don't give the appearance of being able to get a good grip on them in a spear like sense. And even if you could, theres still no way in the world they could be wielded with the speed and agility of an actual weapon designed for thrusting.
I think you're missing my main point here overall, which i tried to make from the start:
1) A crossbow with bayonet, while not completely useless, is a
last resort weapon. The user should get beaten in melee more often than not by an equally armoured/skilled opponent with a melee weapon.
2) It can never be as effective as a proper melee weapon, and this should be reflected in the game via a fair bit less melee damage, including often rendering the crossbow useless for firing until repaired.