"This message brought to you by the Shadowrunners and Smuggler's Association For Drug Usage."

Fact is, it is highly DM dependant how drugs work in your game (speaking of addiction test frequency etc). They may very well be either the best or the worst option to use.

Runners Advocating Deliberate and Intrinsic Consumption for Attributes exceptionaL.

R.A.D.I.C.A.L. ftw!

KING Radical.

But, no matter what, is very Cyberpunk, and should always be an option! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Have We all forgotten that the MAX damage a Bow can do is 18 Physical under SR4A

So?
You can still use it to do usefull stuff cheap and silent over big distances.

ONLY 18p? Like that isn't enough. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

And it's in one attack, too, so you can hurt even a Force 8 spirit with it. Or, if you somehow have AP 1/2 arrowheads (Trollbow sized SnS, maybe, or some kind of armor-penetrating explosive head), potentially anything up to Force 17.

Even if something somehow soaks a bunch of that damage, it still runs a good chance of being knocked down dependant on body. And at 10 damage dealt you get an auto knockdown, no matter how tough the enemy might be - although you'd need to be pretty dang tough to stage down eight damage, eat the remaining ten, and still be in the fight such that a knockdown matters.

~Umi

36, actually, if you use a MRSI.

It's kind of ridiculous that it works for bows.

At least it's limited to Medium and Long ranges. So for a Rating 12 bow, that's between 13m and 360m.

~Umi

Should be enough . .

Rating What Bow? Bows do not go that High by RAW. They stop at Rating 8.

"Most only go to Rating 8, but I specially made this one for you... This one goes to 11." (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

My copy of SR4A has that exact quote, but it says 12 instead of 8. Bizarre. Must have be an errata somewhere between them.

That's also the only way the above comments about 18 damage and 36 with MRSI work, because an arrow's max damage is capped at 1.5 times bow rating.

~Umi

Yes indeed... It was erratted and is correct in the newest Hard Copy of the SR4A book. Including the Precious.
Indeed... 15p (30p) for the win. Which is still incredibly devastating for an ARROW.

Well, these are still Arrows Humans would consider Spears . .
So closer to harpoons which are used to hunt whales usually.

Now I want to make a one-legged Troll Whaling Ship Captain hunting after an Albino Whale Shapechanger!

<.<
>,>
i . . may have done so before actually . .
>_<


well, not a whale shape shifter, but captain ahab the troll was there . .



Also:
i don't get the problems people have with trollbows being powerful . .
you have no problem with trolls
you have no problem with tech
you have no problem with bows
but you put them together in a most logical way . .

Go with that, but also pick up Iaijutsu for either Arrows or Bows (whichever your GM wants you to) so you can Quick Draw your arrows and fire them in one Simple Action. Free Action to ready the bow, Simple to QD the arrows and fire.

Actually, since STR 8 is the max for bows, there's no need to be a troll anymore. Any human with some extra muscles can use that.

I personally don't like that they went with straight STR+x for bows instead of STR/2+x (same goes for subduing damage, the only other occurence where plain STR is done as damage). Also, hardcapping things is, most of the time, a bad idea.
With the latest rules, bows can have a base damage of 3 to 10. To actually make trolls weilding bows viable again, i would propose changing that to make the damage scale all the way up woth Strength. Considering a maximum realistic STR of about 14 (troll with STR 10 muscle augmentation 4), what about STR/2+3 without a hardmax?
That way, the STR 8 character would still do some quite ok 7 Damage (same as heavy crossbow), the STR 14 troll would do the prior max of 10 damage, and some tricked out infected, genecrafted, surged, exceptionally gifted,... "being" (probably on drugs) with STR 21 would be able to get to a whopping 14 damage. Sounds quite fair to me, and gets rid of just another ugly rule in our favorite system. What do you think?

Don't forget about suprathyroid gland. Another +1 so +5 from Bioware alone.

Wait, why would you take a bow at all then? A crossbow is no larger or harder to conceal, holds 5 bolts in an internal magazine, has no strength minimum, and fires twice per turn without requiring any martial arts. Bows suddenly go from being a niche weapon to being laughably inferior to everything else.

~Umi

They always were, it just took a bit for the game engine to catch up to the middle ages.

If you wanted to house rule the sacredness of a bow, then perhaps have it able to be enchanted like a weapon focii, leaving out crossbows as they've got mechanical parts. Cause, `ya know, Magic is totally cool with the electrical pathways of the central nervous system, can readily muck with the most potent computer in the world, the brain, but a simple gear just confounds it.