Look at the bow, what do you mean you do 13P? Options

[Austere Emancipa...]

[Shrike30]

Why is it silly to think of arrows in terms of armor piercing? My understanding of medieval armor design is that an awful lot of it had to do with figuring out how to stop arrows or bolts.

[Austere Emancipa...]

Then they created effective firearms and all that armor was rendered obsolete for centuries.

[The Jopp]

[hyzmarca]

[Austere Emancipa...]

I included the word "effective" for a reason. :)

Were it all about low cost and ease of use, it would have been the crossbow that would have ruled the battlefield from the 16th century onwards. A simple crossbow with a steel prod was cheap as dirt compared to a cast iron firearm and no harder to use -- as late as the 17th century, you could have bought a cuirass, pauldrons and helmet, capable of stopping any arrows or bolts, at about the same price as a flintlock firearm, while a crossbow would have been worth a fraction of that.

But while armorers could reasonably claim their suits were "proof" against crossbows at least since the 13th century, it was a losing battle as soon as Europeans figured out how to make effective use of gunpowder, and by the 17th century at the latest hot lead had decimated steel.

Any normal bow shouldn't have more penetrating power than a blackpowder musket and its imperfectly formed lead balls, and even a siege weapon ("troll bow") wouldn't come close to what we can do with a rifle (not AMR) now (e.g. 12mm RHA at 100 meters for a 7.62x51mm M993 AP).

[James McMurray]

An arrowhead on a troll sized bow is at least as big as a heavy pistol round, perhaps bigger. It deals over twice as much damage as that pistol round. So why is it hard to believe that it could penetrate armor better?

If the answer has lots of boring ballistics math in it, just tell me "trust me, science says so." :)

[hobgoblin]

something tells me this is one more debate that will never end...

[James McMurray]

Have any DS debates ever ended?

[hobgoblin]

there are some that basicly go into extended hibernation, but some topics keep showing up again at a regular basis...

btw, getting into a projectile weapon debate with austere is a interesting, if frustrating, way of killing time...

[Butterblume]

The thread about trolls and bows comes around regularly. Another one, the Called Shot Thread, is overdue ...

[Austere Emancipa...]

This particular bow-topic usually doesn't get carried too long. A few dozen posts, and people get tired of saying how b0wz r0x0r.

James McMurray: Ability to cause damage to unarmored humans and the ability to penetrate armor are not necessarily related in any way. When looking at the "troll bow" at 13P, try and compare it to a HMG (1.5oz of tungsten carbide at 3000+fps) instead of a heavy pistol. Picture in your mind a 9oz arrow hitting 0.5" or more of steel armor plating (that's equivalent to more than 10 of the best breastplates ever made before the 20th century) at 300fps. If you can imagine it penetrating it cleanly, you should stop dropping acid. Also: "science says so."

[CrimsonHawk]

ok so we have the bow what about the crossbow? I see in cannon comanion that there is an automatic reloading crossbow, so for instance, if you get a hvy crossbow and moded it to repeat could you make something like the one in (van helsing) that had like
50 to 100 rounds and fired quite fast? :D


now in Earth Dawn I had a troll archer that could kill things with his troll bow and his dmg was astronomical (poor horrors)

[Squinky]

Going from a magazine of four bolts ( I assume one is readied so five total) would be a stretch, but I could imagine an extended magazine that allowed a few more. Guess it all depends on what kind of game you are playing in.

[Kanada Ten]

Full auto, belt feed, explosive fragmentation, rocket boosted crossbows... for vampire hunting.

[Shrike30]

Rocket-assist... ooo, best way ever to lose your eyebrows :D

[raleel]

*sigh*

I had a 2 page post on this and firefox crashed, but I'll put up the short short short verison. I know it's not 100% accurate, but it's pretty close. Some physics guys can finish up the rest.
--
troll height - 2.5m - 98.4 inches - call it 100
gorilla arm span ratio - 1.47 (1.479 male, 1.466)

if we use the same ratio (not unreasonable, it's described as much longer,humans are 1.03/1.00)
troll arm span - 147 inches or 367.5cm

draw length = arm span / 2.5 (hunterfriend.com)
so, troll draw length
58.8inches or 147cm (right in the neighborhood of 1.5 meters or just under 2 yards)

draw weight - I had to fudge this a bit. Turns out, the lift over the head number (page 130) is reasonable for determining a draw weight (str 3 gives 66#, which is about right for the average joe, 4-5 gives english longbow weights). So, str 15 troll has a 330# draw bow, a str 10 troll has a 220# draw

minimum weight of arrow
5 grains per pound, International Bowhunters Organization. Heavier arrows give more kinetic energy, less noise, but more chance for the target to react and drop off quicker at range.

so, str 15 troll - 1650 grain (107g)
str 10 troll - 1100 grain (71.2g)

So, short of it, trolls use arrows just under 2 yards long, weigh about 1/5 a pound. A quick check with some other info shows this is probably way off, because most arrows are in the neighborhood of more like 7-10 grams per inch, and this is more like 2 :) Still, some of the measurements are likely useful.

[Doc-Pond-Water]

I do not know the physics all that well, but I have a decent amount of experience with archery and it makes me shiver to think what would happen if a 'troll bow' were have a string snap after it is pulled, but before release. I have heard that a current compound bow can take off fingers if stuff goes real bad with the bowstring. When I was 13 or so I had a string snap on my bow, it was nothing (saying the obvious) like what we are talking about, yet it did leave a "whip mark" on my forearm that wept a few drops.

My point as a GM would be this. A bow meant to handle that much pull would likely be a piece of custom work. Arrows of that kind of length would also be custom work. Arrows meant for that kind of velocity would also be custom. Everyone who shoots compound, or to some extent modern recurve bows, knows you do not use wooden arrows with bows with strong pulls, or the string just might split your arrow in half length wise. Remember that even a troll is made out of flesh, that much tension being put on any material and then put so close to a person could turn out very bad for who ever is holding it.

My two cents given at a discount

[raleel]

I don't know how custom it would be, because those sorts of things are relative, but I would agree across the board that you could likely have a thicker bowstring, or a better material. Kevlar seems like a perfectly reasonable option, having a tensile strength and common availablility. Carbon nanotubes are even stronger. To put some perspective on it, wikipedia says kevlar has a tensile strength of 3620 MPa (3620000 Pa, or about 525 psi). Carbon nanotubes (nanofiber sin this case, I would guess) in the lab currently can get 63GPa (about 9137377 psi).

The force on a snap, though, would likely be equivalent to a monofilament whip swung by Big D.

One might expect that with special strong holders (or stout gloves) that it might be possible. It would also probably be thicker than a human sized bowstring, which is more like 5mm. Another source online says that english longbow bowstrings had to be able to hold 4x the draw weight.

No doubt. it's going to be a meaty bow, likely firing arrows that are on the order of 10-20mm (based on "the biggest carbon fiber arrow on the market" at 24/64 inches, guessing that a regular arrow is more in the 16-20/64 range). They likely have a thicker wall to hold off the force of the bowstring.

I suppose I'll go through and put together some real numbers and sanity check them.

[blakkie]

It wouldn't be a fingers or even fingers with gloves deal, they'd be using a release aid.

[Dissonance]

Who on earth is making these Strength Ten Bows, in the first place? I can't imagine that there's, well, _any_ legal market for a bow with a draw strength of OMG/WIN.

In a sane world, I would imagine that bows cap off at a certain strength. Likely somewhere around six. Eight, if you want to be crazy.

Then again, Shadowrun isn't about making sense. Sometimes, it's about making The Green Arrow With Super Monkey Arms And Chitinous Plating. Anchoring, anybody?

[Kanada Ten]

Considering that in the wilds one must deal with critters such the bandersnatch and behemoth, along with hundreds of other armored nasties, I doubt they would limit the strength of bows below the strength of trolls. It's more a question of diminishing returns vs exponentially increasing costs (two things SR doesn't take into account here).

[Shrike30]

Considering that AK-98s sell on the street for 500 nuyen, I doubt there's serious legislation or enforcement efforts in place to try and limit troll archer assassins.

[Butterblume]

One clever person I know brought up the idea that the bow-rating is limited by the skill of the bow-maker.
So, the best bow would be a rating 9. Probably one to three persons in the world could build one.

I admit, this idea has it's weak points, but I like it, so I think I will use it.

[Jaid]

until someone comes up with a machine sprite with a bowmaking autosoft.