Speed Archery, Adept Ability, or...? Options

[Tashiro]

Reinventing Fast Archery
So, how would this work in Shadowrun? Would this be an Advantage which allowed for semi-automatic archery, or would it be done as a combat adept ability? Honestly, I'm really wanting this in more roleplaying games.

[Critias]

It's got about as much combat application as the world's fastest six-shooter type of trick-shot stuff. It's a fascinating technique, and the guy does some really impressive novelty shots...but don't put too much weight on it as a viable combat art, or try to build a combat RPG system around using those speeds as a baseline.

[Jaid]

his "special technique" appears to be "pulling the string back about 6 inches".

so sure... you can shoot super fast. oh, and by the way, the strength of those shots is going to suck massively compared to shooting a bow properly.

and the vast majority of his shooting, when it was particularly accurate, was like 20 feet away.

[_Pax._]

Yeah, as I commented on the video:

"Yes, that's very fast. But how much energy is being delivered at the point of impact? And how far away can a target be accurately hit?

IOW, what kind of sacrifice is being made, in terms of range and penetration?

Keep in mind, chain mail is relatively easy to penetrate with any piercing weapon - chain is meant to ward of cutting attacks from swords and axes. So that part of the video, eh, I'm not convinced."

[Tashiro]

Perhaps so, but I was thinking if a combat adept was doing this, how would it be. With an adept, you can put some magic behind it to give it more power, perhaps. The other thing to note, however, is that this looks to be similar to the techniques used back in the day, so it may have had some merit.

[Udoshi]

So, how would this work in Shadowrun? Would this be an Advantage which allowed for semi-automatic archery, or would it be done as a combat adept ability? Honestly, I'm really wanting this in more roleplaying games.

Neither. Throwing Weapons just need some clarification and expansion. You can ready small throwing weapons = half agility.
Since its kind of like a short-ranged melee, you let thrown weapons split the dice pool to attack multiple targets, just like melee can multistrike. So you actually CAN throw a handful of knives at once like they do in the circus.

Then give bows the same benefit, because they're already a Ready Weapon-to-shoot enabled weapon type.

[Umidori]

Isn't there already a well-established bit of cheese for doing this? Krav Maga to Ready Weapon as a Free Action?

~Umi

[Mach_Ten]

I'm in the camp of splitting the dice pool.

effectively being able to fire more arrows but reducing the overall strength of each attack
due to focussing on speed rather than the longer draw.

DP= 15 is one big arrow, 2 quick at 7/8 or even 3 super fast at 5/5/5
(with a specialization thats 17 or 9/10 or 7/7/7 or even 6/6/6/5)

then you just need to buy some Teflon coated arrow heads for Armor Piercing or Barbed Arrows for just being plain evil

I know you say that the old ways had merits, but they were only shooting at tagets in hardened leather armor back then,
not Plasteel / ceramic plates and impact gels etc.

it can work but you need to work on the function / tactic rather than the power and plain damage.

i.e. a metal arrow with a 100m wire attached to a shock pak .... that guy is effectively stunned and out for the rest of eternity

[Umidori]

Splitting dice pools with a Rating 8 bow is like splitting dice pools with an Assault Cannon. No sane GM would allow someone to make three separate Assault Cannon shots with a single Simple Action, and a bow that deals 10P per arrow should be no different.

~Umi

[Mach_Ten]

Splitting dice pools with a Rating 8 bow is like splitting dice pools with an Assault Cannon. No sane GM would allow someone to make three separate Assault Cannon shots with a single Simple Action, and a bow that deals 10P per arrow should be no different.

~Umi

Holy crap, bows do what DV ? .. Thats... Thats ... Redonculous !

[Dakka Fiend]

That's the nerfed bows btw.

[Mach_Ten]

That's the nerfed bows btw.

Time to tell the GM i'm trading the assault rifle then

[SpellBinder]

How about limiting the speed archery to just short range? It looked like those were all rather close targets relative to how far a bow could shoot.

[Lionhearted]

Time to tell the GM i'm trading the assault rifle then

You never made a troll bow?
Fascinating...

also *safety helmet on*
Here we go again!

[Umidori]

With the nerfed bow rules, there's not even much point to making your archer a troll anymore.

An ordinary human can hit 8 strength pretty easily in a variety of ways, and if you want to get the most bang for your BP roll with an Ork because you get a better deal on your boosted innate strength than Trolls do, and you don't take the hit to agility and charisma.

~Umi

[Lantzer]

I'm not sure why they tried to nerf the Trollbow in that particular way. I personally would have just based the DV on STR/2 like every other muscle-powered weapon. Consistency is good.

[Faelan]

Just want to clear up a couple of misconceptions:
1) Six shooter trick shooting has a lot of combat application. In combat format it is called instinctive shooting, something most people don't practice enough of. It is what will save your ass in a gunfight. For handguns you are looking at accuracy for from the hip insticntive fire being out to 7 yards or more. This also happens to be a common engagement range for such firearms.
2) Mail is only easily pierced on youtube videos using butted mail, or other inferior mass produced products made with a lighter gauge or the wrong type of rivet. Also the padding is necessary part of the armor. Lastly they always seem to be tested at roughly point blank range. So while an arrow can pierce mail it is nowhere near as easy as all the silly videos on youtube make it out to be. Yet to find one that uses real riveted mail with padding for the tests.
3)Speed archery was fairly widespread (the huns and seljuk turks for which there is written evidence supporting the rate of fire). The draw is not as short as some think, on average you are shorting the maximum draw by roughly 2-3 inches, so yes you are sacrificing some power, but lets look at what ranges you are firing at. Horse archers doing the medieval equivalent of a drive by shooting so maybe 20m, a range where you are essentially using instinctive firing for a bow (point and shoot) your lead hand when trained will always point to the target, at short ranges with flat trajectories it is highly accurate, and since you are at such a short range the likelihood of piercing even good mail is high even though you lost a little power.

Instinctive fire works on every ballistic weapon I have ever utilized at up to 100yards with longarms(assault, battle, and bolt action rifles) and shorter ranges with submachineguns and handguns, with a high degree of accuracy as to location selection as well.

[Jaid]

The draw is not as short as some think, on average you are shorting the maximum draw by roughly 2-3 inches, so yes you are sacrificing some power, but lets look at what ranges you are firing at.

sure, for the historical people who practiced for 30 years. for this guy, it looks like he's pulling the string back maybe a foot. if even that much.

[Halinn]

3)Speed archery was fairly widespread (the huns and seljuk turks for which there is written evidence supporting the rate of fire). The draw is not as short as some think, on average you are shorting the maximum draw by roughly 2-3 inches, so yes you are sacrificing some power, but lets look at what ranges you are firing at. Horse archers doing the medieval equivalent of a drive by shooting so maybe 20m, a range where you are essentially using instinctive firing for a bow (point and shoot) your lead hand when trained will always point to the target, at short ranges with flat trajectories it is highly accurate, and since you are at such a short range the likelihood of piercing even good mail is high even though you lost a little power.

Another reason it's not a large problem to lose some power when doing drive-by archery, is that in conventional warfare, it's much more efficient to just wound the enemy, so he still takes up resources, but is unable to fight.

[Modular Man]

[...]or Barbed Arrows for just being plain evil
[...]

Poisoned barbed arrows, if your GM doesn't put a stop to that. Why only go halfway on evil? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/vegm.gif)

With the nerfed bow rules, there's not even much point to making your archer a troll anymore.

An ordinary human can hit 8 strength pretty easily in a variety of ways, and if you want to get the most bang for your BP roll with an Ork because you get a better deal on your boosted innate strength than Trolls do, and you don't take the hit to agility and charisma.

~Umi

I've seen a high agility (as in, very high!) elf been done with a bow. It was scary.
Granted, I've had a character feel the direct effects from a monofilament bola thrown by a somewhat-better-than-average user. Combined with that ambush it was way more more scary. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

Another reason it's not a large problem to lose some power when doing drive-by archery, is that in conventional warfare, it's much more efficient to just wound the enemy, so he still takes up resources, but is unable to fight.

This isn't even limited to conventional warfare. Some corp security guys having to pull their screaming/unconscious colleagues out of the firing zone can spare you a lot of unnecessary hail of bullets. Another (quite non-pacifist) reason to use stun-inflicting weapons/rounds.

Well, speedy bow use can within a stretch of the rules surely be done. Still goes for a signature killing technique.

[Faelan]

Another reason it's not a large problem to lose some power when doing drive-by archery, is that in conventional warfare, it's much more efficient to just wound the enemy, so he still takes up resources, but is unable to fight.

That is really a modern concept which has been disproven time and time again in counterinsurgency operations, where wounded are left for dead by one side. Seeing as how society at the time placed far less value on human life, I really doubt anyone would care about their buddy getting an arrow in the leg when they were being peppered themselves, and a wound is likely equal to a slow painful death by infection. Also unlike in modern warfare you don't have a medical evac plan other than get your wounded off the field of battle after the fight if you won and put the other sides wounded either out of their misery or hold them for ransom if they are a high value prisoner. Also a wounded enemy is never better than a dead one even if they are using resources. A wounded enemy can often shoot, or turn into a suicide bomb, when you really don't want them to. That whole concept was dreamed up by some idiot to make the adoption of the 5.56mm as standard NATO palatable.

[thorya]

That is really a modern concept which has been disproven time and time again in counterinsurgency operations, where wounded are left for dead by one side. Seeing as how society at the time placed far less value on human life, I really doubt anyone would care about their buddy getting an arrow in the leg when they were being peppered themselves, and a wound is likely equal to a slow painful death by infection. Also unlike in modern warfare you don't have a medical evac plan other than get your wounded off the field of battle after the fight if you won and put the other sides wounded either out of their misery or hold them for ransom if they are a high value prisoner. Also a wounded enemy is never better than a dead one even if they are using resources. A wounded enemy can often shoot, or turn into a suicide bomb, when you really don't want them to. That whole concept was dreamed up by some idiot to make the adoption of the 5.56mm as standard NATO palatable.

I don't think it's been disproven. During World War I, general wanted to stop issuing helmets because the dead soldiers were cheaper than soldiers with head wounds they had survived. If you're someone like Russia in either of the world wars, you have soldiers to spare but not the equipment, so wounded are a huge disadvantage. If you're the IRA, good dependable soldiers willing to do violence are much rarer than weapons and bombs, so a wounded soldier that will recover is better than a dead one. Unless, a wounded soldier can be caught and questioned and possibly give up some information on you.

It's all matter of who is your enemy. Conventional western army versus a conventional western army, wounded is better, but we haven't fought that sort of war in a long time. Guerrilla warfare, not so much.

And causing wounds not deaths has never been the selling point of the 5.56mm. In fact, they use to claim more deadly wounds due to the bullet tumbling and the high velocity of the round. But the main selling point has always been ammo capacity for a soldier, low recoil, and the possibility for light weight automatic weapons.

[Faelan]

I don't think it's been disproven. During World War I, general wanted to stop issuing helmets because the dead soldiers were cheaper than soldiers with head wounds they had survived. If you're someone like Russia in either of the world wars, you have soldiers to spare but not the equipment, so wounded are a huge disadvantage. If you're the IRA, good dependable soldiers willing to do violence are much rarer than weapons and bombs, so a wounded soldier that will recover is better than a dead one. Unless, a wounded soldier can be caught and questioned and possibly give up some information on you.

Depending on it as an axiom of battle has been disproven, if you cannot count on it all the time it is not something you should count on as a fact when battle is joined.

It's all matter of who is your enemy. Conventional western army versus a conventional western army, wounded is better, but we haven't fought that sort of war in a long time. Guerrilla warfare, not so much.

No we have not, and neither is it very likely in todays world, and regardless even against a conventional foe, terrain, supply, logistics, economy of force and a ton of other factors will determine whether or not your wounded make it out or not. A dead enemy is one you never have to face again.

And causing wounds not deaths has never been the selling point of the 5.56mm. In fact, they use to claim more deadly wounds due to the bullet tumbling and the high velocity of the round. But the main selling point has always been ammo capacity for a soldier, low recoil, and the possibility for light weight automatic weapons.

So sorry the little "bullet tumbling and high velocity" myth has been around since the day someone hit an enemy dead center and they were still twitching when they got to him. No one with even the most basic firearms knowledge would ever claim the 5.56 Nato is deadly in comparison to the 7.62 Nato which it replaced as the standard ammunition of your average infantryman. As to the weight of the weapon system, it is true that a rifle made for a smaller round will weigh less, however this weight saving is negligible. As to the weight of the ammunition while significant weight savings can be made, and this can be a major factor in the argument it was purely fed by the automatic fire question, which is the only reason recoil was any consideration. You see a bunch of Army brass decided that a volume of inaccurate fire was more effective than accurate sustained fire. They also decided that all engagements will occur under 350 yards, and that not teaching real shooting skills was the way to go with their drafted soldiers. Needless to say times have a changed and the old Soviet theory which had bled into US doctrine has been thoroughly discredited (draft versus conscription minimum tour times had something to do with that.)

The 5.56 also has other problems. Utilized in the M249/Minimi Squad Automatic weapon it performs poorly after the weapon has fired roughly 5000 rounds. Why? The extractor while brand new is able to operate properly on the small rim of the cartridge. Once the extractor is a little broken in misfeeds and jams become a common incident. A small amount of sand will do the same to both the M16 and the M249. In fact every weapon I have had the opportunity to fire in that caliber has a similar problem with minor environmental adversity. You jump up to a 7.62 Nato system of any kind and you have genuine difficulty making it fail. It simply has a larger rim for the extractor to grab, it can survive minor amounts of foreign matter in a much more reliable fashion. Anyway I could go on for hours about this, to cut myself short the 5.56 has never been thought of as a particularly deadly round it is essentially a .223 Rem, which is a varmint round.

[Mach_Ten]

/snip

Faelan has the truth of it,
speaking as a military weapons specialist and British soldier,
5.56 main benefit (to me) was being able to carry 6-9 magazines of the stuff and a lighter rifle compared to the 7.62,

Although, extractor breakage and inefficiency irregularly really showed it's face, probably because other parts of the L85 weapons failed first (Springs, firing pin, useless gas return, banana barrel, etc. ) I could go on, but .. flashbacks .... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)


but getting slightly back on topic,

do you really want to get into a murky houserule or a homebrew system for bows ? they seem to be quite effective (godsdammit) by themselves without any assistance (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

the Adept power would have to be reasonable cost and have a new mechanic to make rapid archery work vs just using 2 simple actions

Make it a full complex action, number of attacks limited to the lower of reaction/ agility

i.e. number of additional attacks scaling down the strength of the attacks etc. (DV / #attacks) + STR ?
essentially peppering a target with semi auto-arrows with reduced chance to hit and reduced damage per attack.

Range reduced by afactor of the #attacks

[Draco18s]

Reinventing Fast Archery

Didn't listen to the audio, but I love how all the shots of him performing at speed don't let us see what he's doing.