Release aids are for pansys. You don't need no skin on your firngers. It just gets in the way. Hard callous and exposed bone are what you want.

What about the lasersighting? or will this be a smartlinked bow >.<
no. just... no...


Oh and dissonance, good job on insulting your way to victory. Best way to win an arguement. Is it any different then to ask what kind of market there would be for reflex enhancers, pain editors, EX-explosive rounds or any grenade? Aquisition is not the question, trying to integrate the physical possibility of an old solution to a futuristic world and then applying abstract rules is the issue.

And to everyone else who has been posting info on this, thank you. You've given me alot to think about, and alot of great help. I particularly like the info on contruction and size of draw/arrows

I honestly think its a little silly for a bow to do that much damage, until i realised that it would effectively be firing a javelin or harpoon. Its still a little much damage wise though and i'm content with the current maximum damage rating of 8P (rating 6 for a bow str min.) my GM has imposed. It was for a character who lives in a wireless-free zone, a smart troll acting as the stupid backwards bountyhunter, and with all you've all said to help, i think it will go smoothly.

and now my own 2 on the matter at hand: what about a bonus to armor of its rating against anything with structure? or even just give anything with a structure double armor. Takes the "exploding lonestar helicopters" out of the equation. and past rating 6 it becomes an exponenital increase in cost, or to simplify things, 250 *rating, and past rating 12 it becomes 500 *level. There are several cases of this in the book, of rating dependant pricing multipliers. maybe give it -1 AP at rating 7 and up, and then -2 AP at rating 13 and up, with a corresponding decrease in damage? so a min. str rating 13 bow would do 13P with -2AP and cost 6500 . Perhaps even making the availibility be rating up to 6, 1.5*rating to 12 and 2*rating above 12. This way that same rating 13 bow would be rating 26 to find. Still legal, but it would take a very very long time to find one. Make arrows be availibility of the bow's rating to find. so for this particular example, rating 13 to locate new arrows. Double that and R for the injector arrows, with a minimum of 8R availibility.

And if thats not enough, maybe make rating 7 and up R and rating 13 and up F.

it should be noted that we're now on our 3rd run, and I (the meatwall for the party) haven't even had to draw a weapon yet. there hasn't been a single fight (not counting shocking a sleeping man into unconciousness). The smart runner avoids ever being seen. Shadows are alot harder to hide in when they are lit up with gunfire.

talk is cheap. Bullets are not. My word are particularly cheap, which is why you get such a long post for 2

one more question, does an arrow automatically break if it strikes a living target, or is that just a convention from *cough* some other game? having only fired bows at target boards, i don't know the answer to that one either.

I don't see any reason for the arrows to break, no. Especially since you're almost certainly talking about shafts made from some SOTA material. I'd assume that some arrows are damaged (but repairable)...in modern terms, something along the lines of aluminium shafts that get bent and need to be straightened. You could come up with some detailed houserules for that (penalties for re-using arrows that you haven't repaired yet, yadda yadda) but that would seem to be contrary to the SR4 'streamlined rules' approach. Just handwave it.

The main weak point is that...well, it doesn't really make any sense. Making a stronger bow isn't really any harder than making a weak one. You just make it all bigger, thicker, and heavier.

What's hard in bowmaking is making the bow /efficient/. Given X pounds of draw, how much of that energy is transferred to the arrow (as opposed to being wasted in moving the string, the arms of the bow, making noise, etc etc etc). If you really wanted to model that, you could give a bow a DV of StrMin + (Maker's skill/3, round down). Or skill/2, if you wanted to be generous.

I'm taking no position on whether a bow doing 13P is realistic. At least, yet :) I'm just saying that the maker's skill isn't the limiting factor on the strength of the bow.

Hm, using this reasoning, why not make a more efficient sword - just make it bigger, thicker, and heavier.

This solution isn't probably the ultimate wisdom, but I thought it has its merits. After all, even today only a few people craft really powerfull bows.

That's because there's no point.

You mean like say, dagger vs. claymore?

To defend McMurray, that was my bad analogy .

Probably to much soccer today. When I wrote it, it sounded like a good analogy .

The point I was trying to make, is that just by making the bow heavier, it will not be more efficient.

Regarding the siege crossbow: I can only bring the lame reasoning that crossbows aren't bows .

True, but that doesn't mean it's any more difficult to make a more powerful bow. The physics of making a bow are pretty straightforward, and given the right materials, anyone with skill can make a bow of pretty much any draw-weight they want. Unless we're talking custom-troll builds, I don't see *why* anyone would want such an insane thing, but it's certainly possible.

Right. This is the point I was trying to make. Making a bow of arbitrary draw-weight is reasonably trivial, given modest skill and access to the necessary materials. That is NOT the same thing as efficiency.

Making the spring as strong as you like is easy. Designing the bow such that it efficiently transfers as much of that energy as possible into the projectile is more difficult. (As a point of interest, though relating to crossbows rather than bows, modern crossbows are upwards of four times as efficient as medieval ones - a modern 150-pound crossbow fires the same projectile at the same speed as a medieval 700-pounder. I can dig up references for that if anyone cares; I mostly mention it just because I think it's interesting )

And, of course there's AE's point that increasing the velocity of the same arrow perhaps shouldn't increase its damage without bound - there may be a point of diminishing returns. I'm undecided on that one.

Well, not really. It may put a nice hole in wooden battlements, but it'll hardly even scratch sturdy stone structures.

When you're shooting humans with hunting broadheads, diminishing returns set in at around 200fps. Beyond 250fps, with any velocity that any bow we can dream of can achieve, the wound caused will be the same, unless you also increase the size of the arrowhead. A 1" diameter arrowhead makes a 1" diameter wound through a human, regardless of whether it's attached to a 450gr arrow that's moving 250fps or a 1000gr arrow that's moving at 450fps. Unless the arrowhead is changed, once you have achieve full penetration through a human body, velocity no longer increases the size of the wound at all.

If you increase the size of the broadhead to a ridiculous degree, then you can make use of a ridiculously oversized (and overpowered) bow. This way, with a siege-weapon type bow, you could theoretically create wounds in humans that could challenge powerful rifles -- like the .338 Lapuas or whatever the Sniper Rifles in SR are supposed to represent. Such a bow would still penetrate rigid armor far worse than any serious rifle with armor piercing ammunition, though. Hence why damage codes up to around 7P are, IMO, justifiable for bows.

No. Hard kevlar, like in ballistic helmets, would work wonders against broadheads. Cutting that shit is really damn hard. Some forms of (by SR4, 70-year-old) flexible ballistic armor would be less useful against arrows than they would against handgun rounds, but that's only a meaningful comparison if you're looking at a bow that does the same damage as a handgun. Other forms of flexible armor would work at least as well against broadheads as handgun rounds -- check up on stab-resistant body armor.

They bloody better be able to decapitate humans if you hit someone in the neck. So can everything from 5.56x45mm on up, and that's, what, 5P?

Ah! Okay, so you're basically talking about blow-through, yes? Past a certain point, increaing the kinetic energy of the arrow just means it's going faster when it comes out the other side. It's even possible that a vastly faster projectile might do less 'damage', punching through so quickly that it leaves a clean wound that has little effect on surrounding tissue.

Now, that said, two counter-points. First, the faster (and probably also more massive) arrow WOULD have improved armor penetration. Energy that's wasted blow-through on an unarmored human likely wouldn't be against someone wearing security armor. And second, I'm not sure how well the system handles blow-through for firearms, either...though the combination of DV and AP does make it possible to try to represent it.

that's naval scale railgun. naval. not navel.

frankly, i don't know that i'd be too afraid of navel scale railguns

When you're firing the arrow at an unarmored human, that point comes up really soon. Any serious hunting bow, with the right broadhead, will go clean through a human. With a 450gr arrow, something like 225fps should be enough to guarantee completely penetration of a human torso.

That's not going to happen. With a broadhead, you never get any real effect on the surrounding tissue -- not at any velocity you can ever achieve with a bow, at least. All you get is the wound cut by the edges of the arrowhead. Whether this wound is cut at 200fps or 400fps, or even 600fps, makes no difference.

In case of a "troll bow", you're definitely looking at a much heavier arrow instead of a much higher velocity. Either way, yes, bigger and heavier projectiles penetrate better. Since the starting point for the penetration is so low, the increase may even seem like a particularly large one. You still won't get penetration as good as you get with AP rifle ammo, but with a siege weapon scale bow you could probably get through flexible body armor without too much trouble (like you can with any rifle, firing just about any ammunition).

Overpenetration isn't the problem, undercavitation is.

As you make firearms more powerful, with similar ammunition they will generally make bigger wounds. A .50 BMG FMJ is absolutely guaranteed to go right through a human body and retain a whole lot of velocity on exit. But it also causes cavernous wounds, because it's a big bullet traveling insanely fast. In the 2000+fps range, even a spitzer shape ejects tissue sideways at quite a high velocity.

In some cases added velocity or projectile weight make little to no difference to terminal effect on unarmored humans. This is usually because of wrong ammunition choices. With some types of ammunition, nearly any firearm will fully penetrate the human body from most angles, and with others even a long range magnum rifle can be stopped quickly in tissue. By the choosing the right ammunition, you can make sure the increased velocity, projectile weight or projectile diameter is utilized to increase the terminal effect in metahuman bodies. Thus, at least when deciding what the Damage Code of a particular firearm is (and not a particular firearm/ammunition combination), overpenetration is a nonissue.

Anyway, there's no actual rule for scaling up the power of firearms and getting a higher Damage Code in return, so the system doesn't need to handle this with firearms like it does with bows.

Surface-to-air thor shot???

actually I think all the str based weapons use mechaincal devices to apply damage. I think they all use of one of the simple machines called the lever. Note I suck at science, math etc. But I think a sword is baiscally just levered force projected into a point/edge.

And yes relaism is overrated, I could care less if a troll bow is realistic. I do care if it is unbalanced to the breaking point, and I have trouble seeing a reason why bows should massively out damage mellee combat.

Well, I was sort of kidding on the "Mach 3" comment, but I'd imagine such a thing would be more audible. Not necessary across town, or anything, but would certainly be more audible.

Huh?

Your strength does 'power' the bow. But if by 'strength stored in the bow' you meant 'the bow stores the power you put into it until you release it', then yes, that's true too. Using the bow's strength rating rather than the archer's (higher) strength makes sense because it's the limiting factor on how much energy you can put into it.

So yes, using StrMin is appropriate. But...I didn't see anyone actually questioning that part. Except perhaps to suggest StrMin/2+some number instead.

I'm all good with the bow doing more damage than a thrown weapon. I don't have any quantitative comparison to offer, but I think the fact that thrown weapons have generally become obsolete in any culture that knew how to make bows is a pretty good argument in that direction (though some of that is from their superior range, accuracy, etc).

I do think it's a bit odd that a bow does more damage than a melee weapon at any above-average strength, though. Would you rather the huge honkin' troll shoot you with an arrow, or hit you with a great bloody axe?

Heh.

The break-even point is Strength 5, though, which isn't even super-human. A Str5 bow does 7P; a Str5 PC with an axe does 6P.

Urban Myth alert.

Isn't it unhygienic to use an axe with blood on it?

Ooooh, good point. After the victim makes their damage resistance test, how about another against disease?

Huh. Just read up on it a little, and so it is. My mistake. I've edited the reply accordingly.