Yeah. I mean, 17 BP AFTER net hits, oh, i'll take that, no problem. Someone with a sniper rifle/elephant gun rolls a crapload of successes? Yeah, that can go as high as whatever. Even a pistol or unarmed attack, i mean, if the hits pile on, the hits pile on. I've done and seen some stupid stuff with Edge, magic, and the like. Adepts who buy their way to 7-10 DVs with Critical Strike? Cool with me, they paid for the Magic Point and the powers, and it's not ''base'' DV as far as im concerned. I mean, if a mage with Magic 8 wants to risk his arse he can overcast his Manaball so it does 16. Magic can do crazy stuff.

But a BASE DV...yeah, 17 is a bit much. Even the strongest troll adept with Critical Strike can only hit...15 unless they initiate a few times. And that i even find more acceptable because 6 of that, again, is magic(and magic does crazy stuff in SR.) And if you want to initiate where you can do a base 17 DV with an unarmed strike, then you earned it; that's minimum 2 Initiations and 2 Magic Upgrades right there...actually more since the troll would need some ware to get that high unless some equally crazy force 17 sustaining focus with Inc. Strength was used or something. It's just technically, with the use of genetech, ware, and the like, a troll can come OUT OF THE GATE with a 17 DV bow.

Now, if bows did, say Str/2 + 2, and(hypothetically) there was an adept power that increased the power of ranged weapons(think Critical Strike for Weapons if you will) , and the supertroll's bow DV was 11 base(9+2), and he took this hypothetical power? Yeah, i'd allow it then, too.

But an UNMODIFIED BASE DV of 17 with NO magic or whatnot-just power and weapon? Yeah, even for me, who plays it very fast, loose, forgiving and will allow just about anything anything if a player even makes an honest attempt to explain it, this is too much.

I like punctuation marks do you like punctuation marks but even more than punctuation marks I'm a big fan of sentences which are composed of words and broken up from one another with punctuation marks and oh yeah did I mention I'm a big fan of punctuation marks too not just sentences?

Referring back to the OP, the description of Krav Maga does not suggest any application of bows. Alternatively you could permit loading a bow to be covered, but seeing as a bow is typically about the size of a longish sword (ie reach>1) it would not cover readying the bow itself.

Devising a new martial art that involves using a bow would be an option, or you could require some kind of quickness test, as for quickdrawing pistols, in order to load arrows more quickly.

As for mighty troll bows, even if you do decide that 2071 tech allows strength 9+ bows, the things should have a price premium for being custom built. The change in damage rating makes a lot of sense intuitively, but if you want to go strictly with RAW, it hasn't been changed in any of the official errata I've seen.

If the situation comes up in my game, I'll deal with it, probably depending on my mood at the time.

The other problem with rediculous troll bows is that now they can build it themselves via nano-forges and its fairly explanatory to how they are able to make the parts.

I'd look at the martial arts given in Arsenal as representative systems, rather than an exhaustive set of all available martial arts.. I don't see any reason why you couldn't take some bonuses from "Krav Maga" and call it "Kyudo" instead, for example, if that seems less "dumb". Really, the game is a lot more fun and interesting if you loose the shackles on the rules a bit

DS

The rule is: "If you take this martial art, here are your benefits." Those benefits include Ready Weapon becoming a Free Action.

The rules are NOT: "If you take this martial art, you get these benefits, unless those benefits are inconsistent with how the GM thinks the martial art works in 2008."

This is not to say that the GM can't house rule a martial art based on just pure personal preference. But the rules are clear. You can call it Krav Maga, or Toilet Paper Fu, it really doesn't matter, the rules don't change. House rule it if you want, but don't get confused. The name Krav Maga is almost nothing but fluff, because in practice the art's abilities have little to do with how Krav Maga works IRL. For all intents and purposes, you should view the martial arts in Arsenal as new, evolved versions of the arts that exist in 2070 and are different from how they work today. Otherwise you're going to beat your brains out over how unrealistic they are.

I don't think bows are too broken at str +2. Several reasons.
1) under normal circumstances (BBB rules only) you can fire them at most once a turn.
2) Sure, many other weapons powered by strength use str/2 + X. But bows don't compete with these weapons. They compete with guns. (They are ranged weapons and are the same size as a largeish firearm).
3) They are at most mediocre for almost every character, it is only the characters that start to get into the str > 10 range that really make bows start to become more deadly than guns. Consider for a second what the implications of making their damage code str/2 +2 would mean for the worlds currently strongest man. Lets assume a strength of 7 (exceptional attribute). He therefore can do 6P -0 once a round with a bow. Or he could pick up a heavy cross bow and do 7p -1 twice a round. So therefore this would make STR powered bows all but useless to every human and elf. (even at str 9 they do the same damage as said crossbow, but have half the rate of fire) so maxing out your str therefore provides no special bonus to ranged combat (It should, str=9 is SUPERHUMAN! lest we forget.) Sure 11P -0 does seem a bit extreme, but you can only fire it once a round.
a) Direct Comparison to guns: There are only a few guns that have similar rates of fire the the bow in the BBB. They are the warhawk, the PJSS elephant gun, and the Panther assault cannon. Of these the PJSS is a good approximation for the bow due to its similar use (when compared to str min 10+ bows) as both of there legitimate purposes are in big game hunting. For comparable damage, one would need to achieve a str score of 7, which of course is not too dificult for trolls, and only a moderate investment for orks, but a dramatic investment for humans or elves. One difference is that the PJSS costs around 10 times as much. However, Suzie the paraplegic 80 lb. 10 year old girl can fire a PJSS (from a prone possition, but of course it has the range to allow that luxury). The investment in increasing one's strength to levels significantly beyond the damage achievable with the PJSS is significantly more than the 1.2 BP that a PJSS costs. Not to mention that normal ammunition for a bow costs as much as Explosive rounds.
b) The PJSS in not the best gun out there, bows also have to compete with sniper rifles (which can be loaded with APDS), that have twice the volume of fire of the bow and significantly longer range. (although they are of admittedly distinctly different legality classes.)
4) The 18P bow is a special case that might as well be magic for the difficulty of getting 5 points of strength enhancement to stack past ones natural maximum. (I can't see how to do this without magic, unless you actually do find a way to raise the natural maximum)
a) Realistically 13 is pretty much I can see sane (and that is kind of questionable) PC's getting in strength which means 1 attack per round at 15p -0 (+1 for explosive arrows or whatever they added in arsenal). How is that so much worse than 2 8p -4 attacks in the same amount of time? (Walther MA 2100 w/ Ex-Ex) I mean, is it really worth getting ones strength up to 13 just so you can make one attack at twice the value of the attacks you could be making with STR = 1 twice as often that also have much higher (lower) AP ratings. One could also compare the bow attack to a short burst from an alpha followed up by a grenade (from its launcher). Which has the distinct advantage of being area of effect.

Overall point: Bows are not unbalanced as they are no better than other options.

So, essentially, I think that the fact that bows are one of the only really useful applications of high STR, (which is really easy to obtain with a troll compared to achieving such high scores in most any other attribute) just means they attract more attention to the uses of trolls' overcompensated str score than other things. But that isn't to say that there aren't more broken things out there. For example Subduing Combat + Crit. Strike 6 beats a bow by at least 3 points of damage every time. Plus your opponent is immobilized. (Subduing Combat damage is calculated based on straight STR, just like bows are.)
If you really want to talk broken (but not abused, fortunately) for the investment of just under 500k you can get an Ares Dragon(slayer) which has a damage code of 66P -half impact, and are reusable. (with good piloting skills you will succeed on the crash tests, thereby avoiding actually crashing, they are only threshold 2, before the VR threshold reduction) More probably: Cesna's can be purchased at chargen (~160k ) and can do 54p -half impact.

My problem with your argument is that it hinges on this basic premise. I do not believe that it is true that 'the normal Shadowrun game' includes only the BBB. I believe that most games actually include one or more of the supplements, such as Street Magic, or Augmentation. As soon as the supplements are added into the equation, things change. Adepts with Quick Draw have no problem firing at a higher rate than once per IP, and redlined cyberlimbs can boost Strengths into the high 20s. And the reality is that the characters that use a bow are the same characters that take advantage of many of the ways to make that bow more effective (as they damn well should!). So typically, when you do see a character with a bow, you will see an Adept with Quick Draw (or another similar ability), and/or high-Strength cyberlimbs.

Unbalanced? Debateble. Stupid? Not really debateable They're fine at lower power. But at higher strength, they get to equal and exceed rocket launchers in raw damage. I know bows are strong, but they are still firing subsonic projectiles. It just doesn't make sense. Will your game be destroyed by an archer? Of course not. An archer is not the ultimate character, his weapon is unconcealable and pretty loud, and gives no penalty to enemy dodge. A guy with an Alpha will probably cause more mayhem. It's just that people generally don't want a bow to kill a car in one shot, guaranteed. This isn't because bows killing cars suddenly destroys the whole game, it's just frickin dumb

It never states that arrows are fired subsonically only.
They are fairly concealable via the breakable down bow in arsenal.
Cars are too easy to kill in one shot, period.

It never states that, but I'm quite confident that a supersonic arrow isn't possible. Bows would need a draw of tens of thousands of pounds to equal the muzzle velocity of a gun. Someone did the math on it in one thread; suffice it to say that though bows can of course be very deadly, they can't propel arrows with as much power as guns propel bullets.

Assuming you're trying to make an argument for bows not being overpowered, your second point contradicts your first One of the disadvantages of bows is concealability, both because of their size and because of the noise they make. Of course the concealable bow helps, but it's really not that great cuz you need some time to put it together. Guns can be concealable AND you don't need to assemble them before using.

As for your third point, that's probably true. But a trollbow can kill a car even more easily than a barret, which is basically an anti-tank rifle. So... yeah.

@Larme

While I agree with you that bows have too high a DV in the hands of strength enhanced PCs, I'm not sure what you mean by "the noise [bows] make". Surely one of the advantages is that they make a lot less noise than a gun.

Less, maybe. But you might not be so sure if you'd ever heard a high poundage compound bow fire. It makes a loud "CRACK!" Certainly not loud enough that you'd need ear protection like a gun, but it's not quiet. Even recurve bows make noise. And when we're talking about a STR min 15 bow, a bow so strong that it's got twice as much pull as what the strongest man in the world today could draw, it's definitely not subtle. It wouldn't bring people from miles away, but everyone nearby would hear it easily.

Absolutely true, you should just visit an archery range and you'll hear a noticable "twang" every time someone shoots an arrow and this is normal people using normal bows...
A bow silencer does exist though, making the twang barely noticable, though this would be of very minor use in a str 15 bow, I would assume...

Perhaps. But the same can be said of an un-silenced gun. Much less a rocket launcher, which I think we agree would be needed to have the same base DV.

It's a niggling little point really, but I wasn't sure whether it was some sort of persistent typo. Thanks for the clarification, anyway.

Even if they're rather noisey, bows still have a WTF? factor to consider. I mean, what kind of nut uses bows any more? In the sprawl? Maybe if you're on the border with some back-to-the-land NAN tribals, sure...

Suppose Joe SecGuard is doing his rounds and hears a loud crack sound. He will, of course, investigate it because that's his job. However, unless he is familiar with bows (or has a sound analysis program runnign or something), he's not going to think "OMG bow-wielding intruders!" He's going to think, "WTH was that? Did something break? Fall over?" Joe isn't likely to react to the bow's sound as a threat (unless the facility is on alert, I suppose).

Or unless there's a two-meter length of rebar with a few fletchings attached to it sticking out of his buddy, Bob's, chest. That wouldn't probably serve as something of a clue that someone was up to no good.

No it isn't. Not continuously. Not at full draw on a longbow. Or even a compound bow. Not unless you're counting the superspeed available to heavilty cybered characters, and I dont' think that's necessary for this abuse of the rules. You might get one arrow off 3 seconds after you've loosed the first, but then you have an empty bow and need to start again. The fastest I've seen a longbowman shoot was more than 3 seconds per arrow (18 in a minute), and that was at half draw. Even with the arrows stuck in the ground with the cock feathers the right way round, the arrow has to come over the string and be nocked before you can raise the bow and start to haul on the string. If a player wanted to do this in my game I'd be making them roll agility tests to nock fast enough.

Sure, a mechanic can be interpreted here to let you fire off stupid numbers of dice that were never intended by the designers. Which is all great and dandy if you, your Ref and your gaming group are having fun. But if your ref says "not in my game", then that's the end of it, neh.

Fair enough. At the point at which Bob dies horribly where Joe can see him, it really doesn't matter too terribly much what you're firing (bow, crossbow, barret, dikoted carp, angry dwarves). It'd be pretty clear to Joe that someone was up to no good.

so... kinda like a quickdraw test then? =P

On topic: I think I may be house ruling bows to be SS weapons. It really is hardly a nerf (you can't fire faster without a special ability anyway) and it can help cut down on some of the absurdity. (Yes the ability of an arrow to penetrait a squad car's armor does seem a little wacky, but arrow shapes (Flechettes) are actually one of the most efficient shapes for armor penetrating projectiles, the kinetic energy penetrators used in Main Battle Tanks are shaped like tungsten (or whatever) arrows and are refered to as Armor Piercing Fin Stabilized Discarding Sabot (APFSDS) ammunition) So I can definitely see why people object to the premise of the car killing bow, I was just pointing out that if your primary concern is enjoyable game play over realism (Not that that is necessarily how it should be, realism is its own brand of fun) then bows don't need too much re-balancing as is.
As always, your mileage may vary.