I've got a question for the DS Community: Can you install a smartlink on a bow? For that matter, what other odd items could you install: A laser sight? A magnification scope? A rigid stock with shock pad?

Laser sight definitely.
http://www.archery-laser.com/

I would imagine a smartlink could be fitted similarly. Mag scopes are more difficult because of the way bows are held. You could have an exchangeable lens sighting system with different lenses for different lengths, but it wouldn't be quite so practical, and would be somewhat bulky. A standard mag scope would be too small to use at arm's length.

No shockpads.

What about Counterweights and personalized Grip ?

With an indian dance
Medicineman

SR3 Canon Companion Page 13, Bow Accessory Mount.
yes, you can install things like Range-Finder for your Smartlink 2 Troll-Archer O.o
or the Extreme Range Laser Pointer for your Adept with Low-Light and Zoom in his eyes

Definitly, for all your full-auto archery needs.

well. with 4 arms you could, theoretically, shoot 2 bos,and with 6 arms 3 bows, so at least burst fire bows could happen . . but nowhere does it say that bows create recoil ^^

Counterweights are pretty useless as they would inhibit the bows ability to accelerate the arrow thus lessening reach and strength of the projectile. Personalized Grips I'd allow but they are also barely usefull since bows are needed to be "reloaded" every single shot. A span of time in which any form of recoil is already processed. For style reasons I'd allow them, none the less.

What about any form of hoists to lessen the needed power to span the bow and thus reducing any form of exertional trembling (as a sort of recoil ruleswise)?

There are stabilizers and dampers for compound bows.

I've yet to see anyone actually post a valid reason for a character using a bow, such as being a traditionalist native american. It's always max strength trolls, taking advantage of the absurd troll-bow exploit. Note that I'm not saying there can't be a valid reason, but noone seems to use one; probably because bows are not that good unless you exploit the absence of a strength cap.

With that caveat, there is no reason why a bow could not support a smartlink. A camera, range-finder, tension detectors etc. could readily interpolate the data and transmit a projected trajectory to an image link. Combined with image magnification you wouldn't need a traditional scope. Frankly a laser sight would be far less useful, since arrows follow a more pronounced parabola than bullets.

Recoil is not an issue (SS), so I don't know what benefit a personalised grip or counterweights would provide, unless you mean as part of the firing action of the bow. In that case I would consider such technological improvements to be included in the bow from the get go. They certainly seem to be present in the image in Arsenal, alongwith complex pulley arrangements.

outgame=ingame reason.
if i realize that things like spears and the such and darts and arrows shot/hurled by me do penetrate armor better than most hand guns, why should i not use an perfectly legal to own sporting device as a weapon?
that's like saying there's no reason for people to use baseball-clubs or lead pipes for hitting people, when there's this telescoping staff or a tonfa that is built for exactly that purpose . .

You want a valid reason?
Bows are quiet, they have alot of variety in their arrowheads, and, you know, not everyone wants to shoot stuff with a gun. Now, yes, Troll+Troll Bow does make the MOST benefit from a bow, but, really, in theory, anyone can make just as much benefit.

That said, I would allow a Smartlink on a bow, though I would probably add a little extra to deal with the added complexity of the software, like, maybe, an extra 100 Nuyen or so...but I would allow it. Laser sights, I would also allow, but they would only give their bonus at very short ranges. However, a valid use of a laser sight would be gauging drift from the point of aim due to things like wind, airpressure, etc. Quite useful if your plan involves shooting a grapple arrow across the way....I might even allow the laser sights bonus to be added to the smartlink in a case like that....

Is that a response directed at me Stahlseele?

Sure, there are in-game reasons for making a character that uses a bow, but have you ever seen anyone posting here making one that don't involve using a max strength troll?

As far as 'perfectly legal to own sporting device' YMMV. In the UK today it's perfectly legal to own a knife, but if you get caught carrying the thing around, and can't offer a good reason you're in trouble. Similarly with a bow, which you can't reasonably disguise or hide, carrying it strung and ready to use will get you questioned pretty thoroughly, and I doubt they'll accept "I'm on my way to the range". The legality or otherwise in your game depends on the running location and the GM.

You argument about baseball bats and tonfa is a strawman. A tonfa could as readily be sports equipment as a bow. The principal reason for using a low tech weapon like a lead pipe would be disposability, not the absence of a telescoping staff.

Is anyone actually reading past the first line of my post?

I explicitly stated that there are in game reasons for using a bow, but I have personally not seen a single character posted on dumpshock that uses a bow and is not a mega strength troll.

@Cardul. The number of perception dice penalties mods like internal suppressors and subsonic ammo apply make it quite possible to make a gun effectively silent in SR. Also the array of arrow-heads offer little more variety than the array of different ammo types.

Hey, if it makes you feel any better ornot, I understand what you're trying to say. And for what it's worth, aside from the Bow troll I helped make for a friend of mine in our current Shadowrun game, mostly because we all thought it was awesome, the only other character I've ever built that used a bow had pretty good in game reasons for it. He was like... a total neo-tribal throwback, didn't use guns or fancy weapons, just tomahawks and a bow and beyond that he was just a NAN human. He had the 'ware to pay the bills and make his investment in off kilter weapons count for something, but yeah, there you go. A character who used a bow just for the sake of concept.

Thankyou Brigandier

you could use Smartgun with a Bow in SR3(or was it SR2 ?) so why not in SR4
@Ornot
one of my Chars ,a female NAN Orkish Weaponsmaster and Ki-Ad also uses a Bow (with STR 5 IIRC)
for the sake of Style.But she also uses Pistols,Assault Rifles,Tomahawk,Knifes,Shuriken...Weaponsmaster

HouHouka
Medicineman

It tells you what can be added to bows in the SR4 BBB. I'll pull up page number and quote when I get home tonight unless anyone wants to dig it up. It is right at the begining of the gear chapter in the back, on the same or page after where it tells you what accessories you can add to different types of guns.

IIRC, Smartgun & Lasersight.

how about this, one wont see posts about non-maxed troll archers as there is no reason to post about them.

thats also why most posts are about "broken" rules, because non-broken rules dont need a post, just to have everyone agree its not broken...

sadly, this kind of behavior can make ones perception of things get a bit unbalanced.

silent majority vs vocal minority and all that stuff...

How about maxing the strength at 6 for bows (Max human). I'm sure that while bows above that strength would be available, they would be custom items. Mainly because the composites required would be expensive and the number of persons interested in such an item would few (no mass production facility needed for the 12 or so people in Seattle that may want one and could afford it. Therefore the availibility should be more than 12 (what starting PCs by RAW can get), and extremely expensive (probably in the 10K range).

My Houseroule is:
Bows with Str 1-6 avail: min STR x2
Trollsize avail +0
Bows with STR 6-12 avail: min STR x3
Trollsize avail +4
More isn't Possible
(only with a special Super-Duper-Adventures)

with a superduperdance
Medicineman

From thw SR4 BBB, Gear Ratings sidebar, under "Mounts" (pg 302)


I've seen a couple non-troll archers in my time.

Silverstring: a SR2-era human street samurai with a thing for bows. He had a cyberarm (maxed strength) and some custom cyberware (reinforced joints, limited bone lacing, etc.) that allow him to take full advantage of the arm's superhuman strength.
EDIT: And Dikoted arrowheads. Can't forget those...

The old Tribesman Archetype from 1e/2e had a bow.

I've never had enough gumption to play him, but I have an Elf with Scorched and BTL Addiction who runs a Reality Filter on commlink 24/7/365. He's stuck in an over-the-top fantasy world hallucination. He's far from optimized (Strength 3), but he does have Agility 6, Archery (Bows): 6 (+2), and a Smartlink (which the Reality Filter interprets to look like a wind spirit who guides his aim.). His backup weapon is a pair of cougar long blades. I'll probably run him as an NPC sometime because I don't think I could actually stay in character for extended periods.

-paws

Thanks for finding it paws2sky. I remembered it but being at work, could not look it up and give page numbers.

Heh, yeah. Once you've seen them chonk through an engine block you'll never forget Dikote arrowheads.

I've seen several characters over the years who've used bows. Primarily adepts before the gunsliger came out. Others were more traditional "samurai" who espoused the use of firearms. OK, he was also a troll. The benefit of the bow, is that its quiet, non-heat residue signature, decent range, and can also be used for indirect fire or "cloud shooting." Plus there#'s a lot of para-nasties out there who have a vulnerability to certain marterials, most of which a good weaponsmith can make arrowheads out of. Oh, and the ammo's reusable and can be used effectively to hit undewarter targets. Hmm, can't recall if bows use impact armour over ballistic - they used too waaaaay back in 1st edition. Then there's the fact that most bows are classed as sporting equipment or hunting weapons and don't really cause too much of a stir compared to a rifle or handgun. Plus they're non-metallic, chemsniffer defeating, work when wet, and generally can be used to do cool things guns can't.

Impale the gun bunnie's hand to the way - check.
Leave considerable length of arrowshaft protruding from wound to aid interrogation - check.
Twang through several targets with one shot [troll-maxed bow with Dikoted arrowheads] - check.

Ooo, and lets not forget about those obscure Olde Worlde bylaws, especially the English ones regarding archery practice being mandatory for every male over 12 on the village green for an hour every Sunday. Or the one that states its still legal for any Englishman with a longbow to shoot any Welshman found on the old city streets of Chester after midnight.

As for what you can attach to them, well using the bow accessory mount you could mount a scope in 3rd Edition. Laser sights were possible, although not really any gopd in reallity considering a arrow's trajectory doesn't fly straight like a bullet's. Oh, and then there was upgrading it to a smartlink as long as you had the bow-hand (your off hand) rigger with the palm induction link - which is downright ludicrous seeing as shooting a bow acurately requires a combination of body stance and both arms working in co-ordination. Maybe the new tech in 4th Edition might make a smartlink possible for trajectory and stance-correction as long as the user had smartclothes and gloves and the bow was a smartbow with an internal set of tension/torsion sensors and diagnostic tech - wireless links would enable actual useful data to be used there I think.

As for recoil, there is no recoil. That's absorbed into the stave and the kinetic energy imparted by drawweight is imparted into the projectile (arrow) for forward flight. The reason why dry-firing a bow is a no-no, as it weakens the stave.

No real reason you _couldn't_ put an appropriately designed scope on a bow, it's just that based on contemporary hunting bows, your point of aim will only be accurate within +/- 5m of the range you sight it in. In SR terms, a scope might only be effective in one range band.

Most bow sights I have seen have multiple aim points, and you set them individually for different ranges. One each 10m is common, if you fire a really fast bow, you might set them 15m apart.

(Note that _strong_ doesn't necessarily mean _fast_. If you fire too light an arrow from too strong a bow, you just destroy your arrow. This is why I picture ST14 trollbows firing rebar that has been turned on a lathe.)

I have a character built that uses a bow (Str 3 Human). I haven't actually played her, for various reasons, but non-Troll archers certainly happen.

Yeah, I have a shaman(finnish mythology based), that had a bow as his primary ranged weapon. He had a few options-a Stunbolt/Manabolt and melee combat as well, but I didn't want to keep popping off spells every time he needed to hit someone, and if he couldn't get close, i wanted another ranged option that fit him. I think he had one point in Pistols he learned later, but his Archery skill was his best ranged attack; he was Strength 5, and did just fine with it; even downed a couple of paranormal critters in one shot. Again, it just seems like the case of hearing about the trolls most often since they have the uber-super-bows.

I also had a weapon specialist that had the archery skill and owned a bow, but didn't use it all that often(it was more of a flavor skill, sport-archery, and hell, just in case.)

I had a SR3 character that only got played once. Dutch was an ork who use anything *but* guns in combat. The bow was his only standard weapon; the rest of the time, he threw billiard balls and clubbed people with pool cues.

the ability to combine a airburst link, bow, and explosive arrows would be nice.

think of it as a very quiet grenade launcher.

quiet until the grenade goes off.

tape grenade with grenade airburst link capabilities to arrow and shoot arrow.
use grenades that let out smoke and or stun gas or something equivalently vile.
or shoot splash grenades with slip-spray faar away ^^
will still stay kinda quiet in those cases O.o

i had a STR16 Troll built for a game, but my GM said i could only spend 2 points of essence on him, so i had to take out things like smartlink, rangefinder and mathmatical subprocessor to calculate wind and range for indirect shooting . . will put those in first thing in game though . . because i allways had planned on him using the bow for long range sniping . . kinda like in most anime where the single deadly arrow suddenly falls seemingly straight from the sky and nails the target to the ground . . and his backstory will be of a critter hunter that does his hunting old school style with bow and arrows and his hand blades . . both laced with GammaScopolamine so he can just lightly to moderately wound his prey but have it fall down and go to sleep immediately so he can shoot it with a net gun and cart it off to where ever . .

The character I asked this question for is actually a strength 6 (after cyberwear) elf adept.

smargun system, why not little piece of ware on bow which calculates current bow tilt, tension and knows used arrows material etc. sound reasonable. rangefinder could be used measure distance to target so that smartgun system could give hint what to do if user wants to hit target (adjust angle, more power) but it would not help when using indirect fire

I'm relieved to see that bows are not soley the province of trolls!

I think getting into too much detail about what a smartlink does on a bow is not worthwhile. Just as a smartlink in a pistol probably measures barrel temperature, ejection pressure and a dozen other things we don't care about (about the only piece of relevant information from a game point of view is ammunition remaining), a bow smartlink would logically measure draw pressure and loading, but none of it is important. Unlike the smartgun, ammunition is unimportant to the smartbow, since it must be reloaded each time.

Considering the relatively simple physics involved in a bow, I forsee the smartbow displaying a predicted flight path to the user, just as a smartgun displays a targetting reticule, so would apply equally to indirect fire, within reason (there is no way for the system to compensate for unknown windspeeds at different altitudes).

hmm . . tape wire with wifi-capable RFID-Tag onto the arrow, shoot arrow through the frigging wall and use the wire to get through wifi-inhibiting stuff and then use the wifi rfid to go into the wireless net of the building?

Oooo, that's a good one.

As for taping grenades to arrows, well don't expect them to fly true. In fact they're more likely to spin off and hit the ground near to the archer because they'd be incredibly unbalanced. Better off sticking to lobbing them, or grenade launchers.

Air-timed explosive heads would be feasable though. Plus don't forget toxin-coated heads. Or even capsule heads if shaped and machined appropriately.

BTW - anyone ever consider the length of a troll's arrow? As a standard human I've got a wrist to chin drawlength of about 36" (3' or 1 yard). If I was to use a traditional English longbow draw to my ear it might get to 4'. Now, consider that proportionately a Troll metatype can reach 3m in height, roughly a third again - so a 6' arrow shaft isn't unreasonable to imagine. But then also factor in the fact that a troll's arms are the same ratio as their legs. Oh yeah. anyone fancy being stuck by an 8-9' arrow that's probably 2-3" thick? No wonder troll bows are feared. Although Lone Star won't really have to think very hard to solve what did the damage to a bunch of security guard corpses impaled to walls with fletched javelins will they?

Sterilize the area with a spell to remove fingerprints and DNA, and well there you go. Which troll killed them? (Side note: upstrengthed characters of other races could also do something similar).

I dunno about fingerprints. Even with a fairly weak bow in the LARP I play, I fire with gloves to protect my fingers from string burn. I would think with a rather powerful bow like that you would definitely use gloves.

trolls get dermal armor for that ^^
or if they are using sissy bows with itty bitty little strings . . just draw with the nails O.o
the really bad thing about toyin laced arrows from troll-bows is the simple fact that if you hit, you DO deal physical damage, thus every hit is an guaranteed injection with whatever you so chose to dip your arrows in . . even if a Ranger-X Bow in SR would only do STR+4L damage(it does STR+4M by the way), a high strength troll would still hit for anything between 14L and 20L Damage at Game-start.
if you don't manage to fully dodge the shot, you're not likely to be able to stage down damage to nothing . . and because of the huge power, it's very likely above armor and so does physical damage in SadoRun4 . .
and even if you only hit for the 20L damage and thus only gain one box of physical damage(however that would work, probably a long scratch from head to toe along the whole body underneath all of your armor) you would be able to inject things like GammaScopolamine so the target has to resist 10DEADLY Stun in Addition without any kind of Armor and most likely only with relatively low natural body . .
even trolls are hard pressed to roll eight tens to reduce the deadly to zero stun . .
so with one box physical damage, you'd probably drop most big critters with . . probably, 10D instant Stun-Damage . .
thus it's the perfect weapon for any real hunter who does not want to damage the body/pelt more than neccessary O.o