Spirit Powers get two feeders of dice from the spirit to affect the target but the target gets only Willpower is most cases. Counterspelling should work against Spirit powers so both the Spirit and Target of the same ability have a 50/50 chance of resisting.

I'm not normally someone who defend the rather cliché "combat" adept but in fourth edition they HAVE been nerfed.

Since an adept nowadays can be the Social Adept, Hacker Adept, Rigger Adept and a bunch of other combinations the Improved ability needs to be corrected.

WHY is combat abilities 0,5 points per level and the others 0,25. Keep all of them at 0,25 since they can do equal "damage" in their respective fields.

I see troll bows as being made from truck leaf springs welded together in an auto shop and 1/8" aircraft cable.

But the Troll-bow concept is very broken IMO. Are there any other muscle powered weapons that use Str+X instead of (Str/2)+X?

Come to think of it, the terminal ballistics of an arrow is very similar to that of a spear, and spears are (Str/2)+X, aren't they?

I would jump into the bow v. spear discussion, but I don't really feel the impulse.

Bows can be build to almost any strength. The "only" problem would be the arrows, and money can solve that problem, as for arrows production to specification will be easy.

Trolls would likely need a superheavy crossbow - a winch mechanism that can make use of their strength and projectiles that can be MUCH shorter (but heavier) than arrows.

If one wants to change the rules for bows one option might be to start granting AP instead of DV once a certain DV is reached. Overpenetration on soft targets is a given.

Odinson, You sound like a fan of the Troll archer concept. I sincerely hope you continue to have fun with the character type in your game. That is the reason we are here after all.

I just don't agree with your opinion using projectile speed to justify what looks like a typo held over from 3E. Luckily, we don't have to agree for you to have a good time with your gaming group.

Fan or not, he's right that the characteristics of a bow and spear are totally different. The bow operates on a spring principle, while the spear is a direct-energy transfer. Since the spring allows you to store energy, you can get a bigger push out of it.

I've always found the idea of trolls shooting telephone poles from compound bows rather amusing. Still, not that I'd ever personally allow one, blatant uses of exploits tend to irk me. If you're going to be an assclown at least be creative about it.

The only problem with lowering the bow damage is that it makes bows useless for normal people, or you need some ridiculous Str/2+ 4 or something so that someone with maximum normal human Str has the same damage value as a crossbow. Crossbows already get multiple shots per round, lower the bow damage much and it is just a horrible choice. You need a Str of 12(12+2= 14) to equal the same amount of damage as a heavy crossbow in one round. Yes, I know crossbows fight armor twice, but they also get accuracy dice twice not to mention they have AP. I mean, it's only -1, but it's still AP. They also qualify for injection bolts just like arrows do. For everyone but a Troll who, let's face it, has a STr of 12-15 and probably not so hot agility, or just crappy at most everything else, the crossbow is a much better choice.


Chris



PS: I would also like to say that while Hood was amusing, the archetype of Troll Bowman seems very silly to me.

The problem I think Troll Bows get into is that there's a dropoff in wounding effect for arrows past a certain point that no game system is really ever going to be able to model correctly. Barring massive changes in what arrows and arrowheads are made out of, arrows are probably going to encounter a severe dropoff in wound force far before the maximum STR that is achievable via a cybered-out troll. To suggest that arrows are capable of reaching wound levels around 15-19 (attribute boost, muscle augmentation, cyberlimbs being redlined, et cetera) strikes me as akin to saying that ordinary rifles are capable of reaching that level simply by increasing the powder charge, rather than wholly redesigning the gun, penetrator, and so on. I find it likely that any arrow and arrowhead capable of delivering as much damage as an AV rocket isn't going to resemble anything currently available in terms of materials. If it were, the arrowhead and arrow would be utterly destroyed upon impact, and would lose a lot of their penetrating power. At higher strength, bows should have some kind of rule of diminishing returns. At the same time, nobody wants to write rules to model that.

That said, by the rules, they can. It hasn't been errata'd out, so knock yourselves out.

Dikoted arrows?

Dikote was my preferred handwavium to apply to handle high-power Ranger-X bows, yeah. Dikote for both the heads and the shaft. I sorta went, "You wanna outperform an autocannon? Part with the cash."

The design problem with the trollbow is in the arrows, not the bow itself. Building the bow is almost trivial, but making arrows that are stiff enough to resist the compression from teh bowstring will take some work. The extra power from the bow is only useful when it goes into making the arrow go, rather than making the arrow flex. Of course, troll arrows would be bigger (5 feet long?) as well.

Heh, part of the problem here is one of game design. There are no rules for thing like bleeding or 'eventually fatal wounds' you go from running around, roaring you defiance, and shooting at the baddies to on your back, seconds from death with no in between.

Hitting a deer with an arrow such that it is immediately incapacitated and dies around 10 seconds after the hit (assuming body 3, 10 condition monitor for the deer, and it takes 10) is basically impossible. Hitting a deer with an arrow such that it bleeds to death several minutes later (and several hundred meters away) is much simpler. Heck, even deer who have their heart and lungs mostly pulped by a rifle bullet behind the front shoulder can still manage to run 30+ meters.

As a rule of thumb when fact checking vs RL, any single wound that inflicts 6+ boxes in SR has a pretty good chance of killing you less than an hour and an wound that inflicts 3+ boxes has some chance of killing you in several hours (barring medical attention).

Assuming we want our bow to do at least 6 damage to a body 3 deer fired by a bow hunter who has agility 3, archery 2, and has taken 2 actions to aim (for 7 dice in total, less with penalties for cove and range) means that our average bow needs to do a base damage of at least 5.

The problem you get when scaling up the damage for the trollbow is that damage on the high end is severely compressed, while damage from the trollbow scales linearly. The sample Anti-tank rocket, if we compare it to modern equivalents, can penetrate a half a meter or more of armor steel, but the game designers have it do 16(-6). If we assume the assault cannon is firing modern 25mm HEDP rounds, they will penetrate around 40mm of armor steel and it gets a damage rating of 10(-5).

I did about 5 min of googling, and 60-70 lbs seems like a good range for normal (Str3 ?) hunting bows.

I wouldn't have much problem with a broadhead arrow from this bow having roughly the same wounding power as a heavy pistol. (roughly .45ACP). I wouldn't raise too much of a fuss over giving it AR damage (5.56mm Nato), but Sporting rifle (.308) is too much. So perhaps Str/2 + 3?

Scale that up to a Str 10 Troll, pulling a 350 lb bow, and you have 8P. That doesn't hurt my brain for a ballista bolt moving at 280fps.

Whose cannon moves?

I've got little actual problem with troll bows being disgusting, but there are certain points that make sense here.

Making arrows that can stand up to the force of firing from a Str 15 bow doesn't seem like a problem when you have the technology to create nanites and cybeware and the like. Carbon nanotubes, honeycombed titainium, unobtainium... That part doesn't seem too far fetched.

However, the idea that arrows should work like flechettes makes sense. After all, what is a broadhead arrow, but a small knife on a shaft. It works on a cutting principle, not on a penetrating one, rather like a flechette. But, you say, what about target points? Well, that's essentially a bullet point on a shaft, so no problem, adjust accordingly: Broadhead arrows are (STR+2)(f)P with a AP of +2, and target points are, say (STR-2)P. No, it doesn't really keep the troll from having a DV of 15, but it does make them less effective. Perhaps, since an arrowhead isn't a bundle of needles, one might make it +4 AP, or even the old flechette rule of double impact armor.

The idea of increasing the cost of the arrows makes sense too. Perhaps a simple double the costs for all arrow rated for bows over STR 7?

ED 209: 60-75lb draws are a little low, (for a compound bow), in my experience. I'd day 75-100lbs are more typical for an experienced bow hunter. And I've known some who regularly used 150-175lb bows.

The realism of troll bows I'm not particularly qualified to comment on (though a troll with cyberware is essentially a machine designed to draw incredible strength bows - look at the cover of Runner Havens if you have it. Assuming the woman is about 5'7", then the troll is about to scale.)

However, in terms of game balance, troll bows are not overpowered, imo. The reason being the following disadvantages:

Completely unconcealable relative to guns.
One shot per initiative pass (requires Ready Weapon Action)
No BF and definitely FA which limits tactical options
No ability to shoot from prone, or crouched behind cover. The best you'll ever achieve is being slightly hidden behind a wall or doorway.
No ability to "quick draw"
No easy ability to pick up ammunition.
Limited ability to carry ammunition (I'll turn a blind eye to the troll carring 100 bullets, but 100 arrows?)
Signature weapon (The police line-up will not be long)
Odd drop off in power compared to assault rifles (the favourite weapon, ime).
Fragility compared to guns.
Replaceability.
Strength based (usually a bit of a dump stat for combat optimised characters)
Get laughed at a lot.

EDIT: Two-handed so no carrying the MacGuffin and shooting like a pistol. Got to stop. My games tend to be quite tactical. Cover, running firefights, etc. The limitations of a bow are obvious to me.

Bows definitely work on a penetration principle rather than a slicing principle. Compound bows work with pulleys and levers so they magnify your stength far greater than throwing a spear.

The arrow heads I've used are actually rather dull and the shafts are made of plain hollow aluminum and those go right through car doors and 1" plywood like it was nothing (there's never a lack of stripped cars to use for target practice in the desert). And that's with my feeble half-strength compound draw, let alone max human strength or max troll strength. I've never shot at live targets, but I've heard stories (maybe this is a job for Mythbusters) from hunters that say their arrows have punched right through a mule deer and kept on going out the far side.

I figure a troll archer would be on the strength scale of a ballista and those are incredibly powerful, slicing through multiple armored warriors and dropping horses. With modern materials for the bow and arrows, I can actually believe a troll archer would be a threat to a heavy vehicle.

I'm starting to get an urge to take up archery. Sounds quite fun.

In my game it was an Ork Phys Ad, but he shot down numerous helicopters, patrol boats, armored vehicles, gun emplacements... he was one of the few characters with an attack with a high enough Power Level to get through most hardened armors (if memory serves, he was doing sniper rifle damage or just above), and throwing enough dice that if he could get the arrow through it, the vehicle would be destroyed. It wasn't the 2M modified damage that was killing the car, it was the 18 successes.

I never really thought of it as being unbalancing, or "unrealistic", just that it was that character's schitck. That was probably one of the longest running characters in our group, it was I think one of that player's first SR2 characters and he updated it to SR3, so that character was probably around for about 8 years. (That player switched out characters a lot, but Rex was one he always came back to.)

You guys do realize that there's an obvious solution to this problem, right?

New EXPLODING ARROWS™ from Rambocorp (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ares Arms™)!

Rambocorp's new line of exploding arrows comes in both HE and fragmentation models, as well as the newly-introduced AV line, which features a shaped charge warhead for those pesky Citymasters, Yellowjackets, and Theoretical Trolls!

The probably has been clearly stated however, and its that weapon damage is compressed past a certain point, but bow damage is a linear scale. Should be an elementary fix! (Apply compression to the equation used to determine bow damage, derf!)