As of SR4A the maximum damage a bow, or correctly the arrow fired from a bow, can inflict is Rating *1.5. With Rating 6 (maximum for norms and elves without attack penalty) only 9P can be inflicted with such a weapon. With a bow for average humans it gets even more ridiculous. The maximum damage is 3*1.5= 4.5; the Bow however does a minimum of 6P.

The rules don't even specify if custom arrows (from Arsenal) or Called shots can surpass this limit.

Did someone go too far in trying to make troll bows more reasonable? I think this attempt failed, 18P(maximum for a STR 12 Bow, needs 4 net hits) should put a dent in most targets.

Well, can light and medium pistols kill?

A skilled shooter can kill with them.

IIRC there are no medium pistols in SR4

Heh, I meant 4P and 5P pistols, because of his '4.5P' example. But right.

I didn't even notice this rule. If Max damage would be something around 15P it would be reasonable, but this is insane.

I prefer my own fix (bows have damage Str/2+3, 5P average user (almost a bit too high), 9P for strong trolls (modified by net hits of course with no real cap).

If the max damage was purely for the purpose of shooting through barriers I could buy it, but an arrow through your head is an arrow through your head. Some things in 4A seems like we know a problem exists, we will "fix" it with another problem. I like FriendoftheDork's solution since it makes bows consistent with other muscle powered weapons. As you pointed out what adds to the idiocy of this rule is with someone with a 6 strength there base damage is 9, because they can only get the benefit of one net hit. In fact they whether they hit or miss they do 9P or nothing.

I've not read the trollbow "fixing" rules as I dont see the need to fix something with to be fair has one never really come up as a problem.

Which page are those rules ? I looked for them but the only thing I found was the limit to a Strength of 8 in the "Gear" section.

STR 8? It's twelve.

I too would love to see a better fix. FriendOfTheDork's fix might work, but does anyone else have other suggestions?

Does any one know where this rule is? The one about the damage cap? I can find nothing in my book about it. I only see the one on SR4A p 316

I'd just remove the 1.5*rating cap on a bow. That's silly, there is no built in cap on how much damage a pistol can do. I don't have the book, so can't look up if the rule is actually in there or not, but if it is, it sounds like a knee jerk reaction to the troll bow that did more damage than an assault cannon.

Personally I've always though this direct comparison of strength to damage is a bit silly. Modern compound bows make draw strength a much lower requirement than something like a long bow anyway, so I don't see that someone stronger is going to be able to draw a bow that much more powerful. Heck, to be perfectly honest, with all the tech available in SR, there isn't any reason the pulleys could turn themselves and basically draw the bow for you, making strength of the user utterly irrelevant.

I do like FotD's solution. Brings it in line with other strength based weapons. Means a troll isn't god with a bow, and a human can still do something useful with it. Leave the strength cap at 8, so the best bow does about the damage of an assault rifle, and a low pull bow is somewhere in line with a holdout.

Yeah, I think FotD is right. I'm going to adopt his fix into my houserules document. YOINK!

Some of you are referencing the SR4a PDF and some the actual print book. Bows are different in each source. Yay! More inconsistency. One of my players pointed this out recently and he only has the PDF. I checked my PDF and he is right about the arrow cap, but then I checked my hardcover and it is different. No cap on max damage other than the fact a bow has a max strength of 8. Therefore Max base damage is 8P with no limit on number of hits you can get. Hardcover rules trump PDF rules (unless all you got is the PDF).

Your fix?

LOL

This ruling has been used by many more people than you, for longer than you. The only other point you have ever brought this up is claiming you liked it from another's list of House Rules.

I have been posting/promoting this rule for well over a year (possibly two), and have been using it nearly as long as you, potentially even longer (you having used it for slightly over two years at the most).



I don't have a problem with you sharing ideas for House Rules.
I do have a problem with you claiming they are "yours", when they so very clearly are not.


Edit: As others have mentioned, the maximum of bows, Rules as Written, is Rating 8, with no other limits.
For those of you thinking the PDF & Print books are different - wrong. You are using out of date PDFs - they where corrected long before the hardcover was printed.

I'm sorry ,but its 8
it used to be 12 ,but the Rules have been Errattaed (in the German BBB pg 361)
together with the x1,5 "Issue"

the newest Rules simply say
Damage = MinSTR+2 for Bows (capped at STR8 /Dam 10P)

with the newest german Dance
Medicineman

While this nerfs troll bows even more, at least it isn't as stupid for normal bows.

I Agree (even though 2 of my Chars are Troll Archers)

Hough!
Medicineman

You know, if it says it like that, I don't know that they mean the cap on damage capable of being delt is 10P, but instead that the cap is on the base damage of a bow.

Personally I still think 10P damage is ridiculous, given that is as much as an assault cannon.

Also, Mu, no reason to blow up at FotD like that. He likely meant 'my fix' as in 'the fix that I use'. Kind of like how I use the term 'my car' as in 'the car that I use' even though the bank technically still owns it till I've finished paying it off, and I certainly don't mean to claim that I designed and built my car from scratch.

That's not just in the german version =) The early SR4A pdf version has it wrong,t hough. They left the original rules text, but changed the table stats.

If you think troll bow do too much damage you haven't seen some of the unarmed combat biuld on the forums they do 13-16P with there fists.

Which if I recall includes things like being an adept and taking 20BP of martial arts qualities and being in melee range and burning a large number of your power points towards that.

Compare that to: Pick up a bow.

Yeah, sure, you can get crazy high unarmed damage, but it is a heck of alot harder than being a troll and picking up a bow.

That's not to say I'm, you know, super happy with the idea of a person punching harder than an assault cannon, but given the magic involved and excessive amount of effort and investment, I certainly don't mind it as much.

Easy man, I'm not intentionally claiming credit for other people's rules. This is my fix, and I honestly can't remember yoinking them from anyone else, although it may be inspired from Synner's old ones, can't remember. In any case changing Str to Str/2 doesn't take much imagination anyway so a pararell development isn't that far fetched, is it?

Although if bows are capped at rating 8 it's not that much point anymore since 10P would be the max. At least that's not better than the Assault cannon.

Not better than, but the idea that an arrow can be as strong as an Assault cannon?

There is a reason you don't see bows on the battlefield, and haven't for a few centuries; they aren't nearly as effective as a gun. Even back when guns sucked they were preferred over bows unless you were comparing an unskilled musketeer to a highly skilled archer.

The advent of gunpoweder weapons came not withtheir indivdual effectives, but with the ease of training soldiers with them. You could take arecruit, slap a few moths of training on them and they'd be good to go with a gunpowder weapons. You needed years of training for efficient archers. Also, you could carry more bullets and powder than you could carry fletched arrows. And the ammunition was faster to produce.

I agree that a 10P bow is ludicrous, but it would also require 8 Strength to pull it. No living human would even come close to puling a bow with that kind of punch. The sheer mass of arrows fired with such a monster would be considerably more than regular bullet and the potential trauma would be devastating. Not to mentiont hat it would be highly effective against your average bulletproof vest.

STR8 would be what? A 300-400 lbs bow? If you just think of the nescessary mass of an arrow with enough structural integrity not to shatter the moment you release the bowstring and what it would do hitting you...

Yeah, 10P might be a bit over board, but I could definitely see an 8P code justified.

I agree, 8P I could totally see, that's along the lines of a shotgun.

And you're quite right about the training thing being a large part of it, but given that SR has no mechanic to balance out that becoming a competent marksman takes a few weeks or months, and becoming a competent archer takes years, the two weapons should be otherwise balanced, and they are dreadfully lacking in that.

Also, arrows are actually worse at going through armor than bullets are (One more reason guns were preferred). Not sure if that holds up against bulletproof vests, but I imagine it would.

It's along the lines of a Sport Rifle, actually, which is still too much. Oh well.

Bullet proof vests (using kevlar) are extremely poor at stoping arrows. The ones that use ceramic plates in addition perform admirably against arrows, though.

Interesting. Roughly what I was expecting. I'm not entirely sure about the reason why kevlar does worse against arrows though, but I think I remember seeing something along those lines on Discovery or History.

Arrows dont deform on impact, because theyre moving much slower. In addition, razer heads will cut through the threads of kevlar, as the kevlar's function is to kind of "catch" a bullet.

Also, arrows have more penetrating power than most bullets, because of simple physics. Arrowhead strikes surface, transfers it's energy to surface, the rest of the arrow is still moving at full velocity however, and continues to push the arrowhead forward.

I doubt that. Physics is more interested in KE, which is the same regardless of shape. Arrow has more mass, but moves slower, and so I think actually has a lower KE than a bullet.

I guess it depends on what deforms and how. I've not looks at slomo footage of modern arrows but the fact is the shaft some times acts like a spring thus apply just that bit more force after impact however I doubt that's a major amount.

It absolutely will.

Here's an article for your education:

http://www.alaskafrontierarchery.com/Articles.html

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?s=&a...st&p=612994

Next most recent post (& probably only other post) you have made on the subject of bow damage.

Just under a year ago, there was a thread dedicated specifically to bow damage, in which I suggested this rule. It also came up numerous times randomly before that, & I don't think I was the only one making this suggestion.

That was from almost 2 1/2 years ago. I can see why FotD might have forgotten where and who it came from exactly. Like Karoline said, there was no reason to come on as strong as you did. Just settle down and stop taking it so personally and/or looking for a flame war.

As if bow/strength rule is something to fight over.

Seriously!

I like your fix*, but IMHO (Str/2 + 3) may still be a bit too generous on the low end.

What do you all think of something like (Str/2 + 1) AP -2, and then grant more AP via special arrow heads (steel / teflon), more damage via different special arrow heads (explosive / shock), and special effects via even more different arrow heads (barbed harpoon tip / chemical injector)?

Alternately, how about DV 3 (plus net hits, just like normal), but AP = Str rating? Then troll-bows would be very useful vs. hardened armor (like spirits), but they wouldn't be able to flay an unarmored man faster than a shotgun full of flechettes.

Cheers, -- N

*) By "your fix", I mean: this fix © 2010 FriendofhteDork, all rights reserved, reprinted above without permission.

Obviously this arguement needs some scientific testing.

Needed:
A) An assault cannon (closest we have today to the SR weapon will work fine)
B) A small ballista using modern materials.

Now, unfortunatly we can't use a large ballista, because it would be shooting larger arrows than the "Troll Bow" (probably). But since the troll bow uses "future" materials, I think a modern ballista with close-enough sized arrows will give us a Myth Busters ballpark to work with.

Now, go blow stuff up! And let us know how it works out.

P.S. Don't forget to that your modern assault cannon can not have a serious blast radius.

I don't see anywhere that it is limited to anything. My pdf states that the max str rating of a bow is 8 and the base damage is (Str rating +2)P. That means that a str rating 8 bow starts off at 10P + net hits (as it is a ranged weapon) from the reaction test. You could reasonably expect to have 3 to 4 net hits depending on the target which is 13 or 14P... right up there with a sniper rifle.

Sounds like a job for mythbusters.

Also, interesting article for the arrows. Seems to indicate that the arrow should have somewhat lower damage, but higher AP than bullets for the most part, but we see the opposite with the troll bow.

That's pretty much exactly what I was going for with this:

Low damage, but a higher AP rating than you could get without using very expensive ammo.

The side-effect of spirits being easier to damage with an "old fashioned" weapon is also kinda nice.

Cheers, -- N

That does sound nice. If anyone playtests it, would you let me know how it works out?

If large, mechanically propelled missiles were actually powerful, it wouldn't just be troll archers using them. With SR level tech, it would be very easy to build a self-drawing bow, so strength of the firer would be completely irrelevant. The reason you DON'T have such items is because they would make crappy weapons (compared to guns) and because bows are sporting tools, so are intentionally "low tech" (compared to what is possible); removing muscle power would just make them complicated mechanical guns.
BTW, the problem really isn't bow design; its ARROW design. If you make an arrow stiff enough to accelerate at the speed needed to produce a "military grade weapon" bow, you end up with an arrow that vibrates at a very high frequency, and looses accuracy. (Or some such- I don't quite get the physics, but my impression is that a slightly "noodly" arrow is more accurate, and impossible in a really powerful bow.)

Yikes.. I've been here this long? Can't even remember that poster at all. It's not YOUR rule either so why so serious? Now let me have my 15 seconds of fame and get over it

What is even funnier to me is all you say about it is sounds good. Its not wow great idea I'm going to yoink it. Sounds good could mean, great idea I'll yoink it or sounds good which is why I use it myself. In this thread I said something like I like FriendoftheDork's fix, even though its the fix I've talked about ever since I saw the freakin bow stats and melee weapons stats and I have mentioned it on this board a few times at least, sometimes in agreement with others. So my I like FriendoftheDork's solution wasn't me saying I'll yoink it but saying I like it because it is what I've been doing. And given how long 4e has been out I'm sure someone else noticed it before me and came up with the solution before me and I very well may have yoinked it from them. But I remember thinking about the rule on my own, though since its been years who knows if my memory is solid on it.