And, technically, with a Bow this gets even Worse.
Because you instantly get the Bow/Arrow-Damage.
And then at the end of the Round the Grenade explodes and deals more Damage.
And because it's an Arrow, stuck, you can't get away from it either . .

Personally I'd just use the different arrowheads from Arsenal and be done with it. A "grenade" arrow is actually an Explosive arrowhead, and the "gas grenade" ones are the injection arrows from the core book that has a gas instead of an injection vector toxin - a minor change.

This.

Does Suck, yes.

I'm a huge fan of injection arrows.
If you can afford it, Gamma Scopalamine isn't even damage...just instant paralyze.
Great for elephants and extractions!

I built an archer recently, and the problem I ran into with injection arrows it how ineffective they are at penetrating armour. oh well, that means stick-and-shock time

Actually there's a gas arrowhead in the German printings that costs 65 . Well, not exactly gas, but it sprays a chemical upon impact, so it'd be gas or contact.

Actually, there is no rule that forbids it (at least in SM 3rd print and SM errata) - you just don't get +1 damage for the Explosion. If you use them as improvised weapons, they deal STR/2P on impact, after that, the grenade scatters/bouces away from the target and explodes on your next IP.

Sticky (gecko) grenades FTW!

How do you throw these?

The gecko component activates after you throw it.

Just thought this might be relevant to the discussion, as far as speed and accuracy goes. If it has made the rounds already I apologize.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zGnxeSbb3g

Yep. Was posted earlier.

Trollbow, on the cheap.

As far as the trick shooter... double checked... he's using a 30-35lb modern recurve shortbow/horsebow. I don't doubt some aspects of what he does. But he's not using a 100+ lb longbow. Bows like that get drawn with the back muscles and not the arms. He's also only using partial draws so effectively only has the power of a those cheap fiberglass childrens bows you might have fired at boy scout camp as a kid. I'm bringing this up because it then goes directly into the PVC bow problem... He's directly sacrificing power for speed, and is directly benefiting from modern materials not available back then. (steel tipped target arrows are actually superior to the long iron bodkin points which were prone to bending on hits and which didn't work as well against steel armor; the reason was simply cost... iron was cheap... steel was really expensive... and not wasted on ammunition like arrows)


The problem with your on the cheap PVC is that it falls into the crossbow trap. Just because the draw weight is 50 or 100 or 500 lbs does not mean you're imparting all that energy efficiently into the arrow. At the end of the day only three things matter... the kinetic energy of the arrow on release and the mass of the projectile.... and that most of that energy isn't in the form of a flexing arrow (when fired arrows bend like a twig, and if too light break like a twig; or they simply flex like a spring while flying hammering their accuracy).

Crossbows were not adopted because they were superior to bows... but because they were cheaper to train conscripts to use them on the quick. It took years (or preferably a lifetime of use) to train archers... crossbowman could be trained in a few weeks. Experienced crossbowman could also benefit from having 'loaders'. People who'd just load crossbows and hand them one after another to the experienced shooter.

Trying to think how to explain this better... the more the limbs flex, and the heavier the limbs are, the more energy which is lost moving the limbs and not imparted into accelerating the arrow. Also longer draw lengths are generally more efficient than shorter ones. Therefor longbows are more efficient than shortbows, and lighter materials are more efficient than heavier materials generally. The other problem is if you accelerate a lightweight arrow too much it snaps in two... hence why I commonly refer to the classical shadowrun trollbow as needing to fire crowbars (the size and length of the arrow is based on the size of the shooter and his draw length). If the arrow is going to be going through both sides of an armored vehicle while not snapping in half while fired... it's going to have to be that strong and rigid (which will limit its speed... heavier the arrows slower it goes... but more momentum it has).

Crossbows had the problem historically of being extremely inefficient... they are effectively very short bows mounted horizontally. Using heavy steel springs which had to flex a lot. They also had extremely short draw lengths compared even to shortbows/horsebows.

The PVC bow has the same problem... you could pull out a modern olympic recurve with a 50lb draw weight... and the PVC with a 50lb draw weight... and I guarantee the olympic bow is firing arrows with higher velocity simply because it's drastically more efficient (more energy... damage to the target).

Oh well, here's a link rather than trying to explain... many people have taken some issue with the figures given here. As is to be expected over a few hundred years of history there are a lot of different data points some better or worse than the ones given here. Higher draw weight bows... or more efficient crossbows... 740lb crossbow vs 68lb longbow. Longbow has roughly equivalent projectile speed! And the projectile has twice the mass... so it has a lot more kinetic energy and more importantly momentum... (it doesn't decelerate as much from air resistance). This is simply because the crossbow uses brute force and a lot of it, but it does not use it very efficiently.

http://www.thebeckoning.com/medieval/cross...ross_l_v_c.html

I have no idea what your rant was supposed to have accomplished. You're arguing that crossbows vs. longbows historically has significance when compared to a game set 60 years in the future with advanced wonder-materials?

The purpose of my post was to show that decent bows could be made cheaply with readily-available materials. The video lists it as a 60 lbs. bow, but I don't care what the draw weight is - the entire point was to show that you could made a bow easily out of materials found in an urban setting. If you really want to take it to the next level you can go buy an accelerometer, make one of those PVC bows, and test the speed of the projectile if you want. I'm not saying it was a Str 8 bow or anything, and that was not the point of my post.

My point was to look at the two items... and realize that the rapid shooter was using the bows in a way which sacrifices performance for speed/ROF. So he's effectively in SR terms using a str3 bow and only getting str1 performance out of it because he's not drawing it fully.

Also to point out that I can use cheap readily at hand materials to make a bow from nearly anything flexible and springy. But it won't be very good. Though it might require str8 to draw... it's probably only going to have str4 performance because its inefficient and not well made with appropriate materials.

Very interesting read Falconer
Why are we trying to make trollbows more silly anyhow? this isn't Discworld

Fair enough. However, on both points, the game doesn't matter. You're attempting to abstract RL examples into the game mechanics, which doesn't work very well. The game doesn't care what exact materials you use to construct a bow - only that you construct/buy a Str X bow.

It was a very interesting read though.

I'm not sure it's relevant, but I figured I'd throw this out here:

Medieval English longbows had draw-weights of 80-120 lbs. As Falconer said, the bow was drawn with the back muscles, not the arm, and men would have to train for years (or even their whole life) to draw them.

Now, if we try to compare this real life stuff to Shadowrun rules it can get confusing. These archers were mostly farmers and craftsmen, not big burly soldiers. So like 4 STR, maybe 5 but probably not more than that. You'll be hard-pressed to find a modern weight-lifter (who would likely have a STR of 6 or more) who can draw a 80+ pound bow, because it has more to do with technique than strength.

I agree that to avoid this kind of confusion, it's easier to just accept the abstractions present in the game than to try to argue about technique and materials.

EDIT: I should have clarified that I have seen modern men drawing bows with 120 pound draws, and such men tend to have broad shoulders but average arms and chest, IE in the range of 4-5 STR in Shadowrun terms, not big and buff like a weight-lifter.