Reinventing Fast Archery
So, how would this work in Shadowrun? Would this be an Advantage which allowed for semi-automatic archery, or would it be done as a combat adept ability? Honestly, I'm really wanting this in more roleplaying games.

It's got about as much combat application as the world's fastest six-shooter type of trick-shot stuff. It's a fascinating technique, and the guy does some really impressive novelty shots...but don't put too much weight on it as a viable combat art, or try to build a combat RPG system around using those speeds as a baseline.

his "special technique" appears to be "pulling the string back about 6 inches".

so sure... you can shoot super fast. oh, and by the way, the strength of those shots is going to suck massively compared to shooting a bow properly.

and the vast majority of his shooting, when it was particularly accurate, was like 20 feet away.

Yeah, as I commented on the video:

"Yes, that's very fast. But how much energy is being delivered at the point of impact? And how far away can a target be accurately hit?

IOW, what kind of sacrifice is being made, in terms of range and penetration?

Keep in mind, chain mail is relatively easy to penetrate with any piercing weapon - chain is meant to ward of cutting attacks from swords and axes. So that part of the video, eh, I'm not convinced."

Perhaps so, but I was thinking if a combat adept was doing this, how would it be. With an adept, you can put some magic behind it to give it more power, perhaps. The other thing to note, however, is that this looks to be similar to the techniques used back in the day, so it may have had some merit.

Neither. Throwing Weapons just need some clarification and expansion. You can ready small throwing weapons = half agility.
Since its kind of like a short-ranged melee, you let thrown weapons split the dice pool to attack multiple targets, just like melee can multistrike. So you actually CAN throw a handful of knives at once like they do in the circus.

Then give bows the same benefit, because they're already a Ready Weapon-to-shoot enabled weapon type.

Isn't there already a well-established bit of cheese for doing this? Krav Maga to Ready Weapon as a Free Action?

~Umi

I'm in the camp of splitting the dice pool.

effectively being able to fire more arrows but reducing the overall strength of each attack
due to focussing on speed rather than the longer draw.

DP= 15 is one big arrow, 2 quick at 7/8 or even 3 super fast at 5/5/5
(with a specialization thats 17 or 9/10 or 7/7/7 or even 6/6/6/5)

then you just need to buy some Teflon coated arrow heads for Armor Piercing or Barbed Arrows for just being plain evil

I know you say that the old ways had merits, but they were only shooting at tagets in hardened leather armor back then,
not Plasteel / ceramic plates and impact gels etc.

it can work but you need to work on the function / tactic rather than the power and plain damage.

i.e. a metal arrow with a 100m wire attached to a shock pak .... that guy is effectively stunned and out for the rest of eternity

Splitting dice pools with a Rating 8 bow is like splitting dice pools with an Assault Cannon. No sane GM would allow someone to make three separate Assault Cannon shots with a single Simple Action, and a bow that deals 10P per arrow should be no different.

~Umi

Holy crap, bows do what DV ? .. Thats... Thats ... Redonculous !

That's the nerfed bows btw.

Time to tell the GM i'm trading the assault rifle then

How about limiting the speed archery to just short range? It looked like those were all rather close targets relative to how far a bow could shoot.

You never made a troll bow?
Fascinating...

also *safety helmet on*
Here we go again!

With the nerfed bow rules, there's not even much point to making your archer a troll anymore.

An ordinary human can hit 8 strength pretty easily in a variety of ways, and if you want to get the most bang for your BP roll with an Ork because you get a better deal on your boosted innate strength than Trolls do, and you don't take the hit to agility and charisma.

~Umi

I'm not sure why they tried to nerf the Trollbow in that particular way. I personally would have just based the DV on STR/2 like every other muscle-powered weapon. Consistency is good.

Just want to clear up a couple of misconceptions:
1) Six shooter trick shooting has a lot of combat application. In combat format it is called instinctive shooting, something most people don't practice enough of. It is what will save your ass in a gunfight. For handguns you are looking at accuracy for from the hip insticntive fire being out to 7 yards or more. This also happens to be a common engagement range for such firearms.
2) Mail is only easily pierced on youtube videos using butted mail, or other inferior mass produced products made with a lighter gauge or the wrong type of rivet. Also the padding is necessary part of the armor. Lastly they always seem to be tested at roughly point blank range. So while an arrow can pierce mail it is nowhere near as easy as all the silly videos on youtube make it out to be. Yet to find one that uses real riveted mail with padding for the tests.
3)Speed archery was fairly widespread (the huns and seljuk turks for which there is written evidence supporting the rate of fire). The draw is not as short as some think, on average you are shorting the maximum draw by roughly 2-3 inches, so yes you are sacrificing some power, but lets look at what ranges you are firing at. Horse archers doing the medieval equivalent of a drive by shooting so maybe 20m, a range where you are essentially using instinctive firing for a bow (point and shoot) your lead hand when trained will always point to the target, at short ranges with flat trajectories it is highly accurate, and since you are at such a short range the likelihood of piercing even good mail is high even though you lost a little power.

Instinctive fire works on every ballistic weapon I have ever utilized at up to 100yards with longarms(assault, battle, and bolt action rifles) and shorter ranges with submachineguns and handguns, with a high degree of accuracy as to location selection as well.

sure, for the historical people who practiced for 30 years. for this guy, it looks like he's pulling the string back maybe a foot. if even that much.

Another reason it's not a large problem to lose some power when doing drive-by archery, is that in conventional warfare, it's much more efficient to just wound the enemy, so he still takes up resources, but is unable to fight.

Poisoned barbed arrows, if your GM doesn't put a stop to that. Why only go halfway on evil?

I've seen a high agility (as in, very high!) elf been done with a bow. It was scary.
Granted, I've had a character feel the direct effects from a monofilament bola thrown by a somewhat-better-than-average user. Combined with that ambush it was way more more scary.

This isn't even limited to conventional warfare. Some corp security guys having to pull their screaming/unconscious colleagues out of the firing zone can spare you a lot of unnecessary hail of bullets. Another (quite non-pacifist) reason to use stun-inflicting weapons/rounds.

Well, speedy bow use can within a stretch of the rules surely be done. Still goes for a signature killing technique.

That is really a modern concept which has been disproven time and time again in counterinsurgency operations, where wounded are left for dead by one side. Seeing as how society at the time placed far less value on human life, I really doubt anyone would care about their buddy getting an arrow in the leg when they were being peppered themselves, and a wound is likely equal to a slow painful death by infection. Also unlike in modern warfare you don't have a medical evac plan other than get your wounded off the field of battle after the fight if you won and put the other sides wounded either out of their misery or hold them for ransom if they are a high value prisoner. Also a wounded enemy is never better than a dead one even if they are using resources. A wounded enemy can often shoot, or turn into a suicide bomb, when you really don't want them to. That whole concept was dreamed up by some idiot to make the adoption of the 5.56mm as standard NATO palatable.

I don't think it's been disproven. During World War I, general wanted to stop issuing helmets because the dead soldiers were cheaper than soldiers with head wounds they had survived. If you're someone like Russia in either of the world wars, you have soldiers to spare but not the equipment, so wounded are a huge disadvantage. If you're the IRA, good dependable soldiers willing to do violence are much rarer than weapons and bombs, so a wounded soldier that will recover is better than a dead one. Unless, a wounded soldier can be caught and questioned and possibly give up some information on you.

It's all matter of who is your enemy. Conventional western army versus a conventional western army, wounded is better, but we haven't fought that sort of war in a long time. Guerrilla warfare, not so much.

And causing wounds not deaths has never been the selling point of the 5.56mm. In fact, they use to claim more deadly wounds due to the bullet tumbling and the high velocity of the round. But the main selling point has always been ammo capacity for a soldier, low recoil, and the possibility for light weight automatic weapons.

Depending on it as an axiom of battle has been disproven, if you cannot count on it all the time it is not something you should count on as a fact when battle is joined.



No we have not, and neither is it very likely in todays world, and regardless even against a conventional foe, terrain, supply, logistics, economy of force and a ton of other factors will determine whether or not your wounded make it out or not. A dead enemy is one you never have to face again.



So sorry the little "bullet tumbling and high velocity" myth has been around since the day someone hit an enemy dead center and they were still twitching when they got to him. No one with even the most basic firearms knowledge would ever claim the 5.56 Nato is deadly in comparison to the 7.62 Nato which it replaced as the standard ammunition of your average infantryman. As to the weight of the weapon system, it is true that a rifle made for a smaller round will weigh less, however this weight saving is negligible. As to the weight of the ammunition while significant weight savings can be made, and this can be a major factor in the argument it was purely fed by the automatic fire question, which is the only reason recoil was any consideration. You see a bunch of Army brass decided that a volume of inaccurate fire was more effective than accurate sustained fire. They also decided that all engagements will occur under 350 yards, and that not teaching real shooting skills was the way to go with their drafted soldiers. Needless to say times have a changed and the old Soviet theory which had bled into US doctrine has been thoroughly discredited (draft versus conscription minimum tour times had something to do with that.)

The 5.56 also has other problems. Utilized in the M249/Minimi Squad Automatic weapon it performs poorly after the weapon has fired roughly 5000 rounds. Why? The extractor while brand new is able to operate properly on the small rim of the cartridge. Once the extractor is a little broken in misfeeds and jams become a common incident. A small amount of sand will do the same to both the M16 and the M249. In fact every weapon I have had the opportunity to fire in that caliber has a similar problem with minor environmental adversity. You jump up to a 7.62 Nato system of any kind and you have genuine difficulty making it fail. It simply has a larger rim for the extractor to grab, it can survive minor amounts of foreign matter in a much more reliable fashion. Anyway I could go on for hours about this, to cut myself short the 5.56 has never been thought of as a particularly deadly round it is essentially a .223 Rem, which is a varmint round.

Faelan has the truth of it,
speaking as a military weapons specialist and British soldier,
5.56 main benefit (to me) was being able to carry 6-9 magazines of the stuff and a lighter rifle compared to the 7.62,

Although, extractor breakage and inefficiency irregularly really showed it's face, probably because other parts of the L85 weapons failed first (Springs, firing pin, useless gas return, banana barrel, etc. ) I could go on, but .. flashbacks ....


but getting slightly back on topic,

do you really want to get into a murky houserule or a homebrew system for bows ? they seem to be quite effective (godsdammit) by themselves without any assistance

the Adept power would have to be reasonable cost and have a new mechanic to make rapid archery work vs just using 2 simple actions

Make it a full complex action, number of attacks limited to the lower of reaction/ agility

i.e. number of additional attacks scaling down the strength of the attacks etc. (DV / #attacks) + STR ?
essentially peppering a target with semi auto-arrows with reduced chance to hit and reduced damage per attack.

Range reduced by afactor of the #attacks

Didn't listen to the audio, but I love how all the shots of him performing at speed don't let us see what he's doing.

Lars I think takes some shortcuts, the guy in the following video does not. Also note he draws to at least mid chest, which is where his natural point of release is.

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

More like two or three years of training (if you don't learn in that amount of time, you will never really get it, plus people had other things that needed to get done for survival). The guy you must be referring to is Lars, and while he seems the quickest in many ways he seems to take short cuts for speed. The video above is a lot easier to follow and see what is actually going on.

All of which I am aware of. I know quite a bit about military history and the M16, but thank you for attempting to educate me. As I said, they use to claim it was more deadly, just like every other unsubstantiated claim about weapons ever (don't get me started on katantas). I can see how you might read that as me believing those claims, but that was not my intent. My point was that the original propaganda for the weapon was never that it would be more likely to wound than kill, as you claimed.

Not to be rude, but I think you have a few of your facts wrong. I would be happy to continue this discussion privately if you're interested, since it's not really on topic for this thread.

My overall point (regarding trick shooting) is that it's not something that everyone knows how to do. It shouldn't be turned into the baseline of a combat simulationist game, it shouldn't be the norm, it should be the exception. It should take practice to be that fast, that kind of speed often comes at a penalty to accuracy (depending on the situation and the range involved), etc, etc.

You don't want to build your initiative round around guys who are firing that fast as your baseline/average, you want to keep it as a level of skill to aspire to (and to aspire to at the expense, perhaps, of other combat-oriented skills or abilities or attributes. You don't see Olympic pistol shooters slapping leather the same way you see SASS competitors. There are plenty of combat/sport shooters who fall somewhere in between and do a bit of both, though, which is kind of my point.

Hmmmmm...
Entertainingly enough. Having fired tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of rounds through both the M249 and the M60, I have found that the M249 was a much more reliable weapon over time. I can also tell you that carrying a thousand rounds of 5.56mm is far more doable than the same number of rounds in 7.62mm. Don't get me wrong, I love both weapons... but for an extended encounter, I far prefer the M249. Of course, My experience with both is over 20 years old, now, so... *shrug*

I did in fact read it as you agreeing with those claims, also my point about the wounding instead of killing was never meant as a fact but as something they later fed the troops to make them more accepting of the new toy gun. Ahh yes Katanas the only sword in the world that defies physics. In fact did you know you can make them so sharp they can split molecules, cutting through steel like it was butter



Quite honestly I truly doubt that but would be happy for you to point them out either as an adjunct to this topic or privately. I was a Rifle & Pistol Instructor for my 6 years active and 2 years reserve in the USMC (along with being a certified instructor on every infantry weapon system which means my MOS was really just 03), and well all things military are a passion of mine, and always have been, so feel free to fire away.

Semper Fidelis Faelan...

The M249 was more reliable than the M60E3 but that was less a matter of rounds and more a matter of mechanical efficiency. The M60 was a poorly designed weapon from the start, whereas the M16 and M249 are actually well designed, but their deficiencies lay with the 5.56. Fortunately when I was in the M60E3 was being phased out for the M240G. As an Instructor at Camp Geiger for my last three years you could say I got to fire a lot of rounds, and observe multiple lines of fire, with a variety of weapon systems. The M240G is by far the single most reliable firearm I have ever fired outside of a bolt action rifle or revolver. On an average day at the range we would fire an average of 10000 rounds per gun through 10 guns. On average we would have 3 malfunctions. All three would be either user error (twisting up the belt usual problem), or simply a bad primer. We also torture tested them one time when we basically had an extra 200k rounds to blow through so our ammo allotment would not get reduced. Essentially we decided to put 100k rounds through one gun without cleaning it. We did switch barrels at appropriate times, and fired it for sustained fire. We got lucky and had 7 total malfunctions all of which were bad rounds, solved by simply recocking the weapon and conitnuing to fire. It however is definitely not light enough to serve in the role the M249 serves. I really don't know what the answer is there.

Ditto. Sounds like you got out just when I was getting in.

Indeed... I have never had the opportunity to fire a M240G.

Used both the old M60 (with ultra-heavy barrels) and the newer one's issued in the late 80's. Absolutely hated the lighter barrels on the new ones of that era. Burned more than a few out in my time, too, because they were such lightweight pieces of crap. I was a happy camper when I picked up the M249, mostly duer to weight and ammo capacity issues.

The M60 was a dream to shoot, and was exceedingly reliable (except for those damned lightweight barrels). The same goes with the M249, but you did have to clean it a bit more often. I really do miss those days from time to time. I never get to go out and shoot like I did back then. Oh for the days of blowing off 50,000 rounds in an afternoon.

Indeed... Finished my eight years with the 1st Gulf War... Out in June of '92.
Was a ground-pounder 03[everything], with a dash of Platoon Radio Operator during the war. Echo 2/7, all the way.

That is about when I showed up on the door step of 3/8 India only to fly out to Twenty Nine Palms for CAX a week later. CAX a gloriously explosive fun time. Anyway I will refrain from derailing any further.

In summary I would not build around the exception as the basis of the system, however I would try to find a middle ground. I mean SR has no way for me to empty a magazine for any double stack handgun in under three seconds, with some accuracy and on target. Not the standard, but entirely doable.

Will do. Side note, I think you have the history of the round wrong not the mechanical failures and operating conditions limitations.

Meant to PM instead.

Thick or not trick, the important thing for me is that that guy actually showed a way to shoot multiple arrows in a short time frame. His merit in my opinion. We play a RPG, not a simulator. We have magic and elves... we have dragons and the Matrix. I now see no problem with a fast type of archery.

Now, game balance issues should aways be considered. If we use this to bring a bow build to an intesting level, good. Now if its used for evil (unbalancing) pourposes, its a no no...

You know how you get that kind of fast archery?

Multiple Initiative Passes.

That gets you up to what, four? That does not take his level of speed into account, and normal people don't get more than one pass. So, no. That does not work. I could see adept ability or an advantage, perhaps.

presuming you have an arrow knocked, is it a Simple or a Complex action to shoot?

If it's Simple, then just making Quickdraw rolls could get you up to eight shots in one combat turn.

And that's abotu 3 seconds of elapsed time, right?

The difference is that to actually fire off arrows as fast as this Lars guy is doing it, you sacrifice a ton of power and accuracy over distance. Trust me, if this guy had really figured out any sort of significant archery technique, you wouldn't be hearing about it from a crappy youtube video with an Anonymous style robot voiceover. There are plenty of legitimate sporting and science news outlets that would love to cover a legitimate story like that, but this guy is all flash and no substance.

So if you wanted to fire off arrows that each had a DV of 1P or 2P, sure, go right ahead and shoot 10 of those in 5 seconds. But if you want to actually do damage, you'll have to settle for something more reasonable, like, say, 2 shots every 3 seconds, which you can easily manage with the Iajutsu martial arts maneuver. You don't even need extra passes, although if you do factor those in, you can hit 8 arrows per 3 seconds, which is even faster than the nonsense in the original video.

Bows are fine how they are. They don't really need any fancy changes, because they're already absurdly powerful if you have the strength for them. And if you don't have the strength for them, there's this handy invention called a "gun".

~Umi

The English had the world's best archers at one time. The English Longbowmen who were highly skilled and trained for years to get where they were. They were eventually out-done by this neat little invention called the "crossbow" which you could hand to almost anyone and get good results. Not as good as a skilled longbowman, but when you had 30 to their 1, it didn't matter much.

I do wish that the selection of crossbows in Shadowrun was actually useful in someway, to be honest.

Bows are cheap, legal, quiet, powerful, and easily underestimated. Guns are easier to use and (depending on type) easier to conceal. But crossbows are slow, do crap damage, and are bulky.

I think it'd be pretty easy to fix crossbows. Just make them like heavier versions of bows that you can keep loaded and ready to fire. Ya know, kinda like they were in real life.

~~~~~~

Step 1 - Minimum Strength Ratings

Just like bows. If you're not strong enough to pull back the string, you can't load the crossbow.

Step 2 - Reload Mechanism Strength Modifiers

Different designs should modify your effective strength. A few examples. A lever crossbow might increase your effective strength by 1, while a "goatsfoot" or stirrup design might increase your effective strength by 2. A "cranequin" or rack and pinion design might offer a bonus of 3, while a windlass mechanism might be 4 or more.

However, at the same time, each type of mechanism should also influence reloading speed. It might take 2 or 3 Complex Actions to reload using a hand-cranked windlass, while a simple arm-drawn crossbow with no mechanical aide whatsoever might only take a single Simple Action, assuming you have the strength to draw it with just your arm like a regular bow.

Step 3 - Higher Damage Codes

Crossbows are sturdier than simple bows, have greater draw-weights, and exert more force. Simply put, they hit harder. Bows may cap out at Rating 8 with modern materials, but crossbows should be able to exceed this. There should be crossbows that require Troll-levels of strength to load, and which should do extreme damage at the cost of extra-long reload times. A Rating 16 crossbow might deal 18P with a single bolt, but it'd also require an effective Strength of 16 and numerous Complex Actions to reload it.

Sure, an Assault Cannon may deal "only" 10P per round (although with vastly superior Armor Penetration) compared to an 18P troll-sized seige crossbow bolt, but you can fire off another round every Initiative Pass instead of only one every 3 or 4 passes, and you can even modify it for SA, BF, and FA fire if you wish.

Step 4 - Size Classes and Limitations

Restrict certain Strength Ratings to certain sizes of crossbow. A light crossbow might cap out at... say... Rating 6, for example. So you might have two light crossbows with two different reloading mechanisms, requiring two different minimum strengths to reload, and reloading at two differnt speeds.

A light windlass crossbow [R6] might give you 4 bonus effective strength, allowing you to fire it with only 2 actual strength, but you pay for that bonus with slower reloads. Meanwhile, a light arm-drawn crossbow [R6] gives you no strength bonus and requires the full 6 strength to reload, but it'd have the fastest reload speed possible.

~Umi

Sounds great. Take the meanest windlass crossbow you can find, install a servo and a magazine feed and mod for FA.

Seriously though, why is anyone (except hobbyists) making a crossbow you have to hand crank in the 2070s?

Actually, there's something else to consider with bows and crossbows -- they tend to go through some materials which are thought of as 'bulletproof'. Bulletproof glass, bulletproof tires, things like that ... where a small-arms bullet bounces off, an arrow lodges. It'd be nice to see that -- give bows and crossbows a higher AP than light pistols -- somewhere between medium and heavy.

Typically because the arrow/bolt is traveling slower. Bulletproof glass is often set up to intercept high velocity, low mass objects (i.e. 0.2 oz of lead) not slow velocity high mass objects (i.e. 4 oz. of wood and steel).

There are materials that can handle both, but they're typically composite. "Armor Glass" is actually a plastic coating on typical glass (you can see it shatter when hit). The thin plastic absorbs the high mass, low speed blows, while the hardened glass under it would deflect bullets.

So what do I get if I put a powered hydraulic ram into my 2070s-material-tech arbalest? One quick button-pull, and WHOOSH, enough strencgth to lift the engine-end of a city bus faster than you can say "city bus" hauls back on the string.

I think a better approach would be: take one simple action to cock the crossbow, another to place a bolt (and quickdraw coudl apply to that step). Whereas for bows, kcocking and drawing the bow is a single simple action (and subject to Quickdraw). So with a crossbow, you trade speed for power.

A Lever reduces the minimum strength needed by 2. A crank (canequin or windlass alike) reduces the minimum strength needed by 2 and lets you apply your strength over multiple actions (so if you have Strength 4, and the crossbow is Min Strength 10, -2 for the crank is 8, it'll take you two Simple actions to fully cock it).

Then add two crossbow-specific modification options:

• "clip fed" (a la the chinese repeating crossbow), making the "place bolt" step a free action for as long as the feed has bolts left; 2 slots;
• "powered assist", giving the crossbow a powered/motorised cocking mechanism; maybe available in three grades, for Strength 5/ 10/ 15; 4 slots (or, 3/ 4/ 5 slots?);

That's my take on it, anyway.


This, I agree with, completely.

Say ... One-handed, Light, Medium, Heavy, and Seige; max rating 3, 6, 9, 12, and 15, perhaps?