Even better.

A backward-facing on-side quiver can be nearly as quick to draw and load. Not my choice of quiver styles, I admit. Also bear in mind that some bucket-style quivers can be capped to stop the arrows from falling out. If an adept has one of those, he has to disengage the cap first; if he doesn't, he risks losing arrows in any major athletics test or fall.

Incidentally, I gather the rules for Dikote have changed since 2nd Ed - can you no longer shoot vehicles with dikoted arrows? (I always used to find a couple of dikoted arrows into the engine block did wonders for discouraging pursuit )

No, it costs 1 point per increase once you go beyond 9. Humans can hit 12 and beyond with this power. The wording specifically states that the power allows you to exceed the Racial Modified Limit (9 for humans). EOTLF's adept should be paying 4.5 points for his Strength of 12.

Further, that adept can only have 6 points of Improved Ability in Projectile Peapons, as that is rating of the general skill. The "carries over to specializations" wording just means that you get to use the dice you paid for (6, in this case) with any specializations you have in that particular skill. You don't get an extra Improved Ability die just because you're using it with a specialization.

The Racial Modified Limit for any attribute for any race is 6 + Racial Modifier. In the case of humans, that's 6 for all attributes. The Racial Maximum for any attribute for any race is (6 + Racial Modifier) x 1.5, rounded up, or 9 for all attributes for humans. mfb is correct. If you don't believe us, read pp. 244-245, Improving the Character of SR3.

Why not just use different coloured flights? If its on a hip quiver, you'd be able to see the colours and draw exactly which type of arrow you want. And just like people with different types of ammo might put different coloured tape around the different clips so they can keep track, different coloured flights would work the same.

I'm also not sure about it taking as long as 30 seconds to string a bow. I've strung a longbow quite a few times because of a historical thing I do in the summer (a modern bow, true, not a real Tudor one which were TRES difficult to string as they had a phenomenal pull strength. It seems a bit off to be using the wrong prop at a historical thing, but its for kids, and you don't shoot or anything. Its just difficult enough that the 12 year old you pick to demonstrate has difficulties in pulling it, so you can stop the kids being so cocky in the face of an angry Tudor soldier by impressing on them how tough we're supposed to be), and though I've never actually timed myself I'm sure I can manage it in less than 15 seconds or so, and I'm hardly strong. Having said that, I don't claim to be an archery expert, the bow in question is for demonstration purposes and I've never shot with it (they don't like people randomly shooting longbows when there's aparty of school kids in front of you. Not that some of them don't deserve to know what it felt like to be French at Agincourt, mind you...). So I could be wrong. But from my experiences I beleive stringing a bow is more about technique than it is strength, and certainly a combat trained bow-user would be quite considerably faster than 30 secs. Doubt they could do it in a combat turn though, and you wouldn't be able to crouch behind cover whilst you did it - you really do have to be standing, at least for a longbow.

As for how fast they can fire, a trained (that's trained since the age of 8 years old until they were 16 or so and already with a deformed spine from the abuse that training inflicts on the body) english or welsh longbowman in Tudor times could shoot off about a dozen rounds a minute, so that's once every five seconds, a little under two combat turns. For an unaugmented human averaging one action a round, even including the ready weapon each time you fire, that means the rules are off by quite a bit if they allow you to fire the thing even once per combat turn and hope to hit your target. Based on that (which is based on what I've been taught about the history of the longbow - its quite possible a shortbow is faster to draw or slower to draw, I've no idea personally) I think with something like a bow (not a crossbow), each ready weapon should be a full complex action, if you want to go for realism. But realism has never been a driving force behind many of the shadowrun rules, as I've heard many on here testify to, so I'm not going to worry about it too much.

And I've noticed a lot of people think bows and crossbows are overpowered in SR, and I have to disagree with you. A heavy crossbow (of the type my neighbour has) hits with the same punch as a shotgun, and its not even a particularly heavy one. I can't draw it, but then I'm not very strong. He can nock it quite easily, though not speedily. A long bow with the right arrow head is quite capable of penetrating thick sheet steel of the like that armoured knights wore at 100 yards or more, and closer than that it can go straight out the other side and cause serious injury to whoever was behind the ex-Knight. Scary weapons. They just can't match the fire rate of a firearm is all, and of course a firearm has no problem penetrating steel armour. From what I've seen though, a crossbow doesn't have a lot of trouble penetrating armour designed to stop bullets either, so on that score I think they even out. Bows/crossbows lose out on their size, the size of their 'ammunition', and the speed (or lack of) at which they fire. But in terms of power they're definately on a par with many modern weapons. You can also retreive the evidence...

Any Joe on the street is more likely to wear serious ballistic armor than serious impact armor. Impact 2 isn't particularly protecting, and more people would have synthleather for a point less.

~J

No, it doesn't. A shotgun firing shot at close ranges can utterly devastate an unarmored human torso -- basketball-sized hole (or bloody mess, at least) in the center, that sort of thing. A heavy crossbow will punch a small hole based on the size of the arrowhead.

Medieval plate armor doesn't do a fucking thing to even slow down bullets. Your basic Beretta M9 firing M882 FMJ rounds will tear through 4 suits of plate mail at close range and cause serious injury to the guy behind. Bows don't match the accuracy, penetration, rate of fire, damage-causing potential, ability to engage moving targets, ease of use, versatility, etc etc of firearms.

You have personally witnessed tests where crossbows were fired at modern body armor? How powerful were the crossbows, velocity and weight of arrow, type of arrowhead used, what type of body armor was it? I've heard the stories, but they're all old and they never spread with numbers to go along with them.

Yeah but the knife fights and punch up's that Joe is going to get into, that 1 or 2 points, makes it ALOT easier to soak. (Unless it's a troll swing at you)

For the record, Austere, an arrow or bolt will penetrate standard Kevlar armour far easier than a bullet. The reason for this is the edge on the arrowhead; Kevlar doesn't resist slashing damage anywhere near as well as it does the blunt trauma of a bullet (yes, bullets are blunt trauma, not piercing - they smash their way into the body). This is the reason SR uses Ballistic and Impact Armour Ratings.

First thing: non-rigid kevlar armor without rifle plate inserts only stops certain types of bullets fired out of certain firearms. Expanding/fragmenting (any designs with exposed lead, hollow points, polymer tipped, etc) ammunition fired out of a handgun is generally stopped, except for certain very powerful weapons, as is non-expanding ammunition from less powerful weapons (up to around .357 magnum-level).

Flexible body armor does not protect you against rifles, it absolutely will not stop any FMJ rifle rounds -- such as 99% of all small arms ammunition in use by modern armies -- and it doesn't even slow down armor piercing designs.

Flexible body armor is useful for civilians and police officers because powerful handguns and rifles in general are rare in firefights in the civilian world, and because most ammunition in circulation outside of the armed forces is some sort of expanding design. In any military conflict, 99.9% of all rounds fired would penetrate any soft body armor. Probably somewhere around 90-95% of all rounds fired in all combat situations anywhere will readily penetrate any existing soft body armor.

Now back to arrows. Like I said, I've heard the stories. I've heard of a few demonstrations, too. Straight facts and numbers are sadly lacking. I have no doubt that several more powerful bows, especially with rather heavy arrows and sharp, edged arrowheads can penetrate many forms of body armor in use today that have not been designed to stop such threats.

But stab resistant body armor is a big selling item. A significant portion of body armor sold today is stab resistant, often also rated to protect against bullets. According to a few numbers that were thrown around in an earlier thread, stab resistant body armor is basically guaranteed to stop anything you can fire out of a 55-60lbs draw bow, even if you use the tiniest, extremely sharp arrowhead.

You can read up on stab-resistant body armor here, or just Google for it. It did not exist, or at least was not very common, when SR came out, so the poor "Impact" protection soft body armor provides is sort of understandable. On the other hand, soft body armor is proven to be very effective in protecting against clubs and other non-projectile blunt trauma, which also falls under the Impact rating in SR.

True enough. I like to call it crushing instead, but that's just personal preference.

In general, yes, marking them is great. But if you're quick-drawing, you're just reaching for an arrow and not really looking at the quiver, so I don't think they'd help until they were on the bow and being pulled back where you see your mark and you think, 'Oh, drek, not the screamer arrow."

Cool, I'll go with that.

Perhaps my terminology is lacking. We're using punch to describe different things. I'm not saying a bolt will take out the large part of a torso, but in terms of how far it would knock you back, or if you were to aim at a target designed to measure force of impact, I think you'd find they were on a par.

I didn't say medieval armour DID do anything to slow down bullets did I? Its the main reason they stopped wearing metal armour in the first place! I was just pointing out that a real bow is vastly more powerful than a lot of people think it is, or has any right to be! Perhaps I should've included the word 'either' at the end of the sentence. Would that have been enough to pacify you? You do seem awfully sensitive about this.

Not personally, no. I've seen documentaries and heard anecdotal evidence from my father the police officer. Its pretty much illegal in the UK to own body armour, so it woudl be practically impossible for me to witness it personally. And the reason I don't have numbers to back it up is because I'm not anally obsessive about the maths. The visual evidence is good enough for me! Of course, depending on your paranoia and gun fetish level you could always argue that the documentaries were faked...

They might come close in terms of momentum, yes, so they might knock you back equally much. However, how far something knocks you back has nothing to do with how much damage it does to humans.

Sorry about that. The "bows are almost as good as firearms" thing is a pet peeve of mine. I just wanted to make sure everybody realized firearms penetrate most things orders of magnitude better than bows.

Not faked, but they might well have been shot using the weakest possible types of body armor available. What I'd like to see is tests using a wide range of currently available flexible body armor types and different kinds of arrows fired from bows of varying power. Without that, all we really know is that there are some kind(s) of arrowhead(s) that can penetrate some type(s) of body armor when fired with enough mass and velocity.

Depending on the firearm & ammo, just like with the bow. Regardless, neither will knock a person back very far, and an arrow from a bow is more likely to (more mass with it), but contrary to movies, getting hit with a shotgun doesn't knock you back 10 feet.

I agree that firearms are superior to bows is almost every aspect, on a 1 shot comparison, most typical firearms that someone can legally carry now are about on par with a high-quality bow. Of course, theres the guns you aren't allowed to legally carry, many of which (with the right ammo) will penetrate better than the bow.

Also, don't forget penetration isn't always a good thing. I don't remember which conflict it was, but it was US vs someplace, and the opposing soldiers were on drugs (cocaine I think) and thusly felt little to no pain. The bullets the soldiers were fireing penetrating the non-armored targets, and went out the other side, leaving a nice hole, but not doing much damage in terms of stopping power. This is why the m-16 is so powerful, is the round tumbles, making it rip up your internal organs, rather than making a neat hole through only one.

I'm not trying to start an argument, just saying that different bullets/rounds/guns can have vastly different effects compared to the smaller (only force really) changes depending on bows.

I dunno, I figure a strength 15 bow probably looks something like a steel pole with a crane cable for the bow. As long as the "bow" part flexes and snaps back, and the "string" part is similar in property to string, but they could support so much tension etc, its possible, we just haven't tried it yet since we don't have people that strong.

Nearly all FMJ rifle rounds tumble when they hit a human, assault rifle rounds quicker than most because the bullets tend to be long and pointy. If they didn't, the wound cavity would be pitifully small. The reason the ammunition the M16 fires is particularly nasty is that it also tends to fragment when it tumbles at high enough velocities.

Patterns of Military Rifle Bullets
5.56x45mm Ammo Oracle

What kind of penetration are you talking about here? Flesh, steel, body armor? Any decent firearm (ie not a .22, .25, .32 firing JHP or fragmenting ammunition) will penetrate more steel than any man-portable bow you can get IRL. Depending on the bullet, arrows might penetrate a lot more flesh, since most ammunition is designed to only penetrate somewhere between 12" and 20", except for big-game hunting rounds and solid (e.g. FMJ) ammunition. This is because the bullet won't need to penetrate any more than that, so you might as well increase the wound cavity and not the penetration.

I already went through armor penetration of bullets vs bows.

You might see much heavier arrows traveling at pretty high speeds, but seeing as how current bows fire arrows in the 300fps-range and the slowest you'll see a bullet come out of a handgun in common use is around 900fps (and ~2000-2500fps for most rifles), I really doubt they'd actually get into the same velocities. Could be you can't even make a bowstring move that fast. Plus there's no point, since the arrow penetrates enough flesh already.

The only thing that would make arrows do more actual damage to humans would be to use much larger arrowheads, and then use heavier/faster arrows to make sure they still penetrate far enough. The wound cavity caused by an arrow similar to the ones we have now with a normal broadhead moving at 900fps would be pretty much the same as one caused by the same arrow moving at 300fps, as long as there's complete penetration of the human.

What reason for the ammo getting more expensive? The only difference might be the size of the gap in the nocking of the arrow to fit around the larger string. Which wouldn't cause a noticable increase in price.