And most definetly the fact that a good archer began training as a child, and that any ordinary child was involved in more or less heavy work from a fairly young age makes a major difference.
Ill have to disagree that technique is NOT involved, but of course you´re correct in a broader sense that it matters alot that you´re well trained in the right places.
And just as a sidenote i might mention the fact that "curvy" "bodybuilder" kind of muscles are extremely subpar in exerting power compared to their mass compared to "flatter" muscles.
Funny thing about experts in this area? Everyone is correct and noone agrees with each other. Well almost...
Overgeneralising...
There definetly is. Average strength of people has gone down notably even in just the last 30 years.
The Romans used composite recurved bows. It was more or less continually used since then.
Laminated bows were very rare though, due to the lack of good glues. They still seem to have existed for a loooong time before good glues, but just too troublesome to be common.
Oh yes. Magyars, Turks, Mongols, Huns, Scythians, they all were feared for their archers, with Turks and Mongols in particular using bows commonly on horsebacks and Mongols in specific pretty much basing their conquest on fast moving mounted archers with powerful bows(well and later on also the siege engineers the pressganged from among their conquered peoples in China).
And the medieveal Turkish recurving bow was outright nasty effective.
Actually that's false: its a lot easier to aim a crossbow accurately than a longbow. They had weekly bow drills in England but not Italy because you don't need to practice the crossbow as much.
Actually what we want to know is the bonus to damage of the weapon in gaming terms
I have shot with a reproduction crossbow. It is easier to aim with the crossbow than the bows I have tried to shot with, and it is quite precise. I could hit my target quite OK at around 70-80 metres without prior training.
I fail to see why crossbows could not be a sniper-style weapon there if you wanted to hit someone precisely. In fact, crossbowmen killed Richard Lionheart and asked if the owner of a castle wanted John killed as well since they could shot him dead when he was inspecting the siegeworks.
Crossbows dominated in the middle ages for several very good reasons.
They were effective. They had a lot of killing power at a good range.
They were easy to use. You didn't need a huge investment in training to raise a force of crossbowmen.
The supposed "crossbow killer" (aka the longbow) was a niche weapon used by a fringe group and hardly anyone had heard of it. It wasn't until the very late 13th and mainly the 14th and 15th centuries that you see it in use in the rest of Europe.
And, frankly, it wasn't the bow itself that was that much superior to other archery options. It was the fact that the Welsh..and later the English... trained from childhood to use it with a high degree of skill. The technical innovation was the longbowMAN, not so much the longbow.
Trying to separate the weapon itself from the tactical and social innovations that accompanied it is extremely difficult. In game terms, you shouldn't just be able to replace your grogs' shortbows with longbows to any effect.
Now, you could replace those bows with crossbows to noticable effect... but ArM5 doesn't have crossbows yet, afaict.
Actually... the inclusion of longbows, which are pretty darn obscure in 1220, and not crossbows, which are widespread, is rather peculiar to my mind. But I'm sure that discussion has been had already..
Mike Loades with the Discovery Channel did a flat minute challange discovering that a crossbow could get off between 2-4 bolts a minute pending on how fatiguing the the crossbowman wanted to be. The longbowman could get a shot off every 4-6 seconds (accuracy being more a factor then fatigue).
Now you're looking at slightly later Agincourt (sic?) crossbows I think here, but not too different.
You'll see that the Longbow was propelling a twice-weight missile at 96% speed. I'm sure the more physics minded will correct me here but sure this is resulting in 1.92 impact power in favour of the longbow.
The Crossbow's major advantage was the fact it's more or less point and click. It may cost much more money to make and be highly inefficient in terms of power and speed, but you can give Geoff the farmer boy one and he may just be able to down a Knight. Longbows take years of practice to master. Trust me I've practiced for years and I'm no master. They need Gorillas of men to use (I use about 66% pull at the limit of my strength) and I'm a big guy trained in these bows.
It also has the advantage that you can keep it loaded for quitwe a long time before releasing the bolt. That cannot be done with a bow, so for controlling a certain area/person, it is a better weapon. But yes, the longbow, if fired by one of those extremely scarce guys in 1220 would be a better weapon. If you are in the British isles and you are aware of its existance, that is.
"(I have searched/researched/etc and have concluded that bow damage/ranges/effectiveness are exagerrated in all RPGs {oddly guns/xbows always seemd to be greatly weakened})"
I still stand by my statement, and I wanted to explain my reasons for believing so.
This thread is probably not over, BUT I wanted to state my great appreciation for you all - AND you are great sports!
[u]IN PARTICULAR I wanted to thank Direwolf75 for being an involved & gracious erudite conversant. Thank You! [/u]
I firmly believe that if we all got together over lots of great mead & ale, we would all roughly/mostly agree :smiley:
IMHO - Ars Magica deals with x-bows & bows & longbows better than almost all other RPGs. But I, personally, still see room for greater realism. But that is my opinion.
THIS ARM5 game is the most fun I have had in a long time with an RPG!
:slight_smile: :astonished: :smiley: :smiley:
Just one thing here, that crossbow bolt is VERY light.
Ie. thats not a bolt made for warfare, but for hunting.
Bolts made for warfare were commonly heavier or much heavier for crossbows compared to bows.
A common bolt for a light crossbow with maybe a 150ish draw weight might weigh more than 2.5 ounces.
As i stated earlier, common crossbow bolts made for warfare would range from around 80g up to a vicious 350g, thats over 12 ounces.
IIRC, cranequin was the last mechanism to be developed.
Exactly so yes.
In case i didnt say it before, ill do it now(or again if i did already), that most likely its because its extremely hard to handle the extreme differences in loading speed and usage between crossbow and bows.
Look at D&D3E for example, their crossbows can with the right options picked get totally insane rates of fire, even supposedly "heavy" crossbows...
So, most likely game mechanics reasons.
And early guns really arent that supremely much better. Better in some ways, much worse in others.
And like with above, if you think about it as damage over time, most RPG early firearms are probably too effective. How many RPGs limits early firearms to anything close to a realistic rate of fire, i personally know of none where reloading takes even 30 seconds, and thats still unrealistically fast for an early gun.
Always ready to argue...
If we get something good out of it, excellent!
Hand drawn (Ouch!!!)
Crows/Ducks Foot - Basically a belt mounted hook.
Footdrawn (There is some controversy as to if this was 3rd or 2nd as the evidence is contradictory with some parts adopting this earlier then others)
Pull lever
Push Lever
Cranquin
Windlass
However was this heavier bolt any better. The Crossbow is an incredibly inefficent device. did the bolt fly as fast (and have as much punch).
Hmm, im almost sure i read that the Cranequin was the last one...
Oh well, might be another of those wonderful "-yes it is, -no it isnt" arguments.
Far better.
Not quite as fast, but their V0 didnt reduce anywhere near as much relative to how much heavier the bolt was made, until you got to the point of "too heavy", so its a matter of getting the best balance you can between total energy put into a target vs having a faster bolt.
Thats why there wasnt any real standard for bolt weights or sizes, in some places or by some units they were made one way, in the next country or even the next county the common bolt used could be completely different, heavier or lighter, longer or shorter, fully made of iron or wood or a mix.
From what i can tell, as long as the shooter was good enough to hit with it, the heaviest bolt that wasnt too heavy seems to have been the best choice.
I seme to Remember reading TG Grant on the subject and him saying the intigrated windlass was a later development, however it wasn't as efficient at the crannequin or even leverages and so was disbanded, but as this was around the time of the initial rise of black powder, there wasn't much development. So I think the Windlass was developed last but it was a step back not forward. More likely replaced by better Crannequins.If you look at the early box type cranequins which preceeded the windlass they're basically a detachable windlass. The rotary cranequin seems to be a later and much better development.
and a Crows foot is basically a hook on the belt where the strings are drawn by the hook holding the strings and the crossbow being moved. The footlock was a loop of metal at the fron ot the bow where the foot was placed to lock the bow and then the strings were pulled by hand.
Well what we really want to know is:
Longbows:
At what range could a decent longbowman (skillevel 5) kill/severly injure/just hit a man/armoured knight.
At what range could a supreme longbowman (skillevel 8+) kill/severly injure/just hit a man/armoured knight.
Crossbow:
At what range could a crossbowman with little training (skillevel ?) kill/severly injure/just hit a man/armoured knight.
At what range could a supreme crossbowman (skillevel 8+) kill/severly injure/just hit a man/armoured knight.
Unfortunately in ArM5 all skills require the same amount of experiancepoints to raise to a certain level. Thus, you cannot learn using crossbows faster than using a bow. However, for the games sake, this should not be changed.
To answer the questions given above, take all those interesting bits of information included in this discussion to your troupe and decide on the deadliness of these devices.
