Quote:
Originally Posted by Polydamas
A fourteenth-century French authority recommended using a light bow for hunting so that one could keep it partially drawn while waiting for the game. In GURPS terms, a bow ST less than your effective ST should give a bonus to Fast Draw, and a greater one should give a penalty.
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The Irish Rangers of my Ärth historical fantasy setting routinely use under-ST bows.
That is, if a given Ranger has the equivalent of GURPS ST 16 (which is not unusual - they're comparable to US Navy SEALs, which I've heard described as tending to be huge and beefy guys) then he'd use a bow rated for ST 13 or at the most 14, because using an under-ST bow makes it more doable to do a lot of rapid-fire quick shots, and hold the bow drawn for a fairly long time in order to aim, and other similar "unusual" shooting methods.
The English longbowmen of the medieval period were about
one very specific thing, launching arrows in
massed fire at enemy target formations, whereas the Rangers of this AH setting need to be a lot more tactically versatile (although their main concern is being able to penetrate armour, as they're an offspring of the Dragon Slayers, who were obviously greatly concerned with having the capacity to kill targets with
very high DR. The Rangers mainly kill Vikings and other monsters, but those do often have quite some DR).