[Phoenix42]

Since you mention Agincourt:

One might also want to mention that fantasy and low-TL campaigns tend to include horses or similar mounts. This comes in two versions: A mounted archer can laugh his enemy in the face because he can use his crossbow or shortbow and can dictate his range; if he's any good and the fight is in an open field, he can also circle his enemies and shoot from behind, negating his enemies' dodge rolls. Don't forget that this is essentially what took the Mongols all the way from Mongolia to Austria and what brought the Huns from the Black Sea to the South of France. If your enemy is on foot or only has heavy cavalry, you can massacre them with relative ease. Of course, if you're in a dnd style fantasy world that, strangely, seems to consist only of dungeons, you're screwed. But that's life :)

The other point being (and this is where Agincourt, Crecy and other English victories over the French in the 100 Years' War come in) that while archery is only mediocre against an armoured enemy (let's not kid ourselves, trying to fire through full plate armour, which usually includes padded and chain armour underneath, is asking quite a bit [DR 8-10], even with your best longbow), remember that those guys are often on horseback, and the horse is not as well armoured. Shoot the horse in a sensitive spot, and it will probably buck, and then you've got either a distracted rider or a guy with 60 lbs of armour who just fell off his horse; both isn't really going to present much of a threat for the moment.

That's one of the historical reasons for the victories won by the longbow. Arrows dont' usually kill outright, unless you happen to be a surfing show-off elf whose name shall not be mentioned, but they can really slow your enemies down. That being said, it takes a lot of balls to shoot a charging destrier in a straight shot; the English archers were firing volleys and didn't have to aim, plus they could knew that if the riders did make it, they'd be protected. Advantages most adventurers don't have, as was mentioned before.


I would say that shooting a longbow from out of a tree, at best, is a roll against the worse of your climbing and bow skill. At worst, the GM could completely forbid it, because a longbow should really be fired while standing, and if you're standing in a tree, not holding onto anything, and aiming a longbow... Well, asking for it seems too harmless a term, really.
A short- or crossbow is an entirely different matter, of course.

So, bottom line: If you're the player, try to get a horse (and make sure your GM isn't a dungeon fetishist), and shoot everybody else's (invest a few $ in barbed arrows). If you're a gm looking to make your world more archer-friendly, put more enemies on horseback and have more enemies wearing less or no armour. Also, of course, having npcs on horseback makes for lots of extra fun when it does come to melee :)