[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Douglas, are we sure we want a strictly proportional relationship?

It makes for a reason for people to carry personalized bows tuned to their ST given the granularity of GURPS damage. Bows, using realistic penetration values, are pretty flat in terms of damage (not a bad thing). A hunting longbow (70lbs) does 1d, a warbow 1d+1, and a strong warbow 1d+2. So having range scale basically with draw weight, and therefore with ST, makes some degree of sense.

It is my impression that the curve flattens out somewhat at the extremes, where more energy is lost accelerating the heavier bowlimbs.

Would make sense; the true range scales with velocity, not force. There may be a practical maximum for such things, given bow and arrow materials properties and the basic physics. Still...what we might do is suggest a tech-level based limit to bow draw and efficiency, which is currently subsumed into a constant of value 1 not explicitly in my formula. Efficiency would always be relative to our reference 150lb medieval warbow.

That would depend on the material used, of course, but for normal wood and normal bow design, I'd say that the middle of the human range yields a better efficiency than the top.

In other words, the GURPS method of adding a flat modifier based on bow length to thr damage might not be that far off (except that thr damage for higher ST is too high).

Could be...what I have above is a scaling for the longbow; we'd need to come up with vague estimates for the velocity of appropriate war arrows with bows of different construction, efficiency, and draw strength. We can then finagle constants that restate the draw vs damage and range equation. Really, is all we're doing is basically giving, for example, a shortbow a lower efficiency than a longbow, and composite bows higher...which is sort of the same as a thrust plus flat modifier.

Still, I think our calcs with the warbow show damage a lot more flat in the human range than I'd have thought...and I consider that a good thing. Most numbers for arrow velocities seem to fall in the 40-65m/s range, which won't be that much of a spread in penetration.

The range in the basic rules is a proportional relationship, of course.

Quite so.

The methods for measuring range given in sources I've come across vary enough to make it problematic for me to get any sort of feeling for them. The top ranges with 'flight' arrows are very high, but that has zero relevance for combat use. Except that in some cases, the arrow termed 'flight' arrows are probably lethal enough (even if not as good as proper broadheads) and in other cases they are purely sporting arrows.

We'd fudge this, likely, with range modifiers (higher) and armor divisors and damage reduction (I'd probably slap on a -1 damage and [0.5] armor divisor, plus an appropriately large range multiplier to account for the feats observed with flight arrows). So long as the results are believable and playable, it's a win.