Making arrows

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Willy

If I´m right then in 3rd Ed. GURPS Grimoire was a pretty usefull and cheap spells called repair arrows for this. .

You're close. Repair Arrow goes back to Magic 1e 1st printing.

It wasn't in Fantasy 1e where the Magic system originated though. So somehwere between those two books some player complained to his GM about having to spend 6 FP to fix a 2 oz. arrow and got a specialized replacement. :)

[Black Leviathan]

I feel like in a fantasy setting the Shape-wood crowd would be dominating the Arrow Market. You could take any stick and make a visibly straight with no knots or wood grain and fix it to the arrowhead perfectly, even craft cheap fetching. You could crank out an arrow in a few seconds just from the scrap pile at a mill.

Alternatively arrow making involves knowing good spots in the wood to forage, drying the wood, lathing and possibly lacquering wood, fixing head and fetching. It would take a few days of prepping materials and assembly. Even with all of your materials prepped you'd still need time for glue/lacquer to dry.

Also as far as I can tell, if you can shape wood you pretty much make FQ bows and crossbows except when you're black-out drunk. It's just too quick and easy for you to make a ideally crafted bow in a few minutes rather than a few days that it would be difficult for you not to become amazing very fast.

[Willy]

Originally Posted by Black Leviathan

I feel like in a fantasy setting the Shape-wood crowd would be dominating the Arrow Market. You could take any stick and make a visibly straight with no knots or wood grain and fix it to the arrowhead perfectly, even craft cheap fetching. You could crank out an arrow in a few seconds just from the scrap pile at a mill.

Alternatively arrow making involves knowing good spots in the wood to forage, drying the wood, lathing and possibly lacquering wood, fixing head and fetching. It would take a few days of prepping materials and assembly. Even with all of your materials prepped you'd still need time for glue/lacquer to dry.

Also as far as I can tell, if you can shape wood you pretty much make FQ bows and crossbows except when you're black-out drunk. It's just too quick and easy for you to make a ideally crafted bow in a few minutes rather than a few days that it would be difficult for you not to become amazing very fast.

Well, you could make the bow shaft out of the scrap pile but all other steps had to be done the old way. So you will save some time but not so much, and you can still use reed if this grows in your area. As for bows even a selfbow, is only nearly completely of wood, but the grip or the part where the string is nocked aren´t, again timesaving yes, but not timeless. Shape wood will mostly get top raw material, finetuning must still be done. A composite bow still takes up to 2 years, that´s the time it takes to get all the parts glued together and the glue dry. Using the old method which was used for the mongols bows you can´t be faster than a year, with or without shape wood.
The main problem for military leaders was not to get bows or arrows, it was the long time it took to train an archer. In the early gunpowder era the bow was deadlier, faster and more precise, not to mention the longer effective range. But the firearms made the race even then because, nearly every idiot could be trained to shoot a gun.

[Say, it isn't that bad!]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Arrows that end up in the mud one way or the other are probably likely to have fouled fletching.

Would this be something that could be cleaned off, or would it permanently ruin the glue?

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by corwyn

Shooting arrows in combat, how likely is it I can reuse the arrowheads?

We've been handling arrow recovery as in 0/50 shaft breaks, then I have an arrowhead but worthless shaft. I don't know about feathers.

Arrowheads are recyclable but only if you can find the arrows. We shot brightly-coloured arrows at a target in an open field (nothing but knee-high grass) and we lost half of the arrows that didn't hit the target.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Black Leviathan

I feel like in a fantasy setting the Shape-wood crowd would be dominating the Arrow Market.

A common house rule among the economically concerned is to allow mages to make things with Shape spells exactly as well as they could make them without from the same materials with the relevant skill. That is, the magic speeds things up and eliminates the need for tools, but it doesn't grant any special skill or knowledge in making. Make an arrow out of bad wood and you still get a bad arrow, just as if you Shape a column of water, you still can't hold up a rock with it after the mage leaves. (Or even while he's there, depending on your interpretation of the magic. If the spell is holding every molecule of water in rigid position relative to the others, that substance is no longer "water". If it just gives the column the general shape, then dense objects would still sink in it. Etc.)

[corwyn]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

Arrowheads are recyclable but only if you can find the arrows. We shot brightly-coloured arrows at a target in an open field (nothing but knee-high grass) and we lost half of the arrows that didn't hit the target.

Well, you probably don't have Vision-20 like my Scout-Wizard does.

[corwyn]

Originally Posted by Kromm

If your campaign is mostly outdoors, I hope you're using GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 16: Wilderness Adventures! That supplement has two important rules for outdoor archers and their ammo:[INDENT]Strike from Afar (p. 15) covers reuse. This rule is realistic, not cinematic – I asked people who shoot bows for fun and food, and they were skeptical of recovering arrows intact outdoors. Unlike when shooting at targets, there often isn't anything to stop the arrow from sailing off, getting caught by a breeze, and ending up hundreds of yards away. When there is, it's too often a rock that blunts the arrow or a tree which stops the arrow at some silly distance off the ground. Sure, you could go look for it . . . but that would have a huge impact on travel time. The cinematic part is doubling the odds of getting an arrow back if you have Heroic Archer.

Does this account for both finding arrows and them remaining intact and usable?