Dodge and drop with ready bow

[Caelarch]

I suspect I'm just overlooking an obvious rule somewhere, but I can't find it and my searching on this forum and Google isn't turning anything up.

My question is what happens to an archer who has his bow ready (i.e. arrow nocked and bow drawn) who decides to dodge and drop (B377) an incoming ranged attack? The rules seem to be silent, implying that the archer's bow remains ready and she can fire on her next turn, but I would expect that a sudden dodge to the ground would ruin the readiness of the bow (i.e. the archer relaxes the draw or even misfires the ready arrow). I can understand a gun, or even a crossbow remaining ready; but certain muscle powered ranged weapons like bows or spear throwers would seem likely to become unready.

Is there something I'm overlooking? If not, thoughts on this situation?

[Mathulhu]

At it's heart GURPS is strongly focused on cinematic simulation.

If the bow is ready then the string isn't drawn back, that doesn't need to be done until the character starts aiming. A bow can be drawn and loosed as a single action.

There is a Will roll for maintaining Aim once a character has dodged.
If firing from prone is possible by RAW then it should be penalised by the Bulk of the bow.

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by Caelarch

I suspect I'm just overlooking an obvious rule somewhere, but I can't find it and my searching on this forum and Google isn't turning anything up.

My question is what happens to an archer who has his bow ready (i.e. arrow nocked and bow drawn) who decides to dodge and drop (B377) an incoming ranged attack? The rules seem to be silent, implying that the archer's bow remains ready and she can fire on her next turn, but I would expect that a sudden dodge to the ground would ruin the readiness of the bow (i.e. the archer relaxes the draw or even misfires the ready arrow). I can understand a gun, or even a crossbow remaining ready; but certain muscle powered ranged weapons like bows or spear throwers would seem likely to become unready.

Is there something I'm overlooking? If not, thoughts on this situation?

I'm not aware of any specific rule but I'd suggest that visualizing what needs to happen will present solutions that can be resolved using current rules.

Dodging and dropping is supposed to leave you prone on the ground. If you're not prone, but sitting/squatting/whatever, you're a bigger target and don't get the full benefit of a dodge and drop. If you are prone, some things have to happen on the way to the ground.

A bow and arrow would start with the bow perpendicular to the ground, the same as you, so in order to not be stopped by the bottom nock hitting the ground, you have to twist the bow a quarter turn, so it ends up parallel to the ground. A throwing spear or a spear and atatl would have been parallel to the ground and need to rotate relative to you to stay parallel while you go from perpendicular to parallel.

Both weapons remain ready by RAW, though you could call for a DX roll to avoid letting go of one or more pieces of the weapon system while dropping, e.g. arrow or both bow and arrow, as a house rule. However, while you could fire/launch your ready weapon while prone, you should probably incur a penalty for doing so.

Bows can be fired while parallel to the ground (after all, that's what a crossbow does), but it's not how it's meant to be fired. It's design is based on you sighting your target while the bow is perpendicular to the ground and that's how the character is trained to use it and he can't raise the bow as high for arcing fire while he's prone.

In the same manner, you probably can't get as smooth or full an arc while throwing a spear with an atatl because again your position is awkward, it's not designed to be used while prone and that's not how you trained to use it.

Now that we've visualized what's happened to the character we can make a simple ruling. "You can remain prone and use your ready weapon at a penalty of X (where X is determined by GM fiat) or you can take 2 turns to stand up and use your ready weapon without any extra (other situational modifiers still apply) penalty."

[Sir Tifyable]

Simple answer: on B364 under Aim, "Active defense: Any, but you automatically spoil your aim and lose all benefits."

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by Hellboy

Realistically speaking anyone with No Arms or both hands holding an object are going to have problems dropping from standing to lying down, normally people use their arms to help break their fall.

Even having 1 arm or 1 hand holding something should cause problems too.

Not sure how to model that exactly, but maybe when people skip a step during posture changes like this they should need to make a DX roll, at penalties if they are missing the arms to help carefully lower the torso to the ground?

No Arms, maybe, I've never known anyone in that situation who needed to dodge and drop. However, realistically speaking, people holding an object with both hands don't have any problem dropping from standing to prone. People usually use their hands (palms) to break their fall, not their arms., but you can use your elbows or just let your knees hit a bit before your shoulders. You usually tilt your head back a bit and lower it last, so you don't do a faceplant.

That said, you won't get the wind knocked out of you from your drop. If you're wearing summer weight clothes, you might put a hole in your knees or elbows and get a minor scrape or two. If you're wearing a winter weight shirt or pants, you usually avoid both problems. (The summer jacket for the combat uniform was just your winter shirt and it worked fine. If your character's wearing a leather jacket, it's not a problem. You might sprain a wrist or elbow or dislocate a shoulder, if you land wrong but it's a very low probability event. In GURPS, it'd be appropriate for a critical failure, but in real life, it isn't even that common, or an 800 man battalion would have four "walking wounded" casualties every time it did a mass "dodge and drop" and it just doesn't happen anywhere near that frequently.

Of course, you don't necessarily keep holding an object with both hands while dropping. It's quite common to take one hand off your rifle and move your rifle to the side, so you don't pin it under you.

Someone with 1 or 0 arms is also going to have a hard time crawling. Does anyone know if the books discuss this somewhere? You'd be slowed down. Particularly with 0, you'd have to shuffle/worm your way.

Maybe. Crawling on the knees rather than hands and knees might be slower; on one hand and both knees, it's probably only a bit slower. Crawling on your belly depends, a lot.

In an enclosed space where you can't make much use of your arms to grab and help pull you forward, there's not much difference whether you have arms or not. If you absolutely have to travel head first, like crawling along in a ditch or through a minefield, probably. Although if you've had time to adapt to your condition it's probably less limiting than you think. If you don't have to crawl along headfirst on your belly, you don't. You turn in place and then roll to where you're going. It's much faster!

[Varyon]

For higher resolution, keeping the bow drawn (the second Ready) while falling probably calls for a roll against Bow skill, possibly at a penalty; on a failure, you accidentally launch the arrow in a random direction (which may just be into the ground in front of you). Once you're down, throwing weapons and bows should probably take the same penalty as a swinging weapon for your current posture.

[Bruno]

I have watched a man crawl, on his back, under netting, for about 15 feet, along a tiny little gangplank, while holding a heron (quite irate) in both arms such that the bird was not hurt, did not get caught in the netting, and didn't peck his eyeballs out. [1]

I was very impressed. He was probably moving at Move 1/2 or 1/3, but it was still an achievement. Propelled by his boot heels, hip, and I swear somehow he was also walking on his shoulder-blades. That was a series of DX checks with a self-imposed penalty to keep the bird safe at the expense of himself and his travel time, if I ever saw any. Bird came out OK, he cut his knee but was not pecked.

[1] Netting over an ornamental pond to stop fish-eating animals from getting in and eating the ornamental fish. So naturally the fish-eating heron got in, and got quite stuck (and tangled in the netting).

[Bruno]

I did mean 0.5 or 0.33 yards per second, ie not very fast. Possibly even slower, it's not like I was holding a stop-watch and I was rather focused on the "Oh dear I hope it all works out" angle.

It's just barely possible he was able to leverage part of the arm holding the heron's beak as part of the wiggle, but no more than the upper arm at best. The other arm was wrapped securely around his front (and around the heron) to keep its legs from kicking and getting tangled in the netting.

The thing is that GURPS doesn't generally track turn-by-turn movement at the below-one-yard level - this is not terribly combat effective. It is, as the saying goes on this board, below GURPS' resolution. The other thing is that humans are not built to move like that - particularly on our backs. We can sort of scootch about, but it's more a side-effect of our evolution than any sort of specialty. We just need to be able to thrash around on our backs enough so we can right ourselves, and enough to get into or out of a funny spot, not to chase down prey or escape predation.

Compare a turtle on its back - it's not important to the turtle to have great overland speed like this, it just needs to flip itself over before it dies of heat/cold/thirst/starvation. Or a fish on land - fish end up on land, and it's important that they have a reflex and the strength to get into the water again, but for most fish they don't have to be any good at it. Fish that hang out in tide pools, walking fish, and suchlike obviously have better motivation, and tend to have better land mobility too.

Only being able to move without limbs is "Slithers" a subset of No Legs. Only being able to move on all limbs is Horizontal, another disadvantage. Being able to voluntarily have one of those disadvantages is probably the Controllable Disadvantage perk.