Question about Muscle-powered Range Weapons...

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

My compound bow is adjustable from a 40 pound to a 60 pound draw weight, all by adjusted the the risers and limbs and pulley arrangement, without ever having to deal with new parts.

Though that's only a difference of about 2 ST (if we set it to BL*2, that's a range from ST 10 to ST 12.3).

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Agreed, especially for nobles, gentry, and folks who grew up in less disease-prone areas and had access to a high-protein diet.

I was trying to back-scale likely ST from height, based on vague memories of the bodies of the Mary Rose archers and the likely draw weights of longbows associated with the wreck.

Foot archers, especially elite longbowmen, tended to be taller and stronger than average. Horse archers could be smaller and more wiry in build. Either way, maximum draw weight topped out at ~200 lbs.

I'm of the opinion that an archer with an effective ST of 14-15 (or maybe, 16-17 due to skill + Strongbow) could probably handle such a bow, although he'd need to be much stronger to keep the bow drawn for long periods of time and he might want to go to a lower draw weight if he was going to be shooting all day.

Thing is you don't keep heavy draw bows drawn for long periods of time (precisely for the reason you give).

Horse bows could be pretty heavy draw as well, I found this talking about Manchu bows, some of the cites are a bit fanciful "transfixing two opponents at once" but a lot of the rest seem not only reasonable but well sourced and consistent. The main points for this thread IMO are:

1). there seems to be pretty consistent agreement that there was a range of bows and ability to draw them

and

2). Getting up to heavy draw involved practice:

"Caution is advised. In 1727 the Yongzheng emperor noticed a trend among his men to proceed too quickly and get injured in the process:

“If there are those who wish to learn how to use a hard bow, they should practice naturally, gradually increasing the strength of the bow. How can one go to such extremes as to take medicine? Unless one knows the nature of the drug there is the chance that people will be hurt. Besides, using a hard bow on horseback is difficult, so what is the advantage? A bow that is of strength six [80 pounds] or greater is enough.”

Those who were eager to master the use of hard bows were in the emperor's view all "ambitious" (心上进之人), and for that reason the greater the pity that they were wrongly harming themselves. "

This chaps got more, this is quite an interesting link re the construction and performance

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Rupert

There were plenty of people in Medieval Europe who were over six-feet tall. While the average peasant was pretty short, particularly in the late middle ages (as the population of Europe grew, the amount of meat in the commoner's diet shrank, and with it their stature), the wealthy had better diets (in this respect, at least) and tended to be noticeably taller. Oh, and misidentifying female remains as male because they were armed or otherwise associated with 'male' gear, which was a common error until recently, also brings the average height reported for previous periods down.

A 'giant' man then would still be a pretty big man today.

The average height for Englishmen was different from modern peoples by around 2 inches, so not really noticeable. What would be unusual to see is how wide the spectrum was. There were more with disorders causing taller or shorter bodies that would get treated with modern medicine today.

Some people get tall even when malnourished, so it's not a universal to say that poor diets MUST lead to squat frames.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

Thing is you don't keep heavy draw bows drawn for long periods of time (precisely for the reason you give).

There was a YouTube video showing how long Ygritte was holding a warbow at full draw on Game of Thrones, finally declaring her the strongest being in the universe.

[Ji ji]

But, how is all of this handled by rules? I am asking as I don’t have my copy of LT at hand.

[Flyndaran]

Pyramid 3/33 Low Tech has the infamous Deadly Spring article. It has more details about bows and their ilk than you could shake a sharpened stick at.
It includes a spreadsheet, because even the author's said he needs it, IIRC.

Great for ultra realism, or pick and choose what features you want in your game ignoring the rest.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Pyramid 3/33 Low Tech has the infamous Deadly Spring article. It has more details about bows and their ilk than you could shake a sharpened stick at.
It includes a spreadsheet, because even the author's said he needs it, IIRC.

Great for ultra realism, or pick and choose what features you want in your game ignoring the rest.

To the sharp end: it has rules that don't involve spreadsheets for holding strong bows at full draw.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by RyanW

There was a YouTube video showing how long Ygritte was holding a warbow at full draw on Game of Thrones, finally declaring her the strongest being in the universe.

heh, I think it's a bit of a cinematic hang over from the western genre the idea of archers keeping their bows fully drawn and pointed at people.

One of the great things about some* modern compound bows is that can be held at full draw without holding the full weight, this great for hunting where you can loose as soon as you see a target, rather than draw, sight and loose in time for them to disappear into the undergrowth



*don't think it's a universal thing in all compound bows? (not sure about that)

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

To the sharp end: it has rules that don't involve spreadsheets for holding strong bows at full draw.

Yep and the extended readying time rules in it can tie nicely into your "Last Gasp" AP system.

So you pay an AP for each ready it takes you to draw (so 1 or 2 for a hand bow depending in draw weight vs. BL), and at my table an Aim action costs an AP when your doing it with a drawn bow*.

So if you were taking two ready actions drawing a bow and then three aim actions to max out aiming a Acc2 longbow, that would be 5 ap and not something you'd be doing over and over again without recovery actions!



*not relevant for crossbows and compound bows.

[Ulzgoroth]

The basic rule is that bows and crossbows have rated ST, which governs their performance. You can only use a bow up to your ST, while you can use a somewhat stronger crossbow taking more time (and potentially using tools) to draw it. This is in the Basic Set. Low Tech refines and maybe adjusts some of the details in the box on p74, but the basic outline is the same.

EDIT: Actually, there's a really surprising statement on LT75 that authorizes understrength use of bows. I'm not sure what to make of that honestly.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

EDIT: Actually, there's a really surprising statement on LT75 that authorizes understrength use of bows. I'm not sure what to make of that honestly.

Makes sense actually, since normally GURPS uses minST as an indicator of minimum ST required for comfortable and effective use of a weapon; treating bows as some sort of special snowflake where minST meant something different is a weird inconsistency.