Question batch #1

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

I don't think the cultists object to fairly high ST values.

Unless it's the Cult of Low Strength. They might object strenuously (as strenuously as they're able anyway).

[Noctifer]

Originally Posted by Bruno

1) When talking about crossbows, you're talking about trained military (often mercenaries) or athletic hunters - definitely out of the Average Joe argument zone.

2) The whole point of crossbows is being able to trade a longer draw time for more punch, while not suffering from having to hold the heavier draw.

This is somewhat counter to how crossbows proliferated historically. One of the 'social issues' that resulted from the use of crossbows was that it was perceived as too easy to use for the average man and too deadly (i.e., it could penetrate armor and kill nobles easier, which was Bad (tm) ). And most medieval fighting men were not professional soldiers: they were farmers conscripted into service as part of their liege's feudal levy.

GURPS doesn't really reflect this, as is. Whereas the crossbow came to replace the bow in the late middle ages because it was more easily used by the common soldier and more deadly than a bow, a GURPS archer is far, far better served equipping himself with a bow rather than a crossbow.

[Mathulhu]

Originally Posted by Noctifer

...a GURPS archer is far, far better served equipping himself with a bow rather than a crossbow.

...unless he wants a higher skill for less investment (Crossbow is DX/E Bow is DX/A), more damage (Crossbow is Thrust+4 the Longbow is Thrust +2), longer effective range (Acc 4 vs 3).
In my experience I see lots of crossbow users and only a handful of bow users. The crossbow men often use it to augment another fighting style or less combat focused characters, while the bow users were dedicated archers.
This fits my understanding of historical examples of archers.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Noctifer

GURPS doesn't really reflect this, as is.

It does; Crossbow is an Easy skill instead of Average. Crossbows also do more damage for the ST (thr+4 instead of thr+1), higher accuracy (4 vs 2), and have a longer range (x20/25 instead of x15/20). Also, Crossbows have lower min ST and Bulk and 60% of the ammo weight.

Rate of fire is the only real advantage of a bow. With one turn of Aim, it's one shot per four turns versus one shot per six turns.

Given the +3 damage from the crossbow, the bow doesn't even really have an advantage in "DPS" for the extra ammo expenditure. After one minute of firing, the bowmen have thrown 1.5 pounds of ammo downrange to do 37.5 points of damage against DR 0. The crossbowmen have thrown 0.6 pounds of ammo downrange to do 55 points of damage against DR 0. Against DR 4 mail, the numbers drop to 2.5 points of damage per minute for the bow (you have to roll a 6 to do one point of damage) versus 16.7 for the crossbow.

a GURPS archer is far, far better served equipping himself with a bow rather than a crossbow.

Not in the context of a massed military formation. The extra damage is important when you're facing armor (as in your knight-threatening quotes), the extra range is a tactical advantage, and the lower logistics requirements also help an army.

And quite possibly not even in the case of a D&D-style adventuring party. One fairly common GURPS party-munchkin tactic is for _everyone_ to carry a crossbow as heavy as they can crank for one volley when closing. The reload time is irrelevant here, as that never happens in combat, so you can use even stronger crossbows that require mechanical assistance (effective +4 ST). The extra damage becomes even more important in a short combat where the RoF of the bow doesn't get to shine, and against armored foes it also becomes important.

What makes you say a GURPS bow is "far, far better"? Certainly, bows win the Rule of Cool. No right-thinking Legolas would use a crossbow. But only because he'll look cooler, not because the game stats are better.

[Railstar]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

snip

Even on the Rate of Fire front, the crossbowman can quite reasonably do his reloading from behind cover, mitigating any disadvantage the longer reload time might cause.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Noctifer

GURPS doesn't really reflect this, as is. Whereas the crossbow came to replace the bow in the late middle ages because it was more easily used by the common soldier and more deadly than a bow, a GURPS archer is far, far better served equipping himself with a bow rather than a crossbow.

As Mathulhu points out, the crossbow is superior in terms of stats that make shots count in Basic rules. (Under The Deadly Spring, they're not necessarily better in damage.)

The one place bows are superior is rate of fire...which looks really important when you're running a hugely strong, absurdly skilled Heroic Archer PC (with the benefit of over-the-top Basic damage levels and probably AP arrowheads) who likes using his bow in near-melee situations. Which is an incredibly bad model for historical combat environments. Even so, the elite longbowmen kept their longbows and their value...crossbows were useful for the vast majority who didn't have that kind of training.



Tangent: Why no 'crossbows' with long, vertical spans? A vertical span would make arms comparable to regular bows more manageable than the horizontal arrangement, allowing for a longer, more efficient draw. They'd be less handy than a more normal crossbow and heavier than a bow, but seem like they might perform better than either.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Dustin

Use the armor's full DR - treating the cutting weapon as crushing to reduce DR up until it achieves DRx2 (and which DR?) and becomes cutting again is too much calculation in play.

Originally Posted by Railstar

Question #1: I would use full DR because of draw-cuts – a slice across the target can be capable of cutting through flesh and into bone (say 4 points of cutting damage, x 1.5 for cutting modifier = 6 HP of injury = enough to cripple an arm or leg) is not necessarily going to inflict massive bruising against a cut-resistant target.

This is my take too. A sword is not as effective at dealing bashing damage as a mace is. If you're using the cutting edge of the sword, and the armor effectively blunts it, you do not get a bonus to crushing damage.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Noctifer

This is somewhat counter to how crossbows proliferated historically. One of the 'social issues' that resulted from the use of crossbows was that it was perceived as too easy to use for the average man and too deadly (i.e., it could penetrate armor and kill nobles easier, which was Bad (tm) ). And most medieval fighting men were not professional soldiers: they were farmers conscripted into service as part of their liege's feudal levy.

My understanding is that they were most heavily used in the military by mercenaries (professional soldiers) or small specialized units, not by armies handing one out to every conscript, like rifles in WW2. If there was a period where this happened, I'd love to know about it because I really want to read about it.

They were also used by nobles as hunting weapons (very light examples) because of ease of use from horseback, plus power of a small compact crossbow, which can't be equaled from a similarly small bow. But here the restriction to nobility was, I understand, as much a function of how legal hunting was as how expensive the bow was, not out of fear that hordes of commoners would mow down every deer. That was already illegal in many places.

[Kromm]

I would like to echo two points here.

I

Real-life weapons terminology is an arbitrary set of labels assigned by archaeologists, historians, hoplologists, and other social scientists who often have no idea what the period terms were for weapons; frequently discover that what words they have were used differently in various regions and cultures; and routinely disagree among themselves on "correct" usage. As these people are documenting the past from incomplete records, uncertainty is expected and tolerated.

Weapons terminology in games is an arbitrary set of labels assigned by designers who also don't always know the "right" terms . . . but who have the major advantage of being able to control precisely how their chosen words are used. As these people are writing technical manuals for people to use for simulations, certainty is both expected and a higher priority than historical accuracy.

The upshot is that it's likely that real-world people might use "longsword" to refer to what GURPS calls a "bastard sword," and vice versa – and it's practically a given that historically, no warrior uttered the word "broadsword." Evidence is that most people called their sidearm by the most popular local term for either "sword" or "blade" at the time. But a generic game that puts dozens of weapons in play at once, often in made-up fantasy realms, can't call all of them "sword" or "blade," so it differentiates using the arbitrary labels I mentioned, occasionally borrowing terms from learned discourse because they sound familiar (e.g., "longsword"), rather than making up names from whole cloth ("Let's call it a forkworkler!").

II

Even in GURPS, crossbows are superior weapons to bows in the sense used by military historians. Thanks to higher Acc and 1/2D, they shoot effectively at ranges between 35% and 100% greater than bows, depending on which stat you value and what kind of bow you consider the standard "war bow." Add in +1 to skill for Easy vs. Average and the crossbow's effective range advantage goes up – best-case, to 200% greater. And its damage pierces armor far more readily. In a massed military formation, this translates into mowing down distant enemies in the time it takes them to close the gap . . . and most important, this means stopping the armored enemies on horseback who are most swiftly closing the gap.

In individual combat, bows are preferable because they allow a higher rate of fire. But neither the bow nor the crossbow is a weapon of individual combat. At the ranges where a couple of seconds of extra readying time might mean you're overrun and killed, historical users of either weapon would already have switched to hand-to-hand combat weapons or effected a retreat. Roleplaying games allow for superheroic archers who bound around a melee using ranged weapons, but that's fantasy . . . and in such fantasy, yes, bow-users are fighting at distances where the range advantage of crossbows isn't relevant, are skilled enough that Easy vs. Average doesn't matter, and get all kinds of cool, cinematic tricks to compensate for the damage disadvantage of bows.

—

The moral of the story is that referring to military history for your information on how individual combatants in fantasy-land will fight isn't a useful exercise.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Even in GURPS, crossbows are superior weapons to bows in the sense used by military historians. Thanks to higher Acc and 1/2D, they shoot effectively at ranges between 35% and 100% greater than bows, depending on which stat you value and what kind of bow you consider the standard "war bow." Add in +1 to skill for Easy vs. Average and the crossbow's effective range advantage goes up – best-case, to 200% greater. And its damage pierces armor far more readily. In a massed military formation, this translates into mowing down distant enemies in the time it takes them to close the gap . . . and most important, this means stopping the armored enemies on horseback who are most swiftly closing the gap.

All of this is true in Basic (and Low Tech) GURPS, though rate of fire definitely isn't negligible to mowing down an enemy charge. (Unlike a siege, where it often doesn't make much difference how much time you spend in full cover behind the battlements readying your weapon between shots.)

It is perhaps interesting to consider with regard to historical battles, though, that in the (probably more realistic) The Deadly Spring perspective crossbows, while more accurate (possibly the most important point) don't throw harder or farther than even moderately strong combat bows and are no better at defeating armor.