12-14-2015, 09:59 PM | #11 |
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Re: Question batch #1
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12-15-2015, 07:39 AM | #12 | |
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Re: Question batch #1
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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.
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12-15-2015, 08:01 AM | #13 | |
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Re: Question batch #1
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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.
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12-15-2015, 08:26 AM | #14 | |
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: Question batch #1
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. Quote:
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. |
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12-15-2015, 08:39 AM | #15 |
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Re: Question batch #1
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12-15-2015, 09:00 AM | #16 | |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: Question batch #1
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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.
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12-15-2015, 09:23 AM | #17 | ||
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Re: Question batch #1
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12-15-2015, 09:29 AM | #18 | |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
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Re: Question batch #1
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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.
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12-15-2015, 10:32 AM | #19 |
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Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: Question batch #1
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.
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12-15-2015, 10:47 AM | #20 | |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: Question batch #1
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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.
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deadly spring, low-tech, pyramid 3/33 |
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