Thread: Horseback Bow?
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Old 02-05-2021, 08:29 PM   #12
Ulzgoroth
 
Join Date: Jul 2008
Default Re: Horseback Bow?

Quote:
Originally Posted by bocephus View Post
For me a "Long Bow" is a thing from Wales. To be perfectly honest, other than knowing they exist and having seen some demonstrations of them, I know positively nothing about the Japanese (China, Korea, Taiwan, etc) bows.

Horse bow to me is something like the mogolian ones that are generally represented around 48" and I think they were composite as well, an English Long Bow is 70+inches.

So you could be correct. I do not believe they are referred to as Long Bows. But its far enough outside of my expertise that short of being specific about the region, time and genre I will default to what I would practice at my table, based on my experiences.
They are, in fact, referred to as longbows (at least sometimes, obviously that's not the original name) and more than 2 meters long...though I am not completely sure that those particular Japanese bows are the ones used on horseback.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bocephus View Post
btw I should say "I have tried something similar to this at my archery club. A saddle mounted on a pivot being rocked by someone whose behind you some distance. I cant hit crap in this situation, and that's on a range without an actual horse head near the field of fire and without the targets changing distance or location. " It was a just for fun thing, but lemme tell ya... after that experience I definitely impose full penalties on mounted archers in any kind of 'realistic' game setting. Oh and I was only able to make it work at all using a 40inch youth bow. I would be very skeptical of anyone using anything more than a short bow.
Real world testing is cool...but note that the Basic rule is that mounted archery uses the worse of Riding and Archery. And that's before looking for any further penalties. So if you don't have Riding to begin with, completely ineffectual is the expected result.
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