Recovering Arrows

[ArchonShiva]

Scrounging allows you to recover half the arrows fired in any given fight. (DFA88)

Fine arrows are harder to break. This seems to have no effect on anything.

Puissance +3 (etc.) arrows are reusable.

I haven’t found anything further on the subject.

Does that mean that:

1. You can only ever recover half your arrows (round down);
2. You decide which ones you find;
3. If the only arrow you shoot is a Puissance+3, you’ll never see it again;
4. You could shoot a dozen $2 arrows into a corpse to make sure you recover your twelve fine balanced meteoric ones?

[adm]

For my games, it's 50/50 on each arrow, and yes for this battle I may loose all of them, but over time it evens out. On arrows that injure their target, arrow heads are usually recoverable*, the shaft or fletching may be damaged beyond use, but you can get a discount on your next purchase with the arrowheads. On misses arrow or arrowhead** recovery becomes more difficult, underground or inside the heads may shatter hitting the cavern or stone walls; outside they can disappear into the sod***, or up in a tree where you don't see them etc.

* What the arrowhead is made of, and what they hit makes a difference, i.e. stone arrowheads vs iron golems aren't a likely recovery.

** As above, what they hit, or off a cliff, makes a difference.

*** If you've ever shot a bow at targets outside in a tall grass setting, you'll know how easy it is to loose arrows in sod when you know where they went, a miss in the heat of battle likely makes it even harder.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by ArchonShiva

Does that mean that:

1. You can only ever recover half your arrows (round down);
2. You decide which ones you find;
3. If the only arrow you shoot is a Puissance+3, you’ll never see it again;
4. You could shoot a dozen $2 arrows into a corpse to make sure you recover your twelve fine balanced meteoric ones?

1. Rounding is not specified.
2. No, the GM decides.
3. See 1.
4. No, you'll either recover 6 of each, or the GM will get annoyed and decide you recover a dozen $2 arrows and 0 fine balanced meteoric arrows.

A reasonable variant solution is to roll 1d per arrow. On a 1-3 it's broken or lost. Alternately, if you want quality to matter, I suggest 1-2 means lost, 3-4 means broken, 5-6 is intact, and weapon quality modifies the odds of being broken.

[ArchonShiva]

Rounding is specified on p. DFA6. GMs can certainly override this.