Archery in this game kind of sucks.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

Realistically archers are only going to be useful in a battle if there are lots of them. Consider Agincourt, which is supposed to be one of the best performances of English longbowman. The English had 5000 archers shooting 60 arrows each, which amounts to 300,000 arrows. We are told that they ran out of arrows during the battle so all 300,000 were shot, and more in addition as runners retrieved some from the battlefield. French casualties during the actual fighting numbered around 4,000 and that included all the ones who were killed in hand to hand. The number who were incapacitated by arrows can't be determined but it was far less. Even if all French casualties were caused by arrows, you are looking at around 1% of the arrows being effective. In reality it was even worse than that.

Full-scale battlefield statistics don't apply to GURPS (or most ttRPGs) so easily. Certainly it is not remotely the case that a GURPS archer should expect to need 75 arrows per target. Also, nobody is going to try to model the battle of Agincourt using GURPS, unless it's completely automated.

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Full-scale battlefield statistics don't apply to GURPS (or most ttRPGs) so easily. Certainly it is not remotely the case that a GURPS archer should expect to need 75 arrows per target. Also, nobody is going to try to model the battle of Agincourt using GURPS, unless it's completely automated.

I specifically said "realistically" and the above applies to small-group skirmishes as well as large-scale battles. If one is trying to simulate real-life arrows in combat then archers would be no fun at all in a game (armour is effectively impenetrable except for the heaviest bows at the shortest ranges). I like GURPS because it strikes a good balance between realism (or at least verisimilitude) and fun.

[tbone]

Originally Posted by Boge

It just hasn't been fun having to attack every two rounds (skill 18, no weapon master or heroic archer yet, so I can't quick shoot effectively), and when I actually hit something that doesn't dodge, 50% of the time I don't deal any damage and the rest of the time I don't do enough damage to really matter.

I sympathize. A slow attack rate (as realistic as it may be) is less fun. (It's why the Two-Handed Axe/Mace skill is such a loser in the game; its big weapons suffer that awful halving of attack rate.)

Enough has been said about the mysterious time-jump that erased your 30-yard advantage over the soldiers, so I'll leave that be. But even in situations that legitimately give you only time for a shot or two, I can understand the frustration. You go and design an archer, an absolute classic warrior archetype, and head into danger hoping to pincushion some bad guys, but your arrows all miss or bounce off. Yeah, not so fun.

So I can understand where the "bows suck in this system" sentiment comes from. But it's worth noting again that the setup was stacked against an archer (even without questionable GM actions). The foes happened to be wearing armor that's pretty effective against bowshot. (Like a wizard occasionally running up against foes with good Magic Resistance. Sometimes it happens.) Every attack by your archer against those particular soldiers is going to be a very iffy "maybe I'll hurt him, maybe not" situation; with only one or two shots, "maybe not" is a strong possibility. So it goes.

I don't know if this'll help quell any "bows suck" sentiment, but it's interesting to imagine the situation from the other side as well. Say your PC is one of the soldiers, and you need to defend the outpost. You know there are enemy swordsmen out there; maybe even bowmen, you fear. So you put on a big coat of steel links - expensive, heavy, and encumbering, but you do it anyway as it's effective protection against swords and arrows. So now you rush out of the outpost, and... boom, from 30 yards away, an archer steps out and drops you to the ground. You're out of the fight. So much for armor.

Yeah, that's all perfectly plausible as something that could happen, but from a player-fun perspective, that outcome kind of sucks too. Armor stops being fun when it doesn't do much.

(And if it's any consolation, there's also this: Yeah, the soldier more or less matched your bow's offense with his armor's defense, But your archery setup weighs a few pounds, and costs - what, a hundred bucks, maybe a couple hundred? To reasonably counter that, the soldier had to make himself heavy and slow, and probably spend many times the money. In that sense, you win. : )

In the big picture, against different targets in varied situations, I think bows are good, even great, weapons in the system. But they're not good in all situations, and it sounds like your archer has the bad fortune to keep running into those. Something an understanding GM could remedy. : /

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

I specifically said "realistically" and the above applies to small-group skirmishes as well as large-scale battles. If one is trying to simulate real-life arrows in combat then archers would be no fun at all in a game (armour is effectively impenetrable except for the heaviest bows at the shortest ranges).

Well, lucky hits happen, but battlefield archery was pretty much a numbers game -- if you shoot enough arrows at a unit, some of them are going to hit something important. Aimed shooting and time of flight exceeding a second don't really go together.

[DanHoward]

Lucky hits are modelled with criticals. There was plenty of direct shooting at closer ranges at Agincourt but these are rarely fatal either. When hunting large animals with a bow you have to track them until they bleed out. A person simply uses a bandage to stop the bleeding and then goes looking for someone to help him remove the arrow. Only arrows that hit the vitals are generally dangerous and the vitals are generally covered by armour.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

I specifically said "realistically" and the above applies to small-group skirmishes as well as large-scale battles. If one is trying to simulate real-life arrows in combat then archers would be no fun at all in a game (armour is effectively impenetrable except for the heaviest bows at the shortest ranges). I like GURPS because it strikes a good balance between realism (or at least verisimilitude) and fun.

No, the statistics from Agincourt don't apply to small-group skirmishes. Do you have statistics from small-group skirmishes?

I'm not going to argue about arrows penetrating armor, because that doesn't matter if you're shooting people who aren't wearing armor. Which is most people. Even on some battlefields.

[Farmer]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

No, the statistics from Agincourt don't apply to small-group skirmishes.

Exactly. Small group combat is taking place at much shorter ranges than Agincourt. Agincourt archers were targeting a range, not aiming at individuals.

[tbone]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

Consider Agincourt, which is supposed to be one of the best performances of English longbowman...

A pretty interesting example. True, it may not give us numbers for what to expect in PCs' short-range skirmishes. But for any players who may have seen archers mow down armies with high-arcing long-range volleys in movies and expect that to happen in the game, your anecdote provides a good reality check.

[ravenfish]

Even if we accept Howard's argument (I am reluctant to judge a weapon's killing power based on a simple examination of casualties achieved per shot fired, given that such mathematics could be used to prove quite definitively that modern battlefield firearms are mostly harmless, but the conclusions he makes lead in a similar direction to other lines of evidence that I cannot so glibly dismiss, including experiments with modern reconstructions), it should be kept in mind that Agincourt occurred towards the end of a period of dramatic increase in the amount and quality of armor worn by the nobility. A french knight at the beginning of the 15th century would have been wearing a suit with substantially more "DR" than the mail coat mentioned in the opening example. (The fact that late-period plate armor offered reasonable protection against early firearms does not indicate that such firearms were poor weapons, merely that late-period plate armor was incredibly effective).

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by Farmer

Exactly. Small group combat is taking place at much shorter ranges than Agincourt. Agincourt archers were targeting a range, not aiming at individuals.

Only at the start. The archers were on the wings and for a lot of the battle they were shooting in a direct line at shorter ranges. Even then they were demonstrably ineffective given how few arrows caused a casualty.