Bow/Crossbow made from Essential Wood

[Anders]

What kind of properties would you give a bow that was made from Essential Wood?

[Culture20]

I've not read Deadly Spring, but does its calculations involve strength of the wood? It be a serviceable cudgel in an emergency.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Culture20

I've not read Deadly Spring, but does its calculations involve strength of the wood? It be a serviceable cudgel in an emergency.

I remember discussing Essential Wood with Bruno for TDS at some point, and we came up with something like "multiply certain favorable properties by 3" over yew. That made it very competitive with higher TL steels (higher than TL 3 or TL4); I don't recall offhand if it was also better than fiberglass or carbon fiber.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

I remember discussing Essential Wood with Bruno for TDS at some point, and we came up with something like "multiply certain favorable properties by 3" over yew. That made it very competitive with higher TL steels (higher than TL 3 or TL4); I don't recall offhand if it was also better than fiberglass or carbon fiber.

Better for what? The properties of a bow aren't constrained by the material it is made of nearly as much as they are by the user.

Changing what the bow is made from is not going to alter the range or damage you can obtain from a particular ST bow, it just changes how big the bow needs to be to have that ST. It's not difficult to build a bow too strong for anybody to actually draw out of ordinary wood (this is after all the entire idea of mechanically cocked crossbows). Tripling the relevant properties will reduce the weight of a bow of a particular draw to a third what it was, but it's not like a wooden shaft too strong for any human to bend significantly is enormously heavy to start with.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

I remember discussing Essential Wood with Bruno for TDS at some point, and we came up with something like "multiply certain favorable properties by 3" over yew. That made it very competitive with higher TL steels (higher than TL 3 or TL4); I don't recall offhand if it was also better than fiberglass or carbon fiber.

Originally Posted by malloyd

Better for what? The properties of a bow aren't constrained by the material it is made of nearly as much as they are by the user.

Changing what the bow is made from is not going to alter the range or damage you can obtain from a particular ST bow, it just changes how big the bow needs to be to have that ST. It's not difficult to build a bow too strong for anybody to actually draw out of ordinary wood (this is after all the entire idea of mechanically cocked crossbows). Tripling the relevant properties will reduce the weight of a bow of a particular draw to a third what it was, but it's not like a wooden shaft too strong for any human to bend significantly is enormously heavy to start with.

In the context of The Deadly Spring, which was what I explicitly referring, that's not correct. A given ST bow can do more damage and range with essential wood over regular wood and some older types of steel because it's more efficient, and less of the energy in the draw goes into moving the limbs. This is more likely noticable ('cause the numbers are bigger) in range than damage (which is still chunky and 1d+1 is a sizable improvement over 1d, as an example)

If you're using GURPS RAW, and looking up damage on the thrust table, it's closer to correct, but since for a given ST you can do thr+1 to thr+4 or so with a bow/crossbow depending on the bow design and therefore its inherent properties, it can still be off. As mentioned, the scale of it (thr+2 going to thr+3 can be a large percentage jump in raw damage, and the output of 'better limb material is not going to be linear in bow mass) is probably higher than the materials change will warrant.

"It's a bit lighter in mass for a given net damage" is accurate. How you get there via ST or draw weight is slightly more complicated.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Anders

What kind of properties would you give a bow that was made from Essential Wood?

It would be much lighter than a bow of similar ST made from normal wood. Gurps usually doesn't go into this level of detail.

You could make much stronger bows/crossbows out of Essential Wood but Gurps usually doesn't go into that level of detail either. You could make crossbows in the ST range given for historical steel crossbows but without steel's reduced eficiency due to the shorter length bolts necessary due to steel's much greater weight.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Anders

What kind of properties would you give a bow that was made from Essential Wood?

Offhand, I'd treat it as a composite bow. Fundamentally, what it does is let you use a lighter spring arm, which means a higher efficiency, but there's not all that much room for improvement (typically reducing weight by a factor of 3 would push a 40% efficiency to 67%, a 50% to 75%, a 60% to 82%).

[Sorenant]

Originally Posted by Anders

What kind of properties would you give a bow that was made from Essential Wood?

Pyramid #3-96 Tech and Toys IV has the Arrows of Progress articles with stat for TL9+ bows. I would refluff the TL9 ones as Essential Wood Bows.

[Black Leviathan]

I'd give it a quality bump, It's tougher, stronger, floats better, but it's not a different bow type and doesn't change in mass.

[Anders]

I'm thinking of giving it the stats of the Welsh Longbow from Fantasy Weapons (most importantly, Armor Divisor 2, making it able to pierce heavy armor).