Quick Question - rules for heavy bows

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Realistically, there's a pretty significant distance between "can use effectively" and "can use at all", particularly for ancient bows (it might not be true for compound bows), because using a bow effectively requires that you can draw the bow and hold it like that, with minimal trembling, while aiming, which requires significantly more strength than is required to draw it at all.

I doubt very much that warbows were 'aimed' in any way after they were drawn. I think it was one motion, draw and release when you're at the top of the draw. The 'aim' was provided by positioning your body right and subconsciously turning it if the angle between you and your target changed (such as when you rode past, for mounted archers). The necessity of aiming with your body, no sights or other equipment to make it easier, is one of the reasons archers who can use a warbow are raised to it, not trained. The musculature and shaping of the body is the other reason, of course.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

I would use the Extra Effort rules and hit them with Fatigue.

Using a weapon that's too 'strong' for you already does, though only after the battle.

[Flowergarden]

Originally Posted by Icelander

I doubt very much that warbows were 'aimed' in any way after they were drawn. I think it was one motion, draw and release when you're at the top of the draw. The 'aim' was provided by positioning your body right and subconsciously turning it if the angle between you and your target changed (such as when you rode past, for mounted archers). The necessity of aiming with your body, no sights or other equipment to make it easier, is one of the reasons archers who can use a warbow are raised to it, not trained. The musculature and shaping of the body is the other reason, of course.

I should say, I'm not a medieval archery expert, had a 120 bow though. And I'm not the strong guy, lets call me 9.5 HP by weight. First of all, keeping arrow at full draw is tiring, so you want to shoot faster, you still be better aiming, at least for a little bit. (But maybe it's just me being a bad archer)
Problem is, bow with the same ST as user doesn't feel like a warbow. It's more like hunting bow.

Second point, as far as I know, you need lighter bows for horseback, and for shooting from the castle walls you need lighter ones too.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Flowergarden

First of all, keeping arrow at full draw is tiring, so you want to shoot faster, you still be better aiming, at least for a little bit. (But maybe it's just me being a bad archer)
Problem is, bow with the same ST as user doesn't feel like a warbow. It's more like hunting bow.

120-lbs. draw weight selfbow is pretty heavy. It's within the range which many historians believe historical warbows to have been. If you can actually pause and sight along the arrow while holding 120-lbs. of tension with one arm, you're probably as skilled and strong as most historical archers.

Your second point is a good one. A lot of the gentry, knights, men-at-arms and nobles were amateur archers. They hunted and they might even be good at shooting deer with their bows. Why didn't they take bows to war?

Because of social attitudes, yes, but such attitudes rarely last very long if they are contrary to good tactics. The association of bows with the yeomanry made sense, because they had the ample nutrition needed to develop that kind of strength, and the free time to shoot bows enough so that their aiming was unconscious, done with the body rather than sighting along the arrow.

Having amateur archers also bring their bows wouldn't add anything, because the men who grew up pulling warbows were shooting at much longer range than hunting bows could reach, to force men in formation all the way on the other side of a battlefield to slow their advance or perhaps even stop entirely in some convenient cover. They were mostly 'suppressive fire', which is an important component of combined arms.

The way I've seen it described is that archers don't aim in the same way that top skeet or trap shooters don't aim with their shotgun. They aim with their whole body and when their stance is right, the shot is right.

[Flowergarden]

Originally Posted by Icelander

120-lbs. draw weight selfbow is pretty heavy. It's within the range which many historians believe historical warbows to have been. If you can actually pause and sight along the arrow while holding 120-lbs. of tension with one arm, you're probably as skilled and strong as most historical archers.

I'm not at all strong or skilled, i meant I had one (for a week, restring it, cause it got to me without a string, understood that the only shooting I could get is in my back and sold it, still get some insight)
And by aiming a little bit I meant one or even half of the second, because you not keeping bow static while drawing, so you need at least position it in the right direction and 'aim'. Maybe you are right, and it's not really aiming...
And with heavy bow you need more than second to draw, at least from my experience.
Another thing is to draw and hold a bow, you use your whole body, not one arm.

For amateur shooting knights and man-at-arms...
I don't know why you even need that. If all your army is archers... That won't go well, I suppose. If this was the winning strategy, than I suppose we would see only archers in historical armies.
Next warbows are heavy for a reason. So you can't just came with your hunting bow and be useful.
Warbows are tiring. You don't want your army to get tired before the fight.

Edit: rereading my first comment I now understood why it sounds like that. I'm not a strong guy meaning that maybe it's not holding bow is hard, maybe I'm weak. It's not that I'm so inhumanly strong for my weight) sorry for that. I'm bad in English too)).

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Flowergarden

And with heavy bow you need more than second to draw, at least from my experience.

I believe the Pyramid article "The Deadly Spring" had some rules for being able to use bows that called for longer draw times. But I've never really been able to get the design system of that to work (I always wind up with bows that have far higher draw weights than the example weapons with comparable output). A later article, "The Arrow of Progress," had some Ultra-Tech bows that were designed to have multiple release points, with later ones taking longer to draw (roughly mimicking the Overdraw mechanic of some bows in Horizon Zero Dawn: The Frozen Wilds and Horizon Forbidden West), but that's a bit different than what you're talking about here (those are all compound bows, typically with assistance from memory materials like bioplas).

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Icelander

120-lbs. draw weight selfbow is pretty heavy. It's within the range which many historians believe historical warbows to have been. If you can actually pause and sight along the arrow while holding 120-lbs. of tension with one arm, you're probably as skilled and strong as most historical archers.

Your second point is a good one. A lot of the gentry, knights, men-at-arms and nobles were amateur archers. They hunted and they might even be good at shooting deer with their bows. Why didn't they take bows to war?

Because of social attitudes, yes, but such attitudes rarely last very long if they are contrary to good tactics. The association of bows with the yeomanry made sense, because they had the ample nutrition needed to develop that kind of strength, and the free time to shoot bows enough so that their aiming was unconscious, done with the body rather than sighting along the arrow.

Having amateur archers also bring their bows wouldn't add anything, because the men who grew up pulling warbows were shooting at much longer range than hunting bows could reach, to force men in formation all the way on the other side of a battlefield to slow their advance or perhaps even stop entirely in some convenient cover. They were mostly 'suppressive fire', which is an important component of combined arms.

The way I've seen it described is that archers don't aim in the same way that top skeet or trap shooters don't aim with their shotgun. They aim with their whole body and when their stance is right, the shot is right.

Surely the simple answer would be that the people we're talking about didn't practice horse archery, and the people you're talking about fought as cavalry?

Having your cavalry force join your foot archer blocks would be all kinds of weird.

(Curious whether they avoided shooting bows during sieges as well, though. It's something I never hear about.)

[Donny Brook]

Assuming similar capability of bows, the side firing from the height of a wall would have a decisive range advantage over an archer below. I suspect that beseigers would only engage in archery in support of determined assault efforts (or feints, I suppose).

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

Assuming similar capability of bows, the side firing from the height of a wall would have a decisive range advantage over an archer below. I suspect that beseigers would only engage in archery in support of determined assault efforts (or feints, I suppose).

I don't know the tactics practiced on this point, but I could see a counter-argument - if you're trying to take the walls, you must have superior numbers, so trading attrition to reduce the enemy's archery strength during the assault could be a positive.

But that's not really relevant to the question, because the people in question are on both sides of the wall.

[Donny Brook]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

I don't know the tactics practiced on this point, but I could see a counter-argument - if you're trying to take the walls, you must have superior numbers, so trading attrition to reduce the enemy's archery strength during the assault could be a positive.

As I said, the time the besiegers might want to use archery is during committed assaults.

But that's not really relevant to the question, because the people in question are on both sides of the wall.

You mentioned sieges. Generally one side of a siege gets to fire from a fortified, elevated position