Weapon Damages

[Joerg]

On 12.1.2018 at 12:40 AM, olskool said:

This is why I divide my Missile weapons' ranges into four Range Bands.  Those four range bands all have different Skill Modifications and Strike Rank costs. 

While most of my experience is with field archery (round targets and animal shape targets), I wonder about these additional strike ranks for long range fire.

If you are firing a military strength bow (or longbow) of better than 70 lbs draw weight, there is no f***ing way that you draw the arrow to the fullest and then fine-tune target acquisition for several seconds. No problem with a compound bow, but no such luck with any recurve or long bow in that draw weight class. That's why I used a nice 40 lbs recurve barebow (stringwalking) for competitions.

 

It is also a myth that you can purposefully hit a man-sized target at extreme range. I liked clout archery at roughly 150 metres, where the "target" were concentric circles on the ground, with a flagpost in the center. Yes, I did ruin one arrow by hitting that flagpole, but I wouldn't say that was intentional.

Firing at a target uniformly moving is only slightly harder than firing at a still target. If the target is more or less randomly zig-zagging, there is no point in trying an aimed hit, unless you can make out a pattern in those motions. Instead, you send three arrows in that direction, hoping that one of them will intersect with one of the course changes.

Firing into a melee is similar, only this time you have a plus-minus target. Sniping is pretty much impossible at more than short range with a missile as slow as an arrow.

 

On 12.1.2018 at 12:40 AM, olskool said:

I list the Skill Modification to simulate the difficulty in hitting a distant target that may be moving unpredictably due to the attack.  I list the Strike Rank Modification (please understand that I use a differing SR system that is randomized and counts down) to simulate the TIME (the Strike Rank cost) it takes to aim AND compute the needed "lead" to hit a moving target as well as the "flight time" of the projectile needed to reach the target. 

Let me guess - you archery exerience comes from shooting a compound bow. Possibly with targetting aids like a scope. Or you are translating experience with gun shooting.

On 12.1.2018 at 12:40 AM, olskool said:

My Range Bands are:

• SHORT RANGE (up to 1/4 Base Range):  Normal Skill Level (1 X Skill) and 1 Strike Rank to shoot (nocking an arrow is 5 SRs).  An arrow can be carried nocked.
• MEDIUM RANGE (From 1/4 Base to 1/2 Base Range):  Fairly Difficult Skill Level (0.75 X Skill) and 2 Strike Ranks to shoot to medium range. 
• LONG RANGE (From 1/2 Base to 3/4 Base Range):  Difficult Skill Level (0.5 X Skill) and 3 Strike Ranks to shoot to long range.
• EXTREME RANGE (From 3/4 Base to Total Base Range):  Formidable Skill Level (0.25 X Skill) and 4 Strike Ranks to shoot to extreme range.   

These chances are also modified by conditions (lighting, target running, small targets, etc...) and the shooter's health.  I find that this system really helps balance the power of projectile weapons' range and rate of fire by making the long shots more challenging (as they would be in the real world).

It is interesting to see lighting as your skill modifiers, but not wind. And you don't mention the nature of intermediary terrain - do you see all the ground between you and the target, or are there ridges obscuring the terrain behind them, or open areas of water? Either make judging the distance quite hard. Most misses are vertical in nature, from misjudging the distance. Misjudging the distance by five meters will make half a meter difference on the target. Admittedly, firing at an upright human-shaped target still makes that a just so hit.

In preparing field archery tournaments, the people setting up the course will seek out all the chances for shots with adverse conditions, like shooting across a well-lit and probably well ventilated clearing into a dark trail.

It is pretty much impossible to bring all of this into rpg rules for archery.

 

 

[olskool]

On 2/4/2018 at 4:20 AM, Joerg said:

Let me guess - you archery exerience comes from shooting a compound bow. Possibly with targetting aids like a scope. Or you are translating experience with gun shooting.

 

1

Wrong guess.  I do own a Compound Bow (80lb Draw Weight, 31" Draw Length) but most of my shooting was done with a Hoyt Recurve (50lb Draw Weight, 31" Draw Length) under HUNTING conditions.  My longest kill with a Recurve is 58 yards on a white-tailed deer.  This is a long shot and I was very lucky.  Now let's address some of your issues with my post so I can clarify my position.  I will start by the RuneQuest RAW rules involving Bows from the newly reprinted RuneQuest Classic.   This will give people reading this post a "benchmark" to use in comparing my rules to the basic rules in RQ2.  We will use the Composite Bow as it is the closest example to a modern Recurve Bow (the bow I'm using in these examples).

The Composite Bow:  Base Range 100 meters, Long Range 150 meters, Extreme Range 200 meters.  Shooting Skill is HALVED at Long Range (so a 100% Skill is reduced to 50%) and QUARTERED at Extreme Range (So a 100% Skill is now reduced to 25%).  The SR Cost remains the same regardless of the Range at which the Bowman is shooting.  There are Skill reductions for environmental factors.  

Now here are my "stats" for a Composite Bow with a Draw Weight of STR10 (a perfectly average STR) and a medium SIZ to the bow (I have Pixi, Short, Medium, and long Bow Staves which are used in a formula with Draw Weight (10lbs of Draw Weight equal 1 STR required to use the bow) to determine the bow's Base Range.  Skipping all of that, my STR10 Composite Bow would also have a Range of 100 meters as a Base Range.  I then DIVIDE this Base Range by FOUR to determine my four range bands.  So my Compound Bow would have a 25 meter Short Range with a normal Skill roll to hit (so a 100% Skill would be unaffected).  At the 50m Medium Range Band, the chance to hit reduces by 25% (so a 100% Skill becomes 75%).  Carrying on to Long Range at 75 meters will cut the shooter's Skill in HALF (so a 100% Skill becomes 50%).  Reaching the limit of Extreme Range at 100 meters will have reduced the shooter's Skill to ONE QUARTER (or 25%  for a Skill of 100%).  As you can see, my Range Bands are more "real world oriented" where any shot on a point target over 50 yards is a very long shot and fairly difficult to achieve.

   "It is also a myth that you can purposefully hit a man-sized target at extreme range."   Not True.  Just YouTube Long Range Archery and dozens of long ranged shots on game animals with Recurve Bows will come up.  Hitting a man is no more difficult than hitting a Bear, Deer, or Hog and there are examples of those shots in plenty.  Is it easy?  NO!  Can it be done? Yes it can.  I'll be the first to admit it is hard to do and that is why a MASTER BOWMAN will only have a 25% chance to hit a target at 100 meters under my rules.  

   "It is interesting to see lighting as your skill modifiers but not wind..."   As a great many of the Forum users are not English-as-a-first-language speakers, I will explain the meaning of "etc..."  This phrase is Latin for "Et Cetera" which translates as "and so forth."  It is used to denote an INCOMPLETE LISTING of items.  In my modifiers, I listed a few examples for reference so readers could visualize how my modifiers might affect the shot.  Yes, I use modifiers for wind.  I just didn't include a complete list here.  

Now I will address your "issues" with the added Strike Ranks and Range Estimation.  You make a statement that leads me to believe that YOU think that the time in Strike Ranks is "logged" while holding a "drawn Bow."  You also point out the difficulty of Range Estimation and the role it plays in accuracy.  I'll start with Range Estimation.  This is a function of a shooter's SKILL.  Highly skilled shooters are masters of Range Estimation.  I factored this in by reducing the Skill for each Range Band.  This "models" the increasing difficulty in estimating the target's range and calculating a proper "lead" for a moving target.  These mental calculations also take time to do.  Thus, Range Estimation has a hand in the time in SRs that a shot takes.  As for the assertion you make about holding a Recurve Bow of any weight, I agree TOTALLY.  Where the issue comes in is in this assumption.  I never said that the shooter would be holding his draw the whole time.  I see a missile weapon attack the same way one is supposed to visualize a melee attack.  We are explicitly told by RuneQuest that an attack is "a series of blows, feints, and maneuvers" that culminate in a to hit roll.  Missile combat should be NO DIFFERENT.  I visualize a missile attack being... 1) The shooter orients his weapon towards his target. 2) he then considers the Range (Range Estimation) and any lead he may need to incorporate in order to hit the target.  3) He then steadies, draws, and smoothly releases the projectile.  4) he "follows through" on his release as he observes his projectile's flight.  All of those steps take TIME.  I measure that time in Strike Ranks (although my SRs are "roughly" 1/2 a second as my rounds are only 6 seconds long).  4 Strike Ranks (potentially representing 4 seconds in the RAW RQ2) is pretty generous for a shot to 100 meters.  Just looking at a typical arrow traveling about 80 meters per second will tell you that even a "snapshot" at 100 yards is going to take about 2 seconds between the draw and release and including the arrow's flight time to 100 yards.

I hope these explanations "clarify" my previous post for you.

[Joerg]

18 hours ago, olskool said:

I hope these explanations "clarify" my previous post for you.

Ok, so you do have the kind of hands-on experience I often miss when looking at people's imagination of archery.

Hitting a man-sized target at 100+ yards/metres: if the target is caught moving in a steady line or ideally stationary, the shot is possible. Not that likely, but possible. If the target is moving in not quite a straight line (like avoiding patches of wet/slippery/sucking ground) and you cannot predict the course, any hit will be due to sheer luck. That doesn't mean that you cannot gauge the distance and loose four or five arrows, two or three before the first one comes down somewhere near the target, and with such a salvo, your chance of hitting returns from random to maybe your decent 25%. But not with a single arrow, you must be willing to waste several hours of work on your arrows to force this one semi-random hit.

While I haven't done any hunting with bows (forbidden in this part of Europe), I have been to competitions that involved trick shots on moving targets. If you are confident about a vector, you can hit a distant target with some confidence. If the vector is not that steady (at least between your release and the impact, never mind whether it was constant in between as long as it evens out), you miss, unless you failed your to-hit roll.

Which brings me to arrow retrieval, and how lucky you need to be to retrieve any arrows. If you use a dovetail composite arrow where the part with the tip may break off, you can reuse 75% of the arrow that hit a hard surface (like bedrock or unyielding armor), and the work involved. If the ground is more forgiving to arrow survival, you need to have a mastery at spotting hidden things, or else a detection spell or device. And bring a small spade or chisel.

Personalized equipment is the rule, not the exception. You always shoot the bow that suits you best for the style of shooting, and the arrows to fit the bow. Hence the "standard bow" assumption in the rules is as much bogus as was the "average pilot" set-up used by the USAF after WW2, leading to numerous crashes due to wrong adaptation of the steering gear.

Trying to hit with arrows too soft or too hard for your bow will be a near-automatic miss as you watch your arrow take a sudden detour maybe a few metres before impact. More fletching or a heavier tip can compensate a bit at the cost of flight speed and accurate estimates of distance. And grabbing someone else's bow and arrows doesn't mean that what was a good fit for him will be a good fit for you. Slight differences in draw length will make an arrow to hard or too weak. Compensation by tilting the bow so the vibration plane becomes vertical only goes so far.

Which leads to different kinds of upper body strength. An archer won't necessarily do well at weight-lifting or bench-pressing, but a well-muscled strong-man may have to capitulate at drawing a strong bow to its full extent due to a different set of muscles required for this, not to mention "locked joints" to take on much of the force without applying muscle power (and vibrations). There's also the problem of exaggerated chest anatomy or clothing accentuating that getting in the way of the string, applying to female chests as much as to over-muscled bench-pressers' ones.

 

[Godhi]

There are several factors one must consider in a typical Runequest melee:

• Few combatants are going to be wielding weapons which inflict large amounts of damage. Remember that the cost of a weapon is directly proportionate to the amount of damage it inflicts, and we are in a Bronze Age culture where wealth is concentrated among the nobles and merchants. Most opponents will either be wielding clubs, knives, or fists; members of the city guard will be among the few armed with swords, but they will most likely be carrying a gladius or shortsword. (1D6 +1) Warriors will most likely be carrying short spears, or maybe a battle-axe (1d8 +2) but the latter will be less common than the spear carriers.
• Swords will most likely be carried by merchants or noblemen. The good news is they will probably not be as proficient as a trained knight or warrior; the bad news is they are wielding weapons that inflict better damage (1D8 +1) and can impale. Another bit of bad news is they are most likely carrying a shield, and are just as good--if not better--at parrying with a shield than striking with a sword.
• One advantage to opponents wielding two-handed swords or great axes: they cannot carry a shield, and have to parry with the same weapon. The bad news is when they hit, the weapon can cause some serious damage in melee. Beware of Trolls armed with mauls!
• The worst danger for the heroes will be missile fire. They might be able to dodge thrown weapons like javelins, but against arrows and crossbow bolts all the heroes can do is hide behind their shields and hope their armor can protect them. The only good news is that the damage bonus for missile fire is halved; on the other hand, missiles such as arrows can impale.
• Rarely will weapons roll maximum damage, fortunately. On an average roll, a light club wielded by a character with a D4 damage bonus will inflict 6 points of damage on a successful hit. A character with average statistics wearing cuirboilli armor with soft leather padding (4 points of armor) who is struck in an arm will take 2 points of damage--enough to reduce the limb to 1 hit point and really hurt him, but not enough to cripple the limb. On the other hand, a blow from a battle axe doing 9 points of damage (an average roll) will reduce the limb to -2 hit points, breaking bones and crippling the arm, but not severing it. This is to be expected from a battle axe in medieval combat.
• So how does one stay alive in Runequest combat? Learning how to parry with a shield or another weapon in one's off-hand. Either that, or learning how to dodge blows so the enemy doesn't hit you in the first place!

[olskool]

On 2/16/2018 at 4:01 PM, Joerg said:

Ok, so you do have the kind of hands-on experience I often miss when looking at people's imagination of archery.

Hitting a man-sized target at 100+ yards/metres: if the target is caught moving in a steady line or ideally stationary, the shot is possible. Not that likely, but possible. If the target is moving in not quite a straight line (like avoiding patches of wet/slippery/sucking ground) and you cannot predict the course, any hit will be due to sheer luck. That doesn't mean that you cannot gauge the distance and loose four or five arrows, two or three before the first one comes down somewhere near the target, and with such a salvo, your chance of hitting returns from random to maybe your decent 25%. But not with a single arrow, you must be willing to waste several hours of work on your arrows to force this one semi-random hit.

While I haven't done any hunting with bows (forbidden in this part of Europe), I have been to competitions that involved trick shots on moving targets. If you are confident about a vector, you can hit a distant target with some confidence. If the vector is not that steady (at least between your release and the impact, never mind whether it was constant in between as long as it evens out), you miss, unless you failed your to-hit roll.

Which brings me to arrow retrieval, and how lucky you need to be to retrieve any arrows. If you use a dovetail composite arrow where the part with the tip may break off, you can reuse 75% of the arrow that hit a hard surface (like bedrock or unyielding armor), and the work involved. If the ground is more forgiving to arrow survival, you need to have a mastery at spotting hidden things, or else a detection spell or device. And bring a small spade or chisel.

Personalized equipment is the rule, not the exception. You always shoot the bow that suits you best for the style of shooting, and the arrows to fit the bow. Hence the "standard bow" assumption in the rules is as much bogus as was the "average pilot" set-up used by the USAF after WW2, leading to numerous crashes due to wrong adaptation of the steering gear.

Trying to hit with arrows too soft or too hard for your bow will be a near-automatic miss as you watch your arrow take a sudden detour maybe a few metres before impact. More fletching or a heavier tip can compensate a bit at the cost of flight speed and accurate estimates of distance. And grabbing someone else's bow and arrows doesn't mean that what was a good fit for him will be a good fit for you. Slight differences in draw length will make an arrow to hard or too weak. Compensation by tilting the bow so the vibration plane becomes vertical only goes so far.

Which leads to different kinds of upper body strength. An archer won't necessarily do well at weight-lifting or bench-pressing, but a well-muscled strong-man may have to capitulate at drawing a strong bow to its full extent due to a different set of muscles required for this, not to mention "locked joints" to take on much of the force without applying muscle power (and vibrations). There's also the problem of exaggerated chest anatomy or clothing accentuating that getting in the way of the string, applying to female chests as much as to over-muscled bench-pressers' ones.

 

      I find it shameful that you aren't allowed to hunt there.  Most game is far from helpless and I find it rewarding to kill, dress, and EAT an animal as opposed to buying a processed animal at the store.  For the record, I'm NOT trying to offend any PETA followers here.  I killed predators on my farm (mostly Raccoon or Opossum killing my Chickens) and hunted animals to supplement my supply of meat.  The way I grew up if you were eating meat, you probably knew its name when it lived (we raised beef cattle) OR you hunted and killed it.  That's just life in rural PA (I'm so rural that I have Amish neighbors).   Please don't be offended by my mention of hunting/killing deer (or other animals). 

 

     I use 400 to 500-grain arrows with a fairly stiff SPLINE (for the uninitiated, SPLINE is how stiff the arrow shaft is).  Even using illuminated nocks, I lose a LOT of arrows hunting.  Most arrows that hit game will crack or bend, rendering them useless.  I wonder if this would be the case with heavier "War arrows" which often weigh 10 grains per pound of Draw Weight (so a 120lb Draw Weight Warbow would use a 1200 grain/78 gram arrow).  

   I use my back muscles to draw my recurve.  My Compound Bow is much less finicky.  In addition, it has an 80% "Letoff" at full draw.  This means it only takes 15lbs of Draw Weight to hold my 80lb Bow at full draw.  This is why I use my Compound Bow in tree stands... A much easier seated draw.