Thread: Modern compound bow vs. legendary weapons?

These are the kind of questions I had to struggle with to write my BRP steppe nomads supplement (to be published hopefuly some time, it is almost done). It is a rather complex question and I've read and heard so many things, often contradictory, that at last, I decided to make it simple. I think that trying to acurately simulate bows is a too complex thing. Not only the bow, its quality, the kind of arrows or the skill and strength of the archer, but also the use it has been made for (acurate firing, volley, mounted archery, life-time...) have to be taken into account. It is all about an optimal combination archer/bow/arrow/use/conditions. Almost every bow is the best for for of these combinations. My short experience in archery did not help much finding the magical formula.

You may have been trained with a coumpound bow, but if using it in stress or in movement during a battle or while trying to escape, it may not be much more efficient than a self bow, at least as long as acuracy is concerned. But for contests like for Ulysse or Robin Hood, where you have time to aim, a compound will surely help. Since the training of the archer is the first criteria, I'd not give a bonus but instead grant a higher basic score. Or may be only for aimed shots. If you play with the fatigue option, you may give some advantage as well. It would probably have no true advantage for instinctive shooting, which is actually what is understood under the Bow skill.
Such a bow would be seen as magical by primitive cultures with no understanding of mechanics, but has a kind of secret technics for high developped medieval cultures like the Chinese or the Muslims kingdoms.

So, Ulysses grabs a modern compound bow and immediately breaks it in half by accident because it draws too easily. Meanwhile, the modern Olympian might as well be trying to bend a steel girder and is working up blisters trying to pull the Greek's famous weapon.

The big advantages of a modern compound bow over traditional bows are:

1) You can hold it back with less effort, allowing you to take more time to aim.
2) The materials would be more resilient and wearth-resistant. A modern bowstring is still good when wet, whereas an old style bowstring can become useless in wet conditions.

Most of the other modern improvements are only of slight benefit in game terms. Sure sights, quick releases and other high tech goodies help, but they don't make up for training and experience. A lousy archer with the best equipment is no match for a skilled archer using primitive equipment.

I think most of this can be maodeled farily easily in an RPG such as BRP without too much difficulty. But if you want to model STR and draw weight you have to expand a bit upon what's in the rules. Basically, you need to look at the STR rating, ranges and the damages of given bows.

Originally Posted by seneschal

So, Ulysses grabs a modern compound bow and immediately breaks it in half by accident because it draws too easily.

Probably not. He would get a feel for the draw of the bow when he starts to pull back. What would throw him would be when he hits the point where the pulleys kick in and the felt draw weight drops in half. That would probably confuse him.

Meanwhile, the modern Olympian might as well be trying to bend a steel girder and is working up blisters trying to pull the Greek's famous weapon.

Some modern scholars have a new take on Odysseus' bow. They think it might have been a composite horse bow, as opposed to a Greek bow, and the difficulty in drawing the bow was because the method of drawing back the bow was different. Rather than holding the bow perpendicular to the ground and pulling pulling back on the string, the bow would have been "drawn" by holding it horizontal to the ground, near the cheek, and pushing the bow up and away.

The idea being that Odysseus wasn't so much stronger than the other Greeks that only he could draw (or string) the bow, but that only he was clever enough to know the secret of how. Which reinforces the whole concept of him being the hero who wins by his wits.

Granted it probably only refers to the cheap pencil like wood arrows sold today, but they highly discourage the use of wood arrows in compound bows because of the forces generated. Also found it interesting that they describe a compound bow as a long push, vs traditional bows that have a quick jolt of energy.

If we are talking about bow using cultures with access to high tech materials, then I think the compound bow wins hands down, as it is the ultimate form of bow.

Where it lacks is due to modern life and use. The use of light arrows comes from their use as relatively short ranged (flat trajectory) hunting and sporting weapons. As a primary military weapon used for volley fire compound bows would be available in the same weights as traditional bows, and equipped with heavy arrows. A modern militaristic society that never discovered firearms would be an interesting spin on things.

Originally Posted by Zit

It is all about an optimal combination archer/bow/arrow/use/conditions.

I did read somewhere that a Mongolian archer typically had four bows for different
uses, like using them on foot or from horseback, for hunting or for war, and also a
variety of different arrows for the different bows and tasks. I could well imagine
that this is true, it would make sense.

Originally Posted by seneschal

Meanwhile, the modern Olympian might as well be trying to bend a steel girder and is working up blisters trying to pull the Greek's famous weapon.

I seem to remember that the modern world record of a successfully used draw weight
was about 180 lbs, which is almost the same draw weight as that of the strongest long-
bow found in the wreck of the Mary Rose.

I think the subtle differences are probably beyond the granularity of BRP. Remember, if you start differentiating between different bow types, you also need to look at crossbows in relation, and then you get into all kinds of complexity. I've used things like +5% aiming bonuses for weapons that allow aiming, but I don't bother with such small modifiers nowadays.

I (and many practical writers as opposed to pure historians) take the extremely long missile ranges quoted in antiquity with a pinch of salt, given the huge disparity between what was claimed then and what is known to be possible today. In modern field archery, shooting at stationary animal targets, distances are normally between 20 yards for rabbits up to 80 yards for bears.

Draw weight is also a controversial issue, because it depends on how far back you draw the bow - all we have to go by is some not entirely trustworthy medieval illustrations, so it may be possible that the 150 lbs longbows of yore were not actually drawn back as far as we would today (or maybe they were - we don't really know), and the smaller size of ancient archers is a factor in this. It is certainly true that these types of bows were mostly used in mass battle and not "adventurer" style archery.

In conclusion, I am quite happy with the BRP RAW on this. There is simply not enough reliable data to go beyond.

Originally Posted by Vile

In modern field archery, shooting at stationary animal targets, distances are normally between 20 yards for rabbits up to 80 yards for bears.

True, but our culture has lost much of its knowledge about and skill in archery.
If you take a look at cultures where archery never came out of use as much as
in Europe, you will find that 80 yards would be considered a ridiculous distance.
As mentioned in a previous post, in traditional Korean archery the standard dis-
tance is 145 meters, in Bhutan the standard distance is 130 meters (with a tar-
get 90 cm high and 28 cm wide). To these people the distances and precisions
mentioned in historical texts do not seem outrageous, they have seen similar
feats in their lifetime.

Edit.:
By the way, there are reliable data about many types of historical bows. For ex-
ample, Ingo Simon (a former archery world record holder) tested and demonstra-
ted several old bows, including a Turkish composite bow of 99 lbs draw weight,
with it he shot an arrow over a distance of 434 meters.

Originally Posted by Vile

I think the subtle differences are probably beyond the granularity of BRP. Remember, if you start differentiating between different bow types, you also need to look at crossbows in relation, and then you get into all kinds of complexity.

It's not all that complex. And yes you do have to look at crossbows in relation. It's not all that bad either.

I (and many practical writers as opposed to pure historians) take the extremely long missile ranges quoted in antiquity with a pinch of salt, given the huge disparity between what was claimed then and what is known to be possible today. In modern field archery, shooting at stationary animal targets, distances are normally between 20 yards for rabbits up to 80 yards for bears

I don't blame you. Most of the extraordinary shots were recorded because they were extraordinary. Most battlefield shooting doesn't count either, since that was ususally massed volley fire at large masses of troops rather that aimed shots at individuals.

Draw weight is also a controversial issue, because it depends on how far back you draw the bow - all we have to go by is some not entirely trustworthy medieval illustrations, so it may be possible that the 150 lbs longbows of yore were not actually drawn back as far as we would today (or maybe they were - we don't really know), and the smaller size of ancient archers is a factor in this. It is certainly true that these types of bows were mostly used in mass battle and not "adventurer" style archery.

It's not that controversial. The difference in draw weight between pulling to the cheek, ear, or above the back of the head (Japanses Style) is not that much compared to the overall ability of the bow.

In conclusion, I am quite happy with the BRP RAW on this. There is simply not enough reliable data to go beyond.

I've seen tons of reliable data. Certainly enough to beyond the BRP RAW.