Bows and Phase action

[steph]

In your session

 

Question 1 : In your session what time it take to fire a arrow. ? (Weapon ready)

 

Question 2 What time it take to fire a arrow  ?(Weapon no ready)

 

Question 3 How Fast draw interfere for a bow ?

 

Steph

[TranquiloUno]

Without checking the rules....

 

1: Half-phase attack action

2: Half-phase to draw\ready a weapon, half-phase attack action

3: Successful skill roll (relevant Fast Draw skill) would make the half-phase draw\ready action a 0 phase actions, then a half-phase attack action

 

That's how I'd run them.

[Toxxus]

19 minutes ago, TranquiloUno said:

Without checking the rules....

 

1: Half-phase attack action

2: Half-phase to draw\ready a weapon, half-phase attack action

3: Successful skill roll (relevant Fast Draw skill) would make the half-phase draw\ready action a 0 phase actions, then a half-phase attack action

 

That's how I'd run them.

That is essentially the rules.

 

Though I think in v6 operating a bow or crossbow also makes you 1/2 DCV.  I'm less a fan of that.  I feel it's a side effect of olympic style archery and not active, mobile archery like you'd see with Lars Anderson.

[TranquiloUno]

2 hours ago, Toxxus said:

That is essentially the rules.

 

Well I guess I'll keep doing it that way then.

 

2 hours ago, Toxxus said:

 

Though I think in v6 operating a bow or crossbow also makes you 1/2 DCV.  I'm less a fan of that.  I feel it's a side effect of olympic style archery and not active, mobile archery like you'd see with Lars Anderson.

 

Huh. Yah, I mean unless guns makes you 1/2 DCV too I don't know why a bow would.

Might be an interesting house rule though it bows\guns are somehow too powerful.

 

 

[akrippler]

firing does require concentration so half dcv. unless you fire defensively then -4 ocv. so just buy 4 psls to counteract that and you can fire defensively every time

[akrippler]

21 hours ago, TranquiloUno said:

 

Well I guess I'll keep doing it that way then.

 

 

Huh. Yah, I mean unless guns makes you 1/2 DCV too I don't know why a bow would.

Might be an interesting house rule though it bows\guns are somehow too powerful.

 

 

bows are pretty powerful, we just started a low power fantasy game at 75 points each, the archer is capable of a higher ka than anyone else, and can do it from a good amount of range before suffering penalties. even with the built in taxes (ocv to stop him from hitting allies in melee, psls against range, etc...)  everything is pretty cheap when it comes down to actually putting out damage. 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

 

Question 1 : In your session what time it take to fire a arrow. ? (Weapon ready)

Question 2 What time it take to fire a arrow  ?(Weapon no ready)

Question 3 How Fast draw interfere for a bow ?

 

 

For Fantasy Hero, its a phase to draw an arrow, nock it, and shoot a bow (you don't fire bows, that's a firearm term).

If you have it "ready" (arrow nocked) its a half phase attack action.

If you have fast draw you can nock or ready the bow with a zero phase action, but its still a half phase action to shoot it.

 

All of this is at 1/2 DCV.  Crossbows can be shot at full DCV.

[TranquiloUno]

Oh, I see, it's by weapon, not by action type. I was confused by now PDF search has shown me the light.

 

5er is Conc for Xbows as well. And it effects time spent reloading as well.

 

Good to know!

[Toxxus]

30 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

All of this is at 1/2 DCV.  Crossbows can be shot at full DCV.

 

I say Lars Anderson to you ,sir!

 

 

No half DCV was had!

[Duke Bushido]

On April 15, 2019 at 1:31 PM, Toxxus said:

I feel it's a side effect of olympic style archery and not active, mobile archery

 

 

Thank you!

 

Competition, take-your-time, breathe-easy archery seems to be assumed to be the norm.  If it was, I just don't see archers being as effective as they were reputed to be on the battlefield.

 

Though I hastily admit that I wasn't there, and it may work out better if there are _thousands_ of them or something.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah definitely concentrate to load and cock a crossbow, even with an arbalest.

And while someone can specially train to move more defensively with a bow... that's not the norm.  Plus, he's using a bow with a draw weight of like 8 pounds so...

[Toxxus]

9 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Yeah definitely concentrate to load and cock a crossbow, even with an arbalest.

And while someone can specially train to move more defensively with a bow... that's not the norm.  Plus, he's using a bow with a draw weight of like 8 pounds so...

 

He's definitely using a lightweight bow to exaggerate the trick-shot capabilities, but he does quote some of the historic texts where they expected a skilled archer to be able to fire an arrow every second or so while moving.

 

Lars STR < battle-hardened Mongolian horse archer STR

[akrippler]

everything lars does seems possible with enough points dropped (ie enough trainning) so it seems modeled pretty well to me

[Brian Stanfield]

13 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Yeah definitely concentrate to load and cock a crossbow, even with an arbalest.

And while someone can specially train to move more defensively with a bow... that's not the norm.  Plus, he's using a bow with a draw weight of like 8 pounds so...

 

That 8 pound bow still put two arrows through chain mail, or at least appeared to do so. If this is true, I’d suppose that would be enough for any archer, even in game terms. 

 

Maybe not dragon scales though . . . 🐉

[Christopher R Taylor]

Probably black knit spraypainted silver like they use a lot in movies for chainmail.

 

Trick archers like this use super light draw bows so they can shoot quickly and easily from all angles.  A really powerful bow (the kind that you need to punch through mail) requires tremendous strength in the upper body and arms, in a few particular stances.

[Toxxus]

40 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Probably black knit spraypainted silver like they use a lot in movies for chainmail.

 

Trick archers like this use super light draw bows so they can shoot quickly and easily from all angles.  A really powerful bow (the kind that you need to punch through mail) requires tremendous strength in the upper body and arms, in a few particular stances.

 

Modern bodkin / narrow tipped arrows pierce mail quite easily.  As far as I can tell from the video it's metal armor (can't vouch for quality though).  I've seen other you tube video creators similarly punch chain mail without much trouble using narrow arrowheads.

 

For a goodly sized chunk of history, though, nobody thought of that improvement and the broad bladed arrows (to do more damage) were well rebutted by the armor.

 

One of the reasons I love HERO system is that armor actually does something to reduce damage.  In other games it just reduces your chances of hitting as though your only options are full damage or no damage.

 

Hollywood drives me nuts on this front with guys in plate and chain being felled repeatedly with a single sword cut or an arrow through solid plate like it was butter.

[Ninja-Bear]

Well to be fair, if you have a group of Archers in a unit, you aren’t going to run around and fire a Bow.  Also though if you were being chased by others, I would try to run  and shoot. Probably not successful but hey when your life is on the line.

[Christopher R Taylor]

They had those kinda arrows in the past too, but archers weren't Hawkeye, they didn't have 20 different kinds of arrows on them.  It was too expensive, heavy, and too much trouble to carry more than one or two types.  Someone had to make all those arrows (by hand) back home, and you could try in a pinch while in the field but probably wouldn't have the materials to do it well.

[Toxxus]

9 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Well to be fair, if you have a group of Archers in a unit, you aren’t going to run around and fire a Bow.  Also though if you were being chased by others, I would try to run  and shoot. Probably not successful but hey when your life is on the line.

 

Mongolian horse archers made an art out of shooting heavily armed opponents while running away.

 

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah mounted archers got pretty good at shooting while moving, Mongols especially liked to do it while riding circles around infantry.  A good archer can be shockingly good, almost unbelievable. Most of the penalties to using bows should be possible to buy off with points (training and talent) in Hero, but they should exist for lesser trained people.

[Ninja-Bear]

5 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

  A good archer can be shockingly good, almost unbelievable. Most of the penalties to using bows should be possible to buy off with points (training and talent) in Hero, but they should exist for lesser trained people.

I totally agree with that !

[bluesguy]

In my games the best PC archers I have allowed them to buy up to +6 with bows, +3 vs. hit location and +3 vs. range penalty. One player's archer would regularly hit enemies 60m to 120m (30 to 60 hexes) and if she had a really good chance to hit she would go for head shots.  Oh and that particular character also paid for combat on horseback so she could shoot from her horse with no penalty.

 

Was it realistic?  Don't know.  Kind of didn't care because they were having fun and the other players were having fun watching it happen; especially since she would often thin out the horde of orcs coming at them ... And honestly this is they way I want my games to feel and how I like to see combat.  For reference (starting about 1:15)

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Honestly, based on the info and stories from archers in wars like the Mongol invasions and 100 years' war... yeah its realistic.  Archers could be terrifyingly deadly and accurate.