The Great Longbow Debate

[robconley]

Personally I would ask these questions on a SCA (Society for Creative Anarchonism) site. I participated in SCA archery and it is instructive. At most events they have target shooting but also several other types.

Speed shooting - where you let off as many arrows as you can in a fixed time. There are several target setup at different ranges. The safety marshal will call the range you are allowed to shoot at which steadily get closer in.

Cloud Shoot - A ring of hay bales with a central hay bale with a watermelon or pumpkin set on top. From about a hundred yards so away you shoot. Obviously you can't aim like at a target so have to shoot for the clouds. This is probably the neatest shooting event they got. You shoot and for a couple of seconds you see dozens of arrows in flight. Then they come down. Note the arrows are colored coded for scoring. Scoring by team not individual. Needless to say they are very safety conscious with this type of shooting.

Honestly unless you have presighted or practiced at the battle site you are not going to be hitting much at max range. In mass formation you can be very effective but individually not so much. With practice you can get arrows within several yards of a target anywhere if you are experienced. If you want to be heroic then just make a call that feels right rather than worrying about realism.

 

[Andor]

Again, it comes from my 2e days where you weren't allowed to use a longbow at close range at all.

I've seen arguments for and against that concept. Some say that all the stopping power of the arrow came from gravity. It was the downwards arc where the arrow gained the most velocity. And even then, normally only after having been fired pretty much straight up.

Others claim that the exit velocity from the kinetic energy delivered by the bow itself is more than enough to send an arrow through armour and out the other side at close ranges (think D&D average combat ranges, ie. within 100ft, usually even closer, within 10-20ft).

So an arrow fired from a bow would only really need three or so feet from the point it left the string to be powerful enough to kill someone, right?

Could you do me a favor? Go back to your high school and find your physics professor. Then kick him in the crotch. Until blood comes out his nose.

The arrow has maximum energy at release. Period. End of freaking statement. It does not magically gain energy 3 feet from the bow. Or 30 feet. Or 300 feet. Does not. Ever.

As far as arcing an arrow goes the energy you gain on the way down is exactly equal to the energy you lost on the way up. The only way gravity ever helps you is if you're lucky enough to be fireing off of a cliff and then I'm still pretty sure that terminal velocity will be less than your initial firing speed for a heavy bow.

The problem with firing a bow at someone at melee range, is that you are in melee range. While you draw your arrow he is going to stab you. 3e's attack of oppportunity covers this just fine, no need for further restrictions.

If you want to get technical there can be some aiming funkiness with a longbow (but not neccesarily a recurve or compound bow) at short ranges, within 10' say. This is due to what is called the archer's paradox, and it's the reason you need to have arrows that are correctly splined for your draw weight. Basically the arrow is going to be wobbling a little in flight before it stabilizes. This might throw your point of impact off by as much as one or two inches. Since most of your foes in D&D are bigger than that, I wouldn't worry about it unless you're fighting pixes. And if you are fighting pixes put down the bow and grab a badminton racket.

As far as armour penetration goes I know an SCA archer on the east coast who made up some bodkin pattern arrowheads which he could punch clean through a 55 gallon steel oil drum at any range you please, even at obliqe angles. It's pretty debateable whether or not an actual medieval bodkin head could have been made from the same high grade and heat treated steel, but it's probably about balanced with an arrow +1 anyway.

 

[malraux]

Could you do me a favor? Go back to your high school and find your physics professor. Then kick him in the crotch. Until blood comes out his nose.

The arrow has maximum energy at release. Period. End of freaking statement. It does not magically gain energy 3 feet from the bow. Or 30 feet. Or 300 feet. Does not. Ever.

This.

As far as arcing an arrow goes the energy you gain on the way down is exactly equal to the energy you lost on the way up. The only way gravity ever helps you is if you're lucky enough to be fireing off of a cliff and then I'm still pretty sure that terminal velocity will be less than your initial firing speed for a heavy bow.

Energy on the way down is going to be much less because of friction.

All that said, the high angle of incidence could have other advantages. If the armor is relatively weak from above, or the target's cross section is much larger, or some other reason, then those high arcing shots, even containing less energy, could do more damage.

 

[TwinBahamut]

Thanks Umbarn. I honestly didn't know there was a difference between energy and momentum. That was pretty cool. Made me feel like I was back in a high school math or physics class though ... but still pretty cool.

You know, there is something Umbran forgot to say about the difference between momentum and energy than might help you understand it even better.

Basically, energy is a scalar quantity, and momentum is a vector quantity. That is math/physics jargon that basically says that momentum cares about direction, but energy does not. There is nothing in the Law of Conservation of Energy that says an arrow or bullet can't spontaneously change direction mid-flight (so long as it retains its speed), but such an event would contradict the Law of Conservation of Momentum.

This is related to the difference between the idea of speed, which only cares how fast something is moving, and velocity, which cares about how fast something is moving in a particular direction.

 

[Bluenose]

Indeed so. The city of Worcester, in the UK, where I live, has such a place. I believe also (although this may be fallacious) that the law which required men to do this is actually still on the statute in some places, and therefore potentially enforceable!

I believe there's a property qualification before you're required to bring a longbow. And I'd also suggest that archery practice in Worcester's Butts is going to annoy the bus drivers, and with tarmac stopping you driving your stakes in they'll probably charge successfully

I suspect this idea has more to do with effectiveness then stopping power. The English longbowman's favorite target was the French Knight. When you are trying to stop heavy cavalry, taking out the horse is usually just as effective as taking out the rider. A horse is a big target from above so dropping arrows have a good chance to hit. The horse is also not likely to be as well armored as the rider. Most archers aren't going to be calmly loosing arrows as the charging knights get close. The bowmen will ideally retire behind a line of men-at-arms before the charge hits home, or draw hand weapons if they have to fight themselves. The longbow was definitely a weapon used to volley fire at range.

That said, I really don't think a longbow needs a minimum range in a roleplaying game. It should also do a lot of damage, but require special training as others have mentioned.

The thing is, after the first few battles the French rarely fought mounted. The English would deploy either behind natural obstacles (the hedge and ditch at Poitiers) or in a position they'd prepared for defence (with either stakes or pits). Mounted charges just weren't effective. On the other hand if those conditions didn't apply you got a Verneuil or Patay, where a mounted charge successfully scattered the English archers.

Also, does anyone really want to be shooting 70 arrows to kill one armoured target in an RPG? At Crecy, the English had 7,000 longbowmen who shot all their 40 arrows off. The French casualties aren't certain, but a common high-end estimate is 4,000 knights killed.

 

[Rykion]

Also, does anyone really want to be shooting 70 arrows to kill one armoured target in an RPG? At Crecy, the English had 7,000 longbowmen who shot all their 40 arrows off. The French casualties aren't certain, but a common high-end estimate is 4,000 knights killed.

Well a lot of Genoese crossbowmen were killed at Crecy too, mostly by their French allies. I would suggest that Crecy is the perfect example of longbows working as I described, but certainly the mud helped. I suspect the number of knights' horses killed far outnumbered the number of dead knights.

 

[Doug Sundseth]

First, some basic physics: Energy in a closed system is conserved. The energy from the release plus the energy from falling from the release point to the final point (usually insignificant) equals the energy dissipated in air friction plus the energy transferred to the target plus the energy remaining in the arrow (in the case of a through-and-through shot). Energy dissipated in the target is what does the damage; the way it is dissipated determines how much damage.

Momentum in a closed system is also conserved. In a system of arrow plus target, the mass * velocity of the arrow plus the mass * velocity of the target will stay constant.

Second, longbows: According to test done by the Royal Armouries (now at Leeds), a period bodkin-pointed arrow will not significantly penetrate a breastplate, even at point-blank range and a perfectly perpendicular strike. The demonstration I saw showed less than one inch of penetration in that scenario, which would probably not reach the skin of the target after considering gaps between breastplate and support and the thickness of the arming doublet. In any case, it would be quite unlikely to cause serious damage. Further, any glancing blow would skip off of almost any armor. (For reference, a 55-gallon drum isn't really the same as armor plate.) If you can manage to miss the plates (which is notably easier with horse barding than it is with human armor), penetration is much less of a problem.

Third, the myth of the longbow: The English/Welsh longbow was a decent weapon, and it was quite important in Europe during the 100-Years War. That said, it was not particularly better than (in fact not quite as good as) steppe archers' composite horse bows. The pull strengths of the latter were higher and the arrows were lighter, resulting in higher "muzzle" energies, faster rates of fire, longer ranges, and better accuracy for the horse bow.

 

[Hussar]

Considering what D&D considers to be a "longsword" I'm not all that fussed that "longbow" isn't all that accurate. To me, a longbow in D&D is a bow that's a bit bigger than a shortbow and that's about it.

 

[Kzach]

Could you do me a favor? Go back to your high school and find your physics professor. Then kick him in the crotch. Until blood comes out his nose.

Could you do me a favour?

Keep your rudeness to yourself.

Neither of the two comments criticising my statements have been needed or deserved from Wulf or you. In one, I was simply repeating what I'd read online in order to foster debate on the subject. In the second, I was merely paraphrasing what had already been said in the topic.

In addition you've misinterpreted what I've said, creating an incident that you then used to insult.

The pull of a bow is roughly 30". Think on that and try reading what I posted again.

 

[S'mon]

Considering what D&D considers to be a "longsword" I'm not all that fussed that "longbow" isn't all that accurate. To me, a longbow in D&D is a bow that's a bit bigger than a shortbow and that's about it.

I think that's definitely the best approach. In my 3e campaign the equivalent of the English 'long' bow is the Northwoods Warbow, an Exotic weapon doing AIR 1d10, which can be Mighty. Unlike the 3e 'composite longbow' though, you can't fire it from horseback.

Likewise the 'long sword' (3' blade, 6" hilt) is called a 'sword' or 'arming sword' - historically a 'long sword' was more what 3e calls a 'great sword'.

One thing I kinda like in 4e is that the 3e great sword is apparently not that big, doing 1d10 same as a bastard sword. That makes it a good standard for the 'grete sword' (ca 4' blade & 1' hilt) and similar weapons, while the Superior 'full blade' can stand in for late-period 6' zweihanders & similar. Bastard Sword can be used for 17th century claymores and such.

Since the 4e bastard sword and great sword are practically identical, other than how they're wielded, I'm flexible about PCs interchanging them, eg turning magic bastard sword to great sword. It might require a new hilt.