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General Tabletop Discussion
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Why is wotc still aiming for PCs with 10 *real word* feet of range? W/o vision range penalty/limit rules for the GM?
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<blockquote data-quote="Stalker0" data-source="post: 9010141" data-attributes="member: 5889"><p>Here's a good summary of some key numbers:</p><p>[Spoiler]</p><p>I'm going to amend the question to fill in some gaps.</p><p></p><p></p><p>This removes things like target arrows and light draw bows which are more accurate but less effective.</p><p></p><p>You didn't specify a particular society or type of bow leaving a pretty broad swath of bows and styles to consider. Despite the "middle ages" and "ancient-history" tags, I'm going to consider both historical and modern bows. Modern advances like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_bow" target="_blank">compound bows</a> (developed in the 1960s), counter weights, bow sights and modern materials are helpful and will serve to push the range up.</p><p></p><p>I will also assume the person isn't wearing more than normal clothing. If you want to get into penetrating armor with an arrow, that's another question. Most soldiers on a medieval battlefield would be wearing padded or leather armor at most.</p><p></p><p>I've done everything in metric. As a crib for the Imperialists, 1 meter is about 1 yard.</p><p></p><p>[HR][/HR]</p><p><strong>Getting an upper bound</strong></p><p></p><p>First, because people have been throwing around answers like 350m and 500m (?!) let's go for an upper bound: <a href="http://www.olympic.org/archery-equipment-and-history" target="_blank">Olympic archers</a> are the best we'll ever do. They're the best trained, under perfect conditions, and they're using extremely accurate, but combat ineffective, Olympic bows. These have a fairly light draw, 20kg, and very light, very fast, and very narrow arrows. I'm not saying you'd want to get hit by an Olympic archer, it would hurt a lot, but they'd be ineffective in combat. Point is, this is the best we can possibly do.</p><p></p><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-0kvLnfW1I" target="_blank">An Olympic archer can reliably put an arrow into a 12cm ring at 70m</a>. A man sized target is about 3 times as large. Apparent target size is directly proportional to distance. Ignoring the problems of wind and arrow drop <strong>we can put our upper bound at about 200m</strong>.</p><p></p><p>[HR][/HR]</p><p><strong>Bow Hunting</strong></p><p></p><p>Now what can a more average shooter do in combat conditions (noise, smoke, wind, exhaustion, moving target, getting shot at...) and firing lethal arrows. For that let's look at people who already do this <strong>bow hunters</strong>. Bow hunters have their own competitions called Field Archery and from this we can glean a reasonable expectation of accuracy. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowhunting#cite_note-4" target="_blank">Wikipedia claims bow hunters will fire at about 15m, with the maximum being about 40m</a>, but it's based on one graph. A bow hunter wants to make sure they hit on the first try, else they're scare their game, and the game will be moving, even if not very fast, so this is probably the most realistic number.</p><p></p><p>[HR][/HR]</p><p><strong>Field Archery Competitions</strong></p><p></p><p>We can look at the <a href="http://www.ifaa-archery.org/index.php/sample-sites/rules/archers-handbook-2013-2014-rev-01" target="_blank">rules of International Field Archery</a> for their expectations. Certain Field Archery competitions are closer to what you'd experience in combat, in particular "IFAA 3-D Hunting" uses animal sized targets placed at <em>unmarked</em> distances. The archer does not know how far away the target is. The maximum distance a target can be placed is 60 meters. This target is 23cm x 37cm wide approximating a man sized target.</p><p></p><p>Similarly, in the "Hunter Round", the maximum distance is 70m but firing at a 65cm target, twice the width of a man. Man-sized 35cm targets are fired at from ~30m.</p><p></p><p>The International Field Archery Association has a "Historical Bows" category which defines them as "based on the accepted design and usage during the period preceding the year 1900". They make no change to the targets for historical bow competition.</p><p></p><p>The effect of historical vs modern bows can be seen in the <a href="http://ifaa-archery.org/index.php/scorerecord/tournament-scores/2014-tournament-results" target="_blank">2014 Tournament Results</a>. The best scores with historical bows (AFHB and AMHB, Adult Male/Female Historical Bow) are routinely lower than the worst scores with modern bows. This could reflect the inaccuracy of historical bows, or it could reflect the smaller talent pool of historical bowman.</p><p></p><p>[HR][/HR]</p><p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p><p></p><p>Based on all this, I can draw these conclusions about a human with a bow hitting a man sized target using a modern bow.</p><p></p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The <strong>absolute maximum range</strong> by the best human with the best equipment is about 200m.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A skilled, experienced archer can hit a <strong>stationary target</strong> reliably at 30 to 60m.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The same skilled bowman will prefer 10 to 20m for a <strong>moving target</strong>.</li> </ul><p>These are numbers for a modern bow. They should be considered upper bounds for a historical archer who would not have access to modern technology to improve their aim.</p><p>[/Spoiler]</p><p></p><p>Summary: Absolute maximum range under the most perfect of conditions is ~650 feet. An experience hunter type archer (that is good enough for big competitions and much closer to actual "combat conditions") can hit ~200 feet for a stationary target, and ~65 feet on a moving target.</p><p></p><p>As this is modern bows and not "historic bows", using this numbers already adds a "fantasy edge" to give our fantasy warriors a bit of a boost. So yeah I would argue that giving bows a range of 200 feet under normal circumstances, and then adding in a special rule to triple that for "very special perfect sniper circumstances" would not only be very accurate with real numbers, but also would remove a big part of why combat boards can't handle "long combat distances".</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Stalker0, post: 9010141, member: 5889"] Here's a good summary of some key numbers: [Spoiler] I'm going to amend the question to fill in some gaps. This removes things like target arrows and light draw bows which are more accurate but less effective. You didn't specify a particular society or type of bow leaving a pretty broad swath of bows and styles to consider. Despite the "middle ages" and "ancient-history" tags, I'm going to consider both historical and modern bows. Modern advances like [URL='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_bow']compound bows[/URL] (developed in the 1960s), counter weights, bow sights and modern materials are helpful and will serve to push the range up. I will also assume the person isn't wearing more than normal clothing. If you want to get into penetrating armor with an arrow, that's another question. Most soldiers on a medieval battlefield would be wearing padded or leather armor at most. I've done everything in metric. As a crib for the Imperialists, 1 meter is about 1 yard. [HR][/HR] [B]Getting an upper bound[/B] First, because people have been throwing around answers like 350m and 500m (?!) let's go for an upper bound: [URL='http://www.olympic.org/archery-equipment-and-history']Olympic archers[/URL] are the best we'll ever do. They're the best trained, under perfect conditions, and they're using extremely accurate, but combat ineffective, Olympic bows. These have a fairly light draw, 20kg, and very light, very fast, and very narrow arrows. I'm not saying you'd want to get hit by an Olympic archer, it would hurt a lot, but they'd be ineffective in combat. Point is, this is the best we can possibly do. [URL='https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-0kvLnfW1I']An Olympic archer can reliably put an arrow into a 12cm ring at 70m[/URL]. A man sized target is about 3 times as large. Apparent target size is directly proportional to distance. Ignoring the problems of wind and arrow drop [B]we can put our upper bound at about 200m[/B]. [HR][/HR] [B]Bow Hunting[/B] Now what can a more average shooter do in combat conditions (noise, smoke, wind, exhaustion, moving target, getting shot at...) and firing lethal arrows. For that let's look at people who already do this [B]bow hunters[/B]. Bow hunters have their own competitions called Field Archery and from this we can glean a reasonable expectation of accuracy. [URL='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowhunting#cite_note-4']Wikipedia claims bow hunters will fire at about 15m, with the maximum being about 40m[/URL], but it's based on one graph. A bow hunter wants to make sure they hit on the first try, else they're scare their game, and the game will be moving, even if not very fast, so this is probably the most realistic number. [HR][/HR] [B]Field Archery Competitions[/B] We can look at the [URL='http://www.ifaa-archery.org/index.php/sample-sites/rules/archers-handbook-2013-2014-rev-01']rules of International Field Archery[/URL] for their expectations. Certain Field Archery competitions are closer to what you'd experience in combat, in particular "IFAA 3-D Hunting" uses animal sized targets placed at [I]unmarked[/I] distances. The archer does not know how far away the target is. The maximum distance a target can be placed is 60 meters. This target is 23cm x 37cm wide approximating a man sized target. Similarly, in the "Hunter Round", the maximum distance is 70m but firing at a 65cm target, twice the width of a man. Man-sized 35cm targets are fired at from ~30m. The International Field Archery Association has a "Historical Bows" category which defines them as "based on the accepted design and usage during the period preceding the year 1900". They make no change to the targets for historical bow competition. The effect of historical vs modern bows can be seen in the [URL='http://ifaa-archery.org/index.php/scorerecord/tournament-scores/2014-tournament-results']2014 Tournament Results[/URL]. The best scores with historical bows (AFHB and AMHB, Adult Male/Female Historical Bow) are routinely lower than the worst scores with modern bows. This could reflect the inaccuracy of historical bows, or it could reflect the smaller talent pool of historical bowman. [HR][/HR] [B]Conclusion[/B] Based on all this, I can draw these conclusions about a human with a bow hitting a man sized target using a modern bow. [LIST] [*]The [B]absolute maximum range[/B] by the best human with the best equipment is about 200m. [*]A skilled, experienced archer can hit a [B]stationary target[/B] reliably at 30 to 60m. [*]The same skilled bowman will prefer 10 to 20m for a [B]moving target[/B]. [/LIST] These are numbers for a modern bow. They should be considered upper bounds for a historical archer who would not have access to modern technology to improve their aim. [/Spoiler] Summary: Absolute maximum range under the most perfect of conditions is ~650 feet. An experience hunter type archer (that is good enough for big competitions and much closer to actual "combat conditions") can hit ~200 feet for a stationary target, and ~65 feet on a moving target. As this is modern bows and not "historic bows", using this numbers already adds a "fantasy edge" to give our fantasy warriors a bit of a boost. So yeah I would argue that giving bows a range of 200 feet under normal circumstances, and then adding in a special rule to triple that for "very special perfect sniper circumstances" would not only be very accurate with real numbers, but also would remove a big part of why combat boards can't handle "long combat distances". [/QUOTE]
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Why is wotc still aiming for PCs with 10 *real word* feet of range? W/o vision range penalty/limit rules for the GM?
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