Cost of Arrows?

[Umbran]

Speaking from both the meat on the table perspective and the hobbiest perspective

I was thinking *professional* meat on the table, as in, "this is how my family gets much/all of the roteins we eat", which was rather more common in yesteryear than it is today, and that impacts the pricing of goods.

 

[Wicht]

I was thinking *professional* meat on the table, as in, "this is how my family gets much/all of the roteins we eat", which was rather more common in yesteryear than it is today, and that impacts the pricing of goods.

Ah - got you.

But how are you expecting that to affect the price of the arrows? I am not sure that it does, Seeing as how the price of arrows relative to bows appears, from all I can tell, to be about identical today as to what it was in yesteryear?.

 

[CaptainGemini]

Part of what kept medieval arrows relatively cheap was that a lot of blacksmiths paid their taxes in arrowheads.

 

[Wicht]

Part of what kept medieval arrows relatively cheap was that a lot of blacksmiths paid their taxes in arrowheads.

Do you have documentation that the arrows were cheap? I would be interested in seeing it, as the documentation I have found, some of which I linked to, shows just the opposite.

Again, in 1518 the documented market price for an english longbow was 3s. 4d., and price for a sheaf of arrows and furniture was 5s. 4d.

 

[CaptainGemini]

Do you have documentation that the arrows were cheap? I would be interested in seeing it, as the documentation I have found, some of which I linked to, shows just the opposite.

Again, in 1518 the documented market price for an english longbow was 3s. 4d., and price for a sheaf of arrows and furniture was 5s. 4d.

I can do basic math and understand basic logistics. Divide 5s. 4d. by 12. That's the price of an average arrow, including part of the furniture.

Then keep in mind that even in the modern world, militaries spend more on the average ammunition usage of the typical soldier than they do on the gun, and ammunition is still one of the most expensive aspects of fielding an army.

I wasn't certain how to word this so it didn't come across as at least partially sarcastic. So, I hope it was not too insulting.

Edit: To explain...

When you have something that is intended to fire repeatedly, you generally want the total ammunition usage to be more expensive than what is firing them. Massively more expensive. The ammunition can be relatively cheap, but military-grade ammunition tends to be a bit more costly anyway. The arrows used by a longbowman of the English army was probably a lot more expensive than that used by the average hunter in the woods just due to the basic construction requirements.

So, yes, you do want to be spending more on ammunition. Because otherwise, the ranged weapon itself is faulty and you add the expense of repeatedly replacing it on top of the ammunition costs. And you have to keep in mind militaries tend to have higher standards for their ammunition than the average person does because militaries are dealing with problems the average person doesn't see in their daily life.

With arrows, the expense difference is going to be more extreme than bullets. The typical arrow probably only has to pierce a deer or a bale of hay. The military-grade arrows have to pierce plate armor. The construction requirements between the two are going to be vastly different, with the military-grade having more rigid requirements and being more expensive due to the special construction requirements.

The typical arrow was probably constructed using whatever suitable wood was found in the forest, as well as whatever feathers were found. The only real expense was probably the arrowhead, assuming they didn't make that out of a rock or just sharpened the stick. As such, those arrows would be incredibly cheap... and also not traded, since most people could just make them themselves. The military-grade arrows, on the other hand, had specific wood requirements, specific feather requirements, had to use metal arrowheads, and so on. So those would definitely be traded.

 

[Wicht]

I can do basic math and understand basic logistics. Divide 5s. 4d. by 12. That's the price of an average arrow, including part of the furniture.

Traditionally the english sheaf of arrows was 24. Which makes it, using today's standards, approximately $10 an arrow. That was not for the military market; that was, I believe, the standard rate that the average Englishman in 1518 would have paid for his arrow. Assuming a longbow cost of 75 gp, it also translates into, in RPG terms, 5 gp per arrow, roughly.

Then keep in mind that even in the modern world, militaries spend more on the average ammunition usage of the typical soldier than they do on the gun, and ammunition is still one of the most expensive aspects of fielding an army.

When you have something that is intended to fire repeatedly, you generally want the total ammunition usage to be more expensive than what is firing them. Massively more expensive. The ammunition can be relatively cheap, but military-grade ammunition tends to be a bit more costly anyway. The arrows used by a longbowman of the English army was probably a lot more expensive than that used by the average hunter in the woods just due to the basic construction requirements.

I am not sure what you are basing your theory that the average hunter paid less for his arrows than the average soldier in England, or that the military arrows would have been more expensively produced. I suspect it was actually the opposite. The hunting arrow needs to kill a deer preferably with a single shot. The military arrows would have been made to be fired in mass volleys. The hunting arrow would therefore, marketwise, want to be the better arrow.

A hundred years before 1518, King Henry V was buying arrows by the hundreds of thousands and paying roughly $2+ an arrow, quite a markdown from the $10 an arrow price the average man was paying a hundred years later.

All that being said, I'm not sure what you are trying to persuade me of. If anything, you are merely agreeing with the premise that RPG arrows purchased by adventurers for the purpose of killing nasty things often wearing armor, are ridiculously cheap by any real world standards.

My real question though, going back to the original post, is how would realistically priced arrows affect the game?

 

[Willie the Duck]

I'm not schooled in either modern or medieval production costs for archery goods, so I'm out of that discussion. I don't think it's relevant to the game as written (of course, this discussion is about changing that). D&D/PF has a very clearly gamist economy. Ammunition is cheap (frankly that's true in games with firearms as well, quite often, unless you're using GURPS and firing APFSDSDU ammo or something). Probably to make people firing weapons choose to do so.

I think the question when comparing the game to real life archers would be better served by asking, "how is the experience of firing arrows in combat different for real world archers than for PCs?" We already have had some disagreement on how many arrows a real world and game world archer shoots in a given battle. What about re-use? Do we think the game rules successfully mimic how often arrows are re-used. I suspect that no one fielding a squad of archers would ever not buy arrows for them because of the cost, so what are the real limiting factors? Is it how many arrows you can carry/the infrastructure of keeping archers supplied? Arrows are more than a weight of encumbrance. Carrying more than a sheaf or two is significantly difficult. Is that more of a limiting factor?

In the end, I don't know exactly how bows were used on the battlefield, but I also know that PCs are rarely on the battlefield. They act as small team skirmishers against enemies which often act very different than an opposing army. That would be interesting to explore.

 

[Wicht]

This seems interesting and pertinent.

[video=youtube;PWCN7HId-b8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWCN7HId-b8[/video]

 

[melichor]

When you have something that is intended to fire repeatedly, you generally want the total ammunition usage to be more expensive than what is firing them. Massively more expensive.

So, yes, you do want to be spending more on ammunition. Because otherwise, the ranged weapon itself is faulty and you add the expense of repeatedly replacing it on top of the ammunition costs.

Hi,
Can you clarify this for me?
Does it come from some particular military theory?

I don't get how having a weapon that uses inexpensive ammunition is faulty or why any logistically sound army would want to use the most expensive ammunition they can.

 

[Wicht]

I don't get how having a weapon that uses inexpensive ammunition is faulty or why any logistically sound army would want to use the most expensive ammunition they can.

Because everyone knows that military brass are in cahoots with military contractors.

Though, in truth, considering that medieval kings often had to borrow heavily to finance their wars, I suspect that they would have been very interested in maximum effectiveness for minimum expenditure.