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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ace" data-source="post: 6212266" data-attributes="member: 944">D&D gets bows basically correct erring a bit  on the heroic side. In the older  editions with 10 second rounds, they were basically spot on.A few facts.The minimum draw weight for a combat bow is about 50 lbs since the arrows need to hit with enough force to reach vital organs through clothes. D&D calls this a short bow.This bow will not easily penetrate jack  armor (this is comparable to leather in D&D but made of layered textiles)  or shields in real life. D&D doesn't  cover penetration except as an abstraction, you roll to hit and if you do, you get an unarmored spot. As Mike "Old Geezer" Monard put it "Abstraction is a font of realism" This gives pretty good results actually at low levels.A long bow (basic) is around 75 lbs draw weight. This is the bow D&D gives 1d8 damage too. It will penetrate jack armor (probably) close up with broadheads   and sometimes mail with bodkins  but not plate.  This is a hunting bow and in reality about as much bow as a woman can draw. In D&D this is of course not the case War Bows such as found on the Mary Rose shipwreck came in draw weights up to 200 LBS! For heavy bows a rough estimate would be in 3x terms +1 Damage via strength per extra 25 lbs draw weight. A 175  LB Bow would be about Strength 20 which is about the strongest bows we commonly find. Most of the archers would not have had Strength 20 though and instead a "class ability" or feat allowing them to increase draw weight through practice. This practice left them with distorted upper body strength that we can see in the  skeletal remains  even nowThose bows had a lot of range and killing power , often penetrated   mail  at close range and the very heaviest can occasionally penetrate plate at close range with bodkin points. D&D might have hardened (possible IRL but we have no evidence for them)   or other super metal or magic bodkins those would get a nasty bonus +x to hit is actually not a bad way to go. Now as to the cool videos  these techniques are neat, its unlikely  they could be used with killing weight bows except very close against unarmored targets and even than they might not stop them. They are basically using the bow like a Cho-Ko-Nu the real life repeating crossbow.Its fired very fast but very weak bolts and the Chinese relied on poisoned arrows or mass firepower for  killing.In reality an archer could manage about 2 or 3 arrows a round from a light bow and 1 per 5 seconds for a war bow. The D&D abstraction is fine here, being a bit generous.The higher levels  of course are mythic (real life is probably Epic 6ish) and as such its all out the window.If you wanted to use this in 3x games, you'd have a feat (arrows storm) and a special bow that does 1d3 with half the range of a short bow  and is -4 vs targets with any armor or natural armor bonus. You could allow an extra 2 attack so that a say 6th level archer with rapid shot which is comparable to this guys skill level could manage 5 shots a round.</blockquote>

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