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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Eldorian" data-source="post: 4544305" data-attributes="member: 10504">A bit of vector calculus.  Math incoming!!!An arrow fired from a bow has a constant horizontal velocity, and its vertical position follows a parabola with zeroes at time = 0 and time = when the arrow hits the ground (which is 300 m / horizontal speed) with leading coefficient g/2.  I happen to know from physics that the best angle to fire a bow to get maximum distance is 45 degrees, so at t=0 the vertical and horizontal components of velocity should be equal.  This information is enough to determine that an arrow fired 300 m at a 45 degree angle takes about 7.8 seconds, and has an initial velocity of about 54 m/s.  Didn't consider the effects of atmosphere here.  This works out to be about 183 feet/sec.  Considering air would slow the projectile, in actuality slightly faster speeds are possible, but this information is good enough for my purposes.Well, I wasn't the one manning the computer at the time, so I guess my roommate's googlefu is weak.  And tho the value would be terribly variable from instance to instance, the goal of this exercise was to find a DC for an attempt to shoot an arrow with rope out of a pit, so working with "max range of a longbow is 300 m" is good enough.Finding the max height is useful information is that max happens to be about 5 times less than the height of the pit the arrow was being fired out of in the first place.  And again, the goal was to find the DC for a check, so max height is terribly useful info.  If you're curious on how I found the max height, think conservation of energy.Me, personally, with my own gaming style, I wouldn't have figured this all out  (the only reason the guy actually running it bothered is that it's play by post.  The reason I bothered is because it sounded like fun).And now you see why I consider ability to use a microsoft program called Excel and the ability to do math to be different enough that the OP should have asked for help with excel, not with math.  Personally, I am quite the novice at excel.  If I need a glorified calculator I use mathematica.  If I need a calculator, I have the one I bought in 1993.</blockquote>

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