Why do Crossbows Suck?

[Ryujin]

Then you should read some more.
Plate armor in the late middle ages were generally shot with a pistol to show that they were bulletproof. The dent served as a sign of quality (look at some armor left over from that time, most have that dent somewhere on the chest plate). Only rather late did firearms became so powerful that armor technology could not keep up. But by that time muskets & pike formations already dominated the battlefield because of logistics and economy (full plate armor was expensive, muskets were not).

There's "proofing", and then there's what happens on the battlefield.

 

[Derren]

There's "proofing", and then there's what happens on the battlefield.

Sure, on the battlefield armors were not 100% bulletproof. But that firearms pierced armor automatically is a myth, they still offered good protection against them (Gothic and Maximilian plate). It was just not economical to equip all soldiers with them. Thats why breastplates were still used way into the Napoleonic wars for important persons.
As firearms advanced they could eventually penetrate armor reliably, but that point came after firearms already dominated the battlefield.

 

[Ryujin]

Sure, on the battlefield armors were not 100% bulletproof. But that firearms pierced armor automatically is a myth, they still offered good protection against them (Gothic and Maximilian plate). It was just not economical to equip all soldiers with them. Thats why breastplates were still used way into the Napoleonic wars for important persons.
As firearms advanced they could eventually penetrate armor reliably, but that point came after firearms already dominated the battlefield.

Automatic? Hardly, or no one would wear helmets in modern warfare. The breastplates did, however, take on more of a role of a badge of rank and ceremonial use. It became obvious that mobility was more important on a more modern battlefield, though breastplate use would continue on into the Renaissance.

 

[Bluenose]

The early firearms were not better than longbows at all and did not pierce armor any better than bows. The full plate armor which we now see as symbolic to knights was primarily invented to defend against firearms, which they did well (and also made knight pretty arrow proof).
It was primarily logistics that made the firearm and pike formation replace the medieval knights. You could train people to use firearms much faster than with bows and provide bullets in larger quantities than bolts and arrows. Had firearms not existed we would have had crossbow and pike formations instead.

There were marginal advantages for firearms over bows in terms of penetration, but it was possible to make armour that was "proof" against pistol or arquebus. What you could do with a firearm (and it was done as early as the 1530s) was increase the power without greatly increasing the difficulty of firing it, which wasn't the case with a longbow due to the physical limits of human beings.

And actually, there were mixed crossbow and pole-arm formations, in Medieval Scandinavia, Spain, and a few other places, though not for very long. Few of them involved pikes, but then wide adoption of the pike didn't happen until the later 15th century, after the Swiss made it famous.

 

[Cleon]

Thats also a good point. Using a good bow requires a lot more strength than a crossbow with the same draw strength as you could use mechanical aids or even just your feet to pull the crossbow into position while you have to do it with your arms for the bow. I already mentioned the fatigue as constantly pulling a bow to full strength tires you really quickly.

It's usually worse than that, because a crossbow typically has a shorter drawlength than a bow (drawlength being the distance the missile is pulled back before firing).

An arrow with fired with an 18-inch drawlength from a 100-pound bow will have roughly the same energy (and hence damage potential) as a 200-pound crossbow with a 9-inch drawlength, but the former can be drawn by a strong human fairly easily, while the latter requires mechanical aids or exceptional strength.

But if those forums and my previous players are any indications, PCs tend to be optimized so strength is not a problem.

The idea is that drawing a powerful bow places enormous stresses on certain muscles and joints, so a specialist "greatbow" archer would have exercized long and hard to make those as strong as possible. For example, some of the skeletons found in the Mary Rose have abnormally overdeveloped shoulders & arms, and are presumed to have been archers.

I'd presume they'd have had good all-round "generic strength", but they also had really powerful back & shoulder muscles on top of that, which might not have made much difference to their strength in general melee.

 

[Cleon]

In the real world, it takes years of training to be good military longbowmen. A crossbow, on the other other hand, could be taught in a few weeks. It's much easier to aim.

Agreed. That's the main difference that few RPGs address.

Another difference is the timing. Battles in real life took place over a day, and archers of any flavor tended to be dug in or otherwise protected. Rate of fire was limited by how quickly your scavengers could collect spent enemy arrows and get them back to your archers. Nobody carried the hundreds of arrows, per man, needed for an all day assault. Instead you'd shoot your supply at the enemy as they shot theirs at you. If your troops were advancing you or designated scavengers would collect the arrows from both sides and get them back to you. If your side was forced to retreat you ran short, since you can only collect the ones that land within your own ranks.

Eh? Any army worth its salt would have made sure to carry enough arrows in their supply train to keep their archers going. The easy way to keep the archers supplied is to have runners going back and forth delivering quivers full of arrows - which from what I've read is how they did it in battles like Agincourt.

For horse-archers that'd have been difficult, for obvious reasons, but a horse archer can carry a lot more arrows. I'd read a Mongol archer would have 120 arrows or more in extra-large quivers on their saddle.

Sending people running around picking up arrows would have been a very inefficient way of keeping the supply going, it makes more sense that they'd have gathered those arrows after the fighting (or in-between bouts, maybe).

 

[Cleon]

2. Archers can shoot arrows in rapid succession by only utilizing a fraction of the bows potential draw strength, but when fully drawing a longbow the rate of fire dropped and also tired out the archers rather fast. Thats why most archers in battle did not even fire at their maximum ability unless absolutely necessary. Also, aiming was harder has the archer could only hold the draw for a few seconds before his arm started to fatigue. Not a problem for volley fire, but aiming on a chaotic battlefield was only possible at a short window.

The only way an archer can use a fraction of a bow's potential drawstrength is by drawing the arrow a shorter distance than normally. That means the end of the arrow won't be near their face and makes it harder to aim - they can't put the nock next to their eye and look down the shaft if the end of the arrow's nowhere near their face.

Further, I suspect an archer using an overpowered military "greatbow" wouldn't hold their aim, but release as soon as they were at full draw and had a bead on their target. When you draw a bow that's at the limit of your strength, it takes so much effort your point of aim will start to wander all over the place as your muscles strain to hold the bow at full draw.

For accurate shooting they'd likely be better off with another bow, one that's as powerful as they can comfortably hold at full stretch - I could see an medieval yeoman having a 60 or 70 pound "hunting bow" for accuracy and a 100 or 120 pound bow for military service.

 

[Derren]

The only way an archer can use a fraction of a bow's potential drawstrength is by drawing the arrow a shorter distance than normally. That means the end of the arrow won't be near their face and makes it harder to aim - they can't put the nock next to their eye and look down the shaft if the end of the arrow's nowhere near their face.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zGnxeSbb3g

Althoough that bow certainly has not a very high draw strength (30 lb), much lower than bows actually used in a war.

 

[Kraydak]

For what it's worth, there is basically bugger-all evidence that it takes years to train military archers. Archery isn't inherently all that difficult, and people can build up muscle quite rapidly. On the other hand, pre-modern states couldn't afford large bodies of standing troops, so to have a pool of archers you needed to convince your yeoman class that keeping in shape to shoot high draw-weight bows is fun. Which is a pretty hard sell. Alternatively, your military elite could be primarily archers (Japan, say), of course, but in Europe that wasn't the case.

 

[Derren]

For what it's worth, there is basically bugger-all evidence that it takes years to train military archers.

Except all the historical documents which said it did.