A word on bows
This is a guide on bows. Despite many people arguing about how powerful a bow is, how much damage it does and other annoying tidbits on what a bow does, not many people take the time to figure out how a bow actually works. It’s often believed that you train a bit by shooting a bow a few times or just slap “trained with a bow since they were little” into the backstory and suddenly your char can shoot any bow they pick up from the local dungeon ruin or whatever.
Basically what this guide is about those little things which don’t effect role-play all too much but are seriously annoying when someone gets it wrong.
If you want a guide on how to actually do archery in RP, Check this out then. Cool fella called Oblivionsbane made it.
TL;DR
I know I tend to rant on about things and this guide will end up getting very long. So here are some basic points I want to get across to all the unfortunate souls who stumble upon this product of a sleepless mind:
- The majority of time taken between shots for a bow lies in nocking an arrow rather than pulling the bow back, firing, and aiming.
- Wood is an organic material. Every single bow is different even if mass produced, same goes for arrows. An elf training a thousand years with a bow will still not be able to perfectly shoot some random bow and arrow they just pulled up off the ground. Unless magic, because magic.
- An addition to the point above. Since wood is organic, it rots and stuff. Got to keep the bow in upkeep or else it is going to not work as well. Same of course, goes with arrows.
- Bows can’t be fired without an arrow. Even the height of modern tech hasn’t been able to really get around this problem. Basically internal stresses cause the bow to go bang.
- A warbow has a draw weight of around a hundred pounds or more. So you can’t really aim anything that does reasonable damage for any length of time.
- Bow's for the most part, weren't strung all the time. Keeping a bow under tension would permanently bend the bow over time but most importantly it would cause the string to stretch. (Thanks to AGiantPie for reminding me of this)
Section 1 - Different types of bow
Section 2 : Actually making a bow
Section 3 : Arrows
Section 4 : Shooting a bow
Section 5 : Bow maintainace
Summary:
God that took ages to write and I missed so many things. Actually, I probably missed a bunch of things and had terrible grammar while doing it. I just hope you can get some info about archery from this and lead to some more detailed and accurate RP.
Please message me if you think something above is wrong or something should be added!
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Rev #5
