Does anyone think Bow has a rather weedy Injury rating? If has the lowest rating in the game, alongside Short Sword (Edit: OK, Dagger is lower). What this means is that lots of times arrows won't penetrate on a Piercing hit. I thought historically arrows were quite effective at penetrating armour (English Longbow springs to mind).

TOR Bow got enc 1, like the shortsword. Looks like it's a pretty small bow (Short bow?).
The longbow is more akin to the Great Bow, enc 3 and injury 16.

I think that the bows relatively low injury is a way to balance their killing power, which is pretty awesome in this game. Bows called shots are particularly dangerous, and the spears -the other weapons with “pierce” called shots- got a equally low injury (Spear 14, Great Spear 16).


PS...and there are a lot of discussions about the effective penetrating capabilities of the longbow. A real can of worms, to be honest

Fair enough.

I don't know that much about arrows but I remember seeing some documentary showing bodkin pointed arrows (kind of like a philips screwdriver shape tip) punching through plate mail quite easily. However the same documentary showed the effect against someone wearing Gambeson armour (a relatively cheap padded armour) being fairly minimal. Gambeson was specifically designed to stop arrows, a bit like modern kevlar jackets are designed to defeat bullets.

I suppose the other thing to consider is that the trauma caused by a sword or axe is greater than that caused by an arrowhead, so it's likely to cause less internal haemorrhaging even if it penetrates.

On the subject of Armour Protection Rolls, do you get to roll if you are wearing NO armour (i.e. just roll the Feat Die)? Also, could a hero use Hope to add his attribute to the Injury rating to ensure it penetrates?

I'm not so sure about gambeson* alone, but I can certainly confirm that the combination of mail and padding is particularly effective against arrows, resulting in mailed warriors running around the battlefield relatively unimpeded by being pincushioned by a number of arrows.
Decent-quality shields made of a number of plies of wood with the grain set at different angles also tends to prevent arrows punching straight through them -- whatever the movies might portray.

Yes you get to roll even if you aren't wearing armour. But you're probably relying on the longshot that you might Gandalf it. Failing that, a highish roll plus a Hope spend to add Body might just scrape you clear. Body can be either being so hard that you take something as a flesh wound that would be a Wound-wound to a lesser man, or being so fast that you half-dodge the attack, and don't take it in a critical , even if you can't avoid being hit.

But you can't add Hope to your Injury rating. TOR is very specific that Hope can only be added to rolls, not scores -- and yes this is deliberate.

Cheers,
--Os.


* I always insist on calling it a "padded jack" for Middle-earth purposes; I find the Norman-French "gambeson" to be a mood-breaker.