Bow's and Great Bows

[Hermes Serpent]

@Corvo, that would certainly work.

It makes it less likely that a conservative player will give up a good part of their defence (roughly a quarter) in order to get a couple more points of damage for each successful attack roll (I'm ignoring any range benefit as it's usually LM fiat). The player may think they are safe enough, and against attackers with 2 levels of skill they probably are, but when you add in any of the Special Abilities that allow attacks against Rearward positioned heroes that loss of Parry defence becomes more important (TN12 is 58% likely to be successful with two levels of skill compared to 27% for TN16). Halving your chances of being hit by using a bow over Great bow seems a big benefit.

Maybe halving your Parry when using a Great bow rather than a bow would be better (TN14 is 42% likely to be a success with two levels of skill). Being Ensnared has been a big fear of some of my players due to the loss of half their Parry.

[PipeSmoker]

Final thought - the balancing point of bows could be that, while it is a reward behind a great bow, the -2 endurance reward is the best reward.... and thus you can have an endurance 1 weapon while still plowing 3x "-2 endurances" onto your armour. meh!

I think this a major point.
Heroes are often swarmed by a great number of enemies and so are forced to go close and personal drawing swords. That way even a big boosted Great Bow becomes useless, just 2 points of Encumbrance you could've spared with a regular Bow...
That's the way the game is, ranged is good to a point, which is realistic, imo. The difference between Great and regular Bow is subtle.
In melee we also have the spear having the option for ranged while swords and axes haven't. Is that a balance issue? I don't think so, but I can see a Bow getting some sort of (VERY) MINOR bonus. Otherwise I think it's fine the way it is.

My 2 cents.

[James Harrison]

I don't like nerfing the great bow -
for one it HEAVILY leads archers into high body low wits builds... cause why would a barding archer want wits?

I quite liked the combined "While in a heavily wooded area or forest an Elf or Woodman making a successful attack roll with a bow and getting a G rune on the Feat die can spend a point of Hope to make a second attack at the same target"

I'm not certain the point of hope is needed; having it restricted to Forested areas and 1 in 12 attacks (average) seems enough. Forcing it to be the same target is also odd; you've just got a penetrating hit, so that 1 in 12 attacks drops down more... Finally "successful attack roll" is unneeded as a G run insures that.

"While in a heavily wooded area or forest an Elf or Woodman getting a G rune with a bow attack may make a second attack."

I would want to be packing a bow in the forest and a Greatbow on the planes with this rule; making bows a real option - awesome.

[Hermes Serpent]

The reasoning for setting the benefit to operate against the same target previously hit is that spending a point of Hope is fairly major and needs careful consideration. If however you are trying for that second wound on something really nasty - a Troll - then a Hope point spend to possibly get a second and fatal wound is probably just the incentive you need and appropriately heroic to boot.

[Corvo]

@Corvo, that would certainly work.

It makes it less likely that a conservative player will give up a good part of their defence (roughly a quarter) in order to get a couple more points of damage for each successful attack roll (...)

Yeah, this was the idea*: Woodmen and Elves are strongly encouraged to stick to the shorter Bow.

*well, the idea is from DocTheWeasel, I just endorsed it

James Harrison wrote:
Final thought - the balancing point of bows could be that, while it is a reward behind a great bow, the -2 endurance reward is the best reward.... and thus you can have an endurance 1 weapon while still plowing 3x "-2 endurances" onto your armour. meh!

Maybe I got your thinking wrong, but here are my 2c. on balancing.
I feel the Great Bow/Bow fatigue disparity shows the same (un)balancing behind Knife vs Sword: +2 fatigue (=1 reward) vs +2 damage, +1 edge, +4 injury (=4 reward)...

That said, I think you cannot really balance the weapons reward-wise, because Rewards and Virtues aren't unlimited. 5 at most, and we know going above Valour/Wisdom 4 is really hard, so most of the times you have to do with just 1-3 rewards/virtues...
So, I think the question isn't "with that reward would my Great Bow be as light as a Bow?" but "with these 1-3 rewards, what would I do when the Troll would charge us?".

In the same vein, my players refuse to use the "-2" fatigue reward, because
a) there is the +2 Endurance Virtue that is mechanically better.
b) for a Woodman, "Fragrant Weeds" would have the same mechanical benefits, more or less (think of it. It's not apparent at first...)
c) they aim for Fell, Grievous, Keen etc, because in the end, they think that if they cannot wound that troll, he would just squash them, irrispective of their fatigue.

Sorry for being verbose, mates , not native speaker and sometimes I struggle to traslate my thinking in plain english.

[James Harrison]

I see what you are getting at - but it's more that other weapon lists give a good choice of weapons, the bow group doesn't hugely.

but I'm happy with the the fix we have come up with...

I'm not certain the knife/sword comparison is valid simply because they are not in the same group and 0 endurance is a major advantage.

I'm bored of thinking on the point now. I would like mechanical oomph for the bow, and think we might have got somewhere.

I'm thinking a strong reason to use a bow might be those 2 endurance, till you buy up points in shortsword as a secondary weapon (or even dagger); you start Bow, great axe and then swap to Great Bow shortsword. Oh well doesn't matter much really - combat is only a bit of the game.

[doctheweasel]

Just throwing more ideas out here.

The difference may be fixed with both of these minor changes:

1. Bow gets Edge 9 (it is easier to place a careful shot)
or, raise Great Bow Edge to G and Injury to 18 (harder to properly aim, but punches right through armor)

AND

2. Great Bow Encumbrance is increased to 4 (because, frankly, they are hard to carry around)

That gives characters a meaningful choice between the two weapons, supports why different cultures would favor each, and adds the fewest "special case" rules.

[James Harrison]

Hum interesting - I like the changes and will consider them - certainly makes a choice between the two

[Robin Smallburrow]

In all this discussion everybody seems to have forgotten the Complications Table on Page 48 of the LMB, specifically:

Attacker is severely hindered (-4) for Ranged Attacks if target has ample cover, such as trees in a dense wood. (the modifier is -2 for light or sparse woods). Now I interpret most (at least 95%) of Mirkwood to fit this description, so my own view of this discussion would be: if using a Woodland Bow or Shepherd's Bow (see the Rewards section for these) these penalties are halved. I could probably find similar arguments for similar Rewards - I prefer this because these particular weapons are specifically made for these cultures so it makes sense that these Rewards should become more powerful in a dense forest such as Mirkwood, and the player who chooses such Rewards should be 'rewarded' for being culturally appropriate!

Robin S.

[James Harrison]

Great point robbin! I think I missed it as I was planning on going by the designers "just use TN 14" philosophy... and pretty much ignored the TN complications.

I think personally I would reduce the penalties by one step for using a bow in a forest.

I would not restrict it to a reward however, I would put it on bows in general. I would not be overpowered, but it would mean the reason elves use bows in the forest was mechanically backed up; leading to other players who want to bring a ranged weapon into mirkwood probably following suit - meaning the mechanic is good and fits the setting.

I will suggest this to my GM as an elegant solution (and already plan to use it myself)

PS the dragons ring still can't be downloaded.