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An Important Point About Archery (and Ways to Use It to Define a Character)

Started by Kingfisher, May 24, 2017, 09:12:26 PM

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Kingfisher

There is a running trope in the fantasy genre.  One that says that if a character happens to be weak, they should be armed with a bow.  The bow is generally defined as a speed based weapon, whereas its counterpart, the crossbow is a weapon for beefy warriors.  Saddly, the relationship is actually the reverse.

During the Hundred Years War, you may be familiar with the Battles of Agincourt and Crecy, two battles said to demonstrate the supremacy of the English Warbow (more on that later, maybe).  While much of the legend is pure fantasy, the fantasy does have some truth to it: the Warbow was an incredibly effective weapon.  But why?  And if it was so good, why did the French never use it, instead relying on mercenaries from Genoa armed with heavy crossbows known as an Arbalest?

To understand the latter, we must first understand the former.  During the Middle Ages, English peasants had a long relationship with the fabled longbow.  Sometimes said to originate in Wales, the longbow dominated thanks to two main properties: its range and its penetration.  You see, the power of a bow generally came from two sources: its Draw Weight and its Draw Distance.  Draw weight refers to the amount of force applied to the bow as it is drawn, caused by the bows inate desire to return to a lower energy state.  The more prone a bow is to retaining its shape, the more it resists the bowman, increasing drawweight.  Incredibly, the draw weight of an average warbow is around 150-160 lbs (according to examples found abord the Mary Rose.)  Adding to that is the Draw Distance, the distance the arrow travels until the bowstring (usually made of hemp), stops pushing the arrow forward.  You see, as an archer releases the bowstring, the ends of the stave begins to accelerate.  This acceleration compounds the initial force of the release, accelerating the arrow until it is loose, granting the missile the power necessary to penetrate armor, even some grades of steel plate (though this was hardly normal).

So if the Warbow was so awesome and powerful, why didn't the French use it?  The main reason is no one physically could.  As mentioned, a standard power warbow required 150 lbs of force to achieve full draw (and some even had a draw weight of 185-200lbs the absolute peak of human physicality).  And France, lacking a culture of war archers, lacked people with the conditioning to operate such mighty tools.  Their solution was the Arbalest, a steel bow affixed to a wooden tiller.

As you may know, the longbow was usually made of a type of wood called yew.  But a crossbow, having steel prods had a much higher draw.  Light crossbows, used mostly for hunting, only had a draw weight of 400-500lbs.  At this level, no human could could operate the weapon, so in this case, a crossbowman had to use a lever mechanism to span the bow.  Military crossbows, however, needed to penetrate armor, not just animal hide and so had a draw weight of around 1000-1200 lbs. and had to be spanned with a rope-and-pully windlass (ideal for foot soldiers) or a gear-and-comb cranequin (a latter design that was slower but could be used on horseback)

You might be thinking, if crossbows have such a high draw weight, they must be more powerful than the measely 150lb bow.  Well, as I mentioned before, bow power is based on the combination of draw wieght and draw distance, and where longbows had over an arm's length (say 2.5ft) to accelerate, an average crossbow only had 6 inches of draw.  As a result, the compact nature of the crossbow required that the weapon to be extremely powerful in the draw, only to match, rather than to exceed to power of a conventional warbow.

TL;DR - For those interested in giving their characters ranged weapons, remember, a bow is a high strength weapon with power, range, and speed.  The mechanical nature of a cross spanner means that, while the weapon reloads slower, it allows a much weaker individual to match the power and range without a lifetime of conditioning


+Fun fact #1: due to the fact that crossbows took longer to reload, crossbowmen carried freestanding shields called "pavices" onto the battlefield, protecting them from enemy archers

+Fun fact #2: Historical warbows are largely limited by by what a human is capable of pulling; crossbows are limited by human technologic engineering.  As a result, a race that is stronger than a human (say an Orc) would likely favor bows.  Not only is the design simple and the weapon quick; if the draw weight got high enough, it could match and even excede the power of a firearm...


Did you find this interesting?  Would like to see more of this?  Have an idea for another topic or ways to improve material like this?  Feel free to reply here or PM me any questions or comments.  And if you think that the subject of historic culture is unimportant, feel free to say that...

Wrathwyrm

Not that I have many arrow users in my not-here-right-now repertoire, but I have never thought of bows as weak or those that use them to be such either.  I've studied the evolution of weapons, here and there.  The longbow is requires as much strength as it does skill, which is to say alot, since you're asking for the steadiness and strength of your arm - coupled with the careful hand-eye coordination - to hit what is essentially for you a tiny target.  You have to do this over and over again.

Compare this to the crank or pull-operated crossbow.  The crossbow was invented to make bowmanship easier, to a degree.  It is a solid, steady instrument that will always fire in the direction it is pointed, so all you need is a good aim and you're set.  Innovation is the fruit of necessity or convenience.  If you've got a bunch of people who are unskilled at weapons, handing them crossbows is devilishly easier than teaching them the bow.  The range is much shorter, of course, but they'll take out a group of charging men.

(Bows would work in favor of stronger races, yes, but so would any other weapon, and they know it.  That's why orks and trolls have heavy weapons all the time.)

Blink

Great read! I have a character who's main focus is in archery.

Thanks for the lesson ^.^


-BLINK

Whim

Interesting read and facts!

Something I notice about a lot of "archery focused" characters is they quite often use hunting bows - often presented as a guy who goes after game as part of his day job, and just happens to get sucked into an adventure - as opposed to a military archer.

How would that sort of bow compare to a warbow in terms of conditioning and power?
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Kingfisher

@Whim: That is a very good point, and is worth mentioning.  By comparison to a 100+ lb Warbow, medieval hunting bows were not designed to penetrate armor, or rather, needed to have lower penetration so that the arrows didn't just punch through and pass out the other side (one comedic comparison was using a 12" naval gun to hunt rabbits).  Hunting bows were generally prefered to be around 60-90lbs, causing the arrow to stay in a fleshy target, keeping the wound open as the fleeing animal bled to death.

The differences don't stop there, though.  Hunting bows could often be rather small, "drawn to the chin" much like modern bows.  However, longbows, due to their size, could be "drawn to the ear."  This meant a hunter just needed strong arms for his trade, while a a war archer relied on the muscles in his shoulders and back.

We also find information from the skeletons of longbow archers.  Longbowmen actually tended to have overdeveloped left arms with bone spures in te left wrists and shoulder, suggesting they spent more effort pushing the bow forward rather than pulling the string back.

That all being said, all warbow archers needed to start somewhere and historical longbows did have a hunting varient (made of softer wood).  This practice/hunting bow still lacked the penetration of its warbow counterpart, but still exercised the same muscle groups.  So the main takeaway is; context.  Is the hunter using a shortbow?  Then he's probably not going to be a very good warbow archer.  He could still operate as a skirmisher but would only work in a setting with minimal armor (ie: rawhide/leather rather than quilted fabric and steel).  But if he hunts with a longbow, it would be a safe bet he is reasonably familiar with warbows.


@Wrathwyrm: On the subject of "heavy" weapons, this is actually a hotly contested topic in the weapon enthusiast community.  And while the underlying physics of weapon behavior is more complex than even I can keep up with (force, pressure, energy transference, friction coefficients and more), the short answer is this: beyond gaining a reach advantage, adding mass to a weapon is not going to improve its performance in the long run and '10-pound clubs' should be avoided unless you have the time to devote to understanding the actually science behind using a weapon 4 times its realistic weight...

Wrathwyrm

@Kingfisher:

Oh, I understand, sir.  Back at another board I go to - Anime High School - a friend of mine had a species that is not unlike Thundercats, a warrior cat species.  One of his characters made use of a large warblade that you would expect only the likes of Guts (Berserk) or Sanosuke (Rurouni Kenshin) to wield.  Well, it IS an anime board.  However, for the sake of some realism, we agreed that smaller weapons - even such as a human claymore - were impractical and awkward for her.

That said, the reason a larger being would adopt a larger weapon - principally in their particular case - is for three reasons that I can see.

The first is weight class.  A troll with a dagger is impractical unless the opponent is right in front of him, and frankly such a person is better off breaking his neck.  A lighter weapon than one's weight class can be awkward due to its speed if the character cannot compensate.

The second is reach.  A comparatively bigger blugeon will be longer and thicker to be able to harm many, not just with its head, but also with its shaft.  The best kind of bashing weapon is strong all the way through and able to assist in crowd control as much as singular opponents.

Third is killing power.  The being who has more mass and strength than the average person can scale up because their huge sword is - to them - the same as your steel longsword.  To most people in Final Fantasy 7, for instance, Cloud Strife's sword is highly impractical.  To a super-strong human being, it's only large and very capable of messing everyone up.  Even a dull slab of steel would bisect a person if the wielder was strong enough.  'Course, it'd also crush every bone in his body and turn the flesh to soup, but you get the idea.

What does all of this have to do with bows?  Not much.  Of course, a huge troll might want to go the Sergeant Detritus route from Discworld.  HE was hauling around a Ballista.

Kingfisher

While, yes, weapons would be scaled to match the size of the user, the physics of close range weapons go beyond just "Increase weight to increase damage."  If you'd like, I can start a topic trying to delve into the complex nature of swords, axes and bludgeons?

Wrathwyrm


RogueWolf

Just to add my two cents into the mix.  The english long bow (war bow) was used by the british so successfully because of one ingrdient you touched on, training.  Peasants from a VERY young age were trained in the use of this weapon.  The cheap weapon, and the cheap lives of the peasants, made the archers the perfect battlefield weapon.  Able to lay waste to knights in chain mail and for a fraction of the cost to arm, equip, and maintain their own knights.

Kingfisher

Sorry to necro post but dangit, I started it.

One thing to take note off in regards to historical warbowmen: despite their common origin, archery was a full- or at least part-time job.  Those who practiced needed an incentive to maintain their physicality.  This meant that in English armies, they were maintained by high wages that rivalled the income of full time men-at-arms (armored cavalry after "Knight" became a title for landed gentry).  They were often payed well enough that, at least anecdotally, they often went into battle wearing custom fitted plate armor.

Compare that to a crossbowmen, who had maybe 1 year of formal training and really were seen as disposable.  For example, at the Battle of Crecy, when the exhausted, unarmored and out"gunned" Genoese crossbowmen were forced to engage English longbowmen, they attempted to flee and were promptly massacred by their own cavalry.

wdb2021

The bow is a weapon that is used to attack from a distance. As a user of a small bow was appropriate, he would not be easily noticed by the enemy.

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