"Warbow" archery - heavy bow builds and more

**half** · September 8, 2013, 11:13

Originally posted by taptap

Shortbow is to my knowledge one of the romantic reimaginations of medieval times which became a fantasy trope. Where there is a long bow there must have been a short bow... when the practical difference was crossbow / longbow.

It does sound like the term 'short bow' wasn't used historically. As I understand it, longbows ended up very long and requiring considerable strength to draw, requiring perpetual training etc. I see the term 'short bow' as referring to bows that aren't that extreme and powerful. I'm not sure where composite bows fit in.

Tolkien explicitly states Earendil's bow was made of dragon-horn which is why we have that, and we wanted that to be different to the other types. It is not clear that we succeeded in getting it in a good space if no-one ever uses them though (and if horn bows typically required less strength -- I don't know about that one).

**WaveMotion** · September 8, 2013, 17:51

I might use a dragon-horn bow sometimes if I could get my hands on one... As it is I've seen about three of them in my entire Sil career, and never when playing archers.

It seems to me, though, that many Archery abilities focus on criticals or adding dice and so are slightly inferior for high-strength, low-dice side archery (e.g. flaming arrows, precision, rapid fire). Could anybody comment on how well that works?

**taptap** · September 8, 2013, 18:26

Bows compare to swords without subtlety and momentum and all wielded one handed as follows: shortbow = shortsword, longbow = longsword, dragon horn longbow = bastard sword. since you get more bonus (focus, concentration, evasion penalty) and easier brands (fire, poison) from a bow both shortbow and longbow turn out to be potent weapons. shortbows are somewhat weaker against critical resisting and / or highly armoured units. dragon horn longbow however requires a lot of strength to use but even then it is hardly efficient compared to a 2 or 3 lb longbow.

That is, however, only my personal opinion. I am somewhat biased towards producing critical hits in general. I may be additionally biased due to finding improved shortbows and longbows about as much or even more often than plain dragon horn longbows, which i anyway don't have the strength to use and tend to ignore even when I find them.

I may try out sth. different next christmas when I get my hands on an early dragonhorn longbow.

**Scatha** · September 8, 2013, 20:01

Originally posted by taptap

Bows compare to swords without subtlety and momentum and all wielded one handed as follows: shortbow = shortsword, longbow = longsword, dragon horn longbow = bastard sword. since you get more bonus (focus, concentration, evasion penalty) and easier brands (fire, poison) from a bow both shortbow and longbow turn out to be potent weapons. shortbows are somewhat weaker against critical resisting and / or highly armoured units. dragon horn longbow however requires a lot of strength to use but even then it is hardly efficient compared to a 2 or 3 lb longbow.

Note that Dragon-horn bows are actually comparable to bastard swords with (+0) instead of (+2). This is normally a pretty significant difference; however it may not be enough to compensate for the other factors you mention, particularly in light of the fact that they are very rare (so you often don't find such specialised versions, a bit like Mithril or Galvorn items). We could consider making them a little more common, or slightly stronger.

As an aside, longer-term the plan is to move branding to a system which is independent of the size of the damage dice. We therefore don't want to make too many balancing changes on the basis of the current system, if they'd just need to be rolled back later.

**taptap** · September 8, 2013, 20:34

Originally posted by Scatha

As an aside, longer-term the plan is to move branding to a system which is independent of the size of the damage dice. We therefore don't want to make too many balancing changes on the basis of the current system, if they'd just need to be rolled back later.

I am curious how you will do this without adding a completely new mechanism (flat modifiers?) to the game. Current system is elegant and nice and I honestly don't think that you need to encourage the use of many-dice weapons even more - it makes perfect sense to me that poison gives more damage on a spear than on a warhammer. It is not that too many people use great spears at the moment.

Dragon-horn longbow: Making them 3d4 by default but keeping them as rare as they are wouldn't overpower them in my opinion. My Egrent preferred her +1, 1d8, 2lb shortbow (and as swap a balanced 2d6 doriath longbow) over a found improved 3d4 dragon-horn longbow. At least the temptation to use them would be greater - but I don't know at what point they become overpowered for non-archer warriors who will probably remain the main users of them.

**Scatha** · September 8, 2013, 23:42

Originally posted by taptap

I am curious how you will do this without adding a completely new mechanism (flat modifiers?) to the game. Current system is elegant and nice and I honestly don't think that you need to encourage the use of many-dice weapons even more - it makes perfect sense to me that poison gives more damage on a spear than on a warhammer. It is not that too many people use great spears at the moment.

The main inelegance of the current system is that it treats elemental brands completely differently from elemental breath attacks (for example resistance stacking against breath attacks but not against melee attacks).

Since you ask, here are some notes on the system we are thinking of, heavily cribbed from old email exchanges with half. I hope they're clear, but apologise if not. Comments are welcome! In any case although we think there's a slight improvement to the rules to be had here, it's a pretty small return on work put in, so it's not a top priority.

A branded attack is a physical attack. If it gets through armour (does positive damage), a separate elemental damage roll occurs.

Like special effects from monsters which trigger on damage dealt.
Get resistance as normal but no protection against elemental part.

Elemental damage could be:

One die's worth of damage (current system)
Always 4d4 (simplest)
A variable number of d4, specified in the attack or on the
weapon (like breath weapons) [In subsequent discussions, we were leaning towards favouring this possibility; it has flexibility and also plays well with the fact that elemental damage is always in d4s.]

Player brands always the same? (=2d4?)

There are also a couple of disconnects between the "single die of elemental damage" and the way the game presents it to you, too. Poison attacks (which are by some way the most frequent branded attack, so perhaps what we should be thinking about here) do no physical damage whether or not you resist, but just increment your poison counter. This is both a little odd in itself (you take no immediate damage from being bitten by a Werewolf?), and makes it stranger that stacked poison resistance does nothing for you. Or when Ururaukar hit, it "burns you" whether or not you have fire resistance, and can damage your inventory with this (making the idea that it's a 4d10 physical attack seem similarly strange).

For players, the changed system would mean:
- An extra line in the combat rolls window when a branded attack got through armour

- Bad up-front as screen clutter
- But would get the "/2" or "/3" which would make it clear how elemental resists work in this context; this is hidden information at present.

- Stacked resistances having some effect

- Not a big deal mechanically. Perhaps more so psychologically.

- Protection as a viable defence mechanism against brands.

- i.e. if you can get enough protection to deflect the attack, negates the elemental part
- Just like against dragonfly attacks, etc.
- Seems perfect in the context of Werewolves, Spiders with poisonous bites, etc: "Even a scratch can be deadly"
- Not clear whether cold and fire should help penetrate armour. I think it's fine either way, and quite like not.

- Would get lower poison counts and more straight up damage from the relevant creatures

- Makes more sense!
- Not quite clear if it's better gameplay.
- But note that even if there's e.g. 1d13 poison and 2d13 physical, will often have more than half damage poison, as physical gets absorbed.
- Also allows design space of e.g. spiders which you can guard against with armour but have very deadly poison.

**debo** · September 9, 2013, 02:23

I think boosting the dragon-horn longbow drops would be enough. If I could go into a game being pretty much guaranteed to find one (i.e. the same way I'm pretty much guaranteed to find a vanilla greatsword at some point), I might be willing to create a heavy-bow build just for kicks.

Even heavy bows will get good criticals imo -- the half-evasion penalty is no joke. Maybe we need to run a few rounds of fsil to help us crunch the numbers...

I would still love to design a build around Wyrm's End one day. I might ask Santa for one this year at christmas

**half** · September 9, 2013, 12:49

Originally posted by taptap

I am curious how you will do this without adding a completely new mechanism (flat modifiers?) to the game. Current system is elegant and nice and I honestly don't think that you need to encourage the use of many-dice weapons even more - it makes perfect sense to me that poison gives more damage on a spear than on a warhammer.

To add to what Scatha has said about this, we are seeing this much more as a change to monster attacks than to player attacks. There are many branded monster attacks (particularly poison) and in most games the player will never make a branded melee attack (they may well make a branded archery attack though). For the reasons he outlined, we think it would be good to make this change for monster attacks.

For player attacks, it doesn't change much at all. It is a bit less elegant (given the old rules could borrow the same system as for slaying weapons), probably won't change melee attacks much (we'll rebalance the branded artefacts to reflect the new rule). I suppose it will make them noticeably less good as armour penetrating attacks, but good if they penetrate. The biggest effect will probably be with poison arrows and flaming arrows (and making these a bit less strong has been a minor goal for a while now).

**taptap** · September 9, 2013, 14:38

Originally posted by half

The biggest effect will probably be with poison arrows and flaming arrows (and making these a bit less strong has been a minor goal for a while now).

Forbidding double branding would probably be cleaner and easier if you are worried about peak strength and want more archers to die horribly to Morgoth, but removing all armour breaking capabilities from branded arrows incl. magical flaming arrows is another nerf for archers in every stage of the game. It just will make people rely even more on song of sharpness because all other brands only work in conjunction with it not as an alternative.

It sure feels right for poison, but at the same time it isn't necessarily more logical for a Balrog blade to do fire damage only when breaking through the steel corslet. There are plenty of possible rationalizations why this should ignore protection.

**half** · September 9, 2013, 17:27

Originally posted by taptap

Forbidding double branding would probably be cleaner and easier if you are worried about peak strength

That's right. The point of the elemental branding change is to improve the system for *monster* branded attacks. I was just pointing out some side benefits (or costs) for player branding.

It just will make people rely even more on song of sharpness because all other brands only work in conjunction with it not as an alternative.

Song of Sharpness is being made notably less powerful in the next version (hopefully so that people no longer think it is the best song, let alone head and shoulders above the others). Also it would incentivise using arrows of piercing, which is fine.

It sure feels right for poison, but at the same time it isn't necessarily more logical for a Balrog blade to do fire damage only when breaking through the steel corslet. There are plenty of possible rationalizations why this should ignore protection.

Yes, as Scatha said, it is the obvious rule for poison and will be implemented like this for poison. For fire/cold/dark it could be done differently. For example, it could be that it adds to the combat damage before prot is subtracted, that it is a separate thing that does Xd4 damage with no possible prot (even if the physical damage was absorbed), or that it is a separate thing that has its own limited source prot (the breath weapon rules). Like Scatha, I'm inclined towards it working the same as for poison just for simplicity/consistency, but will think about it more later.

**half** · September 9, 2013, 17:29

Originally posted by half

Yes, as Scatha said, it is the obvious rule for poison and will be implemented like this for poison.

It would also be a good time to introduce a poison counter for the monsters so they can take poison damage like the player does.

**clouded** · September 9, 2013, 17:54

Not to say it would be better or worse, but this would reverse the current gameplay of poison attacks against heavy armour characters. Currently, with a low evasion high protection character poison stands out as a major threat, especially on ancient spiders.

**taptap** · September 9, 2013, 20:27

Ondrej posted several characters to the ladder that apparently killed Morgoth with dragon-horn longbows (at least that is the highest combat skill they have), admittedly they feature a lot of damage rings.

**taptap** · September 16, 2013, 22:26

I am trying archery with a heavy bow at the moment - STR 5-7 according to gear. All is well, apart from the difficulty in finding / making heavy bows. The only dragon-horn longbow I found was 3.2 lb, so I have to rely on damage rings or improved bows (as ondrej did) to get anything better than 3d6, which isn't very impressive (imagine a light bastard sword which you can't wield two handed, can't combine with momentum and can't smith yourself). The only way to utilize the high strength w/ my strong archer is unbuffed rapid fire with a normal bow, that is nice, but not the heavy bow archery I wanted to try. Simply making a plain heavy longbow is quite difficult already (13 difficulty for 5 lb. 2d5 4lb is probably the only heavy bow available without heavy smithing investment or luck.)