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Saturday, May 21, 2016

Some thoughts on standard arrowhead variations

We had a short discussion of arrows and arrowheads in my last game session. This occasioned some thoughts and comments I figured I'd share.

Blunts: These obviously are "war blunts," since they don't have a penalty to damage or a armor multiplier. A tipless blunt is just a wooden arrow, and those have a bunch of problems. They're half cost, but that's probably because you don't need to put a point or an edge on them.

If you do want no-tip arrows, or you convert an arrrow into a blunt by removing the tip, I'd treat these as cheap wooden weapons, with -1 Acc, -5 to both ranges, and a (0.5) armor divisor.

Cutting arrows: These things do serious cut damage. How serious? A ST 13 composite bow does 1d+3 cutting damage with them. Min/Av/Max is 4/6.5/9. A minimum damage hit on an unarmored HP 10 man will cripple his arm or leg. A roughly average damage hit - let's say 7, because you can't roll 6.5 - would almost do enough to automatically dismember the arm or leg, and 8 or 9 will dismember. Youch. And ST 13 composite bows aren't exactly lofty weapons of legend, either - a ST 11 man with Strongbow 2 can draw one. Bows in my DF game are more usually in the ST 15-19 range, and crossbows even heavier.

So these are clearly not dinky little moon-shaped arrowheads for cutting banners off of poles, but a thrown blade powered by a bow.

One suggestion my players came up with was an armor divisor of (0.5). That would make them still arm-lopping on unarmed foes but quickly drop off the effectiveness scale against more armored foes. Makes sense - who pulls out the crescent arrow or Y- or U- shaped arrowhead to punch through plate or mail or an o-yoroi? Of course, that might seem pretty unfair when you look at any other cutting attack versus armor.

Can they target vitals? Seems like you could aim for the heart with them, but is it going to be as easy to penetrate as with a broadhead? One option here is to say yes, but it changes the injury multiplier from x1.5 to x2, much like cutting the neck does. Only unlike the neck, it's rare for the vitals to be less armored. I wouldn't allow an eye strike except on a very large subject simply because the orbital bone of a skull is well-designed to stop broad-area attacks from entering the brain. Of course, you could just say "no, vitals is x3 injury" but then there is no good reason to use impaling arrows - they're marginally better against the torso but worse against limbs, no better against the neck, etc.

Still, the problem remains - this is pretty much a niche arrowhead, but in game terms, it's making up for a lot of the weakness of the better missile weapons (bows, crossbows), especially versus supernatural foes or solid objects.

One further way to deal with this is reduced damage. They can simply not hit as hard, thanks to the arrowhead's shape, less ability to focus force, etc. The way to do this is give them -1 or -2 damage. Even with -2 that ST 13 composite bow will do 1d+1 (2/4.5/7) and still have some solid effects, but they're toned down. 2/3 of the time an unarmored man will have a crippled limb, but can't get dismembered by the arrows until a ST 15 or 17 bow shows up and rolls well.

I'm not sure if I'll do this - it really depends on how my players feel about it. But I am at least considering the damage reduction overall, but allowing an improved injury multiplier for the vitals.

9 comments:

  1. For the cutting arrows, I'd point to the edge protection rules in Low Tech more than I'd look at any kind of armor divisor.

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    1. I really don't like those rules.

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    2. Really? I thought they were good, at least a better model for representing blunt trauma than the Basic Set's method. I'm a bit iffy on it not differentiating between Flexible and Non-Flexible, but overall I thought it was good. What's your take on it?

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    3. On blunt trauma? Generally I ignore it, but you could probably say you take 1 point of crushing injury per die of damage if your DR stops an attack fully.

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    4. Sorry, I meant your take (and why you didn't like) "Blunt Trauma and Edged Weapons" from Low Tech?

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    5. It fundamentally changes DR vs. cutting weapons in the guise of "hey, the blunt trauma rule doesn't work so well." I basically don't agree that armor should be dramatically improved versus cutting weapons. Or that armor DR is generally too low and needs to be raised. I don't like to criticize books I co-authored, so I don't really want to expand on that any further.

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  2. I think like the flat -1 or -2. Armor divisor seems way too harsh. Don't k ow about vitals, maybe just the x2, that seems more fair. I look at cutting more as a way to get around pierce resistant stuff, I did t realize they were so good overall.

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    1. They're surprisingly effective in GURPS, yeah, for an arrowhead that's more niche. Part of its DF effectiveness is because supernatural threats are generally cut-vulnerable more than piercing and impaling vulnerable. That's fine. It's just kind of odd if they're quite effective against normal foes, the best choice against supernatural foes, and suffer few if any downsides compared to armor-piercing bodkins (doing pi) and standard arrows (doing imp). That's not "useful niche arrow with good DF applications" and straight to "best overall arrow, with armor-piercers second, blunts good versus fragile targets, and standard arrows last." Unstead of a Rock-Paper-Scissors choice matching arrow to target, it's like saying Scissors now also beats Rock. :)

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  3. I think like the flat -1 or -2. Armor divisor seems way too harsh. Don't k ow about vitals, maybe just the x2, that seems more fair. I look at cutting more as a way to get around pierce resistant stuff, I did t realize they were so good overall.

    ReplyDelete