Board Thread:Midian Ideas/@comment-24302820-20141216090503

I think I finally figured out how I want to handle bow skills. Tell me what you think.

Rather than have longbow and short bows as separate skills, there will be a single proficiency called Ranged Weapon (archery). It don't think that it should have the doubled time to learn that Ranged (longbow) did, but I could see that argument going both ways.

Since there is absolutely no accepted definition of longbows or short bows, I'm not going to bother imposing one. I'll make typical versions of each, and have the Weapon Builder allow for all sizes and forms. Since bows will now use a single skill, there isn't much point in a hard delineation anyway.

The standard short bow will be more for hunting. Longbows will be war bows. All bows will have a typical poundage, with an equivalent Strength. Bows won't natively get the Strength modifier for damage. High Strength archers won't be able to use their full capacity with a light bow, and low or average Strength archers can't fully draw a high poundage one.

I'm going to add a basic skill to address this: Warbow. This skill involves strength training and loads of practice with a high draw weight bow. Ranged (archery) will be a prerequisite, maybe with a minimum skill level. This skill will allow an archer to use his or her full Strength bonus to damage. I'm thinking that Warbow will require 4-600 hours to learn, and count as two skills at character creation.

Does this sound reasonable?

It addresses the historic observations of longbowmen needing up to a dozen years of experience, and the modern reality that the basics (very basic) of shooting a bow can be taught fairly quickly, nearly as quickly as teaching someone how to use a sword properly. Dedicated archers still have a slightly increased skill cost over someone taking up the bow as a secondary weapon, but are no longer wasting points between two separate but clearly closely related weapon proficiencies. Dedicated bowmen should have more associated skills than a single high proficiency anyway. This will also help clear some of the obstacles to me releasing the ranged section of the Weapon Builder.

To convert to this new schema, characters with both of the old bow proficiencies would just add them together to find the new skill level, subtracting a couple of levels for Warbow. 