Fast Archery

-2 actions maybe?

I’m eagerly awaiting the 2018 incarnation of this thread, this one has been an improvement over the 2012 one.

Also, a lot of the other players in the “fast archery” scene (who are explicitly doing it to be fast with modern stuff, not claiming to be rediscovering anything) point out that Mr. Andersen has unusually large nocks on his arrows.

I will keep bringing it up until I have my satisfaction!

So there ARE other versions of this thread. Who are you trying to convince? If it makes you happy, you have my approval to allow characters to fire an arrow every 2 actions that only deals incidental damage. :stuck_out_tongue: Have fun, and remember to pack lots of arrows.

Should we then be treating quivers like tool kits? (Roll a 1 on the DoF and you’re down to your last arrow) I’ve always figured that the archers could just replace as needed by scavenging after a battle or fletching/purchasing during down time.

I would prefer -1 action for a -1 power, -1 VA, -1 DoF, and +1 Ob. You shoot a little bit faster, but with less power, penetration and accuracy.

Wouldn’t that qualify him for a die trait then? (Practiced Precision) earned by vote from his instinct “Always enlarge the nocks on my arrows”

Don’t worry Larkin, I’m just messing with Kublai. The books says somewhere that if you purchase a bow you can carry as many arrows as you wish, and therefore counting them like a tool kit would just get in the way.

We usually count arrows at BWHQ. Generally we carry 12 arrows. In times of desperation we use Scavenger to recover arrows from the field, but they are frequently broken or otherwise ruined.

12 seems quite reasonable.

In my D&D days we counted, 12 arrows/bolts to a single quiver, 20 to a double (full back) quiver.
In BWG I could keep the same thing as long as we are counting anyways.
I also used to count the full back sized quiver as a bonus to “armor class” from behind as well as an encumberance issue (I counted “slots” or spaces you carried things in/on).
So in burning wheel terms, a back quiver and harness could add a die to chest armor and also increase the Ob for health, fortitude, and stealthy tests.
(Maybe charge a +1 resource point in character burning for the larger quiver).

Take your quiver heresy to another thread!

Sorry, didn’t mean to “shake” things up. :wink:

New poster here, but longtime lurker and RPG afficionado. I own BWG and have read it cover-to-cover, but am still looking for a game to join.

I’d second the earlier notion that current BWG rules already allow fast shooting. The load cycle for a hunting or elven bow is 5 actions. The first 2 are to draw the arrow from the quiver. That isn’t stated explicitly on BWG p. 451, but p. 447 says it takes 2 actions to draw a weapon, and 1 to grab 1 previously prepared. I’d posit that placing arrows in the ground in front of you, as medieval archers often did prior to battle, is an example of that. So, doing both that and snapshot eliminated steps 2&5 from load cycle (1) grab arrow, (2) draw from quiver, (3) nock, (4) draw, (5) acquire target, and (6) fire, though at the cost of accuracy. (NB: BWG p. 452 says snapshot is Ob 4, not Ob 2.)

What Lars Andersen does is hold 3 arrows in his hand at the same time, which eliminates another action for the first 3 shots and means you can potentially fire every 3 actions: nook, draw, snapshot fire. Adding the Practiced Precision trait reduces this to 2 actions, and The Killer reduces it to 1! (A generous GM could allow Chow Yun Fat to be added on top of that, so that the archer could fire every round without the snapshot penalty.)

Luke has said that a Volley in Fight! is a heartbeat long (about a second), so how do you get to the rate of 3 arrows in 1.5 seconds that Mongol archers were required to achieve? Reflexes, baby!

Reflexes = 6 means you get 2 actions per volley, so you get those first 3 shots off in 1.5 volleys (~1.5 seconds). Reflexes of 9 means this super-archer would get those first 3 arrows off in just 1 volley, before the average Archer can even fire 1!

How’s that, Kublai?

(NB: Lars Andersen does use extra large nooks in order to use this technique. The way to reflect that in game is to require custom-made arrows.)