Overpowered in terms of game balance or compared to reality?
Ranged weapons were always a terrible threat to every army of the middle ages. But there might be some differentation between the weapon types in DF:
crossbows had in fact a good chance to penetrate most types of armor because of the high kinetic energy delivered with heavy bolts, it was the first reliable armor penetrating ranged weapon. Crossbows were also easy to fabricate, and did not need a lot of training to be accurate, that's why it was the poors people weapon of choice.
As a drawback, the rate of fire was very slow, you needed some mechanical help to load the bow, and limited range to achive a penetrating hit.
On the other side, bows as the english longbow or compound bows had lesser penetration potential (but it was not impossible), and it took years to become a well trained marksman; accuratly aiming a bow pulled with 80kg takes time. Bows took a long time to produce and needed to be stored carefully to prevent degradation. But they provided an incredible rate of fire and were effective on longer ranges.
Whenever chivalry did not hinder the effective use of these weapons they played a great role on the battefield. But it was not a noble way of fighting, so it often was not used or used in a wrong way, for the nobles it was more important to fight according the rules of chivalry than to simply win a battle.
Btw. two fingers shown for the victory sign, this comes from the feared english archers taunting their enemies showing the two fingers used to draw the bow string.
[ March 21, 2008: Message edited by: Wawotsch ]
[ March 21, 2008: Message edited by: Wawotsch ]
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Topic: Are bowmen too beastly? (Read 4683 times)