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[Tiler]

Personally, I think armor needs to be beefed up in this game. Plate armor, especially. It's rather obscene how easily those stupid things are punched through by a wooden arrow, when in real life, they were designed to minimize the amount of flat surfaces and such so that arrows would more often than not just deflect off.

This would make wrestling more important, since as someone said, no matter how strong your armor is, your joints are still vulnerable to being abused.

[Dasqoot]

Armor does need to be boosted against regular bows (kobolds, goblins). Longbows and crossbows were known the punch through full plate mail and exit out the other side pretty far though. It just seems that the vital spots are given a pretty large random roll to be hit (the heart and lungs are pretty small compared to say, an arm with a shield or an upper leg), although a direct hit to the guts probably isn't even very survivable with modern medicine unless you can stitch yards of intestine together and have a couple gallons of spare transfusion blood.

Actually, you should expect far more wounding and less instant death from a bow, either way. Usually hits to the heart (irl) are made by  skilled bow-hunters, with a specially designed arrow-head firing at a target standing still, else the arrow will bounce off the ribcage or the shot must pierce through the armpit from a 90 degree angle from the side. I mean even a modern hunting bow with an alloy arrowhead can have arrows bounce off of a ribcage. I can't really picture a crossbow bolt not going directly through something, though.

[cowofdoom78963]

I think that the armor is just fine (well other then the neck thing)
But bows and crossbows are wayyyy too overpowered. one time I was just walking threw a town and all of a sudden a arrow from a bowman at the edge of the screen flys right threw my character... Im not sure if the arrow went threw my heart or not, but it caused Bleeding!, knocked me down and I think it broke my leg and both of my arms.(not entirely sure)

After crawling away I bleed to death.
also just about any time one of my characters gets hit by a arrow its a slow painfull death.

[Jetman123]

Well, there probably is some protection, but maybe 30% of the neck is covered at most.

What he said. The neck can be protected, but my point is it's _hard_ to protect.

In fact, you could say the same about any joint. Shoulder, hip, knee, elbow, wrist, ankle. None of these can be layered over with shaped, interlocking stiff metal plates because they have to move, and as a result they are only covered with chainmail. Even the spine has to be free to move, and as a result there are often small gaps in the chestplate.

All I'm saying is that plate armor is not impenetrable by FAR. It doesn't turn you into a walking tank, it turns you into a slow-moving heavy infantryman who is well protected but still an infantryman. And enough arrows WILL eventually find a joint and cripple your plate-armored warrior.

On the flip side, arrows can penetrate plate mail but they shouldn't do so easily at all. It would take a lot of arrows. See the battle of Agincourt for an example, where a vastly superior force of French knights were killed by English longbowmen - a precursor to modern ranged warfare. However, it took a HELL of a lot of arrows to kill a knight. Crossbows were better but indeed would often bounce off, snapping the bolt or arrow in two and dissipating it's energy harmlessly. If anything the primary purpose of plate mail was to protect against missile attacks, with melee attacks being a close second.

[Snall]

ctrl-alt-delete

[anyar]

Well, there probably is some protection, but maybe 30% of the neck is covered at most.

What he said. The neck can be protected, but my point is it's _hard_ to protect.

In fact, you could say the same about any joint. Shoulder, hip, knee, elbow, wrist, ankle. None of these can be layered over with shaped, interlocking stiff metal plates because they have to move, and as a result they are only covered with chainmail. Even the spine has to be free to move, and as a result there are often small gaps in the chestplate.

All I'm saying is that plate armor is not impenetrable by FAR. It doesn't turn you into a walking tank, it turns you into a slow-moving heavy infantryman who is well protected but still an infantryman. And enough arrows WILL eventually find a joint and cripple your plate-armored warrior.

On the flip side, arrows can penetrate plate mail but they shouldn't do so easily at all. It would take a lot of arrows. See the battle of Agincourt for an example, where a vastly superior force of French knights were killed by English longbowmen - a precursor to modern ranged warfare. However, it took a HELL of a lot of arrows to kill a knight. Crossbows were better but indeed would often bounce off, snapping the bolt or arrow in two and dissipating it's energy harmlessly. If anything the primary purpose of plate mail was to protect against missile attacks, with melee attacks being a close second.

Most of the deaths at Agincourt were from suffocation, not arrows. Plate armor makes it REALLY hard to get out of the mud when your horse has been shot and you end up under it.

[Snall]

I do find arrows/bolts a little too overpowered. Especially when an elite bowmen keeps pummeling me with arrows when Im right next to him hitting him with an axe.  Although it was FUN when I raided that gob fortress and a few travels later noticed I had 2 iron bolts in me...picking them out made me bleed a bit but my guy is pretty tough now, which I believe makes you heal faster?

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

My new adventurer's first kill.

In the next ambush he was knocked unconscious in the second round and never woke up.

[Tiler]

Well, there probably is some protection, but maybe 30% of the neck is covered at most.

What he said. The neck can be protected, but my point is it's _hard_ to protect.

In fact, you could say the same about any joint. Shoulder, hip, knee, elbow, wrist, ankle. None of these can be layered over with shaped, interlocking stiff metal plates because they have to move, and as a result they are only covered with chainmail. Even the spine has to be free to move, and as a result there are often small gaps in the chestplate.

All I'm saying is that plate armor is not impenetrable by FAR. It doesn't turn you into a walking tank, it turns you into a slow-moving heavy infantryman who is well protected but still an infantryman. And enough arrows WILL eventually find a joint and cripple your plate-armored warrior.

On the flip side, arrows can penetrate plate mail but they shouldn't do so easily at all. It would take a lot of arrows. See the battle of Agincourt for an example, where a vastly superior force of French knights were killed by English longbowmen - a precursor to modern ranged warfare. However, it took a HELL of a lot of arrows to kill a knight. Crossbows were better but indeed would often bounce off, snapping the bolt or arrow in two and dissipating it's energy harmlessly. If anything the primary purpose of plate mail was to protect against missile attacks, with melee attacks being a close second.

Semi agreed. People overestimate the piricing power of arrows. It was possible to puncture plate with a bow, but it would be difficult, and would require doing something like shooting it in a high arc so gravity would assist, or shooting it at the perfect angle or with pinpoint accuracy against an unmoving target. The odds of an arrow hitting a target in a joint of armor is far too low (highly improbable would be a good way to describe it) to say that the injuries caused by DF arrows is justifiable. Plate armor was a powerful asset, and could, in fact, turn a soldier into a walking tank if the enemy didn't have the proper weapons needed to defeat it. Just ask the mezoamerican natives how they fared against the Conquistadors (or don't).

And people tend to underestimate the value of less effective armor as well. Chain, of course, was more effective against slashing weapons, and not very useful against blunt attacks, but it afforded quite a bit of protection against arrows and other piercing weapons, since the loops used to make the chainmail were usually far too small for an arrow to simply slip through. However, it didn't afford the added protection of being able to deflect blows through well placed angles in the armor, so it was far less effective than plate, but far more effective that people give it credit for.

Even padded and leather armor is better than it's thought of. There are accounts, by the Muslim armies, of Christian soldiers in the crusades seen walking in formation, with padded armor, with arrows sticking out of them with seemingly no effect. Having a thick layer of leather could make an arrow that would have speared through precious organs 'only' cause a wound instead of a death. Of course, this kind of armor wasn't well suited to wandering around in deserts with on, so it didn't really work out for the Crusaders in the end...

[RebelZhouYuWu]

The views on bows and crossbows ability to punture plate varies from person to person.  Some experts say they easily punture plate armor while others say it only does this rarely.  Plate armors was impervious to direct on sword attacks, but was weak against attacks in the joints where there was no armor.  Plate armor had farily good protection againist spears and blunt attacks, but specilaized weapons like the halberd and poleaxes could easily exploit the plate armor's weak points.

[KrataLightblade]

I think if there were some range dissipation on the bows that'd fix most of the problem.

An arrow at maximum range loses a LOt of its punch.  A bolt or arrow from a good solid longbow at 50 yards, fired by a well-trained bowman, on the other hand, CAN punch through armor... because it's still got all its power behind it, and there's a LOT of power in it.

Of course, this isn't univeral.  I've personally seen and been a part of a few experiments dealing with modern compound bows and crossbows versus armor.  A heavy crossbow can punch through armor pretty easily, if the ranges are close enough.  At "volley range", yes, you're looking for a lucky shot.  At ranges where you can actually aim at a specific target, longbows and crossbows can really do a lot of damage, especially if the archer in question is good enough to specifically go for joints and weak seams, which ANY set of armor has.  Of course, not every archer IS that good.

But for the purposes of this game, I think anyone "elite" probably is exactly that good, and God help you if a champion archer starts firing at you, y'know?

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

I should point out that the idea of firing an arrow in an arc so that gravity adds power to your shot is very silly and contradictory to the laws of physics.  If you shoot an arrow upwards it will land with the exact same amount of energy it had when it left the bow, at best.  The only situation where gravity would increase the power of the shot is if the shot landed on a lower level than it was fired from and even then, that would only be if it hadn't already reach terminal velocity.

[Makrond]

Indeed, in fact firing downwards from battlements at a fairly close range is about your best chance of making a hole through plate armour, not counting deflection angles or anything like that.. Of course, it's still not guaranteed.

With chain mail, you have about a 60/40 chance of the arrow bouncing off harmlessly/breaking a link. Then there's a reasonable chance it will pierce flesh (without quilted/leather armour underneath).

[chaoticag]

Longbows are effective because it requires much more muscles than simple bows.
The only effective crossbow I can think of is the ancient stomach crossbow, where the entire body weight is used to load a shot.

We should also take into acount that these arrows and bolts are not metal tipped, but full metal. Wood is never used in their creation, and i don't think metal snaps as easily.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

Crossbows are pulled back with a crank.  They can have as much strain as the materials can take and size allows.