Tired of shooting that bow over the same distance for the same amount of damage? Here are some house rules to change the way bows work. I'll talk about STR, DEX and CON and how they work to turn bows into a more personalized weapon.I love bows. I love the silence, the skill, and the stealth behind using them. I want my characters to feel it too. So I think bows should work side to side with the character's skills to make him something different. I really like characters that are fleshed out, that have something in particular that makes them stand out. That's why I sat down to make a set of house rules so not all bows feel the same. So here it goes.
I'm going to work with STR, DEX and CON. STR will work with the bow's damage, DEX with the bow's aim and CON with the bow's range. The idea is that higher strength gives you more draw-weight, CON allows for a longer pull (since you tire down slower) and DEX gives you the well know aim.
Lets start with strength. Simple rule is STR adds to your damage. Attribute bonuses are added to the arrow's damage. This represents your character's ability to pull much heavier bows and using heavier arrows that, having more momentum, produce more damage.
Your character's CON increases the weapons range by 10ft per bonus (might want to change it to 5ft for some rules). So an attribute bonus of +2 increases your bow's short/base range by 20ft. This is a representation of being able to do a longer pull on the bow without becoming tired. It's not very realistic ballistics wise, but it represents the long years of training your character has and the benefits this gives on improved character endurance.
DEX adds to your character's ability to aim the bow correctly. This adds the character's DEX bonus to the to hit roll. You're better and sharper at leading the bow on the target so you get a steadier and more precise aim that improves your hit.
Finally there's one extra rule. Damage drops by range. At short range you get the weapon's full damage. Medium range you have a -1 penalty to damage and long range applies a -2 penalty to damage. This will cause some "noise" with version using range increments as per 3.x, but I'm more of the S/M/L range era.
An optional rule is to change range for rate of fire. Cutting range by half allows your character to add one extra attack per round. Sure, that makes medium range into long, but if your character has the stats to compensate for range it can be very good to have that extra attack, no matter the range. For example a character with a bow ranging 60ft might want to cut the range in half because his +2 from CON gives him a 20ft gain. Bringing it back to 50ft range and one extra attack per round.
Images
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2012/oct/23/arrow-hit-the-target
4 comments:
If you don't mind buying an issue of Pyramid magazine to get it, I published an article that was 11,000 words long dealing with bows in GURPS. You might mine it for a bit of heavily physics-based inspiration.
I do play a bowman in a Pathfinder campaign also, so with that in mind:
I'd not base range on CON. It's basically, in real life, a linear function of the kinetic energy of the shot, which is all about ST.
Also, making a pathfinder character dependent on three stats for combat is kinda harsh. A friend of mind calls this being "Multiple Ability Dependent," and considers being dependent on three or more attributes a major drawback.
For STR, you can either have big bows fire big arrows, for more damage but constant range, or let them fire lighter arrows at normal damage at longer range. I'd not do both, though. Big arrows have more energy, but lower velocity.
One thing about real warbows with real heavy arrows: they may be a bit shorter ranged than with flight arrows, but they probably lose less than 20% of their velocity over the entire flight range! So I'd not, in a game like Pathfinder, lower damage with range for heavy war arrows . . . but I WOULD lower it for the longer range flight arrows.
Flight arrows also don't penetrate very well, while war arrows do. I'd probably lower the AC of a target whose AC is raised by armor for heavy war arrows, and lower it for lightweight flight arrows. This would include armored hide, but not the DEX bonus.
Anyway, nifty concept. I always wished for a way to trade DX bonuses for damage, personally, kinda like aiming for vitals. Maybe every -X to hit lowers your required critical hit level by 1 or something.
If you go to my own blog you can find a link to the Pyramid issue that contains "The Deadly Spring."
I understand your comment in regards to multiple ability dependence, at first it might seem like a drawback since we're all used to "positive feedback" games like D&D. Games in which more leads to even more.
On the other hand the odds of having low DEX, CON and STR are very low. Unless of course your character is a wizard wannabe rogue. The point here is not to require all high attributes for all, but rather give some bonus for some or at least one high value.
By putting more attributes in place I prevent optimization and I put some negative feedback into the system. By this feedback mechanism something good comes back as something bad, something D&D lacks in general.
Let me explain further. It is hard to roll all high attributes so as a player you'll generally put high values in either STR, CON or DEX. If I want my character to be an archer I'd put it in DEX if I were using the standard rules. Leaving lower rolled values in the other attributes. It's easy to maximize because bows depend mainly on dexterity and STR comes into play with composites.
But if I factor all three attributes then the lower values of STR and CON come back as negative feedback and limit my ability as an archer in some way. Either through damage or range, or both.
This way the system favors the underdog in one way or the other. A high DEX has better aim, a high STR better damage and high CON better range. If your character lags in STR and DEX, he may still compensate with CON's better range. If the character lacks STR and CON he may compensate with better aim and finally a low CON and DEX character may compensate with higher damage.
If weapons depend on only one attribute then characters with said attribute high will enjoy the benefit and all others will be on the losing end of the equation.
I love the idea of using different ability scores to represent different aspects of good archery, but I think Douglas has a point. The problem with Multiple Ability Dependency is that some classes can be optimized based on only one high ability score (Str for Fighters), while others require multiple high ability scores to be as effective (Str, Dex, and Wis for Monks).
Your goal is to provide archers different ways of distinguishing themselves. You don't expect them to have high scores in all three (Dex, Con, and Str), but you do expect them to have a high score in at least one. But if you're concerned about class balance you'd want to do something similar for melee fighters.
Ben: DEX for to-hit bonuses and STR for damage bonuses for all muscle-powered weapons might be the way to go.
In my fatigue article for GURPS, I give a quantity called Action Points, related to HT, which gives a measure for how many actions in a row you can perform without either losing Fatigue Points or resting to avoid losing FP.
For CON, if you were feeling like tracking Yet Another Quantity, you could do something similar, where you can (say) Do Something for five turns in a row plus your CON bonus. If you push past this, maybe you become Fatigued (I don't know what that does yet; I've not hit that on my read-through) or you have to roll vs. a DC 20 or you become fatigued or something. So if you go nuts shooting a bow, swinging a sword, or whatever, you get tired.
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