Is there any information as far as how heavy of a bow female archers could conceivably use? I read that the average medieval longbow is estimated to be between 80 and 120 pounds of draw.
>>44298712
This sounds pretty magical realm, desu.
>>44298725
Stop being a fag, that's OP's job.
>>44298712
Do more research and learn how strong you need to be to reliably use a warbow. Then see how strong females are.
>>44298731
>Then see how strong females are.
The order of operations seems kind of reversed, since even fairly athletic types don't always have the right muscles for bows.
What system op? I'm fairly sure whatever you're using isn't autistic enough to impose strength requirements to bows
>>44298712
Depends how far you want to shoot. The force needed to draw a longbow is also proportional to how far they could shoot the arrow.
Look into crossbows if you want female archers where the whole strength shtick doesn't matter as much.
I want to believe this is trolling/bait, and that there aren't people who are really this obsessed over irrelevant details.
Archers are as strong as they need to be to use the available bows. That's why they're archers. Biotruths are irrelevant to roleplaying games.
>>44298712
you should use a different system.
>>44298712
Very very little, maybe about half as much.
It's just a matter of the skeleton on the upper body of a man being far larger across the shoulders and chest supporting about 50-70% more muscle on average.
>>44298819
I'm curious about it for my own RPG.
>>44298833
I am not sure why its an irrelevant detail in your book. Bow pull weight seems a pretty obvious place to investigate for RPGs, since it correlates decently to damage and especially to range.
If it hurts your feelings less, you could think of it in terms of how good typical D&Dish/Poul Anderson elves could plausibly be with bows, at least before weird physiology and magic shows up.
>>44298928
>I'm curious about it for my own RPG.
Oh, another "realistic" fantasy heartbreaker.
Move along, everyone, nothing to see here.
>>44298982
>Oh, another "realistic" fantasy heartbreaker.
I don't think you know what a fantasy heartbreaker is.
>>44298928
Elves are as strong as humans in most settings though.
I mean, this doesn't really come up unless you're basing your system/setting on some variation of 3.5, and why would you ever do that?
>>44299133
>Elves are as strong as humans in most settings though.
I know, I'm curious as to just how much muscle is plausible for something of about that size and build.
>basing your system/setting on some variation on 3.5
Wait, what? Why? Strength isn't that big of deal for archery in 3.5, firmly secondary.
>>44298712
Have a female friend who shoots longbow and recurve historical bows. She couldn't sustain fire for as long as a male with xbog huge muscles, but she can empty a quiver from her longbow fast and without costing herself too much stamina. With modern or lighter bows there's no appreciable difference. She's 5'4" and slightly built.
>>44299069
By "fantasy heartbreaker" i meant "a game never to see the light of the day because author concerns himself too much with silly unnecessary details and attempts at "realism" than with actually making the game fun".
But educate me if you have a better definition.
>>44298712
I have a medieval longbow and it's a 36 pound draw because i'm a shrimp. Anything is possible.
But anons make a point by saying that this much detail is irrelevant and ponderous for any game.
>>44298712
uh, depends on the female?
if you want to be autistic about it tie strength to bow damage or range or whatever and then cap female strength
>>44299193
Ah, not sure where you got confused, that's not even remotely similar to the idea of a fantasy heartbreaker... though your train of thought is how we wind up with fantasy heartbreakers to begin with. A fantasy heartbreaker's always been something that, at first glance, may look something new or novel, but are mostly just a D&D clone, and there are too many to count. I would not count OSR in that field.
>>44299274
My bad, then.
>>44299230
I'm not sure why draw weight is too ponderous of a detail, unless you mean a different roll for every pound or somesuch, certainly it would be nothing even close to the ponderousness of, say, calculating bonus spell slots per level in 3.5.
>>44298712
Medieval archers (male) had deformed skeletons from all the archery practice they performed. Do most men have deformed skeletons from archery practice?
Sure greater testosterone leads to (on average) greater response to stimulus and lower recovery time. Great but is that really relevant?
If the average woman practiced archery from the age of 11-12, and we take this practice to be on a daily or even a weekly basis, gradually increasing the size and strength of their bow....
Their would be no reason by the age of 18 for them to be unable to draw a bow.
Skill, hand eye coordination, vision and perseverance would also be important qualities. These are of course not restricted to men.
I sincerely doubt that most of the male posters on this board would be able to draw even an 80lb bow, given the abysmal fitness and strength of the average person on the street.
>>44299337
excuse me but i am in peak physical condition
>>44299325
That it's less ponderous than bonus spell calculation, doesn't mean it's not ponderous as fuck in itself.
You don't NEED hyperrealistic details and extra calculations to make a good RPG. Keep it simple, abstract and playable without looking into the book every minute, and it already will be better than tons of soulless D&D clones rotting on shelves.
>>44299354
That is good for you.
I was merely raising the point that most people are not.
>>44299337
>Medieval archers (male) had deformed skeletons from all the archery practice they performed.
Modern people definitely still manage to get that strong without winding up malformed, but yeah. Not sure if its height, better science, better diet, or what.
I have heard anecdotal accounts of women using 60 and 80 pound bows, and the pictures of women with 60 pound bows I've seen didn't look mutated. Haven't found much information, though.
>>44299494
I don't think you could easily see localised increased bone density.
>>44299416
>doesn't mean it's not ponderous as fuck in itself.
I suppose that's a valid opinion, though especially since people don't have differing strength levels for different muscle groups in RPGs, I don't find it complex at all.
>and it already will be better than tons of soulless D&D clones rotting on shelves.
Soulless D&D clones are a lot of things, but moving in the direction of Dwarf Fortress they aren't.
>>44298712
As heavy a bow as they need to.
Oh, you mean human females? Nobody would play a human female in a fantasy game if they were inferior to males. Realism be damned, they'd just be elves or something.
>>44299589
I think Shadowrun did it pretty well. You have different categories of bows, with different damages. If your strength is lower than bow's category, you both get penalties AND the resulting damage is reduced to max category a character COULD use.
Also stronger bows (like, ones made for trolls and such), tend to pulverize less sturdy arrows, so for high-STR bows you need arrows made of better materials.
>>44299650
Yeah, I was thinking of something similar. Mostly, as I don't envision most people as having their PCs be anything but fit for their size, and most enemies being significantly weaker (skellingtons & goblins) or stronger (ogres and up) than humans, I'm thinking that it'll be mostly about size dice.
Of course female PCs aren't going to be weak for their size, but people presumably are going to designate a size befitting their image of the character.
>>44299494
Bows used in hunting during the medieval period were often in the 50-70lb range, which is still more than enough to kill most game and an unarmoured human. And yes, we do know that women used bows in this range as hunting was the premier team sport among the nobility.
50-70lbs (Probably towards the higher end of this bracket) bows are also believed to be the level of draw used by bows used in warfare during the Early and High Medieval periods.
However any discussion of bows will inevitably focus on English/Welsh warbows used in the HYW, which were certainly not the only kind in use.
For a complete change in focus, consider the composite horse bows used by various Central Asian nomadic peoples. This is actually rather relevant because we have farily convincing literary and archaeological evidence of women regularly partaking in combat, particularly with the Scythians (which may well be the origins of the Amazons of Greek myth).
My understanding is that composite bows of the type used are not more powerful per say, but more efficient than self bows. This means that you get "more bang for your buck" for a given draw weight which is good news for both less strong archers and riders.
Horsebows are limited compared to foot-archers in that the size (and thus maximum draw) is limited due to the need to be able to use it mounted, which would be tricky with a 6,6" warbow on your steppe pony.
Also included for your pleasure are a series of videos from /tg/'s HEMA heart-throb Matt Easton and Dr Tobias Capwell. curator of the Wallace Collection dispelling myths about archers in the HYW.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvlZcxNAVY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yewwhjUYEPQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHqo4syIqD8
TLDR: Not every bow in history was a monster HYW longbow, other bows are availible. Killing a human without armour (or shooting a man-at-arms in the face when his visor is up) is well within the capability of bows used by women in hunting.
>>44299801
And I forget the picture of SCYTHIANS, courtesy of Osprey who if nothing else do draw pretty pictures.
I'm not suggesting that 360noscope headshots are a surefire way to kill a fully armoured man for archers, merely that armour only works if the arrow actually hits it- going around is always preferable to going through.
>>44299780
The best way to do it would be just make bow do damage depending on strength. Simple and elegant.
>>44299801
Ah yeah, I'm aware women can use shortbows.
>>44299875
On point but the other way around, I don't see any benefit to an abstract strength score.
>>44298712
Thanks, OP, for starting this thread. I am writing a game of my own and I need to know the different weights and consistency between male and female turds. Obviously we're talking about men and women with the same diets. The effects of different diets on turd mass and density is a subject for a future sourcebook.
>>44299325
>Everyone in 14th C England had barbarian tier STR
Noice.
>>44299936
The main benefit is that it's abstract. There's no need to emulate different muscle groups, different "types" of strength and such because vast majority of people don't care about that stuff and because "stat+skill" system already covers this very well (skill is physical, as well as mental training, so someone with high STR skilled in archery is assumed to have upper body strength to do it).
The simplier you keep the rules (while still being coherent), the better the end result would be.
>>44298819
I would never dream of using a system that didn't have strength requirements for weapons.
>>44299155
>I know, I'm curious as to just how much muscle is plausible for something of about that size and build.
Muscle density doesn't always have much to do with size.
A Tasmanian devil's jaw strength and body is powerful enough to tear through light metals (I saw one literally gnaw a bike in half with two bites when using spare bike parts as a chew toy) and it's smaller then most dogs.
Muscle density is not relevant to size, that's muscle mass.
>>44298712
In a magical realm like D&D shouldn't we be thinking more in terms of how to build a bow with a draw strength of 200-300 pounds?
>>44299325
Ah, so women with -4 STR could only have a bow with 80 pounds of draw.
>>44299337
I do agree very few random people could pull 80 pounds and do it while maintaining form. Been doing archery for a little over 10 years now. I have shot a few arrows at 80 pounds, but its not something I could do for probably more than five arrows. I've taught some people how to shoot archery, the average healthy adult woman can typically shoot at 40 pounds without problem, a healthy male is around 50-55 depending on height. A persons size is really important for archery, longer lever=more leverage.
To give you some perspective, if I was planning to shoot for hours, I'd probably want to stay between 60-65 pound draw.
Forgive me if I butcher this explanation. With english longbows, you stood with the bow parallel to your torso and pushed with one arm and pulled with the other, which is very different than how bows are used today.
>>44298712
It's irrelevant if average medieval longbow is estimated to be between 80 and 120 pounds of draw, because the average, the extraordinary and the pauper medieval women/girls didn't go to war.
>>44300229
>The main benefit is that it's abstract
I don't see how that's a benefit. At all. Unless you mean abstracting all forms of strength for a given size into one, which is fine.
> There's no need to emulate different muscle groups, different "types" of strength and such because vast majority of people don't care about that stuff and because "stat+skill" system already covers this very well
Glad to hear it, noone was proposing that.
>The simplier you keep the rules (while still being coherent), the better the end result would be.
No, that doesn't follow.
>>44300281
>Muscle density doesn't always have much to do with size.
So far, there don't seem to be any reports of women using 120# bows.
>>44300858
Not really, the English longbow sets the standard for longbows and is generally accepted to be what people are talking about when one shows up, but the longbow existing in a setting doesn't imply that the setting is medieval England. I'm not even sure what you're trying to say.
>>44298833
Can't speak for OP's system, but Shadowrun has bows with strength ratings, and higher rating bows are more effective, up to STR 10 (which is like... 4 standard deviations outside the realm of the human body's ability) where they hit harder than most guns. Just for an example.
>>44301300
There's also something to be said for nearly silent ranged attacks that can carry poison and hit people behind total cover walls (but not total cover ceilings) and such.
>>44301169
Yeah but there are reports of the welsh using £120 bows, and I refuse to accept that welsh men are not inferior in all respects to english women.
>>44298712
>estimated to be between 80 and 120 pounds of draw.
Those are old and likely wrong estimates. I is now believed that longbows that longbows for use in sports or hunting were mostly in the 60 to 95 pounds draw weight range and longbows made for war were mostly in the 110 to 135 pound draw weight range. This is based on a study of English arrows and replicas bows based on ones from the Mary Rose.
>how heavy of a bow female archers could conceivably use?
The issue that you will run into is how is the bow planned to be used. English Longbows, even the ones made for war, have a generally lighter draw weight then Turkish, Mongolian, or Manchu war-bows( 130 to 185 pounds draw). That is because the English and Welsh before them wanted to have a break neck rate of fire of 16 to 18 shots a minute. The draw had to be scaled back else it would tire out the archer. Central Asian horse archers worked on a much slower pace
>>44299155
Well, there are two things to keep on mind.
The first is that muscle density and size are not really dependent on one another. Plenty of creatures in nature are smaller than humans but have much greater strength relative to their size - ants, for example, being the most extreme example. Humans are simply not badass in that way - we're endurance hunters, not sprinters or brawlers. We've evolved to jog after things for days until they get tired and we jab a pointy stick in their neck. But while elves are humanoid, they're not human. They can have an average muscle density very different to ours.
The second is that elves are by definition magic. It's very possible for creatures to have greater muscle density than humans while being the same size or smaller... but even if that weren't the case, the fact that elves are magical beings makes all that pretty irrelevant. Their strength doesn't really have to have anything to do with biochemistry or physiology as we understand it.
>Wait, what? Why? Strength isn't that big of deal for archery in 3.5, firmly secondary.
3.5 and its derivatives is the edition that people get the idea of physically weak elves from.
We have this discussion fairly often and the conclusion is that women are better suited to siege, support, and long range artillery over any kind of medium range option. Outside of traps, scouting, and command of troops, there aren't altogether many more realistic options for females in combat.
