I have been thinking of making an assassain that uses a longbow for his mid range shooting attack. There are a cuple of question I would like to ask. Besides taking rapid reload for a free

reload action what other talents would benifit a longbow. also would I be aloud to mount a red dot laser site on the bow. Also would putting mono on the arrows be aloud or the Lathe blade upgrade since it can be put on thrown weapons.I am trying to think of diffrent arrows that the character could make to use with the bow.

Realistically, yeah, you could do all those things. The sight you can add no problem, since it's directly supported by the book. Melee and Thrown weapons I can see being Mono'd or Lathe'd since they're ostensibly multi-use weapons, but Mono'd or Lathe'd arrows are a hard sell since arrows are generally not recyclable/salvageable. As for alternative arrows, you could always go the historical route . Different arrows may justify losing the Primitive tag, if you're worried about that. However, Primitive Weapons are hard to optimize since they don't get a lot of RAW support; most of the stuff you may come up with will have to be home-brewed.

Red Dot Sight would depend on the GM. Personally I wouldn't allow it, but if you can come up with something creative I expect most GM's would. I'd argue you COULD use mono upgrades on the arrows, albeit it'd make them cost significantly more.

A good talent would definitely be Mighty Shot, to compensate for some of the Bow's lacking power compared to other weapons.

EDIT: I'd also take a look at the Composite Bow as well. Yes, it has lower pen and range than the Longbow, but I personally think the Accurate Rule more than makes up for both those drawbacks.

Red Dot Sight would depend on the GM. Personally I wouldn't allow it, but if you can come up with something creative I expect most GM's would. I'd argue you COULD use mono upgrades on the arrows, albeit it'd make them cost significantly more.

A good talent would definitely be Mighty Shot, to compensate for some of the Bow's lacking power compared to other weapons.

EDIT: I'd also take a look at the Composite Bow as well. Yes, it has lower pen and range than the Longbow, but I personally think the Accurate Rule more than makes up for both those drawbacks.

Agree on Mono Arrows - although I might allow the one instance of the Mono upgrade to apply to a unit of arrows (think they're sold in batches of 10), rather than needing it for every single arrow; that's still a hefty price increase for each individual arrow, but not quite as bad.

As far as applying the Lathe upgrade to arrows, while probably technically possible, it would be (a) ridiculously expensive, and (b) frankly not worth the 2.5k per instance of arrows. Spend the money on mono arrows, and on alternative ammunition/ammunition upgrades that are going to be more cost effective. Spend the money to get a quiver or two of sanctified/holy arrows and sit on them until you need them.

It is also possible that if you talk to your GM about acquiring better quality arrows, you may be able to get the damage bonus from top quality melee weapons when utilizing equivalent quality arrows.

Also, bows are cheap. Get a best-quality bow. Or two, just in case.

By RAW, you can get a Red-dot Sight, though, I wouldn't be surprised if a GM didn't want to let that work. An alternative would be getting a Targeter upgrade (Inquisitor's Handbook, War Worlds section).

Let's be honest, though - bows don't have the greatest support in the rules, and in the real world aim assisting devices for bows is tricky at best.

Also, talk to your GM about getting special ammunition from other lines. I believe that one of the Rogue Trader books has explosive arrows. Poisoned/dosed arrows should also be doable.

There's also the possibility of your GM allowing you to acquire other specialty arrows as custom jobs - for inspiration on these, look at Hawkeye from the Avengers movie/Marvel Comics, and from Green Arrow of DC and the Arrow TV series.

Definitely agree on getting the Composite Bow (or is it Compound?) from Inquisitor's Handbook - you're only getting one shot at a time anyways, so you're probably going to be aiming - make that do even more for you with Accurate.

As far as other talents go, generally the ranged/sniper talent trees should be good.

Also. Regular arrows are Rending damage. Might as well invest in the Moritat background and the Moritat Reaper Alt Rank.

Thank you for ur comments everyone. I was thinking of asking if i could make bleeder rounds like from Rouge Trader i could see them being like the 3 bladed pop out blades we use for hunting now. Was thinking of the Moritat backround because of hte tearing speacial rule for "egde" weapons. The red dot laser sight i would see no problem with because of the all the stuff that get hung off bows in the real world.

I agree the composite bow would be a good choice also.The talents i was thinking would be good are Crack Shot,Deadeye Shot, Dual Shot, Hip Shooting, Marksman, Mighty Shot, Rapid Reload(free action reload)and Sharpshooter.

I think the choice of those talents and special arrows would make for an interesting character to play.

How about a tox dispenser? It works RAW since it can go on low tech weapons. (Built into the quiver letting the arrowheads soak in poison)

How about those explosive arrows Rambo has?

How about tis? Treat as either Frag, Krak or other grenades, And due to the arrowhead's additional weight, reduce the bow's range by 5-10m.

Welcome to the Moritat Brotherhood

Compound Bow, very nice..

Mono Arrows :-)

Explosive Arrows from RT

Tox Dispenser for special needs

other as needed, might need to buy trade: Armourer to build them

if you are going to Archer route, don't forget a Hand Crossbow or Flick Bow for close in work

Did not forget the hand cross bow and flick bows. I like the Trade skill that would come in handy. Would Dual shot let me fire two arrows at once at the same target in shot as a full action.

Did not forget the hand cross bow and flick bows. I like the Trade skill that would come in handy. Would Dual shot let me fire two arrows at once at the same target in shot as a full action.

Personally I wouldn't see why not. The double arrow shot is practically a trope at this point, so I'd think it should be fine.

Just don't try to dual wield your dual wielding.

I could take dual hand crossbows at closer ranges. There are a lot of options that would make a chararter using a bow deadly at 50m in ranges that is what i am going for. As for special arrows i was looking through Deathwatch and saw a bunch of bolt ammo that i could see being used as arrow tips. Some of the effects would be changed but they would work, here are the ones i was thinking about. Hellfire,Kraken,Metal Storm(micro frag blast 1),Whitch (anti psyic). What do u guys think.

Agine thank u for comments u have given me good advice.

Welcome to the Moritat Brotherhood

Compound Bow, very nice..

Mono Arrows :-)

Explosive Arrows from RT

Tox Dispenser for special needs

other as needed, might need to buy trade: Armourer to build them

if you are going to Archer route, don't forget a Hand Crossbow or Flick Bow for close in work

Nice but i can do one better:

I agree with ColArana about the Red Dot sight: it might be book-legal , but it's not common-sense legal: they call it 'archery' because the arrows arch to their target. Unlike lasers....

Nice but i can do one better:

Well done

I know over the years that picture of arrows has inspired some of my nutjob ideas for weapons...

Bow sights, and even bow red dot sights (unless google lied to me), are very real things in archery, and even if red dot sights for bows are rare, it would be pretty easy to have a sight which does similar. From what I can tell, having a sight on a bow is a pretty common thing in modern archery.

Yeah, the whole "arch" thing was more for the armies loosing volleys of arrows at very long range, often arching over their sides own front line to decimate the advancing opposition.

These days, there's not much arching going on. Hunting bows have elaborate aiming devices and are very accurate indeed.

This thing is at least as complex as a red-dot sight, and I can't see any reason why it shouldn't get the same bonus.

There is a precedent, as the mono upgrade says: "Melee weapons without an actual edge, such as mauls or hammers, can also use this upgrade; for these weapons the effect can be due to pneumo-shocks, inertial multipliers, or some other more fitting enhancement." Point being: Different things, different names, same effect.

That sight is what i was wondering about i ahve seen those on bows befor and not just compound ones, I think if i can say it looks like that a gm would not have a problem letting me use it as a "Counts as" to get the +10.

One more question for u all. Why do we not use the characters STR bonus for bows. I shot traditional archery when one draws the string u can u add pounds to the draw weight by going over 28 inch. My bow was rated at 40lbs at 28 inch when i drew the it i was pushing 45 at 32 inch. To me that should be in the game representing your characters train with the bow.

If I had to guess, I would say it's because the individuals who wrote the book do not practice archery and, if they researched it at all, might have come to the conclusion that strength does not lend itself to a stronger shot beyond being able to pull a heavier draw weight.

Heavy draw weights mean a lot though. That's the difference between and killing and "Ow, that hurt!"

That is why i was wondering why they did not include it. I have read they have found long bows that if strung would be 125 lbs pull weight and the guys they had pulling them started at age 5.

I think when i run a game if any one wants to use a bow i will let them add there str bonus to damage.

Really, a composite bow feels like it would do better with a Telescopic Sight, rather than a Red-Dot, to compensate for its relatively short range. Being able to fire at 120 Meters with no penalties seems pretty useful. Then again, it only ways 3 Kg, so why not both? A Red-Dot site on an accurate weapon that never needs to be reloaded (Rapid Reload FTW!) means you will always have a +30 to hit when you take a full turn to fire.

Putting both sights on would be against the sight limit for weapons.

Not sure if my gm would let me take a shot at 150m with a bow lol.

Putting both sights on would be against the sight limit for weapons.

Not sure if my gm would let me take a shot at 150m with a bow lol.

Omni-Sight on bow

But you could always get more then one bow. Like, one for "long-range engagements" and one for more Short/Medium ranged combat.

English longbows could shoot 200 yards. Not sure if you could be very accurate at that range, but that was never a requirement for volley "fire".

But this is 40K. The bow is not made of wood. It's probably made of some wierd techy active material that adds force and moves to add to the strings acceleration. Perhaps it has all sorts of pneumatic enhancers and internal integrity strengtheners, and as long as you don't reverse the polarity (never a good idea), it will perform feats that defy our current bow technology.

They've had 40 000 years to work on their archery, after all