True and yes a English long bowman could hit his target at 200 yards but he was better at 100 yards in just ask the poor knight that was pinned to his horse through his leg. Arrow went in through front armour though the thigh out the back armour, throught the saddle and into the horse.

Ah, I thought I might touch upon the SB-scaling:

I personally like how <Exalted> and <Legend of the Five Rings> handle bows, namely how the bows themselves have a SB rating. If a character's SB is less than the bow's, she uses her own. If the character's SB exceeds the bow's, she uses the bow's. It's an elegant, easy-to-use buff for archery if you ask me.

Ah, I thought I might touch upon the SB-scaling:

I personally like how <Exalted> and <Legend of the Five Rings> handle bows, namely how the bows themselves have a SB rating. If a character's SB is less than the bow's, she uses her own. If the character's SB exceeds the bow's, she uses the bow's. It's an elegant, easy-to-use buff for archery if you ask me.

Concur. At least for primitive/low tech base bows. I think modern compound bows are somewhat more adjustable in terms of draw weight.

It's a nice way to add some variety in bows, and it's not like even a best craftsmanship bow is going to be a huge hit on your resources if you need to upgrade the bow's SB rating.

Heck, I think DH was the first tabletop RPG I've played where you couldn't get your SB applied to damage with the right bow.

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.

As said previously, it would violate the 'one-sight' rule.

Also, since one is logically going the sniper talents route, you're probably going to get the appropriate talent (whatever it's called) to mitigate range penalties.

Besides ... most of the time, combat isn't going to be at particularly long ranges, and the bow's range will suffice.

That said, if you're going the one bow for mid-range combat and getting a second weapon for the long range stuff .. it's probably going to be more effective to just get a Cadence Widower for the really long shots.

I have been thinking about the telescopic sight and I could bay a heavy crossbow and mount it on that be more practical and more realistic.

Alot of the special arrows i ahve been thinking could also be used by a crossbow.

I meant take two bows, not two sights. (That's why I mentioned the weight, 3Kg. Two bows would still weigh barely more than a shotgun, and less than a Chainsword.)

Ah ok was planning on to bows a long bow and a composite bow.

Composite Bow and a Heavy Crossbow for hard/ranged target like a sniper

and remember they will be silent death

Pretty sure Heavy Crossbow doesn't have Accurate, and is therefore useless for sniping. Just checked, it doesn't.

Accurate trumps any disadvantages a composite bow might have relative to other bows.

The Composite Bow is one of only two/three Accurate primitive weapons from all game lines - Rogue Trader has an Accurate Blowgun, and Only War has an Accurate Throwing Knife.

I suppose, however, if your GM allows you to dip into Only War for variant pattern rules, you could get Accurate on other primitive weapons ... but if that's allowed, you can also just upgrade the Composite Bow as well.

Could u build and accurate heavy crossbow with the trade armourer skill if u took the time for it.

RAW is depressingly light on such.

You would need to speak to your GM, as about the only rules support for adding traits to weapons lie in blessing/sanctification of weapons, turning them into Daemon weapons, or diving into the Only War rules for variant patterns.

After reading through this entire thread, you guys have really changed my opinion on using Bows in Dark Heresy, at first I was thinking "What a bad idea, Who would waste their time on a bow?!" but now I am probably going to award one the my group's Moritat assassin.

Thanks for opening my eyes

You are welcome glad we could help. I think a lot of people feel the same way as u did, why do we need bows we have lasguns and bolters. But can be a nice surprise at 50m and in plus they are silent.

Just make sure when u gift the player with the bow you give the character access to special arrows like the explosive one from RT or let them come up with there own see how imaginative they are .

Be aware, however, especially for the Moritat, that specialty payloads on arrows are likely to change the damage type from Rending.

To be fair, though, the only bow really worth taking is the Composite Bow, because it has Accurate; or a variant pattern/modified bow to add Accurate.

Also fairly important is allowing the mono-edge upgrade to be used with arrows and allowing access to the other game lines for variant special ammunition/ammunition upgrades, and allowing a degree of creativity/flexibility in new variant/special ammunition/upgrades.

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

Yeah considering that the setting has targeting technology that can see psychic energy, souls, and everything from diddley eye doe to damned if I know, I'm pretty sure they'd have something to make archery more accurate.

Also I love the idea of a set of (or even just one) incredibly expensive lathe world fashioned arrows which have been crafted to kill a particular target. This is an assassin after all.

Those arrows would be very expensive. I would let u have them but they would be special issue for the mission.

I have thought of using them on my character and I have asked the gm if i could get a couple and he said maybe.

I would allow you to buy them in bundles of 10 for 2,5k or so.

How about anti-psyker psyarrows. THey could work like the psycannon bolts or bolts from catechist crossbow.

Could also be inferno arrows, HE arrows, shocking arrows. Play crysis 3

I saw this and thought if there was to be a Moritat Archer he could be it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEG-ly9tQGk

That was... spectacular?

That is what i am talking about dont tick him off you will be a pin cushion in under a second. Rapid reload any one, to bad u can not do to two shooting actions in a round that would be awesome.

You could create a special Weapon Trainings Talent which would effectively allow you to increase the RoF for bows to something like S/2/5 (haven't really thought about numbers here).

Could have a prerequisite of 40 BS and Basic Weapon Training (Primitive).

That sounds like a interesting thought might have to give a thought my self and come up with some numbers to show the gm and see what he says i would pay 200xp for it if he went for it ( i just picked a number ).

Well I posted some ideas here

http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/133691-two-new-combat-talents/