As I looked through the primitive ranged weapons I've come to the realization that FFG, either gave no thought to, or has no respect for the long and storied history of bows being used to kill assholes in armour. In fact for several centuries a bow or crossbow was the only real anti-armour weapon, save for perhaps the warhammer.....but whatever. In my opinion in the 40k universe a bow shouldn't be able to make ceramite armour its ***** by any means but it should pretty much be able to **** near ignore any primitive armour, because that was why they were deployed in war even when muskets were fielded.

Bows had better range, accuracy, and could actually kill someone in full plate, where muskets and flintlocks were useless against anyone wearing a solid piece of metal on them. Until the advent of true ballistic weapons the only reasons guns got any use was because ease of use, and the simplicity of aiming. Basically they didn't take years of practice to master, and any idiot that was cross eyed could fire one. As far as usefulness goes the bow or crossbow were always better weapons in the hands of people who knew how to use them.

So that's enough of a history lesson, onto the actual rules change purposed.

Name: Class: Range: Rof: Damage: Pen: Rld: Special: Weight: Cost: Availability:

Bow Basic 50m S/2/-** 1d10R* 2 Half Primitive,Reliable 2Kg 20^ Common

Accurate.

Compound Bow Basic 60m S/2/-** 1d10+2R* 3 Half Primitive, Reliable 3Kg 50^ Uncommon

Accurate

Longbow Basic 60m S/-/- 1d10R*** 4 Half Primitive, Reliable 3Kg 35^^ Average

Accurate

Treat all Crossbows (crossbows, heavy crossbows, hand bows, and flick bows) as Accurate at Short range.

For crossbows, heavy crossbows just add +2 Pen and +2 damage to the Crossbow

For Hand Bows and Flick Bows add +1 Pen and +1 Damage

* Add half Strength Rating (round up) to the Damage, based on construction, see ^

** The semi-auto rate only applies if the Reload time is reduced to Free

*** add Strength Rating to damage, based on construction, see ^^

^ Value listed is base cost, for every point of Strength Rating add 10 Thrones to Cost to determine total Cost. Craftmanship modifiers are based on total Cost. A bow with a higher Strength Rating than its user's Strength Bonus uses its user's Strength Bonus as its effective Strength Rating instead and inflicts a -20% to all Ballistic Skill tests with the weapon.

Example: Varrus wants a decent low quality weapon to assassinate his fellow man. He decides on a compound bow. Varrus has a Strength Bonus of 4, but only 40 Thrones so he buys a Compound bow with a Strength Rating of 2 making its Damage 1d10+3R. If he had 70 thrones he could buy a a Compound Bow with a Strength Rating of 5, though unless he bought his Strength up to 50 or higher he would suffer a -20% to all BS tests with the weapon and his damage would only be 1d10+4R instead the 1d10+5 it would be once his Strength is 50.

^^ Value listed is base cost, for every point of Strength Rating add 20 Thrones to Cost to determine total Cost. Craftsmanship modifiers are based on total Cost. A bow with a higher Strength Rating than its user's Strength Bonus uses its user's Strength Bonus as its effective Strength Rating instead and Inflicts a -20% to all Ballistic Skill test with the weapon.

Now for players wanting to more choices than Dukes of Hazard style explosive arrows or sh*tty worthless-against armour regular arrows I'd like to present a few options based on real life equivalents. Both wrok for Bows and Crossbows

Diamantine Bodkins: The long slender heads of these arrows, tipped with one of the few substances know for tearing through ceramite with ease, provide the weapon with a high tech edge that returns the bow to the fold of a good anti-armour weapon.

Effect: The weapons Pen value becomes 6 and removes the Primitive quality

Cost: 50 Thrones each

Rarity: Very Rare

Tech Broadheads: These insidious devices were created by a Tech-Priest attached to an Imperial guard regiment mostly comprised of feral worlders refusing to leave the weapons of their homeworld behind. The Tech-Preist decided to find a way for them to keep their edge in battle against modern weapons. These arrows are tipped with blade covered tech devices that spread open becoming hooked chunks of metal lodged deeply into the flesh of the target, upon impact.

Effect: Add +1 Damage and +1 Pen, remove the Primitive quality, add the Tearing quality, and if the weapon does any damage in Wounds to the target the arrow must be surgically removed or the victim will suffer great harm. While the arrow head remains in the character all Agility and Weapon Skill tests are considered Hard (-20%). A challenging (+0) Medicae test as a full action (on both parties' part) removes the the arrowhead without any more damage. Any attempt to remove the broadhead without surgical assistance requires an Intelligence test, failure indicated the character takes 1d5 damage ignoring armour and Toughness bonus, success indicates that the arrowhead is removed and the target takes a single point of damage not reduced by armour or Toughness.

Cost: 75 Thrones each

Rarity: Extremely Rare (Outside of certain Imperial Guard regiments where they are standard issue)

Name: Class: Range: Rof: Damage: Pen: Rld: Special: Weight: Cost: Availability:

Bow Basic 50m S/2/-** 1d10R* 2 Half Primitive 2kg 20^ Common

Accurate, Reliable

Compound Bow Basic 60m S/2/-** 1d10+2R* 3 Half Primitive 3kg 50^ Uncommon

Accurate, Reliable

Longbow Basic 60m S/-/- 1d10R*** 4 Half Primitive 3kg 35^^ Average

Accurate, Reliable

Hopefully this will actually keep its shape and be easily understandable, as that is the entire point of writing out a **** chart.

In the example Varrus decided on a Bow, not a compound Bow.

Initially Dark Heresy was produced by Black Industries. Offhand the only bow or crossbow weapon I can remember FFG working on is the purgatus crossbow in Ascension (A speciality weapon). The rest are just FFG copying the stats that Black Industries made. I don't really expect them to do more as bows and crossbows are simply obsolete in a setting where fully automatic weapons are easily obtained.

What do you mean by "true ballistic weapons" ?

Last I checked, a ballistic projectile was any projectile that was unpowered for most of its flight. This would include all guns, as well as bows.

Some thoughts:

- Your formatting did not hold up when transferred to the forum.

- Initially pen 4 on the longbow did seem a high, since it would be the same as mono-edged weapons against regular armour. Then I remembered that penetration on primitive weapons only applied to primitive armour (IH page 95), so it isn't an issue.

- 60m range is the same as a las carbine (remember, weapon ranges have been reduced from realistic values to keep melee viable). Are you really saying that that a bow* is as accurate as a beam of light.

- The same goes for giving them the accurate quality. If a rocket with a stabilising spin or a beam of light isn't accurate enough to earn the accurate quality except on weapons designed for accuracy, how could an arrow or crossbow bolt get it ?

- I'd suggest adding the full SB value to the damage of bows, not half.

- The rules for the bows strength rating would require players to replace the bow as their SB increases, which isn't going to go well when compared to other weapons which work the same at all strength values.

- Diamantine Bodkins seem rather overpowered. Unguided projectiles (bullets and arrows) penetrate armour by concentrating a lot of force into a tiny spot. Bullets start off with a better shape for that, those designed to penetrate armour have AP 3, why do these get twice that ?

- Tech Broadheads do a lot worse to the target they are stuck in than purgatus bolts (unless the target is a daemon or psyker). Why ?

- I'd add in mono edged arrows. Similar to the mono upgrade for melee weapons, these would remove the primitive quality and set penetration to 2. Unlike melee weapons, these only need to hold their edge for one use, so they can be of an inferior alloy to mono-melee weapons, so you have an excuse to make them cheap. You need to have some cheap non-primitive ammo, otherwise most players will stick to SP/Las weapons and you wasted all the effort coming up with these rules.

- I'd remove the penalties for using explosive arrows if the players acquired a higher quality supply.

*Arrows have a lot of things that make them less accurate: Arrows take longer to arrive, meaning you need to predict the targets movement more, wind, where the arrow is on the bow string, shape of the weapon, local gravity being different from the planet you trained on.

Yes I know about the black FFG thing, point was FFG made the errata, and made no changes.

True ballistic weapons are ones with ballistic rifling, which is basically what makes guns useful now.

I know my format didnt hold....thats why I reposted the chart, since I don't see a way to edit on these forums.

The range on a bow comes from the regular range of the bow given in the book +10, seeing how back in the day archers could kill people regularly from 100 meter, even if they were moving.

Accurate comes from the listed trait the Compound bow gets, which isnt any more or less accurate that a longbow or a short bow in real life, and again represents the fact that despite what the movies tell you more bowshots were lethal than gunshots are today, due in part to the training and accuracy of archers back then.

And another thing about accuracy, can you shoot someone with a beam of light thats hiding behind a rock? Because any archer worth their salt could arch a shot to hit people hiding behind low cover, and again they could do that with regularity. So yes I am saying its more accurate than a beam of light in hands accustomed to its use.

I suppose making retooling a bow a stated option would have made sense, but a Craft roll should obviously be able to adjust pull strength and such, as well as the length and heft of the arrows used.

A steel bodkin in real life can be fire from 50 yards away and bury itself up to a foot into solid oak, and you say its overpowered but it still isnt as good as say a bolt round, it has one better Pen, but tearing and it does explosive damage wich kills faster and does worse things, and is possibly harder to heal if you use alternate rules.

And as for the Broadhead, it does less damage than the purgatus, can be removed outside of a medical bay, and are designed to make the bow of feral worlders something that won't get them killed. They dont cause damage every trun, its just when you have a 3 foot shaft with a head covered in hook in your gut its hard to move around.

I've seen mono arrows somewhere else so I didn't figure I needed to rewrite them. But 10 arrows for 40 Thrones, Pen 2, not primitive, blah blah blah.

I understand you're concerns but bows can match a lot of guns in todays world, and we dont have super tech to make them out of, and no one in our world is trying to make them for war. Very simple advances in tech could still makes bows combat viable in todays world.

I agree with a lot of what Bilateral says here, so I thought I'd back 'em up.

Versus armor I think you may have a point on muskets/flintlocks, but against soft fleshy folk I'm not so certain. I think the AP value (provided it's primitive only, there are problems with the modern arrows here though) seems reasonable

Accurate give you +10% to hit when aiming, and +1d10 damage per 2DoS on a successful hit that benefits from aiming (to a max of 2d10). Considering the core weapons that benefit fro accurate are a sniper rifles (needle and longlas) and hunting rifles, it seems inappropriate to give the same benefit to a weapon that is less accurate.

I too find the increase in range to be a little too high in comparison with other weapons- arrows tend to loose velocity much faster than firearms so in the scope of the game they should be reduced.

The semi-auto rule is kind of interesting I think, and a unique way of looking at someone trying to 'rapid fire' with a bow, I like it a lot more than a convoluted talent scheme where you would try to fire more shots in a single turn.

I feel the strength calculations are cumbersome- it would slow the game down and slow down any character wishing to purchase one to the point they may give up. Give it just + strength. If you want to get crafty with strength I'd consider degrading it based on long/extreme range. I'd also make a note to remove strength damage from crossbows.

Why do Hand and Flick bows do more damage than a longbow but just under the damage of a crossbow?

Diamantine Bodkins: Should not have the penetration of a krak grenade or plasma gun. The 'super dense core and diamantine tip' of a bolt round is only pen 4.

Tech Broadheads: I love the description, and I like the addition of tearing and making it a modern weapon, but combined with the penetration given to bows of 4 this seems high. It should be no bonus to pen or a reduction, IMHO as pen 3 and 4 is looking at round specifically designed to penetrate modern armor. The rest of the profile seems a little over the top as well, there are lots of nasty bits of ammo in 40k that don't seem to create this effect. Cost wise it makes some sense, but simple stat wise it seems off to me, especially with the IG note where it's standard issue in some regiments. You're looking at an weapon (with your base stats for compound bows) that does 1d10+3 pen 4, semi-auto fire, tearing, and inflicts a -20% penalty to the opposition with a solid hit all firing as far as a lasgun. Across the board the stats are better here. Either the Guard Unit is seriously abusing munitorium resources with rounds that cost 75 thrones each, or the arrows are actually cheap enough that they'd be mounting these broadheads on other projectile weapons and shipping them out across the galaxy.

Now on to your current points:

TempestSatori said:

Point taken that arrows killed a lot of people 'back in the day' but you also had a host of environmental factors that helped that (like less medical tech, etc.

As for accurate for 'behind cover' that's not an aspect of the accurate quality, that's more or less a special rule about ignoring certain types of cover.

TempestSatori said:

You listed your Bodkins as pen 6, bolters have pen 4 (or 5 for the heavy bolter) and are diamantined tip as well. To me, that seems over the top.

No offense but your idea of history is compeltely skewed in favor of bows.

In real life, bows in general were not the superb armor piercing discarding sabot depleted uranium tipped superguns that films like LotR might depict. In fact for most of it's history armors even made of cloth or bronze were often able to stop or deflect normal arrows, from the time of the early mesopotamian civilizations to the early greek and roman one.

Even during the middle ages in europe bows were easily stopped by mail armor, which is why knights coverered themselves and sometimes their horses with it. If it did not work they wouldn't have spent fortunes on these kinds of armor.

It was not until the advent of the welsh/english longbow and the far eastern composite bows that such armors could be reliably pierced.

And even so with advances in metallurgy and armor crafting the 14th century plate armors could withstand even these kinds of projectiles (in addition to early firearms). At the battle of Agincourt where the famous english longbowmen defeated an army of french knights very few knights actually died of arrow wounds and most died of coup-de-grace with daggers. Their horses are another matter entirely.

In any case it was never bows or even crossbows that made armor obsolete.

And yes muskets especially in the 17th century and up could pierce most armors from short range, but heavy breastplates were still used as excellent protection against stray musket balls until the mid -18th century where they were mostly used to protect cavalry against sabers and lances.

I do agree that bows etc. are poorly represented in the game as it is, mostly because of it's horribly low damage. In WHFRP normal bows had damage 3, same as a normal man with a sword (SB). In DH sword still has it's ok damage, but bows have for some reason lost 3 points of damage for no apparant reason. Yes of course bullets should be more dangerous to men in armor, but they already halve primitive armors.

So IMO bows should be 1d10+2 minimum, preferably 1d10+3. Longbows and composite bows already have more than decent stats in Inquitior's Handbook so I'll leave them be. Crossbows should be 1d10+3 or +4, and possible have some armor penetration, especially for heavier models.

As for ranges I agree with Bila., realisticly they should be higher than in the book but so should firearm ranges. 30m base for normal bows sounds fine, as actually hitting something at 30-60 meters with a bow is not that easy, while with a rifle it is fairly easy with minimal training. 100 meters for bows is considered long range, while 200-300 usually is the absolute maximum with all but the best longbows and composite bows.

Modern compund bows are of course both easier to use and have good range and aiming systems, but still falls short (literally) of guns and bullets.

Longbows IIRC has 50m range in IH, which is also pretty good. And really, semi-automatic burst with bows? Even legolas was not THAT good (although he came very close). Again, bows do not shoot as fast as semi-automatic pistols do. No matter the skill involved. I could maybe allow 2 shots per turn for a very skilled archer, maybe requiring a special talent (in addition to Rapid Reload), but not as a general weapon ability.

In any case all this is kinda useless unless the acolytes travels to feudal planets alot and go undercover.

Yes I know about the black FFG thing, point was FFG made the errata, and made no changes.

Why would they ?
Bows and crossbows are simply obsolete weapons. The RAW works well enough for primitive planets, any more work on them is simply not worth the time required.

My proof that they are obsolete weapons: No military or police force uses them.

True ballistic weapons are ones with ballistic rifling, which is basically what makes guns useful now.

Where do you get this definition from ?
Wikipedia gives this definition for ballistics:
A ballistic body is a body which is free to move, behave, and be modified in appearance, contour, or texture by ambient conditions, substances, or forces, as by the pressure of gases in a gun, by rifling in a barrel, by gravity, by temperature, or by air particles. A ballistic missile is a missile only guided during the relatively brief initial powered phase of flight, whose course is subsequently governed by the laws of classical mechanics.

Searching for "true ballistic weapon" turns up only a few links. None mention rifling as being part of a "true ballistic weapon".

As for rifling being the only thing that makes guns useful, what about things like rate of fire, sights, much quicker training, etc ?

I know my format didnt hold....thats why I reposted the chart, since I don't see a way to edit on these forums.

Here is a suggested way to format them that will work better. Note the inclusion of:

Bow; Basic; Range:50m; S/-/-; 1d10R; Pen 2; Rld:Half; Primitive, Reliable, Quickfire; 2Kg; Cost: 20; Rarity: Common

Special Qualities:

Quickfire: If the user of this of this weapon has reduced the reload time to a free action, the weapons rate of fire becomes S/2/-

Quickfire may not be the best name for this trait. But having the trait description separated out should make things more readable.

The range on a bow comes from the regular range of the bow given in the book +10, seeing how back in the day archers could kill people regularly from 100 meter, even if they were moving.

Proof for these kills at 100m ?
Note that I'm looking for proof that the archer could kill a specific person at 100m, not aim into a crowd and kill someone.

Also, how does a bows range compare with a firearms range ?

Accurate comes from the listed trait the Compound bow gets, which isnt any more or less accurate that a longbow or a short bow in real life, and again represents the fact that despite what the movies tell you more bowshots were lethal than gunshots are today, due in part to the training and accuracy of archers back then.

I'd argue that if you want parity, either show that bows in general are more accurate than sniper weapons, or remove the accurate quality.

And another thing about accuracy, can you shoot someone with a beam of light thats hiding behind a rock? Because any archer worth their salt could arch a shot to hit people hiding behind low cover, and again they could do that with regularity. So yes I am saying its more accurate than a beam of light in hands accustomed to its use.

How does the flight path have anything to do with accuracy ?

Without sights, maybe the bow is more accurate, but I'd like to see proof.

With sights:
- If the crosshairs are exactly parallel with the barrel, then the laser will hit a fixed distance below the crosshairs. Calibrate the sights for a set distance and, when firing at that distance, the beam will hit exactly where the crosshairs are pointing.
- If you have a laser targeter, then the dot showing where your gun is pointing also adjusts for any lensing effects.

How does one make a useful sight for a bow ?

A steel bodkin in real life can be fire from 50 yards away and bury itself up to a foot into solid oak,

For this claim to mean anything, you need to compare it to how far a bullet fired from the same distance will penetrate the same material. Also, could we stick to metric here as that is what Dark Heresy uses and most of the scientific community uses ?

and you say its overpowered but it still isnt as good as say a bolt round, it has one better Pen, but tearing and it does explosive damage wich kills faster and does worse things, and is possibly harder to heal if you use alternate rules.

Lets see:
- Bows and crossbows have their energy come from the wielder, either as the bow is drawn back or as the crossbow is loaded.
- A bullets speed isn't limited by the wielders strength. Instead the limit becomes the recoil that the wielder can withstand. It is also smaller, so it loses less speed to air resistance.
- A bolt round is a rocket propelled projectile, meaning it can gain speed as it flies. So recoil is less of a limit.

How does a bow get more penetration ?

But the main reason I find these overpowered is that pen 6 is what you find on power* or plasma weapons. Weapons that penetrate through means other than their ballistic characteristics.

*This gives me an idea: Power Field arrows

Unlike Bullets and bolt shells, arrows can be made hollow when stronger alloys are used. By cutting down on the power supply, Magos watisname was able to mount a functioning power field generator within each arrow, set to activate shortly after the arrow is fired. While the power field can only be active for a short time, it is active for long enough.

Effects:
- Arrows lose the primitive quality.
- Add +5 damage.
- Set penetration to 6.
- Change damage type to energy.
- If fired at a range of less than 1m, the power field fails to activate and the arrow deals the unmodified damage.

Cost: A lot.
Rarity: Extremely rare, maybe near unique.

A sword is 1d10, a power sword is 1d10+5 pen 6. I used the same conversion here.

And as for the Broadhead, it does less damage than the purgatus, can be removed outside of a medical bay, and are designed to make the bow of feral worlders something that won't get them killed. They dont cause damage every trun, its just when you have a 3 foot shaft with a head covered in hook in your gut its hard to move around.

What about an option to cut off the shaft ?

I've seen mono arrows somewhere else so I didn't figure I needed to rewrite them. But 10 arrows for 40 Thrones, Pen 2, not primitive, blah blah blah.

I've not seen them in any official publication. I feel its best to reference a house rule if you use it, even the well known ones.

I understand you're concerns but bows can match a lot of guns in todays world,
How can they match guns ?

and we dont have super tech to make them out of, and no one in our world is trying to make them for war.
If bows can match guns, why isn't anybody trying to redesign them for military or police work ?

If what you claim is true, why was everyone stupid enough to stop using them for military work ?

Very simple advances in tech could still makes bows combat viable in todays world.
Such as ?

Bilateralrope said:

Thank you.

Ok these forums suck, this is the third time I've lost my post.

So in short. Arrows kill people in armour and were the primary means of doing so, until a sword, the rapier, based on the design of an arrow, made the use of armour obsolete. So yeah there's that.

At a 30m range that means the max range of a bow is 120m, which is total horseshit, Period

Bows are accurate, they may not have the range of rifles, but as the needle pistol shows us, range has nothing to do with how accurate something is or not. Plenty of uses of the bow could shoot a moving man or animal in the eye with a bow regularly, so yes accurate.

Ok a combat round is 5 seconds, note that semi-auto is a full round action, a lot of ancient armies required an archer to fire 3 arrows in 6 seconds, so yes a semi-auto of 2 on bows that aren't longbows is fine, and perfectly realistic. Also Legolas could regularly fire that many or more arrows in less time while on the move.

On the Strength calculations, that was done for the sake of realism, which it is a game, so one for one is doable.

Hand and flick bows don't get to add strength, in fact no crossbows do, I never said they would, they have a set bonus to damage based on the draw of the weapon, which is what I accounted for.

On the Diamontine Bodkins ok I can give on that for game balance, Pen 4 seems reasonable, with their rarity and cost. Especially when you think a cold iron bodkin could stick a foot into solid oak and diamontine is better in every way, and pretty much made for cutting through armour.

Tech Broadheads, Pen 2 sounds better, but everything else stays, seeing as how as from the aftereffects it is in most ways inferior to a lasgun with a hotshot pack, which you could buy 5 of for the cost of one broad head. And when I said standard issue I meant one or two per feral, not whole quivers of them. I mean a little common sense should told you at that cost they wouldn't even be widespread where they are common.

Oh and the point about shooting behind cover was more about the degree of control one has with a bow, and therefore how accurate it is in the hands of someone who is familiar with its use.

TempestSatori said:

You are preaching to the choir good sir

TempestSatori said:

I don't think anyone here disagreed with you, the problem is, as Bilateral pointed out, all the ranges in the game have been reduced. None of the ballistic weapons n the game shoot as far as a 'real world' version would. The adjustments people are suggesting are to bring them in line with the RPG system, and your attempt at interjecting real world ranges will make the bows ridiculous compared to other weapons.

And really, it wasn't the bow or sword that made ancient armor obsolete.

TempestSatori said:

Well unless you give them a massive range bump like you did you your stats . Range doesn't have things to do with how accurate something is, but what we're saying is in the game accurate quality is only given to certain weapons, and most of us seem to be of the opinion that a bow is not equal in accuracy to sniper rifles and their ilk. Your 'accurate' bow means it's not LESS accurate than other weapons. Adding the accurate trait makes it MORE accurate than other weapons, which I would say 'horseshit' to you.

TempestSatori said:

I personally don't have a big problem with this, though Dork does have a good point- the vast majority of people won't be able to do this, so perhaps a requirement of a proficiency or other talent would be in order. Or use Bilateral's description where 'if you don't move and as a full round action in conjunction with the rapid reload talent...'

TempestSatori said:

The next thing that I missed previously is any time you're removing the primitive quality you have to consider the impacts that strength bonus will have on the weapon. If you're looking for hard core realism you'll need to reduce the damage and pen of the arrow as range increases as well; it's a game so I try to go with the existing game mechanics though.

TempestSatori said:

You're giving a bow the same penetration as a bolt round, which is a rocket propelled dimantine tipped death machine. I honestly still can't see how the penetration would be the same. Armor peircing bullets aren't even there, and the kinetic force in a bullet is greater than that of an arrow for a longer distance. The error isn't in the fact that bodkins can be quite effective on trees, the error is in how it's balanced against other weapons in Dark Heresy

TempestSatori said:

The term 'standard issue' strikes me, as most guard regiments don't even get equipped with krak grenades which cost less than your arrow head, let alone two of these. I'm not sure the cost is 100% on here. And common sense? Really? With the stats you've been tossing around where you make bows and arrows as or more effective than some of the highest of the high tech in 40k to more accurately reflect 'realism' I decided to take nothing for granted here.

I also forgot to add in the strength bonus in the previous comments, that alone would make long range arrows equal to or suprior to lasguns when simply equipped with mono-arrow heads. As Bilateral points out, bows are an inferior weapon on the battlefield, and as proof, they have no modern use in militaries or police powers, and no attempts are being made to do so.

And as for a hotshot pack, I disagree. A Lasguns reload is Full, so with rapid relaod that's reduced to half. In theory if you pushed it you might get it down to a free action if you tape your mags together, but I'm not sure I'd allow that. So with that, you get one shot a turn (no semi auto), you gain tearing, you do 1d10+4 with no strength bonus, you gain penetration 4, you lose the reliable trait (and so therefore jam on 96+ without your backup roll). Yours will do something like 1d10+3+4 (maybe 3 from a low level feral guardsman) pen 2 tearing on semi-auto, keep reliable. I wouldn't call it inferior 'in most ways' as you're swapping damage for pen here in most cases and you get to fire twice versus a hotshot that's one and done.

TempestSatori said:

Again I think this ties back to 'someone who is familiar with its use' and would likely require a specialty proficiency. This doesn't make it an 'accurate' weapon based on the system used in the game, it gives it a quirk or a trait.

A +10 bump isnt a serious bump to range, when you consider that the lasgun has a range of 100m which is almost twice that.

And training in primitve basic weapons is advanced training. Look through all the other sections of basic weapons, and tell me that even with the additions I've made here you still don't get a lot more bang for your buck out of any of those other training types. Adding Rapid Reload to that is something that no one who doesn't come from a Feral world, or ins't some freaky ass assassin who refuses to shoot people would even have together.

I agree that when adding extra damage from SB bows can be a little strong which is why I had the half SB rule in place to begin with expect on longbows, who have their own restrictions.

Any yes I am saying a man using a bow can be more accurate than guns made by people who aren't that knowledgeable in the use of creation forges, like say in Gunmetal where labour serfs make a good deal of the guns used in the Calixis sector.

Only precision made guns are considered accurate, things made for aiming and killing for far afield, like a hunting rifle, long las.....or on worlds where they don't have manufactorum bows. That's the entire point of a bow, or say a long las, to put distance between you and what you want to shoot, and to be able to hit it with a single well placed shot. So again yes bows should be accurate.

Guns and arrows penetrate things differently, where a bullet is made to push its way into a target by way of sheer force where it then widens creating a vacuum inside the target and transfer kinetic energy to the target causing a lose of internal homeostatic integrity and trauma to organs, an arrow is made for precision, it has a sharp point which it that alone doesn't pierce the target then the flexing of the shaft behind it brings about a pretty terrible amount of penetrating force, which is the principle around which the rapier was created. Now a bolt is basically just a very advanced bullet, with a hardened tip so that when it hits something hard it doesn't immediately mushroom, the only two things making bolts go through armour so well is A) the force driving them, which true is greater than that of an arrow I'm sure, and B.) the hardened tip. Now a bow with that same tip actually shaved to a monomolecular edge, instead of a wide point, and with the extra mechanic of being made to penetrate, would likely in fact go through armour just as efficiently.

About the lagun thing, yeah they actually have a mechanic for that, Called duplus ammo clips in the Inquisitor's handbook in the war zone section. And sure a feral could do that, semi-auto two of the Tech-broadheads, and then he wouldn't have anymore of those or likely any other special arrows, which are both cost and rarity prohibitive, and he could only do that if he started with or bought primitive weapon training, which means that by and large he's missing out on something that is likely more useful to get something that makes sense for his character, and he would also have to have rapid reload, which a guardsman can't even get till third rank. Which makes the Rapid Reload/Semi-Auto thing pretty **** balanced to me. But you're right they may be too easy to find so lets go with Near Unique, so that if you ever manage to find any, it won't be more than about 3 of them.

Any other complaints?

Oh and just to put this out there, most military grade bullets won't go more than about six inches into ballistic gel, which is made to mimic the human body's density and resistance. A bodkin can stab a full foot into solid oak, which is much harder and has more resistance than a human body. So thats how well bullets hold up, most don't go more than three or so inches, I'd say about 5 at the most and that's something in the realm of a .308 which can shoot through the armour of an armoured car! Yes bodkins are viable for armour killing arrows and they should have the Pen they have.

TempestSatori said:

Okay, I'll tell you that taking Pistol Training Bolt Pistol I can use, in most cases, a sigle weapon. When taking Basic Weapon Training Las I get Las and Longlas...thoretically laslocks. Primitive gives me a class of weapons, but a larger variety, especially if you toss in 3 types of bows and multiple crossbows.

Regardless, what I'm trying to say here is that the more special characteristics a weapon gets, the more sense it makes to require special training to use it.

TempestSatori said:

Wait what? What are you saying here? Bows can be accurate, yes, meaning you get to roll your BS to hit and not have a penalty. Just like 90% of the rest of the weapons. What does creation forges in Gunmetal city have to do with anything? I don't follow.

TempestSatori said:

Yeah, the point of a bow was to create distance between you and the target....in the 12th Century. Accurate give you a BONUS of +10% to hit and a BONUS of 1d10 per 2 DoS to hit. That makes no sense to me for a bow in the world of 40k. And a longlas is a simple las variant, I doubt there are scores of craftsmen pouring over them in meticulous detail.

TempestSatori said:

"The standard bolt is .75 calibre with a super-dense metallic core and diamantine tip." I'm pretty certain a 'super-dense metallic core' will provide better penetrating power behind it than a wooden shaft propelled by cat gut (or super future bow strings). The energy at impact of a bow is something like 55 pounds versus a standard assault rifle at more than 1000.

TempestSatori said:

Couldn't recall the name, however I'm still not sure I'd allow someone to reload a weapon as a free action.

TempestSatori said:

First, ballistic gel is made to mimic himan tissue, it doesn't replicate skin or bones, and certainly doesn't represent modern armor or armor of the future.

Second, I'd like to know where you got your data from, because it doesn't add up to the info I have. .223 rifles (also known as 5.56, or an M-16) were considered unfit for law enforcement for a long time use because it had too much penetrating power, and police don't tend to like to shoot the bystanders behind the bad guy by accident. Turns out the .223 is probably not the biggest offender. Ballistic gel tests show .223 ammo anywhere from 7 to 16 inches into the gel. If shot through the wall of a house first, it only penetrated 5 inches in, and was split in two. Smith and Wesson .40 handguns penetrate between 13 and 22 inches into the gel, depending on whether they went through a wall or not (and strangely enough, with hollow-tipped rounds they penetrated further if fired through a wall into the gel because they failed to expand.

Firearms can shoot through houses one end to the other and hit bystanders, I don't know that's something arrows can do. Most of the weapons that can do that, as represented in the game, have ZERO penetration.

But anyhow, regardless of this information or the majority opinion, I doubt you'll agree with us...but I can't help myself from a spirited debate.

TempestSatori said:

This not true. Arrows were rather poor at piercing armour. When armour was mainly chainmail and/or leather they had a decent chance of wounding an armoured knight, if the right arrow was used and the range was short enough. Most serious arrow wounds were caused when an unarmoured or lightly armoured area was hit by an arrow. By the time of proper late medieval plate armour armoured men-at-arms were almost entirely immune to arrows and crossbow bolts, even at short ranges. Plate would not have been the cost if it wasn't .

Yes, arrows defeated armoured soldiers several times, but 1) this was usually in the early to middle Medieval period, before true plate (even then mail does provide protection against arrows, just not nearly so well as plate, 2) in many cases it was the fact that mounted knights got their mounts shot out from under them that was often the problem. At short ranges (often less than 40m, and this was a time when most archery was massed archery at distances of 100+ yards) the right arrows with proper military longbows could pierce armour, but that is a bit last minute if being charged by knights.

You are right that guns didn't need the same amount of training as bows, and that is one of the reasons they overtook the bow, but the idea that bows were better at beating plate than guns is nonsense. Bows fell out of fashion exactly because of increasingly arrow proof armour. You could armour yourself against guns but it was too heavy for practical use (knights needed to be mobile) or to protect more than a limited area (there were some breastplates that were proof against shot... from the front, and at least as long as you were not at the closest ranges). Accuracy wise... Well, both guns and bows tended to be used en-masse in volley fire, and as far as I am aware were roughly comparable in that use. Used at single point shooting in a battlefield situation they were also roughly comparable (50 yards). The one thing bows had was rate of fire (crossbows not so much as they could easily take as long or longer than a gun to load, at least any type which had a ), as a properly trained longbowman (which took 10 years of practice, compared to a few weeks for a musketeer) could manage AT LEAST 10 shots a minute (though only for a few minutes before exhaustion would wear that figure down), compared to the 2-4 rounds a minute from a musket.

By the Napoleonic wars armour was next to unheard of exactly because guns had fallen out of fashion. Combining this with the fact that units moved in extremely dense formations would have meant that bizarrely longbowmen would have been deadly. And apparently Wellington asked about the possibility of a regiment of them, but they were not available and couldn't be raised as it would have taken to long to train them properly.

I agree with borithan (except the part about guns falling out of use in the napoleonic wars (typo?).

I also think that longbows would have been devestating on the early 18th century battlefield, but as stated they did not exist anymore - neither the skilled strong archers nor the yew longbows needed. And even if they had managed to create such a unit it would have been loath to use it as a casualty there would be nigh-unreplacable compared to the standard line infantryman. Later in the same century rifles with short reload times and eventually true repeaters were introduced that would have outshone any longbowman unit easily. These rifles, essentially the comparison of DH's Hunting Rifle, were accurate to several hundred meters range, could (and can) penetrate modern body armor, could fire 3-5 shots in DH round of 5 seconds. No matter how skilled an archer is, a rifleman can always work a bolt on a rifle quicker than pull out an arrow, nock it, draw, point and loose.

However in DH such a rifle has only SINGLE SHOT mode. Is that realistic? Of course not, but I, not unlike many others here believe it was a balance decision by design rather than lack of firearm knowledge (but may be that as well). Other examples could be the semi-auto Stub Automatic with RoF 3 while in RL SA handguns can fire 4-5 rounds per SECOND, or at least 1 round per second accurately, which would mean it should have RoF 5 minimum.

Autoguns, if anything like it's RL counterpart, can easily fire 5 times the listed RoF fire of 10.

So if you really want realistic "fire rate" for bows in this game then you should also make them for all firearms or you will simply unbalance bows. In fact I think bows, with their in game rate of fire of 1 per 5 seconds is not that far from what an average trained user could do in RL, so if they had nerfed it has much as they nerfed guns it would have RLD 4 instead of RLD 1/2.

yup, typo. I meant to say armour was no longer used because guns were so widespread (which were near impossible to effectively armour against) and bows had fallen out of fashion, and so there was no point.

Regarding hypothetical Napoleonic archers: Yes, they would have been difficult to replace when lost, but they wouldn't have been as vulnerable as other infantry of their time, at least to gunfire. Archers would tend to operate in a looser formation than musketeers and so would have been less punished by cannon fire and gunfire. Of course they would probably be more vulnerable to cavalry so... yeah.

And yes, if guns have the RoF they have at the moment bows do not deserve semi-auto fire. If guns were upgraded then it might be ok for bows, in the right hands, to get a very slight increase in RoF.

Sure, whatever.

Bottom line, this is house rules, if you aren't suggesting something to make the rules more playable, then kindly stop replying,because if you don't like them, then you don't have to use them. That would be the nice thing about house rules.

You are perfectly entitled to play things however you like, of course. I was just pointing out that your changes were based on incorrect assumptions about military history and technology. Now if you play Dark Heresy as a heroic game the heroic myths of longbowmen (ie felling fully armoured French knights with ease, Robin Hood etc) would suit it fine, and so a boost to bows and crossbows could be totally justified, especially if you were wanting to encourage players to use them.

I'm gonna have to disagree with you, because when I say muskets that's what I was referencing 1rst and second generation firearms, circa say the 1500's. Not the 1700's era firearms, with several advantages such as better firing mechanisms, metallurgy, rifling.

You seem to have misunderstood my time-frame. Also that commet was more pointed to people who seem to want nothing more than to argue, and not be very helpful.

The point I think some of us are trying to make is that a lot of the stats you have don't come across as "in line" with the setting or existing rules. Arrows being generally inferior to modern weapons, when upgrading them to be cooler in 40k it seems like you'd want to keep them in line with the existing weapon systems. As Borithan says though, if you're going for a Robin Hood/Fantastical feel, beef them up.

The other problem is anytime someone has so far tried to suggest an alternatives with rationale for said alternative you jump on them with your perception of the superiority of the bow or its equivalent to modern arms.

Argument aside, I'll resummarize. Personally I'd stick to much simpler systems and look to not advance the bow or special ammo for the bow to that of the super high tech weapons. Primarily this would be through special ammo, and the adding of a few specia abilities that you can unlock by purchasing a talent.

Give the explosive arrows similar stats to the grenade launcher with reduced range but with the reliable property. Give your tearing arrows non-primitive, tearing, maybe 2 pen, 1d10+strength, maybe a +1 or 2 to damage, and make them much less expensive and more easy to obtain. Consider creating 'special abilities' for the bows accessible primarily through specialized training (put rapid shot, fire behind cover, and whatever other special bow abilities you want under the special ability) to show that anyone in skilled in primitive weapons can fire the bow, but to do cool things with it you have to do an extra ability representing the extra training with it. I'd give your AP arrows AP3 like manstopper bullets, non-primitive, and 1d10+strength. Consider even creating arrows with the toxic quality, giving them a boost to non-primitive, standard base damage, but the toxic quality (I'd not give them bonus damage or pen as the other toxic weapons in the game don't have those traits either for game balance purposes).

If you want a super arrow that does something messed up to someone give it that special ability only and not bunch of other abilities (like high pen, tearing, etc.)- so regular damage plus something like "upon inflicting damage, the arrow head triggers a charge and expands inside the body sending sharp barbs out through the soft tissues, making movement painful. Victims must make a toughness/willpower check each turn or suffer a -x to all agility based rolls and their movement is reduced by -x due to the crippling pain. Removal of the device requires an extended medicae check over the course of x turns, with penalties and bonuses of the situation applying to all rolls." Make them priced reasonably high for the tech involved, but not cost prohibitively high. Exotic shots are 20 for 1, and bolts are 16 for 1, I'd say somwehre around there would feel right depending on the abilities the arrow head had. Make their availability similar, so somehwere around the rare level I'd say.

Firm up the 'silent' portion of them and give a penalty to notice them being fired, especially if fired from a concealed position or in the middle of a gunfight.

To me, giving them things like that would increase their battlefield flexibility, give them some tactical potential, but not create a weapon that is (IMHO) unreasonably equal to or superior to weapons developed 20-40k years in the future. Your Weapon Specialization (Bow Weapons) talent can cost around 1-300xp depending on class, which isnt' all that much in the grand scheme of xp. Make sure the cost of the specialty ammo things are within regular reach so that players are interested in spending the time to seek them out.

TL;DR: Summary 2.0: IMHO they should be toned down, made simpler, more attainable, and more specialized in order to make it attractive to players and to help it blend with the existing system.

TempestSatori said:

"The initial role of the musket was as a specialist armour piercing weapon; it therefore coexisted with the arquebus over the period c. 1550 – c. 1650. For example, from 1636 the complement of the Spanish infantry company, in Flanders, was 200 men, 11 officers, 30 musketeers, 60 arqubusiers, 65 pikemen with body armour, 34 pikemen without armour. The musketeers received double pay.[11]"

From Wikipedia (but I have seen this in several other sources). As you can see we are not just talking about the 1700s flintlock musket, or the early 19th century rifles. The heavy spanish musket used with a fork stand had the range and penetration of the later flintlock musket, but had disadvantages in firing mechanism and weight.

That said, I wrote a reply to you accusation of "people wanting to argue" but it was unfortunately lost. But in short expect critique when you post house rules and accept that people may not always agree with you. And the historical discussion aside, several here has commented on the (lack of) balance aspect of these rules and suggested to tone it down. My own suggestion is to boost damage for normal bows and crossbows since they are underpowered, either a set one like 1d10+3 or use 1d10+bow's SB. That makes them as effective against primitive armor as normal guns are against non-primitive armors.

The Longbow and COmposite bow in IH already have Pen IIRC, so there you go. And as said Rapid Reload+one homemade talent could allow 2 arrows per round.

Now you can choose to ignore us and use whatever rules you like. I do hope your players are happy about them though.

I've been thinking about the quickfire trait. Giving a semi-auto fire rate doesn't feel right given how much the wielder will need to move to load and fire the second arrow. Maybe change it to:

Quickfire : This weapon can make two half action attacks in a turn, each with a -10 penalty. However the character wielding it must have enough time in his turn to reload it between the attack, through either reducing the reload time to a reaction/free action and/or increasing the duration of his turn.

I'm going to claim rule of cool for quickfire, not attempt to justify it.

I'd suggest that you don't attempt to change the weapons themselves, except for adding SB to bow damage and this quickfire trait. Instead focus on adding pieces of tech or sorcery into the arrows to make them useful. Think RT Explorers or Throne Agents, characters who can afford to openly use an unusual weapon and afford unusual ammo for it, not acolytes who need to blend in and have limited funds.

The Tech Broadheads are a good example of this. I'd just suggest a few tweaks:

- Change the penetration to +2

- Remove the Int test to remove it. If you have one stuck in you and nobody with medicae, you can't get it out without ripping bits of your flesh.

- Allow removing without a test, but that will deal 1d5 damage. This is an arrowhead designed to be difficult to remove.

- Simple fail on the Medicae test will do nothing. 4+ DOF and the arrow is removed with 1d5 damage.

- A strength test (not sure about difficulty) to snap the arrow shaft and remove the penalties, unless the character is using the limb with the arrowhead, then the penalties are -10. Also it will make the medicae test harder.

Change the lore from it being commissioned for a guard regiment (if the guardsmen don't want to use issued lasguns, they will be shot with issued lasguns till the survivors change their mind) to being commissioned by someone with lots of money.

Note that your Diamantine Bodkins got complained about but my power field arrows, despite doing more damage, did not. Either everyone missed them, or the problem came down to how you justified it:

- The power field arrows use established 40k tech to apply a damage and penetration increase to the weapon, with the increase being calculated by looking at the stats of other things with power fields.

- The Bodkins use an unnamed substance to penetrate armour through their physical characteristics and, despite arrows having less force behind them (human strength vs chemical propulsion), worse flight characteristics (larger size means more air resistance to slow them down), you claim that they will have much better penetration.

Ok a combat round is 5 seconds, note that semi-auto is a full round action, a lot of ancient armies required an archer to fire 3 arrows in 6 seconds, so yes a semi-auto of 2 on bows that aren't longbows is fine, and perfectly realistic. Also Legolas could regularly fire that many or more arrows in less time while on the move.

Wikipedia claims that an AK-47 has a ROF of 600 rounds per minute. With 5 second rounds you get 12 rounds per minute, meaning that it would be able to put out 50 rounds in a turn (change to 3 second rounds, like many other games use, and that goes down to 30). The highest number of rounds an in-game weapon can fire in a single turn it 20, this being a heavy weapon with a ROF of -/-/10 and the storm quality (from Lure of the Expanse)

Clearly this is another gameplay abstraction.

I'm gonna have to disagree with you, because when I say muskets that's what I was referencing 1rst and second generation firearms, circa say the 1500's

Dark Heresy does give rules for early generation firearms, the musket and the flintlock. Compared to bows and crossbows, they suck.

Pistols: The flintlock does +2 damage compared to the hand bow, but has tripple the reload time along with the inaccurate and unreliable traits.

But the reload time and inaccurate trait remain. Personally I'd prefer the hand bow since its quicker reload time will make up for the decreased damage.

Basic weapons: The musket gets +2 damage again. But it is more expensive than the crossbow and bow, while having a longer reload (5 round for musker, 2 for crossbow, half for the bow) and has the primitive and unreliable traits.

The quicker reload does make up for the less damage. But the bow can be brought down to a free action reload with rapid reload, meaning that you now have the option of using a half-action aim on every turn.

Then consider how likely each one it to jam. Again, the primitive firearms lose.

Bottom line, this is house rules, if you aren't suggesting something to make the rules more playable, then kindly stop replying,because if you don't like them, then you don't have to use them. That would be the nice thing about house rules.

You brought these house rules and their questionable justifications here for discussion. They are being discussed.

Do you have any good reason for wanting people to stop ?

"Because they disagree with me" is not a good reason.

Conceptually, I think the idea of making a unique, high-tech bow for your players to choose from amongst the other 40k weaponry isn't a bad idea. The problem is that you're presenting weird anecdotes from hundreds of years ago as rational as to why a society with the kind of tech like 40k would still use bows.

Not to mention a few mechanics no one has discussed: This person, firing 3 arrows on SA in a combat round, how much ammunition for that are they going to be carrying? How much can they shove in a quiver? Seems like they'll run out pretty quickly, and it's not easy to have a few extra quivers as spare.

Also, a major bonus for arrows is that being wounded by one is an incredibly traumatizing experience, as you now have a shaft sticking out that does just about as much damage coming out as it does going in.

All this said, you should concentrate more on presenting this as a specialized weapon, one that kills silently and in specialized situations, rather than something to be seen alongside of stubbers and lasguns in an underhive.