I got a great comment on the Bow ST thing by +Sean Powell, a fellow engineer and archery enthusiast. So I decided to make a post out of my responses to his comments. My responses to his comments will be in blue italics. His stuff is in black bold. I’ve only been the occasional GURPS fantasy…
When I wrote The Deadly Spring, I pegged the strongest bow that humans pulled at about 200 pounds draw. I saw lots of bows in history in the 170-190# range, but not much more than about 200#. Mongol composite bows of as much as 165#, the strongest bow on the Mary Rose was about 185#….
I’m actually a bit surprised I didn’t do this on Thursday when I talked about Lifting ST and Striking ST and ranged weapons. But it came up tangentially on a thread on the forums about powerful warbows and how pulling a high ST bow couldn’t have been that unusual if states could field thousand of archers,…