In the core rules, all arrows have an edge of 3, making them equivalent to a javelin or sword. Certainly, historically, many cultures used bows that were that powerful and dangerous, and these cultures tended to use the bow extensively in warfare.
On the other hand, in many other cultures the bow had almost no place
in war. In part, no doubt, because people didn't like giving up the
protection of a shield, but also because the bows just didn't have
the power to do much damage at a long enough range to be effective.
>From all that we know about the heortlings, they would seem to fall
into this category. They really seem to view the bow as mostly a
hunting weapon.
The rules reflect this to some extent--the heortlings just use selfbows, with an effective range of 50 yards, which is the same distance most humans can run with an unrelated action. So with a self-bow you can get one shot in while your opponent closes, and then they are on you and you don't have shield or melee weapon in hand (with a javelin you could get in the same shot, and at least have shield in hand when your foe arrived). The composite bow, with a range of 75 yards, allows you to take either two shots, or one shot and then drop the bow and arm yourself.
What I'm wondering is if that seems adequate to explain how little the bow is used by the heortlings? Or to better reflect that most of their bows are built for hunting, not war, should they also be described as "light" bows, dropping their edge down to 2? This would make your typical hunting bow at a slight edge disadvantage versus your typical heortling warrior who's armor and shield give him a defensive edge of 3.
So, the short question is: typcial heortling bow, edge 2 or 3?
Follow on questions of course are:
- if edge 2, how common are edge 3 bows?
- would many heortlings use bows traded/taken from praxians or other
cultures with stronger bows? Or would the technique to use them
effectively be too different to easily adopt them?
--Bryan
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