Improvised bow

[Gemakie]

Hi,

I and several other members of my party are mainly ranged bow users and I have a suspicion that our gm might be pulling the 'you wake up and notice all your equipment is gone' trick. Always a fun one, but as mainly ranged users I'm sure we're gone be trying to get back some ranged weapons as soon as possible.

Now I've found out that while crafting our own bows, it will probably take a week or more, so that isn't really an option unless we're left alone in a (prison) hole for over a week and manage to find enough materials to satisfy the equipment cost and rudimentary tools.

So we come to improvised weapons and I was wondering, ignoring the simple thrown weapons, would it be possible to grab a curved stick and some string and tie together a simple bow in a few minutes?
Or make an improvised bow in some other way? (fishing rod with the line tied to back on the handle?)

Of course this will eventually come down to our gm's call, but I was wondering how other players and gm's thought about it so he already has some discussion to fall back on.

Tia,
Gemakie

[Sean K Reynolds]

The Beginner Box doesn't have rules for improvised weapons, but the Core Rulebook does. Here's the info:

Improvised Weapons: Sometimes objects not crafted to be weapons nonetheless see use in combat. Because such objects are not designed for this use, any creature that uses an improvised weapon in combat is considered to be nonproficient with it and takes a –4 penalty on attack rolls made with that object. To determine the size category and appropriate damage for an improvised weapon, compare its relative size and damage potential to the weapon list to find a reasonable match. An improvised weapon scores a threat on a natural roll of 20 and deals double damage on a critical hit. An improvised thrown weapon has a range increment of 10 feet.

So if you made an improvised shortbow, you'd have a –4 penalty to hit with it, but it would deal shortbow damage (the reasonable match), but threaten a crit on a natural 20 and deal double damage on a crit.

[Zog of Deadwood]

Depending on your party's level, the spells Minor Creation or, better yet, Fabricate are possible sources of new bows and arrows, but you've got to have a sorcerer or wizard capable of casting them. Those may be too high level for your party, but if you've got a druid in the group, there is also the 2nd level spell Wood Shape. It does state that fine detail isn't possible, but it ought to make crafting a bow a LOT faster by giving you "blanks" to work from.

Also, if any of your bow users have feats that translate over to all ranged weapons, slings and javelins are very easy to come by and take very little time to make. Not as good as bows, of course, but better than nothing.

[Gemakie]

Thanks, this should help :)

I also noticed a few hours after I posted that the beginner box forum is for the actual beginner box physical item (which was quite unknown to me) and not a sort of 'newbie questions' area as I thought it was.
So I did indeed post this in the wrong sub-forum :/
But since I didn't see any way to move or delete the post...

The rule set we play with would be the full pathfinder core rules plus several extra books like the ultimate .. ones.

[Bearded Ben]

You should be able to craft slings pretty quickly and most of your archery feats would still apply to using them. They'd make a decent stop-gap ranged weapon until you get your stuff back.