Goblin Squad Member
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I actually don't have a problem with an 'alpha-strike' being feasible for a group, particularly against low-level (or HP) players. I do think it should take a minimum of four people, each using a relatively powerful attack - perhaps something that requires the use of Power - but I like the realism of four arrows reliably putting someone down.
Part of the reason I'm okay with this is I doubt there will be very many Kill On Sight organizations in PFO - it benefits everyone to allow people to move in and out of their territory. (Well, this won't really be true during the War of the Towers, but when settlement economies have evolved it should be.) I also think the reputation and alignment systems will help weed out the popularity of such tactics, so the wandering parties who execute travelers at random should be few and far between.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm quite sure the guy you're looking for is Lars Andersen.
I think the person you are talking about is Lars Anderson...
Many thanks to both of you!
Diella, Lars Andersen - The World's Fastest Archer is exactly the link I was looking for.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The Navy uses the similar "Hooyah" for motivation and the like (such as annoying fellow lower enlisted: "Hooyah, shipmates!"). We have Aye-Aye to cover the original HUA. Typically the definition of Aye-Aye is given as "I understand and will comply." The Marines have "Oorah."
No idea where "Booyah" comes from, but I don't think it was the service.
I think it came from Hollywood, as Bludd surmised. I also think his the most telling account with the reference to 'Hurry Up and Wait'. That is as universal across Government as SNAFU.
For the implicit question I picked up on, whether it was there or not, Honorable Discharge, Medical, USNR 1971
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Goblin Squad Member
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Just stumbled across this one:
you'll only be able to reliably gank with nothing but threads if we're dumb.
And this one:
We also don't intend to let characters have any real PvP capabilities "naked". You'll have to wear some kind of protection, have to use some kind of consumable, and generally be burning economic assets of some kind when you fight other players. So there will always be a cost to engage in PvP. You won't be able to run up to a character wearing nothing and stab your target to death with a newbie dagger.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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He did mention daggers there though not bows :P
In all seriousness though, I think that the bow debate might not be releivant once we are able to start leveling up our characters some more. The hard part is going to be keeping the bow relevant against mobs since they don't level.
Speaking of which how will the difficulty of mobs increase with the higher character levels? It would be great if we did actually start seeing monsters with role levels as we got higher in our levels. Is it going to be area based so the further from a starter town the more difficult the NPC enemies become?
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Goblin Squad Member
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He did mention daggers there though not bows :P
In all seriousness though, I think that the bow debate might not be releivant once we are able to start leveling up our characters some more. The hard part is going to be keeping the bow relevant against mobs since they don't level.
Speaking of which how will the difficulty of mobs increase with the higher character levels? It would be great if we did actually start seeing monsters with role levels as we got higher in our levels. Is it going to be area based so the further from a starter town the more difficult the NPC enemies become?
I think that topic could merit its own thread. I see a problem with gradually having tougher monsters further away from the NPC settlements - it renders large parts of the world uninteresting to you depending on your current power level. I think there should be blobs of tougher and easier mobs scattered all over the place so that everyone can find some enjoyment in every general area. Less segregation of players that way (which is good in my opinion).
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm quite sure the guy you're looking for is Lars Andersen.I think the person you are talking about is Lars Anderson...Many thanks to both of you!
Diella, Lars Andersen - The World's Fastest Archer is exactly the link I was looking for.
Doing a little digging on google (I can't watch the video while at work), for his speed and trick shooting, he's shooting a 30lb bow at half draw. That would barely annoy a deer and wouldn't penetrate any sort of field armor whatsoever. In the stills I've seen, he's shooting at targets which are about 15 feet away....which is point blank range for a bow.
Admitedly he's an incredibly talented archer and it's an amazing performance but it's just that, a performance. It's entirely impractical for use in hunting and or in war.
Note, I discovered that there is also a Hungarian by the name of Lajos Kassai who practices archery techniques similar to those practiced by the Mongols. If you look at him shooting, he is also firing at targets from a range of 15ft.
As a point of reference, for modern hunting, you want a minimum 40lb draw...at full draw and 40lb-60lb (adjustable) is common for modern compounds. English longbows historicaly were thought to average between 80-120 lbs, Mongol recurve bows averaged between 100-160 lbs. You can read about the penetration tests done against historical armor for bows of various draw weights. Google Matheus Bane and/or Mike Loades for those.
Note, I'm not trying to bash archery. As I said, I bowhunt myself and really enjoy it but, as with so many things, once you actualy start doing it you start to realize the difference between fact and fiction. Archery was a very, very important component of the medieval battlefield but it was just that one component. There were reasons why it was only one component of the armies of the day and there was a reason why it wasn't till the advent of firearms that armor and melee combat stopped being such important components of warfare.
Edit: Not that this has any bearing on game mechanics, but I'm kinda a nit for such stuff.
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Goblin Squad Member
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From the perspective of someone who doesn't know a lot about archery:
There is a part where he shoots through chainmail like it's nothing.
Also, when hunting I imagine that range and precision are the most important things. I can picture other situations where speed and mobility would be more important.
But either way, I don't think that it's that kind of archery that we want in this game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@GrumpyMel,
At 2:17 in the video, from 69 meters, he fires three arrows in less than 1 and 1/2 seconds. All three hit a block that looked to me to be smaller than a 6' cube, with fairly small spread.
At 3:29 in the video, from what looks to me like about 20 feet, he quickly fires three arrows that all pierce riveted chain mail.
But I really don't want to get into a back-and-forth about it. You're welcome to your skepticism and I learned long ago it's not my place to try to change that about you :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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@GrumpyMel,
At 2:17 in the video, from 69 meters, he fires three arrows in less than 1 and 1/2 seconds. All three hit a block that looked to me to be smaller than a 6' cube, with fairly small spread.
At 3:29 in the video, from what looks to me like about 20 feet, he quickly fires three arrows that all pierce riveted chain mail.
But I really don't want to get into a back-and-forth about it. You're welcome to your skepticism and I learned long ago it's not my place to try to change that about you :)
I know you don't want a back-and-forth about this, but a quick note about the armor shots- chain mail is absolutely terrible at resisting arrows. You would be far better off wearing a lino-thorax (linen armor utilized by the Ancient Greeks and other Mediterranean cultures).
The guy in the video is amazingly talented with a bow, but trick archery is not anything like combat archery (as noted, different bow requirements, and likely, very different arrows.)
It is also interesting to note that the two greatest triumphs of the English longbow were aided by the fact that the French had to attack uphill (Poitiers) or through mud (Agincourt). In both cases, the hampered movement allowed the archers to predominately kill the French horses, while the arrows had little affect on the French knights themselves.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@GrumpyMel,
At 2:17 in the video, from 69 meters, he fires three arrows in less than 1 and 1/2 seconds. All three hit a block that looked to me to be smaller than a 6' cube, with fairly small spread.
At 3:29 in the video, from what looks to me like about 20 feet, he quickly fires three arrows that all pierce riveted chain mail.
But I really don't want to get into a back-and-forth about it. You're welcome to your skepticism and I learned long ago it's not my place to try to change that about you :)
I know you don't want a back-and-forth about this, but a quick note about the armor shots- chain mail is absolutely terrible at resisting arrows. You would be far better off wearing a lino-thorax (linen armor utilized by the Ancient Greeks and other Mediterranean cultures).
The guy in the video is amazingly talented with a bow, but trick archery is not anything like combat archery (as noted, different bow requirements, and likely, very different arrows.)
It is also interesting to note that the two greatest triumphs of the English longbow were aided by the fact that the French had to attack uphill (Poitiers) or through mud (Agincourt). In both cases, the hampered movement allowed the archers to predominately kill the French horses, while the arrows had little affect on the French knights themselves.
Yup, mail is predominantly intended as a defence against slashing weapons and was almost always worn over a cloth or leather layer of protection. However, mail is not mail is not mail. There were huge differences in quality of construction bith in materials and methods used, tightness of the weave, size and thickness of the links, double vs single link, quality of the metalurgy, etc. High quality tight-knit mail, even by itself actualty was pretty effective against piercing weapons including arrows. However such armor was far less common then lesser quality types.
Edit: The other important thing to remember about arrows is that they typicaly kill by blood loss rather then shock. That's why you usualy wait 20-30 minutes after shooting a dear in a vital spot before moving from your stand and need to know how to track a blood trail. It's not uncommon for a deer that's shot in a vital area to run for several hundred yards before bedding down to expire. In combat terms that means even after delivering a mortal wound, you still might have had to deal with your foe for 5-10 minutes before they actualy expired.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Remember this is a video game, the whole point is that it isn't reality.
We know, it's a bit of a digression. It has no real bearing on the game. As far as the game goes, the goal of the combat system should be to make sure that everyone has fun playing and that no one gets an "I win" button.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Remember this is a video game, the whole point is that it isn't reality.
Distance fighting in reality, is already overpowered, which is why we have been fighting mostly that way for a few centuries. Whatever the possibility of a martial artist in a perfect context with perfect modern-day equipment and without any need for lethality, we must keep some balance in mind. And shooting from a distance without any moment impairment isn't really balanced.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@GrumpyMel,
At 2:17 in the video, from 69 meters, he fires three arrows in less than 1 and 1/2 seconds. All three hit a block that looked to me to be smaller than a 6' cube, with fairly small spread.
At 3:29 in the video, from what looks to me like about 20 feet, he quickly fires three arrows that all pierce riveted chain mail.
But I really don't want to get into a back-and-forth about it. You're welcome to your skepticism and I learned long ago it's not my place to try to change that about you :)
Goto Bodkin Point Arrows for a wiki entry on a type of arrow with better penetration against armor.
One note of interest is that even with this type of arrow testing certainly seems to indicate that an archer would have had a hard time scoring a lethal hit on a heavy plate armored warrior.
I would expect if your archer is getting penetration he has custom arrows designed specifically for that purpose, i.e. thinner needle point to slide into the rings rather then cut through them.
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*Jumps off cliff from a hundred feet up*
*Lands on feet and walks over*
Hey, guys, what're we talking about? Oh, realism, neat. Yeah, bows are definitely not being handled realistically right now. :/
What? How'd I get up to the top of that mountain? I walked up a spiral staircase of men. How else?
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Goblinworks Lead Game Designer
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I hadn't been following this thread as Stephen was since it's more his day to day bailywick, but I do feel obliged to let you guys know we are well informed about archery.
STANDARD DISCLAIMER WHEN TALKING ABOUT ARCHERY WITH ME: I can be an real jerk about archery. I was previously an nationally ranked competitive archer (like top 50 in the nation in Olympic style archery), I have previously been a certified Level 1 NAA instructor back when they had those, I've been taught by Olympians, I have taught at numerous camps and clubs, I shoot multiple styles, I have read many books and written a few about archery. I've done historical reenactment combat archery (including making some good shots while running), field archery, target archery, pretty much every type of archery except hunting. Until last year I had a heart condition that prevented me from doing most sports so for the last twenty five years archery has been my sport. Until a few week ago one of my bows was in my office for use in animation reference. I can put twelve arrows into a torso sized space at twenty yards in one minute with a straight bow that I know will go through leather like it's nothing. I know archery. Chances are, I know more about archery than you. So I can be a jerk about it.
Despite my deep and abiding love for archery in all it's forms, ultimately our concern is not so much how archery really works; our concern is not so much simulation as balance. Our maximum range is 35 meters due to technical constraints, so we're already pretty limited in replicated a real bow. Ranged attacks currently are over powered due to a number of things aside from damage; movement speeds, firing arcs being way too large, no line of sight checks, inabilitiy for NPCs to effectively attack moving targets with melee, no ammunition, etc. Not saying we may not crank down damage, but there are a lot of moving pieces to look at, and I would rather not make archery the lone weapon that has to stand still while attacking. Also the lack of charge and similar abilities in Alpha thus far also make ranged characters harder for melee to deal with. All of combat is going to get tweaked, nerfed, unnerfed, and retweaked over the next month and archery is no different. But it is definitely getting the hairy eyeball.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yup, mail is predominantly intended as a defence against slashing weapons and was almost always worn over a cloth or leather layer of protection. However, mail is not mail is not mail. There were huge differences in quality of construction bith in materials and methods used, tightness of the weave, size and thickness of the links, double vs single link, quality of the metalurgy, etc. High quality tight-knit mail, even by itself actualty was pretty effective against piercing weapons including arrows. However such armor was far less common then lesser quality types.I know you don't want a back-and-forth about this, but a quick note about the armor shots- chain mail is absolutely terrible at resisting arrows. You would be far better off wearing a lino-thorax (linen armor utilized by the Ancient Greeks and other Mediterranean cultures).
The guy in the video is amazingly talented with a bow, but trick archery is not anything like combat archery (as noted, different bow requirements, and likely, very different arrows.)
It is also interesting to note that the two greatest triumphs of the English longbow were aided by the fact that the French had to attack uphill (Poitiers) or through mud (Agincourt). In both cases, the hampered movement allowed the archers to predominately kill the French horses, while the arrows had little affect on the French knights themselves.
One thing I would like to see be implemented in PFO is armor is not static but dynamic when it comes to AC. Depending on the type of attack being used against the armor the AC will represent it. Some armors will be strong against one type of attack (say slashing) while being weaker to other types in various degrees.
I used the optional rules for armor in 2E AD&D to represent this weakness/strength situation in armor.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@GrumpyMel,
At 2:17 in the video, from 69 meters, he fires three arrows in less than 1 and 1/2 seconds. All three hit a block that looked to me to be smaller than a 6' cube, with fairly small spread.
At 3:29 in the video, from what looks to me like about 20 feet, he quickly fires three arrows that all pierce riveted chain mail.
But I really don't want to get into a back-and-forth about it. You're welcome to your skepticism and I learned long ago it's not my place to try to change that about you :)
All that means to me (since this is a fantasy game), is that he is a 20th level Ranger with all the bow feats (plus Improved Initiative, Quickdraw etc) and has been practicing his art for decades. Perfectly valid if a character can do similar after two and a half years of training in game...not so much for a first level noob.
Yeah, Improved Initiative.
Ain't none o' them blocks of wood getting the drop on him.
He's the worst at pounding in the wooden posts. That's why he shoots 'em.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Its always interesting when you get what are really medieval roleplayers arguing with fantasy roleplayers in D&D based games. The mere mention of spiked chains used to result in a 500 page thread-naught in 3.5
Two things fantasy games never do particularly well are armor and archery. As mentioned above chainmail traditionally was vulnerable to archery and the best defense in most cases was a cloth gambeson either alone or under the chain. However if you went anywhere near water in a gambeson you were likely to drown as it weighed a ton when waterlogged. Of course in fantasy games you can swim fine in a gambeson and chainmail protects better against arrows than cloth but hey its a game.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Interesting idea for the combat improvement a few years down: break "physical" into subtypes like Piercing, Slashing, and Bludgeoning. Have different armor layers with different outcomes for each.
I know Dwarf Fortress uses a simple physics model to handle damage, but it doesn't use hit points except as a kludge (because if you look at the physics of animated undead, they should be unkillable, and that is bad for gameplay)
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Goblin Squad Member
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It ended up just being a magnifier or minimizer to the rock/paper/scissors balance equations, basically at random. There's no particular reason for a Nightshade who chose to train Thrust to be great vs Albion archers and weak vs Midgard archers, while the reverse is true if he trained Slash instead.
In PFO, people probably aren't going to be changing their armor type as a battle-by-battle tactical choice, so giving you a damage bonus for equipping piercing weapons vs medium armor when you know the enemy clerics are probably in chain seems kind of pointless.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Interesting thread, in Final Fantasy XI (the first MMO they made), Rangers were always ahead in damage, with the justification being that the player-crafted ammo was so expensive that it was justified.
(we used to joke that they were using Gil Toss)
What the devs did get frustrated about was the fact that most Rangers would stand in melee range and only use dagger auto-attacks until they had built enough TP to do a finishing move with their bow/crossbow/etc (TP being similar to a Warrior's Rage in many MMO's, except every martial class used it).
Their solution was to make the damage vary by distance, so there was a sweat spot you had to stand in to be effective. It was a rather ugly solution though, because there was nothing in the GUI that indicated you were standing the correct distance, and add-ons for the game were strictly illegal in the Terms of Use.
I'm not suggesting that this was the right solution, but I could see an accuracy debuff while moving making sense (something you could diminish by investing in to archery).
Line of Sight would be a start, but in a lot of AAA MMO's you can strafe at full-speed and fire at someone chasing you without much difficulty even with that in place.
Yes please. Archery is out-of-hand in Pathfinder, and becomes more so the more supplemental material you add.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Again realism is not the focus here, it's a game and that means various different styles of combat have to be fun and competitive.
I'm also not anywhere nearly as cool as Lee. His background with archery really has ratcheted up the coolness factor for PFO significantly.
I am, however, a life long hunter and I've shot bows since I was a kid and have experience bow hunting large game, as well as having a decent background in history.
Here is the point that I would like to get across for whatever it is worth...
The average historical longbow with arrows designed for war was estimated to shoot at a speed of around 160 fps (that's what Bane used for an estimate for his test) at release. Modern compounds designed for hunting top out at around 350 fps.
The average (unencumbered) human can sprint at a speed of 22fps and we are an extremely slow animal. So even assuming best case scenario for a modern hunting bow, the target will travel 1ft for every 15ft. At an average hunting range of 20 yards the target (assuming it's a human not a much faster deer) will have moved upto 4ft from where it was when you released the arrow. On a deer sized animal, the target for an ethical lethal shot is no more then 3 to 4 inches from your point of aim. Now understand that a deer (or human or any other sentient creature) is not a foam plate, it can decide to stop, speed up, slow down or change direction whenever it wants. Now think about moving yourself while dealing with that.
The above should illustrate why an ethical bowhunter never fires at a target that is even aware of his presence nor at one that is moving at anything faster then a very slow walk and would never do it while moving himself.
You likely can't find a 100lb draw longbow that would be an example of an historical English weapon of war, but see if you can find a 60-70lb one and just try and bring it to full draw without moving. Then try to knock an arrow, bring it to full draw and release while sprinting at top speed.
Again realism is not the focus here, it's a game and that means various different styles of combat have to be fun and competitive.
I'm also not anywhere nearly as cool as Lee. His background with archery really has ratcheted up the coolness factor for PFO significantly.
I am, however, a life long hunter and I've shot bows since I was a kid and have experience bow hunting large game, as well as having a decent background in history.
Here is the point that I would like to get across for whatever it is worth...
The average historical longbow with arrows designed for war was estimated to shoot at a speed of around 160 fps
Ah, the days when reality was low-definition.
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Goblin Squad Member
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And compare all of the difficulty of firing a bow while running with the difficulty in using a double-axe.
Not a double-bitted axe, but a shaft with a double-bitted axe on each end.
Decius, again this is not an arguement for how game mechanics should or should not work. Heck I'm sure we'll have things like feather-fall and cone of cold and trolls and stuff. GW is making a high fantasy game based off a high fantasy IP, realism doesn't really weigh very heavly there.
However, we got into a bit of a digression into what was realistic. I was trying to illustrate to Nihimon (and others) that they type of things you see in fantasy game or in demonstration shooting (such as the videos posted) or in Hollywood movies or frankly in LARP which I've also seen and experienced a bit myself has little to no relationship to actual hunting with a bow or to archery in historical combat.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Ah, the days when reality was low-definition.Again realism is not the focus here, it's a game and that means various different styles of combat have to be fun and competitive.
I'm also not anywhere nearly as cool as Lee. His background with archery really has ratcheted up the coolness factor for PFO significantly.
I am, however, a life long hunter and I've shot bows since I was a kid and have experience bow hunting large game, as well as having a decent background in history.
Here is the point that I would like to get across for whatever it is worth...
The average historical longbow with arrows designed for war was estimated to shoot at a speed of around 160 fps
Nice one! FPS = feet per second, a standard measure of velocity.
It's a pretty important metric for hunting game with bows and/or rifles.
I figured, but my initial reading made me laugh. ;P
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Goblin Squad Member
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I was trying to illustrate to Nihimon (and others) that they type of things you see in fantasy game or in demonstration shooting (such as the videos posted) or in Hollywood movies or frankly in LARP which I've also seen and experienced a bit myself has little to no relationship to actual hunting with a bow or to archery in historical combat.
I remain skeptical that we (humans collectively) have an adequate understanding of how life was actually lived 12,000 years ago to be able to make such absolute claims, especially about a way of life that was made obsolete hundreds of years ago.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'd look for references in US military history regarding the lethal range of the bow, in addition to European history.
The English Longbow could be lethal out to it's maximum range, which could be more then 300 yards, provided it could penetrate whatever armor the target was wearing (or hit a joint or opening in that armor). That's pretty well established and not in question (from me, anyway). However, at that range archers weren't firing directly at individual targets. They were firing high arcing shots at an area, as quickly as they could, and blanketing it with arrows in the hopes that some would find marks in a vital area by sheer dint of volume of fire.
Coinicidently Colonial and Napoleonic era European armies also trained thier musketmen not to aim at individual targets. It slowed the soldier down and volume of fire was considered more important than accuracy with such weapons.
P.S. I'll stipulate that our understanding of daily life 12,000 years ago is pretty sketchy. However our understanding of major battles, millitary tactics and technologies of the 11th-16th centuries isn't all that bad. There is some reasonable documentation as well as arceological evidence. It may be rather embellished and you have to read between the lines but we have a decent idea of what happaned at Hastings, Agincourt, Crecy, Townsend, Bannockburn, etc. We also have a pretty decent understanding of hunting with bow and arrow since plenty of people still do it today....both modern hunters with modern equipment and indiginous peoples.
P.P.S A bit of trivia. The last recorded combat use of the English Longbow didn't happen as long ago as many would think. A member of British patrol in France in 1940 used it to take out a member of an opposing German patrol...search for Jack Churchill
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Goblin Squad Member
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P.S. I'll stipulate that our understanding of daily life 12,000 years ago is pretty sketchy. However our understanding of major battles, millitary tactics and technologies of the 11th-16th centuries isn't all that bad.
And that was definitely the age of formation combat, where - as you mention - individual accuracy was not particularly valued, and firing volleys all at the same time was more precious than any individual firing as quickly as he could.
What little we know about ancient archery is largely based on Mounted Archery and Formation Combat. There were some 5,000 years of history where we (humans) were using bows before the domestication of the horse. Another couple of thousand years before Classical Civilizations (Assyrians, etc) began using large armies to conquer huge swaths of the ancient world.
I submit that there might be something about that ancient way of using bows as an individual for hunting or in small combat engagements that would look more like what Lars Anderson does. Maybe...
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Goblin Squad Member
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P.S. I'll stipulate that our understanding of daily life 12,000 years ago is pretty sketchy. However our understanding of major battles, millitary tactics and technologies of the 11th-16th centuries isn't all that bad.And that was definitely the age of formation combat, where - as you mention - individual accuracy was not particularly valued, and firing volleys all at the same time was more precious than any individual firing as quickly as he could.
What little we know about ancient archery is largely based on Mounted Archery and Formation Combat. There were some 5,000 years of history where we (humans) were using bows before the domestication of the horse. Another couple of thousand years before Classical Civilizations (Assyrians, etc) began using large armies to conquer huge swaths of the ancient world.
I submit that there might be something about that ancient way of using bows as an individual for hunting or in small combat engagements that would look more like what Lars Anderson does. Maybe...
I'm certainly not qualified to speak about use of a bow in combat in prehistoric times... that's a whole different kettle. However I feel reasonably comfortable speaking about use of a bow in hunting as I actualy do it. Some important facts...
- Animals have very keen senses. Rapid movement is the surest way to get spotted in the wild. That will invoke a flight or fight response where the animal either tries to move rapidly away from the hunter or if it's large and dangerous it may charge and attempt to maul the hunter.
- Human beings are VERY slow compared to almost all the game animals we hunt. We have good endurance but we are complete snails in a sprint compared to most of our furred or feathered freinds.
- With the speed of even the best modern bows, unless you are standing right next to the animal, the distance in which the animal can move in the time it takes the arrow to reach it far exceeds far exceeds the size of the lethal zones on the animal. This isn't a mystery, it's basic physics. So unless the animal is moving in an entirely consistant and predictable manner, shooting has a very high probability of resulting in a miss or non-lethal hit. It's why ethical hunters don't do it with large game and why "string silencers" were developed for modern hunting bows because animals can sometimes "jump the string" or startle sufficiently in the time between when they hear the bowstring and when the arrow reaches them to cause a miss or non-lethal hit.
- With large game, arrows kill through blood loss rather then shock. Unless you get lucky enough to sever the spine (I had this happen on the last deer I harvested with a bow), even a lethal hit means the animal is going to live for some time after it's been shot. Exactly how long depends on a lot of different factors. However dealing with a pissed off 1500 lb Kodiak Bear for the 5 minutes it takes to expire after it's been shot in the heart with an arrow isn't most peoples idea of fun.
- With small game like rabbits and birds, they sometimes react to threats by going to ground and freezing in hopes the predator won't see them and will pass them by. They are really, really, really hard to spot in cover by the way. This is the only instance in which it's ok to move up on game. However, moving rapidly rather then slowly is counter-productive since it is more likely to flush the animal. If you are hunting for meat rather then sport it's vastly preferable to shoot the animal on the ground while it is still, since you have a much better chance of hitting and you may be able to recover the arrow. People can and do shoot game birds on the wing or rabbits on the run with arrows. However the it's a very, very low percentage shot...not because the archer lacks skill... but because the animals don't always fly or flush in a consistant pattern and at a consistant speed.. and by the time the arrow reaches it the animal will no longer be where it's path was taking it when the hunter shot. This results in a missed meal and a lost arrow. That's why Flu Flu arrows were invented. Most people who don't hunt don't realize the dynamics of this. I've actualy had game birds swerve on me to avoid shotgun blasts when I was hunting with shotgun.
I'm not trying to be overly contrary here, even though it is my nature. However, in order to understand how bows were used in hunting, it helps to have actualy hunted with bows.
Edit - To whatever limited degree the game draws on history for inspiration of mechanics.... and I agree it should be quite limited... I would argue that the Late Medieval or perhaps even very early Rennisance periods probably are most applicable. They seem to have the closest match in technologies and culture, to the degree such things can be matched to the Pathfinder setting. If a game were to be set in something analogous to late neolithic earth then alot of the physical and cultural constructs (not just the fantastical stuff) that exist in Pathfinder would be absent.