Neverwinter Nights 2 Persistent World BGTSCC Discussion Forum
https://bgtscc.net/
Thal wrote:The egyptian, as Thal L'Nygurath. Just put his eyes red, darken skin, and white longer hair.
In media, the bow, one of the ancient world's most effective ranged weapons, has nowhere near the punch it has in Real Life. A character struck with an arrow need only grab the shaft and yank it out with little more than some momentary discomfort, then go back to doing whatever they were doing. If they're too busy in the middle of a melee, they can just leave them in place and deal with them when things settle down.
If you've gotten your knowledge about bows and arrows from the media, it's understandable that you'd think they were easy-to-use but relatively useless weapons. Needless to say, this is yet another area where Hollywood gets it wrong. Frequently.
What really put the bow and arrow out of business as a weapon of war was the rise of increasingly cheap plate armor that forced archers to loose at shorter and shorter ranges to have any chance to penetrate. Combine this with the advantages that firearms had over most warbows (better armor penetration, horrific wounds, able to be used prone and behind cover, and shooters suffering less fatigue) and you see the bow finally being put to rest sometime in the 16th century.
An arrow hit on a lightly armored or unarmored person might knock them off their feet. Trying to continue doing anything with an arrow sticking out of you is difficult at best, although whether the difficulty is primarily physical or psychological is dependent on where the arrow is sticking.
Attempting to pull out an arrow will only make things worse - historically, arrowheads were not firmly adhered to their shafts. Sometimes they were attached with a blob of candlewax, but usually the archers would simply spit on the shaft before sticking the head on - thus, snapping the shaft (a lot more difficult than Hollywood makes it look, as they were made from the hardest woods available so they would fly further and straighter), was completely pointless, as pulling on the shaft would leave the arrowhead inside the wound. The only way to remove one was to widen the wound, either with a knife or by wiggling it around. And as archers would usually stick a number of arrows in the dirt at their feet in preparation for firing them, this meant arrow wounds always became badly infected. The only way to deal with an arrow quickly was to push it through until the head came out the other side. A hit from an arrow was never "just a flesh wound".
Scale armor (the first effective common metal armor, used by many cultures in the Fertile Crescent even to Sumerian times) provided some protection from arrows, with a narrower point required to punch through. While we usually don't think of chain mail as protective against arrows, the multiple thicknesses typical of chain armor were very effective in stopping arrows. Rings would be lost when an arrow struck with force and the armor would have to be repaired later. (It sure beat being killed or severely injured by an arrow wound, though.) Plate armor stopped arrows cold, but was very expensive (at least at first), and a lucky hit was still possible.
A form of "Worst Aid". May play a part in a "Rasputinian Death" and can easily invoke "Human Pincushion". Contrast "Bulletproof Human Shield", "Guns Are Worthless", "Almost Lethal Weapons" where it's the modern-day firearms that get similarly shafted. A common justification is to make the pull-ee the "Implacable Man" or "Made of Iron". Almost always averted when it comes to "Arrows on Fire", because, well...they're on fire. For slings being treated similarly, see "Suffer the Slings".