Could elves create compound bows using only materials found in average medieval fantasy setting?

So compound bows weren't necessary in the first place.

this is the height of stupidity.

why would they.
they want a bow to shoot farther, they magic it.
they want the arrow to have more power, they magic it.

they have a reliable method of improving things (magic) that they will use, instead of inventing a new method.

Every setting puts limits on magic. Why wouldn't they want to have the best weapon possible before applying magic?

Most D&D is actually in the Renaissance/Early Modern Period technologically actually.

It's probably one of these daily elf thrads, don't think too hard about it.

Why don't they have nukes? Apparently you just have to think about the best weapon ever and then you automatically gain the skill, knowledge, industry and materials to produce said weapon and also everyone will just switch and automatically use? There are usually some stepts between all these things and pre-modern bows worked in general so fine that they probably didn't see any need to advance them beyond that level.

They don't really look like something impossible to make with elf craftsmanship.

I wonder what speeds would a 120lbs compound bow achieve.

Maybe a recurve bow made of natural rubber tree and treated with an "special elf technique"?

Will it do the trick?

>Also stop posting Japanese donkey-eared rape-victims.

You mean rape-enablers.

DOTS they could simply grow compound bows.

I don't know about Elves, but the Dragon-Blooded pulled it off.

>being this butthurt about drawings

Are you going to rant about Aenarion and Fingolfin now?

Seeing you fly into an anally ravaged tirade every time this stuff comes up is honestly worth putting up with these dumb threads.

Why would the Elves need to wait for the Dwarves to do it? The Elves taught the Dwarves how to craft in the first place.

Fuck, did you read the Hobbit? The Dwarves traded up for Elven weapons the first chance they got, because they knew it was superior quality.

Like what the other guy said, guns are pretty cool. The high elves in my setting really put a lot of development into firearms as soon as they got their hands on a hand gonne

Man, Elvish musketeers would basically be pulling shit from that stupid Wanted movie, wouldn't they?

> fire once, curve the bullet to hit enemies behind cover or hit two dudes in a row
> the bayonet on their musket is a better spear than your sword is a sword.

Fucking Elves

>a compound bow is a piece of machinery.
This is really the key bit. It's less a question of materials as it is one of technology -- of figuring out that a system of pulleys can let you draw a very stiff bow with fairly little effort, giving you very good range and power in a very compact and easy-to-draw bow.

Materials-wise, you could theoretically do it just with common steel or the like -- it'd just be heavy and a bit unwieldy. But in your average fantasy setting, you probably have something like mithril, strong and lightweight, which would be ideal for a compound bow. But all the mithril in the world won't help you without that knowledge of pulley mechanics.

I'm pretty sure you can't build the traditional elven impressive cities without knowledge of pulleys. Or equivalent magic.

Fucking elves, man.

I mean, I could. And I'm not an elf. So I would just assume they could. Glue's easy to make when you've got a lot of deer corpses and that's the trickiest part of the whole project.

>Or equivalent magic.
Well, that's the rub, really. Levitation magic can serve the same role as a pulley in construction work, but won't help you at all in making a compound bow.

Also, even if they did use mundane pulleys, it's worth noting that simply having multi-pulley systems that make use of mechanical advantage is not itself sufficient to have the understanding of those principles necessary to come up with composite bows. Block-and-tackle systems have been around since the 1st century, but the compound bow wasn't invented until the 20th.

Honestly, people these days SERIOUSLY underestimate how hard it is to invent shit. It's easy to connect those conceptual dots in retrospect, but coming at it from the perspective of only knowing point A and trying to get from there to point B ain't easy. There's a reason it took so many millenia to get to where we are today, and it ain't because earlier societies were less intelligent. Less *educated*, yes, but education and intelligence are very different things.

I think you're confusing compound bows and composite bows. Compound bows are made with the bowstring run through a pulley system to improve the draw. Composite bows are made from two or more different materials (typically wood, horn, and sinew) laminated together to produce a stronger limb.

No, I am not. You need glue to make a compound bow as well since they're recurves and the strongest recurves are made from composites.

The pulley is a simple lever that people were familiar with even in the middle ages. For that matter, all bows are simple levers unto themselves as they take advantage of the bow as fulcrum to generate force.

So in essence you'd probably need to be familiar with composite bow making and simple levers, but yes. It should be doable. The hardest part would be coming up with a reason to do so when you can simply have people train their entire lives to use 160 pound draw war bows instead.

If we are doing Tolkienesq Elves, they wont have levitation magic.

"Magic" elven gear, according to Tolkien's notes, doesn't actually have any otherworldly property imbued in it. Its just really, really well made.

Yes, even Sting. That dagger glowed when orcs are near not because of a spell, but because the Elvish smith that made it was just that fucking good at metalworking.

So they probably used pulleys, but pulleys so stupidly good at being pulleys that its effectively magic.

So then you need a reason why they would have to invent something like a compound bow with the materials and knowledge they have on hand.

"Hmm, These humans are getting better at crafting armor and shields and our bows just arn't cutting it..."

>Looks outside and sees some laborers raising some building materials with a pulley system

"You know what..."

Nah, you wouldn't use composite limbs in a compound bow. Composite bows are stronger, yeah, but you can get stronger still with other means -- it's just that any much stronger, and you'd end up with something too stiff to draw normally. The whole point of a compound bow is to use pulleys to draw limbs that are too stiff to draw directly. It's not unlike an arbalest, really, except instead of a windlass it uses more of a block-and-tackle type approach.

A compound bow in a fantasy setting would likely be made of metal. Ideally one of those fancy fantasy metals, like mithril. Or maybe ironwood.

True. But when you look at it that way, in a Tolkienesque take on things a "magic elven bow" very well might *just be* a compound bow.

But usually when people talk about an "average medieval fantasy setting" (particularly in the context of this board), I assume more D&D than Tolkien. Which, for all that D&D takes a lot of ideas and trappings from Tolkien, are two very different things.

D&D in general is a kitchen sink of various genres but people try to shoehorn the ye olden fantasy as the default aspect of it which flys in the face of everything the game offers.

Are you retarded?

What do you think compound bows are made out of if not a composite material?

You're not wrong, but that doesn't change the fact that it's usually what most people have in mind when they talk about "generic fantasy".

Well yeah but that has more to do with the settings people probably grew up with. Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, etc.

My own exposure into D&D didn't involve any of the offical settings so for me the ye olden fantasy is not set in my mind when it comes to D&D. If anything , Ebberon would be the closes but I just like Science Fantasy more than regular fantasy in general.

Modern composites =/= medieval composites. I'm deeply skeptical that a composite of medieval fantasy materials like wood and horn would be more effective than just using mithril and calling it a day.

That's great for you, but you have to realize I'm talking about the broader swath of tabletop gamers in general. You're in the minority here, an outlier. Which doesn't necessarily mean your take is wrong or invalid...it just means it isn't appropriate to assume of any given random stranger on the internet.

You'd still want to back the mithril with something that wants to bend. That's rather the entire point of composite bows and composite materials in general is gaining attributes the components don't have separately by leveraging their strengths in tandem.

Modern bows are made of aluminum alloy or carbon fiber precisely because these composite materials have the ability to flex, even if it requires significant strength to do so.

Maybe you should leave the materials science to the adults.

I'm perfectly aware. That's why every topic on the matter assumes D&D because people invariably conflate it with typical fantasy. I'm not arguing against it so much as acknowleding that it is a thing in spite of mine or other's feelings on the matter.

Regardless. We're in a topic about Elven technology

I suppose you're right. My initial point, going back to your first comment about glue, was aiming at the point that glue is not at all the critical component for making a compound bow in a fantasy setting. And I got a bit fixated on the core components there, and didn't really think so much about how those could perhaps be improved by compositing.

To state where I'm coming from more clearly: The more critical factor, materials-wise, in making a compound bow in a fantasy setting is not the ability to make composite materials, but the availability of suitably strong base materials from which to form a composite.

(Though really, more important than all of that is the matter of the compound draw technology, rather than the materials used.)

An elf doesn't need a stronger bow to pierce heavy armor. He just shoots the clumsy human wearing armor directly into the 1/8" eye slit, effortlessly.

actually compound bows don't lessen the effort taken to draw a bow, they just make it very easy to keep it drawn (and smooth out the draw)

>You need glue to make a compound bow as well since they're recurves and the strongest recurves are made from composites.
here's a compound bow
see where the limbs are attached? the limbs are what do the effective bending in any bow, and they're way off at the ends, do think that middle part is going anywhere?
this has different strength needs than a composite or recurve bow
>The pulley is a simple lever that people were familiar with even in the middle ages.
pulley = lever?
cam = pulley?
you don't know what you're talking about
t. archeryfag

It depends, a compound bow can be used more than once without potentially scaring off nearby wildlife

Elves also "Sing" weapons out of trees and shoot arrows harder than steel in some settings.

>Forgetting even about magic for a moment
Your real world logic, which only uses materials from THIS reality doesn't add up in a world that uses materials that don't exist!

Yes. Any race that has access to finer metal working, has discovered the wheel/pulley/fulcrum, and already has a decently developed archery background can make compound bows.

Advanced materials like high-tensile steel, fiberglass, carbon fiber, and aluminum help achieve faster arrow speeds per given arrow weight and make bow a little less fragile and affected by weather. They are not required to make compound bows work.

A compound bow in that setting would be expensive and delicate, requiring a fine metal smith and bowyer working together to craft. Using elven knowledge of wooden material or fantastical animal parts its possible that the limbs of the bow might approach the elasticity and material weight of modern composites though they'd be hard pressed to surpass them.

Its main advantage in that setting probably wouldn't be arrow speed but rather accuracy as the reduced "holding weight" at the end of drawing an arrow would give the archer more time and less muscle strain while holding the draw, letting them aim the shot better.

> average medieval fantasy setting?
> fantasy

..sure.

Why would they even have bows? They should just enchant rocks/sticks to become heat seeking missiles.

and all those guys familiar with the pulley (not a simple lever) never made a compound bow, even though it should be easy. wtf?

hr-giger-designs-a-hunting-bow.jpg

how do you know mithril doesn't bend, or already posses the desired qualities.

simply never had the idea or never the ability to make one even if they could think one up. History is rife with simple as fuck inventions that could have been made with primitive technology and manufacturing. It comes down to either they never had the idea or never had the time/resources to pursue it between not starving/getting_conquered/getting_plague/dying.

Since Mithril confers a substantial dex bonus due to being light and flexible but highly resistant to damage, it probably would bend well enough to be used in a composite bow.

elves should be anally ravaged

question is if its weight and spring-back rate are better then horn or good bowmaking wood (irl or fantasy bullshit)

>but the Solars pulled it off.
Fixed that for you

Just have them make composite bows.

>Why don't they have nukes?

Because they had magic Airships straight out of Final Fantasy armed with magic crystal death lasers.

I'd compound that ass, if you know what I mean.

I'm assuming you mean you thought this thread needed a bump for some reason, though I don't really see much left to discuss

In a lot of settings elves don't have advanced machinery. They compensate with enchanted metallurgy, nature magic, or some other gimmick.

Because something like Sting is less likely to be damaged to the point of needing repairs from field use, while trying to imbue the same microscopic properties onto a bow would make it a royal pain to repair of it were to break as opposed to an easier to disassemble and reassemble compound bow. Of course, the issue with elves is that they don't generally believe in "replaceable parts" versus making each tool of theirs a unique piece of art, which runs into the issue of why they should make compound bows when their own are just as good and A E S T H E T I C.

You've never had a physics class, have you?

(For what it's worth, I almost made our Olympic team. Mostly because archery is fucking childishly simple and the primary hurdle to the team is making the investment to go to the events.)

>Why don't they have nukes?
reductio ad absurdum, user.
if you wanted to argue that way, then there's no reason your fantasy world shouldn't just be using enchanted sticks and rocks for everything, because who needs iron or bronze? we have magic!
anyway, to return to the realm of the sensible: magic doesn't preclude technological progress, and in most settings isn't common enough to make nearly as much of an impact as you'd like
ultimately there's no argument against improving the base materials you're enchanting to get better overall performance - especially during a war, because the other side will be looking for advantages over you, too, and they'll be improving their own equipment in any way they can.
there's also the factor of mass manufacture; it's always going to be easier and cheaper to produce better mundane weapons than it is to produce the worst mundane weapons AND THEN hire wizards to magic them up to a +2.
of course, you could always just produce better mundane weapons and then magic some of them up, but who needs technology, right?

also, something something anti-magic field.

>anally ravaged tirade
one sentence does not a tirade make, user, and he didn't even seem that mad. are you projecting?

From the many aspect of "elves" I always assume it's a thing where they will at least try to learn how to do something themselves and master it to the point they can be self sufficent in it or at least differ to a master of the field if they have no particular interest in learning it themselves.

That said, to answer your question. Such an elf would be particular in maintaining their weapon because they were probably the ones who made it that way even if it wouldn't be practical logistically.

Are you fucking stupid OP?

>almost
That's cool. I didn't make the Olympic team either.

Yeah I just decided the roughly 15 thousand dollar investment to get to all of the prelim events wasn't worth it.

(What, you thought Dressage was the only expensive Olympic sport?)

If fantasy can have retarded shit like gyrocopters or repeating ballistas I see no reason why not.

well we're equally close to the gold, so...

Why couldn't they? Didn't compound bows exist in ancient times.

I would liket o fondle Marcille's ears

You're not seeing the big picture. Compound bows that are ALSO fortified by magic.

>Apparently you just have to think about the best weapon ever and then you automatically gain the skill, knowledge, industry and materials to produce said weapon and also everyone will just switch and automatically use?

Exactly. This is D&D's greatest flaw, in my opinion, even if it is just an issue of expected narrative versus delivered narrative

Forgotten Realms itself is far removed from "ye olde fantasy." At least the modern iteration of it, anyway.

While a forest economy can give you everything you need for a compound bow (animal parts, and combining it with magical tree husbandry is overkill, wood material quality tends to come down to growth patterns- what made the historical longbow so good is that yew happened to grow as a natural laminate in the relevant region, those South Asian woods everybody drools over tend to be cored on various fungal infections altering development), what a crossbow that can give a comparable performance for less effort needs is steel. Good, reliable composition and structure steel and a lot of it. Hard but not brittle gearing, flexible crossbars, everything constructed to reliable patterns, good metal files for fitting out mechanisms... elf economy just better not try.

Well, maybe if they'd be more accommodating to requests for casual intra-party sex like younger races things could be different.

D&D Mystara had elves intentionally hate machines - the cataclysm that caused them to leave their original homeland was made by humans fuggin around with tech too much and elves buying into using that crazy new tech and ignoring their forest ways until it literally set their home on fire. Most of their population died, their lands eventually froze as whatever the hell they were doing caused the planet's axis to shift, more shit happened to cause a chunk of their population to go 'nope' and hide underground for a few hundreds of years and become dark elves (note: not drow, that's a different D&D setting) and the rest finding themselves in some badlands. Elf Moses told them to grow a magical forest here, and thus 2nd edition Alfheim was made.

Elves are trying to avoid the second apocalypse in this setting, so they say fuck you to technology. Everyone knows Faerun and Greyhawk, but people that grew up with Moldvay and Basic D&D were given 'the known world' which eventually became known as Mystara. Dave Arneson's playtest setting used to help create D&D, Blackmoor, was not part of Greyhawk, so TSR stuck it into the distant past of the Mystara setting, and then credited Blackmoor as causing the technological apocalypse that fugged the elves over.

tl;dr: Basic D&D setting is 'the known world' which became Mystara, and in that setting, elves got ass blasted by using ancient tech, so they hate it now

Compound bows and composite bows are a different thing, I believe.

>high elves
>forest

>Come on Marcille, there's nothing weird about sucking your party member's dick
>Sureau used to do it all the time
>Just don't touch my balls, that's gay

Horn, bone, leather, and woods of varying tensile strengths are available in prehistoric times, so yes.

Fucking brain dead pedantic moron.