During our combat exercise the night before last, we ran
into some questions about archers and shooting more than once per turn. I
delved into the books and, after a letter to the editor, I have a comprehensive answer. Note that I ran all of this by GURPS editor Sean Punch, who speaks Word of God . He checked it all off point-by-point and answered a question about bow Acc and Extra Attack (Multi-Strike) as well. Before we get into this, note that all of this is by far more complicated and deep than any of you ever need to go to be good, effective GURPS players. This is about as advanced as GURPS gets. This is GURPS theology here. If you're not interested in playing a Scout, very little, if any of this will apply to your character. Like I say, even if you play a Scout, this is well beyond what is necessary to play an effective one. All that said . . .
Shooting one arrow per turn is easy with the
Heroic Archer advantage from Dungeon Fantasy 1: Adventurers , p. 14 or a greatly-expanded definition of the
same advantage in Martial Arts , p. 45. Let's look at the DF version in detail: "[M]ake a Bow
roll at -3 to ready your bow in no time. [S]uccess lets you attack at
-3 on the same turn!"
With a Fast-Draw (Arrow) roll, then a Bow roll at -3, a
Heroic Archer can shoot immediately at -3 to skill, but gains his Acc bonus (Archie, you
were right about the -3 to skill). Both those -3's are -1's if the archer has
Weapon Master.
In order to shoot two arrows at once in DF,
first, we have the Double Shot technique from Dungeon Fantasy 11: Power-Ups , page 32. It introduces the Unique Technique
(Double-Draw) perk. It allows the archer to draw two arrows with a single
Fast-Draw roll at no penalty, then loose them. We could end the conversation for shooting two arrows in a turn there, but let's take it further.
The Double Shot technique is built upon a
Dual-Weapon Attack (Bow) counting the two arrows as separate weapons,
basically. For those kids who are following along, don't turn to it yet, but
rules for DWA are on page B417. However, the Basic Set doesn't include rules for bows.
The Dual-Weapon Attack maneuver is expanded in Martial Arts on page 83 to include bows.
From Martial Arts , p. 83: "DWA (Bow) lets you shoot two arrows at once from a bow,
possibly at different targets! Heroic Archer halves the default penalty to -2.
Readying a second arrow requires an extra Ready or use of Multiple Fast-Draw (p. MA103)."
In other words, DWA bow lets one shoot two
arrows at once, but both attacks are at -4. Heroic Archer makes that a -2
instead.
However, how does one get two arrows knocked to
sting at once to make a DWA in the first place?
The rules in Martial Arts , p. 103, expands the regular rules for using the Fast-Draw skill and
allows two arrows to be drawn at once at -4 to the roll; that's -2 per item being drawn for a total of -4, halved for Heroic
Archers to -2 and halved again to -1 for Heroic Archers with Weapon Master (Bow).
To summarize, in a Dungeon Fantasy or other
cinematic campaign, the archer makes a Fast-Draw (Arrow) roll at -4 (or -2 with
Heroic Archer) to draw two arrows at once. Then, the archer takes
a Ready maneuver to knock them to string. A Heroic Archer can instead make a
Bow-3 roll and not have to take the Ready maneuver (but see above). After that,
the archer can make a Dual-Weapon Attack using an Attack or All-Out Attack (or Move and Attack for Heroic
Archers) maneuver. Each attack is at -4 to hit, but you can learn the
Dual-Weapon Attack technique (p. B230 or MA83) to reduce this penalty. However, according to Sean Punch, a Heroic Archer add the -3 penalty each to the -4 per attack if he made the Bow-3 roll to attack immediately. "Penalties always stack in GURPS," Punch said. On the bright side, the bow's Acc bonus applies to both attacks, he said: "Acc still applies. It has nothing to do with aiming in this case . . . it's just a feature of Heroic Archer."
So, there we go. That's how an archer shoots
two arrows at once, Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves style. Let's take it one step further to the bleeding edge of GURPS rules. We know how to shoot two arrows at once, but what if the archer wants to yet a third arrow in a turn? Again, the answer is in Martial Arts . Extra Attack (p. B53), has a special enhancement found in Martial Arts , p. 44, called Multi-Strike. An archer with Extra Attack (Multi-Strike) could attack again with a bow if skilled enough to do so. The Fast-Draw roll would now be at -8 (-4 for two previous items, -4 for two more, as p. MA103 says), halved and/or quartered for the Heroic Archer and Weapon Master advantages like normal. However, Martial Arts p. 127, also notes that DWA can only be used once with Extra Attack, so no, you can't again shoot two arrows at once. Well! I think that covers everything. Whew!
