Archery

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House Ruled Physical

Armory Sourcebook p. 208
Preq's	Strength ●● Dexterity ●● Athletics ●●
Level(s)	● (2XP) ●● (6XP) ●●● (12XP) ●●●● (20XP) ●●●●● (30XP)
Venue	All
Possessed By
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Your character has devoted years of practice to the bow. She may be a competitive archer, a low-tech hunter or a medieval history enthusiast.

Dots purchased in this Merit allow access to special combat maneuvers. Each maneuver is a prerequisite for the next. So, your character can’t have “Rapid Nock” until she has “Draw and Loose.” The maneuvers and their effects are described below. All of the following maneuvers work only with bows.

Errata: A character may use either Athletics or Firearms to fire a bow, but without at least one dot of the Fighting Style: Archery Merit, the user suffers a -2 penalty to the attack roll.

Draw and Loose (●)

Your character’s arm muscles are well-toned for the demanding task of repeatedly drawing a heavy bow. She gains +1 Strength for the purposes of a bow’s minimum Strength, Damage and Range.

Rapid Nock (●●)

Your character can maintain a withering rate of fire. Once per turn, she may “reload” a bow as a reflexive action.

Arcing Fire (●●●)

Arrows, like all other projectiles, travel in ballistic arcs. Your character is a master of estimating range, wind and other factors to arc shots much farther than they would travel if fired directly. Double the Ranges of any bow your character uses.

Standard Archery

Plunging Fire (●●●●)

Your character can eschew direct attacks in favor of launching arrows high into the air to plummet straight down on hapless victims. Your character’s bow attacks suffer no penalties for target concealment behind solid objects, so long as the target lacks overhead protection and your character can see any part of the target by which to gauge her location. For example, a target hiding behind a log with her foot sticking out applies no penalty, but a character in a fetal curl on a van’s floorboards receives normal protection.

Drawback: Your character may use this maneuver only outdoors or in enclosed spaces large enough to provide for several hundred feet of vertical flight (e.g., football stadiums).

Combat Archery

Like Fencing, the Archery Fighting Style includes more than one discipline of study.

This branch of Archery retains the same levels ● through ●●●, but offers alternate versions for ●●●● and ●●●●●. A character must declare which they are purchasing, and cannot mix them. If a character wishes to acquire both sets of 4th and 5th dots, the Merit must be purchased again in it's entirety.

Deadly Fire ●●●●

At this level of expertise your character has spent so much time with a bow that she has honed an impressive musculature suited specifically to drawing and loosing arrows, one which allows her to wield a bow with a heavier draw weight as well as achieve a fuller draw without slowing down her rate of fire. This allows her arrows to hit with greater force, giving her +1 to the bows damage, raising it from 2L to 3L.

Speed Archer ●●●●●

Your character's skill with a bow is such that she can unleash several arrows in rapid succession within a scant few seconds (one turn). In a single action, she may make one extra archery attack for a total of two attacks. Also, the archer must declare the targets of each attack before the first attack is rolled (label them within the Dice Roller), and each attack not directed at the initial target is at an additional -1 modifier.

See Also

• Equipment
• House Rule regarding damage
• Secondary branch based on contribution by Cayce