Arrow damage

Since I always play in full plate, I am curious as to the damage people in other garb receive from arrows. I assume in real life at least 90% of arrows will hit plate and bounce off. However in this game I seem to receive damage from virtually every arrow shot at me, even with lots of defensive skill. Is the damage received proportional to the armor? If so, how in the heck can any one survive when there are several archers in the area? I do survive, but am pretty advanced in level and skills. Seems that a beginner should be protected more just by wearing plate.

 

I always chuckle when people try to apply real life logic to these types of games in an attempt to justify arguments!! In real life I dont see skeletons rising from the ground, or people walking around slinging spells willy nilly!

To try and answer your question using your real life comparisons, Arrows do damage to you regardless of your armour as you are have a Hit pool. In real life one arrow would/could kill you, but in game they whittle your health down. This could be due to the pain of each arrow hitting your armour and crushing it into your body with the force of the shot. Wearing plate armour mitigates a little more of this damage than wearing chain > leather > cloth, but you still take damage. Shields need work, they should offer better protection IF you are actively blocking in the right direction.

From my own experience the damage does seem to be proportional to the armour you wear, but I think these figures need a pass over as they dont seem drastically different for ranged attacks. I do notice greater protection in full plate from melee compared to leather. Archers seem to reduce my HP 3x faster than melee.

 

Mob archers are unrealistic on many levels. They should be very deadly at range, but when you get right next to one they need to switch to melee weapon and block, or use the bow to block (thus damaging it), or just die quickly because they should not be able to continue with pinpoint accuracy and strength. But yes, this is a game that needs mechanics to work. I just think the archers are overpowered when they are mobs, and they are under powered as avatars (from the videos I see). Carrying 500 arrows is absolutely ludicrous as well. I want to see someone try it. Just 2 dozen is a sizable amount. Add gleaning to the mix and this will fix it.

Hopefully I am not straying too far from your OP. No matter what you wear, if there are 3 skeleton archers then I am guaranteed dead, even with my shield which does not block.

 

All this is conjecture for me because I have to imagine it all. I have never worn armor, nor fired a bow much. Imagining a fight, if I had to chose between facing three melee opponents swinging big huge sharp two handed swords at me or facing three archer firing little arrows at my plate, of course I would choose the latter. So far in this game though, I would choose the melee opponents every time.

 

Aldo,

With a focus on realism, plate wearers should be immune to arrow damage, except for a rare crit to the neck or eye socket.

Additional realism, plate wearers should have to fully remove their big metal can every 3-5 minutes during battle to avoid instant death
from heat stroke.

Alternative theory, its all MAGIC!

 

I'm far from an expert but I have some experience from playing around with lots of fun stuff like swords and plate armor, I have also a bit of an interest in medieval history etc.
Generically I'd rather be fighting the melee opponents every time, although in specificity it would depend a lot on the bow and arrow tips and how armored the sword weilders are.

This is simply because you will never catch those bowmen, who can easily surround you and fire point blank straight at your weak points. So almost regardless of bow all they'd have to do is get one behind me and aim for the knee joint and I'd go down.
On top of that if it is good bows with the rigth arrow tips then as soon as I got into point blank range they would start to penetrate my 'semi' protected areas.

So just the fact that the melee opponents would have to come to me would work very much in my favor. But then on top of that melee weapons like swords is exactly what my armor is made to defend against, so I'm pretty much invulnerable to most "swings".

So with three bowmen I'd be almost guaranteed to lose, but with the sword guys I at least have a chance.

 

If they con yellow, it's simple. You don't survive. You die.
Seriously, NPC archers, since they started using Glyphs like Aimed Shot (which can remove 25% - 50% of your HP in one hit, if they're yellow to you) are the most dangerous common enemies in all of Shroud.

The answer to your question is you fight everything except them, then come back and pwn them in the face when their damage is trivialized by your adventure level vs. their level.
For resource acquisition, you don't need to fight them. Now if we could make pulp/paper for recall/teleport scrolls from wood SCRAPS? NPC Archers would be a much bigger deal.

Active abilities like Dodge? They don't work against glyphs, or at least, there's no way to tell, because glyph misses don't go in the combat log. Woops.

 

If it only were that simple...I think this one is worth watching..
English longbows vs medieval plate armour
The take-away message is basically, that experimental archaeology is not an exact science but is rife with bias one way or other, and that yes, warbows were to some extent effective against plate armor, not as a direct hit to say the breastplate, but to the joints and the like.

As to the "realism", or lack thereof in the game, the bows enjoy the smallest strength bonus of almost all weapons (aka "hollywood archery"). Also, perhaps not so much directly related to game mechanisms, except regarding that strength bonus (as heavy armor has strength bonuses), there seems to be widespread belief that real-life archers wore only light armor.

 

Yes! It's quite painful. I typically carry a 1,000 at a time with my Archer/Air/Water build (which I'm really enjoying). And 24 arrows are NOT 1 stone, they are 1.2 (despite the vendor stating otherwise). So if you calculate the max arrows you can carry before going on a skeleton grind, take that into account, otherwise you'll easily become encumbered.

 

I kind of laughed when I saw the amount of arrows for a 'skeleton grind'. IMO, skeletons should be 80% immune to arrows... no fleshy bits, no blood.
But I digress. I am happy with any game's mythos as long as it is consistent.

 

Historically inaccurate, At any one particular point in time /battle , you can say that arrows technology was better or that plate armor technology was better, but you can't generally say that plate wearers were immune to arrow damage.

The long bow and the heavy Crossbow, killed off the use of plate armor in old times because the thickness needed to stop the new higher velocity arrows was too much weight to wear.
This continued an arms war with Plate adding deflective angles, and expensive manufacturing techniques to the armor, to stop the penetration of arrows and arrows increasing velocities and penetration power.
However the expense of the new armor was such that it was reserved for very few on the battle field, and it was never "arrow proof" only "arrow Resistant".
Until the whole thing came crashing down with the common use of gun powder, at which point most foot soldier armor was discarded until modern times, and bullet resistant became a potential and a new arms race began.

 

A lack of defense against archery is a real issue. Critical hits ignore active defenses and archerscrit far more than others.

Even high level shield bearing platemail is inadequate

 

Is this actually the case? As far as I'm aware crits are still impacted by defenses, but happen to overwhelm them. Archery has access to aimed shot which has steep scaling, as well as one skill which actually does ignore armor.

If I am right, the defensive design itself is the problem, and high crit/ high scaling weapons such as Archery just happen to best situated to exploit that weakness.

 

I've been hoping when I get my dex high enough it would mitigate this somewhat. I was hoping that my high dex would mitigate their high dex damage potential.

However actually saying it out loud makes me think, I should stop raising my swords and next patch when targeting is fixed join the ranks of archers instead
(can't beat them join em)

 

. Yes, crits are garunteed to make it past defences at the expense of not getting the crit damage bonus

 

This is why I put down my blade and picked up a bow

 

A slow news day, usually I wouldn't get into this age old nerd debate, as the only way to lose is to participate. Yet I am a slow learner. I started calculating kinetic energy and typical thickness of Middle Ages armor before thinking just Google the answer.

Most articles on the subject of longbows penetrating plate armor state they were NOT effective or inconclusive.

So please state your source for effectiveness. Or don't and we can call a truce.

Source: Google "YouTube longbow vs plate armor".

 

Next debate. Longbow vs Crossbow...

 

Personally, I'd run from either group.

Ironically 2 Handed swords outside of the whole moral effect of facing someone with a very large sword were actually more of defensive type of weapon, waiting for the right time for a large strike.
A miss with 2 handed weapon was usually fatal to the wielder, because they wouldn't be able to get into a defensive position, before their opponent could strike back.
It wasn't like you see on TV with Conan in full on aggressive mode swaying down swaths of enemies before him, with a two handed sword in a single hand.
It was more like the wielder was dancing around the sword and hiding behind it and under it when blows would be headed their way.
Their fighting style usually required two or more position changes to transition the blade from a block position to a strike position.

A two handed sword wielder more often than not actually moved around the blade, rather than swinging the blade around themselves.
It was only after they had built up momentum that the blade would swing out. (their swings had more in common with hurlers, and discus throwers than fencers)

Think of a two handed as a tall long, skinny shield, that needed to build up momentum to strike an effective blow, until then it was a defensive bashing weapon.

 

Lets go for the truce option.
My point was only that at different points in time, the answer was different about which one was more effective, and neither was "garunteed" to defeat the other only more effective during that battle, or less effective during this other time.
There was an ongoing 1up battle that raged on for ages.
The very latest era plate designs were more effective than long bows of that age, however then the battle changed to gun powder, and it became moot.

I believe for every source I can quote that says the pull strength and arrow tips are wrong for a test that failed to penetrate, you'll be able to quote a source that says they aren't.