Well, the way I see it is:

The weapon firing the missile determines a) how hard it is to parry and b) the damage the ammunition does initially. Eg: A longbow is Huge and does 1d8 damage whereas a shortbow is Large and does 1D6 damage.

The "size" of the ammunition determines the penalty for being impaled. After all, an arrow is an arrow regardless of how it got stuck into you and so the penalty for it hampering your skills should remain constant.

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This is how I read it, too. The size of the weapon measures the penetrative power of that weapon or its ammunition to determine whether the blow overcomes a shield parry.

I suppose if you really wanted to get chunky you could assign lengths to the bolt or shaft to better measure the quality of an Impale. I think that's a bit overkill, if you'll pardon the expression.

Fire an ogre bow, with a bolt the size of a small tree trunk and THEN you could be -40%....! otherwise I agree, an arrow is an arrow and at best 5mm wide.

However the HEAD of the arrow makes a difference. There were arrowheads specifically designed to stay inside the flesh and rip open a nasty gash when pushed or pulled out. If the arrow went clean through though then you would pull it out following the same direction it went in and not worrying about the flights as they wouldn't do anything (or snap them off first).

Ah, yeah. Arbalest bolts and stuff would certainly be larger than an arrow and raise the penalty somewhat.



RQ6 specifically mentions barbed items I believe...

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Even modern longbow arrows are wider than 5mm, typically 8-11mm. Those fired from the more powerful bows are even heavier. Having a 5mm arrow in you is one thing (I know! ); I'd really _not_ have a heavier one.

See http://www.quicksarchery.co.uk/superbasket/category/283/Wooden+Shafts for samples of modern shafts for target archery (as opposed to combat archery).

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Not to mention the fact that a heavier bow will push such an arrow further into the tissue of your target, giving much worse penalties.

I know that 40% might seem like a lot, And it probably is, but I'd find 10% to be ridiculously low to have a longbow arrow protruding from somewhere in your body and still trying to fight. I'd at least administer a 20% penalty, perhaps even a 30% penalty.

Anyway the rules go either way, because the standard rules would apply a -40% penalty, but this may be counteracted by a parenthesis.

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I understand where you are coming from, but I will have to agree to disagree with you on the above. The "standard rules" clearly state that piercing weapons impose a penalty based on their size. The longbow is not the piercing weapon, the arrow is and the example (in brackets) clearly shows this.

When you start making all kinds of situational modifiers for this type of thing, where do you stop? OK, I'm shot with a longbow at long range, surely the velocity of the missile is now decreased, lessening it's impact, which should reduce the penalty for being impaled. At close range (or closer) by using modifiers, the penalty would be increased. It is a game, not an exercise in mathematics. When people try to over rationalise or try for too much realism, IMO, it creates layers of complexity that are simply not needed.

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I believe this is where we disagree, I'd say something that fires a missile is the weapon, and the missile is just that. The missile.
I wouldn't consider a 7.62-bullet a weapon, but an AK47 I would. Same goes for bows and arrows. The size of the weapon is H, it imposes a -40% penalty.


I agree, luckily just taking the Size of the weapon solves this, so a short bow is L, a longbow is H and an arbalest is E. That corresponds to a -30% ; -40% and a -50% penalty.

Either way, the argument that using impale as a valuable debuff on range still stands, even just a -10% cumulative penalty is pretty useful.

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Well, this way the penalty for an arrow would be the same as
the penalty for a lance (Size H), which I find less than convin-
cing ...

You can't go by the size of the weapon to determine the Impale penalty, you need to go by the size of the missile. The weapon determines the missiles penetrative power and initial damage - nothing more. As Rust points out above there is a significant difference between functioning with an arrow in your arm and a Lance or Javelin regardless of how the arrow got stuck into you!

Also, an arrow can be used as a weapon if desperate, albeit a fairly ineffectual one. The same cannot be said of bullets.

With due respect and not being an expert in ballistics, I would suggest that bullets regardless of caliber be treated as small - so when Impaled by a firearm the penalty would be -10%. The initial damage is quite a different issue as are situational modifiers for trying to remove bullets which are significantly more difficult to remove than an arrow or similar.

Notwithstanding, I would rule that any missile attack that causes a major wound would only inflict the Impale penalty (all other benefits of the Impale CM stand) if the target made the successful Resistance roll. On a fail, they are taken out of combat anyway and if the location struck is a limb it has probably been severed which means there is nothing left to Impale!

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