bows and crossbows detail (Bows And Crossbows)

Bows and Crossbows

Three bow weapons exist: a conventional (recurve) bow, a compound
bow, and a crossbow. All three check against the Bows Skill,
weighted by Strength, Dexterity (x2), and Perception (x2) -- the same
shape every other armed Skill uses, at your full Skill rating.
Whoever you're fighting defends with Athletics, exactly like every
other armed attack.

Arrows and bolts are real, physical ammunition

A conventional or compound bow fires arrows; a crossbow fires
bolts. These are two separate, incompatible ammunition families --
a crossbow will refuse to load an arrow, and a bow will refuse to
load a bolt. Both are ordinary physical objects: carryable, stackable,
tradeable, droppable, lootable, exactly like loose firearm rounds.

    load <bow> with <arrows>
    reload <bow> with <arrows>
    unload <bow>
    weaponstatus <bow>

All three bows use a single internal chamber -- nock/load one arrow
or bolt, fire it, and the chamber is empty again until you load
another. There is no magazine to swap; loading is always one
projectile at a time, the same cadence a revolver's cylinder uses.

A fired projectile isn't necessarily gone

Unlike a firearm's bullet, arrows and bolts don't just vanish when
fired. A shot that misses may leave its arrow or bolt lying wherever
it landed -- an ordinary object anyone can pick up. A shot that hits
may leave its projectile still with whatever it hit, recoverable the
same way. There is no special "retrieve arrow" command -- an ordinary
`get` handles it, whether it's sitting on the ground or need be taken
from what you just shot.

See also:

    help firearms
    help blades and melee weapons

For builders/staff

Prototype keys: `conventional_bow`, `compound_bow`, `crossbow`.
Ammo product IDs: `standard_arrow` (caliber `arrow`), `standard_bolt`
(caliber `bolt`). Spawn a weapon with the normal builder spawner
(`@spawn conventional_bow` or similar); spawn loose ammunition with
the existing generic ammo-spawn command:

    @spawnammo/loose standard_arrow=20
    @spawnammo/loose standard_bolt=20

`weaponstatus <weapon>` reports the same readiness/loaded-ammo/fire-
mode summary every other weapon does. To exercise projectile
recovery: fire at a disposable target, then `look` the room (a miss)
or the target/corpse (a hit) for the recovered arrow/bolt object, and
`get` it back. Recovery is currently deterministic -- every fired
projectile survives, on both a hit and a miss; destruction odds are
explicitly open/unbalanced future tuning, not yet wired to any roll.

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