Intermission: Archery Styles

Styles were added to GURPS Fourth Edition in Martial Arts, and represent a great tool for characterisation and for widening the combat space. Player characters don't just know Broadsword, they know Iaijutsu, which distinguishes them from the random bandits that jump them. Having Style Familiarity also vastly increases the number of perks you have available, as shown in the table below, which can make or break a character. I defy you to build a samurai without at least Grip Mastery and Form Mastery! 

For the GM, the use of combat styles can help with world-building by distinguishing some factions from others, or some players from others. It can also act as a justification for granting enemies abilities and options the players don't have access to, with the added bonus that it might be available at some point (after a long quest to prove their worth, of course). It subtly shifts the responsibility for remembering combat rules from the GM onto players, too: if everyone can Riposte, it's part of the GM's job to remind them of the rules. But if only one player character knows how to Riposte, that's his job - which makes it all the more exciting when he pulls it out to save the day.

So, styles make a great reward for players and the GM alike. Melee fighters are well-served by the styles in Martial Arts, which can be easily adapted to different settings by filing the serial numbers off, and Thaumatology: Magical Styles extends the concept to mages to great effect. But what about ranged combatants? Martial Arts describes four archery styles: Foot Archery, Kyujutsu, Kyudo, and Yabusame. They're nice - especially Foot Archery allowing up to Arm ST +3! - but we can do more by taking some pointers from Gun Fu, which did the same for action-movie gunslingers, and Tactical Shooting, which built styles for realistic shooters, and making some action hero archery styles, after the jump.

Goblin Archery [4]

Being short of stature and cunning of mind, goblin archers emphasise the group ambush, ideally in darkness to take advantage of their Infravision. Practitioners avoid using All-Out Attacks, preferring to keep themselves safe at the cost of accuracy rather than committing to an attack. They make common use of pop-up attacks (B390) and cover, eschewing specific hit locations in favour of hitting something. They rarely fight out in the open, but begin a fight with a volley of poisoned arrows and activated traps to cover their assault troops. When the fight devolves into a melee, they train to take advantage of openings in their foes' defences. 

Skills: Bow; Camouflage; Stealth. 

Techniques: Low Fighting (Bow) (Martial Arts, p77)*.

Perks: Battle Drills (Tactical Shooting, p37); Cool Under Fire (TS38); Dirty Fighting (Dungeon Fantasy 11: Power-Ups, p11); Distraction (Dungeon Fantasy Denizens: Thieves, p19); Poison Mastery (Appendix A); Rope Shooter (Gun Fu, p21); Sure-Footed (Any) (MA52).

*Ranged attacks don't suffer penalties for posture, which would make this technique redundant - if not for the fact that it also reduces defence penalties as well, which the goblins very much appreciate.

Greatbow Fighting [3]

Warriors of a certain size sometimes feel the need to pick up an oversized bow and do some damage from afar. The art of greatbow fighting is to make the most of their tremendous strength. Strongbow and Special Exercises, if bought together, allow use of a bow rated for the combatant's ST +5, placing the strongest longbows (ST 33) in reach of the strongest barbarians and half-ogres. These warriors are usually far more armoured and hardy than their opponents, leaving them almost entirely fearless of reprisal - as a point of pride, they stand well in the open, drawing their massive bows to their maximum and holding them for a pinpoint shot. They don't aim for specific targets - they know their shots are lethal no matter what they hit! 

With great distance, though, comes great opportunity for their foes to dodge. Advanced greatbow training emphasises visualising where their foe will be when the arrow lands, making the most of their arrows - which are in proportion to the bow!

Skills: Bow; Zen Archery. 

Perks: Cinematic Knockback (GF17); Combat Option (Prediction Shots) (MA121); Special Exercises (Arm ST +1), up to three times (MA51); Strongbow (MA51).

Close-Quarters Archery [4]

Attacking from afar is all well and good, but experienced delvers know that often, the enemy can come from anywhere. These warriors train to use their bow, and its ammunition, in the most awkward of places - the melee. They still prefer to engage enemies from a distance, but use their bows and arrows as clubs, daggers, and even garrottes on occasion! Heroic Archers don't need Close Combat, as this is already accounted for in their advantage. They also train to escape the melee with Evade, using acrobatic dodges and rolls to break free and find an advantageous position to snipe from. 

Skills: Acrobatics; Bow; Knife. 

Techniques: Armed Grapple (Bow) (MA67); Close Combat (Bow) (MA69); Evade (MA71); Retain Weapon (Bow) (TS45); Targeted Attack (Bow) (MA68). 

Perks: Akimbo (GF17); Arrow-Fist (Appendix B); Bow-Fist (Appendix C); Form Mastery (Bow) (MA50); Grip Mastery (Bow) (MA50); Off-Hand Weapon Training (Knife) (MA50). 

Dwarven Tunnel Archery [5]

Dwarves usually avoid archery - stubby legs make it hard for them to wield a large bow vertically - but sometimes fierce tunnel fighting induces them to pick up a crossbow. Tunnel crossbowmen focus on defeating and utilising cover in small spaces, making heavy use of pop-up attacks to keep themselves out of the line of fire. They specifically train to target the face, as it is unlikely to be armoured, and practice using the crossbow itself as a weapon to defend themselves in close quarters. Dwarves of means are usually armed with repeating crossbows to better take advantage of enemies appearing from cover!

Skills: Crossbow; Fast-Draw (Arrow); Staff. 

Techniques: Close-Quarters Battle (TS43); Retain Weapon (Crossbow) (TS45); Targeted Attack (Face) (MA68).

Perks: Barricade Tactics (TS37)*; Battle Drills (TS37); Bend the Bullet (GF17); Cool Under Fire (TS38). 

*Where the four-step cover rules seem too fiddly, Barricade Tactics can instead just let a character get an extra -1 to be hit when in cover, in exchange for suffering -2 to hit, which can be negated by an Aim manoeuvre. 

Appendices

Appendix A: Poison Mastery

Poisoning a weapon is generally a long action - it can't be reasonably done in combat. You poison so many arrows that you can declare an arrow you draw to be poisoned as a free action! This does come with some restrictions: you must own the poison, a dose of which is consumed as usual, and you cannot "un-poison" the arrow after the fact. Whether you poison your arrows as you draw them through an obscure technique, or whether you really prepared them in advance (like a Gizmo), is up to you. 

Appendix B: Arrow-Fist

When using an arrow as an improvised dagger, you don't suffer the usual restrictions on damage or risk the arrow breaking. 

Appendix C: Bow-Fist

You've trained to wield a bow in close combat without damaging it. You can strike at foes using Bow skill as though it were a club, dealing thr+1 cr or sw+1 cr at reach 1. This also extends to using the bowstring as a rope garrotte!