Re: Thought for the day

David Vestal wrote:

> I believe that the arrow is flexing heavily coming off the bow, and is
> more likely to hit cleanly with a moment of stabilization in flight.
> At least, that's what I think I learned from the Mythbuster's
> "splitting an arrow" episode.  So a penalty to-hit or to-dam does make
> a bit of sense.

In that said Mythbusters I remembered one Top Gear episode where agile 
car was "fighting" against attack helicopter (some Apache-variant IIRC). 
Apache had real difficulty getting clean shot to car which was close 
because it needed to turn and twist all of time to keep aiming to the 
car making zig-zag under it. When there was some distance between those 
Apache didn't have any problems getting a clean shot.

That would be pretty analogous to melee-distance bow-using. You have 
hard time getting clean and accurate shot to someone that close, 
especially when you would need to avoid his blows at the same time. Get 
some distance and you no longer need to be dodging from attacking 
melee-opponent and you don't need to turn and twist so hard to get a 
clean shot. In order to get a shot you would need to make "a hip shot". 
Shoot without really aiming. Short distance would make hit probable, but 
without aiming it could as well miss completely or glance off from armor 
without any harm done.

Timo Pietilä