Porcupines?

[charliec9238]

Whilst backpedaling away from enemy combatants and loosing shafts at them, I’ve seen, at times, a head shot where the enemy promptly drops dead. However on other occasions I’ve seen and enemy with an arrow protruding from their unarmored forehead showing no ill effects, other than an increase in cursing and threats. Sort of like the alien in the beginning of Peter Jackson’s “Bad Taste” blundering around with a sledgehammer embedded in his cranium.

In another situation, an enemy had so many arrows protruding from different body parts (including their head) I felt I was fighting a porcupine.

Rather amusing, but also annoying when a bloke just doesn’t die.

[Lieste]

Arrows are often lethal with a single hit. However the lethality is rarely immediate, and it can take upwards of 9 arrows to drop some of the tougher armoured bandits.

Some of the people “killed” with a single arrow get up again later too… I find that most of the time it takes two arrows to finish off the weaker enemies, and sometimes they will run and drop in the woods somewhere. Between 3 and 9 arrows will deal with the rest.

Which is quite within the reasonable range - if not wildly optimistic - knights during the main crusade period often returned with dozens of arrows sticking into their brigandine or maille-over-gambeson, usually with minimal or no injury after encountering Saracen archers. While these are smaller bows, they are fairly high draw weight.

[Ambaryerno]

Also keep in mind that an arrow to the head wouldn’t always be instantly fatal in real life. Just chalk it up to the arrow somehow managing to hit that spot where it enters the brain without hitting a critical part.

Life would probably REALLY suck for the individual afterwards, but the wound itself is survivable.

[Forbidding]

Supposedly 10% of people shot in the head survive. Where it hits and what damage to inflicts to a given area of the brain is what really determines its lethality. I am not sure how far an arrow would pierce the skull compared to a bullet.

[SirWarriant]

I think the time to kill in general just needs worked on. It really kills immersion for me when i slash a man in the head five to six times before he goes down, and that’s on people who aren’t even wearing helmets.

I would like a system where unless you had to aim for gaps in armour with arrows, but I’m not going to hold my breath. If someone is heavily armoured then they should be able to take quite a few arrows, before going down. Some accounts written by Saracens actually describe Crusaders walking around with 10 or more arrows sticking out of their armour, seemingly unhurt. And that was during the 1100s when armour was much less advanced when compared to the time period the game takes place in.

Crossbows should really be the king ranged weapon in this game, due to how many people have armour.

[charliec9238]

I shot one of the two guys coming down off the hill behind Reeky’s dad’s yard at the very beginning of the game - you have to gallop to the Talmberg shopkeeper, buy a bow and couple dozen arrows, then gallop to the hill to catch them before they get to town.

Anyway, I put my first arrow into what I think was they guys left eye (OW!) and he immediately dropped and didn’t get up again. I didn’t have time to look because the other guy was all over me like a cheap suit and I got rather busy…