Bow vs. Crossbow?

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What advantages does a crossow have over the standard bow & arrow? Why would someone choose a crossbow is given a choice?

Feel free to discuss ninja throwing stars as well if you feel the need to do so.

[MoreWineII]

I've always been partial to crossbows, but I can't really explain why.

And by partial, I mean I've never come close to firing either one, but if I had to pick I'd go xbow.

I did fire a slingshot once though.

[Nottom]

I think they might have more power behind them for the size, but I'm not an expert in medieval weaponry or anything.

[Voltron87]

crossbow. duh.

[stabn]

You can keep an arrow cocked in a crossbow.

[brassnuts]

I've heard that crossbows are more powerful but less accurate. I have no idea how accurate this info is though.

[thirddan]

i would never choose a throwing star over a crossbow...but thats just me...

[stabn]

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i would never choose a throwing star over a crossbow...but thats just me...

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What about four throwing stars or one x bow and one arrow?

[[censored]]

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i would never choose a throwing star over a crossbow...but thats just me...

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You have revealed yourself to be not a ninja. We are only left to wonder how much this mistake will cost you.

[The Armchair]

Any moron can use a crossbow (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossbow#Use), but using a longbow takes actual skill.

[gorie]

low level nuke.

[swede123]

Crossbows offer more power, accuracy, and shooting distance compared to a similar sized regular bow. In addition to this they had a little mechanism to string the weapon (cock it) meaning any simple soldier could easily become powerful enough to take down a knight with armor and everything. Longbows on the other hand took a whole lot of strength to string and were more difficult to shoot. Crossbows became so powerful the pope actually had to come out and denounce them (if used against Christians) since they enabled foot-soldiers to bring down cavalry.

Swede

[d10]

If we're talking medieval times, you would only choose a crossbow if you had no skills. Otherwise, long bows completely owned crossbows. Crossbows had no advantage over longbows at all, other than the fact that anyone could use one. The English made the French look like, well, the French, in the 100 Years War thanks in large part to their archers.

[Blarg]

I've never seen crossbows compared to longbows without it being noted that crossbows were far better at penetrating the armor of fully armored knights.

As to distance, as someone mentioned, I could be wrong, but my understanding was that longbows shot for a greater distance.

[gumpzilla]

That would be rather strange. Naively, one would expect that armor penetration would correlate highly with the speed of travel, which obviously is linked to distance. Upon a little more reflection though, it occurs to me that arrows with their longer shafts might be more likely to break and disperse energy in that way on the armor than the shorter bolts, so perhaps this isn't as paradoxical as it sounds.

[Jeff W]

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What advantages does a crossow have over the standard bow & arrow? Why would someone choose a crossbow is given a choice?

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By far the greatest advantage of crossbows was that they were easier to use.

Crossbows are better at penetrating plate armour.

Crossbows can be pre-loaded.

The longbow was superior because of it's rate of fire(more than 2x that of the crossbow IIRC).

[Blarg]

I've heard different things about loading crossbows, but all pointed out how slow it was. You had to crank and crank, and on some models people had to use their feet, etc. Quite a production.

English bowmen practiced like crazy, and there was even one day of the week put aside where Englishmen were required to practice, I think I remember reading or seeing on some documentary. They were very fast with it. I do remember seeing a documentary recently where untrained people were trying to figure out how many arrows the English longbowmen were capable of firing per minute per square foot of land. They all got some bows, got not a whole lot of training, and had at it, shooting into a certain section of a field, then counted up how many they each shot and how many arrows landed per square foot for just their small clutch of less than a dozen untrained archers. It was a pretty impressive number even with these guys; I have no reliable idea of the number of arrows they got off on average except my impression was that it was over a dozen easily for even the worst of them, and some got about 20 per minute, and the little section of field they chose was thick enough with arrows that basically anyone standing there would have been hit at least once. Even these middle aged dudes could produce that "hail" of arrows that sounds so terrifying when you think of it.

So a crossbow definitely took a very big back seat on speed.

[d10]

At least 3x as fast, and that's with a not very complicated crossbow.

Preloading is nice, but you aren't going to preload your crossbow unless you plan on using it. And if you planned on using it, you could just as easily put an arrow on your bowstring and have it pulled back by the time you take aim.

The bows used in the documentary you're thinking of weren't the same kind as they used in medieval England. Those bows required on average 150lbs of force to pull back 1 foot x 3 feet to fully extend = more force than anyone with not a lot of training could ever fire. Although I guess it would demonstrate the speed of a bow well. A good archer could fire off 12-15 well aimed arrows/minute.

[Blarg]

Yeah, there's no way the guys I saw would be pulling 150 lbs.

Interesting stuff. The bow and arrow was one hell of a clever invention.

[EliteNinja]

Ninja throwing stars are also known as Shuriken.

They were designed so that if they were to glance off someone, they would land far away from the victim. This would impart fear into the ninja's enemy as it would seem that the victim had been struck by an invisible blade. Thus is the origin of the legend ninja's invisibility powers.

[-Skeme-]

Throwing stars are hard to throw accurately. Maybe it's just because I have bad aim.

[Ringo_Mojo]

The British longbow was quite an amazing weapon. Even after the introduction of early firearms, British archers were still superior in speed, accuracy and range. Unfortunatly it took a day to train a typical musketeer and over two years to train a skilled longbowman.

<-- Watches a lot of the history channel.

[Blarg]

If I had cable, I'd probably have the History Channel on constantly.

[whiskeytown]

crossbow has more power -

however, you can get more shots off with a bow and arrow - the crossbow takes longer to load and fire-

RB

[Ray Zee]

present days-- it has no advantage unless you dont know how to shoot a bow. the crossbow aims easy like a gun. too slow and cumbersome to carry around. new coumpound bows negate power advange over crossbows speed of arrow.

olden days. your expendable soldiers could learn to fire them in short order.