Bows are just carved staves with a piece of cord. Yeah, the shape is a bit more complicated than a quarterstaff, but still just carved wood, not first class wood art. Why are they so expensive, more expensive than swords? The iron and steel materials themselves should be expensive in societies with low tech. Not wood.
They should cost a maximum of 1 gold piece instead of 25 and 50. Just compare them to quarterstaves with 2 sp cost.
Medieval quarterstaves were made from hardwood, and are not intended to be bent for a bow. Longbows were made from Yew (a softwood) that has to be carefully shaped and aged.
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While I agree that bows should cost less than Swords in a purely logical sense, you're talking about them as though they're just wood and string. A longbow that can be used reliably and accurately for an adventurer is a complicated machine. I don't know if you've ever tried to make your own bow before... not necessarily as like...a craftsman or anything, but even if you were ever a kid who found a cool stick and had some bungee cords with you, but anyway... it's very easy to make a very basic bow that can maybe launch an arrow across a room, it is much harder to craft a bow with the precision and durability to accomplish what players pull off in 5e.
That said... I think the cost is mostly a game balance thing. Bows output some solid damage from long distances. A weapon's price in 5e isn't just dependent on how expensive one would be to craft out of materials in the real world... it's also adjusted based on how mechanically useful it is in the game. It's not always the case... a trident is identical to a spear in function, but still costs more because they're "harder to make", but it's still a factor, in general, when prices are settled on for in-game items.
Dunning Kruger effect. Long bows are not cheap and never have been. You know nothing about them and assumed they are easy to make.
Currently a real bow made using historical methods costs well over $100. Good ones cost over $1,000.
Here is what you need for a long bow.
The right wood, grown especially for it. No, you can't just use any wood. When they ran out of Yew, they passed a law to allow other types of wood to be used.... for practice bows. Not war bows.
The wood is taken from a particular part of the tree with one side being the bark side and another the heartwood part. Has to lumberjacked with skill, which costs more money.
The wood must be dried for over a year. Storage etc costs $$$
Someone that knows how to cut the wood for a specific draw weight. It costs 10 cents for the part to fix the car, $100 to know which part. This skill is expensive and the people that have it know it. You pay extra for a 'masterwork' item, and the long bows qualify.
The bow must also be shaped for accuracy. The form is not meaningless.
You also need the string capable of holding up to that draw weight - and a bit more just to be safe. Oh and it has to deal with water well. Sometimes they used silk - do you think that was cheap?
You might want some varnish on the bow as well. Wax, resin, and tallow make for higher costs
Dunning Kruger effect. Long bows are not cheap and never have been. You know nothing about them and assumed they are easy to make.
Currently a real bow made using historical methods costs well over $100. Good ones cost over $1,000.
Here is what you need for a long bow.
The right wood, grown especially for it. No, you can't just use any wood. When they ran out of Yew, they passed a law to allow other types of wood to be used.... for practice bows. Not war bows.
The wood is taken from a particular part of the tree with one side being the bark side and another the heartwood part. Has to lumberjacked with skill, which costs more money.
The wood must be dried for over a year. Storage etc costs $$$
Someone that knows how to cut the wood for a specific draw weight. It costs 10 cents for the part to fix the car, $100 to know which part. This skill is expensive and the people that have it know it. You pay extra for a 'masterwork' item, and the long bows qualify.
The bow must also be shaped for accuracy. The form is not meaningless.
You also need the string capable of holding up to that draw weight - and a bit more just to be safe. Oh and it has to deal with water well. Sometimes they used silk - do you think that was cheap?
You might want some varnish on the bow as well. Wax, resin, and tallow make for higher costs
This makes me curious what a longbow costs in historic times. A quick Google search didn't yield anything that sited original sources. I imagine there are probably treasury reports, war time expense reports, or something else that could be referenced as an original source. But history and historical research is not my forte so I don't know how to go looking for such sources.
The hart wood is the dark colored center and the soft wood is the lighter colored outer section.
For an old English long bow made from a single peice of wood you would place the darker hart wood to the front of the bow and the softer wood facing the archer.
Hart wood does not compress but softwood does.
You would carve each limb differently testing the bend of each as you go. They have to stay the same both above and below the hand grip.
The draw strength on one of those bows was anywhere from 60lbs to75lbs for a starter bow to 110lbs for a combat bow. Combat bows were able to drive a metal tipped arrow through a metal breastplate every time.
The profe3tional archers would actually grow extra bone attaching their tendons to their back and shoulders from all the practice.
The string itself was not simple string. It was tendon harvested from the best cattle's backbone. It was also the preferred cord for a garrote. Wire at the time was to fragile for anything but jewelry.
So a good bow was anything but a stick and string.
This British other swordmaker has more fancy bastard swords so let's see his cheaper arming swords: 1100 pound. These have scabbards, too. https://www.castlekeep.co.uk/swords/#medieval
But there are cheaper ones of course from about $350. These are probably not from Asia.
Yes, there are historical prices for bows. See Randall Storey's thesis. A bow cost 9 denars in average while swords cost 41 denars. Quality is not known, they were calculated from 14-15 samples. Britain, 1250-1350
My question there would be 'What for a bow is that?' Is a simple hunting bow the same price as a longbow/war bow?
Note the crossbow prices in that link: 25d/50d/79d for light/heavy/arbalest
I am guessing that 9d is the price for a simple hunting bow.
Translation: I don't like the facts from sources, so I will ignore them.
Pardon? I am not ignoring the source at all. I am actually paying more attention to it than you are. Answer the question: Exactly what bow is that for 9 pence?
Oh, you definitely do. The list doesn't mention 'hunting bows' nor 'war bows', yet you interpret bows as 'hunting bows' based on ... nothing.
For one the market was set by the king. It was against Kings Law to buy something in one area and sell it at a profit in another. The price of all things was set by the king and only changed by the king.
Crafts guilds would petition the king to set the price for their services and goods. If a roofer in a village altered his prices he could be jailed for the offense.
And the King would never price himself out of a good or service.
Plus smiths always has a small force of semi skilled workers who did most of the real work. a good smithy could put out a short sword a day.
The bower or fletcher almost always worked alone. If he produced a bow or two a week he was lucky.
The king needed a 10 to 1 ratio of swordsmen to archers. It was harder to train and equip archers.
Remember that prices in the D&D book are flexible. Consult your DM for the actual prices.
At one point in history archery was outlawed because the king could not regulate wooded weapons. The simple possession of a bow was a jailable offense. At other times archery was encouraged by the king because he wanted more trained archers for the army.
If you look back to AD&D there was actually more different bows available.
5e has reduced the list of weapons down to what they thought the public wanted. And at the time no one wanted to be archers. It was not a stand up and fight ability.
That was a tax free day on church grounds agreed to by the local church and the king. The local church used those days to "help" the poor sell their goods. The poor were expected to donate to the church the saved tax moneys.
It was a day for the normal citizen to sell the goods he personally grew or made. It was not intended for the average merchant.
I was speculating that the bows were hunting bows based a lack of clarity of bow type and on price comparison with the crossbow prices. I thought I had made that clear. However, on your insistence, I have done a deeper dive.
The thesis, in the section The Cost of Armaments, uses the word 'bows' precisely once... says the prices were stable, but does not give any sources and immediately starts discussing arrow prices and then dives straight into crossbows and crossbow prices.
Plus this lovely line: " 'Price' denotes either value of purchase or cost of manufacture as the exact nature of acquisition is not always evident."
In other words, the prices are not all apples to apples comparisons. The bow prices could be just raw materials costs, for all we know. Or alternatively, just the finishing costs. Prices for crossbow strings are given, but none at all for bows.
So, what comeback do you have other than insisting that you must be right because I have not conclusively proven you wrong?
This is true for swords as well. How do you know if a sword was made for war or it was just a cheap short sword for citizens? So you should ignore the whole thesis.
There are uncertainties always in such cases. Still, 14-15 samples are a lot for a single type of item.
Btw hunting bows are not very different to longbows. They are a bit thinner, and probably a bit shorter, but not that much.
I really appreciate the link to Technology and Military Policy in Medieval England, c.1250-1350 Csatadi, thank you! I haven't managed to pull up the exact sources it sites in its bibliography but I did find other volumes for some of the referenced publications. So to me it seems to be as good a source as we are likely to find.
I haven't read the whole thing but I do want to point out that in Appendix II it provides tables for what appear to be bulk orders by the crown to supply its armies. This provides even less specific information than Appendix I as some purchases include multiple items for a single listed price. However, these items are for the specific purpose of outfitting an army and so removes the uncertainty about the intended use of the items. Also these prices likely reflect a more consistent quality as they need to be able to withstand combat while being as easily producible as possible.
The purchases with data relevant to us were made in 1242 and 1285 as they contain a price for a "Bow" and a "Sword and Knife". In 1242 the cost of a bow was 40% the cost of a "Sword and Knife" and in 1285 the cost of a bow was ~37% the cost of a "Sword and Knife". So it is quite apparent that at the times of these orders a "Sword" was more expensive than a bow. The only way for this to not be true is if the "Knife" constituted more than 60% of the cost of the "Sword and Knife" line item.
The closest we can get to this ratio via D&D 5e weapon prices is to compare a Shortbow to the combined cost of a Greatsword and Longsword. This yields a relative cost ratio of ~38% so that is pretty spot on. However, I doubt anyone would agree that the "Sword and Knife" the orders referred to would actually match up with a Greatsword and Longsword.
So to me it is apparent that the cost of weapons in D&D were determined more by the needs of the game, rather than historical accuracy.
A really good sword is still made of primarily iron, what is important is crafting process and skill of the smith. But when making a really good bow, what you need is a properly grained wood, you can not just use any part of the tree for a bow, even if it is yew or mulberry, you need a branch with proper rings/lines/grain... Even in todays economy a good handmade two handed sword and a good handmade longbow have similar prices. So no, it is a not a stick with a string, you can not shoot effectively to 200m with a stick/string.(though in reality a proper longbow is capable of shooting to farther than that which is kinda errored in dnd, i do have masterwork 120lb and 180lb longbows made of maple and yew and they are both capable of shooting targets further than 600 feet) The latter i bought for nine hundred bucks in 2011, and for that price you can buy multiple good swords where i live(Turkey). The problem is arrow costs in DnD imho, arrows that are meant for actualy combat or hunting is much more expensive than those meant for training, and even training arrows which are made traditionally are expensive irl, while they are kinda negligble in game... (whole economical misundertanding comes from the currecy exchange rates in todays world, US and EU citizens think everything as their cost in dollars and euros, that was not the case for people in past, a farmer could easily buy a sword but he did not want it, he needed a scythe instead thus he bought one(bought does not necessarily mean he paid in coins or cash), a farmer gets a scythe and the smith gets some food, a proper scythe requires more workmanship and similar amount of raw materials when compared to a proper sword, so in practice it is not less expensive, though that is/was not the case in DnD pricing. And in reality most people in the past had enough knowledge in carpentry and smithing to make themselves these tools and weapons, but they lacked the knowledge to craft masterwork ones, a farmer could make an iron scythe but not a steel one. Same goes for bows, many people knew making a bow with Mulberry(and it's relative species) wood in Asia and even America(American Indians)but crafting a masterwork composite longbow, or even a selfbow was considered an art in most socities. A composite war bow required maple, ox horn, innards of specific fish for Hunnic Bows, and maple wood was almost always gathered from 17 years old trees(it was a custom)... So no again, it simply is not a stick and a string.
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Bows are just carved staves with a piece of cord. Yeah, the shape is a bit more complicated than a quarterstaff, but still just carved wood, not first class wood art. Why are they so expensive, more expensive than swords? The iron and steel materials themselves should be expensive in societies with low tech. Not wood.
They should cost a maximum of 1 gold piece instead of 25 and 50. Just compare them to quarterstaves with 2 sp cost.
Medieval quarterstaves were made from hardwood, and are not intended to be bent for a bow. Longbows were made from Yew (a softwood) that has to be carefully shaped and aged.
Helpful rewriter of Japanese->English translation and delver into software codebases (she/e/they)
While I agree that bows should cost less than Swords in a purely logical sense, you're talking about them as though they're just wood and string. A longbow that can be used reliably and accurately for an adventurer is a complicated machine. I don't know if you've ever tried to make your own bow before... not necessarily as like...a craftsman or anything, but even if you were ever a kid who found a cool stick and had some bungee cords with you, but anyway... it's very easy to make a very basic bow that can maybe launch an arrow across a room, it is much harder to craft a bow with the precision and durability to accomplish what players pull off in 5e.
That said... I think the cost is mostly a game balance thing. Bows output some solid damage from long distances. A weapon's price in 5e isn't just dependent on how expensive one would be to craft out of materials in the real world... it's also adjusted based on how mechanically useful it is in the game. It's not always the case... a trident is identical to a spear in function, but still costs more because they're "harder to make", but it's still a factor, in general, when prices are settled on for in-game items.
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Dunning Kruger effect. Long bows are not cheap and never have been. You know nothing about them and assumed they are easy to make.
Currently a real bow made using historical methods costs well over $100. Good ones cost over $1,000.
Here is what you need for a long bow.
This makes me curious what a longbow costs in historic times. A quick Google search didn't yield anything that sited original sources. I imagine there are probably treasury reports, war time expense reports, or something else that could be referenced as an original source. But history and historical research is not my forte so I don't know how to go looking for such sources.
The hart wood is the dark colored center and the soft wood is the lighter colored outer section.
For an old English long bow made from a single peice of wood you would place the darker hart wood to the front of the bow and the softer wood facing the archer.
Hart wood does not compress but softwood does.
You would carve each limb differently testing the bend of each as you go. They have to stay the same both above and below the hand grip.
The draw strength on one of those bows was anywhere from 60lbs to75lbs for a starter bow to 110lbs for a combat bow. Combat bows were able to drive a metal tipped arrow through a metal breastplate every time.
The profe3tional archers would actually grow extra bone attaching their tendons to their back and shoulders from all the practice.
The string itself was not simple string. It was tendon harvested from the best cattle's backbone. It was also the preferred cord for a garrote. Wire at the time was to fragile for anything but jewelry.
So a good bow was anything but a stick and string.
@Mog_Dracov
Okay, let's see the price of battle ready replica swords. For example these makers are British, not cheap Chinese or Indian stuff.
The cheapest bastard swords (= versatile DnD sword) at Albion swords cost $1085 https://www.albion-swords.com/NEXTGEN HAND AND A HALF SWORDS.html
This British other swordmaker has more fancy bastard swords so let's see his cheaper arming swords: 1100 pound. These have scabbards, too. https://www.castlekeep.co.uk/swords/#medieval
But there are cheaper ones of course from about $350. These are probably not from Asia.
So compare these to the $100 bow.
@TheGnome5786
Yes, there are historical prices for bows. See Randall Storey's thesis. A bow cost 9 denars in average while swords cost 41 denars. Quality is not known, they were calculated from 14-15 samples. Britain, 1250-1350
https://web.archive.org/web/20151207205040/http://www.randallstorey.karoo.net/thesis.html
Translation: I don't like the facts from sources, so I will ignore them.
Oh, you definitely do. The list doesn't mention 'hunting bows' nor 'war bows', yet you interpret bows as 'hunting bows' based on ... nothing.
Read the thesis if you need your answers.
I would not quote the historic price of anything.
For one the market was set by the king. It was against Kings Law to buy something in one area and sell it at a profit in another. The price of all things was set by the king and only changed by the king.
Crafts guilds would petition the king to set the price for their services and goods. If a roofer in a village altered his prices he could be jailed for the offense.
And the King would never price himself out of a good or service.
Plus smiths always has a small force of semi skilled workers who did most of the real work. a good smithy could put out a short sword a day.
The bower or fletcher almost always worked alone. If he produced a bow or two a week he was lucky.
The king needed a 10 to 1 ratio of swordsmen to archers. It was harder to train and equip archers.
Remember that prices in the D&D book are flexible. Consult your DM for the actual prices.
At one point in history archery was outlawed because the king could not regulate wooded weapons. The simple possession of a bow was a jailable offense. At other times archery was encouraged by the king because he wanted more trained archers for the army.
If you look back to AD&D there was actually more different bows available.
5e has reduced the list of weapons down to what they thought the public wanted. And at the time no one wanted to be archers. It was not a stand up and fight ability.
That was a tax free day on church grounds agreed to by the local church and the king. The local church used those days to "help" the poor sell their goods. The poor were expected to donate to the church the saved tax moneys.
It was a day for the normal citizen to sell the goods he personally grew or made. It was not intended for the average merchant.
This was to help pay for the church buildings.
Go to Home Depot, buy yourself a piece of wood and some string, and make yourself a longbow.
You'll find out real quick why bows cost so much.
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This is true for swords as well. How do you know if a sword was made for war or it was just a cheap short sword for citizens? So you should ignore the whole thesis.
There are uncertainties always in such cases. Still, 14-15 samples are a lot for a single type of item.
Btw hunting bows are not very different to longbows. They are a bit thinner, and probably a bit shorter, but not that much.
I really appreciate the link to Technology and Military Policy in Medieval England, c.1250-1350 Csatadi, thank you! I haven't managed to pull up the exact sources it sites in its bibliography but I did find other volumes for some of the referenced publications. So to me it seems to be as good a source as we are likely to find.
I haven't read the whole thing but I do want to point out that in Appendix II it provides tables for what appear to be bulk orders by the crown to supply its armies. This provides even less specific information than Appendix I as some purchases include multiple items for a single listed price. However, these items are for the specific purpose of outfitting an army and so removes the uncertainty about the intended use of the items. Also these prices likely reflect a more consistent quality as they need to be able to withstand combat while being as easily producible as possible.
The purchases with data relevant to us were made in 1242 and 1285 as they contain a price for a "Bow" and a "Sword and Knife". In 1242 the cost of a bow was 40% the cost of a "Sword and Knife" and in 1285 the cost of a bow was ~37% the cost of a "Sword and Knife". So it is quite apparent that at the times of these orders a "Sword" was more expensive than a bow. The only way for this to not be true is if the "Knife" constituted more than 60% of the cost of the "Sword and Knife" line item.
The closest we can get to this ratio via D&D 5e weapon prices is to compare a Shortbow to the combined cost of a Greatsword and Longsword. This yields a relative cost ratio of ~38% so that is pretty spot on. However, I doubt anyone would agree that the "Sword and Knife" the orders referred to would actually match up with a Greatsword and Longsword.
So to me it is apparent that the cost of weapons in D&D were determined more by the needs of the game, rather than historical accuracy.
A really good sword is still made of primarily iron, what is important is crafting process and skill of the smith. But when making a really good bow, what you need is a properly grained wood, you can not just use any part of the tree for a bow, even if it is yew or mulberry, you need a branch with proper rings/lines/grain... Even in todays economy a good handmade two handed sword and a good handmade longbow have similar prices. So no, it is a not a stick with a string, you can not shoot effectively to 200m with a stick/string.(though in reality a proper longbow is capable of shooting to farther than that which is kinda errored in dnd, i do have masterwork 120lb and 180lb longbows made of maple and yew and they are both capable of shooting targets further than 600 feet) The latter i bought for nine hundred bucks in 2011, and for that price you can buy multiple good swords where i live(Turkey). The problem is arrow costs in DnD imho, arrows that are meant for actualy combat or hunting is much more expensive than those meant for training, and even training arrows which are made traditionally are expensive irl, while they are kinda negligble in game... (whole economical misundertanding comes from the currecy exchange rates in todays world, US and EU citizens think everything as their cost in dollars and euros, that was not the case for people in past, a farmer could easily buy a sword but he did not want it, he needed a scythe instead thus he bought one(bought does not necessarily mean he paid in coins or cash), a farmer gets a scythe and the smith gets some food, a proper scythe requires more workmanship and similar amount of raw materials when compared to a proper sword, so in practice it is not less expensive, though that is/was not the case in DnD pricing. And in reality most people in the past had enough knowledge in carpentry and smithing to make themselves these tools and weapons, but they lacked the knowledge to craft masterwork ones, a farmer could make an iron scythe but not a steel one. Same goes for bows, many people knew making a bow with Mulberry(and it's relative species) wood in Asia and even America(American Indians)but crafting a masterwork composite longbow, or even a selfbow was considered an art in most socities. A composite war bow required maple, ox horn, innards of specific fish for Hunnic Bows, and maple wood was almost always gathered from 17 years old trees(it was a custom)... So no again, it simply is not a stick and a string.