Short Bow skill

General Information

A short bow is a ranged weapon typically around half the size of its cousin, the long bow.

Short bows are the lightest of all bow classes, having a default load time of two seconds. They tend to have the highest balance of the three stick bows, and therefore are a popular choice for characters with high agility and low strength.

Capped player-made short bows have the highest balance on a standard bow-type available in-game, slightly edging out capped player-made longbows. Their small load time is an attractive feature. A capped short bow combined with capped arrows is an amazingly powerful weapon, though many players opt for longbows to maximize their damage potential.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantages

• Large damage and accuracy bonuses when using the AIM verb.
• Lowest load time of all bow types
• Highest balance of all standard bow types
• Can be fletched by players

Disadvantages

• Inability to use shield when aiming a bow
• Lower attack potential than longbows

Guild-Specific Abilities

• Barbarians and Rangers: Dual Load

• Rangers and Thieves: Snipe

• Barbarians and Paladins have the ability to parry arrows within the range of their weapon. While this is mostly attributable to melee, players using pole arms or pole-range weapons like greatswords will be able to parry arrows at pole as well. This is a direct defense contest of bow skills vs. parry skill.

• Shield primary (Paladins) and secondary (Barbarians, Rangers, Traders) guild have the ability to load their bows while wearing an arm-worn shield by down-sizing their shields (Paladins using medium shields, secondary guilds using small shields). Note that this adds a 3-second roundtime penalty to the loading process Requirements: Wearing a smaller arm-worn shield than the maximum allowed by your guild.

• Rangers have the ability to fletch hunter's bows.