My void elf hunter, Fal’therin, often gets to work fletching new ones when he’s got nothing to do. So I like to include that flavour in RP
1 Like
Okay, problem.
Someone stole my blunderbuss.
3 Likes
Who would do such a thing?
1 Like
I do my arrow prep and managing arrows all the time, so I think if you play a character that is a -bow- person, it really gives you something idle to do while you’re waiting for walkup, or an excuse to reach out to people for materials and things like that.
That and having arrows break sucks massive butt, so keeping mental or recording what arrows you have/how they were crafted/what enchantments or special properties they have, and then giving yourself a restriction that there’s a % chance they break. That way, you have a reason to seek out characters to help you replace arrows, like a priest to bless Light arrows, or a shaman to enchant Lightning arrows.
1 Like
I try not to get too hung up on the details, but I do like the whole ‘magical arrow’ angle ever since I took my first arcane shot in Shadowglen 20-something years ago 
Guns are cooler though, so I like playing with some of the magic lore in the game to make ammunition seem less of a pressing issue. My hunter is a gunsmith, and one thing he’s learned from others in the trade is how to etch and engrave runes along the chambers of his firearms to draw mana from the world’s leylines to enable him to fire arcane shots should bullets not be available. Good in a pinch, but terrible if there’s no residual mana around.
He employs similar techniques to the shells of his bullet casings whenever he needs something stronger, or something with a different effect - usually just when I need to flavor his hunter abilities: Explosive Shots are just bullets with fire runes, Freeze Traps are munitions carved with frost magics, etc..
3 Likes
Don’t forget, every weapon is a hunter weapon.
Only stat stick enthusiasts will understand.
2 Likes
I used to go all out with combat prep RP, acquiring a full quiver of various arrows, the fletching color indicating the arrow-type. Feyawen would carry about a dozen generic arrows, 10 moonsteel (good for demons & undead & void), and 2 specially blessed arrows (Elunarian) for purifying corrupt ground. I enjoy capping ammunition in RP and applying realism to my characters, it leaves the option for failure open.
3 Likes
So I don’t know if I loosened my own restrictions but Carmen carries bear traps in her backpack, so now she has 3 of those that no one will acknowledge if I ever do RP combat again.
Everytime I’ve used a bear trap in RP, it gets ignored, so I’ll probably give it up. Again.
When I had an actual roll system that I used, a bear trap would have been treated like an explosive mine. You set it in one round and then it triggers when touched. It would be high damage since it was a weapon your character would have to ‘wait’ for it to go.
1 Like
I haven’t roleplayed a hunter extensively but I have a guildie who has roleplayed a hunter since beta. Oldies like me will remember you once had to devote actual inventory space for ammo in early WoW. Well, said guildie was notorious for forgetting, in spite him being an excellent player and frankly, one of the best hunters to ever kite General Drak I’ve seen. in spite this, he absolutely could not remember to stock arrows or bullets to save his life, so the dichotomy of him being a top-notch hunter with nothing to shoot made it all the more hilarious. (Keep it mind that melee Hunter spec was not a thing at this time.)
So I started carrying ammo in my bags. Anytime he ran out in the middle of the dungeon, we no longer had to pause while he hoofed it to town and back to resupply on a 60% flying mount, because it was early BC and we hadn’t yet made enough gold to buy epic flying. Now, he did not ask me to bring ammo for him, I just did it on my own and when he inevitably ran out, wordlessly opened a trade window and popped them in. The stunned silence then giddy giggle I heard in Ventrilo was worth it.
Anyway, over time, it turned into something we incorporated into our character’s IC dynamic. We still RP those characters 20 years later and these are the kinds of stories that really make roleplay and the MMO part of WoW great.
1 Like
Imagine being a hunter and using a ranged weapon. This post brought to you by Survival Gang.
Anyway, if I ever do have a bow IC, I usually have a sidearm that my character switches to after I decide I’m done shooting arrows. If I wanna play the “oh no i ran out of arrows– time to stab people!” angle, it adds some versatility to the character. Bows are also pretty impractical after a certain distance, so “fire a few arrows and stab with your sword or spear it if it’s still coming at you” feels more realistic than an arrow count.
1 Like
Do you remember when hunter pets had happiness, and devoting inventory space for the specific types of food for the different species?
There was one time I watched an Orc hunter in Vanilla die to lions because his pet boar decided to leave him in the middle of being mauled.
There’s a Conan server I was playing on for a little while that had a roll system with guns. They had a snap pistol that was a one-shot little thing, which was pretty cool. Just about all ranged RPers had one, as well as a sword.
I’ve got three Hunters that use Bows, two that use Crossbows, and another 4 that use Guns.
One of the things I think people overlook is our Bags of Holding, those neat handy-dandy items that allow us to carry several times our weight in equipment, food, supplies and Dragon heads, that never rot, rust or seem to decay except for very specific items.
So we can assume ‘dead’ matter within a Bag of Holding does not age, decay or expire, or at least has a much reduced rate?
A simply matter is just to have a quiver, bolt-holder or ammo-belt that essentially is a specialised Bag of Holding that can hold several hundred arrows. That said, the Bow-users also take great care to remove their arrows when possible because:
-
It is always good to save and re-use them because you never know when you’re going to run out, or where.
-
Leave no trace of your passage, especially in times of war or when rivals are nearby, you don’t want them picking up your trail or figuring out what you’re trying to do.
-
Arrow-heads are expensive, especially the kind that can punch in-between heavy scales or the gaps in thick plate-armor, and even if you have to cut the shaft off, you can still salvage the feathers or leather strips you use for stabilizing the arrow in flight for a new arrow.
Seriously, the variety of arrow-heads is astonishing. Mankind is nothing if not inventive when figuring out ways to kill the rest of Mankind.
There’s also stuff like Hunters’ explosive arrows and similar, and you don’t need to have a big fire or explosion, it just needs to be hot. Whether loaded with a mixture of gunpowder, pitch, sulphur and oil that would ignite briefly but with extreme heat, likely setting the target’s hair and clothing on fire, and let us be really honest, nearly everything panics when they’re set on fire. Alternatively, an arrow with an magic scroll wrapped directly behind the arrow-head that is enchanted to explode when set on fire would be a nightmarish weapon, as not only can an enchanted arrow-head or bow providing the explosive ‘mechanism’, but again, it is light-weight, doesn’t affect the trajectory or speed of an arrow over a short range of, say, 30 feet or so, and again, setting things on fire is something of an auto-win situation.
Combine a Bag of Holding with arrow-heads for different situations, like broadheaded arrows for maximum bleed and internal damage (three-sided ones were notoriously bad due to it being nearly impossible to stitch the wound closed …), barbed to catch on and hook into muscle and organs inside the target, square-heads to transmit the kinetic force into the target without penetration, making them a little more useful against plate-armor, but at that point, just get a dang gun already, the V-shaped for just traumatizing the heck out of the lightly-armored targets with deep, wide cuts that would cause them to bleed out very quickly, the list goes on and on.
Despite having, like… ten hunters? Only one of them actually uses arrows regularly.
My VElf Ven’valin. Making arrows is how he copes with just about everything, so they get real artsy despite the fact that he looks like a hobo. I consider him only carrying 20 arrows total. 10 normal, 5 envenomed, 5 barbed.
If he can’t retrieve them? He breaks them shafts and brings them back home. Each one is kind of special in its own way to him. It also means he gets to restart the process of making them… … IIRC, I think he proposed to his, now, husband with an ivory arrow with a golden head and a pair of bracers.