Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25606723-20160816004541/@comment-26863727-20160819220911

IT'S NOT A CROSSBOW, FOR THE MILLIONTH TIME.

Crossbows use a miniature bow, made of wood. An arbalest uses a steel bow that incorporates the more efficient recurve shape. Pound for pound, a recurve has more power than a simple bow. With the Renaissance and the spread of this technology to Europe, the original shape became obsolete. While an "organic" recurve uses layers of horn, sinew, and wood to create the shape naturally, it can also be forged from springsteel. At around 70 pounds a recurve had the power of an ordinary longbow. If you made a recurve the size of a longbow it would be pretty horrendously powerful, too strong for any normal human being to use. Now imagine what one made of a thick-ish piece of steel would be like. It already has the insane half-ton draw weight, which alone would make it equivalent to around 250 pounds of longbow even with the short draw. Add the recurve and you have the equal of more than three hundred pounds of bow.