[Dragaera] The New Palace

[Jon%20Lincicum]

----- "David Dyer-Bennet" <dd-b at dd-b.net> wrote: 
> 
> 
> Archery is certainly non-trivial. Just to achieve basic competence (will 
> at least scare a stationary target at 25 feet, say) is non-trivial. It's 
> my impression that basic competence with a thrown knife is MUCH harder. 
> Until you get rather a lot of practice there's about a 50:50 chance that 
> the wrong end of the knife will hit the target, for example :-). 

Well, yes, but knives are easy to come by. If you're a bored Dragaeran youth with nothing much to do otherwise, you might while away much of your youth (say, 80 or 90 years of it, anyway) throwing one of your father's utility knives around. In that amount of time, you might get pretty darn good at it. 

If archery is simply not a common practice, however, finding a good quality bow, arrows, and archery range might be more difficult, and thus the youth is not going to get his practice in. 


> >> The flashstone is probably a better weapon for a brigand; it's very 
> >> close 
> >> to exactly equivalent to an early pistol, fairly easy to use, rather 
> >> short-range, and devastating if you hit your target. 
> > 
> > I agree with this. 
> 
> It's harder to reload, though. But since people were talking about it as 
> an option, I've been ignoring that part. 

If a highwayman is clever, he never has to fire his weapon, anyway. It's used as a threat, so I don't know that this is as big a drawback. We've seen flashstones that carry several charges in any case, and they're small enough that you can always carry more than one. 

Majikjon