Compound Bows and other improvements

[Trayer]

Now I'm no major of the history of the longbow, but it seems to me that adding a few improvements to standard bows. If someone adds a cam or two to a bow and reworks the bowstring, you can get extra distance and power out of the bow. Their arrows will fly farther and faster. If the bow itself is carved from an exeptional material such as bone or a perfect yew wood, the archer can put more tension on the string and the bow itself becomes much sturdier. With these facts in mind I'd like to open up a discussion about such improvements, what their actual game mechanics would be and how difficult it is to implement these by a practiced bowyer/fletcher.

Here are some of my preliminary ideas:
Let me know what you think :?


Additional cam on a hunting bow: increase total range by 25 paces
short = 2-62 medium = 63-93 long = 94-125

Another cam adds another 25 paces for a max of 50 paces extra
short = 2-75 medium = 76-112 long = 113-150

Now what about what kind of extra damage this would do? See I'm just not too good at adding all this stuff up. I'm pretty sure there are some flaws with the ranges listed above, but I'm just not sure. it seems odd that short range is up to 50 percent of the total distance of the weapon and the remainder of the range brackets only hold 25 percent of the range of the weapon. And this doesn't divide up the same way for a long bow either. It's short range is only 20 percent of the total range of the longbow. Again I'm no history major (and obviously not a good game designer) so I'd like some help here.

Thanks in advance.

-CMC