Greatbow balance

4 dexterity and 4 perception. You still paid heavily for the 18 strength, when you could have had balanced stats or spent more points on skills. You could have just as easily put points into unarmed and a martial art and been nigh-unkillable, people do that all the time. I see no issue here whatsoever.

You’re legitimately building a character around using that bow. I don’t know what you expected.

Spears do the same thing.

A setup action to guarantee a critical hit in melee would be really cool. You should put that in the needful things thread.
Again, I don’t see an issue here beyond a comparison to melee. Melee is still faster and has no ammunition requirements, plus you don’t need a specific strength build to use the top melee weapons.

I suppose? Seems you’re just exploiting close-range shots. You could do the same with a shotgun or any number of other guns, and those don’t have the range of the greatbow. Have you tried this build against anything other than basic zombies? A hulk maybe, or a military grade turret?

It uses normal arrows because they’re an abstraction. Arrows are surprisingly complex and have a number of factors in their make and manufacture, so ingame you use the same arrows for a 30lb youth bow as a 120lb warbow, despite that being unrealistic. They’re also surprisingly strong, all things considered, and would probably have little issue with a 300, maybe 400lb draw weight. That said, I could modify them to use heavier arrows, and I might, but it’s not a large concern for now.

As for materials, you can make any poundage bow out of any materials (within reason). You just need more of the materials. Thicker limbs, thicker strings. There are all kinds of youtube videos of people making insane poundage bows, it’s just a matter of using the materials correctly.

The composite crossbow isn’t a fair comparison, it’s a handheld crossbow of lower poundage with no strength restriction whatsoever. A stronger crossbow will be coming soon, it’s just a matter of my getting around to it someday.

Assault rifles have no strength requirement.

Nah, wood can take incredible stresses if you use it properly. Ships, ballistas, houses even.

They’re the same bow, but one is bigger. Higher poundage. That’s pretty much the only difference.

Because I would have to code them all and that’s a pain. Then it’s a pain for all the players who have to try to work out the difference between “50lb Recurve bow” and “55lb Composite bow”. I’ve had this discussion before, the answer is that there’s not enough payoff for that kind of complexity.

Because it shoots harder? Melee scales a bit oddly, I don’t know what else to say.