braking bows/shields

[Black]

can a bow or shield be broken if not being held by a user...i.e just laying on the ground

[Cyric]

It is generally acceptable to break a bow that is lying on the ground. There is no hit requirement for how hard you have to hit a bow to break it, and most people don't want their bow getting swung at full force if they can avoid it. Usually if there is a marshal within hearing range, just lay your sword on the bow and announce that its broken.

Shields are different, since it's up to the wielder to determine if a red hit was good enough. This may vary from realm to realm, but you usually can't just go around breaking shields that are lying on the ground.

you can also check out this thread, as it's come up before:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=34344

[Theros the Large]

It is quite a common practice for people to tap a bow with their sword while it is laying on the ground and calling it broken. Please note that you should be polite when you do this and not smack the hell out of someones defenseless and probably expensive bow. A gentle tap and an announcement of "this bow is now broken" is sufficient.

It is not common practice for someone weilding a red (class 2) weapon to wander about the field beating the crap out of random shields laying on the ground. It just seems counter productive as their are usually so many shields on the ground during larger battles. I would think that the shields would be considered "broken" and unuseable if you did this but your time would probably be better served in trying to kill people rather than random unused equipment.

Hope that helps.

[Sir Par]

This does happen on small fields though, usually when you have a person who has lost their shield to a red, and is try to scavenge another. Its really up to how your home realm does things.