We all know how tools have a tag that tells you how much attack damage it does. Bows should have the same thing. It should just be the maximum attack damage, not including slightly pulling before release.
I'm not sure why this hasn't been added yet but it only took a few minutes to add it to my own mod:
These both show the full-charged (critical) damage as a range since critical arrow damage is randomized (base damage is 2 and if Power is present an additional level * 0.5 + 0.5 is added; this is then multiplied by a velocity factor which is 3 at full charge and rounded up, hence the minimum damage of a fully charged bow is 6 without Power and 15 with Power V. For critical hits an additional 0 to damage / 2 + 1 is added (rounded down) for up to 10 to 23 damage. You can actually deal even more damage if you can increase the velocity of the arrow, e.g. falling and explosions):
int power = CustomEnchantmentHelper.getEnchantmentLevel(Enchantment.power, this);
int min = (power > 0 ? MathHelper.ceiling_float_int(7.5F + (float)power * 1.5F) : 6);
int max = min + min / 2 + 1;
var3.add(EnumChatFormatting.BLUE + Integer.toString(min) + "-" + Integer.toString(max) + " Ranged Damage");
(the Wiki has slightly different figures but they appear to have misread the code; random.nextInt(damage / 2 + 2) returns (0 to damage / 2 + 1) since it returns 0 to bound - 1 and damage is only rounded up for the initial damage calculation and when I modified the code to print out the exact values from velocity and min-max damage I only saw an enchanted bow deal more than 10 damage and Power V deal more than 23 damage when the velocity factor exceeded 3, the highest I saw for normal shots)
Also, as shown here it isn't enough to know that a bow can e.g. one-shot a ghast (10 health), which only has a 20% chance for an unenchanted bow (6-10 damage); even a Power V bow doesn't reliably kill spiders (15-23 damage vs 16 health), so knowing the damage range would help one know what to expect (that said, I'm not sure why bows are still random, aside from things that affect velocity; this used to be the case for melee enchantments prior to 1.6 and protection enchantments prior to 1.9, both of which were likely changed to make combat more predictable).
If arrows are above 12 damage when they hit a mob or player, that damage gets turned into a 12.
Proof? Bows/arrows can definitely do far more than 12 damage, I one-shot 20 HP mobs all the time with my Power V bow (never mind that I actually looked at the code itself, the gold standard for (dis)proving claims) and I see absolutely no indications of any cap on how much damage an arrow can deal - with enough velocity it could even become infinite.
Here is a video from a reputable YouTuber that got an arrow to deal over 80 hearts of damage (that's 160+ damage) by using TNT to propel it to an extreme velocity, and that's just a normal arrow, no critical bonus which will increase damage by up to 50% (only arrows shot a by a player will normally be critical; it can also be assumed that any fully charged shot is critical):
You are probably confused by a bug regarding how arrow damage interacts with magic damage when you use arrows of Harming (Harming II deals 12 damage, so there you go, now I know where your claim of "12 damage max" comes from but it isn't even accurate here, except that armored players can take less damage once the arrow damage exceeds 12 due to armor reducing arrow damage but not magic damage, and even then that's only the damage that got past armor):
If the harming effect does more damage then the bow would with normal arrows then only the damage from the harming effect is applied.
If the bow damage with normal arrows is more damage then the harming effect then only the bow damage is applied.
This is determined before damage reduction, so a power V bow fully drawn and using an arrow of harming (instant damage II) against a target in diamond armor (just for example) will only do about 2 hearts of damage. If instead the bow is hardly drawn at all then it will do 6 hearts of damage, the damage from the instant damage II effect.
We all know how tools have a tag that tells you how much attack damage it does. Bows should have the same thing. It should just be the maximum attack damage, not including slightly pulling before release.
This is a good idea, although we know Bows are pretty strong anyway with Power 5.
They can one shot Ghasts, although you need to be good at aiming and judging the arrow arch to do this at a distance.
even harder to pull off is to shoot their fireballs away.
I'm not sure why this hasn't been added yet but it only took a few minutes to add it to my own mod:
These both show the full-charged (critical) damage as a range since critical arrow damage is randomized (base damage is 2 and if Power is present an additional level * 0.5 + 0.5 is added; this is then multiplied by a velocity factor which is 3 at full charge and rounded up, hence the minimum damage of a fully charged bow is 6 without Power and 15 with Power V. For critical hits an additional 0 to damage / 2 + 1 is added (rounded down) for up to 10 to 23 damage. You can actually deal even more damage if you can increase the velocity of the arrow, e.g. falling and explosions):
(the Wiki has slightly different figures but they appear to have misread the code; random.nextInt(damage / 2 + 2) returns (0 to damage / 2 + 1) since it returns 0 to bound - 1 and damage is only rounded up for the initial damage calculation and when I modified the code to print out the exact values from velocity and min-max damage I only saw an enchanted bow deal more than 10 damage and Power V deal more than 23 damage when the velocity factor exceeded 3, the highest I saw for normal shots)
Also, as shown here it isn't enough to know that a bow can e.g. one-shot a ghast (10 health), which only has a 20% chance for an unenchanted bow (6-10 damage); even a Power V bow doesn't reliably kill spiders (15-23 damage vs 16 health), so knowing the damage range would help one know what to expect (that said, I'm not sure why bows are still random, aside from things that affect velocity; this used to be the case for melee enchantments prior to 1.6 and protection enchantments prior to 1.9, both of which were likely changed to make combat more predictable).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
So... the reason they don't is because bows are, really weird.
Basically, bows have a crit chance, and have damage drop off (based off arrow velocity)
So, lets say, for the sake of simplicity, we opt to show a bows Max, non-crit damage, without using tipped arrows to the player.
Sounds good, right?
Well...
Not quite, once we get into power 4+ we start to run into problems.
Because bows have a damage cap.
If arrows are above 12 damage when they hit a mob or player, that damage gets turned into a 12.
Even on crit, even using arrows of harming.
So... if bows accurately showed the max non-crit damage they deal...
It would wind up reading 12 for power 3, 4 & 5.
And if you're thinking "wait... doesn't a damage cap make arrows of harming useless?"
Yes. Yes it does.
Proof? Bows/arrows can definitely do far more than 12 damage, I one-shot 20 HP mobs all the time with my Power V bow (never mind that I actually looked at the code itself, the gold standard for (dis)proving claims) and I see absolutely no indications of any cap on how much damage an arrow can deal - with enough velocity it could even become infinite.
Here is a video from a reputable YouTuber that got an arrow to deal over 80 hearts of damage (that's 160+ damage) by using TNT to propel it to an extreme velocity, and that's just a normal arrow, no critical bonus which will increase damage by up to 50% (only arrows shot a by a player will normally be critical; it can also be assumed that any fully charged shot is critical):
You are probably confused by a bug regarding how arrow damage interacts with magic damage when you use arrows of Harming (Harming II deals 12 damage, so there you go, now I know where your claim of "12 damage max" comes from but it isn't even accurate here, except that armored players can take less damage once the arrow damage exceeds 12 due to armor reducing arrow damage but not magic damage, and even then that's only the damage that got past armor):
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
it doesn't have any cap to it it can basically one hit ghast from being pulled back all the way.
Which is 5 hearts of health= 2 health points per heart which is 10 health points.
yeah should be added