Sling reload

[darth_borehd]

If you are not a halfling with that alternate racial trait, is there anyway you can get rapid reload for a sling?

[My Self]

Uh, this?

Ammo Drop + Juggle Load

[Imbicatus]

There is a halfling only feat chain that you can take instead. However, you can take that with racial heritage. It's still two feats for something that bows get for free.

[Crimeo]

Imbicatus wrote:

There is a halfling only feat chain that you can take instead. However, you can take that with racial heritage. It's still two feats for something that bows get for free.

Bows cannot be reloaded with one hand (or at least not for free, don't know if there is some weird ability out there), so they do not get the first of those feats (the ones posted in response) for free in its entirety.

Whether this advantage over bows is one that anybody cares about or in any way remotely approaches the other advantages of bows, is an exercise left to the reader.

Also, this does not seem to apply to the halfling version, only to ammo drop.

[My Self]

Also notice that you can use the sling in melee without AOOs for reloading, meaning that if you take another annoying feat, you can use the sling as a club or flail.

Though you'd probably be better off just getting Quickdraw and switching to a real weapon.

[Crimeo]

Slings are actually somewhat viable, if you have a lot of spare feats. They just aren't likely BETTER than bows in any build. But VIABLE yes.

Those two feats bring you up to bow levels for mechanical behavior, and also give you a free hand, making it not entirely two feats spent just for that (maybe 1.5...). After that, you can still go on to apply deadly aim, rapid shot, and even manyshot (even though manyshot mentions bows, juggle load says "you can fire as many times in a full attack as if you were using a bow" so I see it as still working).

And a sling is only -2 flat damage behind a composite longbow at any strength score. Which may be sometimes offset by being able to squeeze one more attack out every round with a double sling by my reading vs. a bow, although at TWF penalties.

(I haven't actually built this, may be missing something, but point is just that it isn't truly abysmal, it is just questionable relatively)

[Qaianna]

Apply the feats to a sling staff and you're equal to a bow (and costing another feat if you're not a halfling).

I still wonder why there's no Rapid Reload option for slings and sling staves tho.

[My Self]

Qaianna wrote:

Apply the feats to a sling staff and you're equal to a bow (and costing another feat if you're not a halfling).

I still wonder why there's no Rapid Reload option for slings and sling staves tho.

There is, it just happens to be a feat chain.

[lemeres]

Crimeo wrote:

Slings are actually somewhat viable, if you have a lot of spare feats. They just aren't likely BETTER than bows in any build. But VIABLE yes.

Juggler bards. Just a couple levels, and then mutliclass into anything with a lot of bonus damage per hit and feats so you can take both TWF and ranged feats.

Throw out ALL the damage.

You can do similar things with hand crossbows...but those have their own problems.

[Gwen Smith]

My Self wrote:

Qaianna wrote:

Apply the feats to a sling staff and you're equal to a bow (and costing another feat if you're not a halfling).

I still wonder why there's no Rapid Reload option for slings and sling staves tho.

There is, it just happens to be a feat chain.

There is not. Feats that allow rapid reload for the sling do not include work for the slings staff (see this FAQ, and the warslinger trait does not work with sling staffs per this FAQ.

There is no way in the rules to reload the sling staff as less than a move action.

[My Self]

Gwen Smith wrote:

My Self wrote:

Qaianna wrote:

Apply the feats to a sling staff and you're equal to a bow (and costing another feat if you're not a halfling).

I still wonder why there's no Rapid Reload option for slings and sling staves tho.

There is, it just happens to be a feat chain.

There is not. Feats that allow rapid reload for the sling do not include work for the slings staff (see this FAQ, and the warslinger trait does not work with sling staffs per this FAQ.

There is no way in the rules to reload the sling staff as less than a move action.

Oh, wait, what?

That seems pretty... unbalanced? Slings staffs have literally less feat and archetype support than crossbows, and have absolutely nothing on archery. If you want to become an OK slinger, you spend as many feats as a good archer. If you want to become a good slinger, you spend as many feats as a trick archer or amazing archer. If you want to become an amazing slinger, well, good luck.

Still, there is a rapid-reload-esque option for regular slings, as mentioned earlier.