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OMG, yes.
*shrug* I never minded slings being only good for halflings [it gave them something unique].
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The sling was an incredibly common weapon of the ancient era, perhaps exceeded in frequency of use only by the spear. But it was largely supplanted in the classical era by bows and completely outclassed by bows by the medieval period.
Bows have longer accurate ranges, the capability of indirect fire and require less room to wield. All in all, while an important weapon for a very long period of time, it was distinctly inferior to the bow (to say nothing of the longbow) by the end of the classical period.
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"Indirect fire" with bows is largely a myth. Arrows that penetrate solely by the power of gravity have very low lethality. The strength of bows is shooting directly at the target, where they can have really a lot of power.
Anyway i think both bows and slings should get the wielder's strength bonus to damage.
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The sling was an incredibly common weapon of the ancient era, perhaps exceeded in frequency of use only by the spear. But it was largely supplanted in the classical era by bows and completely outclassed by bows by the medieval period.
Bows have longer accurate ranges, the capability of indirect fire and require less room to wield. All in all, while an important weapon for a very long period of time, it was distinctly inferior to the bow (to say nothing of the longbow) by the end of the classical period.
The real ancient world also didn't have widespread exotic metal ammunition and cheap, common alchemical explosives. Or ugroshes and starknives and whips that turn into snakes.
I'm a-ok with slings getting a buff to be just as useful as other projectile weapons. They should definitely be able to launch grenade-like weapons, /without/ a feat tax, and they should also definitely get ability bonus to damage.
Slings have always been pretty good. They cost the same number of "feats" as bows, and deal slightly less damage in exchange for basically always having the Adaptive quality. By higher level your weapon damage dice don't count for much anyway.
By higher level your weapon damage dice don't count for much anyway.
Yeah, about that...
Slings have always been pretty good. They cost the same number of "feats" as bows, and deal slightly less damage in exchange for basically always having the Adaptive quality. By higher level your weapon damage dice don't count for much anyway.Except in PF2 damage dice is increased for every bonus to attack [max of +3 currently]
I was referring to in PF1. There's also the fact that you can't cram a longbow into a coat pocket (without magic at least).
So long as PF2 doesn't exclusively buff bows, slings will still have their niches.
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Yeah, a buff to slings would be nice. Although I'm not sure they should really be a simple weapon, as my understanding is they're actually kind of tricky to use accurately. As PCScipio said, slingers were usually mentioned to have been practicing since they were a kid. Generally shepherds, using all the boring standing around watching sheep time to practice with their sling (which was used to keep predators away from the sheep as well as alleviate bordem).
But also crossbows. Seriously, they were very popular and useful weapons, but the current rules have them as basically inferior to bows in every regard. And then of course repeating crossbows are /overpowered/ compared to normal ones. In reality they had really light draw-weights to allow for repeat fire so were weak and short ranged. The Iconic Ranger as a primarily crossbow wielder should be doable as a valid build, not one that is crappy.
I think one big difference already is that most can use the crossbow while only those who can use martial weapons can utilize short or lnog bows.
Crossbows aren't always shunned, and some do things for character and style rather than min/max. Our current group has a hunter and one of their primary weapons is the Crossbow (for ranged, they also use a two bladed sword).
Well, good slingers trained since boyhood. Roman legionaries who used a sling to drop stones in the general area of the defences to support an assault could manage that perfectly well while largely training for other things (which incidentally is an example of slings being used for "indirect fire").
Was that the standard sheppard's sling, or a staff sling? The later seems to be super easy to use (if not the easiest to aim accurately, but as you pointed out nothing really is) and also mostly seemed to be used in siege and naval warfare, where volume of projectiles and the ability to be indirect kind of makes up for lack of accuracy. Also the lever gives good range. I found it kind of odd in PF1 that they're an exotic halfing racial weapon.
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Was that the standard sheppard's sling, or a staff sling? The later seems to be super easy to use (if not the easiest to aim accurately, but as you pointed out nothing really is) and also mostly seemed to be used in siege and naval warfare, where volume of projectiles and the ability to be indirect kind of makes up for lack of accuracy. Also the lever gives good range. I found it kind of odd in PF1 that they're an exotic halfing racial weapon.Well, good slingers trained since boyhood. Roman legionaries who used a sling to drop stones in the general area of the defences to support an assault could manage that perfectly well while largely training for other things (which incidentally is an example of slings being used for "indirect fire").
the answer to that is Kender...it's always the Kender.
the answer to that is Kender...it's always the Kender.Was that the standard sheppard's sling, or a staff sling? The later seems to be super easy to use (if not the easiest to aim accurately, but as you pointed out nothing really is) and also mostly seemed to be used in siege and naval warfare, where volume of projectiles and the ability to be indirect kind of makes up for lack of accuracy. Also the lever gives good range. I found it kind of odd in PF1 that they're an exotic halfing racial weapon.Well, good slingers trained since boyhood. Roman legionaries who used a sling to drop stones in the general area of the defences to support an assault could manage that perfectly well while largely training for other things (which incidentally is an example of slings being used for "indirect fire").
Another reason to hate them. Like halflings, but always Chaotic Obnoxious. So obnoxious that they need to die in a fire. All of them.
I think Kender are also to blame for halflings in 3rd ed and beyond being skinny instead of the little chubby guys they were before. That and "They're totally not hobbits! Honest!"
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But also crossbows. Seriously, they were very popular and useful weapons, but the current rules have them as basically inferior to bows in every regard. And then of course repeating crossbows are /overpowered/ compared to normal ones. In reality they had really light draw-weights to allow for repeat fire so were weak and short ranged. The Iconic Ranger as a primarily crossbow wielder should be doable as a valid build, not one that is crappy.
Um...Crossbows are inferior to regular bows in skilled hands in real life. The short staves don't transfer energy well, and they take a looooong time to load.
Their main draw was that they could be used easily by anybody, whereas a longbow took a lot of training and you had to be rilly strong.
That carries over into the game - just about everybody is proficient in crossbows, there's no strength penalty if you have low strength, but they're slow to reload. Bows are fast reload, require martial proficiency (or elfiness, yay!), and have a damage penalty for low strength on regular bows and an attack penalty on composites.
There is no objective reason for a sling to take any more time to reload than a bow.
I'm assuming that in the new 3 action and a reaction economy, that an archer won't need to take a separate action to knock an arrow, and then another to aim and release it, but simply to take a single action to load and fire. A sling ought to work the same way.
A crossbow, however should take time to reload, perhaps a single action for a light crossbow, and 2 or more actions to reload a heavy crossbow.
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Some weapons have to suck, that's why we have levels of proficiency.
If you just want to have:
Simple Ranged weapon
Advanced Ranged Weapon
and have players describe it as whatever they like I'd be okay with that. But if you're going to have categories, something has to be worse than the other.
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What really killed slings in PF1 was the action cost to reload them, with no way to reduce it unless you were a halfling.
I hope PF2 does away with the idea that it costs actions to reload crossbows or slings but not to draw a arrow from a quiver for a longbow.
Really this. While I don't think everything needs to be equal, the power gap shouldn't be so vast that some character types become distasteful to play.
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But also crossbows. Seriously, they were very popular and useful weapons, but the current rules have them as basically inferior to bows in every regard. And then of course repeating crossbows are /overpowered/ compared to normal ones. In reality they had really light draw-weights to allow for repeat fire so were weak and short ranged. The Iconic Ranger as a primarily crossbow wielder should be doable as a valid build, not one that is crappy.Um...Crossbows are inferior to regular bows in skilled hands in real life. The short staves don't transfer energy well, and they take a looooong time to load.
Their main draw was that they could be used easily by anybody, whereas a longbow took a lot of training and you had to be rilly strong.
That carries over into the game - just about everybody is proficient in crossbows, there's no strength penalty if you have low strength, but they're slow to reload. Bows are fast reload, require martial proficiency (or elfiness, yay!), and have a damage penalty for low strength on regular bows and an attack penalty on composites.
They had a short draw length, but also had a very high draw weight (I've seen numbers over 1000 pounds draw weight for the heavy duty suckers). From what I've seen, it looks like the inefficiency of the short draw-length is more or less canceled out by the high draw-weight resulting in fairly similar range and penetration with some of the heavier crossbows as a heavy English warbow. They are more accurate though. They are slower, although how much depends on the spanning method. A cranequin or windless on one of the very heavy bows are pretty slow. But a goatsfoot lever or spanning belt can be relatively quick for a somewhat lighter bow, and a hand-spanned light bow is faster still, although still not as fast as a conventional bow. Although in game terms I totally think the proper selection of feats should make a crossbow wielding ranger be effective. Lets have both Robin Hood and William Tell (or Legolas and Varrik if you want to get more fantasy themed). Maybe a feet to allow dex bonus to damage like gunslingers eventually get. There might be one already, but I can't think of it if there is.
But speaking of conventional bows... why is it only composite bows get the strength bonus? The power of the bow is largely based on the draw-weight (which would be strength dependent regardless of the bow type) and draw-length. So all bows should really have the strength bonuses. The famous English warbows were notoriously powerful with 90-180 pound draw weights (part of the reason for the large amount of training for war-archers, not just skill but strength. Archer skeletons can even be identified by the deformation of the bones from pulling that high weight), but they were simple self-bows, not composite. Maybe something like composite ads a +1 bonus, or composite bows are capable of higher strength bonuses or that a composite long-bow is short enough to be usable while mounted would make more sense. Or maybe instead of normal bows and composite bows it should classed as hunting bows and war bows. But this is kind of nitpicky.
Some weapons have to suck, that's why we have levels of proficiency.
If you just want to have:
Simple Ranged weapon
Advanced Ranged Weaponand have players describe it as whatever they like I'd be okay with that. But if you're going to have categories, something has to be worse than the other.
Yeah, I think this puts Paizo in a tough spot design wise. On the one hand, they want to enable people to make whatever crazy character they like. On the other, damage dice varying between weapons is baked into our expectations much like ability scores, and the Simple/Martial Weapon distinction exists for a reason.
Also, slings are free and don't weigh anything. If you have a decent strength score, they are generally better than bows until you can afford a good composite, and you even when you do there's literally no reason to not carry the sling too. It can provide back up, doesn't care if your strength score changes, and does bludgeoning at range.
It's just niche, and not as good as a fully invested high level archer. But let's face it, few martial things in PF1 are. To make the sling both the go to low level weapon and a comparable choice at high levels is gonna require some feat investment, or or just removing weapon statistics entirely.
Could be fun with custom ammo types. They're already fun if you're a Halfling and add STR bonus to damage, so they have some stuff going for them if you're a STR guy starting out that cant afford a comp. bow.
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Slings required many years of practice to use well. Slingers were often described as having trained since boyhood with the weapon.
Some of this is also due to slings being extremely easy to fashion and difficult to break so it was something you could give to a boy to hunt with and practice with where a bow strong enough for hunting may not be usable to a child and would be a non trivial thing to replace if broken.
Yeah, a buff to slings would be nice. Although I'm not sure they should really be a simple weapon, as my understanding is they're actually kind of tricky to use accurately. As PCScipio said, slingers were usually mentioned to have been practicing since they were a kid. Generally shepherds, using all the boring standing around watching sheep time to practice with their sling (which was used to keep predators away from the sheep as well as alleviate bordem).
But also crossbows. Seriously, they were very popular and useful weapons, but the current rules have them as basically inferior to bows in every regard. And then of course repeating crossbows are /overpowered/ compared to normal ones. In reality they had really light draw-weights to allow for repeat fire so were weak and short ranged. The Iconic Ranger as a primarily crossbow wielder should be doable as a valid build, not one that is crappy.
The biggest advantage of a crossbow was simply they were extremely easy to train people to use. Crank wheel back aim pointy end at enemy rinse repeat. It could make a raw peasant a lethal threat to a knight. The striking power was higher but english long bows were not that far behind but it was far easier to outfit a new crossbow wielding squad than to train up a similar number of archers.
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It would be great if they can come up with some sort of system to make each type of weapon and armor different instead of having a handful of the best and everything else that is never used. Especially armor. Why even have different types of heavy armor when one is the best and everything else is just worse? With the crb there might as well just be 3 armors- chain shirt, breast plate, and full plate. Because all the other ones stop being used after first level. Maybe have different armor and weapons be drastically different prices so that you buy better ones as you go up in level (that was the starfinder fix). Other than that, not sure how to fix this issue without making all weapons and armor to much the same.
the answer to that is Kender...it's always the Kender.
Ok, time to lock the thread: someone mentioned kender nd I find them highly offensive!!! Really, there is no word more obscene. ;)
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Personally, I'm actually an advocate of a much more limited weapon/armor list that is far more generic than what we currently have.
I'd be cool with something like:
Simple Projectile Weapon 1d6 50ft range
Martial Projectile Weapon 1d8 100ft range
Simple Light bladed weapon
Martial Light bladed weapon
Simple One-handed bladed weapon
Martial One-handed bladed weapon
Simple Two-handed bladed weapon
Martial Two-handed bladed weapon
Etc
It would be a lot of work to create the initial table, but then anyone could describe their generic weapon template as whatever type of weapon they wanted.
Then if you want to say you have a sling, you could still use the martial projectile weapon template and have it be a viable weapon.
There's no real reason to be penalized for what is largely a flavor choice when you have proficiency in the weapon type. There is no reason for a crossbow to be worse (or better) for a character that has both simple and martial weapon proficiency.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
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Oh wow, this is a classic.
Decades ago, one of the designers of Dungeons and Dragons had never heard of a military sling, and thought this was the same as a slingshot toy.
Military sling: http://www.webassign.net/giocp2/5-p-064.gif
Toy sling: http://www.everwonder.com/david/simpsons/pics/b1.gif
So, you know, he confused a highly effective weapon with lead bullets from the Greek/Persian wars of antiquity (among others) for the little toy pea-shooter used by Bart Simpson and Dennis the Menace. Later designers have simply copy/pasted the sling stats, and this is why the sling has been a very crappy weapon throughout all iterations of D&D, and now, Pathfinder.
It would be nice if somebody would finally rectify this :)
Personally, I'm actually an advocate of a much more limited weapon/armor list that is far more generic than what we currently have.
I'd be cool with something like:
Simple Projectile Weapon 1d6 50ft range
Martial Projectile Weapon 1d8 100ft rangeSimple Light bladed weapon
Martial Light bladed weapon
Simple One-handed bladed weapon
Martial One-handed bladed weapon
Simple Two-handed bladed weapon
Martial Two-handed bladed weaponEtc
It would be a lot of work to create the initial table, but then anyone could describe their generic weapon template as whatever type of weapon they wanted.
Then if you want to say you have a sling, you could still use the martial projectile weapon template and have it be a viable weapon.
There's no real reason to be penalized for what is largely a flavor choice when you have proficiency in the weapon type. There is no reason for a crossbow to be worse (or better) for a character that has both simple and martial weapon proficiency.
Love this. So many times I've wanted specific flavor for a weapon to fit something I've seen, and haven't cared as much about the mechanical impact (really, aside from critical range, there isn't too much that makes a huge impact between weapon choices of the same handedness).
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Slings need some looking into, for sure. Slings have zero to do with strength bonuses, ever. They are exactly the antithesis to strength. They utilise physics to circumvent needing strength. They are relatively simple to make and use but to use them properly (warfare) would require tremendous training (akin to bows). There could be a separation between types of slings easily (a-la halfling warsling).
We have long bows and similar in order to use STR to damage (think of Ulysses being the only one able to string and pull his bow, and compare that to the David and Goliath story where the weaker one uses a sling).
Apart from finding historical weapons interesting, I sling with traditional made slings, and come from an area where they were used for warfare. Seen what old fellas that used to be sheep herders as boys can do with a sling, amazing..but it takes decades to get that good.
Personally, I'm actually an advocate of a much more limited weapon/armor list that is far more generic than what we currently have.
I'd be cool with something like:
Simple Projectile Weapon 1d6 50ft range
Martial Projectile Weapon 1d8 100ft rangeSimple Light bladed weapon
Martial Light bladed weapon
Simple One-handed bladed weapon
Martial One-handed bladed weapon
Simple Two-handed bladed weapon
Martial Two-handed bladed weaponEtc
It would be a lot of work to create the initial table, but then anyone could describe their generic weapon template as whatever type of weapon they wanted.
Then if you want to say you have a sling, you could still use the martial projectile weapon template and have it be a viable weapon.
There's no real reason to be penalized for what is largely a flavor choice when you have proficiency in the weapon type. There is no reason for a crossbow to be worse (or better) for a character that has both simple and martial weapon proficiency.
Do not want. I'd much rather increase the distinction between weapons, not muddy them all up.
One of the things i always note about slings, especially sling staffs, is that they can be used to lob things other than Pellets, at least my DM allowed me to. My rogue character, Cat Burglar Mususu, Wielded a sling (which was flavored into a slingshot) And she lobbed things like bags of broken glass, Rotten Eggs, Sand, Flour, Oil flasks, among other things. Rarely killed anyone, but sure did cripple foes.
So...allow slings to lob things other than pellets, maybe?
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Do not want. I'd much rather increase the distinction between weapons, not muddy them all up.Personally, I'm actually an advocate of a much more limited weapon/armor list that is far more generic than what we currently have.
I'd be cool with something like:
Simple Projectile Weapon 1d6 50ft range
Martial Projectile Weapon 1d8 100ft rangeSimple Light bladed weapon
Martial Light bladed weapon
Simple One-handed bladed weapon
Martial One-handed bladed weapon
Simple Two-handed bladed weapon
Martial Two-handed bladed weaponEtc
It would be a lot of work to create the initial table, but then anyone could describe their generic weapon template as whatever type of weapon they wanted.
Then if you want to say you have a sling, you could still use the martial projectile weapon template and have it be a viable weapon.
There's no real reason to be penalized for what is largely a flavor choice when you have proficiency in the weapon type. There is no reason for a crossbow to be worse (or better) for a character that has both simple and martial weapon proficiency.
I'm not saying weapons shouldn't have distinctions.
I am saying there is no need for the gladius, and a short sword, or other one-handed bladed weapons to really have different stats. You can have a category of weapon that has certain attributes, and let players call it whatever kind of weapon they want so long as they utilize the stats.
I mean personally for my games I just tell players to use the stats of whatever weapon and can pretend that it's anything else. Go ahead, use the mechanics for a bow and call it a crossbow. You have proficiency in longbows, no reason for you to suffer mechanically for what is otherwise a flavor choice.
When the ranged weapon blog comes out hopefully we will get some information on slings.
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When the ranged weapon blog comes out hopefully we will get some information on slings.
We already know that they don't take an action to reload from one of the demo games (assuming they didn't get it wrong, but I don't think so). I think that and Halflings getting an Ancestry Feat to make them better are about all we know, though.