Just think what level Cortez must have been after killing tens of thousands of Incan warriors.
Just going by the article...
Unless you have another citation, that bit about armor going away because of guns is all you.
Meh...
I've lost interest.
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Armor became heavier to stop bullets; as a consequence, warriors on the march started discarding pieces bit by bit, until by the time of the Spanish Empire, nothing remained but the helmet, breastplate, and maybe bracers.
This is a fairly important fact that D&D glosses over.
When you carry a weapon and wear armor, 99% of the time, you're not using either. A lot of weapon choice was based on convenience, not necessarily killing power.
In a fight, weapon X gives you a 5% better chance to win than weapon Y, but weapon X can't be effectively put into a sheath so you have to either carry it all the time or strap it to yourself very carefully, because accidental bumps and stumbles could injure you or your traveling companions. You're going to be traveling to/from the battlefield for at least two weeks. Which would you choose?
I'm not convinced that slinging would/should be a bad choice for an adventurer type. These are people spelunking through muddy tombs of monsters for a living. A bow subject to any amount of reality would be useless to a person like that. It actually makes more sense for such a character to specialize in slings than bows, but the rules as they are now discourage it (since none of that is relevant).
Not only is a loaded sling not likely to accidentally fire, nor does it warp the string, it is actually a very effective improvised flail.
If bows were presented realistically, the most powerful enchantment would be the one that makes it waterproof. :)
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I'm not after the realism of using a sling to be represented in the game, though I don't want it removed either. I'm not looking to change the sling. All I wanted when I started this blasted thread was some kind of understanding why a bowyer can use many more ranged attack feats than a slinger.
Is there a rationale in all the articles so far cited that helps explain why its so bloody technical (3 feats) for someone to load a sling quickly or perhaps help explain why you can't, as someone proven highly accurate w/the weapon (Precise Shot) and highly intelligent (13 +) aim well at a single target for more damage.
W/a sling's feats you can shoot more accurately at long distance; same as a bow/crossbow. W/a sling you can be more deadly @ 30'; same as a bow/crossbow. But in the end you have more options with bow/crossbow than with a sling.
"Sling wasn't as popular, so there's no support for it in the game"
Then why make that the bloody Halfling racial thing? Why not make them excellent throwers of knives? Knife throwing is still a popular act in modern days for traveling entertainers; if Halflings are "traveler" types in Golarion, why not knives?
Its my assertion that slings are a holdover from 1e. They got jammed into the game, some words from a previous version of the game got copied/pasted and then forgotten about. Then, recently, someone said "oh, halflings still have that sling thing; we should do something about that" and a couple half-hearted sling feats appeared. Other than that, nothing.
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I've never really understood why Manyshot only worked for bows. Something mechanical like a crossbow or a gun I can understand, because it's not as simple as jamming a second bolt into your crossbow to fire two; however, firing two arrows from a longbow simultaneously is just as silly (if not more so) than loading and firing two bullets from a sling. Furthermore, why not Manyshot with two throwing weapons? Throwing two daggers from one hand is a pretty common trope that I'm sure some players would love to emulate.
I would love to see a 'war sling' released in a later supplement that uses language similar to the harpoon; ie. if you have exotic weapon proficiency with it, you can do X, while if you don't, treat it as a normal sling. The war sling would be treated as a halfling martial weapon, do 2d4/x3 damage, and be reloadable as a free action.
There. Exotic, so you can justify the strength to damage bit (although composite bows should be exotic as well when you think about it), and with stats comparable to other ranged weapons.
Kindly note that if you're dungeon delving and tomb robbing, a sling is a horrible weapon to have. You'll never have the space to actually use it in confined spaces. You can probably still use a bow or crossbow.
If you're outside in an open area, sure, you're fine. But the bowman has a narrower profile, and the crossbowman can shoot sitting down.
==Aelryinth
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Kindly note that if you're dungeon delving and tomb robbing, a sling is a horrible weapon to have. You'll never have the space to actually use it in confined spaces. You can probably still use a bow or crossbow.
If you're outside in an open area, sure, you're fine. But the bowman has a narrower profile, and the crossbowman can shoot sitting down.
==Aelryinth
A greataxe or greatsword, on the other hand, is ideal.
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If you're dungeon-delving, MAYBE a short bow. A longbow is not very conducive to stooping. Really we should all be using crossbows and spears.
I might make a fighter who uses a simple spear in protest of this silly weapon bias. Just because something is easy to train in doesn't make it less effective; in fact, it's usually MORE effective.
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I did quite a bit more research on this subject over the course of this morning.
Good searching, sir.
However, I think some of your text may have been in a selectively-invisible font colour because I predict some here may not be able to see it.
No, I'm sure that wouldn't happen. Have some faith in the guys across the aisle of this particular debate, I'm sure they wou...
Once the Longbow and Crossbow became common, the sling disappears from standard military usage except for odd corner cases like sieges, etc.
...oh.
Seriously, what?
I'm not even unsympathetic to your argument, Deth. I think the sling shouldn't be as "good" as the longbow, and I'm okay with it taking specialized training to get the sling to the point where you could get as much out of it as you could get out of another weapon. I think it should require Exotic Weapon Proficiency, for a start, which is one more feat you could spend elsewhere if you were wielding a better weapon.
But stop using misinformation to make your argument when it can stand perfectly well without misinformation. While I certainly wouldn't blame anyone for initial ignorance about slings in the medieval era, you've now been corrected about history, can we knock it off?
I even addressed to you an example (Falkirk) where the same side in the same battle is fielding both longbow and slinger units. And another in which mass slingers were deployed three hundred years after crossbows became commonplace in European armies.
Slings for everybody!
Except ciretose.
Kindly note that if you're dungeon delving and tomb robbing, a sling is a horrible weapon to have. You'll never have the space to actually use it in confined spaces. You can probably still use a bow or crossbow.
Slings come in different lengths. A short sling is not much different than just throwing an axe. If you have room to swing a battleaxe, you have room to sling. Bows, on the other hand, would be very difficult, because most of the time, you're trying to walk around and squeeze and crap, not standing and shooting--a long rigid object like that would be very difficult to spelunk with, while a short length of string would be pretty easy.
Hmm, actually your comment is making me think you don't actually know what slinging looks like. You're probably imagining that long wind up, spin in a circle around your head a few times thing that movies give us, but that is really only for longer, warslings where distance is most important. A short sling is mostly just a lever that enhances a throwing motion.
Is the composite longbow even a traditional medieval european thing? From what I am seeing they were made mostly from a single piece of wood.
The Composite Longbow doesn't exist in history at all, and the Composite Shortbow was basically unknown in Western Europe. Bow design was essentially based on local environmental conditions.
In Europe, for the most part, bows were made from a single piece of wood, because they could do that with the local wood and humidity/weather/etc.
In the Near East, things were a lot drier and wood wasn't so good, so they made composite bows, which are essentially not wood at all--they're horn, bone, and other animal bits held together with animal-based glue and stuff. They made for stronger shortbows because the glue and other materials could withstand more tension than wood, but there is an upper limit to the size those could be, both because of the composite nature of the bow and the fact that the Near East had mostly horse archers.
As I mentioned before, the Inuits made cord-backed bows because of their environmental situation. They were generally a core of driftwood, then backed with cords of various sorts--usually animal sinew, but sometimes stronger seaweeds and stuff--to hold it together and keep the tension.
If you bring a European Longbow to the American North and ride around in a kayak with it, it's going to get wet and warp. If you bring a Composite Shortbow to England, it's going to break apart in the humidity. If you bring a cord backed bow to the Near East, the sinew is going to dry out and snap. Bows are basically non-transferable. You made them from local parts and if you had to go to a drastically different environment, well, you either didn't rely on that bow for long, or you had to make a new bow with local methods.
Is the composite longbow even a traditional medieval european thing? From what I am seeing they were made mostly from a single piece of wood.
The composite longbow is more or less a made up weapon, not in medieval Europe or anywhere else. There may have been a few examples of large composite bows, likely from places where good bow-wood could not be found, I'm not sure - but if you had a choice, the general point of choosing composites would have been to get a smaller bow.
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So in summation:
Slings were dangerous, certainly more than 1d4 plus strength (assuming the average soldier has a +2 at best). They also shouldn't be a simple weapon, because it requires years of training to become good with it from a military standpoint. Composite longbows never existed, and regular longbows had just as much trouble with plated armour as slings did, although slings had the potential to seriously hurt someone even if they didn't penetrate.
I feel like we could move beyond 'what is the deal with slings?' to 'can we please change slings?'.
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So in summation:
Slings were dangerous, certainly more than 1d4 plus strength (assuming the average soldier has a +2 at best). They also shouldn't be a simple weapon, because it requires years of training to become good with it from a military standpoint. Composite longbows never existed, and regular longbows had just as much trouble with plated armour as slings did, although slings had the potential to seriously hurt someone even if they didn't penetrate.
I feel like we could move beyond 'what is the deal with slings?' to 'can we please change slings?'.
Citation for any of these things...
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Feel free to check the posts I was summarizing ciretose.
The posts you were summarizing didn't provide any actual evidence.
The Incas and the Aztecs lost to the Spanish, who by the way were generally lightly armored because it was the 1500's not the 1200's.
What I've seen a lot of is people who want slings to be better saying "Slings should be better" and not a lot of actual evidence as to why they should be better.
It would be like me going "Why aren't boomerangs as good as bows in the game?!?!"
The Incas and the Aztecs lost to the Spanish, who by the way were generally lightly armored because it was the 1500's not the 1200's.
Not true. A typical colonial Spanish infantryman of the 1500s was far more armored than a typical Spanish infantryman of the 1200s.
Now, he might not have been as heavily armored as a Spanish heavy cavalryman of the 1200s, but apples to apples.
And "heavily" with the cavalryman would be a weight term - the 1500s infantryman might well have been better protected, since a Spanish heavy cavalryman of the 1200s would have been wearing chain, which was very heavy and cumbersome, but not translating weight to protectiveness as efficiently as the armors of the 1500s.
In any case, the Spanish largely conquered their American empire with native soldiers, with actual Spaniards only serving as the elite shock forces and as officers. The Incas "lost" to their neighbors and subjects, and to disease, as well as to the Spanish.
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Going to Wikipedia for what it is worth.
From the deadliest warrior "Apache vs Gladiator"
"For long-range weapons, the sling was tested against the bow and arrow. Steven Dietrich launched a lead sling shot at 91 mph. The shot was then simulated by an air cannon which drove a lead sling shot into a gel head and shattered the upper jaw, penetrating just past the nose. Alan Tafoya, wielding the bow and arrow, first fired an arrow at a wooden target as the velocity of the arrow was clocked; the arrow's velocity was measured at roughly 65 miles per hour. Tafoya then fired multiple arrows at a gel torso in quick succession, landing multiple death strikes, including a shot between two ribs, a shot to the neck that would have severed the spinal cord, and a shot along the jawline that would have jutted into the base of the brain. The edge was given to the bow and arrow due to its superior range, accuracy, and lethality."
For "Persian Immortal vs Celt"
"For long-range weapons, the bow and arrow was tested against the sling. The bow and arrow's effective range was 50 yards while the sling delivered two kills and three wounds with five shots. The edge was given to the bow and arrow for it superior range, accuracy, rate of fire, and lethality."
I didn't find the video, but I also didn't try very hard. Off to bed.
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The Incas and the Aztecs lost to the Spanish, who by the way were generally lightly armored because it was the 1500's not the 1200's.Not true. A typical colonial Spanish infantryman of the 1500s was far more armored than a typical Spanish infantryman of the 1200s.
Now, he might not have been as heavily armored as a Spanish heavy cavalryman of the 1200s, but apples to apples.
And "heavily" with the cavalryman would be a weight term - the 1500s infantryman might well have been better protected, since a Spanish heavy cavalryman of the 1200s would have been wearing chain, which was very heavy and cumbersome, but not translating weight to protectiveness as efficiently as the armors of the 1500s.
In any case, the Spanish largely conquered their American empire with native soldiers, with actual Spaniards only serving as the elite shock forces and as officers. The Incas "lost" to their neighbors and subjects, and to disease, as well as to the Spanish.
Infantryman maybe. Knight, no. And they lost to disease, so most of the discussion is beside the point even if there were more than anecdote.
And again, even if non of this were the case, actual evidence is still lacking since anecdotes of the losing side being "Pretty good" isn't really all that impressive if you want to put a weapon obsolete for hundreds of years prior to the period on par with the best weapons of the period.
Not only is a loaded sling not likely to accidentally fire, nor does it warp the string, it is actually a very effective improvised flail.
If bows were presented realistically, the most powerful enchantment would be the one that makes it waterproof. :)
Well as i mention before, the Balearic slingers carried three slings and used them as head bands when not in combat. .Carrying your weapon as a head band has to rank up there with convenience
Fact is the sling is a cheap easy to use weapon in pathfinder that almost anyone can use.. If you improve the sling then it should no longer be considered a simple weapon. And the sling has been and still is used by shepherds and others in many places.
you can arm peasant militia with it, and can have first level players use them when they cannot afford better weapons or do not have proficiency to use other missile weapons. So I would not say they are totally useless.
I would like to see a few more feats for the sling,( One that would allow you to toss grenades from a sling and another that would allow you to use larger size ammo for in exchange for a decrease in range to name two.)but neither is high on my list of things I would like to see.
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Well, the spanish did not use composite longbow either, so I do not see how that proves the composite longbow was better.
Doesn't prove it was worse.
Here is a source with Bow info. Feel free to provide one with sling so we can compare.
Deadliest warrior tests are the only thing I've seen so far and they don't help your position.
For "Persian Immortal vs Celt"
"For long-range weapons, the bow and arrow was tested against the sling. The bow and arrow's effective range was 50 yards while the sling delivered two kills and three wounds with five shots. The edge was given to the bow and arrow for it superior range, accuracy, rate of fire, and lethality."
Makes sense to me. Xenophon's Anabasis recorded that Greek slingers slinging stones were getting the worst of a struggle against Persian archers - particularly due to a range advantage, as the Persians were particularly adept at long range archery - until Rhodian slingers armed with lead bullets, which greatly enhanced their range, entered the fray and roflstomped the Persians.
I don't think the Celts manufactured lead bullets, so Deadliest Warrior likely got it right (for once).
If you improve the sling then it should no longer be considered a simple weapon. And the sling has been and still is used by shepherds and others in many places.
That's not because Slings were easy to use, that's because slings were extremely useful to shepherds, since it could be used to kill wolves or redirect sheep from a distance. Shepherds would train with the sling basically their entire lives--put a sling in the hand of another peasant, say a baker, and he'd probably just shrug and wear it as a belt or something.
And yeah, Deadliest Warrior is a joke--they're not really scientific, they're all about sensationalizing stuff. They found a great Apache archer, and he was awesome. They did not find a great slinger (because there really aren't any), so the sling lost in accuracy because the guy they found wasn't as precise as the archer. That's kind of bull when you think about it. The truth is, we don't really know the upper limit of accuracy that a sling can have in the hands of a professional. We do know, however, that shepherds used to use them to drop rocks in front of their flock to redirect them, so the idea of them being wildly inaccurate seems impossible--it's not like they'd risk hurting their flock.
For "Persian Immortal vs Celt"
"For long-range weapons, the bow and arrow was tested against the sling. The bow and arrow's effective range was 50 yards while the sling delivered two kills and three wounds with five shots. The edge was given to the bow and arrow for it superior range, accuracy, rate of fire, and lethality."
Makes sense to me. Xenophon's Anabasis recorded that Greek slingers slinging stones were getting the worst of a struggle against Persian archers - particularly due to a range advantage, as the Persians were particularly adept at long range archery - until Rhodian slingers armed with lead bullets, which greatly enhanced their range, entered the fray and roflstomped the Persians.
I don't think the Celts manufactured lead bullets, so Deadliest Warrior likely got it right (for once).
Here we go. I see I did not remember all the details of Xenophon correctly (it was Greek archers who were getting outranged by long Persian bows and slingers, and Persian stone slingers and archers who got outranged in turn when the Greeks switched to slinging lead). Anyway, read it for yourself:
[3.3.15] For at present the enemy can shoot arrows and sling stones so far that neither our Cretan bowmen nor our javelin-men can reach them in reply; and when we pursue them, a long chase, away from our main body, is out of the question, and in a short chase no foot-soldier, even if he is swift, can overtake another foot-soldier who has a bow-shot the start of him.
[3.3.16] Hence, if we should propose to put an end to the possibility of their harming us on our march, we need slingers ourselves at once, and horsemen also. Now I am told that there are Rhodians in our army, that most of them understand the use of the sling, and that their missile carries no less than twice as far as those from the Persian slings.
[3.3.17] For the latter have only a short range because the stones that are used in them are as large as the hand can hold; the Rhodians, however, are versed also in the art of slinging leaden bullets.
[...]
[3.4.15] But when the Rhodian slingers and the bowmen, posted at intervals here and there, sent back an answering volley, and not a man among them missed his mark (for even if he had been very eager to do so, it would not have been easy), then Tissaphernes withdrew out of range with all speed, and the other battalions followed his example.
[3.4.16] For the rest of the day the one army continued its march and the other its pursuit. And the barbarians were no longer able to do any harm by their skirmishing at long range; for the Rhodian slingers carried farther with their missiles than the Persians, farther even than the Persian bowmen.
[3.4.17] The Persian bows are also large, and consequently the Cretans could make good use of all the arrows that fell into their hands; in fact, they were continually using the enemy's arrows, and practised themselves in long-range work by shooting them into the air
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Said the notoriously inaccurate Ancient Greek Historians, pertaining to a period how many centuries prior to the medieval period of which the setting derives?
If you want to argue lead shot should be sold for more damage, that seems reasonable.
But without actual data, I'm not going with the same type of historians who claimed millions (plural) of Persians were at the Battle of Thermopylae...
Ok, where is the actual data of the highly succesful medieval army armed with compositelongbows?If you want to get rid of composite longbows, I'm fine with it.
But you'll also find adding strength to slings makes little sense, given strength probably didn't add much to them relative to technique.
In all seriousness--I'm not being insulting here--do you even know how a sling works?
A sling is basically just a lever to extend the length of your arm. If you think a thrown rock should carry your strength bonus, then a slung rock should as well. It enhances your arm strength. Technique gets you accuracy, but physical arm strength gets you the power.
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Said the notoriously inaccurate Ancient Greek Historians, pertaining to a period how many centuries prior to the medieval period of which the setting derives?
If you want to argue lead shot should be sold for more damage, that seems reasonable.
But without actual data, I'm not going with the same type of historians who claimed millions (plural) of Persians were at the Battle of Thermopylae...
Putting aside the hilarity of dismissing first-person, primary source historical records in favor of Deadliest Warrior, and demanding actual data, in the same breath...
Xenophon is not Herodotus. He is highly regarded academically for the clarity of his observations and accuracy of his accounts, and unlike Herodotus (who tells the reader frequently that he doesn't know if what he is saying is true, since he's relying on legends he's been told by others), Xenophon was recording things he saw with his own eyes, as one of the commanders of the Greek army in question.
You don't need to take my word on it, feel free to go read up on him. Anabasis is one of the foundational texts of military history. Troop numbers and details in ancient texts are always unreliable, especially for a foreign army (because how would they really know?), but Xenophon is as reliable as you will get in the ancient world, and he was recording his own soldiers here.
Anabasis is also a fascinating read and I recommend it even totally outside the context of our little debates about our game. So on the off chance that you did take my advice and go read it, you wouldn't only be getting random sling trivia out of it, I promise :)
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Ok, where is the actual data of the highly succesful medieval army armed with compositelongbows?If you want to get rid of composite longbows, I'm fine with it.
But you'll also find adding strength to slings makes little sense, given strength probably didn't add much to them relative to technique.
In all seriousness--I'm not being insulting here--do you even know how a sling works?
A sling is basically just a lever to extend the length of your arm. If you think a thrown rock should carry your strength bonus, then a slung rock should as well. It enhances your arm strength. Technique gets you accuracy, but physical arm strength gets you the power.
It is a lever. But the force comes from the swinging motion, not from a Jai alai type arm extension.
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Putting aside the hilarity of dismissing first-person, primary source historical records in favor of Deadliest Warrior, and demanding actual data, in the same breath...Said the notoriously inaccurate Ancient Greek Historians, pertaining to a period how many centuries prior to the medieval period of which the setting derives?
If you want to argue lead shot should be sold for more damage, that seems reasonable.
But without actual data, I'm not going with the same type of historians who claimed millions (plural) of Persians were at the Battle of Thermopylae...
Data that is notable for how wrong it is. (Again, first hand accounts of millions of persians at Thermopylae.)
Vs actual, tested data.
Yes. I also believe the world was round then, despite primary sources of dragons beyond the horizon...