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I have no hard data on effective ranges but what i see tossed around about longbows is that they are effective to about 150m, after that the arrows lose a lot of penetration ability.
I am seeing 200m tossed around as a slings effective range mostly for accuracy reasons, the bullets tend to apparently retain much of their force through longer distances. I personally think that 200m mark is a bit high.
I have made my own sling in a way shown on Slinging.org's website and have used it very little over the last 10 years or so and I can fairly consistently hit a setup sheet of 4x8 plywood at 100ft. I have penetrated 3/8" plywood with the bullets (I cast them from a high density dental plaster and they are usually unusable afterwards...I haven't looked into casting metal yet and will have to wait on that until more time opens in my schedule...I haven't tossed in at least 8 months). I would classify myself as a severe novice in slinging and I can see that if I could practice more my accuracy and range would increase a lot. I don't have nearly the wrist action displayed in some videos of people slinging that I have seen. I feel like I could hit a dartboard at 100' with a week or 2 of dedicated practice. It really is a very cool weapon that is very accurate in the right hands.
Without getting involved in the argument about range, I wonder if we might more profitably ask about ways in which slingers can be brought up into something like parity with archers. I'm thinking about abilities that could be granted to slingers in some sort of an archetype. If I were writing up such an arcetype, I might include some of the following (in no particular order):
-- An ability to radically improve the range of slings, and only slings, to a degree considerably better than Far Shot does.
-- The ability to hit multiple targets with a single shot -- ricochet around corners, ricochet it from one target to another, maybe even make it a line attack.
-- The ability to fire through water without taking the usual penalties
-- The ability to fire the sling while prone
-- The ability to launch multiple slingstones with a single shot (why not?) which would duplicate Manyshot but allow only a single target
-- The ability to stun, sicken, nauseate, blind, or deafen a target
-- The ability to snipe with a sling (maybe in combination with a ricochet) without taking the usual penalty to Stealth
-- The ability to ignore some points of armor, sort of like firearms but without ignoring armor completely.
If slingers could get all of these benefits as they went up levels and perfected their mastery of the weapon, I'd imagine they could stay competitive with archers.
Coriat's level 7 Human Warrior was nice, but I think we can beat this point even further into the ground. To show just how ridiculous Ciretose's standard is, I'll match it with a level 7 human warrior who starts with the base NPC stat array (13,12,11,10,9,8) and has NPC WBL (4650 gp at level 7).
Level 7 Human Warrior
=== Stats ===
Str 16 (+2 racial, +1 level)
Dex 11
Con 12
Int 10
Wis 9
Cha 8
=== Defense ===
Hp 7d10+10 (64)
AC 19 (9 Armor)
CMD 20 (7 BAB, 3 Str)
=== Saves ===
Fort: +6 (5 base, 1 Con)
Ref : +2 (2 base)
Will: +1 (2 base)
=== Attacks ===
(7 base, 3 Str, 1 enhancement, +1 WF -2 Power Attack)
+10/5 (2d6+11 19-20x2)
=== Feats===
1. Power Attack, Weapon Focus
3. Cleave
5. Great Cleave
7. Vital Strike
=== Skills ===
3/lvl
=== Gear ===
+1 Greatsword
Full Plate
First Attack base: 55% hit, Avg. Damage (2d6 + 11 = 18) = 9.9
First Attack Critical: 10% threat, 55% confirm = .99
Second Attack base: 30% hit, Avg. Damage (2d6 + 11 = 18) = 5.4
First Attack Critical: 10% threat, 20% confirm = .54
Total DPR: 16.83
Cleave DPR: 21.78
Ciretose's required DPR: 21.25
So ... there we go. An NPC with NPC stats and NPC wealth can hit his standard of "viable" DPR if he can cleave, and is close to it otherwise.
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You'll up the greatsword warrior's output if you exchange most of his wealth for potions of bull's strength. It's like you don't even care about optimizing for doing 1/4 of a CR equal opponent's health in one round!
I haven't tried, but I bet a commoner with martial weapon proficiency: longbow could come close to the incredibly low 1/4 health benchmark.
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Uh...no. Citation please because that isn't consistent with anything I've seen. The Range at Agincourt was measured at 300 yards.Professor N H Gibbs, formerly Professor of the History of War at Oxford University, as cited in Numerical Analysis of a Battle from History by T G Weale of the UK Defence Operational Analysis Establishment.
This gives a quick description of the battle of Crecy.
Your 300 yards effective combat range for longbows at Agincourt comes from where? I would check your source again, if I were you, because I think you'll find that 300 yards is at the extreme end of the maximum range, rather than effective combat range. At Agincourt the English deliberately fired at extreme range because they wanted to lure the French into attacking prematurely.
It was the extreme end of maximum range. You were citing the record distances for slings. That is actually well less than the 345 indicated
I'll note you didn't include the rest of my post, which Gallo reposted later...
@Gallo - The point being if we are going to talk about best case scenarios on one we should be talking about the same on the other.
Heh, zero point buy, NPC wealth, NPC class. Nice. That was more ambitious than mine. And the non cleaving DPR isn't far off, for all that (though I have learned from watching someone play a fighter who has Cleave - that Cleave is pretty iffy and eventually with a steep drop-off in returns)
PS, ciretose;
What we do know is that every army that could afford bowmen in the period portrayed in setting, choose them over slings.
I kind of feel like I've made it pretty easy for you to know better than this!
That post even cites the Crown of Castile choosing to field slingers rather than bowmen during the very heyday of the English longbow. It's not like Castile was a weak minor nation, or lacked access to bows (indeed, even the most cursory research into English trade in bowstaves reveals that more of their yew came from Spain than from England). They could have fielded the longbow had they chosen, but they chose to field the sling.
And the English fielded the sling too, during the same heyday of the longbow.
Even besides that, forces of bowmen at all, at least in Western Europe - so even if you forgot about that Spanish I spoke of - or the English deployments of slingers, or the Italian, or Scandinavian... powerful peoples all) - which powerful wealthy armies were choosing the bow and not the sling, exactly, when few were really favoring the bow at all, compared to the crossbow?
You could go east to the Turks, the Mongols, the Persians and the Arabs, where you'd find quite a large place given to the bow, I suppose - but there you'd also find a longer military lifespan of the sling than even in Spain. Or you could go earlier, from the Hundred Years' War to the Crusades or to the Carolingians (the "paladin" guys) - but in those periods, you'd find even the traditional shepherd's sling pretty much all over the place in every significant army. Or you could go to different arenas of war - from the land battlefields of the Hundred Years War to the galley fleets of Venice, say - but there you'd find the staff sling firmly ensconced.
(And I don't really disagree that the shepherd's sling no longer had the edge by the medieval era - though I disagree that it was that far behind, and the staff sling was quite up to date - it mostly just annoys me, at the moment, to see history gotten wrong).
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Coriat's level 7 Human Warrior was nice, but I think we can beat this point even further into the ground. To show just how ridiculous Ciretose's standard is, I'll match it with a level 7 human warrior who starts with the base NPC stat array (13,12,11,10,9,8) and has NPC WBL (4650 gp at level 7).
Level 7 Human Warrior
** spoiler omitted **First Attack base: 55% hit, Avg. Damage (2d6 + 11 = 18) = 9.9
First Attack Critical: 10% threat, 55% confirm = .99
Second Attack base: 30% hit, Avg. Damage (2d6 + 11 = 18) = 5.4
First Attack Critical: 10% threat, 20% confirm = .54Total DPR: 16.83
Cleave DPR: 21.78Ciretose's required DPR: 21.25
So ... there we go. An NPC with NPC stats and NPC wealth can hit his standard of "viable" DPR if he can cleave, and is close to it otherwise.
Do I really need to point out the logical flaw in a cleave dependent DPR build?
Seriously?
Let me go back and check Coriat, but this is pathetic...
You'll up the greatsword warrior's output if you exchange most of his wealth for potions of bull's strength. It's like you don't even care about optimizing for doing 1/4 of a CR equal opponent's health in one round!
I haven't tried, but I bet a commoner with martial weapon proficiency: longbow could come close to the incredibly low 1/4 health benchmark.
Well, he does have some left over NPC wealth...
If cleave is that much of a sticking point, bump him from the base NPC array to the heroic NPC array. The resulting two extra points of strength takes his DPR up to:
First Attack base: 60% hit, Avg. Damage (2d6 + 13 = 20) = 12
First Attack Critical: 10% threat, 55% confirm = 1.2
Second Attack base: 35% hit, Avg. Damage (2d6 + 11 = 20) = 7
First Attack Critical: 10% threat, 20% confirm = .7
Total DPR: 22.1
Still an NPC class with NPC WBL and NPC stats.
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Human Warrior 7 (Manyshot seems to be brought up often enough that I figured I'd make it high enough to use it, and to iron out early level weirdness).
First off, props at making a legit attempt and not trying a cheese build like the other guy.
Now checking the math (and please check mine back)
7 + 6 + 2 + 1 = 16
-2 (rapid shot)=14
- 2 (deadly Aim= 12
So it will be +12/+12/+7, not +13/+13/+8. So you lose %5.
WBL is 23,500 so that seems fine.
Point buy was 20 I assume? Two dumps stats, but I never made that a rule, it was just something I didn't do in my build, and it is something I would say an Non-PC class wouldn't have, but that is probably nit picking.
The 1d8 + 9 is correct. The crit number would also be down 5%.
But I don't think that change brings you below the bar set, even removing manyshot.
So fair point made. Where would you put the bar so I can see if I can hit it?
A halfling warrior slinger would do 1d3+9 (same feats - Manyshot)
A human warrior slinger wouldn't be able to full attack without losing precise shot.
A halfing fighter would add 4 feats and weapon training to do 1d3 + 12 damage at a higher attack bonus, same with the fighter.
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AND WHAT PRAY TELL IS THIS PERIOD? DOES ANYBODY KNOW? No, seriously. ANYONE? Because it's either classical greek period [crossbow tech level], modern [machineguns and how we've made the composite longbows in pathfinder], fuedal dark ages [about a third of the governments on Golarion], Iron Age barbarian hordes, Renaissance [the firearms].
The Medieval period. And arguing it is later doesn't help the sling defense given the Medieval period is when they were made largely obsolete.
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Also anyone who says "Given the shortfalls of prior experimentation it is likely that the capabilities of slings lie closer to ranges reported in textual sources than to the measured trials" Meaning "I believe stories more than science" is not someone I take seriously.Yeah, I think that says a lot about you rather than the author.
What he is saying is that "given the shortfalls of prior experimentation", i.e. the difficulty in reproducing the skill and experience of the reported slingers, that "it is likely that the capabilities of slings lie closer to ranges reported in textual sources than to the measured trials". In other words, he is acknowledging that his experiments are not perfect and that the results may therefore be skewed. Exactly what a responsible scientist would acknowledge.
He is attempting to rationalize the stories rather than test a hypothesis.
His testing did not bear out what he wanted, even doing best case scenario math. So he dismissed them. Hence a Masters of Art rather than Science...
Also, that is Mr. Skov's Master thesis. Mr. Skov, not Dr. Skov unless something changed since this past May when he was working on his Master's degree.
I will also note that zero people on this thread are arguing slings should be ineffective.
They aren't.
You can kill a horse at first level, after all. :)
But they were not as good as composite bows.
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PS, ciretose;
What we do know is that every army that could afford bowmen in the period portrayed in setting, choose them over slings.I kind of feel like I've made it pretty easy for you to know better than this!
If anyone is arguing that the sling has zero effectiveness, please raise your hand
*crickets*
But the threshold is "as good as composite bows"
It wasn't.
Half of your references are "The last sighting"...
For example "I have yet to find mention of slings in the Crusades after the 12th century, save in siege or naval context, in which they are present "
and
"Slingers are recorded as causing casualties among the Viking army which ultimately lost a battle against the army of the Irish High King, Brian Boru, in AD1014, but with few details."
Citing "Hey every once in a while during the period, occasionally this weapon was kind of ok, sometimes" doesn't mean it should me made on par with the best weapons of the same era.
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The tests all came out less than 100m, with the exception of one person.I advise you to read Page 48. Especially the top five ranges which are/were world records, and therefore independently verified.
Jerzy Gasperowicz (bipointed lead) 505m
David Engvall (Dart) 477m
Larry Bray (Stone) 437.1m
Melvin Gayloor 349.6m
Vernon Morton 258.2m
Using what kinds of slings.
Or would that weaken your point?
Can I look for modern composite bows to make my point too, or am I restricted to period materials and you aren't? Just curious.
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I have made my own sling in a way shown on Slinging.org's website and have used it very little over the last 10 years or so and I can fairly consistently hit a setup sheet of 4x8 plywood at 100ft.
Or about 33 yards.
Again, let us get to the base of the discussion.
Slings could kill people.
But they were not as good as composite bows.
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If cleave is that much of a sticking point, bump him from the base NPC array to the heroic NPC array. The resulting two extra points of strength takes his DPR up to:
First Attack base: 60% hit, Avg. Damage (2d6 + 13 = 20) = 12
First Attack Critical: 10% threat, 55% confirm = 1.2
Second Attack base: 35% hit, Avg. Damage (2d6 + 11 = 20) = 7
First Attack Critical: 10% threat, 20% confirm = .7Total DPR: 22.1
Still an NPC class with NPC WBL and NPC stats.
12 + 1.2 + 7 + .7 = 20.9
12 + 1.2 + 7 + .7 = 20.9If cleave is that much of a sticking point, bump him from the base NPC array to the heroic NPC array. The resulting two extra points of strength takes his DPR up to:
First Attack base: 60% hit, Avg. Damage (2d6 + 13 = 20) = 12
First Attack Critical: 10% threat, 55% confirm = 1.2
Second Attack base: 35% hit, Avg. Damage (2d6 + 11 = 20) = 7
First Attack Critical: 10% threat, 20% confirm = .7Total DPR: 22.1
Still an NPC class with NPC WBL and NPC stats.
Huh. I made a minor math error.
Care to address the actual point being made?
NPC Half-Orc (Toothy) Warrior, Elite Array, NPC Wealth.
Str 18, other stuff
Feats: Power Attack, Weapon Focus, Additional Traits (Killer, Swordlord's Page), Furious Focus.
Gear: +1 Greatsword, others stuff.
Standard attack is 7 (BAB) + 4 (STR) +1 (WF) +1 (Magic) = +13.
Full attack routine is Greatsword +13/+6 (2d6+11; 19-20) and Bite +6 (1d4+6)
DPR vs target AC 20:
.7*18+(.1*.75*20)+.35*18+(.1*.4*20)+.35*8.5+(.05*.4*10.5) = 24.385
Or 28% of an equal-CR target.
With an NPC with heroic NPC stat array and standard NPC wealth (and half the wealth left for other stuff like armor and potions).
Also, for completeness sake, drinking a cheap 50gp Potion of Enlarge Person increases the DPR to 30.7, which is 36% of a CR7 target.
AND WHAT PRAY TELL IS THIS PERIOD? DOES ANYBODY KNOW? No, seriously. ANYONE? Because it's either classical greek period [crossbow tech level], modern [machineguns and how we've made the composite longbows in pathfinder], fuedal dark ages [about a third of the governments on Golarion], Iron Age barbarian hordes, Renaissance [the firearms].The Medieval period. And arguing it is later doesn't help the sling defense given the Medieval period is when they were made largely obsolete.
Bows generally started going out of use around the same time but let's not let that get in the way of the discussion. The reason slings, and bows, went out of use was a combination of social, cultural, economic and military reasons. Their effectiveness did not drop just because they were no longer in use. If that was the case then Wellington would have busily trained up lots of longbowmen because a unit of longbowmen would have been more effective than one using Brown Bess muskets.
Uh...no. Citation please because that isn't consistent with anything I've seen. The Range at Agincourt was measured at 300 yards.Professor N H Gibbs, formerly Professor of the History of War at Oxford University, as cited in Numerical Analysis of a Battle from History by T G Weale of the UK Defence Operational Analysis Establishment.
This gives a quick description of the battle of Crecy.
Your 300 yards effective combat range for longbows at Agincourt comes from where? I would check your source again, if I were you, because I think you'll find that 300 yards is at the extreme end of the maximum range, rather than effective combat range. At Agincourt the English deliberately fired at extreme range because they wanted to lure the French into attacking prematurely.
It was the extreme end of maximum range. You were citing the record distances for slings. That is actually well less than the 345 indicated
I'll note you didn't include the rest of my post, which Gallo reposted later...
@Gallo - The point being if we are going to talk about best case scenarios on one we should be talking about the same on the other.
I'm not talking about best case scenarios (though there is enough evidence out there to align slings and bows depending on how many primary sources you wish to misquote or ignore).
As I've mentioned several times I don't really care about comparative ranges of slings and bows when it comes to the game. But given you had selectively quoted one study to try and claim slings couldn't really be used beyond about 100 yards I felt obliged to make a few observations about weapon ranges.
And when you and others linked various academic studies into slings, you still managed to pick and choose information to support your case and ignore any inconvenient information, including in one case, a sentence immediately after what you had quoted.
Irrespective of how you want to argue about sling ranges, the fact remains that range doesn't really come up much in game and the comparisons you are using with character builds are about DPR and feat costs., with range not really a factor.
Heh, zero point buy, NPC wealth, NPC class. Nice. That was more ambitious than mine. And the non cleaving DPR isn't far off, for all that (though I have learned from watching someone play a fighter who has Cleave - that Cleave is pretty iffy and eventually with a steep drop-off in returns)
PS, ciretose;
What we do know is that every army that could afford bowmen in the period portrayed in setting, choose them over slings.I kind of feel like I've made it pretty easy for you to know better than this!
That post even cites the Crown of Castile choosing to field slingers rather than bowmen during the very heyday of the English longbow. It's not like Castile was a weak minor nation, or lacked access to bows (indeed, even the most cursory research into English trade in bowstaves reveals that more of their yew came from Spain than from England). They could have fielded the longbow had they chosen, but they chose to field the sling.
And the English fielded the sling too, during the same heyday of the longbow.
Even besides that, forces of bowmen at all, at least in Western Europe - so even if you forgot about that Spanish I spoke of - or the English deployments of slingers, or the Italian, or Scandinavian... powerful peoples all) - which powerful wealthy armies were choosing the bow and not the sling, exactly, when few were really favoring the bow at all, compared to the crossbow?
You could go east to the Turks, the Mongols, the Persians and the Arabs, where you'd find quite a large place given to the bow, I suppose - but there you'd also find a longer military lifespan of the sling than even in Spain. Or you could go earlier, from the Hundred Years' War to the Crusades or to the Carolingians (the "paladin" guys) - but in those periods, you'd find even the traditional shepherd's sling pretty much all over the place in every significant army. Or you could go to different arenas of war - from the land...
One of the reason slings have a low profile, in the sense of not being recorded much in historical texts, was that they were seen as peasant weapons and the various chroniclers largely focused on the knightly class (and bows if they were English). So even if they were as, or more, widely used than bows and crossbows, they wouldn't be as proportionally well recorded in historical records.
I have made my own sling in a way shown on Slinging.org's website and have used it very little over the last 10 years or so and I can fairly consistently hit a setup sheet of 4x8 plywood at 100ft.Or about 33 yards.
Again, let us get to the base of the discussion.
Slings could kill people.
But they were not as good as composite bows.
Maybe we could proceed under the fairly reasonable assumption that if Fake Healer had been living in a period when slings were used as weapons of war - and could only throw 33 yards - he wouldn't have actually been used as a slinger. And therefor his occasional use of it would not be representative of anyone whose livelihood (and life!) depended on proficiency in its use.
NPC Half-Orc (Toothy) Warrior, Elite Array, NPC Wealth.
Str 18, other stuffFeats: Power Attack, Weapon Focus, Additional Traits (Killer, Swordlord's Page), Furious Focus.
Gear: +1 Greatsword, others stuff.
Standard attack is 7 (BAB) + 4 (STR) +1 (WF) +1 (Magic) = +13.
Full attack routine is Greatsword +13/+6 (2d6+11; 19-20) and Bite +6 (1d4+6)
DPR vs target AC 20:
.7*18+(.1*.75*20)+.35*18+(.1*.4*20)+.35*8.5+(.05*.4*10.5) = 24.385Or 28% of an equal-CR target.
With an NPC with heroic NPC stat array and standard NPC wealth (and half the wealth left for other stuff like armor and potions).
Also, for completeness sake, drinking a cheap 50gp Potion of Enlarge Person increases the DPR to 30.7, which is 36% of a CR7 target.
What do you want to bet that ciretose will fixate on you using a race trait and mentioning a consumable over actually addressing your build?
PS, ciretose;
What we do know is that every army that could afford bowmen in the period portrayed in setting, choose them over slings.I kind of feel like I've made it pretty easy for you to know better than this!
If anyone is arguing that the sling has zero effectiveness, please raise your hand
*crickets*
But the threshold is "as good as composite bows"
It wasn't.
Half of your references are "The last sighting"...
For example "I have yet to find mention of slings in the Crusades after the 12th century, save in siege or naval context, in which they are present "[/unquote]
and
"Slingers are recorded as causing casualties among the Viking army which ultimately lost a battle against the army of the Irish High King, Brian Boru, in AD1014, but with few details."
Citing "Hey every once in a while during the period, occasionally this weapon was kind of ok, sometimes" doesn't mean it should me made on par with the best weapons of the same era.
I have to admire your persistence with ignoring primary sources and continually selectively using material. A reference to 4,000 slingers in a Spanish army in 1367 (ie late medieval period), let alone primary sources beyond what Coriat noted in his referenced post, is not "hey, once in while".
What do you want to bet that ciretose will fixate on you using a race trait and mentioning a consumable over actually addressing your build?
I don't think even Ciretose can whine about using a race trait when his build that did about as much % damage per round also relied on a race trait.
That guide is about full-out combat optimization, and not every game is optimized or there even is an intent to do that. Also, it says a hammer needs to do X - they don't show it, or the why's of it. It's an opinion piece - a well-founded opinion piece perhaps but it relies on a specific gamestyle and doesn't do much to provide evidence to it's claims.
I agree with the conclusion that 1/4 is far too little when damage is the only thing you bring to the table, but an opinion in a specific guide based on a specific view on how the game should be played isn't really good proof for anything unless discussing with people who explicitly share that view.
Honestly, if a bard or rogue dealt the amounts of damage the slinger does I think that would've been okay in our games - they bring skills and magic to the table, even discounting the combat abilities. But that slinger has slinging as his _only_ schtick; it's worthless in melee, it's worthless at skills, it's slow, it has no crowd control or magic, it sucks at combat maneuvers, it's got pretty crappy social options, it's not stealthy etc etc.
Human Warrior 7 (Manyshot seems to be brought up often enough that I figured I'd make it high enough to use it, and to iron out early level weirdness).
First off, props at making a legit attempt and not trying a cheese build like the other guy.
Now checking the math (and please check mine back)
7 + 6 + 2 + 1 = 16
-2 (rapid shot)=14
- 2 (deadly Aim= 12So it will be +12/+12/+7, not +13/+13/+8. So you lose %5.
WBL is 23,500 so that seems fine.
Point buy was 20 I assume? Two dumps stats, but I never made that a rule, it was just something I didn't do in my build, and it is something I would say an Non-PC class wouldn't have, but that is probably nit picking.
The 1d8 + 9 is correct. The crit number would also be down 5%.
Sorry, I forgot to include bracers of falcon aim's bonus in the attack breakdown.
It should read:
(7 base, 6 Dex, 2 enhancement, 1 pointblank, 1 falcon's aim, -2 Rapid, -2 Deadly)
+13/13/8 (1d8+9/19-20x3)*
*double damage on first shot
(+2 Str, +2 enhancement, +1 pointblank, +4 Deadly)
Similarly, the 19-20x3 is from the same source.
This makes my math correct as far as I can tell, albeit I managed to fool myself into thinking I had forgotten the bracers after all, with the exception that unlike you I seem to have managed to overlook them mere minutes after actually including them in my own numbers. Mumble grumble beer mumble.
But I don't think that change brings you below the bar set, even removing manyshot.
So fair point made. Where would you put the bar so I can see if I can hit it?
I'll think about this one and get back to you. I want to play with a few analogous weapon comparisons, e.g. sickle vs. shortsword, to get a feel for what the numbers have to say in cases that I don't consider problematic.
Also, that is Mr. Skov's Master thesis.
So it is. That doesn't change the evidence, nor the fact that it was reviewed by senior academic figures for accuracy.
Nor that you are at a woeful disadvantage with your own lack of knowledge when arguing against a focussed study for a post-graduate level thesis. If you have an equivalent level of study behind you, then declare it and feel free to criticise Mr Skov. If not, don't try to pick holes in a thesis when you don't understand what is being said in it.
Extreme ranges? Yes, which is what you were asking for when you were quoting extreme range longbow distances.
I have already mentioned several times that:
a) Maximum range is not effective range.
b) I am not suggesting that the sling to be upgraded to exceed longbow (or composite longbow) range or damage.
1. So why did the slinger need Clustered Shots when the archer didn't...was it so you didn't have to give the slinger deadly aim as that would make the damage fairly close?
2. Also, why give high Dex builds improved Initiative?
3. Oh...because you weren't trying to make an honest comparison...
4. Hell, you can't even actually take Clustered shot 2nd, because of the pre-requisites...
1. Think about it for a second. Archer damage is high enough to overcome DR anyway, and I gave him silversheen just in case. Besides, the archer spent an extra 600 gp on his composite bow, so he couldn't afford a ring, so I gave him Dodge to compensate -- keeping him at the same AC and the same effectiveness against DR. In other words, to make an honest comparison...
And giving the slinger Deadly Aim for free STILL wouldn't let him "come close" -- unless "close" means "a small fraction of the total."2. Maybe your DM mollycoddles things so that fights run for 4-6 rounds. In general, I play in games where people pull out all the stops and combat is over in a round or two. Improved Initiative is the most important feat there is.
3. Speak for yourself.
4. Archer feats were listed alphabetically, genius, not in order selected. The slinger's feats started from there and substituted as needed.
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But the threshold is "as good as composite bows"
No it isn't. It is at least as good as shortbows.
This has been said again and again and again. You cling to your strawman like a toddler to a teddybear, but the thread is there for anyone to read.
Half of your references are "The last sighting"...
Well, we don't use slings any more in battle or combat so historical accounts are kind of important. The same is true of longbows, by the way. If you want to throw out all historical record and design your weapons on some other basis then do so in your own game. It will not be realistic but you can discard all those irrelevant and annoying eye witness accounts and historical reports.
You are once more fervently clinging to the argument that slings were superceded on the battlefield so should be necessarily be weaker than the weapons that superceded them. This fails on two major, very important, points, both of which have been brought up repeatedly in this thread:
1. The Pathfinder game happily uses technology and cultures that are not locked to a late medieval period, as well as fantasy elements such as magic. The weapons portrayed are from a diverse range of periods, from Neolithic to C20th, and most have benefits that mean that they are a viable choice for a PC to take. The sling does not. The rules simply do not reflect what a sling is capable of.
2. Being superceded by battlefield tactics does not make a weapon any less effective;
a) Slings were demonstrably deadly against warriors wearing mail. Mail is a common armour type in Pathfinder. Likewise they are recorded as working well against rigid plate (in the form of helmets).
b) People's anatomy and physiology do not alter over time, so a weapon that causes X damage in 1200BC will do the same amount of damage to a person in 1200AD.
c) Ranges will likewise be unaltered, assuming that the user is equally as skilled.
d) Battlefield tactics changed from dense heavy infantry units with light skirmishers and a scattering of light cavalry, to heavy shock cavalry with heavy infantry and long-range heavy missiles. That is why the likes of the sling, javelin and throwing weapons disappeared from the battlefield. Unless your Pathfinder game consists of recreating late medieval battlefields, the sling being superceded on those battlefields is an absolutely irrelevant detail.
This was a long post, but I hope you take notice of it, because the central supports of your arguments are based on fallacies and strawmen. The thread long ago grew into a monster, but you are bringing up the same irrelevant points time and again. They have been refuted and their weakness pointed out each time, yet you persist as though nobody pointed out to you that you are arguing with yourself.
You ignore all posts that firmly demonstrate your errors and bring up strawman arguments at every juncture. You show a remarkable lack of understanding about what you are discussing yet cannot accept evidence from those who have better knowledge.
Ask yourself whether you are now really defending the Pathfinder sling, or if you are actually just stubbornly putting your head in the sand so that you cannot see the evidence to refute your arguments.
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I have made my own sling in a way shown on Slinging.org's website and have used it very little over the last 10 years or so and I can fairly consistently hit a setup sheet of 4x8 plywood at 100ft.Or about 33 yards.
Again, let us get to the base of the discussion.
Slings could kill people.
But they were not as good as composite bows.
"I would classify myself as a severe novice in slinging and I can see that if I could practice more my accuracy and range would increase a lot."
Selectively using my own words out of context is not proving your point, it only proves that you are purposely blinding yourself to any other ideas that are not your own.And again:
Sling and Bows have similar extreme ranges, effective ranges, Damage potential and firing rates in real life.
That is not reflected in the game.
But please, keep doing your "laa-laa-laa not listening" dance. I wonder if you are just trolling to mess with people because it's hard to believe that someone can actually be dense enough to ignore so much actual data on a subject and still come back with "yup, 33 yards is it" or "bows were superior in every facet" time after time.
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I'll think about this one and get back to you. I want to play with a few analogous weapon comparisons, e.g. sickle vs. shortsword, to get a feel for what the numbers have to say in cases that I don't consider problematic.But I don't think that change brings you below the bar set, even removing manyshot.
So fair point made. Where would you put the bar so I can see if I can hit it?
Well, I started thinking about this, and then I lost track and started thinking about two things: Kirth citing the Tain and the article ciretose linked to.
Reading the other parts of Ciretose's article, I get the sense that its argument is that the sling eventually lost its tactical edge over other weapons and the best gained a similar edge over it, but not drastically so - and that the author identifies the larger reason for their disappearance as social and economic changes:
It is common for people to fire projectiles backwards when they are first learning, meaning a high degree of proficiency is needed before they can be safely placed in a battlefield situation.
Heh, I bet.
In feudal times, lords could recruit their serf population as soldiers (Wise, 1976). Many of these men were already proficient with the bow or sling, which were used for hunting game. However, by the High Middle Ages, nations and cities had developed large standing armies, which were recruited, sustained, and equipped by the government (Martin, 1968). An increasing number of these recruits were from urban populations which had far less exposure to ranged weapons. These units had to be trained from scratch and there was a high turnover. This led to the increased use of weapons that were deadlier with less training. The sling was perhaps the least effective choice of ranged weapon in this role.
However, increased cultural diffusion and urbanization in the Middle Ages meant local cultural traditions, such as slinging, were weakened. Instead, European culture was homogenizing. By Medieval times, there were few pockets of experienced slingers left, certainly not enough to be organized successfully. This is probably the primary reason why the sling rarely appeared on the medieval battlefield: the lack of skillful slingers.
I then combine this with the references I've found that seem to show that significant land sling (setting aside naval use) use did persist, but not everywhere. In Poland, for example, which is well known in the period for its myopic economic focus on farming grain, you see the bow and crossbow decisively displace the sling. Whereas e.g. Spain grew immensely wealthy off the wool trade:
The study of Spain's early modern economic history has been dominated by interest in her New World empire -- by images of galleons returning home laden with gold, silver, and precious stones. But wealth generated from the New World accounted for only a small percentage of total income for the crown and private citizens alike. The vast majority derived from the Spain's agrarian economy, of which wool production formed an important part. Large-scale herding supported tens of thousands of families at all social levels and allowed a profitable use of land that was unsuited to agriculture. For centuries, wool production and trade arguably generated more foreign income than any other component of the economy.
Then looking at the geographic distribution of peoples who continued to use both bow and sling alike - Celts, Byzantines, the Ottoman Empire, Mongols, Arabs, South Italians - you see quite a lot of hilly herding areas. Anatolia was no Poland, and where you see shepherd populations persisting, you generally don't see the bow and crossbow compete out the sling like they did in Poland or Germany.
And, of course, the Tain is like half about stealing each other's cattle. Herding makes its appearance again, and is accompanied by fantasy sources for awesome slinging.
(Incidentally, the Turks seem to be another good place to look for more mythological depictions of slinging being awesome:
It was capable of hurling twelve batmans of stone at each shot. The stone it hurled seldom fell to the ground, and, when it did, it would fly as dust and bum as fire. For three years no grass grew at the place where it fell.
A batman varied from time to time and place to place, but seems to have been between 2-8lb. So, it hurled 24-96lb worth of sling stones, Karajuk rarely missed with it, and when he did, he would explode the ground like an artillery shell. That's a badass fantasy sling right there).
Anyway, all this suggests to me a mechanical approach:
A) Slings be improved, as many in this thread have suggested, to the point where they are not quite as good as bows but pretty close (-10% maybe, maybe with some niches where it's better and other areas where it's worse - there are plenty of good suggestions).
B) Slings be made an exotic weapon, as others in this thread have suggested, but
C) A background trait (shepherd) can grant proficiency in this particular exotic weapon.
Then you could have what Kirth and Nicos want, which is a sling on closer par with a bow, but not what ciretose fears, which is a mechanic encouraging PCs to abandon the longbow for the sling in droves - since it would only be really advantageous to use a sling if your PC had a shepherding background, and furthermore since the bow would probably still ultimately edge it out in maximum potential and in the hands of the most focused users. It could however be better for shepherd-background-traited Cuchulainn type character to pick up a sling than a bow, particularly if we are talking one weapon among several rather than a rapid shotting, deadly aiming turret style character with his entire build focus on ranged combat with one weapon.
And then you could have the staff sling as a martial (rather than exotic - it was simpler than the shepherd's sling), two-handed, one-big-shot version of the sling. Maybe its niche could be 1.5x Str to damage, like the ranged counterpart of the two-handed melee weapon. Most illustrations and videos I've seen use both arms together to power the throw, not one hand to draw and one to counter as a bow does. But then it would retain its slower reload and lower ultimate potential than the bow, while having something that is at least unique and potentially attractive to some builds.
And then mighty crossbows, to have a bit different niche in their own right, and... okay, I'll stop.
...So, this is a really longwinded way of saying that the idea of the sling as an exotic weapon, but with proficiency available to characters of a certain background by taking just a trait rather than the whole feat, appeals to me.
I'll return to the original question I said I would think about when I get home from work.
AND WHAT PRAY TELL IS THIS PERIOD? DOES ANYBODY KNOW? No, seriously. ANYONE? Because it's either classical greek period [crossbow tech level], modern [machineguns and how we've made the composite longbows in pathfinder], fuedal dark ages [about a third of the governments on Golarion], Iron Age barbarian hordes, Renaissance [the firearms].The Medieval period. And arguing it is later doesn't help the sling defense given the Medieval period is when they were made largely obsolete.Even if the sling were obsoletes against a full plate (bows also have difficulty against them), the sling should be better against most of the armors presented in the book. Chainshirts, breastplates, etc.
It have been posted several times how sling coudl kill people armored with those armors.
I just wanted to point out that very few soldiers had full plate on the medieval battlefield. It was pretty much just the knights who were rich enough to buy this armor. Full plate was made to deflect arrows and lessen the kinetic force of blunt impact weapons like slings. Mail in contrast provide little to no protection against blunt impacts, and this was the most typical metal armor for most of history.
To say nothing of the fact that not all Pathfinder opponents wear metal armour, let alone full plate.
Yet the sling is equally as poor against all of them.
Plenty of foes in Pathfinder actually wear leather or studded armor, which would provide only modest protection against slings.
A quick point about surface area and energy: the tip of an arrow does provide a superior concentration of force. But that is not the only thing that matters. Burton, in The Book of the Sword, makes the same point about blades and concludes that stabbing weapons such as the rapier and curved slashing weapons like the saber are unquestionably superior weapons. Yet, history seems to have decided otherwise, with straight, versatile blades preponderating in many cases. Why? Because injuring a human is not a simple physics problem.
Ok, does somebody, besides Ciretoce, thinks this should be ignored and still have the sling equally poor against every armor? and have the bow equally good against everything?
Sean K Reynolds, who likens using a crossbow or sling to throwing water balloons. And SKR's opinion counts for a lot more, rules-wise, than ciretose's.
The weapon/armour problem is something that Pathfinder and D&D cannot tackle without dropping the whole AC system and turning to armour as damage mitigation. That is unlikely to happen as a large body of players will complain that losing AC is turning away from its roots. Of course, this was also the case when THAC0 went, so maybe it could happen in a future Pathfinder edition.
The old AD&D 1st edition did have a table of bonuses and penalties according to armour/weapon, but I don't know anyone who actually used this full time. In any case, it was inadequate because it didn't allow for natural armour or weapons, as well as requiring each new weapon/armour type to be laboriously calculated before being added.
If penetration was modelled with mitigating armour a lot of problems with weapons could be tackled better, the sling included.
Even if the sling were obsoletes against a full plate (bows also have difficulty against them)
This is a tangent to the topic of the thread, since it is about longbows and not slings, but I stumbled accidentally over something that interested me quite a bit while researching the last post. I'll put it in spoilers.
Keegan, in particular, in a study of the Battle of Agincourt, has shown that the tactical use of the English archers at this battle, and, for that matter, in all of the battles since the beginning of the fourteenth century, with the longbowmen either skirmishing in a "shoot-out" with their opponents' archers or flanking their infantry troops, could not have caused the loss of life attributed to them by historians. In fact, there is little evidence that the longbowmen, needing to fire with a steep arc to cover the distance between themselves and the enemy and thus unable to penetrate their opponents' armor, did any more damage than the killing of a few horses and the wounding of even fewer men. While the archers did not kill many men, however, they did harass their enemy to such an extent that they broke into a disordered charge, a charge narrowed by continual flanking fire until it reached and stopped at the solid infantry line. This, then, caused the victory - not the archery fire itself, but the archery-induced disordered charge into a solid infantry line...
I don't know how solid this book's argument is, historically speaking. It does seem to have a few potential seams that stand out, but the English longbow is not something I am truly well-read about enough to really dig into this.
However, what I find interesting is the thesis that English archery could actually fit into the paradigm of all other archery with which I am familiar (particularly the precepts of Byzantine horse-archery). I'd always regarded the English longbow as a bit of an outlier to the general rule of historical war that archery fire was excellent at disrupting ordered formations but that it had difficulty killing soldiers, thus necessitating a combined arms pairing (e.g. the cataphract's lance and bow) to be really successful. This new (to me) theory that there wasn't something strange and inexplicable about English archery is something that is interesting to read.
Anyway, your post brought it back to mind, and it's a theory that in my own ignorance I hadn't before encountered about the English longbow, so I figured I would share.
Oh, and possibly it was the crappy English historians who were exaggerating their bow? Score one for Xenophon - better than the English!
A lot of confusion is caused by the change from mail to plate during the Hundred years War. Whereas the longbow was comfortably penetrating mail at 100 yards (using bodkin arrows), you would need to be much closer, tens of feet, to penetrate plate, and even then the arrow head would struggle to do more than break into the armour, not fully penetrate.
In addition to very few men-at-arms being fully plated, their horses usually wore only a padded comparison. Heavy chest barding was sometimes worn, and was tried at Poitiers, but the consequent lack of mobility was exploited by the archers who simply moved to the flanks and shot the warhorses in the unarmoured sides and rear.