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Yeah, the English longbow is the Western equivalent to the katana. It was good but you can't kill tanks with it.
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.
[tangent]
Actually history decided that marrying the two concepts or crafting for the purpose of use was the best, if you look at the history of blade design. Your example of the saber was used heavily throughout the later years of the swords use, often being useful for the purpose of the cut via the curved edge, and a either double edged tip or thicker tip for the thrust. The true reason that straight edged blades were prevelant for such a long time was their relative ease in production.
Well, there is a confound there. In the later years swords were primarily only used by cavalry and curved blades were less likely to get stuck in the target when making ride by sorts of attacks. Thus, almost all cavalry swords were curved. For example, scimitars and sabres were primarily cavalry weapons.
Straight swords were better at finding the weaknesses in armor and getting past melee defenses, and thus swords designed for melee continued to use straight or nearly straight blades. For example, the rapier.
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Burton's deal was that curved swords are better for slashing (and, yeah, you'd do that from horseback), especially when used with a "drawing cut." Straight swords are better for thrustung, and if you do that, you want to maximize it, so that a rapier is better than a longsword in that regard.
To model this, bludgeoning weapons would do massive base damage but have almost no crits; slashing weapons would crit easily but not do a lot of extra damage on them; and piercing weapons would be hard to crit with but their crits would puncture organs and be fatal.
I don't necessarily think PF should do any of that, but it's food for thought.
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GURPS does this nicely. A weapon is Bludgeoning, Cutting or Impaling.
It has a base damage (based on user strength with modifiers), and hits armour with this damage. The armour value is subtracted from the damage done, then the remainder is:
Bludgeoning - damage is the remainder.
Cutting - damage is x1.5 the remainder.
Impaling - damage is x2 the remainder.
Thus a mace does high base damage but a dagger does less. The mace cracks through heavy armour but doesn't do any additional damage when it gets through, the dagger struggles against armour but is getting extra damage when it penetrates (or the target isn't armoured).
The weapon you choose is partly determined by the armour you are facing. In an unarmoured brawl a dagger can be deadly, but against a man-at-arms you'll be reaching for the mace or warhammer.
Burton's deal was that curved swords are better for slashing (and, yeah, you'd do that from horseback), especially when used with a "drawing cut." Straight swords are better for thrustung, and if you do that, you want to maximize it, so that a rapier is better than a longsword in that regard.
To model this, bludgeoning weapons would do massive base damage but have almost no crits; slashing weapons would crit easily but not do a lot of extra damage on them; and piercing weapons would be hard to crit with but their crits would puncture organs and be fatal.
I don't necessarily think PF should do any of that, but it's food for thought.
remind me to pm you my homebrew stuff for weapons and armor. You might find it enlightening and help me iron out some kinks.
I don't necessarily think PF should do any of that, but it's food for thought.
I agree. My point was that people arguing that slings suck because of plate mail are missing the fact that plate was only worn by knights and the effectiveness of bows versus armor has been greatly exaggerated.
Anyone in mail, which was the most common armor, would be as or more afraid of slings than bows, because arrows had trouble piecing mail (or plate) unless they were shot with a ton of force directly at the target. Long range shots didn't tend to have the force necessary to piece mail, but they did demoralize foes and get the occasional lucky hit.
Regardless of what people say, plate armor, like a breastplate, was even successfully worn in the civil war. However, it was heavy and painful to wear for long durations.
Plate armour is used today, and steel plate was used in both the First and Second World War. Armour has never gone away, it is just inconvenient to use in mobile warfare, especially when you are walking everywhere.
The sling is sucky because the Tiger tank was immune to it.
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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?
That is less than 1/4 cr, which was the benchmark that was "easy"
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** spoiler omitted **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.
** spoiler omitted **...
This is mostly an accurate assessment of Agincourt.
Are we now shifting the argument to "Longbows were bad" because the "Slings are better" argument is faltering?
No one was arguing that slings were better than longbows.
No one has been arguing that slings were better than longbows.
No one is at this time arguing that slings were better than longbows.
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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.
Bite and a trait :)
I ask again, what would be the bar so I can hit it? At 7th level, since that seems to be the new goal post :)
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No one was arguing that slings were better than longbows.
No one has been arguing that slings were better than longbows.
No one is at this time arguing that slings were better than longbows.
I am incorrect that you and others arguing they should do comparable ranged damage.
Nicos said 80%, I couldn't get there due to manyshot, but at least it was a defined goalpost.
So far Nicos is the only one who at least set a goalpost.
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Burton's deal was that curved swords are better for slashing (and, yeah, you'd do that from horseback), especially when used with a "drawing cut." Straight swords are better for thrustung, and if you do that, you want to maximize it, so that a rapier is better than a longsword in that regard.
To model this, bludgeoning weapons would do massive base damage but have almost no crits; slashing weapons would crit easily but not do a lot of extra damage on them; and piercing weapons would be hard to crit with but their crits would puncture organs and be fatal.
I don't necessarily think PF should do any of that, but it's food for thought.
It would be an interesting way to approach it in the next version.
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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.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.
Slings were obsolete before full plate. They were obsolete when composite bows became readily available, because composite bows were more accurate, easier to used, and did more damage.
No one is arguing the sling couldn't kill people.
What is being discussed is the fact that it couldn't kill people as well as things that are better than it at killing things.
A decent case can be made that the sling was on par with non-composite bows with significant training and skill.
Pretty much no case can be made that it was on par with composite bows.
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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.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.
It isn't a drop in effectiveness we are discussing.
It is relative effectiveness.
I can kill someone with a thrown rock.
Putting that rock into a sling is better than throwing it.
Putting an arrow into a composite bow is better than the rock.
Putting a bullet in a modern fire arm is better still.
Rock<Sling<Composite Bow<Modern Handgun<Modern Machine Gun
Slings were obsolete before full plate. They were obsolete when composite bows became readily available, because composite bows were more accurate, easier to used, and did more damage.
I'm interested to know, when exactly do you think composite bows first became readily available?
Pretty much no case can be made that it was on par with composite bows.
You really love this strawman, don't you?
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The question is in the proportions.
If a sling were 3/4 as good as a bow, I'd be pretty happy with it (that's 75% vs. Nico's 80%, so I'm 5% easier to please!). The current sling, which is about 1/10 as good as a bow, I'm not at all happy with.
But reality aside -- and as a more important consideration, to my mind -- the game suffers if you cling too strenuously to the paradigm you listed. What if James Bond never used anything but an AK-47? Does anyone maybe feel like the movies would lose something in the translation? To encourage a game that reflects the movies and not trench warfare, you take liberties with the stats to encourage people to use pistols. Victory Games did this extremely successfully, back in the day.
If you want anyone to use a sling, you've got to throw it a bone. No one wants slings to be better than longbows, but punishing people for selecting a sling and then calling them idiots isn't the way to encourage its use.
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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.
It wasn't a selective study. It is the same study used in the article cited by your side. It is "the" study everything seems to cite when looking for anyone measuring people using period slings.
Apparently that study is the only one that has gotten people trained with period slings to use them and test the distance. And that study isn't getting results consistent with ancient texts.
Feel free to cite ones that do. My google fu isn't seeing it.
Can slings kill? Yes.
Are they good at it? Yes, otherwise people wouldn't have used them.
Did things that were better at killing come along and make slings largely obsolete? Yes.
What were these things? Composite bows.
So what we have is a weapon that is largely obsolete during the period portrayed in the setting, that used to be considered the best option.
Kind of like the flint knife.
If you want to argue that a flint knife should be the same as a dagger...I disagree
Similarly the sling<Composite bows.
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.
Against plate armor he's probably right. Against a soft unprotected skull or kneecap not so much. The fantasy genre still assumes armored knights and big scary monsters to a degree, so unless we're going to go back to the vs armor type charts and then take it up to 11 with different weapons we're better off with 1d4+ strength... which actually isn't that bad.
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we're better off with 1d4+ strength... which actually isn't that bad.
1d4+Str, with no crit multiplier, with half the range, and with no iterative attacks possible unless you burn two extra feats on that alone? That's stupefyingly bad.
Doing any one of those things would make the sling less effective than the composite bow. Doing all of them is, as Raymond Chandler said, like knocking in someone's teeth and then shooting him for mumbling.
Bite and a trait :)I ask again, what would be the bar so I can hit it? At 7th level, since that seems to be the new goal post :)
The bite is from an alternate racial trait to get an extra attack - does that sound familiar to someone using warslinger?
I don't think it's easy to peg down just a bar in DPR, I think that's kind of meaningless since nearly all other characters will have something else than direct attack damage; even the archer had the ability to make AoO's in a 15ft reach, and that's quite a big deal. Also, just counting DPR discounts all the other factors, like hit points, speed and saves.
That said, if we're going to ignore the other statistics, I'd say a dedicated damage dealer that doesn't really have anything else going for her should be able to do about 40% equal-CR target's hit points in a single attack. A bit lower might be acceptable if it can do remarkably more circumstantial damage often enough (say favored enemy, smite, Ki points etc) but that's a pretty vague line.
For comparison, from the DPR Summer olympics (which were made with far fewer splatbooks available):
Swordy Sam, sword monk does 42% when played ultra-defensively, but can mostly do 55%. In addition it has Punishing Kick 10/day and other monk goodies.
Zweihander Zelda, a THF fighter, does 49% and has good defenses
Farshot Fallon, an archer fighter, does 55%.
Omelite's Barb/Fighter wielding a THW, does 62% and for 10 rounds per day 96%.
Omelite's Synthesist does 84% with good defenses and also has an animal companion too that does 33% (that's right, the animal companion does more than your slinger).
Omelite's Magus does 72%.
Now, these are all optimized characters, and I realize that you do not need to optimize that much in all campaigns. So I'd say about 40-45% would be the baseline, though of course that's just one component and if you can just do 45% while having crappy speed, saves, hit points etc that's not acceptable.
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The question is in the proportions.
If a sling were 3/4 as good as a bow, I'd be pretty happy with it (that's 75% vs. Nico's 80%, so I'm 5% easier to please!). The current sling, which is about 1/10 as good as a bow, I'm not at all happy with.
I think with your number (75%) is fair, I disagree with your assessment.
The difference is Manyshot. Manyshot is a problem, IMHO. I think deadly aim should be precision damage, and if it were than manyshot would not be a problem.
I'm also fine with manyshot for slings, as it makes as much if not more sense to give slings access to the concept.
But credit for a goalpost. Thank you.
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Bite and a trait :)I ask again, what would be the bar so I can hit it? At 7th level, since that seems to be the new goal post :)
The bite is from an alternate racial trait to get an extra attack - does that sound familiar to someone using warslinger?
I don't think it's easy to peg down just a bar in DPR, I think that's kind of meaningless since nearly all other characters will have something else than direct attack damage; even the archer had the ability to make AoO's in a 15ft reach, and that's quite a big deal. Also, just counting DPR discounts all the other factors, like hit points, speed and saves.
That said, if we're going to ignore the other statistics, I'd say a dedicated damage dealer that doesn't really have anything else going for her should be able to do about 40% equal-CR target's hit points in a single attack. A bit lower might be acceptable if it can do remarkably more circumstantial damage often enough (say favored enemy, smite, Ki points etc) but that's a pretty vague line.
For comparison, from the DPR Summer olympics (which were made with far fewer splatbooks available):
Swordy Sam, sword monk does 42% when played ultra-defensively, but can mostly do 55%. In addition it has Punishing Kick 10/day and other monk goodies.
Zweihander Zelda, a THF fighter, does 49% and has good defenses
Farshot Fallon, an archer fighter, does 55%.
Omelite's Barb/Fighter wielding a THW, does 62% and for 10 rounds per day 96%.
Omelite's Synthesist does 84% with good defenses and also has an animal companion too that does 33% (that's right, the animal companion does more than your slinger).
Omelite's Magus does 72%.Now, these are all optimized characters, and I realize that you do not need to optimize that much in all campaigns. So I'd say about 40-45% would be the baseline, though of course that's just one component and if you can just do 45% while having crappy speed, saves, hit points etc that's not acceptable.
So to be clear, if I can get to 40-45% with an optimized build (I can dump stats, which I didn't do) you will back down and say the sling is viable?
I want to check before I put in the effort.
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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.Against plate armor he's probably right. Against a soft unprotected skull or kneecap not so much. The fantasy genre still assumes armored knights and big scary monsters to a degree, so unless we're going to go back to the vs armor type charts and then take it up to 11 with different weapons we're better off with 1d4+ strength... which actually isn't that bad.
Context matters. He was saying that not every weapon option needs to be equal. It wasn't a sling specific statement (I believe it was in a crossbow thread)
And I agree that 1d4 + strength isn't bad. It is, in fact, my basic point.
The difference is Manyshot.
...and two feats needed just to get iterative attacks at all, and another feat to get comparable crits to other weapons... and after all that the range is still half and the base damage is still a lot lower.
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The difference is Manyshot....and two feats needed just to get iterative attacks at all, and another feat to get comparable crits to other weapons... and after all that the range is still half and the base damage is still a lot lower.
The difference in damage separating it from the 75% goal is manyshot.
The only builds that can use a bow in melee without -4 or an AoO is the 6th level ranger and the 4th level fighter. And that same feat applies to the sling.
You can't use a bow one handed. A bow is a 3 to 6 foot long object vs a strap or length of basically rope.
What is your baseline to define 75%?
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"CONCLUSION
The sling enjoyed more than 10,000 years as humanity's premier ranged weapon. Its remarkable simplicity meant that by Hellenistic times, it had reached its pinnacle of development; there was simply nothing left to improve in its design. However, other weapons continued to develop, which eventually surpassed the sling in effectiveness. Better armor and tactical changes further reduced its value. This transition was slow, taking place over the last two millennia. However, it was during medieval times that an experienced slinger would find, for the first time in history, that he was simply outmatched."
Said the founder of slinging.org, Chris Harrison.
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The question is in the proportions.
If a sling were 3/4 as good as a bow, I'd be pretty happy with it (that's 75% vs. Nico's 80%, so I'm 5% easier to please!). The current sling, which is about 1/10 as good as a bow, I'm not at all happy with.
I think with your number (75%) is fair, I disagree with your assessment.
The difference is Manyshot. Manyshot is a problem, IMHO. I think deadly aim should be precision damage, and if it were than manyshot would not be a problem.
I'm also fine with manyshot for slings, as it makes as much if not more sense to give slings access to the concept.
But credit for a goalpost. Thank you.
IGNORED BY THIS POST YET POSTED MANY TIMES-
Ammo dropJuggle load (both from a halfling book if your GM allows it)
Improved Crit
and maybe toss in Far Shot to be able to at least get in the ballpark with range.
But keep saying that Many Shot is the problem. It isn't though. And yeah, 14 times you have brought up deadly aim which nobody has show any concern with.
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IGNORED BY THIS POST YET POSTED MANY TIMES-
Ammo drop
Juggle load (both from a halfling book if your GM allows it)
Improved Crit
and maybe toss in Far Shot to be able to at least get in the ballpark with range.But keep saying that Many Shot is the problem. It isn't though. And yeah, 14 times you have brought up deadly aim which nobody has show any concern with.
What is your math goal post.
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Any world with giant scaly monsters is going to have significantly different evolution too. Both in people [as seen with folks that can pick up a stone column without a serious hernia] and in technological development.
If a sling won't kill a rabbit because the rabbit is three feet tall and coated in bony growths, then no one's going to hunt with it.
Are you arguing for or against my point?
When more effective weapons were available and needed, less effective weapons were used less.
That doesn't mean the less effective weapon was useless. But it does mean it wasn't as good.
Which is why it was used less.
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"CONCLUSION
The sling enjoyed more than 10,000 years as humanity's premier ranged weapon. Its remarkable simplicity meant that by Hellenistic times, it had reached its pinnacle of development; there was simply nothing left to improve in its design. However, other weapons continued to develop, which eventually surpassed the sling in effectiveness. Better armor and tactical changes further reduced its value. This transition was slow, taking place over the last two millennia. However, it was during medieval times that an experienced slinger would find, for the first time in history, that he was simply outmatched."
Said the founder of slinging.org, Chris Harrison.
How does that prove the sling had less ability than a bow? I see the outmatched as "in the time it takes to train a rank of slingers, I can train 10 ranks of bowman".
Is 10 to 1 outmatched. It is. It still has nothing to do with the abilities of either weapon, only the training required to use said weapon.|
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What is your math goal post.
IGNORED BY THIS POST YET POSTED MANY TIMES-
Ammo drop
Juggle load (both from a halfling book if your GM allows it)
Improved Crit
and maybe toss in Far Shot to be able to at least get in the ballpark with range.But keep saying that Many Shot is the problem. It isn't though. And yeah, 14 times you have brought up deadly aim which nobody has show any concern with.
I don't need a math goal post, I can add up how many feats I have to use to be on equal footing with a different concept. I don't care about DPR. I care about how totally off the representation of the sling is in comparison to the bow. I can make a slinger that can hit marks, but the cost is 4 or more feats to be on par with a weapon that had similar abilities in real life.
The difference in damage separating it from the 75% goal is manyshot.
Let's get something straight here, since we're talking goalposts. If a slinger has to spend five feats to reach 75% of what a longbowman can with one feat -- that's not a fair comparison. So, prove to me the sling meets 75% with the following conditions:
1. Both characters focus on ranged combat, meaning you don't get bogged down in spending a lot of resources on making a bow or a sling into a viable melee weapon, and meaning the archer doesn't have a bunch of leftover feats to spend on being a melee expert or whatever.
2. Human only. I don't care who can do what with racial splatbook traits.
3. Equal expenditure of feats on ranged combat.
4. Heroic NPC stat array at start, none of this 25-point buy stuff.
5. The archer is relatively well-optimized primary damage-dealer. He doesn't do 25% of a like-CR monster's hp with a full attack -- he should be doing more like 75%. Neither character has feats to waste on stuff like basket weaving.
So the slinger should be able to deal 75% of the archer's damage, or 56% of a same-CR monster's hp, in 1 round. And the two should be more or less equal outside of that.
I'm repeating this question because I would really like an answer, and it should be more difficult for you to ignore two posts than just the one.Slings were obsolete before full plate. They were obsolete when composite bows became readily available, because composite bows were more accurate, easier to used, and did more damage.I'm interested to know, when exactly do you think composite bows first became readily available?
Okay, in typical fashion you are obviously going to ignore the question.
The first composite bows that we are definitely aware of come from archaeological findings in Egyptian tombs, Tutankhamun's tomb, for example. That was around the C14th BC. It is likely that they were around centuries before this as there is secondary evidence of their existence but no actual bows have remained. They were common in Biblical times and throughout the Classical age. Yet the sling was still in widespread military usage during that time.
They were quite plainly, therefore, not "obsolete when composite bows became readily available".
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The difference in damage separating it from the 75% goal is manyshot.Let's get something straight here, since we're talking goalposts. If a slinger has to spend five feats to reach 75% of what a longbowman can with one feat -- that's not a fair comparison. So, prove to me the sling meets 75% with the following conditions:
1. Both characters focus on ranged combat, meaning you don't get bogged down in spending a lot of resources on making a bow or a sling into a viable melee weapon, and meaning the archer doesn't have a bunch of leftover feats to spend on being a melee expert or whatever.
2. Human only. I don't care who can do what with racial splatbook traits.
3. Equal expenditure of feats on ranged combat.
4. Heroic NPC stat array at start, none of this 25-point buy stuff.
5. The archer is relatively well-optimized primary damage-dealer. He doesn't do 25% of a like-CR monster's hp with a full attack -- he should be doing more like 75%. Neither character has feats to waste on stuff like basket weaving.So the slinger should be able to deal 75% of the archer's damage, or 56% of a same-CR monster's hp, in 1 round. And the two should be more or less equal outside of that.
Can I toss one in?
I would like to see the differences in DPR at each of the slinger's range increments.....just to be fair.|
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How does that prove the sling had less ability than a bow? I see the outmatched as "in the time it takes to train a rank of slingers, I can train 10 ranks of bowman"."CONCLUSION
The sling enjoyed more than 10,000 years as humanity's premier ranged weapon. Its remarkable simplicity meant that by Hellenistic times, it had reached its pinnacle of development; there was simply nothing left to improve in its design. However, other weapons continued to develop, which eventually surpassed the sling in effectiveness. Better armor and tactical changes further reduced its value. This transition was slow, taking place over the last two millennia. However, it was during medieval times that an experienced slinger would find, for the first time in history, that he was simply outmatched."
Said the founder of slinging.org, Chris Harrison.
If you don't believe the person who founded the site for slings, what can I possibly say to change your mind?
It doesn't say equally or not equally trained. It says.
"However, it was during medieval times that an experienced slinger would find, for the first time in history, that he was simply outmatched."
This was his conclusion. Not a line out of context. This is literally the conclusion of the article.