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As the title.
I'm baffled by how niche throwing weapons are to build and what items you need to pick in order to make throwing weapons just a viable option, and even that's not acceptable, because past 6th level, they're crap. Let's take our items, for starters.
The Returning weapon property only allows you one attack, ever. The Called weapon property has a range limit, and requires a Swift Action in order to use. The Blinkback Belt, while it allows you your full limit of BAB options, requires you to forgo your attribute belts, which the game assumes that you will have at some point. This can be shored up by spells like Bear's Endurance and such, but having to spend resources for that in each combat is both impractical and also inoptimal.
Second, let's focus on our throwing mechanics; we already start off pretty MAD, because we need Dexterity for our to-hit, and we need Strength for our damage, and the means to make them SAD aren't cheap, and require further niche specialization (such as taking levels in Rogue, picking up feats, magic items, and so on). Next, we have even less range than if we were simply picking up a bow. Lastly, and this is perhaps the most crucial, you only get one attack.
Sure, this makes stuff like Vital Strike and Furious Focus seem like good options, but the other issue is that throwing weapons have crappy damage dice. At best, you're looking at a D8 damage dice, and because you're forced to be MAD, your static damage is mediocre at best.
Did I also mention making throwing weapons into dedicated usage of weapons is a mess? Because it is. You won't be able to afford proper throwing weapons having more than a +1, due to their disposable mechanics. Once you throw your weapon, you don't have it anymore, it's either stuck in a tree or inside the gut of a bad guy unless you get some magic items that fix that issue, and even then, it comes with its own sacrifices (no attribute belts being the biggest one).
Want to be some cool guy that wants to throw a bunch of daggers or spears at bad guys? Too bad. You're only getting two spears or daggers, if you're lucky, unless you have your magic items shore it up for you. This is because TWF mechanics require that you select two specific weapons to carry out your attacks, nor can you switch between weapons at any point during your TWF action. So, if you have 4 +1 daggers (that's some lategame stuff, by the way!), you can only ever use 2 of them, and if you throw them, you can't draw out your remaining 2, and throw them as well.
That's not even taking into consideration the issues you'll run into in regards to damage reduction. If they have any sort of damage reduction, such as Magic, Cold Iron, Adamantine, and so on, you won't bypass it unless you're some really rich guy who can run around with a bunch of +10 throwing weapons. You're also going to be doing less damage than any other martial party member because you're MAD and you don't have access to attribute-boosting belts to improve your to-hit/damage like they do, so any Damage Reduction you come across can very easily bury your ability to contribute in combat.
I know this comes off as some sort of angry rant, and to be honest, it kind of is; throwing builds have been something that I would be very interested in pulling off, because it's cool, unique, and something that not many people do, but because of the mechanics of the game, I can understand why that's the case, and it frustrates me that it is.
Ricochet Toss solves most issues.
You can always pick up the martial focus feat to qualify for ricochet toss.
Empty-handed Monk can help with the ammo issue. I built one once that threw silver and copper coins at enemies.
It solves some of the issues. But not all of them.
Most players are working towards +5 weapons ASAP (or if they need some weapon property specifically, like Keen), and that allows them a lot of to-hit/damage, and to bypass several parts of DR that aren't easy to bypass. Those weapons also aren't of a "disposable" mechanic, so they're around at all times.
If you're throwing, as I've said before, you have +1's at best, and once you throw them, they're gone unless you have specific magic items that require you to sacrifice Big 6 priorities (which the game assumes you have), and plus you're still MAD.
Yes, but the feat tax entry is hard to bear on a build that is already feat heavy.
Depends. Slayers and Far Strike Monks have a ton of feats to spare.
You could also be a vigilante. One of their vigilante talents not only makes it so all throwing weapons you use of a given type have the returning quality, it also makes it so higher up, if you throw a magic weapon, every other weapon you throw that round has the same bonuses. Throwing five daggers works fine, even if only one of them is +5 Flaming Undead-bane and the others are just store bought daggers.
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You could also be a vigilante. One of their vigilante talents not only makes it so all throwing weapons you use of a given type have the returning quality, it also makes it so higher up, if you throw a magic weapon, every other weapon you throw that round has the same bonuses. Throwing five daggers works fine, even if only one of them is +5 Flaming Undead-bane and the others are just store bought daggers.
Just remember to ask your GM if you get a bonus for calling them "batarangs".
But seriously, as others have said, the Weapon Master Handbook makes thrown weapon builds viable. Between the Startoss feats and Ricochet Toss, you should be fine. Here is a thread I started a few months ago about this, which talks options. I haven't gotten that PC far enough yet to tell you how it worked out, but in theory, it looks good.
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Something something water balloons something something.
Kidding aside, Ricochet Toss is a decent fix...if your game starts at level 6-7+ and you're fine with eating 3 Feats (or playing a Fighter and only using two) to do what should have been possible from day 1.
Far Strike monk is one of the best throw build archetypes around. It grants you most of the required feats for free (Quick Draw I'm looking at you!). If you can get your GM to allow you to use that archetype with Unchained monk, then you're even better! Look into it.
Ricochet toss solves the issues. It's still worse than archery, but everything is worse than archery. Thanks to the weapon masters handbook throwing is viable. You do need to be a fighter or at least something with weapon training though.
Its primary advantage is that it is often a natural switch hitter, assuming things like daggers. You do ranged attacks, and have a melee option when enemies move in (bows have a similar style for ranged+melee... throwing leans more on melee side of things)
Is this a feat tax? Hardly. This isn't combat expertise here, where you notice no benefits and never use it. It lets you get effective range on a weapon you may have taken anyway for melee (daggers do have a ton of support). The feats lower the difficulty of getting full attacks when enemies are at a distance, without the usual 'I have no weapon' problem of normal throwing.
You can just stab people up until that point when you can pull it off, and maybe the occasional throw when things are calm.
If I wanted to stab people, I wouldn't be making a throwing build. Just saying.
Waiting 7 levels to come online even at a very basic level ("I can make my attacks") is pretty bad any way you slice it.
You need more Feats to melee well and throw well, by far, than what is required to just shoot a bow in melee if you need to.
For thrown builds I like to take two levels of Winding Path Renegade for the increase in range.
Having Martial Flexability also helps cut down on feat taxes.
If it's a home game I would suggest using these rules; they cut down a lot of feat taxes and outright remove Point-Blank Shot from the game.
A Herolab mod is also available.
Edit: Oh, and don't get me started on how stupid the Starry Grace feat is; because of the wording the feat is useless to Far Strike Monks and TWFing throwers
I think it's impossible to throw things exclusively, the nature of thrown weapons is that they are situational in use, not something you depend on constantly. Heck most weapons have narrow windows of special use. eg: Bolas, Sap, weapons with brace, charging weapons, weapons that benefit from power attack etc.
Most players are recommended to at the very least have some form of melee attack as well as a ranged weapon, the most basic would be a club (tree branch!) and a sling (throw rocks!) which all classes have access to. Most thrown weapons fill both these roles immediately.
My personal favorite mechanically speaking is throwing axes.
If I wanted to stab people, I wouldn't be making a throwing build. Just saying.
Waiting 7 levels to come online even at a very basic level ("I can make my attacks") is pretty bad any way you slice it.
You need more Feats to melee well and throw well, by far, than what is required to just shoot a bow in melee if you need to.
Well, you don't necessarily have to wait until level 7 to throw. You just have to wait that long to throw something NICE on a regular basis.
You can always just quickdraw and throw regular, unenhanced daggers. And you keep your enhanced dagger on hand for melee and important shots.
And I guess that is just the difference in our fantasies. I would prefer a flexible combatant that slash, do a backflip backwards, and leave a few parting shots in the opponent's face (which is a full attack with a 5' step in the middle going into ranged attacks- seems legal). Some people just want an archer, and finding that this isn't as good as bows for that.
Overall, throwing weapons fullfill mutliple roles (allowing you to apply things like weapon training/specialization on all attacks), and daggers, the poster child of throwing weapons, has tons of support, such as damage boosts and attack boosts. Why abandon one of your main advantages? When a bear is in your face, you don't have to eat AoOs- that is a fine advantage.
I haven't played them, but seems like a Warpriest could do well with Shuriken.
Likewise, Monks have that Feat that lets them use Monk UAS damage with a weapon (shuriken, to avoid Quickdraw).
And Ninja builds.
There's also builds that aren't about throwing attacks 24/7, but can still do well with them.
I like the Barb Rage Power that lets you get a free thrown weapon attack when charging.
There's stuff that lets you throw weapons not meant to be thrown, as well.
I guess it comes down to what you expect. If bows weren't better than thrown weapons, they wouldn't exist.
Thrown weapons are nice because they are inherently versatile, and easily concealed.
If you really want to shine with them, you need to find the scenarios where their strengths matter,
not just roll in with your page full of stats and expect to win a DPR contest.
BTW, did nobody yet mention advantage of thrown weapons vs. bows? Ahem... Windwall ring a bell?
(although to be fair, most GMs feel guilty about using that, despite Archery being perceived as strong tactic that casters would logically prepare against)
If I wanted to stab people, I wouldn't be making a throwing build. Just saying.
Waiting 7 levels to come online even at a very basic level ("I can make my attacks") is pretty bad any way you slice it.
You need more Feats to melee well and throw well, by far, than what is required to just shoot a bow in melee if you need to.
Yet you wait 6 lvls to make more than one attack (unless TWF which is beyond the point)....
Yet you wait 6 lvls to make more than one attack (unless TWF which is beyond the point)....If I wanted to stab people, I wouldn't be making a throwing build. Just saying.
Waiting 7 levels to come online even at a very basic level ("I can make my attacks") is pretty bad any way you slice it.
You need more Feats to melee well and throw well, by far, than what is required to just shoot a bow in melee if you need to.
That's only for bard based parties, a sorcerer based party only has to wait 5 levels and a wizard based party only has to wait for 4...wait you're talking iterative attacks, aren't you?
That's only for bard based parties, a sorcerer based party only has to wait 5 levels and a wizard based party only has to wait for 4...wait you're talking iterative attacks, aren't you?Yet you wait 6 lvls to make more than one attack (unless TWF which is beyond the point)....If I wanted to stab people, I wouldn't be making a throwing build. Just saying.
Waiting 7 levels to come online even at a very basic level ("I can make my attacks") is pretty bad any way you slice it.
You need more Feats to melee well and throw well, by far, than what is required to just shoot a bow in melee if you need to.
Or maybe level 1 or 2, if you take rapid shot on a fighter. I mean... we are talking about a ranged build here.
But again- you can just use cheap 2 gp daggers for those attacks when you want to do them at ranged. Getting daggers out there was never exactly the problem- the problem was that, starting at mid levels (ie- when ricochet comes up), the need for weapons with enhancement bonus becomes a lot greater, and the previously near disposable nature of throwing weapons made that hard to use such investments.
But at the disputed level ranges, you can get by with just nonmagical daggers. A bit of a pinch towards the end, but still workable.
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Yeah, I don't get the comment about waiting until level 7.
As I said, I made a thrown build, but I haven't played him much. As a human fighter, he has Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, and Quick Draw at level 1, and will get Rapid Shot at 2. He just carries a lot of throwing weapons, and recovers them after each fight.
He'll have an extra attack per round from level 2, without having to worry about positioning like a TWF melee guy. So he should easily keep up in damage with more normal damaging builds, even if he's not doing quite as well as the heaviest damage builds available.
As others have said, the problem is that by the time you hit the level where you're expected to have magic weapons, he won't have enough money for every throw to be a magic weapon. But that will be solved by Ricochet Shot at level 6, and stick to one well enhanced weapon for the rest of his career, like any other martial class.
So he'll be behind on not having a +1 weapon for levels 3-5, when many other martials do. That's a minor inconvenience, not a major problem. Heck, at level 5, he gets Weapon Training 1 from being a fighter, which most other martials don't have, so that'll make up for it numerically for that level.
Again, thrown weapons aren't the most optimized build in the game, but they're certainly playable, right from level 1. It's feat heavy, so a class with bonus feats and/or going human will help, which is part of why I went straight up human fighter. My guy will easily out-damage many of the un-optimized martial builds that I see people bring to the table in PFS all the time.
I currently playing a Far Strike Unchained Monk at 2nd Level that focuses on boomerang. At 2nd level he already has a +9 to attack and 1d6+5 damage. Here's the profile if you want to look at it.
Thrown builds are not impossible or worthless. Does it take a lot of pre planning, patience, and dedication? Yes. But not impossible. The thing people also need to take into consideration about the level 7 thing, is that you don't even get your first iterative attack until 6th level anyway. So you have to wait 1 more level before you can get one more attack with the same weapon... Why is that even a big deal? And before that you can make two attacks if you focus on the Startoss chain (which every thrown build should) as a Standard Action against two different targets... Again where is the issue?
Yeah, it seems like the 3-5 level tier is being overblown.
Yes, magical weapons are needed for some things, but not every enemy in every encounter.
You will have one magic weapon obviously. And you can get a small collection of special material weapons,
which in fact you can also combine with a range of weapons with different damage types (B/S/P),
which is something a normal "single weapon focused martial" would probably want anyways.
Either you are recovering thrown weapons, or shuriken etc benefit from economical special material cost for ammo.
And so a bit more of wealth is temporarily diverted into this thrown weapon collection,
but once you hit 6th level you can get rid of the collection, and WBL still stands, so no loss in the end.
And to repeat myself... You aren't being shut down by Wind Wall or similar effects.
I thought about the Vigilante Talent, but it becomes useful at level 14
I get the hang ups about not wanting to be reliant on a single weapon property but it does solve a lot of the problems with thrown weapon builds.
And to repeat myself... You aren't being shut down by Wind Wall or similar effects.
ah, missed that effect. Arrows are shut down, while daggers would just face a 30% miss chance. Still not great, but not a complete loss (particularly since ranged builds go for the 'many hits' style anyway)
I get the hang ups about not wanting to be reliant on a single weapon property but it does solve a lot of the problems with thrown weapon builds.
So it is the keen to ricochet toss's improved critical. A +2 is a bit steep, but this does make it easier for classes unable to meet the weapon training prerequisite to get throwing to work. Good for nonfighters/monk/warpriests/etc.
Throwing being feat/WBL heavy isn't a problem if you're not in a hyper-optimized campaign. If your campaign expects you to be putting out maximum damage-per-round, don't bother trying it. If your group doesn't optimize hard and the GM is willing to adapt the challenges/treasure to accommodate it, there's no problem.
Magic weapons are expected at levels 3-5? I didn't get one until getting to level 7 in our RotRL campaign. Granted, my usual response to DR is 'hit extremely hard'.
About the only way I can think of throwing weapons to be enchanted and still viable cash-wise would be taking advantage of shuriken; those enchant en masse as ammo. This is only of use to folks who know how to use the fiddly little things, though.
I'm now thinking of the Shield Champion brawler; that's in its way a throwing build, but with features that help out (like having the shield come back eventually). Other than that ... well, I guess it is a hard style to pull off, I guess.
Were there ever any Roman legends of enchanted pila?
Magic weapons are expected at levels 3-5? I didn't get one until getting to level 7 in our RotRL campaign. Granted, my usual response to DR is 'hit extremely hard'.
I think level 5 is when one should start expecting it. By then, a lot of people may have found some random magical weapon from a boss (maybe not the magic greatsword you wanted, but maybe a longsword, or an ax/spear/etc.), and the magic crafting feat for weapons comes at level 5. So it wouldn't be too unusual at level 5.
3-4? Yeah, I can see that you would often be without. And honestly? Yeah, it isn't much of a difference if you use masterwork until you can grab +2. You only find a problem with DR/magic.
If you just can't wait until 6th or 7th level to be Warrior from Gauntlet maybe you could buy a Blinkback Belt.
I've got a "throwing build" of sorts in a Mythic game and have found that Mythic Vital Strike can make throwing a light hammer at least viable. Full attacking with a bow and Clustered Shots would result in better damage, but I'm ready to switch hit at any time, and I get to keep my shield out, so it isn't all bad - of course this cost me 2 regular feats and a Mythic Feat.
@Qaianna - I thought pilum were usually designed to bend or break when they hit so that they couldn't be thrown back and would be harder to pull out of shields. That didn't stop the Romans from having legends of +1 Animal Bane pilums though. They allegedly threw some at Hannibal's elephants, not realizing that an enemy caster had Awakened them into Magical Beasts.
Ricochet toss solves the issues. It's still worse than archery, but everything is worse than archery. Thanks to the weapon masters handbook throwing is viable. You do need to be a fighter or at least something with weapon training though.
100% with Imbicatus here.
Is it just me Imbicatus or have there just be a ton or throwing threads lately and I think we're in everyone one of them, haha.
Ricochet toss solves the issues. It's still worse than archery, but everything is worse than archery. Thanks to the weapon masters handbook throwing is viable. You do need to be a fighter or at least something with weapon training though.
Luckily Ricochet Toss is a Weapon Mastery Feat so you could take Martial Focus if you don't have Weapon Training
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Ricochet toss solves the issues. It's still worse than archery, but everything is worse than archery. Thanks to the weapon masters handbook throwing is viable. You do need to be a fighter or at least something with weapon training though.Luckily Ricochet Toss is a Weapon Mastery Feat so you could take Martial Focus if you don't have Weapon Training
Yes, it's possible, but throwing builds require a staggering number of feats and most classes that don't get weapon training also don't get bonus feats. I suppose you have enough bonus feats as ranger, slayer or far strike monk to make it work, but it will come online later than a fighter or warpriest, who can take it at 5th level.
Yes, in addition to the standard ranged Feats (Point Blank and Rapid Shot, maybe Deadly Aim) as well as any melee Feats you might need to make it work, you would also need Martial Focus, Weapon Focus, Quick Draw, and Ricochet Toss.
It's not pleasant to have to jump through so many hoops just to be able to match a bow wielder who has the same Feats. Or even a crossbow user, Crossbow Mastery can at least be taken sub level 6 if you can get the Feats in time, and two of its prerequisites are ones you need ON TOP OF the four you need to full attack with Thrown.
Yes, in addition to the standard ranged Feats (Point Blank and Rapid Shot, maybe Deadly Aim) as well as any melee Feats you might need to make it work, you would also need Martial Focus, Weapon Focus, Quick Draw, and Ricochet Toss.
It's not pleasant to have to jump through so many hoops just to be able to match a bow wielder who has the same Feats. Or even a crossbow user, Crossbow Mastery can at least be taken sub level 6 if you can get the Feats in time, and two of its prerequisites are ones you need ON TOP OF the four you need to full attack with Thrown.
Well, the bow user also needs to jump through a bunch of hoops if they want to do what throwing builds do naturally- have the ability to attack a guy that is 5' away from them without eating AoOs.
Bow users have to get their own style to pull that off, and even then it might end up 'meh' in melee, while there is tons of support for daggers and such.
Shouldn't you be able to step away from the enemy? I mean by the time you can get point blank master you should be in the air 90% of the time and ignoring terrain.
To be fair, a lot of enemies have Reach, even from early game.
But yeah, Point Blank Master is only one Feat. Snap Shot makes two if you want to threaten.
Versus a minimum of three, probably 4.
Throwing characters have one thing going for them over bows: melee synergy - you can Weapon Focus/Specialize in the same weapon for melee and throwing (except for shuriken?).
Trying to throw a variety of weapons is probably asking for trouble.
It's only one feat in point blank master, and honestly thrown weapon build want that too or weapon finesse, so they need the same number of feats.
Point Blank Master is only one feat but it is locked to Fighter only. :/
What about a dagger of doubling with magus VMC? Belt of hurling lets you use Str to attack and a Ranger can pick up two weapon fighting without Dex.