Maximizing the Sling

[MidsouthGuy]

I want to build a character who really makes the most of an underrated weapon, and I decided on picking the sling. It's such a simple, basic, unassuming weapon. Literally just a step up from throwing rocks, what you would expect someone who rolled poorly for his starting gold to pick. But in history it was used to devastating effect on the battlefield and could even out perform early firearms. I want to create a character who brings that to the table. I'm probably going to pick a human fighter as my race and class to make use of all those extra feats, but I need some help selecting feats and any other items that would increase the deadliness of the sling. I want to avoid things like explosive bullets, but anything else I'm open to the idea of using. Thanks in advance for the advice!

[avr]

Try a halfing instead. Warslinger saves you a couple of feats, which is more than the human bonus gives you.

I'm not sure what things like explosive bullets includes. Are you ruling out slipslinger style / grenadier / bombardment?

Slings are in the thrown fighter weapon group. If your GM agrees this makes them thrown weapons for feats then some options open up, you may want to find out before trying to make this character.

[Gray Warden]

Halflings get one more feat than Humans, but lose on average 2 points of damage, which is equivalent to a feat (Weapon Specialization), so I would take that into consideration.

I would go Human Warpriest (Arsenal Chaplain). With the Human's FCB they get both the same number of feats of Fighters AND Weapon Training, plus spells, which not only make up for the 3/4 BAB but add on top of that lots of damage. A cracked Opalescent White Pyramid ioun stone enables you to use the Halfling Slingstaff without expending a feat, otherwise you can use a regular sling with a base damage of 1d6 instead of 1d4.

[Gray Warden]

After looking better at the various sling-feats and racial features, this is the comparison between Halflings and Humans in terms of feat slots and damage on a dedicated sling-build:

Humans can spend their bonus feat and a regular feat on Ammo Drop and Juggle load while using a regular sling. The total damage will be 1d4 + Str.

Halflings have the Warslinger trait, which allows them to free-reload slings, not slingstaves. However, they can pick the Slipslinger Style feat to free-reload slingstaves as well and add +1 do damage as well. Their Str bonus will probably be 1 point lower than a similar Human build because of the Str penalty. This nets them 1d6 + (Str - 1) + 1 = 1d6 + Str points of damage.

In other words, with the same expenditure of resources, Humans are short by 1 point of damage. However, on a Warpriest build this difference is removed as Humans start with 1d6 base damage.

Still, slingstaves are inherently better than slings in terms of reach and because they threaten adjacent squares in melee, and Halflings get +1 to hit, AC and +4 on Stealth, which fits well the concept. On the other hand, Halfling Warpriests don't get extra bonus feats from FCB.

Overall, I'd say that Halfling is better if going Fighter, while Human is better if going Warpriest. Of course this is from an optimization point of view, feel free to choose what you most like!

Just for reference, here's an example of Human Arsenal Chaplain Warpriest

14 16+2 12 12 14 7

Traits: Fate's Favored, Seeker

Feats:
1 Ammo Drop, Juggle Load*, Weapon Focus[sling]*
3 PBS, Precise Shot*
5 Rapid Shot
6 Weapon Specialization*, Point Blank Master*
7 Deadly Aim
9 Cluster shot, Greater Weapon Focus*
11 Divine Interference
12 Improved Precise Shot*, Greater Weapon Specialization*

If you prefer vanilla Warpriest, the Air blessing pretty much allows you to snipe anyone you can see, and attenuates the need for Point Blank Master.

Finally, if you make such character a follower of Pulura, you could pick the Deific Obedience feat, go into 6 levels of the Evangelist PrC (which makes you lose only 1 level of your main class), and at the 11th level you can make your bullets +2 brilliant energy. Warpriests can do it as well via Sacred Weapon, but not before level 16.

[Scott Wilhelm]

My thought on playing a Halfling that does lots of damage in melee is to focus on Sneak Attack Damage. Take your Precises Shot, Ammo Drop, Rapid Shot, that Feat that lets you make Melee Attacks with your Sling like it was a Flail, etc, but also take 3 levels in Bard with the Flame Dancer Archetype. Get an Eversmoking Bottle Blinding everybody except for your Allies you bless with your Fire Dancing. Then take levels in classes with Sneak Attack Damage and snipe all your pathetic, blinded victims to death.

[Gray Warden]

Scott Wilhelm wrote:

My thought on playing a Halfling that does lots of damage in melee is to focus on Sneak Attack Damage. Take your Precises Shot, Ammo Drop, Rapid Shot, that Feat that lets you make Melee Attacks with your Sling like it was a Flail, etc, but also take 3 levels in Bard with the Flame Dancer Archetype. Get an Eversmoking Bottle Blinding everybody except for your Allies you bless with your Fire Dancing. Then take levels in classes with Sneak Attack Damage and snipe all your pathetic, blinded victims to death.

Ammo Drop makes no sense without Juggle Load, and Halflings need neither of the two as they have access to the Warslinger alternate racial trait.

The slingstaff can already be used to threaten adjacent squares in melee, so the Sling Flail feat is unnecessary.
Halflings with the aforementioned trait need only to get Slipslinger Style to free-reload a slingstaff without provoking AoO AND threaten adjacent squares.

Plus, I don't understand the focus on melee combat when the sling is used primary (and pretty much only) at range. It's like the OP asked for an optimal greatsword build, and you suggested a throwing build.

[Scott Wilhelm]

Gray Warden wrote:

Ammo Drop makes no sense without Juggle Load, and Halflings need neither of the two as they have access to the Warslinger alternate racial trait.

Okay. Sure. Whatever. My point is that I would emphasize Sneak Attack Damage.

Gray Warden wrote:

The slingstaff can already be used to threaten adjacent squares in melee, so the Sling Flail feat is unnecessary.... free-reload a slingstaff without provoking AoO AND threaten adjacent squares.

The problem with the sling staff is that it's not a sling.

The title of this thread wrote:

Maximizing the Sling

The title of this thread never wrote:

Finding something better than a Sling.

If you are going to abandon the OP commitment to using a Sling, then you should just use a Long Composite Bow!

Gray Warden wrote:

Plus, I don't understand the focus on melee combat when the sling is used primary (and pretty much only) at range.

I'm not focusing melee combat. I'm focusing on the Sling. Sling for Range, Sling for melee. I'm also emphasizing Sneak Attack Damage.

Gray Warden wrote:

It's like the OP asked for an optimal greatsword build, and you suggested a throwing build.

No. It's like if the OP asked for a Greatsword Build, and I was looking for ways for him to use his Greatsword for everything: Ranged and Melee, and Grapple with the Greatsword if you can. That's what I'm doing, only with the Sling. Why?

Because

The Original Post wrote:

I decided on picking the sling.

It's a little thing I call helping the OP get what he asks for.

[Mark Hoover 330]

I notice that no one looked at the Arc Slinger Feat. If the point is to maximize the sling specifically and we're not concerned with the melee angle, then Arc Slinger pushes the benefit of Point Blank Shot from 30' to 50'. Taking the Warslinger trait with a Halfling means you could load the sling as a Free action, make a shot from 50' away, then move another 20' as a Move action putting you just outside the 30' Charge range, all while gaining the +1 to attack and damage from Point Blank Shot.

Another way to avoid the Move action penalty loading slings and sling staves... mounts.

1. Take a PC with an Animal Companion or a Mount feature
2. Take a Small sized PC with a Familiar using the Mauler Archetype
3. Take a Small sized PC with a Small sized Familiar and a Feat that lets them use a mount of their own size
4. Purchase a trained riding animal or Figurine of Wondrous Power; alternately train your own riding animal using Animal Handling and Downtime

The point of all of this is that your mount does the moving for you. Your PC is free to use their Move action to load the sling and so long as your mount doesn't double move you suffer no penalty to making an attack.

My personal favorite PC was a Halfling Warpriest (Divine Commander) with a Wolf Mount. He wielded a slingstaff, used the Warslinger trait and Slipslinger Style to load as a Free action, and maxed out every kind of action type he could: Full Attack constantly from wolf-back, Swift action to use the Fervor ability to cast Divine Favor or to tack on Sacred Weapon bonuses, and once in melee using his wolf to add some extra damage.

Eventually my PC dual-classed into Hunter. The GM allowed me to use the Wolf as my Animal Companion and advance it with levels in both classes. By 7th level I was full-attacking with 2 shots at 50', each delivering 1d6 +9 plus 1d6 Fire (playing Reign of Winter AP). My wolf could move me up to 50' in a single Move action so if I then wanted to enter Melee I could have the wolf proceed to where the two of us were making Flanking attacks together.

Maximizing the sling specifically though is about maximizing something that ISN'T a bow, which is difficult to do with the way many Feats are worded. For that reason I'd suggest finding out early on what your GM will and won't allow for the sling, if any. Also, as avr suggested above determine if your GM will allow Thrown Weapon Feats and abilities.

Finally to the OP, a note about Exploding Bullets and such: if you're excluding trick ammo as part of your "maximizing" the sling, you're missing some of the fun of using this weapon. Over time slings lose out to many other Ranged weapons, especially bows, on both potential range and damage. Some things however help make up some of this gap.

Consider: the lowly Thunderstone. Used in a sling without ANY Feats that allow you to use it as ammo, you attack with a -4 penalty to hit, however you only need to hit an opponent's square which is an AC 5.

Now think about that: say you're a level 1 Halfling with a sling. You have a starting Dex of 18, a class or Trait that gives you Stealth as a Class Skill, and you can see a foe from Stealth at roughly 40' away. Attacking an AC 5 is within your first Range increment so, in your Surprise round BLAM! You've just potentially handed your party a 4 pt advantage on their initiative rolls for round 1.

It goes on from there. Taking Feats that allow you to fling 1d4 damage flaming oil, 1d6 damage alchemical weapons, and so on; tossing Tanglefoot Bags 50'; filling hallways with smoke or even lobbing a small pellet that explodes into a burst of caltrops.

See, my point is that with some of the trick-ammo you begin to see that the role of slings in Pathfinder isn't JUST to deliver mass amounts of damage. The humble sling is the prankster's weapon and a martial's answer to some "battlefield control" options. If you have someone in the party with the ability to increase the DCs on alchemical effects from your ammo plus the right Feats you could be standing at the periphery of fights directing traffic.

TL/DR: bottom line, with the sling you should prepare to grind out EVERY mechanical advantage you can.