Hey guys,
I wanna use a sling as a weapon but I can’t find one in the books. How would you stat it?
I was thinking about using the Pistol stats and rules and pay run of the mill price for it.
What do you guys suggest?
Thanks!
I’d probably just use the stats for a thrown rock (either palm-sized or large) (p. 558 in BWG), and increase the WP by one (so, from +0 to +1 for palm-sized rocks, and from +1 to +2 for large rocks). You can give it the max range and range dice for a pistol if you want, but just taking the full stats for a pistol and applying them as written to a sling seems massively overpowered to me.
I know a lot more about slings now than when I wrote BWG. Here’s what I’d use for a basic war sling. There are lots of variants you could introduce if you wanted to play around in that era.
Sling: B3, B6, B9. Range ~100 paces. VA — Range dice: Optimal 1D, Long Range 1D. 3 action load and fire in Fight.
What’s the DoF look like for the I/M/S ?
What’s the base obstacle in Fight?
Can we use them to fulfill the tool requirement for Hunting?
Thanks Luke, thanks guys really appreciated!
Right. Sorry. Should probably be 1-3/4-5/6.
Ob 2, like other shootie things (but that’s assuming a lot about the type of sling you’re using).
And tools for hunting…interesting. Maybe? With a limit on the type of game you can bring down? Or maybe a +1 Ob pen?
There’s got to be at least 3 other threads on this as well if you would like to look at them.
You’re right I did a lazy search I just found one from 2012 saying pretty much the exact thing that we’ve been saying over here. BW player’s are in sync.
If skill in hunting is to duplicate the ability to successfully bring down an animal, that process is different with different types of weapons. But if the difficulty doesn’t change for a javelin when compared to a bow, why would it change for any other weapon?
Basically, to hunt you need something to hunt with, the hunter adjusts his technique to what works best for the weapon he is using, the game he is after, and the conditions he is hunting in. His ability to make those adjustments is determined by his hunting skill.
The Ob penalty would be because bows and javelins make for better hunting weapons than a simple sling.
By that logic, wouldn’t the same thing hold true for combat too?
If anything, I would suggest a situational obstacle penalty for whatever weapon you were using to hunt different types of game. (I doubt that hunting with a spear or javelin is as effective as using a bow in most cases) but in an abstract system such as this, do we really need to go into that much detail?
We don’t differentiate between longswords/shortswords/katanas/claymores/ect. when we use the sword skill, rather we let the situations dictate advantages and obstacles.
Why should the choice of weaponry be any different when it comes to hunting?
When we hunt, shouldn’t we be able to use whatever seems appropriate for that task, rather than be limited to javelin or bow?
Historically, people have used other weapons than these to hunt and kill their prey. And in fantasy fiction,anything goes.
Javelins are hunting weapons designed to bring down big game.
The obstacle penalty would simulate the reality that slings are better at bringing down small game but making it more difficult to bring down larger game.
So then should a bow or javelin be penalized when going after smaller game as it is harder to target them, and when you do hit with a weapon meant to bring down a man or a bear, there probably wouldn’t be much meat left after the kill.
But again, that’s getting more involved then we probably need to for an abstract system.
I would suggest that we just leave the hunting skill the way it was written. And if anyone wants to make a case for hunting with a sling, bolas, spear, crossbow, trident, club, net, lasso, throwing sticks, boomerang, pistol, or rifle let them make their case to their gm and broker for advantages and penalties.
I do see your reasoning for penalizing the sling against larger game, but then I think, Goliath was a lot bigger than a bird, and David did alright (of course, he was using his Faith on that one)
This talk of ‘slings don’t bring down big game’ has me wondering: Why were there so many sling-using warriors in the Bronze Age–like, whole divisions of them in a large battle–if they couldn’t bring down ‘game’ as big as humans? That’s more than the average weight of a deer or a middling-weight black bear or boar. [Though, yes, one must account for the protection of fur and thick hide–leather armor.]
Used well, with steel balls or dense stone, a sling is formidable. And it delivers blunt damage, if that’s a factor in the fight (e.g., avoiding bloodshed; shattering skeletons).
A sling can bring down big game. It’s just not as good at it as a bow or javelin. The trade off is that a sling is significantly cheaper than a bow, and a good rock is much easier to acquire than a good arrow or a good javelin. Quality and affordability always pull us in different directions, and must be balanced. Maximizing the quality of a single individual’s weapon isn’t the same as maximizing the efficiency of an army. Remember, bronze is much harder and generally better for making weapons with than a lot of early low-carbon iron alloys, but yet the Bronze Age gave way to the Iron Age because wrought iron is significantly cheaper to make.
Perhaps the tool requirement for hunting should be “Appropriate Weapon” then, with obstacles for inferior and advantage for superior weapons.
(Keep in mind that in a fantasy based game, you could well have a wizard out hunting with his magic wand)
That works.