D&D 5E Why wimpy SLING damage and range?

[The Crimson Binome]

OK, you don't seem to understand the nature of weapon use or injury or even armour as it works in the real world so you really can't claim to use reality as a yardstick here. I suggest doing some research before coming back to this argument. There's really no point in me continuing to argue with you until you do. See you in five years or so.

And you don't seem to understand the basics of simulation, abstraction, and reasonable assumptions. Feel free to come back to the boards once you understand the basic premise of what system mechanics represent in an RPG.

 

[Pranqstr]

not know about slings

I was debating the 4x long rang guidelines, but the other weapons are more direct fire weapons (crossbows, bows, spears, etc) and was considering 5x for the sling, but kind of caved a bit. So I mixed it and allowed the sling bullet 5x, the consistent density sling stone to match the long range of a shortbow (which works out to 4.8X), and the unbalanced stone to be standard 4x. I probably shouldn't mix it up, should I? Is 5x too long, as data says slinger could outdistance the shortbow, but in order to make the sling short range shorter, you have to make the long range longer...

I agree D&D isn't accurate, but like Saelorn said, there has to be a basis in realism.

Dropbear/baby, The historical record does say people died from sling damage without bleeding. Body shots could break bones and cause internal damage, it is less likely a hit to a limb wound kill, but it is possible (you have heard of compartment syndrome?). I did look up sling on youtube and watched a lot of videos, before I started this thread. I have listened to a few Lindybeige, and he says stuff like Roman developed a set of tongs for removing the sling from the bodies (contradicting what you said, it's more than head hit or bludgeoning...), and some cultures baked clay to get consistent density in the stone/bullet (another article I read said Aztecs made clay stones with bits of obsidian so the pieces cut a little.). A dagger on the battle field is like a pistol in the real world, it is a weapon of last resort (or a weapon you use until you find a better one). And Schologladiatoria says the same thing essentially, and a dagger is a weapon used in a grapple... And he said he does not know about slings and proceedes to speculate. Many Special forces in the real world carry hatchets/hand axes, not daggers because they can penetrate better and concentrate forces in a narrower blade for close fighting. But I digress...

No. D&D isn't a realistic system, but you have to have a basis for comparison. In the PHB the weight of 20 sling bullets is 24oz (1.5 lbs), which is way light compared to found Roman and Greek slings bullets which light ones seem to range between 1.8oz to 2.5oz, so the weight should be a minimum of 2.5lbs, which shows the Authors can make errors.

I enjoy your air of superiority, saying negative comments without providing any real factual information. Good for you!

 

[Derren]

A dagger on the battle field is like a pistol in the real world, it is a weapon of last resort (or a weapon you use until you find a better one). And Schologladiatoria says the same thing essentially, and a dagger is a weapon used in a grapple... And he said he does not know about slings and proceedes to speculate. Many Special forces in the real world carry hatchets/hand axes, not daggers because they can penetrate better and concentrate forces in a narrower blade for close fighting. But I digress...

Daggers were one of the better weapons you could use against plate armor. Sure, a polearm or a weapon specifically made for defeating plate is preferably, but if you had a choice between a sword and a dagger you chose the dagger.
Hatchets might be better now, but in old times penetrating heavy armor with a one handed hatchet was very unlikely. A dagger was much better in slipping into vulnerable spots not covered by armor.

 

[Kalshane]

Daggers were one of the better weapons you could use against plate armor. Sure, a polearm or a weapon specifically made for defeating plate is preferably, but if you had a choice between a sword and a dagger you chose the dagger.
Hatchets might be better now, but in old times penetrating heavy armor with a one handed hatchet was very unlikely. A dagger was much better in slipping into vulnerable spots not covered by armor.

I'd still take the sword. You have a lot more options half-swording with a longsword than you do with a dagger. (Especially if your opponent is armed as well as armored, which is usually the case.) Though anyone trying to melee with someone in plate while unarmored themselves is going to be in a lot of trouble, regardless of what weapon they have.

 

[dropbear8mybaby]

I agree D&D isn't accurate, but like Saelorn said, there has to be a basis in realism.

You can't have it both ways. Either you're hewing to reality or you're not. You can't keep shifting the goal posts whenever someone questions your logic. If I say D&D isn't a realistic system and you say we're not basing it on reality, then you can't go and then say you're basing things on reality when someone questions you on that.

D&D barely pays lip-service to realism. Sure, you need two hands to load and fire a crossbow in the system. But that's where the "realism" ends. A dagger is no less deadly than a longsword. There's no justification for it doing less damage aside from system mechanics contrivances. If it were based on reality, then the longsword would be a superior weapon to a dagger primarily due to reach, leverage and the techniques you can use for defence and attack. But D&D doesn't work that way. Instead, the longsword is represented as the better weapon by having a higher damage die.

And the same logic has to apply to all items in the system. A sling may very well have been the superweapon you want it to be in history, but in D&D it's represented the way it is because that's how the system works. And all that is leaving aside the fact that D&D is a mish-mash of real-world cultures and technology and time periods that has no comparative basis in reality. So the sling in D&D could be representing any sling throughout history rather than the peak of its evolution and use in the real world.

Dropbear/baby, The historical record does say people died from sling damage without bleeding. Body shots could break bones and cause internal damage, it is less likely a hit to a limb wound kill, but it is possible (you have heard of compartment syndrome?).

I never said they didn't. I said it was most likely that they would kill by head shot than other means and in the context of D&D, not history. And all that is also not accounting for armour. I don't care what sling bullet you're using or how accurate you are with it, you're unlikely to kill someone wearing 15th or 16th century plate armour with it from 300 yards away. And again, D&D doesn't account for weapon versus armour types. It's simplified. A sling bullet does the same damage wether the target is armoured or not. D&D isn't the system for subtleties of weapon and armour and the context of battle/melee situations. Any single argument you bring up to justify improving the sling, you can also use for every single other weapon in the system. None of them are truly representative of how they work in reality. So why should the sling get special attention?

I did look up sling on youtube and watched a lot of videos, before I started this thread. I have listened to a few Lindybeige, and he says stuff like Roman developed a set of tongs for removing the sling from the bodies (contradicting what you said, it's more than head hit or bludgeoning...), and some cultures baked clay to get consistent density in the stone/bullet (another article I read said Aztecs made clay stones with bits of obsidian so the pieces cut a little.). A dagger on the battle field is like a pistol in the real world, it is a weapon of last resort (or a weapon you use until you find a better one). And Schologladiatoria says the same thing essentially, and a dagger is a weapon used in a grapple... And he said he does not know about slings and proceedes to speculate. Many Special forces in the real world carry hatchets/hand axes, not daggers because they can penetrate better and concentrate forces in a narrower blade for close fighting. But I digress...

What has any of that got to do with anything?

A sling bullet against the predominant form of armour throughout European history and which is the most common heavy armour in D&D, i.e. gambeson and mail isn't going to do much of anything aside from being annoying and maybe bruise a little, unless it's a head hit. And even then, there's a very good reason why helmets were very popular. If you're arguing about bullet damage against unarmoured opponents, then you're using the very best possible scenario that advantages your argument and isn't represented in most of history. The Romans weren't using sling bullets against lorica segmentata wearing opponents. The Greeks weren't using it against gambeson and maille wearing opponents. And in D&D, neither of those things matter because the sling will do the same damage against an armoured or unarmoured opponent because that's how things are balanced and represented in the system, regardless of reality or logic.

I enjoy your air of superiority, saying negative comments without providing any real factual information. Good for you!

I'm pretty sure you're the same dude who came onto the DoMT server and argued with everyone about the underrated superiority of the sling as a superweapon. You didn't listen to anyone there and you won't listen to anywhere here either. So obviously you love the sling and want to make it better. OK, do that. What's stopping you? You don't need or want my approval. So other than getting people to agree with you, what is the point of making a discussion thread if you're not willing to discuss anything?

 

[Pranqstr]

Actually, this is the first time I posted anything about the sling, and i'm not sure what DoMT is...

After discussing with my gaming group and this group, the argument seems to be leave it. I can live with 1d4, but the range of 30/120 means in order to sling without disad you have to be within a combat move of an average humanoid. And even at the long range (with disadvantage) a sorcerer can exchange shots, but the sorcerer isn't at disad and will do more than a 1d4. I hate to create and spend a feat to extend the range, as it means most people will ignore the sling and go for a bow. I think the range should be better and the weight of the bullets should be more.

Not a superweapon, but an effective weapon. Do you really think 5e has it correct? In 1st/2nd ed the range kept up with the shortbow and long range was better than the shortbow (sling stone was shorter range than the bullet), I posted ranges earlier.

 

[dropbear8mybaby]

Not a superweapon, but an effective weapon. Do you really think 5e has it correct? In 1st/2nd ed the range kept up with the shortbow and long range was better than the shortbow (sling stone was shorter range than the bullet), I posted ranges earlier.

No, I don't think D&D is fair to a lot of things and don't think it has much of anything correct when it comes to representing history and reality. But... it's D&D. I accept that D&D is a simplified fantasy game. Hand crossbows, for instance, shouldn't exist at all. It was a toy weapon. Polearms are grossly misrepresented. They were a superior weapon in a lot of situations and grossly inferior to carry around all day. The armours in D&D are atrocious. Padded should be far better than it is (assuming padded means gambeson), and plate should be far rarer and have penalties for sustained use. But we have characters walking around in plate and carrying polearms all day every day and battlemasters doing more damage with a hand crossbow than they could with a greatsword. We also have elves shooting fireballs out of their fingertips.

I'm not opposed to making a system that is more realistic and representative of reality. I'm working on a custom, homebrew version of 5e that is about as similar to 5e as Arcana Unearthed was to 3e, and brings a lot of things more into line with how I think they should work. But core D&D just isn't the system for that kind of thing.

Now, making a feat similar to Crossbow Master, something you mentioned in your OP, is a fine solution, but making the base sling more powerful just, in my opinion, doesn't make sense in the context of the core D&D rules.

Anyway, I leave this thread with this last tidbit. Here I present to you the second highest DPR weapon in D&D that, using a battlemaster, can fire up to 9 times in one turn, second only to a glaive/halberd and only because Polearm Master gives you a reaction attack and Crossbow Master doesn't:

[video=youtube;se_N8CrooPY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=se_N8CrooPY[/video]

 

[Derren]

and plate should be far rarer and have penalties for sustained use

Where does this idea that plate was rare come from? Once they figured the process out, plate was much more easy to make than chain armor most soldiers wore some variation of plate armor

 

[see]

Arrows/bolts (made of mostly wood and with fletching to catch the air) shed force with distance flown a lot faster than than a good dense spin-stabilized biconal lead bullet. Slung stones aren't very good, because they're so low-density, but biconal lead was standard long before Rome fell.

Rather, the major trouble was that you needed somebody expert in the sling to hurl it properly, which meant herdsmen practicing since childhood, not serf farmers. (Of course YouTube videos from modern amateurs show the sling as not-very-good.) The more land under cultivation, the relatively fewer good slingers available, and the relatively more people that could be handed a crossbow. Throw in difficulties with arranging volley fire, densely packing slingers, and using things like arrow slits, and of course in mass warfare based around sieges slings dropped from favor. But that had relatively little to do with armor. (And the effect of armor could have been partly offset the same way it was in arrows and bolts -- steel tips with shapes optimized for penetration in front of the body. There just wasn't enough sling use for the other reasons to justify making better sling bullets.) Applied to D&D-scale combat, the medieval problems would mostly go away. Your character could be an expert in the sling, you generally aren't trying to arrange mass volleys from packed slingers in mass combat, and you generally aren't shooting from great cover.

So, yeah. If you were trying to realism-ize D&D weapons, you would have a much more effective (and martial for the needed expertise) sling, move the heavy crossbow down to simple/wizard and give it a 1/3 rounds firing rate (to reflect the roughly 20-second time between shots to cock and reload), make polearms utterly lousy in non-formation use, add a fairly high minimum strength to the longbow (you can tell a real longbowman's skeleton because his bones were warped by his asymmetrical muscles), remove scimitars from the "light" weapon list, et cetera. It's not so much D&D is "wrong" as that it just puts real-world names on weapon mechanics that exist to fill specific game conventions.

 

[dropbear8mybaby]

Where does this idea that plate was rare come from?

From the fact that even at the very height of it's use and distribution, people weren't walking around town in it, doing their daily business. It was an apparatus of war, not a casual town outfit.