Why aren't slings more common in fantasy RPGs?

Doesn't even take a lot of training, slinging rocks to hit within line of 3 meters takes an afternoon, you'll hit a moving target the size of a human in maybe two weeks. And slings are cheap enough that every idiot can learn with them as a child.

* THAT much training. It's still quite a bit, yeah.

I asked /k/ about it a while ago
Tl;dr: higher range, lower cost, but low accuracy, blunt trauma won't pierce and won't make the target bleed, needs looser formations in mass battles

Slings can inflict quite a lot of damage against an unarmoured or lightly armoured target, but against enemies wearing something like mail they're pretty useless.
They were mostly popular in the ancient period where bows were quite a bit weaker than the kind you got later in history.
For reference... m.youtube.com/watch?v=covH4voKukw

Maybe against standard PC humanoids and skeletons, but against things that grow their own armor or are made of fire and such, it would be better to use the sling to toss things like alchemist's fire or holy water.

>takes more trainign than a bow sure, but if you're just fighter McSwordman, there's no fucking reason not to just carry around a sling and 10 lead bullets amounting to all of 5 or 6 pounds.

Damage is plenty high, just has garbage armor pen.

A hallway you could manage in, and unless your pressing yourface through branches there are likely none in the way of a sling.

And I strongly disagree that poison is useful outside of hunting unless you're using fantasy or high tech poison.

For a solitary adventurer it seems a rather practical thing to have on you.

It's not about battles but single adventurers, so the last point doesn't really count here.

Because a fat fuck in a chair could not use a sling after 20 minutes of half ass attempts.

Here is you nerf and a spell that can do it better.

Slings aren't long, hard and pointy. As such, they do not convey the all important message of "I have BIG dick, but not, like, a dick for girls and making babies, that would be gay, a manly dick ! for stabbing dudes and imposing my strength on them ! ".
And that's all that we are searching for in weaponry.

Absolutely, pretty mumch every one of my pcs carry a sling as a backup ranged weapon.

rule of cool

slings arent cool

I think they're cool

You have issues dude.
They were quite common in pastoralist people, a sling was the weapon of choice of them to ward off wolfs or cattle-stealers, the problem was the training, to make a very good slinger you need lot of time training,a lot more than a longbowman, and with the advent of the crossbow than was powerful, precise and easy to train it made the sling a rarity outside of a few places, like it did the bow in nearly all Europe but England and some periods of france or East Europe. The balearic slingers were trained since kids, and even in low numbers wrecked shit with they slings, from mauling shields and helms to sinking tirremes (the Consol Metellus had to beef up the armor of his Tirremes to conquer the balearic islands).

PHALLIC WEAPONS ARE HURTFULL TO WYMYN N GAAAYS! Thats probably a good point tho, people don't use weapons as much that aren't considered manly and powerful. A sling just doesn't look like a powerful weapon and more like a gay ass string tanga.

Slings take more space to use. That's relevant for a lot of niche things, battle formation among others. You can't use it well in tight spaces, moreso than for most bows. You can't fire from cover, you risk thwacking your mates and failing your shot.

How strong do you need to be to use a sling? Passably or ideally.

How fast ios it to aim and fire?

Isn't as much as the strenght as the practice you have with it, even a child can throw a stone with a sling and kill some one.

I think you're thinking of the long swings you sling around your head, which is not what you would use as an adventure if you aren't slinging into huge formations a good 200 meters off.

Short slings are fired right from rest at your side just like and arm and extender for over hand throw, if you've got a foot of clearance over you head you're good to go.

Not nearly as strong as you need to be for a warbow I'd guess.

As always, I blame D&D. A longbow with its d8 damage is largely inadequate when it comes to actually killing things. Since a sling has even less damage you can not really attack with it, just notify the monster that you exist.

D&D also makes the sling always have shitty reloading properties.

You cannot fire them in close ranks like arrows.

No, I'm not thinking about that. Even if a bow takes up the same space, if you hit the bow on something while nocking an arrow it's not going to mess with your form as bad as if swinging a sling.

Of course, this is missing the best thing about those bullets.

On the left we have a picture of a thunderbolt. Showing the whole idea is to strike with massive force.

On the right we have "Catch," Because why the fuck not?

You also can't fire them through slits.

Anyway, here Veeky Forums, have a read.

Doesn't fit the aesthetic, I guess.

Slings died out as the number of bored pastoralists went down.

And there was more room for improvement on bows and crossbows, AFAIK.

/k/ is full of shit.

Roman accounts of slings said about how the bullets would embed into the flesh, this is a modern reproduction of this:
youtube.com/watch?v=Tpu-BCSfJ2c&index=86&list=PLkMIaCcWSxvxhsuJvH70MgTlIV-gUAH2w

youtube.com/watch?v=aElI3Doa8mE&index=5&list=PLkMIaCcWSxvxhsuJvH70MgTlIV-gUAH2w

>bullets

Not stones, bullets made of lead.

Don't many fantasy RPGs have slings? What do you want, rulebook covers with slingers?

>Don't many fantasy RPGs have slings?

Yeah, but they are often even shittier than just throwing rocks.

>Because slings weren't used in Tolkien.

this meme is dumb. there are tons of things in your average fantasy RPG that weren't in LotR.

/k/isn't thinking about that. It's a blunt weapon. It may embed itself in the body, but ut won't pierce deeply into the body and cause bleeding and loss of blood pressure or destroy heart and lungs. A slingstone can only kill by hits to the head.

>didn't read your link because I'm on a playstation

Because 1d4 damage

That has more to do with it than anything else

hit points

Back with Baldur's Gate, I loved slings.

They provided a nice weapon for mages to keep them out of melee.

So ask the GM to make them a little better.

Yeah but since 4e Wizards have had perfectly accurate unlimited magic missiles. RIP in peace, only use for slings in D&D.

They worked pretty well for David though. Headshots are good.

Could make a good Macguffin launcher, too, if you need it tossed down a dragon's throat or something.

I'd if/when I wanted to play a slinger, and none of the games I like to GM have slings as shit weapons.

However, that answers OP's question of why slings aren't common in fantasy RPGs, even when they exist in the book.

>ut won't pierce deeply into the body and cause bleeding and loss of blood pressure
>didn't read your link because I'm on a playstation
The link shows blood loss though

>Because slings weren't used in Tolkien.
Pretty sure Bilbo was packing a sling during the Hobbit.

>Reload times, because fidgety reloading and massive configuration changing of the weapon after being used that you have to undo first.
>Firing time, because you have to spin it up first and you can't have it spun up without it making noise and forcing you to move a body part.
>Unnatural aiming and firing, since you can't just point one bit of the sling towards the enemy to make it dead, unlike with most weapons and even just thrown rocks.
>Fairly obscure firing. I and i'm sure plenty of others too, have no idea how the mechanism of getting the pebble out of the sling works, while it's fairly obvious to anyone how bows work.
>Heavy ammo, because you can't just find pebbles of the right shape and size lying around everywhere, and a piece of stone is always heavier than an arrow.
>Blunt damage is generally less deadly in small quantities than piercing damage. You need to hit the head to do any real damage with a small rock, and (i don't really have facts on this) i don't assume you could break the leg of a big warrior with a single sling-shot. Meanwhile you can totally incapacitate someone with an arrow hit to some muscles or tendons.
-Blunt damage instead of piercing damage is easier to protect against. You literally only need to wrap yourself in some pillows or wear thicker winter clothing to have the impact damage dissipate, instead of wearing moderately heavy and somewhat expensive chainmail like with arrows.
-Less stable firing position, because one limb is in constant movement before firing while you can have one arm stable against a surface with a bow.
-No advantage from vantage points, because you need to expose your whole upper body to give the projectile free flight path and see the enemy too. So you can't shoot through bushes or slits in walls. You can't shoot into or out of tents either.
-Size. The maximum size (area of spinning) of the sling is larger than that of an bow. Meaning less guys in the same area.
That's all.
Correct me if i'm wrong.

As an individual weapon slings are very hard to use accurately compared to a bow or crossbow. Slings are best suited for massed fire against formations of troops rather then individual combat or hunting.

I thought Hobbits were just preternaturally good at throwing stones?

>you never know when a pipe will come in handy.
420blazeit.jpg

One DM I had always made a completely seperate roll on a hundred sided die for slings. There was always the smallest chance that a scrawny rock could get a miracle crit and perform an otherwise impossible feat for any other weapon. His reasoning was that the humbleness of the weapon used in earnest in a hopeless situation could win the sypmathy of the player's diety. Never ended up doing more than one hit ricochet kills when our rogue ran out of arrows, but the concept he had was neat.

Whatever miniscule amount of training it takes to get good at using a sling, it takes less to train to use a bow and less to train to use a crossbow etc.

At absolutely point blank range and lead was expensive- probably more than arrows, negating one of the prime advantages of a sling.

Slings are neglected, but they simply aren't as good as bows which are a more sophisticated, effective weapon.

>thunderbolt
>catch!
Are they enchanted?

No, it's just that they tend to get a lot of leisurely practice during their 30-something years as minors exempt from work.

>Whatever miniscule amount of training it takes to get good at using a sling, it takes less to train to use a bow
Niguh what.

slings are OP.

>Highly accurate

Except that's wrong.

They also didn't have range for shit and lost power dramatically compared to a bow.

Slings should be used by alchemist type characters to throw potions or grenades, like the Finns and Spanish did

Y'all are pretty heavily underestimating the damage of slings
Slings being described as equal to muskets
>One writer noted that the power of the sling in the hands of an Aztec warrior was “only slightly less than that [of a Spanish firearm]” (Korfmann, 1973).
>A scholar writing about the Tanala tribe of Madagascar explained “at 50 yards slings are as dangerous as firearms in native hands.”
>An observer on a French archeological expedition in the 1900s recorded the details of a conflict with natives in Iran, noting that they had “poor-quality muskets, pistols, lances, and far more dangerous slings.” (Lindblom, 1940)
>Similar reports from Samoa in the 1800s
Slings described as more dangerous than bows
Vegetius, a Roman writer in the late 4th century, observed in his famous Epitoma Rei Militaris that sling missiles were more effective than arrows against soldiers clothes in leather, since they did not need to penetrate the leather in order to cause bruises. Should the soldier wear no protective clothing, the missile would penetrate the body easily up to a range of about 100 meters.
Slung rocks penetrating flesh
>Celsus, a Roman medical writer from the 1st century B.C.. He describes in his De Medicina that: "...there is a third type of [projectile] that sometimes needs to be removed, a leaden bullet or rock or something similar, which breaking through the skin lodges inside in one piece. In all of these cases, the wound needs to be opened a bit wider, and what is inside must be extracted with pincers along the same pathway by which it entered."
>European chroniclers speaking on the Marianas slingers: "They are very skilled at using the sling for which they fashion marble slingstones that fly as through bewitched. These resemble very large acorns ... that are flung as through they were fired from an harquebus. They ... strikes with such force that, if it hits the head or the body, it will penetrate."

There's a difference between "bleeding" and "blood loss". A mace can make you bleed, if it scrapes you or causes the skin to split, but you're not in danger of bleeding to death from it. An arrow wound is a timer to treatment or unconsciousness.

Because they fare poorly against armor and in games have a much lower damage potential compared to bows.

They are. At least one character in every fantasy group I've been in had one.

Well, Testament did have the option of engraved sling bullets which granted morale bonuses (and penalties for enemies if they realised)

Sling bullets with writing was actually very common. Other designs included snakes and scorpions; other text includes "Take this", "Ouch", and "For Pompey's Backside"

So yeah, I'd say magical. Since, you know, a lot of standard things would be magical in D&D, like flaming slingstones (heated clay), just like flaming arrows are enchanted.

Of course the main advantage of slings was range. Only with with specially designed bows and arrows would you beat a sling for range.

>They also didn't have range for shit and lost power dramatically compared to a bow
Except that's wrong.
Roman and Greek sources repeatedly describe slings outranging bows. Assyrian reliefs show slingers launching from further than archers. The conquistadors make similar reports in S America and rated the Peruvian slingers far more dangerous than Aztec archers given their armour.

This all makes sense when you think about the difference in density and area of stones vs arrows. An arrow is FAR more susceptible to air resistance and wind.

Something everyone forgets about slings is their versatility.
Sure, almost everyone realizes that a sling can function fine with a pocket full of river pebbles, but just picking up rocks to replenish your ammo is only the tip of the iceberg.

You can fire just about ANYTHING the size of your fist or smaller from a sling. You means rocks, that means bullets, that means jars of acid, that means grenades, molotovs, pouches of choking dust, undead rodents, signal flares, messages tied to bricks, fairies in crash suits, smoke bombs, rocks stuffed in a leper's sock, caltrops, small coconuts, birds, small coconuts tied to birds with a strand of creeper. The possibilities are endless!

The workaday paradox. Stuff that does a job well and inexpensively tends to just fade into the background. 5e's default setting per the PHB seems to just assume they're a part of everyday life in Faerun. They cost a silver point, both them and their ammunition are common adventuring gear available everywhere, and every PC class comes into play proficient in them. There's probably a bowl of them near the front of most shops and a lot of shepherds, woodsmen, and adventurers keep one tucked away for just-in-case. Kids probably entertain themselves practicing with them or flinging acorns or mud balls at each other.

But because it's just sort of "there" nobody really ever brings it up all that much, like handaxes, sickles, or hammers. Shame, really. They're pretty neat.

>A slingstone can only kill by hits to the head.
Link also shows the lethal threshold for fractured livers by impact. Impacts to joints also cause fractures. Sling, knee, etc.

Rocks are everywhere, and if you really want to fuck shit up a metal or fired clay ball isn't hard to find.

The sling shoots orbs of annihilation

A 59 years old Spanish veterinarian took down a helicopter in 1989 with a stone throw. Here's a link to an article of the time, in Spanish:

elpais.com/diario/1989/08/11/espana/618789604_850215.html

Long story short, the guy was picking up some herbs when the helicopter got close. He and some other neighbors were pretty pissed off because helicopter and plances often passed nearby and it was annoying, so he decided to throw it a stone. He probably hit a critical point and the helicopter tanked instantly. No one died, but all the crew got broken bones.

The next day he said in an interview that he hadn't throw any stone - the pilot wanted to give him a "little scare" but got too close, made contact with the ground and crashed.

hemeroteca.abc.es/nav/Navigate.exe/hemeroteca/madrid/abc/1989/08/12/004.html

This article doesn't mention a sling, but I remember a similar event (also in Spain) that DID involve one. Something about a guy, a shepherd or something similar, who thought a helicopter was going to steal water from a little lake in his property and sniping it instantly with a slingshot. I'll try to find it.

Another one for now: a Mexican almost took down another helicopter in 2006. It took him 5 stones, didn't take the helicopter down and ended up three years in prison, but hey, not everybody can be a hero.

blog.com.mx/sociedad/apedrea-helicoptero-y-va-3-anos-a-prision/

No, he just threw rocks.

That's only true in cases where the technology behind the bows are just that primitive. Once reinforcement became a thing, a technology that they didn't have in the Americas or the times of the Assyrians, the balance shifted so far in favor of bows that they never looked back.

that reload time though, "hold on badguys I am just getting another rock ready". Also no penetration for armour

>small coconuts tied to birds with a strand of creeper
I see what you did there.

Compare that to an arrow. Punctured internals are going to more reliably put someone down than throwing a rock and hoping you hit something vital.

It doesn't need any, it's basically like being hit with a ranged mace.

Yeah, it doesn't go through your helmet, but you are probably concussed anyway.

>Compare that to an arrow. Punctured internals are going to more reliably put someone down than throwing a rock and hoping you hit something vital.

The arrow also isn't going through the armor, but carries less energy and is going to be deflected.

> to sinking tirremes (the Consol Metellus had to beef up the armor of his Tirremes to conquer the balearic islands).

Wat.

What the fuck? You can totally kill someone with internal bleeding from blunt trauma. Hell, broken bones can be even deadlier since they can rip arteries if moved improperly or fallen on.

You're retarded.

Bodkins do a pretty good job against mail.

That's what you get for making your trireme out of balsa wood.

Depends on the armor. They did well enough against anything short of hardened plate at one point or another and proper war arrows were fairly hefty.

>That video
>All these people who keep slings as sidearms
>Asked to disarm
>basically unravel tyheir whole outfit revealing their their boot laces, vambrance laces, clothing trimmings, belt, headband, whole tabbard, and even their bowstrings are all slings
>And their underwear is made from two slings.

And that's why the underwear became known as a "thong".

>less to train and use a bow
The physical conditioning alone will take longer.

It's about "spilling" blood. If they cough up blood or it leaks out their anus, then that's *their* bad, not the cleric's fault.