Better to suffer the Slings *or* Arrows?
Can someone educate me a little on the historical usage of slings as a weapon?
I know there are ancient accounts of slings being used very effectively in battle, but what I'm particularly interested in are its utility for other purposes... especially hunting.
One of my standard RP characters is a scout/ranger type who focusses on travelling light and getting the most out of the little equipment he carries.
I've been considering switching him over to a sling user (rather than his usual bow) on the basis that a sling and a bag of rocks is significantly less cumbersome than a 6" piece of wood and a loose tube of pointy sticks...
My concern is that the sling might be significantly less useful for putting dinner on the table... Whilst an archer can remain still and hidden right up to the lethal moment, a slinger would have to reveal himself and risk startling his quarry with the dramatic motions required to use his weapon.
TL:DR... Are slings viable as a hunting tool?
PS: I'm not really interested in discussing the mechanics of BG or any particular RPG system... I've got those down! :-)
This is totally about how the character feels to me and avoiding a glaring faux pas.
I know there are ancient accounts of slings being used very effectively in battle, but what I'm particularly interested in are its utility for other purposes... especially hunting.
One of my standard RP characters is a scout/ranger type who focusses on travelling light and getting the most out of the little equipment he carries.
I've been considering switching him over to a sling user (rather than his usual bow) on the basis that a sling and a bag of rocks is significantly less cumbersome than a 6" piece of wood and a loose tube of pointy sticks...
My concern is that the sling might be significantly less useful for putting dinner on the table... Whilst an archer can remain still and hidden right up to the lethal moment, a slinger would have to reveal himself and risk startling his quarry with the dramatic motions required to use his weapon.
TL:DR... Are slings viable as a hunting tool?
PS: I'm not really interested in discussing the mechanics of BG or any particular RPG system... I've got those down! :-)
This is totally about how the character feels to me and avoiding a glaring faux pas.
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Comments
I would recommend either a spear, quarterstaff, or dagger for a melee weapon, since all of them could be made with found objects. Spear or dagger probably makes more sense for a hunter, but a quarterstaff wouldn't draw blood, making it better for scouting and taking down strategic targets quietly.
For practical purposes, check out 'The Walking Dead' and Daryl Dixon. While it is a bit ludicrous that he survives with only 3-5 arrows for his crossbow, it is MUCH more viable to be carrying 20-30 arrows than an equal number of rocks, at least weight wise. And any good Bow specialist is going to have at least some skill in fletching and constructing a basic arrow.
It's very much six of one, half a dozen of the other, I suppose.
Thanks for the responses. :-)
As for the smell factor, the thousands and thousands of walking cadavers probably smell a good deal worse so I suppose they get used to 'The new normal' smell wise. It's all a matter of degrees anyway. Although disintary and other issues probably should be more prominent in the show.
I don't so much have a problem with the number of zombies out there, society did basically die out such that maybe 1% survived the initial infection after all. My problem is with the fact that 5 years on, the integrity of the corpses should start degrading to the point where they shouldn't be able to move anymore. Muscle tissue is still necessary for locomotion and without bodily fluids to maintain, they degrade fairly quickly.
The reality is, if the group can survive another year or two (given that most of society 'Perished' in the initial infection), the Zombie aspect should pretty much correct itself. You'd get a few stragglers that managed to survive the initial onslaught, but that would be manageable. Then they would just have to ensure that any fresh deaths were dealt with appropriately.
@abacus - Fair point about the arrows. However if you are using the Orlando Bloom Legolas template, I think you are already throwing out physics at the get-go. So it becomes academic to discuss as you can't run along a falling rock, nor use it to jump anywhere.
This guy is a beginner, but he gets some good hits, and demonstrates good single-throw technique:
This guy tests it on ballistics gel, although the wind in the mic is irritating, and he talks so much he makes me want to say "less talking, more slinging, please."
LindyBeige is very knowledgeable, although he rambles a lot, and he's inside and doesn't actually throw in the video. He did a whole series of videos about the sling if you care to look them up.
You can find many more good informative videos if you want to take the time to research it.
You could definitely be an effective outdoorsman with it, especially in a very primitive setting. More technologically advanced weapons are generally better, but the sling has the advantage of being very easy to make with materials that can be found outdoors, and requiring no technological support such as smelting metal or blacksmithing.
both sling and bow are deadly weapon.
So avoid both of them.
Of course, the word primitive when used to describe the techniques our ancestors used, always makes me chuckle. They were pretty darn inventive and sophisticated, in my opinion. They had to be.
I never know what I am going to find myself thinking about when I come to this delightful forum, so full of such diverse, entertaining, and often inspiring people. Today I was led on yet one more delightful journey. Thank you all again.
You would not hunt with slings unless you didn't have bows or spears. Blunt trauma is brutal, but if you want to kill a deer, you want to pierce its heart or lung, or at least put something in its haunches that won't fall out, so it can't just run away and escape. A sling isn't strong enough to break a deer's leg, or accurate enough to hit the leg reliably. Nor will it cause much blood loss. The deer would be hurt, but it could easily run away.
An arrow will pierce a lung and drain blood. Poor aim still puts a big stick in a deep wound and will make it painful to move. What about a rock at top speed?
The rock will hurt. And then it will bounce off.
Sling, dagger, club and staff was the first weapons man invented and discovered.
Dagger was a piece of stone with sharp point and edges, good to pierce and cut, used for hunting, combat (we can not talk of war because at that time there was not a society complex enough) and woodworking.
Club was often a bone, a femur.
Sling is a masterpiece of that early tecnology, the only one who survived almost unchanged up to middle age and even after. For good reasons.
Handy to carry around, easy to make, does not require a complicated ammunition like the bow (have you ever try to make an arrow? A straigth one? A lot harder then people often tink).
And with a terrific efficiency, because energy=mass*speed, and the bullet is low mass, much smaller then half fist, but is acelerated to a very high speed. So a lot of energy hitting a small area, because the bullet is small. Crushing damage (not the piercing of DnD...).
Club evoluted to mace or flail, paleolitic dagger to neolitic one and with metalworking in modern one and sword, staff to spear then halbard and pike.
Sling was born perfect.
And only in bg or in some situations like the roman lead bullet shown in the movie the sling user has to carry a big bag of bullets, the pebbly shore of a brook was an infinite source of them and not the only one.
He also did not need many, as @semiticgod pointed out range is limited, in combat the enemy close distance, in hunting the prey flee.
Only modern tecnology and rubber band made an improvement possible.
The sling is a very versatile weapon. You don't need super-heavy stones to do serious damage, though as pointed out, arrows are better to fell prey. So for a hunter who's main target is to kill animals, I'd think a bow would be the primary option. But for someone for which hunting isn't the sole purpose, I'd say a sling is an excellent choice. You can replenish your stock of bullets and throw pretty much anything you find on the ground, at a disadvantage of range and accuracy of course. It was not uncommon for armies to replenish ammo with stones found on the ground, I've read. But then again, when you want to fire at a slow-moving or immobile group of enemies, accuracy is of less concern then if you want to fire at a small or moving animal.
You can have several different kind of ammo and the romans issued lead bullets, not all of them round. They could have points for smashing through armour quite effectively etc, so if your character is geared for versatility and mobility, the choice of sling is a good one, methinks.
I really like that you, @abacus, put in this kind of thought in your character creation. I do the same.
Bow, in both hunting and combat, is a superior weapon becouse it pierce and has longer range and a better precision at long range.
If you want to fire at a moving animal from short distance the sling is the better as is very easy to follow his movement changes while with bow you have to move the whole upper body.
And the sling is the fastest to use as with bow to remain in "fire position" more than few seconds is very exhausting. A hunter waiting in position behind a bush is not possible in RL.
About accuracy I would say that mostly depends on the skill of who use the weapon, both are accurate in the situation where they excel.
Sling is better at shorter distance with smaller pray that move randomly, bow with bigger prey, that sling can not damage enough, and at long range.