Best light ranged weapons

[FocusWolf413]

What are the best light ranged weapons? At 5th level, I'm looking forward to taking full advantage of far shot, rapid shot, and battle dragon stance's twf penalty reduction. I'm proficient with all simple and martial weapons, and hand crossbows are martial weapons in our game.

[Psyren]

I'm guessing from the stance that you're playing PoW - you may want to tag this thread Pathfinder so the DSP folks are more likely to come by.

Unless PoW introduced something that I'm unaware of (I have yet to read it in detail,) the only ranged projectile weapon I know of that counts as "light" for the purposes of TWF penalties is the hand crossbow. There are also light weapons with a range increment (e.g. daggers) which means they are suitable for throwing - these will also count as light when used at range.

[FocusWolf413]

The game is kind of an unholy abomination combining homebrew, 3.5, and pathfinder.
I know darts have a 20' range increment, but is there anything with a greater range increment?

[Khedrac]

And the problem with the Hand Crossbow, is that barring an enchantment, while it may only take one hand to fire it takes two hands to load.

Proper two-hand combat at range generally has to be thrown for this reason.

[Seruvius]

The game is kind of an unholy abomination combining homebrew, 3.5, and pathfinder.
I know darts have a 20' range increment, but is there anything with a greater range increment?

there are Holy Abominations? :smallbiggrin:

So the best light ranged weapon I cant think of is really the Boomerang. The martial version does d4 damage and has a range increment of 10'. Pretty boring on its own, but when you add the boomerang Daze and Boomerang Ricochet Feats from Eberron into the mix, suddenly each successful hit can hit again and every enemy hit has to save against daze with DC=Damage received. Not sure how common Daze resistance/immunity is in your homebrew, but in 3.5 its rather rare.

[nedz]

Erm, depending on the actual rules you are playing: you probably need Quickdraw if you intend to throw more than one object a round.

Also: best in what context ?

In terms of cost: it's hard to beat rocks, since they are free and you are not guaranteed to get your weapons back when you throw them. Being able to spam Magic Stone might help here.

In terms of funny: whatever is lying around, finishing up with the sink.

[Psyren]

Shuriken are better than darts also - shorter increment, but they count as ammunition when it comes to enhancing them, meaning that for the same price it would take you to enhance one dart, you can enhance 50 shuriken instead. Much cheaper. Same goes for making them masterwork, cold iron etc.

[Seward]

Shuriken also let you draw them as ammo without needing quickdraw, but the OP isn't proficient in them.


Weirdly dart are pretty good - cheap, 20' throwing range. Light hammers are similar in effect if you need blunt for some reason. If your ruleset includes Starknives, they're like expensive darts with x3 crit.

Hand axes do more damage (1d6) but have only 10' range. They're your go-to for slashing damage if you're fighting zombies or plants or something strange like that.

Eastern weapons don't add anything better. Hand crossbows if you can figure out how to reload them do 1d4 with 19-20 crit range, and are significantly easier to enchant than throwing weapons. But like Shuriken, they're exotic weapons. Sling Gloves (a weird Pathfinder weapon from Adventurer Armory) are also exotic, but reload as a free action, so they're strictly superior to hand crossbows.

That's about it for light weapons in the simple+martial arena, barring pistols/gunslingers. In 3.5 splash weapons would qualify (and can be mixed with quickdraw) but in Pathfinder, explicitly says splash weapons aren't weaponlike enough for things like drawing on the move and quickdraw. So YMMV at throwing 10-20gp per attack at enemies and losing strength bonus to damage but getting the benefit of touch attacks and elemental damage.

[Psyren]

That's about it for light weapons in the simple+martial arena, barring pistols/gunslingers. In 3.5 splash weapons would qualify (and can be mixed with quickdraw) but in Pathfinder, explicitly says splash weapons aren't weaponlike enough for things like drawing on the move and quickdraw.

The new Weapon Master's Handbook includes a style chain that lets you treat splash weapons like sling ammo, including getting damage boosts from your magical sling, and of course firing them at much longer range. As long as you can reload it fast enough (e.g. Ammo Drop) you can full-attack with holy water with a 50ft. increment. (Alternatively, you can use a Sling Glove - the style lets you treat any weapon with "sling" in the name as though it were a sling for the purposes of feats and class features.)

Underground Chemist Unchained Rogue can get sneak attack with splash weapons this way, and an Alchemist dip will get you Int to damage with them also via their "Throw Anything" feature.