Halfling Sling User

[tstewt1921]

I wanna play a Halfling whose primary weapons is a sling. He would be very mischievous, joking and possibly somewhat psychotic at times. What kind of builds/classes would you recommend for this? Open to all suggestions, the one thing that won't change is his primary weapon.

[Seharvepernfan]

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?132330-Optimizing-slings

Slings are not good weapons. A halfling gets a net +3 higher bonus to attacks with slings/thrown weapons compared to a human, but the lower damage die and str bonus hurts. I would say rogue, so you could get sneak attack damage, but you'll always be better off as a TWF/Rapid Shot/Flurry of Blows thrower.

[liquidformat]

Depends on how literal you want to be going down this rabbit hole. If you want to go quite literally go with rogue or swordsage then hop into Warsling Sniper from races of faerun. After that grabbing another prc that it gets a bit hard, maybe assassin.

If you want to have a similar concept but be a more powerful character in general go with daggers and take a look at the following prcs: invisible blade and master thrower from CW, Whisperknife RotW, bloodstorm blade. invisible blade gives nice bonus to sneak attack and is even better if your dm ignores the erreta. master thrower gives you some great options for throwing multiple daggers at once and getting the more attacks in general. Whisperknife gives you some interesting abilities and bloodstorm gives you a lot of very nice perks. halfling rogue acfs from RotW also supports this well and halfling paragon also gives you some throwing bonuses. Swashbuckler adds, and shadow blade give you int and dex to damage so you can ignore str. flick of the wrist gives you extra ways to make people flat footed and the two weapon fighting chain gives you more attacks.

[ericgrau]

There's a variant of bloodstorm blade that gives slings a free action reload time and so makes it a viable weapon. It's specifically for halflings.

Your attack bonus is superb and your damage is lacking yes, but that's a lot easier to manage than the other way around. Ranged weapon mastery for example boosts your damage a bit. Maybe you'll find better ways, but it's at least better than a rogue who gets medium BAB and requires tremendous resources just to get his sneak attack to work part of the time. Bane bullets of common monster types are another trick. Draw the one that applies. Undead is an easy choice; beyond that feel out how your campaign goes. Likewise get various metal types for DR. Poison is viable levels 5-10, especially drow poison. By itself it's not great, but see here we're adding bonuses little by little until it adds up to something great.

With some Googling I found some great slings and sling ammo here, besides other tips: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-132330.html

[tstewt1921]

There's a variant of bloodstorm blade that gives slings a free action reload time and so makes it a viable weapon. It's specifically for halflings.

Your attack bonus is superb and your damage is lacking yes, but that's a lot easier to manage than the other way around. Ranged weapon mastery for example boosts your damage a bit. Maybe you'll find better ways, but it's at least better than a rogue who gets medium BAB and requires tremendous resources just to get his sneak attack to work part of the time. Bane bullets of common monster types are another trick. Draw the one that applies. Undead is an easy choice; beyond that feel out how your campaign goes. Likewise get various metal types for DR. Poison is viable levels 5-10, especially drow poison. By itself it's not great, but see here we're adding bonuses little by little until it adds up to something great.

With some Googling I found some great slings and sling ammo here, besides other tips: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-132330.html

This is wonderful!!! Where is the variant??

[Goaty14]

There's always the Giant's Homebrew (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=9623050&postcount=6). Legend has it that you get a +5 to diplomacy checks to convince your DM to let you use it if your DM is on these boards.

[ericgrau]

This is wonderful!!! Where is the variant??

I just read about it. AFAIK it's in the main bloodstorm blade description. The wording is fuzzy, like it's just a suggestion, so you may need the DM's ok.

[Psyren]

Is Pathfinder material allowed? Slings got quite a bit of love there, particularly for halflings. Juggle Load (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/combat-feats/juggle-load-combat/) will let you full-attack with them for instance, but halflings don't even need feats if they just take the Warslinger racial trait. Combine with Slipslinger Style (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/combat-feats/slipslinger-grenadier-combat/slipslinger-style-combat-style) and you can load any sling-like weapon as a free action, including sling staffs and the halfling double-sling (the latter of which will let you effectively TWF with slings.) The style also lets you use alchemical splash weapons as sling bullets, doing the damage of both (which of course includes any magical bonus on the sling itself.)

A good chassis to put the above techniques on would be an Underground Chemist (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/rogue/archetypes/paizo-rogue-archetypes/underground-chemist/) Unchained Rogue. In addition to helping you craft splash weapons to use with your abilities, you would get sneak attack damage with both the splash weapons and with your regular sling bullets, and get your Int mod added to their damage as well. Other good options would be Investigator, Inquisitor, or Mesmerist.

[Skevvix]

Can you use alchemical flasks as improvised sling ammo? That might be an interesting thing to try.

[Psyren]

Can you use alchemical flasks as improvised sling ammo? That might be an interesting thing to try.

You can in PF using the feat I listed above. I wouldn't call it "improvised" though since no penalty.

[PunBlake]

Can you use alchemical flasks as improvised sling ammo? That might be an interesting thing to try.

The way to do this in D&D 3.5 is using the Gnome Calculus (A&EG), which is technically 3.0 content, but the weapon is also mentioned in Unearthed Arcana's Weapon Groups? Regardless, it's nowhere near as good as PF's variants or a War Sling with Skip Rocks (RotW), if you're thinking about taking Exotic Weapon Proficiency to use one.

[Zaq]

The fact that slings take a move action to load and don’t have a RAW option equivalent to Rapid Reload without Aptitude shenanigans is the real killer. A ranged attacker who can’t full attack (unless you want to pre-load a million slings and Quick Draw them? They’re free, after all!) is a sad sight.

Though it occurs to me that Order of the Bow Initiate’s particular brand of horrific jankiness kind of syncs up here. Here’s the truth (what’s that?): OotBI’s signature ability, Ranged Precision, is also very terrible specifically because it’s a ranged technique that precludes full attacking. So if for some reason you’re convinced that both using a terrible weapon and a terrible class would be smart, you can only make standard action attacks anyway, so you could use Ranged Precision with your sling, assuming you’ve got the feats to light on fire to deal with OotBI’s prereqs and to also get WF on a sling for some unholy reason. I’ll tell you what truth is: this is a bad choice.

To be honest, it breaks absolutely nothing at all to make slings not take a non-free action to load, even without investing resources like Rapid Reload. So the best bet is to try to convince your GM to handwave that away. But if you’re stuck with RAW, either do the Quick Draw nonsense (probably a different image than you hoped to present), use the Aptitude workaround, or just accept that you’re giving up the majority of a ranged attacker’s effectiveness. Kinda sucks.