Forums: Rules Questions: Anyone know of any Fixes for the Halfling Sling-Staff/Flask Thrower issue? (2024)

PLEASE READ THIS POST BEFORE RESPONDING:

Okay, so I recently started playing PFS, and the group I play with (we live in a small-ish town so there are basically just eight of us) told me "you play one archer you play them all" to me when I voiced that I might play an archer. Taking this as a challenge, I started looking into rules and online, and I found the "Halfling sling-staff" (and later, the flask-thrower.) They did a d8 damage(d6 small), added Strength bonus to damage, and could be used in melee. "Great," I thought. "Not the most optimal thing in the world, but viable, unique and quirky."

But then after asking a few questions, I started delving into the deep and bottomless hole that is the internet (and paizo forums, in particular) and found that no, in fact, the Sling Staff is basically the worst ranged weapon in the game.

The issue: Halfling Sling staff require a move action to reload. There is NO WAY to counteract/reduce this. Rapid Reload only works with Crossbows and firearms. The halfling Warslinger racial ability only works with (base) slings and double-slings (according to the halflings of Golarion FAQ). The Ammo-drop/Juggle load feats only work with (base) slings and double-slings (via the precedent set from the warslinger FAQ)

Now, all the threads I found ended over a year ago, and I was wondering if any new traits/feats/special abilities/errata have come up in the interrum time to change this, or if the Halfling sling staffs still cannot get iterative attacks.

As a last note, I'll compare some of the ranged weapon options here to see if maybe a Halfling Staff-sling would be overpowered with iterative attacks.

Options:

Weapon: Longbow
Requirement to use: Martial Weapon Prof (OR ANY elf)
Damage(s/m): d6/d8 (+str)
Requirement to get iterative attacks: None, automatic
Range: 100/110 (normal/composite)
Special pros: Many feats and special arrows for this weapon (manyshot, smoke arrow, etc.)
Special cons:large, to add Str to damage, you need a composite/adaptable longbow, which can be costly at early levels.

Weapon: Light Crossbow
Requirement to use: Simple Weapon Prof
Damage(s/m): d6/d8
Requirement to get iterative attacks: Rapid Reload Feat
Range: 80
Special pros: Can fire (but not load) 1-handed (with a -2 penalty)
Special cons: None

Weapon: Shortspear
Requirement to use: Simple Weapon Proficiency
Damage(s/m): d4/d6+str
Requirement to get iterative attacks: Quick Draw
Range: 20
Special pros: Can use in melee. Enchantments (and feats like weapon focus/specialization) work with both ranged and melee attacks. Can use in 1 hand, leaving other hand free for a shield, etc.
Special cons: Quite heavy to carry around a bunch of shortspears. As a thrown weapon, it can only travel 5x range increment.

Weapon: (base)Sling
Requirement to use: Simple Weapon Prof
Damage(s/m): d3/d4+str
Requirement to get iterative attacks: Warslinger halfling racial ability OR 1 rank in slight of hand, ammo drop+Juggle Load feats
Range:50
Special pros: Some feats (like whip sling, arc slinger) for the weapon. With Ammo Drop/Juggle Load this weapon can be used in 1 hand, leaving other hand free for a shield, etc.
Special cons: Without feats, loading provokes AoO

Weapon: 1-handed firearm
Requirement to use: Exotic weapon Prof
Damage(s/m): d6/d8 (typically)
Requirement to get iterative attacks: Rapid Reload+alchemical cartridges OR rapid reload+11th level gunslinger
Range:20 (typically)
Special pros: Hits touch AC in first range increment. Some guns (pepperbox) can get iterative attacks without feats (for the first six shots). Certain powerful feats/magic items/magic guns exist.
Special cons: Without feats, loading provokes AoO, Misfire chance.

Weapon: Halfling Sling Staff
Requirement to use: Exotic Weapon Prof (OR halfling with martial weapon)
Damage(s/m): d6/d8+Str
Requirement to get iterative attacks:Impossible (currently)
Range:80
Special pros: Can be used in 1 hand (but not loaded), Can be used in melee, Enchantments (and feats like weapon focus/specialization) work with both ranged and melee attacks.
Special cons: loading provokes AoO

Conclusion: Letting rapid reload work with a sling staff basically makes it better than a crossbow. You gain +str to damage and a melee attack that uses the same enchantments as the ranged part (like a shortspear or a dagger.) I am not a game designer, but I don't know if that is more or less powerful than a single feat. However, I will say that with all the other broken feats out there (like pummeling style, currently) that this is far from game-breaking, in my opinion.

Sadly, there is no solution. And it wasn't actually the ruling that made it invalid, it was the explanation of the ruling, and it's all inference from there. If they had just said "the warslinger racial trait only applies to normal slings--for other slings, you have to use the feat trees" that would be fine.

My 3rd-level weapon master (sling staff) warslinger sits in the drawer, completely useless because almost none of the Halfling racial feats for slings actually apply to the only weapon in the game with "Halfling" in the name. (But I'm not bitter or anything...)

If you want to go resurrect and flag any of the FAQ request threads, it might help. Might not.

Gwen Smith wrote:

Sadly, there is no solution. And it wasn't actually the ruling that made it invalid, it was the explanation of the ruling, and it's all inference from there. If they had just said "the warslinger racial trait only applies to normal slings--for other slings, you have to use the feat trees" that would be fine.

My 3rd-level weapon master (sling staff) warslinger sits in the drawer, completely useless because almost none of the Halfling racial feats for slings actually apply to the only weapon in the game with "Halfling" in the name. (But I'm not bitter or anything...)

If you want to go resurrect and flag any of the FAQ request threads, it might help. Might not.

Thank you for taking time to respond.

On the one hand, I KINDA get why the ammo-drop feat tree doesn't apply to Sling-Staffs. If they did, it would make sling-staffs a 1 handed d8+str mod ranged weapon that also worked in melee, which is pretty powerful (and it should be, it requires three feats and a skill, after all.) But if the rapid reload feat worked, then it would basically make them slightly above a crossbow. Add a melee attack and STR to damage, but downside, it would still take an AoO to load.

As for resurrecting the FAQ thread and asking . . .
1) Is that proper etiquette? I know a lot of forums don't like (or will ban you) for 'thread necromancy.'

2)How, exactly, would I go about doing that? I mean, what exactly do you mean I should do? I'm not very familiar with navigating the Paizo messageboards.

To expand on that...

Take a L4 Halfling Warpriest for example.

Assume Str 12, Dex 18, Good & Air Blessings

Traits: Fate's Favored, ???
L1: Weapon Finesse
L3: Piranha Strike, Point-Blank Shot
L4: Opening Volley

With the Good blessing, you can add 1d6 to each attack vs. evil creatures as a standard action

With Sacred Weapon, you can add 1d6 Fire, Electricity or Cold damage as a swift action

With the Air blessing, ranged attacks don't provoke

So, with all that in mind,

Round 1: Swift Action Fervor Divine Favor (+2 atk/dmg), Standard Good Blessing
Round 2: Swift action Sacred Weapon (Fire/Electricity/Cold), Move (f necessary), Standard Attack

+1 sling staff (Ranged) is +13 3d6+5
+1 sling staff (Melee) is +12 3d6+4 (+4 attack if made after a successful ranged attack)

Instead of Opening Volley you could pick up Piranha Strike for a small damage boost. If you need more damage you can cast Bull's Strength.

At level 6 you can pick up Vital Strike with your bonus Feat to increase it to 2d6 base. You're doing 1d8 base (2d8 vital strike) at level 9 (level 8 if you take the halfling FCB to increase your sacred weapon by 1/4). If you pick up Large Target, you can add +1 damage per each size category your target is larger than you.

It's not amazing damage but I'd say it's competitive enough for a fun, quirky build.

redward wrote:

To expand on that...

Take a L4 Halfling Warpriest for example.

Assume Str 12, Dex 18, Good & Air Blessings

Traits: Fate's Favored, ???
L1: Weapon Finesse
L3: Piranha Strike, Point-Blank Shot
L4: Opening Volley

With the Good blessing, you can add 1d6 to each attack vs. evil creatures as a standard action

With Sacred Weapon, you can add 1d6 Fire, Electricity or Cold damage as a swift action

With the Air blessing, ranged attacks don't provoke

So, with all that in mind,

Round 1: Swift Action Fervor Divine Favor (+2 atk/dmg), Standard Good Blessing
Round 2: Swift action Sacred Weapon (Fire/Electricity/Cold), Move (f necessary), Standard Attack

+1 sling staff (Ranged) is +13 3d6+5
+1 sling staff (Melee) is +12 3d6+4 (+4 attack if made after a successful ranged attack)

Instead of Opening Volley you could pick up Piranha Strike for a small damage boost. If you need more damage you can cast Bull's Strength.

At level 6 you can pick up Vital Strike with your bonus Feat to increase it to 2d6 base. You're doing 1d8 base (2d8 vital strike) at level 9 (level 8 if you take the halfling FCB to increase your sacred weapon by 1/4). If you pick up Large Target, you can add +1 damage per each size category your target is larger than you.

It's not amazing damage but I'd say it's competitive enough for a fun, quirky build.

First off, The sling staff does 1d4 damage in melee if it's small sized, second off, for your build to work, you'd have to have your staff sling constantly loaded, and most GMs would say something like "your rock fell out of your sling at some point, like when you were dodging that fireball."

Anyway, nitpicking aside, that does look like a decent build, it's just not what I had in mind when I envisioned my slinging character. Thanks for looking into it though.

The issues I see here are the following:

Issue: Loading ANY sling, including a halfling sling staff, is a move action in the absence of feats or special abilities.

1) We know that because of the FAQ on the Ultimate Race Guide, that the Halfling alternate racial trait "Warslinger" does NOT allow a halfling to load a halfling sling staff as a free action (merely a 'base sling.') (http://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1gh)

2) We ASSUME that, because of the similar wording in the feats "Ammo Drop" and "Juggle Load", that those feats likewise do not affect the Halfling Sling Staff.

3) Because the feat "Rapid Reload" only affects certain crossbows and firearms, it too, by Rules as Written, does not affect a halfling sling staff.

Thus, by precedent (but not direct word from the developers) we assume that it is impossible to load a halfling sling staff any quicker. This prevents any character from ever firing the sling staff more than once per round. I have seen several threads on this but no definitive answer from the developers.

(It should be noted, by this strict interpretation system, that several feats fail to work. For example the feat 'sliding axe throw' allows a user to bounce an 'axe' off the ground. Not 'any axe,' not 'anything in the axe fighter group,' just 'axe.' Since there is no weapon simply named 'axe,' this feat, under this strict interpretation system, does not work.)

On a separate, but related note that I have not seen answered, what is the rule on a Flask-Thrower (From Gnomes of Golarion)? It says that it 'resembles' a sling staff, and that it can throw any number of alchemical/equipment items as well as bullets, but it gives no information about firing bullets. Does it use the same statistics as a halfling sling-staff? Does it count as a 'sling' for the fighter's thrown weapon category?

VampByDay wrote:

First off, The sling staff does 1d4 damage in melee if it's small sized, second off, for your build to work, you'd have to have your staff sling constantly loaded, and most GMs would say something like "your rock fell out of your sling at some point, like when you were dodging that fireball."

Ahh, you're right. Though that will scale up due to Sacred Weapon.

So this is one corner case of rules interaction that is not going to work for you in PFS.

In a home game, you DM has the liberty to say, "Oh yeah, totally, those sling abilities should work with Sling Staffs, that totally makes sense".

In PFS, the GM's can do that, and we have to abide by strick RAW even when it's dumb or doesn't make sense.

I find it incredibly unlikely that any of the Paizo employees are going to make an official ruling on this very small corner case. There are way too many tiny little corner cases like this (dwarven boulder helment not being in the close weapons group comes to mind), for the PFS admins to make ruling for all of them, if they did that would be their full time instead. A lot of the quirky racial weapons don't work well in PFS because the abilties they are clearly intended to have aren't spelled out RAW. I think dwarven longaxe might not be RAW in the axes weapon group, and there are a lot of quirky little racial weapons.

This is a cool concept for a character, but it won't work in PFS. Save it for a home game where it can get the treatment it deserves. Don't try and get it to slide through for PFS, putting the volunteer judges in the position where they have to be the bad guy isn't the nicest thing to do.

Victor Zajic wrote:

So this is one corner case of rules interaction that is not going to work for you in PFS.

In a home game, you DM has the liberty to say, "Oh yeah, totally, those sling abilities should work with Sling Staffs, that totally makes sense".

In PFS, the GM's can do that, and we have to abide by strick RAW even when it's dumb or doesn't make sense.

I find it incredibly unlikely that any of the Paizo employees are going to make an official ruling on this very small corner case. There are way too many tiny little corner cases like this (dwarven boulder helment not being in the close weapons group comes to mind), for the PFS admins to make ruling for all of them, if they did that would be their full time instead. A lot of the quirky racial weapons don't work well in PFS because the abilities they are clearly intended to have aren't spelled out RAW. I think dwarven longaxe might not be RAW in the axes weapon group, and there are a lot of quirky little racial weapons.

This is a cool concept for a character, but it won't work in PFS. Save it for a home game where it can get the treatment it deserves. Don't try and get it to slide through for PFS, putting the volunteer judges in the position where they have to be the bad guy isn't the nicest thing to do.

First of all, no, I wasn't going to do that to any volunteer judges. If this doesn't work from the build up on the boards, I am not going to try and ram it through PFS. I was hoping to basically bring awareness to it so that someone might take a look at it. Now, while I agree it isn't a major issue, I might not relegate it to 'tiny corner case' because it is the ONLY halfling racial weapon and it JUST DOESN'T WORK. I was hoping that someone at Paizo might see it and make an errata for it so that halflings, and others, can use the ONE halfling racial weapon and wear it with pride. If it doesn't end up happening, that's fine, I have a completely legal grumpy gnomish oracle I'm enjoying the hell out of, I just thought I could get someone to take a look at this and say "Y'know what? Yeah, that should work. Here, let me see about fixing that." Like I said, if not, I can play plenty of other builds, I'd just love to see this issue resolved.

Mad Alchemist wrote:

I don't think any change will come from this. The devs had their chance to FAQ warslinger to set the precedent that a sling with a stick attached could be loaded as easily a stick with two slings attached. Instead we got what we got. Poor precedent for sliding axes though.

Well, one can hope. If not, I can say I at least tried.

Victor Zajic wrote:

If it was up to me I would fix it in a heartbeart, if only to satisfy the kender fanboy that lives inside my head.

Pathfinder has no Kender.

Pathfinder has no "Kender-like" creatures.

There will never be Kender in Pathfinder.

blackbloodtroll wrote:

Victor Zajic wrote:

If it was up to me I would fix it in a heartbeart, if only to satisfy the kender fanboy that lives inside my head.

Pathfinder has no Kender.

Pathfinder has no "Kender-like" creatures.

There will never be Kender in Pathfinder.

And you don't know how happy that makes me. :)

blackbloodtroll wrote:

Victor Zajic wrote:

If it was up to me I would fix it in a heartbeart, if only to satisfy the kender fanboy that lives inside my head.

Pathfinder has no Kender.

Pathfinder has no "Kender-like" creatures.

There will never be Kender in Pathfinder.

They.....do....exist

This thread is quickly derailing.

On that note though, I always thought kender got a bad rap. I mean, everyone always just saw that they rifled though other people's pockets and used that as an excuse to play the most irritating, annoying characters ever, and those guys aren't playing kender, they are playing 'annoy the other party members until the GM kicks me out.'

Kender are nuanced and not stupid. If your mage tells a kender "Hey, don't rifle through my stuff, I need it to cast spells, and to make sure everyone is okay at the end of the day," the Kender will not rifle though the mage's stuff (or will ask.) Also, they don't have a concept of personal property, so they CAN'T steal. They take something, look at it, whatever, but they will give it back if you ask. They will also give you THEIR stuff if you ask. Many people forget that part of the equation.

VampByDay wrote:

This thread is quickly derailing.

On that note though, I always thought kender got a bad rap. I mean, everyone always just saw that they rifled though other people's pockets and used that as an excuse to play the most irritating, annoying characters ever, and those guys aren't playing kender, they are playing 'annoy the other party members until the GM kicks me out.'

Kender are nuanced and not stupid. If your mage tells a kender "Hey, don't rifle through my stuff, I need it to cast spells, and to make sure everyone is okay at the end of the day," the Kender will not rifle though the mage's stuff (or will ask.) Also, they don't have a concept of personal property, so they CAN'T steal. They take something, look at it, whatever, but they will give it back if you ask. They will also give you THEIR stuff if you ask. Many people forget that part of the equation.

If you play a kender as described, it IS "the most irritating, annoying characters ever". If you aren't, you're playing it wrong. THAT'S why so many people loathe them.

This is pretty much how everyone thought of them unless you where 'that guy'. http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Kender

Victor Zajic wrote:

So this is one corner case of rules interaction that is not going to work for you in PFS.

In a home game, you DM has the liberty to say, "Oh yeah, totally, those sling abilities should work with Sling Staffs, that totally makes sense".

In PFS, the GM's can do that, and we have to abide by strick RAW even when it's dumb or doesn't make sense.

I find it incredibly unlikely that any of the Paizo employees are going to make an official ruling on this very small corner case. There are way too many tiny little corner cases like this (dwarven boulder helment not being in the close weapons group comes to mind), for the PFS admins to make ruling for all of them, if they did that would be their full time instead. A lot of the quirky racial weapons don't work well in PFS because the abilties they are clearly intended to have aren't spelled out RAW. I think dwarven longaxe might not be RAW in the axes weapon group, and there are a lot of quirky little racial weapons.

This is a cool concept for a character, but it won't work in PFS. Save it for a home game where it can get the treatment it deserves. Don't try and get it to slide through for PFS, putting the volunteer judges in the position where they have to be the bad guy isn't the nicest thing to do.

It's actually not a corner case at all. The Halfling sling staff has been around since before 3.5 was released as OGL. If worked fine until an FAQ made it completely impossible to load a sling staff as anything but a move action, which makes it useless for a ranged weapon specialist overall, and useless for anybody past BAB 6 (No single-attack build will ever match the damage output of a Rapid Shot full-attack, and even it one did, losing your move action is a massive disadvantage in the overall action economy--Believe me, I've tried.)

Currently, the sling staff is the only ranged weapon in the game (short of siege engines) that doesn't have any option to reload as faster than a move action. With the correct combinations of feats, characters can reload a sling, both ends of a double sling, a heavy crossbow, a double crossbow, a double-barreled pistol, and a musket all as a free action. But there is no possible way to reload a sling staff. Period.

Reading the Halflings of Golarion book, I actually got the impression that the developer was not aware of the sling staff at all. Otherwise, why did they go out of their way to create two feats and a new special item that come close to mimicking the effect of sling staff? Honestly, I would have preferred that the FAQ had just declared the weapon not legal for Pathfinder. Then, at least, those of us with dedicated sling staff builds could at least get a free rebuild to recover our characters.

But removing a longstanding weapon from practical use does not count as "a corner case" at all.

I think she was actually saying that.

Quote:

since before 3.5 was released as OGL

Gark the Goblin wrote:

I think she was actually saying that.

Quote:

since before 3.5 was released as OGL

Oh, right. Sorry, I had just woken up when I wrote that, must've missed it.

Anyway, hopefully this issue gets resolved. If not, that's sad, but I can live with it. But as Gwen said, this seems to be the ONLY weapon IN THE GAME (other than siege weapons) that cannot get iterative attacks.