I may or may not have mentioned this before, but one thing that played a major role in my renewed interest of slinging was the game Dungeons and Dragons.  And now I am about to reveal what a complete dork I am ;)

A while back my brother and I decided that it would be fun to write out what we would look like as d&d characters.  My brother found out quickly that english proffesors don't translate well into an adventure game, but I did alright.  Anyway, I was drawing up a picture of what I would look like and how I would carry my gear, using things that I actually own, and I had drawn myself with a bow.  Now, I don't own a bow, but I'm ok with one.  The more I thought about it, the more I thought that I should limit myself to things I actually had, or could afford (or make).  And that's when slings popped into my head.  I went to the internet and looked up slings, and now here I am... but enough of the backstory.

What prompted my post today was something myself and the other supervisor here (who I have converted to slinging) were doing saturday morning while waiting on all our peons to show up for work.  We had a foam practice golf ball, and we were slinging it back and forth at each other.  On impulse, I tried slinging at him while I was running, and to my suprise, I hit him.  I tried it again several times with good results.  He being also a d&d fan, joked that I had taken the "shot on the run" feat.  If you're not a d&d fan, that probably doesn't make much sense... sorry, if you really want to know about it I can explain.

Which brings me to this morning, and the real point of all this.  I was back in the warehouse practising my slinging with a raquet ball, and I decided to try my shot on the run again.  My target was a 1qt canteen sitting on the rungs of a ladder at about 12 yards.  I managed to hit it 75% (15 out of 20) of the time, which is better than I do standing still.  I'm wondering if by running and not really thinking about my shot much, I'm actually improving my chances, or if I'm just finally getting better.

Incedintally, that drawing I did of all my gear played a role in me changing my slinging style as well.  I love my figure 8, and I still use it for distance or fun, but I've changed to the byzantine style for accuracy... mainly because the pouch would get caught on my sword during a fig-8 ;)

go on then what character class are you ?
I always liked druids - mainly because they were chaotic neutral and held grudges (long grudges lol).
 
OH yeah lol, nice one on the running slinging thinging.
Not much keen on running myself but  do most slinging while walking - does that count ;-)

I could see a definite advantage to using the moment already used in walking/running to slinging, as opposed to having to gather momentum from a 'stopped' state.

it'd remove one variable of focus, and leave you simply the act of throwing, but I'd wonder about the power of it?

Curious Aardvark wrote on Sep 23^rd, 2008 at 12:08pm:

go on then what character class are you ? I always liked druids - mainly because they were chaotic neutral and held grudges (long grudges lol).   OH yeah lol, nice one on the running slinging thinging. Not much keen on running myself but  do most slinging while walking - does that count ;-)

Due to the nature of my military training I'm a multi class fighter/ranger, and my alignment tends toward nuetral-good (my wife said I was lawful good, until I explained the law vs. chaos thing to her).  I even went so far as to graph out my life and show when and why i gained each level that I have (I'm a level 12 if you wanted to know).  I know, I sometimes have a lot of time on my hands ;)

As to power, I don't get quite as much power as I do out of my fig-8, but it is still enough to send the rocks out past 150 yards, so I'd say it's pretty effective.

I had a look at the 4th edition rules recently and I dont think they modelled the sling well. They should boost the power and range way up and throw in some balances like needing plenty of room and lots of skill.

I was doing some speed shooting at the weekend and got 9 to 10 shots per minute in sustained fire, reloading with the throwing hand  from an ammo bag at my right. I tried to get a faster burst by keeping a second stone in my throwing hand but I got mixed up and failed to release the sling during the throw. I now have a nice deep bruise on my leg where I whacked myself :(

I´ve never played D&D, but I have tried R&S (running and slinging). Much easier with a sling that any other proyectile weapon I´ve ever used. The spinning motion compensates for any change during the sprint.

I haven't played in a couple years, but D&D used to be what my life was about. I even house-ruled slings into a more realistic weapon (range and damage-wise) and many of my characters were slingers (like myself.)
I haven't had a look at 4th edition yet, but I'm willing to bet I don't like it. I was pleased with 3.5, so why they went and "updated" already is a mystery to me. Even from a business standpoint, 3.5 was going to keep selling for several more years.
Oh well.

I remember slinging while running towards my target once... I tried various styles, but had the best success with a basic underhand, until I caught myself in the back of my leg.
That left a mark.  :(

Yeah, 4E kinda sucks... my group is sticking with 3.5.  And I also have house rules that modify the sling to make it more realistic.  Glad to see I'm not the only one that does that ;)

Actually it's an interesting idea.
Trying to model my skillset according to d&d rules.

I think I'd need a new character class :-)
Do they have anything for someone who's fairly expert in things as diverse as pyrotechnics, cookery, slinging, heavy lifting, philosophy and half a dozen minor skills: things as diverse as mycology and wu chi.
I tend to think of myself as a poor mans polymath :-) (so not  a modest character then).

Been a long time since I've looked at a d&d book.  

Ive always wanted to try dungeons and dragons, it sounds fun

i would so be some kind of slinging-peasant -nomad

JTK wrote on Sep 23^rd, 2008 at 8:24pm:

Ive always wanted to try dungeons and dragons, it sounds fun i would so be some kind of slinging-peasant -nomad

You might even be able to play a slinging-peasant-nomad-otter ;)

i need to have a picture of an otter as my little clip thing now...

sweet!

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Okay, how about this: we compare our various house rules and try and create a generally acceptable set of rules that accurately model slinging in D&D 3.5 and 4.0 rules.

We could then submit these rules with all the accompanying supporting evidence to TSR and see if they will adopt them :)

I'm all for it, I'll get my stuff together tomorrow morning and post it (gotta run out the door right now)

Just for starters, if you moderators want to move this to other topics I would understand.  Now that I have that out of the way...

Alright, here are the standard rules for the sling in 3.5 rules.  A sling is a simple ranged weapon, that does 1d4 damage, and has a range increment of 50 feet.  The maximum range of a projectile weapon is 10 times the range increment, with the difficulty increasing by 2 for each range increment past the first one.  This gives you a -18 to hit at your max range.  The longbow in contrast does 1d8 damage, with a 100 foot range increment.  Now doing the math, this means that the maximum effective range for a sling is 500 feet, or 166 yards, while the longbow's is 1000 feet, or 333 yards.  The main advantage that the sling has over the bow in D&D rules is that you can add your strength modifier to the damage with a sling, but you can't with a regular longbow.  With the sling you must use manufactured sling bullets for full effect.  You can use stones, but you take a -1 penelty to your attack (they are less accurate).

My house rules up the damage of the sling to 1d6 (plus strength modifier) for stones (-1 to attack still applies), and 1d8 for lead glans, with a range increment of 120 feet (max range of 400 yards).  I toyed with the idea of requiring an extra feat to be able to use the sling, but decided against it.  Loading still takes a move action, though you can take a feat to be able to load it as a free action.  

So, what rules do you guys use?

more along the lines of the original post (move it? - you've hardly digressed at all ;-)

I was walking the dogs this evening and just seeing how different styles work while you're walking - with an invisible sling. Bilbo's shoulder's playing up so I don't want to aggravate it by him chasing real missiles.

And I decided to try something a little different.
It's got no real power but it was a slinging thing I'd not tried before. ( i did try a few real throws at the end of the walk - just to give the shoulder a wee bit of exercise ;-)

It's a bit odd to explain.
You basically start with the sling hanging down, swing it up and FORWARD, round your head once and throw. The round your head and throw is identical to the fig 8 end. You just start with the sling swinging in the opposite direction and from held hanging down.

Like I said it's got no real power as you don't get the initial rollercoaster boost you get with fig8. But it's dead easy to use while you're walking :-)

that also brings into question....

how much work do we allow the leverage and mass to do rather than our own muscle 'oomph'?

That sounds kinda like what I'm doing C_A... I'll try to get a video up soon to show it.

Thanks guys, now  want to play D&D. Time to crawl into the basement again...

It's funny, when I was of the "right age" (about sixth or seventh grade) I knew some kids who played D&D and I gave an abortive attempt to get into it.  It didn't draw me in.

Now that I'm 37, I can read about playing it and now it does appeal to me.  Hahaha!  Yeah, good luck to me to get started playing now!

Anyone in the West Palm Beach, Florida area?

played a bit when I was at college - then they invented home computers and I didn't have to play with the other children :-)
Dungeon master on the atari st was the business ! (20 years ago lol)