[DF] Slingshot launched pixies?

[robkelk]

Originally Posted by Bruno

I would give someone with a spear-thrower a skill penalty though - a pixie is not a carefully crafted and balanced dart or spear. A -2 seems roughly appropriate - a pixie is worse than even a Cheap spear/dart, because it's not even approximately the right shape.

Wouldn't their wings make them more aerodynamic than normal for their shape, though? The benefit might cancel out the penalty - IDHTBWM.

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by robkelk

Wouldn't their wings make them more aerodynamic than normal for their shape, though? The benefit might cancel out the penalty - IDHTBWM.

I generally picture pixies as possessing butterfly or humming-bird wings, adapted for fluttering or beating rather than gliding. As such, they may provide some stability when launched, but would also produce more drag - and exceeding the pixie's "safe" flight speed may damage the fragile wings.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Asta Kask

Are pixies small enough to be launched from a sling? What damage would they do if, say, armed with a longspear?

No. But you could fire them with an arbalest. Realistically though they'd start to tumble wildly.

[Anthony]

Well, a pixie is basically a 7" tall lump of solid iron (it is 10x heavier and 25x stronger than a flesh and blood creature of similar dimensions), so it probably actually has okay air resistance for its weight. It's a horrible shape for accurate aiming, though. Also, are you talking about a sling or a slingshot? A sling would probably result in a dizzy pixie and 1-2 lb is a rather heavy object to throw with a sling, a slingshot isn't really available pre-rubber and 1-2 lb is really heavy, but the lack of spinning and dizziness would allow the pixie to effectively control its own flight.

[Snaps]

Well, lets say a slingshot has a range of ST x5.

The way I am reading the entry in DF3, Pixies only have 1 hit point normally (-5 ST than a further -4 to HP).

So a guy with a 10 ST, shooting a pixie with a slingshot would send that pixie flying at about move 50.

pg. 371 tell us that a pixie moving at 50 yards per second would do (1 x 50)/100 dice of damage. A 0.5 result gives us a damage of 1d-2.

Now if you want to allow the rules on pg. 397 used for attacking from a mount, then it gets interesting. Those rules let you use ST x velocity /100 instead of HP x velocity /100.

So if you use the pixies average ST of 5 the damage becomes 5 x 50 /100 = 2d. With a pixie lance this would become 2d-3 imp.

If however you allow the pixie to use the SHOOTERS ST (he's firing the little guy from the slingshot after all) then damage becomes 10 x 50 /100 = 5d of damage, -3 for that pixie lance so 5d-3 imp.