Defending against the Flinger

[hcobb]

The TFT Companion reprints the Classic edition Flinger article at page 15 and notes that the rules have been tweaked to restore the power of the light crossbow over the Flinger in Legacy, but does not spell out how this works. So how exactly does one defend against the Flinger?

Short answer: Use the defend option.

Longer worked example:

1: All of the Flinger's ranged attacks are thrown, not missile weapons.

2: Defending is effective against thrown attacks (Legacy ITL page 117), may be made after a half move and is effective against attacks beyond adjacent. (Hexagram #9, page 3)

3: Legacy has very effective Defend options for say Weapon Expertise (ITL 41) and Unarmed Combat IV (ITL 43)

Classic's Flinger typically has adjDX 15 which is a 95.37% chance (Handy chart at https://www.hcobb.com/tft/TFT_Saving...rcentages.html ) to hit or trip up their foes, if these targets do nothing.

Against a figure who takes the Defend option and who has either Fencing or Weapons Expertise and Shield Expertise this is either adjDX 14 or 13 (What the fnord are "melee attacks" anyway?) and is rolled on five dice instead of three. This reduces the to-hit chance down to 22.15% (or15.2% if thrown weapons are "melee attacks"), and even without the defend option an expertly handled small shield bounces almost all Sha-ken attacks.

Also in Legacy daggers can now explicitly be made Fine Weapons (ITL page 123) and a starting character can easily have Dagger Expertise and a very fine steel dagger for 1d+2 damage.

Alternately a half-elf wizard with the Dagger Expertise talent and the Staff III spell holding a (not fine if clothes are to be bought, unfortunately) silver dagger staff does only 1d damage in melee, thrown weapon, HTH, and occult attacks, but the occult attack ignores mundane armor, has a range of two hexes, and is +3 to hit, at the cost of one fatigue point per attack. This wizard is then expertly prepared against HTH attacks, especially if they have a Naturalist team member to extract natural poison (ITL page 126). The same combination of abilities can be had with a starting elf or goblin, but without the chance to save a memory point by taking Common as their native tongue.