Whips should act like ropes when not held.
Note that when I talk about climbing and swinging, you should be able to do it with ropes.
Whips should have a length that determines from how many tiles away you can whip, longer whips take more rope/ whatever made of, also takes more skill. Perhaps when whipping from more than a tile away, it draws a line, using crossbow bolt symbols, from you to the target for a step or if it gets stuck in until it is unstuck. Stuckin should count as grapple, which ill explain next.
A sufficiently skilled lasher should be able to 'grapple' things with his whip, whereby the whip would act like a rope attached to the object but will roll against smoothness based on skill. If the object is light enough (determined by strength) and not fixed in place then you can grapple it then 'tug' the whip to bring the object back to you:
Where S is a cave spider silk sock:
@ S
@---S
@
Or if the object is heavy enough or fixed in place, you can swing on it or climb it:
Swinging: where O is a cielling:
O
@
-O
--
@-
O
|
|
@
O-
--
-@
Climbing:
█ is wall, B is bronze collosus corpse:
B
█
█
@ @█
╔---B
|█
|█
@ @█
╔---B
@█
|█
@█
@---B
|█
@█
|█
╔@--B
@█
|█
|█
"Crap, that aint a corpse!"
/
╔@@B
|█
|█
|█
Oh and you can 'tug' the rope/whip to undo the temporary knot.
You should also be able to grapple stuck ins to pull them, either tearing them out or causing pain.
Last thing: attaching ropes to ballista arrows to either rope in a mega beast or send siege ropes over a wall.