Not sure I follow -- I don't assign whips to my dwarves, those are orc weapons . Trolls as such never give me much of a problem, they seem to fall to my axe and spear dwarves just fine. Haven't run into any ogres yet in 31.25.
As programmed currently in the raws, whips are clearly bugged -- they act as if the whole weight of the metal whip was travelling at supersonic speed. If there's going to be a steel-and-candy-clad-champion killer weapon, it should be the crossbow, not the whip (and the crossbow *can* do exactly that, if the steel-clad defender isn't a skilled shield user). When I spend five years or more of game time training my warriors without using a danger room, and go to the additional trouble of encasing them all in all-masterwork gear, having a single squad of lashers kill off the entire military is ridiculous. At least with crossbow/archer goblins, I can defeat them with careful positioning, use of l-bends, etc. Lashers are just broken.
(For reference, I'm using the values suggested in the prior thread -- [ATTACK:BLUNT:10:10:lash:lashes:NO_SUB:2000] ). That may actually be a little weak, but I don't know enough about how the system works to calculate a "better" value, I just know that that seems to give more reasonable results.
orcs? what are those? =P
never seen in the combat reports that your *steel axes* are being deflected by the (large troll fur robes)?
i have noticed whips are a LOT less devastating against armorless targets. dont get me wrong, they still can do damage, but i seem to chip a lot less bones, which is where the real danger of whips is. as trolls and ogres tend to only wear clothing, the whips seem to just bruise muscle far more often than chipping bones.
for comparison, watch combat involving silver warhammers on both armored and unarmored opponents. the warhammers seem to have the same effect, the armor adds to the impact or something.
i dont dispute that whips are not modelled correctly, only stating that some weapons are "better" for armored opponents, others for unarmored.