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[Loud Whispers]

The worse encounter I've had with lashers so far resulted in 4 dead dwarves, all civilian. I must be either really lucky, or spamming 80+ military dwarves on them seems to do the trick.

[ledgekindred]

I always pull my military inside if I see lashers incoming.  I'll let the trap field handle them, then send the military out once they start to retreat.  And yes, as others have said, this is even with legendary fighters equipped in masterwork steel or adamantium armor.  And as others have also said, as soon as I collect enough of them, I set up my own lasher squad to go give back in kind.

The problem is that the amount of damage done is - very basically - ((velocity * force) / contact area).  Even though whips, flails and scourges have mediocre force, they all have high speed and ridiculously small impact areas.  Thus we wind up with the Dwarven Lightsaber effect, punching through even the strongest armor and severing limbs left and right. 

They can be nerfed if you are willing to go into the raws and edit item_weapon.txt and change the contact area and velocity values.

[Sutremaine]

The worse encounter I've had with lashers so far resulted in 4 dead dwarves, all civilian. I must be either really lucky, or spamming 80+ military dwarves on them seems to do the trick.

How's your shield skill and dodging? Weapon strength means nothing if the blow can't connect.

[Loud Whispers]

The worse encounter I've had with lashers so far resulted in 4 dead dwarves, all civilian. I must be either really lucky, or spamming 80+ military dwarves on them seems to do the trick.

How's your shield skill and dodging? Weapon strength means nothing if the blow can't connect.

That fortress had lasted for 30 years (unusually high , so I had quite a lot of veterans, prolly why. I wonder if I can find that save somewhere....

[Awessum Possum]

Oh, so it's not that my military was incompetent it's that the goblin had a lightsaber. Well, I'm sure this will comfort the souls of the twenty dwarves who died that day.

[NonconsensualSurgery]

Then he lashed by militia commander in the upper arm, bruising the muscle through an artifact adamantine mail shirt.

Soon after, he had his weapon arm cut off and died quickly. Scary stuff.

Addy mail shirts are horrible at lashing protection - they're blunt weapons like anything else.

The wiki says they're actually edged weapons. Their contact area is small but their penetration is really really small. It's not immediately obvious why they're so deadly, especially given that most of them are just plain copper. It might be a bug.

Presumably, if a dwarf ever made one out of candy it would be the most powerful weapon possible.

[ledgekindred]

The wiki says they're actually edged weapons. Their contact area is small but their penetration is really really small. It's not immediately obvious why they're so deadly, especially given that most of them are just plain copper. It might be a bug.

Presumably, if a dwarf ever made one out of candy it would be the most powerful weapon possible.

Whips and Flails are treated as blunt weapons, doing crushing damage which can easily penetrate even candyfloss armor.  Scourges are edged, which generally results in limbs being severed and flying off in arcs.

And someone did get a magic blue scourge from a mood on the forums at one point.  It was indeed as deadly as one might imagine.

[Azure]

The worse encounter I've had with lashers so far resulted in 4 dead dwarves, all civilian. I must be either really lucky, or spamming 80+ military dwarves on them seems to do the trick.

How's your shield skill and dodging? Weapon strength means nothing if the blow can't connect.

Go try to rock a couple sieges. Even with 10+ to Legendary+5 All that needs to happen is one of those hundreds of shots to connect and it can be over. Whips and morning stars 1-shot the brain. Other lasher and hammer/mace weapons just need to connect once to break a bone then its a race between your dwarfs willpower and the reinforcements agility stat. Dodge/shield means nothing if your passed out from the pain =D

[Loud Whispers]

The worse encounter I've had with lashers so far resulted in 4 dead dwarves, all civilian. I must be either really lucky, or spamming 80+ military dwarves on them seems to do the trick.

How's your shield skill and dodging? Weapon strength means nothing if the blow can't connect.

Go try to rock a couple sieges. Even with 10+ to Legendary+5 All that needs to happen is one of those hundreds of shots to connect and it can be over. Whips and morning stars 1-shot the brain. Other lasher and hammer/mace weapons just need to connect once to break a bone then its a race between your dwarfs willpower and the reinforcements agility stat. Dodge/shield means nothing if your passed out from the pain =D

Not much use against a carp storm of addy armoured dwarves though

[Sutremaine]

Go try to rock a couple sieges. Even with 10+ to Legendary+5 All that needs to happen is one of those hundreds of shots to connect and it can be over.

I found a yearly save with a siege on it (just goblins) and sent my best dwarf out to see what would happen. 29 pages of combat and 17 kills later, and I don't think any of the melee attackers even managed a swing. Sooner or later there will be one shot that's blunt, aimed at a crippling spot, and gets through, but I'm pretty sure old age will get him first.

[NobodyPro]

They're blunt weapons but I found that setting them to EDGE is not only preferable but closer to real life. Any injuries I've ever seen that involved whips IRL where small cuts. These whips were made of leather and the injuries were accidental but my point stands.

[I am Leo]

I'm working on my squad of dwarvern lashers. My mace lord squad is getting to know their new flails and morningstars.

[Anathema]

The problem with whips is that DF doesn't consider any kind of weapon to be made of multiple pieces; to DF it's all one rigid body. The tip of the whip hits with high speed and small contact area (as it should) but with the full weight of the weapon behind that blow, not just the weight of the tip. It's not really a lightsaber, it's a bullet - well, a short range bullet, but same effect when it hits. High speed, ridiculously high weight (results in bullet-like force), small contact area, goes clean through metal and flesh and fractures the bone beneath.

It's an easy fix - go into the raws item_weapon file and reduce the 'size' of whips and scourges by about a hundredfold. The result feels more realistic to me: they're poor weapons for actual warfare, almost always deflecting off decent armor, but are still dangerous to unarmored dwarves. And like any weapon, there's always a small chance to get lucky even against a fully armored dwarf and hit him somewhere vulnerable. If you're going less for 'realism' and more for 'balance', i.e. you want whips/scourges to be not so overpowered but at least on par with other weapons on the battlefield, reducing size by somewhere around 1/20 should do it*.

*Disclaimer: I have used the 1/100 reduction extensively but not the 1/20 one, it is a rough estimate, I take no responsibility for any gunshot whip wounds your dwarves may suffer.

[Iren]

I can tell you, the artifact candy short sword my weaponsmith just made works like a lightsaber ^^

[fraxert]

I think I'm going to start calling goblin lashers "jedi scum".