Blowpipes. Grr

Has anybody thought of revising the rules for the blowpipe?

I wanna give one of my skinks one for some character, and for fluff reasons but the rules let it down. I was thinking if the range was increased this would make it a lot more viable, or something like a multishot. The javelin is just a far better investment at 10gc. And i find the stealth rule a bit obsolete as the range is only 8'.

Any ideas?

Blowpipe is terrible and everyone knows it. I once started a topic on the SG boards asking people to fix it. Here are some ideas:

Blowpipe #1: 2/5gc
Counts as Sling/ Short Bow

Blowpipe #2: 10gc
R16", S3, Fire Twice if warrior did not move

Blowpipe #3: 5gc [My personal favourite]
R16", S2, Always counted in Black Lotus (6s to hit wound automatically)

Blowpipe #4: 10gc
R16", S3, Always counted in Black Lotus (6s to hit wound automatically)

Blowpipe #5: 15gc
R16", S2, Fire Twice if warrior did not move, Always counted in Black Lotus (6s to hit wound automatically)

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No sniping from hiding, you ask? - Well besides the fact that players generally abhor this kind of tactic, it actually never really did anything as enemies could always just move straight towards the Blowpiper eigther exposing him with LoS or charging him. The above ideas keep it simple. Feel free to adapt them in any way that pleases you.

Well, Asp beat me to posting, and he has more developed ideas than I. Here's what I was posting anyways:

Haha, I've long been meaning to post exactly this. My two main warbands are lizardmen and skaven, and I really, really want to use blowpipes for the same reasons as you, but it's an exorbitantly expensive item which is far inferior to a sling or showbow.

At a minimum, give it 16" range, or 12" range with no long distance penalty, and increase the strength to 3.

I wouldn't give this to one of my four skaven heroes capable of wielding it, or even to one of my lizardmen heroes, but I'd toss one on a skink henchman for fun if I had lots of extra gold (it'd more than double the model's cost in gold).

Allow the above upgraded weapon to be used with quickshot, and I might run one on a hero. I'd still prefer a QS crossbow or knife fighter thrown weapons nine times out of ten though.

As the warhammer blowpipe is range 12", S3, with 2xMulti Shot, you could houserule something along those lines as well.

also somehting that out group did was making black lotus re-roll natural 1s to wound instead of 6s autowounding - works much better!

This applies to Skaven more than Skinks, but I've always promoted the house rule that a model armed with a blowpipe can hide in water (they use it like a snorkel, like the ninjas used to)

I've always been more intrigued by making different options for blowpipes IE giving it different kinds of ammo - only one finished work on was a poison that could cause temporary stupidity (on my own comp back home . will post rules later)..
Thus keeping the price but giving it other options than just hiding and shooting