The Lucerne Hammer is a reach weapon and so can not normally be used to strike enemies 5' away.
Reach: You use a reach weapon to strike opponents 10 feet away, but you can't use it against an adjacent foe.
Note 1: A few weapons, like the whip, are exceptions to this rule, but they state so explicitly.
Note 2: The Spear Dancing Style feat line eventually offers a way to attack opponents at 5' and with reach in the same round. (Spear Dancing Style, Spear Dancing Spiral, Spear Dancing Reach)
Without a special ability (like Polearm Master's Pole Fighting extraordinary ability), you can't attack normally with it. I think you can use it as an improvised weapon at that range (someone correct me if that's incorrect).
Normally, with a reach weapon, you need to be 10' away to use it to attack normally.
So a 5 foot step back don't cost an attack of opportunity, and that would be the way to go about it?
That or also having a second weapon that affects adjacent foes and doesn't occupy your hand. Armor Spikes or Bite attacks are popular.
The Lucerne Hammer is a reach weapon and so can not normally be used to strike enemies 5' away.
Reach: You use a reach weapon to strike opponents 10 feet away, but you can't use it against an adjacent foe.
Just for the record, I'd like to point out that the whole rule about not being able to use Reach weapons against adjacent opponents is complete and utter nonsense. While that indeed what the rule says as written, it just falls down flat in the face of real world usage of these weapons. Sure, you could just take a step back or rely on Armor Spikes or a Bite attack, but sometimes the best tool for the job is whichever tool you already have in your hands. To illustrate this fact, there were entire schools combat in the of medieval era that taught the use of various different pole arms, Talhoffer comes to mind for one, an I can assure you that any properly trained user (ie To put it in D&D terms, anybody who is actually considered proficient with the weapon) could and DID practice techniques for engaging opponents who managed to maneuver inside the standard range of the weapon.
As much as we modern folk like to consider ourselves intellectually superior to our "uneducated" ancestors, the truth is that our forefathers may not have had our access to higher education but they certainly weren't stupid. We have to remember one indisputable fact... For us, as in this example, the issue of how a pole arm could or could not be used is an abstract concept, merely a matter of interest while we are playing an RPG or perhaps watching a movie or tv show. For them, such issues had very clear real world applications that were quite literally a matter of life and death.
They would have been no more inclined to handicapping themselves with a weapon that would leave them vulnerable than we would be. If defeating a pole arm users ability to effectively defend themselves was no more difficult than simply stepping a little closer so that they couldn't hit you, then nobody would have been stupid enough to use them.
If an enemy stepped too near, the pole arm user could simply choke up his grip on the haft of his weapon and fight a closer fight, this would not be at all difficult to do between with opponent that stayed five feet away as assumed by the 5x5 squares in Pathfinder. In case he didn't have enough time or distance to do that, many pole arms were also equipped with a butt spike, for exactly this reason, that would likely do damage equivalent to a Spear or Short Spear. Even those reach weapons that were NOT so equipped could still have a quick and dirty butt spike added by the simple expedient of sharpening the butt end of the haft like an oversized wooden stake, and would do damage accordingly. Finally, remember that the entire haft of a pole arm is basically a quarterstaff, and opponents could be and WERE struck with any section of the haft that happened to be handy.
In the medieval era, pole arms were often used from behind a shield wall or from behind a barricade, so many modern game designers probably assume that this is how the were DESIGNED to be used, and by extension, the only way that they COULD be used (many of them perhaps having only limited knowledge of how these weapons were actually employed in real life), but it simply isn't so. I have actually seen first hand, and even experienced, the way these weapons work in a Medieval reenactment context, and I can personally attest to the fallacy of the Non-Adjacent Only rule for reach weapons. I have lost several matches precisely because I foolishly believed the idea that a pole arm couldn't readily be used to hit you if you just stepped in close enough, which I only believed in the first place because I had spent my childhood and teenage years reading it in D&D rules, only to take a haft or a butt spike to the face.
Now whether you decide to incorporate any of these ideas into your own game to add a little realism to your combat is, of course, entirely up to you. If you prefer, you can simply stick to the Rules As Written, but I just thought I'd thrown some data out there to give you folks the option.
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White76Knight, you haven't told me anything I didn't already know. This isn't the forum for making Pathfinder more realistic. This is the forum for discussing the rules that actually exist.
So house rule a penalty off of damage by one size level for fighting within 5 feet if you don't possess one of the appropriate feats.
Those style feats are pretty neat
White76Knight, you haven't told me anything I didn't already know. This isn't the forum for making Pathfinder more realistic. This is the forum for discussing the rules that actually exist.
Which is why I said "you can simply stick to the Rules As Written, but I just thought I'd thrown some data out there to give you folks the option."
I reckon there's nothing wrong with having extra options for those who want them.