Illusionist's page

I was wondering this, myself. Maybe there aught to be a lance weapon group that does double damage on a charge. I'm not sure why you couldn't do just as well with a spear or pike.

In Real Life, this is mainly because of weapon shape and how it transmits force. Simple fact is, horse and man is a pretty heavy weight at fairly quick motion headed towards you - that is a hell of a lot of force. The intent of any weapon is then to take advantage of that force, transmitting it into a target to cause damage.

This is why the medieval lance has that characteristic shape. The flare in front of the grip prevents the hand from sliding down the shaft, and ideally, on plate armour, that's combined with a lance rest to keep a couched lance stable.

You can get decent mileage out of a spear couched and tucked under the armpit, but not nearly as much as a properly-shaped lance.

Culture defines profanity. Today's profanities range. English prefers sexual, scatological, and religious curses, with a side-trip into ancestral (accusations of questionable parentage, for instance). Quebecois French, on the other hand, displays a marked preference for religious curses (look up 'sacre'). That and French French also display a differing way of cursing - they prefer to string together long columns of invective without actually saying anything coherent. The swear-happy Dutch prefer diseases for most of their cursing needs.

Where's your wizard from? What environment did he grow up in? What did the culture of his upbringing regard as sacred, as profane?

(I personally recommend going with either Quebecois or Dutch, translated into English; that'll let you get the right force without the same weight of typical curses.)

Start off scenic. Describe a nice picture of just how good the landscape looks. Point out a few landmarks, paying special attention to, again, just how damned good they look. Give them the very distinct idea that they're somewhere high up with a lovely view of the landscape.

And that admittedly, they might look a lot better if the PCs weren't currently in freefall, three hundred feet in the air, and beset by hawkmen.

One hawkman must of course be played by BRIAN BLESSED!, who curses and blusters at the PCs that all they had to do was behave, but noooooo, they had to stick their noses in where they didn't belong and now they have to be thrown off. And because the Hawkboss is particularly wroth at the PCs, he's there to make sure they go down and splat against the landscape.

The Hawkboss may or may not survive the encounter at DM discretion (and if the DM wants an excuse to act as BRIAN BLESSED!), but the following facts are in evidence:
1. The PCs have just pissed off entities with aerial capability;
2. These entities have secrets of which they were afraid the PCs would run into;
3. By Player Logic, this of course means that the PCs must find a way to get back into the unfleshed-out aerial location, hopefully without getting thrown off again.

Mind, this owes its roots not just to Flash Gordon but also to Exalted. I've used this opening twice to excellent effect.