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Foreword: This is proposal 1. If it ends up needing adjustments, I'll have to make them in a separate post in this thread. Search for the words "Updated Poleaxe Stats" to see revisions (if any).
Source: MyArmoury.com's article on the Medieval Poleaxe.
See Also: This Image.
Poleaxe
Game Stats: (See Note 1)
Two-Handed Martial Weapon
Poleaxe // 18 GP // Damage (S) 1d8 // Damage (M) 1d10 // Critical 20/x2 // Weight 8 lbs (See Note 2) // Type B or P or S // Special: Reach and See Special Text
Flavor Text: Sometimes called the 'Knightly Poleaxe', 'Pollax', or 'Poleax', this weapon entry refers to the broad class of polearms featuring a spear tip, axe head, and hammer head all on one end of the weapon. Despite the 'knightly' term, this weapon is available to the general citizenry, including adventurers. It was popular amongst some duelists for its versatility and significant striking power, allowing them to choose the right response to each situation without having to change weapons.
It should not be confused with other polearms that happen to have an axe head, such as halberds, horsechoppers, and certain other weapons referred to as 'poleaxes' but feature different designs opposite the axe blade (such as a beak/hook).
Special Text:
You gain a +1 bonus to your CMB on all sunder combat maneuver attempts with a poleaxe. (See Note 3)
Designers Notes:
1: I've attempted to balance this weapon against the Horsechopper, Bec De Corbin, and Lucerne Hammer. The 20/x2 crit may seem underwhelming, but in light of its special benefit on Sunder checks I felt this might be a fair trade-off. Playing with the exact Damage and Critical values might be necessary, but this is in the general ballpark as the others.
2: This weight is roughly in line with real world poleaxes, but is not in line with other Pathfinder polearms. If this is a concern, you may instead have it weigh 12 or 13 pounds and this will make it consistent with core Pathfinder rules and APG weapon weights.
3: This is admittedly a minor variation on an existing mechanic, the lucerne hammer and bec de corbin give +2 against certain armor types. Given you have three different weapon heads (hammer, axe, spear tip), I felt a broad +1 bonus might better reflect how the user could pick the ideal head for what they're trying to destroy. This may be too powerful, however; it's roughly equal to half a Feat.
If it is too powerful, I propose replacing it with the flat +2 bonus the above weapons provide. However, if you do this you should give it a 20/x3 crit instead of its current 20/x2.
In Summary:
Compared to the bec de corbin, this poleaxe is equal in damage and Reach but inferior in critical. It has all three damage types (B, P, and S) but loses Brace. Its Sunder bonus applies to everything instead of just specific armor types, so in theory this should be a 'zero sum' weapon that is balanced againts its immediate peers.
The most obvious benefit comes from fighting multiple enemies with Bludgeoning, Piercing, or Slashing related Damage Resistance. This is roughly in line with the poleaxe's real world benefits, where each weapon head was ideal against different kinds of armor. For those actually versed in poleaxe fighting, I acknowledge these proposed stats gloss over a few interesting techniques you can do with them... however the same is true of most other polearms in Pathfinder and representing them here would make for a clearly overpowered weapon; I apologize.
I would love to hear input on whether you feel the benefits are reasonably balanced against the drawbacks, or whether I've gone too far in either direction. And if you wind up making it available in your home games, I'd like to hear that too!
I would think it would have the blocking property, as the primary style uses the haft for defense. That is principle difference between using this and longer polearms.
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RJGrady, that's probably apt to some extent... but I'm trying to keep it relatively consistent with its peers in existing Core/AA/APG/UC content. And to be fair, you could transfer some of those techniques to the quarterstaff, halberd, bill, etc. to varying degrees. Rather than proposing broad rearrangements of several weapon stats, I felt it best to go with what exists. At some point I just end up accepting that Pathfinder core rules cannot portray all the intricate aspects of polearm usage.
While most poleaxes seem to be on the short end of the polearm range, they're still long enough that I felt it best to model them as Reach weapons that balance around their obvious peers such as the bec de corbin and so on.
A halberd doesn't have reach.
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In Pathfinder? Agreed, but it's silly that the halberd lacks Reach; most of the historical examples are long enough. Even the shortest of them have enough length that you get a decent reach advantage.
Now, when I said you could 'transfer those techniques' to the various weapons... I mean the real world versions. Something you learn on a bill most likely still works with a halberd, which (excepting anything requiring the hook/beak part) still works on a naginata, and then probably transfers over to the poleaxe. There are meaningful differences between them, but they're variations on an idea rather than learning wholly new technique sets each time. No polearm in Pathfinder that I'm aware of models the staff-fighting aspect of polearm use, and doing so with a new weapon opens the obvious precedent issue of "well, why don't the others allow it?"
In light of that, I opted to treat the poleaxe as a peer to the other reach polearms rather than reworking it into a blocking-style weapon for Pathfinder's purposes. Pathfinder melee combat simply isn't detailed enough in its core rules for me to accurately model all aspects of poleaxe fighting, so I went with the aspect that the game already covers. It's simply meant to be a new weapon with advantages against various sorts of DR due to having three damage types.
This is old, I know, but screw it I like poleaxes. So something that some people assume, the halberd is longer than the poleaxe so it shouldn't have the reach property, especially since the halberd does not.
If I was to rework the stats I think it would be more like this:
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Poleaxe // 18 GP // Damage (S) 1d8 // Damage (M) 1d10 // Critical 20/x3 // Weight 8 lbs (See Note 2) // Type B or P or S
Flavor Text: Sometimes called the 'Knightly Poleaxe', 'Pollax', or 'Poleax', this weapon entry refers to the broad class of polearms featuring a spear tip, axe head, and hammer head all on one end of the weapon. Despite the 'knightly' term, this weapon is available to the general citizenry, including adventurers. It was popular amongst some duelists for its versatility and significant striking power, allowing them to choose the right response to each situation without having to change weapons.
It should not be confused with other polearms that happen to have an axe head, such as halberds, horsechoppers, and certain other weapons referred to as 'poleaxes' but feature different designs opposite the axe blade (such as a beak/hook).
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Poleaxes were never designed to break through armor like a Bec De Corbin, or Lucerne Hammer. I know realism doesn't really need to be part of Pathfinder but I think that this balances it out far better than the sunder property. Especially since I don't believe that sunder is used by many groups use sunder actively. It also lines up with the spears, hammers, and axes are already generally 1d10 with a 20x3 crit.