Halfling reach with spears.

[Elise567]

My halfling rogue has the standard, simple 2h spear, sized small. It does 1d6 damage and has a reach of 20 ft. When I entered it on my character sheet, I wrote the reach as 10 ft. I halved it because I assumed it would be treated as half the length since equipment for me is half the weight. And I'm little. It seems silly to have a reach of 20 ft. I'm 2'10'', for goodness sake.

I just read somewhere that the reach for small and medium creatures is the same. If I am going by the rules, do I truly have a 20ft reach with my spear?

[Xaratherus]

A spear does not have a reach of 20 feet; it has a range of 20 feet, meaning that you can throw it 20 feet as its first range increment. Its melee attack 'range' is still 5 feet, as any standard weapon without the reach quality.

With that said, you are correct that: regardless of the size of the spear, its throwing range increment is 20 feet; and weapons with the reach quality have the same melee attack 'range' regardless of the weapon size (normally 10').

[Oladon]

Err... no. You're looking at the "range" column, which is the range increment for determining how far you can throw/fire a weapon.

A regular spear does not have the "reach" property, so you only threaten 5' with it. (A longspear, on the other hand, does have "reach".)

[DM_Blake]

I am sure you mean "range", not "reach". Two different game terms.

However, there are no rules to adjust the range or reach of any weapon based on the size of the wielder. The only thing that changes is the one thing that you see in the Weapons Table: damage (there are different damages for Small and Medium weapons, and more rules for figuring damage for creatures bigger and smaller than that).

So your halfing's spear has a range increment of 20', as the table shows.

Think of it this way. Your arm is smaller but so is your spear, so you can throw your smaller spear just as far as a human could throw a medium spear.

[Elise567]

Thanks. I was wondering if I had range and reach mixed up. Whoops.

[lemeres]

Also, as you said, the weight is changed as you move in size.

Thinking about it, I think I would houserule that creatures smaller than tiny cannot have reach weapons. I mean, are you saying that a creature the size of a housecat can wield an 8 foot long spear effectively, and that this spear doesn't instantly snap (again, changed weight, which for a longspear should mean it gets thinner).

According to some of the rules for reach (written from the reasonable assumption that you would be somewhere between small and large), the spear would still be able to hit 10 feet away even if it was wielded by a creature 3'' tall. If we scaled the comparison of the weapon length to the user up to small or medium, it would be like using a long spear that was 120-240 feet long. That is longer than the first increment of a crossbow!

[Ventnor]

lemeres wrote:

Also, as you said, the weight is changed as you move in size.

Thinking about it, I think I would houserule that creatures smaller than tiny cannot have reach weapons. I mean, are you saying that a creature the size of a housecat can wield an 8 foot long spear effectively, and that this spear doesn't instantly snap (again, changed weight, which for a longspear should mean it gets thinner).

According to some of the rules for reach (written from the reasonable assumption that you would be somewhere between small and large), the spear would still be able to hit 10 feet away even if it was wielded by a creature 3'' tall. If we scaled the comparison of the weapon length to the user up to small or medium, it would be like using a long spear that was 120-240 feet long. That is longer than the first increment of a crossbow!

I'd say that halfling martial characters who've specifically trained to use those weapons can do so effectively.

They're already taking a strength penalty and a weapon damage penalty. No need to kick halfling fighters when they're down.