My question is and i have looked threw the core book and didnt find it. Can i use a weapon that has reach on it 5ft away or do i only have to use it 10ft?
You cannot attack opponents who are within 5 feet of you with a reach weapon. It allows you to strike out to 10' but once they are next to you you cannot hit them.
This answer assumes a medium sized humanoid creature is using the reach weapon.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Get armor spikes on your armor. Gauntlets are also weapons you can release your hold on the reach weapon with one hand as a free action. You just won't do as much damage.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
well thats a bit of a bumber since i wanted to make a paladin with a two handed hammer, and all of them have reach on it. any advice?
In Pathfinder the Earthbreaker is a two handed hammer that does not have reach.
That should be exactly what you want.
If your dm allows 3.5 bleedover, the short haft feat works wonders.
There is no feat I can think of in core rules that allows you to shorten your grip on a weapon, their are however archetypes that allow this I believe. I doubt Paizo will introduce such a feat since it would remove one of the more key features of the archetype.
In any event, as Wraithstrike mentioned you can use armor spikes, you could let go and hold your weapon and one hand and strike with a gauntlet, or you could wield a Earthbreaker as Gilfalas suggested.
1. As was said, Earthbreaker is a 2 handed hammer that doesn't have reach. It does 2d6 and x3 on crits.
2. You could use a reach hammer anyways. Reach is usually good to have, often giving attacks of opportunity more so than non-reach weapons have. The not being able to attack adjacent enemies can be a pain sometimes, but usually nothing a five foot step can't solve. Just carry a warhammer or another non reach weapon and if you really have to drop the reach weapon and draw the non reach weapon. Or have armor spikes or spiked gaunlets or take Improved Unarmed Strike.
Combine a reach weapon with combat reflexes and a moderate dexterity and you will usually see a significant damage output increase.
Note though that the non exotic two handed reach hammers don't have as good a base damage as the earth breaker, or don't have as good a crit multiplier. The dwarven longhammer does the same damage and has the same crit mulitplier, but unless you're a dwarf it would require taking a feat to use properly.
3. use a warhammer. You can switch between using it as a one or two handed weapon as you like, meaning you can pull out and use a shield if you think you need it, or if you have a shield giving a needed benefit like say fire resistance when fighting fire breathing enemies. And if you want to just unleash damage you can use it two handed, the only drawback being the lower damage of the base weapon. 1d8 (4.5 avg) vs 2d6 (7 avg) is a 2.5 pt average damage difference, and at higher levels this will get dwarfed by the damage coming from strength and power attack and smites. So the extra versatility of the one handed hammer might be worth the minor damage reduction. Unless you're looking at being enlarged often, or getting an impact weapon, or vital striking a lot (things that benefit a lot from the larger base weapon damage), the versatility probably outweighs the extra damage.