Goblin Squad Member
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Well, interestingly, many pole arms in PF TT have [reach], meaning they can be used at 10ft, but not in close range. Would you accept that consequence in PFO? Especially with no collision? I suppose that however does not preclude collision-based effects or attacks such as "kick" to knockback an opponent that gets too close.
Thoughts?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I like reach weapons too. I just love having my rogue slip into the 5' range and go stab happy why the guy with the reach weapon either tries to kick me or finally decides he has to drop his weapon.
Either way he is having to use unarmed combat which he most likely doesn't have the feat for. So penalties for him. :P
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Goblin Squad Member
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... it revolves around attacks of opportunity...
I had the same thought.
Reach weapons were never intended to be used while soloing, so having a Fighter maneuvering to stay between you and the enemy - and capitalizing on any Opportunity the enemy presents as they to try to approach you - sounds like it would be kind of awesome :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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In fact, reach weapons (spears and polearms) can be used in close quarters in real life. It is all down to changing the grip which takes seconds, the front hand being the pivot and the rear hand levering the head around freely.
In a one-v-one contest of man with spear and man with sword, the spear usually wins in modern recreations of medieval combat. Some aspects of real combat aren't represented, of course, but even with the ability to chop at the weapon shaft the balance is still with the spearman.
I've just posted a link to a useful talk over on the Ugly Armour thread. Schola Gladiatoria's online talks are really useful to listen to as he is a man who knows what he is talking about, being both a scholar of original fighting techniques and a modern fighter with medieval weapons.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In fact, reach weapons (spears and polearms) can be used in close quarters in real life.
I have no doubt that spears can be effective in close combat. I'm a little more skeptical about true reach weapons like pikes and true pole-arms (the kind that were designed to be used in formation from the 2nd or further rank back). And even then, I would imagine a short spear would be more effective in close combat.
Just my intuition, I haven't (yet) hit the link you posted.
[Edit] Watched the video - very cool, thanks for sharing! - and I see what you're saying. I think it all comes down to the "close quarters" thing. I think you're right to say they can be used in "close quarters", and I should have been more accurate because I was thinking more in terms of "confined" quarters, where the polearm-wielder doesn't have a lot of room to hold his hand out behind him while retracting the weapon. Again, awesome video link, thanks :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Watched the video - very cool, thanks for sharing! - and I see what you're saying. I think it all comes down to the "close quarters" thing. I think you're right to say they can be used in "close quarters", and I should have been more accurate because I was thinking more in terms of "confined" quarters, where the polearm-wielder doesn't have a lot of room to hold his hand out behind him while retracting the weapon.
No problem, historians are still learning from people like Schola Gladiatoria who recreate history 'for real'. Even the much-sniggered at re-enactment societies teach historians about the 'human' aspect of history.
Confined quarters? Yes, I'd be dropping my pollaxe and drawing my dagger very quickly! Once the opponent can grapple you anything longer than a knife is getting in the way. When mugged in a dark alley you aren't going to find much use for a longsword or battleaxe....
Having said which, the pollaxe (and other polearms) can be very effective even toe-to-toe! Notice the close-quarters hooking and punching here.
Academy of European Medieval Martial Arts pollaxe* demonstration.
That video is also eye-opening for the effectiveness of the armour, as explained by the instructor at the end of the video.
*It is correctly poll- not pole-. The term comes from 'poll' meaning 'head' (as used in 'poll tax, for example) and not because it is on a pole.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I like reach weapons too. I just love having my rogue slip into the 5' range and go stab happy why the guy with the reach weapon either tries to kick me or finally decides he has to drop his weapon.
Either way he is having to use unarmed combat which he most likely doesn't have the feat for. So penalties for him. :P
This is why I always put a spiked-gauntlet on my pole-arm wielders (as a player). No need to drop the weapon, no need to draw a new weapon, still does lethal damage.
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Goblin Squad Member
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*It is correctly poll- not pole-. The term comes from 'poll' meaning 'head' (as used in 'poll tax, for example) and not because it is on a pole.
I love learning things like this! Thanks :)
Also, I found very interesting the part in the original video link where the guy described a sword as a "side arm", in essence that it was useful because it could be worn without interfering with your daily routine.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I woukd love to see the shield and spear combination. This conversation brings me back to beta of Age of Conan, when their supposed weapons historian tried to say that the combination of shield + spear did not exist in history (yes, he actually wrote that). Instead of Funcom just admitting that they could not create the animation for it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Historically spears were a far more popular weapon than swords. In most cases the sword was a "side arm" - meaning the back up weapon, not the primary. There are very few historical examples of soldiers using swords as their primary weapon.
Contrary to how PF rules portray spears and reach, there was no "inside" a spearman's reach. A spear's reach can be shortened very quickly and very easily, to shorter than even a sword's reach, so it's far more likely to see a spearman slipping inside the reach of a swordsman. Combine that with how the wider grip used to hold a spear gives it far greater leverage, and it's easy to understand why the spear was almost always preferred to the sword.
If anyone is curious about this, try looking a spear vs sword "HEMA" duel (HEMA = Historical European Martial Arts).
Shield and spear was a lot more effective in formation combat. One on one, holding a spear one handed gives up a lot of leverage making it easy to swat aside, and slow to recover. Holding it two handed does the opposite though, gives you more leverage and able to bring it back more quickly than a sword - so definitely the way to go in a 1v1 fight.
Holding the spear under the armpit helps regain that lost leverage caused by holding it one handed, but it's still more sluggish to aim even if you could still thrust fairly quickly. But you don't really have to aim well when poking at a formation.
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Goblinworks Game Designer
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We're still waiting on (two-handed) spear animations to test it, but we're initially planning to test the spear attacks as having twice the range as normal melee weapons. We aren't planning to have an "inside your reach" deadzone, as those are much fiddlier in real time with the potential for latency. Ultimately, the better reach will be factored into the other effects of attacks for the spear.
Other polearms will follow spear.
Keywords are a separate system from which weapons certain attacks can be slotted on. (Long term I'd like to overlap them more, so you could, say, put an axe attack on a sword, and it would just do terrible damage because few of the keywords match, but for our initial animation set we want to make sure the attacks makes sense for each weapon.)
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Goblin Squad Member
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That would make spears and other polearms viable weapons and make them different than two handed weapons as a weapon group.
Imagine a quick enemy who invested in things that increase movement speed, staying out of your attack range but still being able to attack you.
Also perhaps consider something like allowing polearms to trip and set against a charge.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Historically spears were a far more popular weapon than swords.
Despite the numerous benefits, I think one thing that is forgotten is how much cheaper it was to build and outfit an army with spears. For most of history, metals were still relatively rare and expensive. Building a good sword took a good deal of time from very skilled people. A spear was a bit easier. You still needed skilled people, but a pole-turner was easier to find than a blacksmith, and casting spearheads (if metal was used for them at all) is much easier than pounding out an actual blade.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Historically spears were a far more popular weapon than swords.Despite the numerous benefits, I think one thing that is forgotten is how much cheaper it was to build and outfit an army with spears. For most of history, metals were still relatively rare and expensive. Building a good sword took a good deal of time from very skilled people. A spear was a bit easier. You still needed skilled people, but a pole-turner was easier to find than a blacksmith, and casting spearheads (if metal was used for them at all) is much easier than pounding out an actual blade.
That's interesting, but overshadowed by that fact that there are so many examples of soldiers who were equipped with both polearms AND swords, and primarily used the polearm with the sword as a backup.
One example that really drives home the point is the very large two hander (aka zweihander or bidenhander) that was used to combat pike formations: as soon as the knight was able to form a gap in the pike formation (by swinging the swords great mass around in figure eights) he would generally then switch his grip moving one hand above the guard onto the blunted section of the blade and then proceed to hold and thrust with it like a polearm to attack into the formation. This one example is a very rare case of favoring a sword vs polearm, and only worked for two reasons: 1) the polearms it was targeting were much longer than the average polearm and thus the wielders had poor leverage (although I suppose the momentum really helped too, but didn't work as well against multiple shorter polearms because the momentum was still not enough for that many targets with good leverage), and 2) its attacks were mostly made using it as if it were a polearm.
And yes, good swords were expensive. At the height of the middle ages, a knight was generally expected to pay the price of 10 slaves for one good longsword (not quite the same as "longsword" in Pathfinder)
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Goblin Squad Member
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A very well articulated video on the topic: http://youtu.be/l2YgGY_OBx8
FYI, that's the same video Sadurian linked in Ugly armor design the other day, and referenced in this thread several posts up.
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Goblin Squad Member
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*It is correctly poll- not pole-. The term comes from 'poll' meaning 'head' (as used in 'poll tax, for example) and not because it is on a pole.I love learning things like this! Thanks :)
It shouldn't surprise anyone that I did some independent research on this. If you're interested, Pollaxe - Wikipedia.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It shouldn't surprise anyone that I did some independent research on this. If you're interested, Pollaxe - Wikipedia.*It is correctly poll- not pole-. The term comes from 'poll' meaning 'head' (as used in 'poll tax, for example) and not because it is on a pole.I love learning things like this! Thanks :)
Oh man, I love learning about this kind of stuff too. I clicked the link that Blaeringr posted and inadvertently spent the next 2 hours watching those videos... oooops. :)
Just so fascinating.
