[Steve Plambeck]

From my first gaming group, my fellow GM and I brought up this very debate with an arms instructor we met at a SCA event in the late eighties. He had just given a demonstration on swords and shields when we cornered him, and he was very polite and helpful.

We laid out the TFT pole weapon rules for him, explaining the damage bonus for charge attacks, and got his opinion on how realistic this would be.

He shook his head no, then gave us a personal demonstration on how to use a halberd. He explained that to maximize damage, you would never want to level it at an enemy and run at them to attempt skewering them. Impalement is not the goal.

The real business end of all pole axes is the blade, and it is most effectively used from up close and adjacent. He taught us to hold the halberd across our bodies, while facing slightly sideways to the target. You grip the pole with your hands about 3 feet apart, and using your hip as the fulcrum you pivot the pole across your body with a rolling motion. This snaps the blade towards the enemy with considerably greater force and speed than you could muster any other way. "Now this" he said, "is what will give you your double damage -- charging would be just silly."

Despite my friend and me being completely convinced, we went back to our group and stuck to the RAW because that was easier :)

Actually the RAW may well still be realistic for the spear and javelin, neither of which can do any real damage without impaling, but the heavier pole arms and any pole axes really work differently than a spear. In regular combat they should probably do more damage than they do, and in charge attacks less then they do.

Just having read the wikipedia article on the halberd, there's reason to question the defensive bonuses we give to pole arms as well. They did have a neat trick though that isn't reflected in the rules anywhere: that "hook" on the opposite side of the axe blade was apparently quite effective at pulling horsemen off their mounts.

I agree though that realism is not the only goal in game design. Lumping all the pole weapons into one "class" that all follow the same rules has its advantages when it comes to playing the game. If TFT didn't lump things together, it wouldn't play anything like it does. The rules are a set of clever compromises all to enhance playability.