Quote:
Originally Posted by larsdangly
A better treatment of pole arms would be to give them all a similarly strong (and quite good) impaling charge attack, and then to have the swinging/hacking attack scale with ST and extend up to quite high values. The reality is that a halberd or pole hammer is one of the few weapons on a medieval battlefield that will wreck your day even in heavy armor.
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Not all polearms are good as thrusting weapons. Poleaxes and Polehammers, especially. The Halberd is a great weapon - but it's not as good as a spear for thrusting, nor as good as a similar axe, hammer, or bec vs heavy armors, because it's got off-impact blades that can make it easier to parry.
The best all-around seems to be the Glaive - a 2' seax (meat-cleaver with a thrusting point) on a 4' to 6' handle, often with a back spike and/or back-hook. It does most things a halberd does with a cheaper blade, and one which is also still useful as a utility tool... and is easier to make, as well. But, like the Halberd, a dedicated bec is better at opening the can, a dedicated axe is better at chopping bones to dust through chain and/or denting plate, and the dedicated bill hooks are better at pulling riders and cutting straps...
Likewise, the Seax itself is a jack of all trades blade - a 2'-3' meat-cleaver with a thrusting point, and a 10 to 20 inch handle. Strong enough to make a useful hatchet, easily sharpened, massive enough to be hard to block or divert, and still wieldy enough to be used as a machete, too. And it can be used to stop-thrust as well as push thrust, in addition to chopping. Oh, and it's nimble enough to be used for preparing dinner... none of them as well as a dedicated blade for the task, but all of them better than the wrong blade. (