Fantasy Trip Pole Weapons and Charges

[tbeard1999]

I broke this off from the "list the issues" TFT thread (Fantasy Trip Glitches, Contradictions, Ambiguities).

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

Yes, charge attacks with polearms are too strong. After a few decades of reflecting on it, I don't think that charging with a halberd is any better than charging with any big pointy stick. The halberd's blade doesn't help in the charge.

Maybe the solution would be to give a charging figure with any pole weapon a flat 2+2 dice damage (2 handed spear's damage in a charge attack). Or whatever you think that damage should be.

I think mounted figures with lances should be pretty awesome though.

And I'm willing to listen to argument that the javelin is too short and light to get a charge bonus.

For me, the issue would revolve around game balance. I never found javelins to be an issue, but they were rarely taken by my players.

[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.

[ak_aramis]

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.

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. (

[tbeard1999]

Originally Posted by ak_aramis

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. (

Watch out, you may wind up recreating Gygax’s pole weapon fetish in AD&D :)

[pyratejohn]

My recollection from ye olde days as a spear/glaive man were that my advantages were reach, and the ability to get in a quick hit with a sneaky jab or chop now and again. The only time that I felt like I did a hit with "extra damage" was in line battles while standing behind the shield wall. Then you could get in a full overhand swing with plenty of power behind it.

[tbeard1999]

Originally Posted by pyratejohn

My recollection from ye olde days as a spear/glaive man were that my advantages were reach, and the ability to get in a quick hit with a sneaky jab or chop now and again. The only time that I felt like I did a hit with "extra damage" was in line battles while standing behind the shield wall. Then you could get in a full overhand swing with plenty of power behind it.

I think Melee got the concept correct - pole weapons *could* be more effective in a charge. And Melee allowed some interesting tactical approaches with pole weapons.

But doubling the damage, while simple, might have been too much, with larger pole weapons. A simple fix might be to add 1 die for a charge attack (or set vs a charge) with anything the size of a spear or larger.

[ak_aramis]

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

Watch out, you may wind up recreating Gygax’s pole weapon fetish in AD&D :)

Gygax didn't know what he was doing. He made distinctions that don't matter to how it functions. The Glaive-Guisarme is just a glaive.

Functionally, there are only a double-handful of useful bits that define types

• Single-point thrusting ("Spears", Awls)
• Multi-point thrusting (Forks and tridents)
• Pole-axes
• heavy blade on a stick (Glaive, Naginata)
• swung Picks, spikes, and beaks (essentially Armor Penetrators)
• hooks and pole-sickles - cut by pull and/or pull riders
• Pole-hammers
• Grabbing weapons
• Hybrids of the above

These can be simplified further into the following with only a mild loss of fidelit:

• Thrusting (Does it really make much difference if it's an awl, dagger, or a spike?)
• Swung blades (a glaive and a poleaxe are pretty similar in swung use)
• Swung spikes
• Swung hammers
• wielder-facing blades and hooks

Different damages by weight - light, medium, heavy - and call it done.

A few things that people sometimes think of as polearms really aren't.

The Javelin and throwing spear are not really polearms. Throwing spears and javelins are usually much lighter, and are at best a desperation weapon in close order melee. A parry is likely to destroy them.

The Pilum (plural: pilae) is also not a polearm - it's intended use is to weight the opponent's shield... stab it through the shield, then drop it; the long head bends, and it adds a couple pounds at a longer moment arm position, so it makes it hard to use the shield. (If you stick it into the ribcage, it has even more annoying effects.)

[JLV]

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

Yes, charge attacks with polearms are too strong. After a few decades of reflecting on it, I don't think that charging with a halberd is any better than charging with any big pointy stick. The halberd's blade doesn't help in the charge. And I'm willing to listen to argument that the javelin is too short and light to get a charge bonus.

Depends somewhat on the "javelin," I'd say. Thrown spears would still qualify in my opinion, specifically lighter javelins (purpose-designed, you might say) wouldn't (and would do less damage inherently, IMO).

And something like a Pilum, specifically designed for the head to break off in the enemy, or his shield, in order to hamper his movement and defense (and prevent the enemy from using it by throwing it back at you!) would obviously be completely unsuitable for a charge attack -- the energy of the charge would be wasted when the neck of the pilum bent and snapped (as it was designed to do). Heck, you can't even use the pilum the way the Zulus did the Assegai, to parry and stab; at least not reliably.

Which raises the question about whether or not something such as a "short spear" (Assegai) should be a category of weapon...

The real question becomes how to make the rule simple, and the simplest way is to state that javelins may NOT be used in a pole-weapon charge attack, but that spears can. (Arguably, "short spears" wouldn't work well in a charge either -- they are a man-to-man weapon, not a pole weapon.)

[tbeard1999]

The guy who survived the longest in one campaign was an elf with no armor wielding a naginata. He had a speed of 14. (This thread should be in TFT Pole Weapons and Charging, editor.)

I replied to this post here to effectively move it to the right thread.

That doesn't surprise me. The figure you describe would attack first in a charge attack and would hit 91% of the time. He would do 2+4 damage, enough to seriously injure or kill normal opponents most of the time. More than half of the time, he'd knock an opponent wearing chainmail (or leather and small shield) down, which would prevent the opponent from retaliating.