what if you don't want your foe to fall on your spear?

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I think with the foe's whole person falling toward you I might require a retreating defense in any case.

Not just to get your weapon pointed away from them, surely?

[Tinman]

Originally Posted by Varyon

There could be a situation where you're pointing the spear's business end at the person as a means of intimidation, to convince them to keep their distance, without any desire to actually harm them. That's the situation where I'd allow a Parry to move the weapon out of line; if you're holding it for a cross-check, I wouldn't even count it as a "Readied Impaling weapon," at least for purposes of a CritFail causing the target to be impaled.

No, people make this mistake about guns all the time. Weapons are tools of killing not of intimidation.

Weapons are only a viable means of intimidation in a "comply or else" scenario.
However, the "or else" really only works if you follow through because there will be people who call your bluff.

As to the OP's question, the only way to change the result of a crit fail is by using luck.
If another's crit fail would be a major problem for a PC, I as GM would let a PC use their own luck.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Tinman

No, people make this mistake about guns all the time. Weapons are tools of killing not of intimidation.

Weapons are only a viable means of intimidation in a "comply or else" scenario.
However, the "or else" really only works if you follow through because there will be people who call your bluff.

I wasn't saying it was a good practice, but it is something a character might opt to do, and I don't see a problem with letting them get the weapon out of the way, any more so than them getting the weapon out of the way of an attack on said weapon. Of course, it's ultimately up to the GM as to if the character has the option.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Tinman

No, people make this mistake about guns all the time. Weapons are tools of killing not of intimidation.

Weapons are only a viable means of intimidation in a "comply or else" scenario.
However, the "or else" really only works if you follow through because there will be people who call your bluff.

As to the OP's question, the only way to change the result of a crit fail is by using luck.
If another's crit fail would be a major problem for a PC, I as GM would let a PC use their own luck.

Weapons are absolutely and emphatically tools of intimidation. Including when they are used in actual warfare.

They're not safe tools of intimidation, obviously. Telling people to that they're not tools of intimidation at all might make sense in environments where you have a sufficiently low tolerance for wounding or killing the intended subjects of intimidation, or where armed intimidation is inappropriate behavior. At least if you think you can get them to internalize such a transparent untruth.


Threatening people with weapons doesn't even actually require being willing to follow through, though obviously you need to (a) not be obvious about your unwillingness to your target, (b) be willing to risk the potentially-deadly accidents that brandishing weapons invite and (c) deal with the risk of the bluff being called.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

His bad luck isn't about what you want to happen.
Critical misses aren't something the opponent did deliberately.

Yes but it seems strange that only random chance can make stabbing the wrong person completely unavoidable like it was a critical hit against you but in reverse.

Originally Posted by Rolando

If you don't want to hurt someone don't point a spear at them.

Nothing here indicates you're actually pointing the spear at the person who is attacking you, just that you have it readied.

Like weirdly the spear is legally occupying your front hexes and someone could attack you from behind, crit-fail, and still impale themself on the spear even though it's tip is 3 yards away and it should be impossible.

Something like "this only applies if you're occupying the same hex as the spear's tip" sounds like a pretty good idea for a house rule on applying this crit fail result though.

Originally Posted by Rolando

If you have a spear at hand and trying to control a drunken peasant (for example) you may say to the GM you are not using your spear in a dangerous way, you are using it mostly to parry and push, probably with both hands (across the chest) or something.

If you are using the spear with an intent to kill you probably have it pointed to the target and a critical failure is as surprising to the target as to you.

It only says that a spear is readied. You might be intending to aim it at a monster who is chasing the peasant but the peasant does something crazy like attacks you with a Shove to get past you.

Even though he's already ran a couple yards past the tip of your lance, it sounds like he somehow backtracks two yards and impales himself as a result of the crit-fail shove.

Originally Posted by Varyon

EDIT: Of course, the GM could be justified in saying that only getting the weapon out of the way (that is, using Parry) means the attacker stumbles into you rather than your weapon, which may risk you falling down or similar.

fair point

Originally Posted by Tinman

As to the OP's question, the only way to change the result of a crit fail is by using luck.
If another's crit fail would be a major problem for a PC, I as GM would let a PC use their own luck.

This seems like the type of thing which skill could prevent though, someone skilled with a weapon should have some chance of reducing the chance of accidentally stabbing someone they never attacked in the first place.

This seems like a similar situation to resolving "Knockback" situations.

B378 mentions this:

If you knock your foe into something solid, the result – including
damage to him and whatever he hit – is as if he had collided with it
at a speed equal to the yards of knockback.

A person is arguably "solid" meaning you could 'collide' with a person who was standing behind them.

It doesn't mention anything about either party being able to "dodge" to prevent this collision.

If you don't let the person standing behind the shoved person attempt a dodge though, it gives a loophole where you create unavoidable attacks via people letting themselves being shoved into targets.

IE if you treat a "shove A into B" as "automatically successfil hit against B" then B still gets a dodge so long as you don't treat this as a critical success.

Though since you need to roll to hit with slams, I think some kind of skill roll to have A hit B (as opposed to enter their hex but miss them, like what can happen with a slam) also seems fair. I guess if you did make that roll you could have unavoidable critical hit successes.

Since the Unarmed Critical Miss result is not an intentional action, unlike with shoving a skill roll to hit seems inappropriate, meaning there would be no chance to roll a critical success to make it an undodgeable slam.

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

They're not safe tools of intimidation, obviously. Telling people to that they're not tools of intimidation at all might make sense in environments where you have a sufficiently low tolerance for wounding or killing the intended subjects of intimidation, or where armed intimidation is inappropriate behavior. At least if you think you can get them to internalize such a transparent untruth.

Threatening people with weapons doesn't even actually require being willing to follow through, though obviously you need to (a) not be obvious about your unwillingness to your target, (b) be willing to risk the potentially-deadly accidents that brandishing weapons invite and (c) deal with the risk of the bluff being called.

I don't think anyone is arguing that spears are absolutely safe here.

The proposal isn't "the spear user can automatically avoid stabbing the unarmed peasant" just "give him chance to prevent it if he makes an active defense roll"

Some low-DX incompetent soldier with a horrible spear skill would have a very low parry and very low chances of saving that peasant from accidental impalement, ZERO chance if he had just made an AOA and lacked defenses.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Plane

Like weirdly the spear is legally occupying your front hexes and someone could attack you from behind, crit-fail, and still impale themself on the spear even though it's tip is 3 yards away and it should be impossible.

Something like "this only applies if you're occupying the same hex as the spear's tip" sounds like a pretty good idea for a house rule on applying this crit fail result though.

It only says that a spear is readied. You might be intending to aim it at a monster who is chasing the peasant but the peasant does something crazy like attacks you with a Shove to get past you.

Even though he's already ran a couple yards past the tip of your lance, it sounds like he somehow backtracks two yards and impales himself as a result of the crit-fail shove.

Strange things can happen during the chaos of combat. If you find this problematic for your sense of disbelief, consider the following. Rather than simply "foe has a Ready impaling weapon," have it be "foe has a Ready impaling weapon, and you pass through a Front hex within the weapon's Reach," and also have the attack retroactively stop movement (although there may be a roll for you to avoid running yourself all the way through, if applicable). So, if you've got a long spear Ready at Reach 4, then if the peasant starts 5 yards out and tries to Slam you, but rolls a critfail, he actually runs into your spear point at Reach 4 and probably stops there. If the peasant instead started at Reach 3, he's too close for this to apply, so instead trips and faceplants.

I don't think you should be required to define where your weapon is located at all times; treating it as being in all your Front hexes within Reach simultaneously is honestly more realistic, because a spearman (for example) isn't going to stand stock-still, he/she is going to be shifting where the spear is pointed to dissuade anyone from getting too close. If someone just ups and tries to run into the spear, of course, the spearman should probably get a chance to get the spear out of line, if he/she would rather not prepare a dish of Peasant Kebab. Parry fits quite nicely, here. As noted, I wouldn't require a roll if this was the result of the spearman having a Critical Success on his/her Parry - a Critical Success should never be a bad thing for the one who rolled it! (Note this also means, if someone were mistakenly attacking an ally, I'd actually have them discover it was an ally and miss on a Critical Success - or at least give the player the option for this; on the flip side, I might make a Critical Failure into a hit if I were feeling evil, but probably wouldn't)

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Strange things can happen during the chaos of combat.
If you find this problematic for your sense of disbelief, consider the following.
Rather than simply "foe has a Ready impaling weapon," have it be "foe has a Ready impaling weapon, and you pass through a Front hex within the weapon's Reach,"

Yeah that was discussed above.
But still, even by limiting the circumstances is the problem of "they're stabbed, end story".
It creates a weird situation where a critical failure creates unavoidable contact with an attacker, making it resemble a critical success in some ways.

Originally Posted by Varyon

also have the attack retroactively stop movement (although there may be a roll for you to avoid running yourself all the way through, if applicable). So, if you've got a long spear Ready at Reach 4, then if the peasant starts 5 yards out and tries to Slam you, but rolls a critfail, he actually runs into your spear point at Reach 4 and probably stops there

This brings MA106 to mind, Holding a Foe at Bay:

If you inflicted injury with anything but a thrusting, impaling weapon – or if you rolled damage but didn’t penetrate DR – your foe must win a Quick Contest of ST with you to get closer

The wording could be seen as only applying to an "obstruct" or "parry" or only "stop thrust" attacks, and stop thrusts can only be done via Wait maneuvers AFAIK

Wound = spear's inside so no ST contest, instead you can freely run yourself through long as you have the gumption (will roll)

That's another one of these weird situations where the spear-wielder is forced to play by the game of their target.

Normally if you don't want to injure others you have options like using Defensive Attack to get a dmg penalty, or intentionally using lower striking ST with your attack to reduce the thrust dice.

So if you said something like "I'm doing a defensive attack using ST of 1 to poke this peasant" you might avoid doing serious injury: just 1 basic damage x2 wounding multiplier = 2 HP lost, maybe he'll live.

But apparently he can just optionally leap onto the spear, and there's no way to stop it?

I would think if you perceived someone doing this, maybe you could optionally wrench your spear backward at the last minute to stop them?

To react fast enough though I would think a parry roll appropriate. It's arguably even already in the rules if you have a Sacrificial Parry perk: in this case you are treating the enemy you just intentionally stabbed as an "ally" and "parrying" your own spear attack, except you're doing the kind where you're "yanking" the weapon out of the way.

Originally Posted by Varyon

I don't think you should be required to define where your weapon is located at all times; treating it as being in all your Front hexes within Reach simultaneously is honestly more realistic, because a spearman (for example) isn't going to stand stock-still, he/she is going to be shifting where the spear is pointed to dissuade anyone from getting too close.

B400's drawing is straight ahead but I agree with you that a lot of chars will be doing that with their weapon. It's especially strange to treat weapons always as being in those yellow hexes even after you just made an attack outside of that line, like striking into the front-left or front-right hexes.

Regarding the "shifting to dissuade" it takes me back to our conversation a month ago regarding how Priestess uses these wide arcing staff swings to keep goblins at bay from what looks like all 3 hexes.

With spears it's a big different though, like we're not talking about launching actual thrust attacks (Priestess is clearly throwing them swings) but just using lateral movements to aim and set up possible thrusts (or "walk into his weapon" stuff too)

Originally Posted by Varyon

If someone just ups and tries to run into the spear, of course, the spearman should probably get a chance to get the spear out of line, if he/she would rather not prepare a dish of Peasant Kebab. Parry fits quite nicely, here.

Another thing I thought about was even if you can't fully move the weapon's tip out of the way (what we have a parry represent) you might still pull it backward.

When people impale themselves ala MA106 they use their own ST's thrust damage, so maybe someone could somehow reduce that?

The weird issue with "find maximum damage for your weapon using his thrust score" is you can have an absurd situation like some ST 5 goblin holding a tiny spear and then some ST5000 giant impales himself for hundreds of damage on it.

At some point, with that level of force, wouldn't it actually just knock the goblin's hand backward so there would be nothing solid to push against?

I'm thinking instead of "Success increases his wound to the maximum possible
injury from your original blow" that maybe you add the self-impaler's thrust to the rolled basic damage but cap the basic damage at the maximum possible basic damage you might have rolled. I guess you could make that triple max damage since you could have theoretically rolled a crit success.

This is all very instantaneous though, it seems to cover "he ran himself through on my sword in an instant" situations" but not "he gradually ran himself forward on my spear over time".

I remember seeing that happen for dramatic effect in some martial arts flick but can't remember which one...

I'm thinking just "you can step to inflict thrust on a force field so you can step to inflict thrust on yourself via a spear" as an analogy.

Originally Posted by Varyon

I wouldn't require a roll if this was the result of the spearman having a Critical Success on his/her Parry - a Critical Success should never be a bad thing for the one who rolled it!

That's sometimes subjective though. "You do triple damage" is actually a bad thing if you weren't intending to kill a foe.

Originally Posted by Varyon

(Note this also means, if someone were mistakenly attacking an ally, I'd actually have them discover it was an ally and miss on a Critical Success - or at least give the player the option for this; on the flip side, I might make a Critical Failure into a hit if I were feeling evil, but probably wouldn't)

We have PU5p4 "Buying Failures" for situations like this, it notes "critical success to failure costs 3 points".

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Plane

This brings MA106 to mind, Holding a Foe at Bay

Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking of. There, as you note, the struck foe gets to decide if he/she would rather back off or keep going. In a case where the foe has stumbled into the spear by accident (due to either CritFail on their end, or a CritSuccess on the defender's end), however, I'd say if they want to avoid fully running themselves through, they need to roll against either Dodge or their best Unarmed Parry (which doesn't count as an Active Defense, it's just a good measure of the character's reaction speed and efficiency).

Originally Posted by Plane

But apparently he can just optionally leap onto the spear, and there's no way to stop it?

As with the case discussed in this thread, if the foe is trying to run themselves through and you'd rather they didn't, I'd let you pull out your spear with a successful Parry. Note this means the foe simply gets to close the distance without needing to worry about the spear in the way.

Things are hairier if you're using a barbed spear, as pulling it out does half the damage it did going in (and requires a Ready by RAW, although I'd be inclined to have you trade an attack instead). In that case, I'd say the barbs make it too difficult to pull out with a quick reaction, so you're basically helpless to prevent the target from running themselves through.

Originally Posted by Plane

B400's drawing is straight ahead but I agree with you that a lot of chars will be doing that with their weapon. It's especially strange to treat weapons always as being in those yellow hexes even after you just made an attack outside of that line, like striking into the front-left or front-right hexes.

I'd allow the player to shift the "threatened" hexes if for some reason it matters. It's harder to cover your Side and Back than Front, however; for Side, you cover it and the Front hex adjacent to it (so you essentially lose 1 hex of coverage), for Back, you cover only it (so you essentially lose 2 hexes of coverage).

Originally Posted by Plane

When people impale themselves ala MA106 they use their own ST's thrust damage, so maybe someone could somehow reduce that?

Perhaps something like "on a Failure by 1 (on the Parry to get the weapon out of the way), roll normal damage for your attack, halve it, and reduce the foe's damage by this amount." As a further option, rather than MoS 0 meaning you get it completely out of the way, you reduce damage by your full rolled amount - so if you're of comparable ST to the foe, you have a good chance of negating the damage, but it's not a given. For MoS 1+, you simply get the weapon out of the way.

Originally Posted by Plane

The weird issue with "find maximum damage for your weapon using his thrust score" is you can have an absurd situation like some ST 5 goblin holding a tiny spear and then some ST5000 giant impales himself for hundreds of damage on it.

Yeah, some limit is appropriate. One option is that the foe deals damage as though they were wielding the weapon themselves, so it would be based on 3xMinST at the most. An alternative is to limit the foe's ST to be roughly equal to the wielder's BL (a Slamming foe is treated as weighing pounds equal to their ST).

Originally Posted by Plane

This is all very instantaneous though, it seems to cover "he ran himself through on my sword in an instant" situations" but not "he gradually ran himself forward on my spear over time".

I remember seeing that happen for dramatic effect in some martial arts flick but can't remember which one...

I'm thinking just "you can step to inflict thrust on a force field so you can step to inflict thrust on yourself via a spear" as an analogy.

Yeah, inflicting damage equal to your own thrust each second of walking forward might be a way to emulate that, if you have need to.

Originally Posted by Plane

That's sometimes subjective though. "You do triple damage" is actually a bad thing if you weren't intending to kill a foe.

So, that would go something like this:

"Player: Alright, I don't want to kill this guy, so I'll flip my spear around and thrust the blunt butt-end into his chest. *Rolls* Sweet, a 3! Critical Hit. *Rolls again* Crap, a 3! If I do triple damage, I might just kill the poor guy...

GM: Well, you had a Critical Success, which shouldn't be a bad thing. You can waive the triple damage result and just do normal damage instead; it's still a Critical Hit, so he doesn't get to defend.

Player: Hey, yeah, that sounds great. Thanks!"

And there you go.

Originally Posted by Plane

We have PU5p4 "Buying Failures" for situations like this, it notes "critical success to failure costs 3 points".

I'd need to look at PU5 again, but I'd never charge a player to turn their own problematic Critical Success into a Failure. Of course, I'd be disinclined to use character points as currency for impulse buys - better to allow characters to invest in Destiny or similar to get a regenerating source of impulse points than permanently burn points for effects. But that's just me.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking of. There, as you note, the struck foe gets to decide if he/she would rather back off or keep going. In a case where the foe has stumbled into the spear by accident (due to either CritFail on their end, or a CritSuccess on the defender's end), however, I'd say if they want to avoid fully running themselves through, they need to roll against either Dodge or their best Unarmed Parry (which doesn't count as an Active Defense, it's just a good measure of the character's reaction speed and efficiency).

From the speared guy's perspecitive if spear-guy uses a Stop-Hit, it's like an accident: something happened which he didn't intend.

MA106 gives a pair of "two movement points" situations, one being "points to sidestep" if you lose the contest of ST when held at bay, or if you got impaled, it's "points to back off" which seems to imply free removal from the spear.

Not sure if the latter should still apply as of Technical Grappling basically giving a free grapple to the spear-user and it's their option if they want to leave it in or take it out... like is the movement points thing still an alternate option to using a "Break Free" attack to reduce the Control Points of a spear-in-body grapple?

*sends telepathic vibes to Cole*

Going on your idea of using a parry... TG36 mentions "Escaping Parry" can be based on "an appropriate melee weapon skill". It doesn't mention what's appropriate but I imagine that might mean soemthing like "your skill in the weapon which is grappling you" (Escaping Parry based on Spear if a spear is stuck inside you and you're trying to get it out with your bare hands) or perhaps "your skill in a weapon which is grappled" (Escaping Parry based on Spear if someone is grappling your Spear)

If we used this, we could reduce the free Control Points that a Spear automatically establishes (as of TG) when impaled inside a foe.

Originally Posted by Varyon

As with the case discussed in this thread, if the foe is trying to run themselves through and you'd rather they didn't, I'd let you pull out your spear with a successful Parry. Note this means the foe simply gets to close the distance without needing to worry about the spear in the way.

Since normally a parry is for avoidance, thoughts on rolling an "escaping parry" (-2 penalty) and rolling thrust to see how many CP you subtract from the CP your spear being left in the body would do?

I've always thought this would be good emulation for "it's easier to pull your spear back for the next attack if it missed than if you stuck it in someone" (ie not just a problem for the swing-impale crowd, they should just have a more awkward time getting it loose.

Originally Posted by Varyon

Things are hairier if you're using a barbed spear, as pulling it out does half the damage it did going in (and requires a Ready by RAW, although I'd be inclined to have you trade an attack instead). In that case, I'd say the barbs make it too difficult to pull out with a quick reaction, so you're basically helpless to prevent the target from running themselves through.

Using the TG system for Control Points seems like a natural fix here: the damage caused coming out is still injury caused by an impaling weapons, so you could treat that as establishing even more control points that you need to "Break Free" of.

That actually brings up an interesting point: since reducing a spear's grapple is now a gradual process (ie if someone puts a spear in you, maybe it takes 2-3 turns of "Break Free" to get it out) how exactly does the "half damage it went going in" get partitioned?

The best I can figure is this...

TG15 says "considered to have inflicted CP equal to basic damage"

so if pulling out causes "half the injury", you're negating the effects of "half the basic damage"

so basically, for every 2 CP you remove from the grapple, it should create the effects of 1 basic damage.

so for every 2 CP you remove, the barbs inflict 1 more basic damage (and restore 1 control point)

Eventually you're down to 0 CP and removing the last CP (to get to -1) to end the grapple will not add +1 CP, so you're free.

The effects of this injury-wise would depend on wound multipliers per usual.

Originally Posted by Varyon

Perhaps something like "on a Failure by 1 (on the Parry to get the weapon out of the way), roll normal damage for your attack, halve it, and reduce the foe's damage by this amount." As a further option, rather than MoS 0 meaning you get it completely out of the way, you reduce damage by your full rolled amount - so if you're of comparable ST to the foe, you have a good chance of negating the damage, but it's not a given. For MoS 1+, you simply get the weapon out of the way.

by the time a Stop Hit is done, you've already made contact and are inflicting some amount of damage, so I don't really think there should be any kind of "complete avoidance" here

It's more like perceiving "wait, they're leaning into my hit at the last second" and jerking back at last second.

I do like your idea of somehow tying the damage you're able to subtract from his damage (not your own, you already committed to it) to a kind of parry roll to represent your reaction speed.

Strange thing I just noticed: you can attempt dodges yet still do the whole "impale myself further on a spear" thing which seems weird to me. It's like "I was trying to avoid the spear but then realized it hit me so I figured -heck yeah- and leaned into the hit I was trying to avoid a split second earlier'.

Originally Posted by Varyon

Yeah, some limit is appropriate. One option is that the foe deals damage as though they were wielding the weapon themselves, so it would be based on 3xMinST at the most.

This doesn't really reflect how little arm ST the goblin has to stabilize that spear so it can bust through your DR and stuff, more likely your DR's resistance will just push it out of his hands.

Though there weirdly isn't any kind of "I drop my sword if a 500d crushing knockback-only attack hits my sword" in basic rules, the Gun-Fu thing of making a ST roll (subtracting basic damage) which got extrapolated to Sorcery:PAWS could be a baseline.

Originally Posted by Varyon

Yeah, inflicting damage equal to your own thrust each second of walking forward might be a way to emulate that, if you have need to.

Sometimes I wonder if instead of Striking ST allowing that to be Lifting ST should be allowed if you're doing it at a slower pace, like maybe you could roll thrust-based-on-lifting if it's every 2 seconds instead of 1?

Originally Posted by Varyon

So, that would go something like this:

"Player: Alright, I don't want to kill this guy, so I'll flip my spear around and thrust the blunt butt-end into his chest. *Rolls* Sweet, a 3! Critical Hit. *Rolls again* Crap, a 3! If I do triple damage, I might just kill the poor guy...

GM: Well, you had a Critical Success, which shouldn't be a bad thing. You can waive the triple damage result and just do normal damage instead; it's still a Critical Hit, so he doesn't get to defend.

Player: Hey, yeah, that sounds great. Thanks!"

And there you go.

There could also be situations where "I'm throwing telegraphic haymakers because I want my foe to succeed in parrying me" where a crit success would also be bad because it prevents parrying.

Maybe in these situations, rather than negating crit successes on the fly, a GM could allow a PC to specify before rolling "if I roll a critical success, it's a normal success" ?

Originally Posted by Varyon

I'd need to look at PU5 again, but I'd never charge a player to turn their own problematic Critical Success into a Failure. Of course, I'd be disinclined to use character points as currency for impulse buys - better to allow characters to invest in Destiny or similar to get a regenerating source of impulse points than permanently burn points for effects. But that's just me.

I think there's some precedent that if you pre-allocate your Bonus Points to an Impulse Buy in advance that it's half-cost. Cheaper cost for lost on-the-fly flexibility.

Should prob be some temporal guidelines though. Like yeah if you die, it's 50 points instead of 25 points to buy "extra life" in advance, but you shouldn't be able to get that -50% discount if you're trapped in a bomb with a room and make the purchase a second before it goes boom.

I think part of the 'belated double cost' could be akin to "I don't need to arrange the plot normally required to buy exotic advantages"

[Rasna]

Originally Posted by Plane

I was looking at B557 and result 5 ("you hit a solid object") on the Unarmed Critical Miss Table. It also applies to results 6 and 16 on that table.

Instead of a broad "wall, floor, etc" the "exception" says "you fall on his weapon" if the foe you missed was holding a readied Impaling weapon.

There might be situations where that's not desirable for the spear-holder though, like "I don't want to kill this crazed peasant trying to punch me, he's drunk and I'm trying to protect him" or "I at least don't want him stuck on my spear, it would take time to get him off where I could be attacked by others" or even "he has acid blood which is going to ruin my spear"

So should there be some option to maybe treat this like a non-critical successful attack on a weapon where the spear-holder might perform a dodge or parry to prevent contact with his spear if he doesn't want the free auto-impale against the unarmed attacker who crit-failed a punch on him?

-

a similar concern for results 3 and 18... if the GM says "walk facefirst
into an opponent’s fist" shouldn't the owner of that fist have a say in if they WANT their fist to make contact?

I think "you trip and fall on your head" is more analagous to the earlier "you hit a wall" or "you hit a floor" results that don't involve contact with other characters.

I was thinking 3/18 instead of auto-KO could be something like "take a 2-yard fall/collision to your skull" or maybe like 5/16 where you suffer the results of the striking ST you were using for the failed attack? It seems like helmet and skull DR should matter.

Unwanted impaling damage to the target could be avoided if the spear is wielded with a Defensive Grip or with the Staff skill. The Spear and the Long Spear have the same weight and lenght respectively of the Quarterstaff (4 lbs., Reach 2) and the Long Staff (5 lbs. Reach 3). Swings are the same of Quarterstaff/Long Staff at -1 cr damage due to the absence of end caps in Spear/Long Spear, while thrusts with the butt of the weapon are the same of Quartestaff/Long Staff at -1 cr damage (same cr damage with a blunt butt spike or spearhead thrust-1 impaling damage with a pointed butt spike).