Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?

[Plane]

One thing I think we're overlooking here is that if this rich dude has enough wealth to buy armor (and prep to armor up ahead of time) he probably also has the wealth/prep to get on horseback for superior mobility than the spear guy.

This would be very different on horseback since you could have your horse charge the spear guy and using spears in close combat gets pretty tricky.

A spear wielded 2H is reach 1,2* which means it takes a ready maneuver to change reach, so if you're stuck at reach 2 then you're -8 to skill to use it in Close Combat until you make that ready maneuver.

Originally Posted by Aldric

Fighting blind is not really a great idea

usually not, though the armor makes it a lot more feasible to do

B394's visibility rules make it only -6 if you can still see your surroundings (buckler-over-face guy still can see up/down/left/right just not front) and a mere -4 to hit if you still have an idea of where the person is (ie you know they are in the hex ahead of you because otherwise you would be able to see them coming around the left/right of your buckler)

You get -4 to defenses in this situation but if you're already doomed due to Deceptive Attack then you're probably just going to make All-Out Attacks anyway.

AOA:double where 1st is a DWA (shield bash + sword) and 2nd is another sword hit could be pretty effective - if you're purely relying on your high spear skill to parry this stuff then that 3rd parry is going to be at -8

Using that spear to parry also sets up rich guy to use his ST 12 for a Bash as well which is going to penalize parries coming in the following turn.

Your basic spear also weighs only 4 pounds (B273) so it risks breaking if you use it to parry an attack 3x that (12+) per B376, so ST12 guy making a slam would be adequate to do that.

This would also apply if using the 15lb medium shield on B287 (2 in 6 chance of breaking) and using a Shield Bash w/ a 25lb heavy shield has a 5/6 chance of breaking the spear if it parries.