Take from someone with 10+years of korean and european sword training..a man with a spear has a considerable advantage over swords.

I’d personally give the shieldwall action to the pike (representing a heavier weapon being more sturdy perhaps), and give the spear the reach property; perhaps decreasing its maximum thrown range too. It would be nice to have reach on one simple weapon (besides the great club if we use the Altrole rules for those too, I mean). This solidly sorts the javelin into “thrown spear” and the spear into “melee spear” categories.

I'm trying to differentiate weapons in my game, by giving the character with the longer weapon initiative, spear over sword and axe, halberd etc over spear. Sword over dagger. Maybe just when you use it two handed? I like the piercing doing something, creating disadvantage. I have a magic spear that skewers someone on a NAT 20 . Spear deserves more use in D&D.

@DarkMark-cf1ec

Ай бұрын

easy fix: increase damage to d8 like the rapier, so 2h would be a d10 (they are effectively the same, you dont need much to pierce we used to kill things with JUST WOOD that got a tad sharpened, whole point is to have as little surface area as possible). also make them have 5+ reach (just like polearms) but 1 handed, the whole point is to have superior range, overcome armor and be able to use a shield like vikings

The spear not having the reach property feels weird, personally I house rule it that if you are wielding the spear in two hands it also gains Reach because you can hold it further down the shaft without losing control.

the spear and the rapier are effectively the same thing, the less surface area you have the easier it is to pierce. the spear should "realistically" deal 1d8 damage one handed, and give +5 ft reach (whole point of spears, they are like polearms duh)

Great series!

It's Finally here! I've been waiting for the spear!

A point of correction: spears didn't actually fall out of use; terminology and semantics just changed. Even as recently as the 18th century, weapons known as "half-pikes" were used aboard ships as standoff weapons and partisans and spontoons - both fundamentally similar forms of spear - were used by officers and NCO's to direct infantrymen and during a bayonet charge. 20th century lancers carried weapons that were practically indistinguishable from the earlier weapons of foot soldiers. My biggest issue with spears is that they could arguably be considered a martial weapon and should be competing with the likes of Longswords and Halberds. But between their lack of reach and limited comparative damage, they fall behind martial weapons for utterly arbitrary reasons. Ideally, I would just boost the weapon's damage to 1d8 and give it the Reach property, though that runs the risk of over buffing. If you want to separate the spear from martial pole weapons, you could gate the d8 (d10) damage behind the Polearm Master feat.

i think spears should just be reach weapons.