Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Akharu 10-04-05, 12:16 PM	I'll try to keep this short. One of my players is making a Fighter/Dwarven Defender who will be taking the Phalanx Fighting feat out of Complete Warrior which requires him to use a heavy shield and a light weapon. Basically, all he's wanting to have a spear weapon with the Kusari-gama stats. What we'd do is just change the name of the weapon to something like Phalanx Spear and mechanically treat it just as we would the Kusari-gama using the identical stats for the K-g. He would still have to take Exotic Weapon Proficiency to use the weapon. As DM, I don't see a problem with this especially since he could just as easily use K-g completely legal. Just trying to get opinions. Also, I thought there was a weapon/spear in CW or CAdv that worked in pretty much the same way. I think the only difference was that you had to use a move action to change the grip so you could attack 5ft away.
Tony Vargas 10-04-05, 01:20 PM	Balance-wise, obviously, there's nothing wrong with this - if you find the k-g balanced in the first place, which is debateable. However, it doesn't model a spear very well - it's good for tripping and disarming, which doesn't make much sense for a spear, and can't be set vs a charge, which does, and it has dual-reach, when a light spear, if it had reach at all, would reasonably have conventional reach (not threatening within 5'). You could house-rule the phallanx feat to work with "a light piercing weapon, trident or spear." (a trident is basically a D&D one-handed martial spear) This would allow the player to use a shortspear or trident. You could also add a balanced one-handed, martial spear with reach. Just take the longspear, reduce it's crit to x2 (like the other one-handed 'spears,' the shortspear & trident) and class it as one-handed and martial. It could even /be/ a longspear, just used with martial instead of simple proficiency (much like a bastard sword is one-handed when exotic & two-handed when martial). Or, instead of modifying the feat, you could add a special one-handed reach spear that is exotic, and either light, or simply 'counting as light' for the purposes of phallanx fighting, only. The stats should be identical to the one-handed martial reach spear - that is, a longspear with a x2 crit. If you're counting it as 'light' it should probably litterally be lighter, as well, and a distinct weapon from other spears. If it's 'light for phallanx fighting, only' then it could just be physically identical to a longspear (as above).