Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Mithridates 03-31-05, 02:29 AM	Longspears are nice, but sometimes you need that extra length to outdo your enemy. I'm thinking some really long spears here, probably more useful in formations than by a single player. Looking back on (real) ancient history, while many Greek hoplite spears could be considered longspears, sarissas (used by Macedonian phalanxes in particular) may have cleared more than 20 feet. Even if you account for several feet being held behind the warrior's hands, that's easily 15 feet of reach. I'm assuming that such long reach would work in much the same way as normal 10' reach, only more so, threatening a "ring" of squares farther away. What I'm not clear on are the rules for using such a weapon in a formation. The "over your shoulder" grip required to hold a sarissa or simiar pike over the shoulder of the guy in front of you doesn't lend itself as well to leverage and accuracy as the "hold it like a regular spear" grip does, which the front line of a phalanx would be using. There's also the cover rules to consider; how effective is such a formation in combat? Logically, it wouldn't make sense for you to accidentally hit the guy in front of you (he's not very close to the business end of your spear), but how much would he hinder your ability to fight? If you have more than one rank in front of you, does that compound the difficulty?
Colmarr 03-31-05, 02:54 AM	You are effectively describing the pike. It doesn't exist in core v3.5 D&D, I suspect largely because it simply isn't feasible as a weapon in small-scale combat. If you were to create it, I would treat it as a martial weapon with the stats of a shortspear, but with reach of 15'. Anyone within 10' of the user would be safe from attack. In terms of the cover question, the rules for reach weapons say that you determine cover as though the attack was a ranged attack. Therefore, pick a corner of the attacker's square. If any line from that corner to any corner of the target's square crosses another creature, the target has cover. Although you can't "hit" the guy in front of you, he can get in the way of your thrusting, move sideways and knock your attack aside, or back into you and hamper your movement. Mechanically, there is no difference between one rank of cover and multiple ranks. At some point (I would say the 3rd or 4th rank), the DM will probably upgrade the cover amount to heavy cover and give an AC bonus of +8 rather than +4, as allowed in the DMG.