Have you ever used the 10-foot pole?

[diaglo]

My PCs carry an 11' pole. . . because, as everyone knows, there are just some things you won't touch with a 10' pole.

Ghost quote: "Ditto."

always used an 11ft pole myself too.

 

[Tav_Behemoth]

I've seen a 10' pole used in my campaign to great effect by Justice Gray, the party's monk (who uses the Ember D&D plastic mini; if you imagine that the monk is 7' tall, like Justice, she might well be carrying a 10' pole).

None of these uses are the classic poking-and-probing; they're more usually pole-vaults, set-ups for acrobatic swings, etc. Susannah, Justice's player, had never played D&D before so things like skill checks etc. don't really matter to her, but she's got a great gift for visualizing a situation and thinking up cool Jackie Chan things to do within that framework.

 

[Wolfspirit]

I was going to say, wasn't it the 11' pole that got a lot of use?

You know, of all the 3e games I've been in, I think I've seen about 5 pits total, trap or otherwise. That, and at least one of my GMs doesn't deal well with "out of the box" thinking, and all the nifty uses I could ever think of to do with something like that would fall flat.

To top it off, it's a 10' (11') pole. It's big, heavy, and forget about going through winding passages. Not that great for the games I've played in.

 

[Jai Kel]

For 1st and 2nd Edition there were two gear requirements for every adventuring party I was a part of...

1. Halfling (any variety will do)
2. 10' pole

Thus giving you the ubiquitous Halfling on a Stick.

There's nearly 1001 uses for this device...

 

[Mindseye]

Yep....used one last Saturday in the True Dungeon at Gencon. Maybe it was more like a 7 foot pole, but the spirit was there!

 

[DonaldRumsfeldsTofu]

My PCs carry an 11' pole. . . because, as everyone knows, there are just some things you won't touch with a 10' pole.

I'm really glad someone made that joke. I was fearing I'd have to do it for a second

 

[absurdum]

I guess a Quarter Staff is close enough, though. What'd that be? 5 or 6 foot?

Why is a Quarter Staff called a *quarter* staff anyway? Quarter of what? The 20-foot pole?

It's called a quarterstaff because of the way it is held in combat.
I am going to draw a diagram, - are the pole, and + are hands

------------+-----+-----

is how you hold a quarterstaff, with one hand at the half, and one at the quarter.


if you were to hold it like this
---------+---------+----------

it would be a half staff..


but I digress.

 

[Timely Drought]

We used to carry around an 11 foot pole for setting off those traps with a 10 foot explosion radius.

I'm glad skills took over in 3e. Few things annoyed me more than having the game grind to a halt to figure out puzzle traps.

 

[Fajitas]

Let me tell you a story about 10' poles...

When I lived on the East Coast, I used to be very active in a LARP group. Well, one game, a bunch of us decided to come as the Clichedians-- a group of horribly cliched characters straight out of the 1st Ed. PH. One of our guys went through the 1st Ed. equipment list, and we made sure that we were carrying pretty much every darned thing on the list: grappling hook, mirror, birdcage, 50' of rope, you name it.

I was in charge of the 10' pole.

I can say, from experience, that anyone who is carrying a 10' pole and then says they're taking an action *other* than "I carry my 10' pole" is a big fat liar.

 

[the Jester]

10' poles... ah, yes. Those were the days.