Spiked Chains: Pure cheese or sometimes OK?

[NilesB]

A guisarme has reach and can trip. you can still take weapon-specific feats.

But it doesn't help you disarm...

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Dannyalcatraz, a mallet or sledge needs only to hit an unmoving target under no split second time pressure, a weapon has much greater needs as far as fast precise control i.e. wieldiness.

if you think a morningstar is anything like as masive or unbalanced as a sledge you really need to do some more research before you start making blanket claims.

Actually, I wasn't claiming they are as massive- sledgehammers typically weigh 2-5x as much as a weapon meant for war- I'm saying that they use a similar distribution of the mass they DO have.

I've handled weapons.

If you take a well-made longsword, the balance point of the weapon is below the midpoint of the weapon's length within a few inches of the crossguard.

A shorter blade's balance point is typically below the crossguard in the actual hilt.

By way of contrast, axes, maces, flails, morningstars and similar weapons concentrate their mass towards the weapon's striking tip- essentially the reverse of the balance of a short blade. Its a function of the way they do damage.

In further contrast, a chain is typically balanced perfectly to its midpoint, and its construction material (metal chain links of equal size) makes the balance fairly evenly distributed along the whole weapon's length. Even weighting the tip amounts to only a few percentage points of shifting mass to the tips- those weights aren't bowling balls or grapeshot- they're smaller than a key-lime.