Two hands for a spear?

[0bsolete]

A player wanted to make a character who used a spear and net (he's not big on tridents). The problem he found though, was that the spear is a two-handed weapon. Now, looking back through history you find many groups of people who used spears and spear like weapons as one handed weapons. Any group which used a phalanx formation, most greek heroes, many of the roman gladiators, and countless other groups. Even mounted units. At first when he pointed this out to me, my first instinct was to go with the book, then I thought about it and realized it didn't make sense. This is a 6lb spear, so its as heavy as many one-handed weapons and lighter than a couple (heavy mace is one). Its not long enough to have reach and can be thrown pretty accurately over a distance, so obviously its not too long.

Would you chaps say it is fair to make it so that it is a two-handed weapon as a simple, but a one-handed as a martial? I can definitely understand where it would be unwieldly especially to somebody with almost no major training.

 

[ShadowChemosh]

Have the player use a shortspear, a one handed simple weapon, and the problem is solved.
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/weapons.htm#shortspear

 

[Aluvial]

I've already adopted the change that you make in my home game.

Two-Hands Simple --- One-Hand Martial

Aluvial

 

[Kat']

I'll second that. Seems balanced to me.

 

[Derro]

Good fix. That actually makes the spear viable as a primary weapon for martial oriented classes. The spear has the same stats as a battle-ax excepting a range increment and damage type.

The argument can be made that it is unbalanced because the spear is throwable but if it is your primary weapon you are effectively disarming yourself. So it is a bit of a trade-off.

 

[Herobizkit]

3.0 already had that fix.

Shortspear (Simple, 1d6/x3) and Spear (Martial, 1d8/x3) were one-handed, and the Longspear (Martial, 1d8/x3, Reach weapon) was two-handed.

 

[Nifft]

3.0 already had that fix.

Shortspear (Simple, 1d6/x3)

In 3.0e, it was called a "half-spear", wasn't it?

Cheers, -- N

 

[Hypersmurf]

3.0 already had that fix.

Shortspear (Simple, 1d6/x3) and Spear (Martial, 1d8/x3) were one-handed, and the Longspear (Martial, 1d8/x3, Reach weapon) was two-handed.

Better check your PHB again.

The three spears in 3E were halfspear (Simple, 1d6/x3, Medium), shortspear (Simple, 1d8/x3, Large), and longspear (Martial, 1d8/x3, Large, Reach weapon). So for a human, both the shortspear and longspear were two-handed weapons, and the halfspear was one-handed.

This is pretty much the same as 3.5 - the spear and longspear (the two 1d8 weapons, equivalent to 3E's shortspear and longspear) are two-handed, and the shortspear (the 1d6 weapon, equivalent to 3E's halfspear) is one-handed.

Neither edition has a 1d8/x3 one-handed spear.

-Hyp.

 

[Herobizkit]

I stand corrected.

Still, you see all those old pics of the spear-wielding warriors with shields and wonder why they carry them at all...

Since I obviously don't remember the rules that well, we effectively houseruled-without-knowing-we-houseruled the spear as a 1h weapon, and only the longspear needing 2h.

 

[jaelis]

One issue with making the spear a 1H martial weapon is that it handily blows the trident out of the water. (And we wouldn't want that ) Even compared to a battleaxe, it gets the set vs charge as well as the nice range increment.

One fine option is to say that you can wield the spear as a 1H martial melee weapon, but you can't throw it with one hand. Another is to make it a 1H exotic.