Where are hte polearms?

[Banshee16]

One might presume the existence of higher-level variants of create food and water with a more efficient output. Say, a 7th-level variant that created enough food and water for 100 people per caster level?

Or possibly a cleric using Empower Spell on his Create Food and Water, for instance?

But, looking at the charts for NPC level dispersement according to population, just how many level 5+ clerics are there really going to be in that army? I think you might have a handful that are lvl 7 or higher, maybe 8-16 there are around level 5, and then increasing levels of even lower level ones who can't cast it, and can really only do Cure Light Wounds, etc.

I think that in a D&D army, despite the presence of spellcasters, there really would be a minimal impact. I think that's why some games like Birthright had to create Battle Magic....magic is too limited when we're talking about armies, because it's based on a small squad/skirmish model.

Sure, you might get an archmage who decides to participate, and uses a meteor swarm that wipes out 100-200 men. But first of all, just how many archmages will there be who can do that? And how much effect will removing 100-200 men have?

I see the presence of mages etc. in the game as being almost like having nukes. Nobody uses them, but many have them. Similarly, I'm sure that an army would have a team of mages with a variety of spells memorized, in order to maximize the variety that can be counterspelled. Or, in a best case scenario, it would be as I just described, and at the same time, your army has a team of shock troopers or elites who are tasked with hunting down and destroying the other army's mages....if they manage to do it, they signal their own army, and the mages who had been holding back keeping their fireballs and cloudkills in memory to counterspell, turn around, and start using them on the other army's troops.

Banshee

 

[Diplomat123]

As several people have said, it depends on the level of magic and magical creatures in the world, and how keen those mages are to get stuck in. In terms of a large field battle, a low magic world might look quite like a medieval battle, whereas in a high magic world it could be a lot more like a modern battlefield with the grunts keeping their heads down as specialised and magically protected creatures and troops zoom around.

Defensive positions should still exist though. In our world an army that bypasses a fortress has to leave a large body of men behind to stop raids out of it against their supply lines. And the same should be true in a D&D setting. But those fortifications would look very different.

Someone has already mentioned the effect of a dragon on a typical open walled castle. But just a few low level rogues could easily scale a castle wall at night that would be a suicidal climb in our world, overcome a few guards and open the gate. Military fortifications (as opposed to cities) might be located only in a few key locations and not be open to the air at all. They would need to utilise spells in their construction to resist rock to mud, teleport and other similar spells. Such defensive spells might become standard in such a world.

As for cities. Most sieges come down to the attacker making a breach through the wall and forcing their way inside. Once they achieve that their numerical superiority tells and it is all over. I am assuming that no-one is able to magically protect an entire city from all the various spells, flying and burrowing creatures that could be brought into play. As the attacker presumably has more men, more creatures and more magic than the defender he can use these at a point of his choosing to breach the outer defences.

 

[Andor]

It's worth noting that a mid to high level druid is the terror of any army.

Rats chew your ropes, vines tangle up your wagon wheels every night, it rains out the roads, and your crops suffer drought, your water is poisoned, horrid diseases plague your troops, trees come to life and attack, your gear rusts. And you can't find the bastard. Ever. The only answer is to kill every squirrel, every mole, shrew, rat, bird, bat, dog, cat and stranger. And your own horses and oxen, donkeys, dogs.... Oh, and if your buddy goes off to the woods alone better give him the password when he gets back. Could be a druid in disguise.

If one side has druis and the other doesn't you got problems.

 

[Banshee16]

As for cities. Most sieges come down to the attacker making a breach through the wall and forcing their way inside. Once they achieve that their numerical superiority tells and it is all over. I am assuming that no-one is able to magically protect an entire city from all the various spells, flying and burrowing creatures that could be brought into play. As the attacker presumably has more men, more creatures and more magic than the defender he can use these at a point of his choosing to breach the outer defences.

I was under the impression that most seiges ended through treachery, not through the walls actually being breached.

As to protecting cities from certain types of spells etc. I'd think that a castle's defenders would be doing things like inventing enchantments that preventing someone from teleporting into the area, by bouncing their teleport out over the ocean, unless they're bearing a particular token item, including lead in the construction of particular rooms to prevent ethereal visitors, etc.

Banshee

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

This I am in agreement. Fast and cheap fortifications that don't pin the defending army in place I can see.

I guess my problem with static defenses is that, in my opinion, they leave the initiative to the attacker.

Here are my assumptions:
1) Defender has a strong defensive position, but the attacker has a stronger army (attacker had better have a stronger army, otherwise why is he attacking?)
2) Attacker can only take that position with great cost, or with magic.
3) Defender can only hold out against the attacker's magic with magic of it's own.
4) Both sides have equal magic power. Everything that one side has, the other side has available to it.

How do you, the defender, prep your spells to stop me the attacker? Do you take move earth to rebuild the walls that I brought down with my move earth? Do you take summon elemental to counter my earth elemental? What if you have an elemental memorized the day I decide to drop a cloudkill instead? What if you took 1 wind wall, 1 move earth, and 1 earth elemental and I decide to come in with 3 elementals?
I'll probably try a few change self or invisibility infiltrations, but I won't have high hopes - a proper defensive structure had better be protected against that sort of nonsense, but, still, you never know until you try.
I'm going to assume that you have dispel magics but those are unreliable and time sensitive. You can't dispel something once the magic is finished being cast.

Well, some you can and some you can't. You could dispel a cloudkill or an elemental. You can't dispel an earthquake or a move earth.

So one day I'll lob my spell offensive at 4am. The next I'll do it at 1am. And then I'll hit at noon. I can dictate the times that my offenses go off - your dispel magics and counterspells have to be available 24/7.

The problem with this is that the range of D&D spells is, for the most part, quite limited (long range and a massive area of effect is why Sunburst IS a world-shaking spell). In general, in order to use magic against the fortification, you need to come within bowshot of its walls. So, you can move up and do your thing at 4 AM, but by doing so you've started the engagement at 1 AM and the defender can shoot or fireball you just as you can shoot or fireball him (perhaps better because you have to expose your fireballer to retaliation in order to get it off but your opponent does not have to expose his magical resources to yours until he chooses to retaliate and at that point, choosing to retaliate for you simply means prolonging the engagement instead of retreating to try again at 1 PM).

The big advantage of the static fortifications is that they force the besieger to expend resources in order to use melee troops and allow the besieged to field a higher percentage of ranged troops--all of whom have better protection than the besieger's ranged troops will. Thus, while the attacker has more troops in your example, the defender can actually make use of a much higher percentage of his troops at any given point in the engagement and his troops have an advantage because of the fortifications. Magic weakens that advantage (because fortifications offer less of an advantage against magic than against physical weapons) but it still remains an advantage.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

While I realize the masses of polearms was certainly the most effective use of polearms, I think it's somewhat misleading to say that that's the ONLY place you saw them.

I suppose it depends if you include spears in with polearms.

However, watching my students drilling with naginata, I would say that polearms definitely can be used by individuals quite effectively.

I know this was way back in the thread, but could someone explain to me how polearms are useful to individual fighters? I'm not going to dispute anyone's historical knowledge or weapon training, since I have neither (at least in polearms), but my intuition tells me that they ought to be clumsy in one on one combat. Say one guy has a sword while the other has a pike. Wikipedia says that pikes were 10-14' long. The guy with the sword closes to effective sword range by parrying a thrust and stepping forward. You can't go as fast backward as forward so the pike guy can't stay away from him. Pike guy has to choke up on his weapon and all of the sudden he has a short spear with 8' of dead weight on the back end. Seems to me like he would be easy meat.

So how does it really work?

 

[Banshee16]

I know this was way back in the thread, but could someone explain to me how polearms are useful to individual fighters? I'm not going to dispute anyone's historical knowledge or weapon training, since I have neither (at least in polearms), but my intuition tells me that they ought to be clumsy in one on one combat. Say one guy has a sword while the other has a pike. Wikipedia says that pikes were 10-14' long. The guy with the sword closes to effective sword range by parrying a thrust and stepping forward. You can't go as fast backward as forward so the pike guy can't stay away from him. Pike guy has to choke up on his weapon and all of the sudden he has a short spear with 8' of dead weight on the back end. Seems to me like he would be easy meat.

So how does it really work?

Keep in mind that there are many *types* of polearms. Something like a pike really is intended for a particular use....like a hedge formation against cavalry, so I doubt anyone would dispute that it has limited use in melee.

However, there are plenty of others, such as glaives, halberds, poleaxes, etc. and many of them can be used more close in. On the documentary I saw, they showed that the poleaxe, for example, has a great degree of utility against a knight with a sword. The haft or head can be used to block a sword blow, and the wedge shape of the axe, or the hammer head can be used to trip up an enemy.

The example the guy hosting the documentary gave was a sample melee between him wielding the poleaxe, against a guy with a longsword. Both were wearing full plate. The guy with the longsword attacked, and he simply stepped back to avoid the blow, then took a swing with that long reach, and nailed the other guy with the axe. Against plate armour, axe trumps sword.

He then showed another example, where he used the poleaxe to parry the sword strike, then used the haft to lock up the guy's blade, and pull the sword out of his hands.

In a final example, he parried the guy's sword, with the poleaxe, then stepped in, and using the back of the axe blade, hooked it behind the opponent's head on his armour and stepped back, which resulted in the swordsman being pulled off his feet. Then, he stepped back, and using the spike, would have had a killing blow.

A major point he made was that plate armour was *very* effective against swords. But many polearms such as the poleaxe had the ability to punch through full plate armour. So the guy with the sword could hack away, and the plate armour blocks a lot of the blow.....but then the guy with the poleaxe only needs one hit with the spike on his opponent's helm, and he's driving a few inches of metal into the guy's brain. The sword, by contrast, is actually very unlikely to be able to cleave a helmet. They did some experiments to measure the truth of paintings showing guy's helmets being cleaved by sword blows, and found that helmets were *very* effective at stopping a sword....though the defender might very well have a major headache, concussion, or sore neck, even if he survives. Many polearms though? They punch right through.

I suspect it has to do with the amount of force from the blow, and how much space it's distributed over. A strike with a sword distributes the kinetic force of the blow across the length of blade hitting the target, by the width of the blade. That means much less force per inch than a spike, which is concentrating the same force into a 2 mm square area....giving the spike more penetrating power. I remember by brother, who's an engineer, showing me something similar with hammers. Use a regular hammer on a sheet of glass, and it won't necessarily break. Do the same thing with a ball peen hammer, which is curved, and so only impacts the glass at the apex of the curve, and it shatters every time. It was years ago that he showed me the example, so I might not be remembering the correct tools, but I do remember the principle of what he was trying to say.

In the documentary, the host made the case that most knights actually fought with polearms against each other, as those were the weapons needed to get through armour. Swords were used also, but they were more of a historical/prestige thing, because before the advent of plate, they'd been the main weapons of many European warriors for centuries.

The D&D rules don't simulate this very well however, which was why I created the thread However, some of the posters have pointed out some excellent ways in which the D&D rules either address this, or can be made to do so.

Banshee

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

One thing I've noticed with almost every exhibition of fighting with a polearm (save for the longest ones, like awl-pikes) and my personal sparring experience is that they almost always use it as what would be considered a double weapon in 3.X- something not reflected in the current rules without spending a feat.

Is using the haft the best way to use a polearm? Usually no, but if given the choice between blocking a sword blow at my thigh with the haft and not blocking a sword blow at my thigh at all, I'll take the first option 99% of the time...

 

[Mighty Halfling]

D&D's dislike for pole arms might have been created in 1st edition D&D when Weapon Speed Factors were in use. This figure (which reflected the time it took to use a weapon in combat) essentially pushed anyone with a pole arm way back in the initiative order.
With that squirming around in the back of their minds, maybe the designers of 3.0 didn't think to much of pole arms to give them much attention.
Also, IIRC weren't the tripping rules in 3.0 very difficult to use effectively? Things cleared up in 3.5. (I'm still dying to try a dwarf fighter with a tripping weapon!)
It might also help to develop rules for a using weapons to make a "forced dismount" attack on a mounted adversary.
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Boy, I was just looking at Dragon Compendium Vol. 1 in the story before I read this and I liked what I saw. With mention of expanded pole-arm rules/feats inside, I'm definitely buying it!
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And lastly, GREAT thread!

 

[Banshee16]

And lastly, GREAT thread!

Drinks all around!

Banshee