D&D 5E Have we misunderstood the shield and sword fighter (or warrior)?

[Charlaquin]

Holding the spear (or staff...) with one-hand and doing a reverse spin to swing the butt-end around is easy enough. It isn't as effective (hence the low damage), but can catch an opponent off guard.

Sure, which is why I said there are some cases where you might do so. It’s just not typically going to be your best option. And it certainly won’t be catching anyone off-guard when you do it consistently every 6 seconds

I had a PC who was a spear/shield ranger with Dueling and STR 18 and PAM, so the butt-end damage was d4+6.

Yeah, it’s a pretty strong style, but I think balanced fine compared to PAM with a halberd or glaive and defense fighting style. Same average damage, just sacrificing the higher maximum and Reach for +1 AC. Also both hands are continually occupied instead of having one hand free when you aren’t attacking.

 

[ECMO3]

I would need to be on a PC to write a full reply, but I will say the central bit:

I didn't really consider the subclasses, because they benefit most styles roughly equally

I would not agree with this. Champion and Purple Dragon are the only ones that really apply equally.

Rune Knight for example gets an extra 1d6 damage with one hit a turn, but you have to hit to get it, so doing GWM and reducing your hit chance reduces your chance to land that extra damage. RK also gets advantage to strength checks which is going to be of more benefit to someone who us doing strength checks regularly, like tavern brawler or shield master.

Eldritch Knight gets a bonus action attack when he uses cantrip. In play this gives him an extra 1d8 damage using a blade cantrip for the EK (or more if 2 enemies are close together). Cavalier also gets a bonus action attack up to 5 times a day if an enemy hits someone else. These directly conflict with PAM bonus action attack though.

 

[ECMO3]

Last time I looked staves and spears were not polearms...ever.

?????

When did you look? Spears have always been polearms. They are the quintesential pole arm. Most would consider quarterstaffs and cudgels to be pole arms too.

A pole arm means literally a weapon (arm) made from a pole.

 

[Charlaquin]

It's funny, because they left the Pike out of that attack, which presumes that even the designer felt that turning a pike all the way around was a step too far.

It's too far with the other weapons as well.

The solution is not to limit it to weapons that someone who doesn't know what they're talking about would think would work - the solution ought to be to change the fluff. There's many, many ways why any of that group of weapons (and, as @Oofta says, many other weapons, and weapon combinations) could have to get an extra 1d4 bludgeoning thump in.

It’s viable in some situations. Just usually not the best option.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Sure, which is why I said there are some cases where you might do so. It’s just not typically going to be your best option. And it certainly won’t be catching anyone off-guard when you do it consistently every 6 seconds

But think about how good you would be at it doing it every 6 seconds!

Yeah, it’s a pretty strong style, but I think balanced fine compared to PAM with a halberd or glaive and defense fighting style. Same average damage, just sacrificing the higher maximum and Reach for +1 AC. Also both hands are continually occupied instead of having one hand free when you aren’t attacking.

I think overall it is well-balanced between the different build types, each have their strengths and weaknesses of course.

 

[Digdude]

?????

When did you look? Spears have always been polearms. They are the quintesential pole arm. Most would consider quarterstaffs and cudgels to be pole arms too.

A pole arm means literally a weapon (arm) made from a pole.

 

[Digdude]

Help yourself to a quick wiki search. There are no staves, cudgels, or any other far-fetched wooden poles except for weapons with heads attached. All shown are two handed wooden shafts with all kinds of shapes of weapon heads.

 

[FireLance]

That's kind of the point, though isn't it? Why would you ban something that allows you to do the thing you think you should be able to do, just because someone wrote some dumb fluff for it?

Insert snarky 4E reference here.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I edited my OP to make my central point clear: Sword and Shield is a bit better to compensate for the lack of feats

It’s ok. It got derailed in less than 1 page.

 

[James Gasik]

Help yourself to a quick wiki search. There are no staves, cudgels, or any other far-fetched wooden poles except for weapons with heads attached. All shown are two handed wooden shafts with all kinds of shapes of weapon heads.

Ok, so I went to Wikipedia, and found this:

In the words of the arms expert Ewart Oakeshott-

Staff-weapons in Medieval or Renaissance England were lumped together under the generic term "staves" but when dealing with them in detail we are faced with terminological difficulty. There never seems to have been a clear definition of what was what; there were apparently far fewer staff-weapons in use than there were names to call them by; and contemporary writers up to the seventeenth century use these names with abandon, calling different weapons by the same name and similar weapons by different names. To add to this, we have various nineteenth century terminologies used by scholars. We must remember too that any particular weapon ... had everywhere a different name.

So apparently calling a polearm a "staff-weapon" or "stave" was perfectly legitimate.