35ft reach???

[irdeggman]

I just imagine a guy (or girl) swingin a spiked chain towards a line of people, sweeping at them all.

DM: Okay, you get hit, you get hit, and you are fine, because you are in the middle?

Call me an idiot, but for someone who is role-playing kinda strict, I'd even call that one attack that did much less damage.

The spiked chain is really broken because of what it is, a mobile contortable, long weapon which has spikes running all the way down its length. If I was a dm and wanted to fix it, Id make it do much less damage. like 1d4. Or you know what, how about its only 5ft long?

Just another spiked chains are broken thread.

Hmmm so how can a weapon (in 3.5) strike everyone in a line again?

A character with a high enough BAB can make multiple attacks but that is not the same as an equivalent to many shot (i.e., shooting mutiple arrows with the same action)

 

[Ungruush]

well, as far as the OP was concerned...

A medium character with maximum reach, eh?

I'd go:

Goliath (for Powerful Build...large longspear),
Monkey Grip (for a better increased weapon size....huge longspear),
Get some Strong Arm Bracers (For even greater weapon size....gargantuan longspear),
and Righteous Might...

If you went ahead and used Gargantuan Longspear, with your righteous might, you should be looking at a reach of about 50ft. if my math is correct...

then you could add the inhuman reach for another 5ft. and your cleric spell for another 5ft. and you are looking at a grand total of 60ft.

sounds painful

 

[Philodendron]

If you want to hit everyone in line... don't forget about the rules for soft cover and reach weapons.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Goliath (for Powerful Build...large longspear),
Monkey Grip (for a better increased weapon size....huge longspear)

Monkey Grip has no real use for a character with Powerful Build; it doesn't give you any increase on what you can already do.

(Powerful Build lets you use a Large Longspear, and Monkey Grip lets you use a Large Longspear with a -2 penalty. The combination lets you use... a Large Longspear.)

So with the Strongarm Bracers, you're a Medium creature using a Huge Longspear, which gives you a reach of 10 feet (Medium creature w/ reach weapon). With Righteous Might, you're a Large creature using a Gargantuan Longspear, which gives you a reach of 20 feet (Large creature w/ reach weapon).

-Hyp.

 

[moritheil]

... it doesn't?

Chain, Spiked: A spiked chain has reach, so you can strike opponents 10 feet away with it. In addition, unlike most other weapons with reach, it can be used against an adjacent foe.​

At 10' reach it does, but not when enlarged. "It can be used against an adjacent foe." That means you threaten the 5' around you.

Again, this is the RAW interpretation. I'm aware that cases are made for either side of the argument.

I just imagine a guy (or girl) swingin a spiked chain towards a line of people, sweeping at them all.

DM: Okay, you get hit, you get hit, and you are fine, because you are in the middle?

Call me an idiot, but for someone who is role-playing kinda strict, I'd even call that one attack that did much less damage.

The spiked chain is really broken because of what it is, a mobile contortable, long weapon which has spikes running all the way down its length. If I was a dm and wanted to fix it, Id make it do much less damage. like 1d4. Or you know what, how about its only 5ft long?

Just another spiked chains are broken thread.

It comes down to how you play 3.5. If the weapons behave in certain ways as laid out by the rules, and the explanations are just fluff, then you would do well to run things by the rules. But if the weapons have to behave in ways that fit your imagination, and the rules are secondary, then yes, you will have this sort of problem.

 

[Fortain]

Side-note...

...to OPs question, a Spiked Chain can hit anyone within reach, from 5ft. onward. There's no "donut hole" area where she can't hit.

Quote from WotC 3.5E FAQ, dated 12/21/07:
The description of the spiked chain states that it is a
reach weapon that can be used against adjacent foes. What
if a Large creature wields a Large spiked chain? Can it
attack the squares that are 10 feet away? What are the
adjacent foes of a Large or larger creature?

As with the vast majority of examples in the Player’s
Handbook, the spiked chain description assumes that the
wielder is a Small or Medium creature wielding a spiked chain
appropriate to her size. What the description really means is
that a character wielding a spiked chain can attack creatures
that are within her natural reach (in addition to those at the
normal range of a reach weapon). For a Medium or Small
creature, that means creatures that are 5 feet away (i.e.,
“adjacent”).
A Large creature wielding a spiked chain (or similar reach
weapon that also allowed attacks against adjacent creatures)
could attack creatures within her natural reach (that is, who are
either 5 or 10 feet away), in addition to those at the normal
range of a Large reach weapon (15 or 20 feet away).
A Huge creature wielding a spiked chain could attack
creatures 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, or 30 feet away. A Gargantuan
creature wielding a spiked chain could attack creatures 5, 10,
15, 20, 25, 30, 35, or 40 feet away, and a Colossal creature
wielding a spiked chain could attack creatures anywhere from 5
to 60 feet away.

 

[moritheil]

...to OPs question, a Spiked Chain can hit anyone within reach, from 5ft. onward. There's no "donut hole" area where she can't hit.

Quote from WotC 3.5E FAQ, dated 12/21/07:

I don't mean to be snide, but this is the point at which you lost any hope of conclusively ending the argument. The 3.5 FAQ is notorious for incorrect judgments and contradicting both the printed rules and itself.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

In 3.5, a Medium creature using a Large reach weapon threatens the same area he does with a Medium reach weapon.

I understand this is the admittedly majority reading of the rules, but 'Smurf and I disagree on this one, and I'm not alone.

A question posed to the Sage Re: Monkey Grip and Reach was answered (and I paraphrase) that though the rules are silent on whether the medium creature with a size large weapon gets additional reach, it was within the spirit of the rules and he'd probably allow it (I have the quote and the Dragon cite on my PDA, but its not with me right now).

That said, instead of going with Righteous Might, I'd go with the Psionic power Expansion, which allows your PC 2 size increases- meaning a Med creature would become Huge. In addition, there are feats in one of the FR books and also DCv1 that get you an additional 5' reach (I probably wouldn't let them stack). Coupled with the abberation feat...

I'm also not sure that the spell that boosts weapon size stacks with other size-increasing spells, powers or abilities.

Again- some of what I'm talking about I have in a file on my absent PDA- I'll repost on this later.

 

[Flipguarder]

I liked this topic mainly because a lot of the issues are undiscussed in the PHB. In those cases, I take reality as a template for how to make rules. I don't mean the swinging attack i mentioned earlier, because that would be rediculous in game, I just wanted to mention it to be a jerk, Idk.

Also, I've always considered the Psionic books to be WAAAAY overpowered, as those rules, and the DMM feats are the largest providers of cheese for 3.5. I don't even own the book, so I didn't mention it.

 

[moritheil]

I liked this topic mainly because a lot of the issues are undiscussed in the PHB. In those cases, I take reality as a template for how to make rules. I don't mean the swinging attack i mentioned earlier, because that would be rediculous in game, I just wanted to mention it to be a jerk, Idk.

Also, I've always considered the Psionic books to be WAAAAY overpowered, as those rules, and the DMM feats are the largest providers of cheese for 3.5. I don't even own the book, so I didn't mention it.

DSP is bigger cheese than DMM, and there are cheesier things than DPS - but you're right in that DMM is cheesy. In general it's best to not cite something like DMM (which is standard or even sub-par for a character optimizer) as "the largest provider of cheese."

Along those lines, there are many who insist that Psionics are very well-balanced and it is only DMs who don't know the system well that allow people to exploit it (for example, forgetting to enforce level-based PP restrictions or forgetting to check for psionic focus.) I will let them make their case themselves.

The problem with running things "by reality" occurs when you reject something and others are not equally unaccepting of the possibility. If you want broadly applicable rulings you will have to at least be aware of the possibility that other peoples' imaginations do not match yours. In the past, I ran into a couple players who insisted that I was wrong as a DM simply because they couldn't wrap their heads around certain things - whether fireball spells or rules for how attacks work. While magic is usually the biggest offender (fireball violates thermodynamics, which is an issue if you game with engineers or scientists), it is also a problem when one person wants to do something a lot more cinematic than other people feel should be possible.

In the end it is best to tell your group ahead of time which way you run things, by strict RAW or by instinct. In the case above, I had told them at the beginning that I would run strict RAW, so the repeated protestations of "that doesn't make sense to me" were not of value. If you don't do this, prepare for arguments over minutia.