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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 8677972" data-attributes="member: 87792">This doesn't follow at all and the Hoplite is an excellent illustration of why. The Dory carried by hoplites would be long enough to be considered a pike - at 2.5-3m it was certainly a reach weapon. And trying to wield pike and shield as a combination is utterly useless in single combat to the point 5e doesn't allow it.The reason the pike swept the battlefield both for the Hoplites and later in the Pike & Shot era is that you used them in dense blocks. Because they were longer than anything else they'd attack first - and the second rank would get free attacks for anyone that stepped past the first rank. But the pike (and with it the hoplite) worked because it was a formation weapon; with pikes the reach allowed the rear ranks of the pike block to fight.Or to put things another way if three hoplites were confronted by three people with sword and shield their best plan would be to drop their pikes and draw their swords - otherwise they would probably lose hard. On the other hand if a hundred formed up hoplites with spear and shield, and their flanks protected, were confronted by three hundred people with sword and shield the best thing the swordsmen could do would be to retreat, preferably onto broken ground where the hoplites couldn't keep formation (which is a summary of how the Legions won at both Cynoscephalae and Pydna). The hoplite is a good member of a formation - but not a good individual fighter. And if they are trying to fight as individuals it should be with either thrown javelins or their <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiphos" target="_blank">sword</a>.And by making the spear a simple weapon 5e made the spear the weapon of militia and conscripts. By giving it a feat they also made it a weapon of the elite. Meanwhile skirmishers with money carry and use swords - which is all pretty accurate. (Swords were in reality mostly sidearms and are great weapons for carrying easily).</blockquote>

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