Great,
The spears actually work better because you can get the butt attack for 1d4. It doesn't work with pikes (makes sense, pikes are super long spears, and before checking, I thought it would be odd to have that benefit apply to them - the designers agreed).
Thorbin will head for the pikes though, since those weapons are visible to him & are close. Since the guards fell in the water, he'll likely hear them, so he'll try to help. He'll upgrade to the spears if he has a chance later.
Cheers,
SG
Cool, but I should have mentioned that I'm still waiting on a thing or two to start the first full round (or the second, after the one where nearly everyone is surprised, if you count it properly 5e-style). Or to put it simply - you shouldn't go again quite yet. It's okay, I'll use your post for that round, just remember that when I tell everyone to go, you don't have to (unless you want to change what you're gonna do, I'm going to reveal more of what's going on first).
I'm just waiting on
@KahlessNestor's dc10 dex save to see if Valrin's in the water, and
@Snarf Zagyg to post whatever Razum is up to. If they don't get time to do it soon, I'll move on anway (which is fine, they can just add it to the first part of their following turn). I'll probably do this later today.
As an aside, I've trained a bit in the use of a polearm (though not a pike, really). Anyway, I sort-of don't entirely agree with the fluff of how the feat works anyway, pike or not. It's pretty slow to turn a polearm around (even a shorter one) and yet it's pretty quick to thrust it twice. At any rate, rather than saying that the feat wouldn't work with a pike, I would just have changed the fluff to represent a quick weak-thrust as the bonus action, seeing as they consider the bonus action 1d4 to be balanced with the regular attack of other polearms, it doesn't seem to make much of a difference. But that's just me.
(As an aside, I can't imagine how anyone would use a quarterstaff
without using both ends, which 5e doesn't model at all, go figure.)