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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Flying Toaster" data-source="post: 9892183" data-attributes="member: 7052563">As a kid I had fun reading about all of the crazy polearms, but they definitely raised a lot of questions not easily answered in a world before the Internet.  Many of the names were in French, or referred to places like Bohemia or Lucerne.  How does anybody in Oerth know about Earth?  Or is it like a Hollywood sword & sandal epic, where we just understand that the American English we hear stands in for Ancient Greek?Even then I assumed that some of the polearm names were examples of weird medieval military humor.  An ordinary earspoon was a commonplace ear cleaning tool, so maybe the polearm name was a boast about how Bohemians were so rugged they used polearms to dig out earwax.  Or maybe it was actually a wartime dig at Bohemians by their enemies, like “Dutch courage” - Bohemians are so crazy or stupid that they used polearms to dig out earwax.  Without a specific reference from history, it is hard to say.PCs in our AD&D games rarely used polearms, tridents, or even spears very much, because we tended to worry about which weapons could be used in the confines of dungeon corridors and rooms.  Most people just wanted to use swords anyway.  I seem to recall playing a fighter who used a fauchard-fork for its special ability to hamper opponents.  Polearms with those special abilities to trip or dismount opponents might have seen more use if the rules had focused more on weapon reach and/or mounted combat, which I always thought was a bit of a strange omission for a game that evolved from a medieval combat simulator.</blockquote>

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