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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 2298741" data-attributes="member: 4937">The spiked chain is an utterly lame uber weapon as written.  It's so good as written, one wonders why armies of professional chain-wielding soldiers weren't conquering half the known world.  I guess it was because no one ever invented it, considering that well, you can't actually find such a weapon anywhere in the historical world.  Unspiked chains, sure.  Even unspiked chains with weights on both ends.  Chains with a weapon on one end, sure.  But hardly ever reach weapons with chains on one end, or weapons with enough chain on the end to count as reach.  Every eastern martial art chain weapon I've seen uses a thin relatively flexible chain that is very much designed to be grabbed anywhere along its length and is employed in a fashion somewhere between a whip and a staff.  The chinese 9 section chain would be a great example of a chain designed by someone who very much understood that the critical problem to overcome was control.  The whole thing is about 4' long mind you, its most certainly not a reach weapon.Back when I was a roguish street punk, my brother and I spent quite a while practicing with lengths of chain.  I can tell you that one reason you'd never use a spiked chain is it would cut you to peices.  You very much have to regain control of the chain constantly, and you can't do that with spikes along its length.  It would be as bad or worse than trying to handle a numchuka with knife blades.  Moreover, its incredibly difficult to parry a heavy weapon (like a baseball bat) with a chain, even if you are strong.  I understand real chains were used to parry swords, buts that a whole different ballgame.As far as I can tell, the primary reason for chain weapons existence (like most eastern weapons) is that they were hold-out weapons which could be easily concealed or explained.  The eastern thugs using those chains weren't using them for very different reasons than my brother and me were practicing with them - except that they probably had more serious intentions to use them.Most real chain weapons should be classified as flails of some sort in my opinion, or perhaps as whips that do lethal damage rather than non-lethal.If you want a weapon with characteristics like a spiked chain, use a long staff or a 3-section staff or some such.I've not come up with a good fix to the spiked chain.  I'm thinking of banning it, but that seems drastic.  Right now what I do is double its 'fumble' range from 1 to 1-2.  The fact that they are now alot more likely to bash themselves or an ally with the 'spiked chain' has detered players enough that it's not really come up, but I wonder if this is the best situation.</blockquote>

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