D&D 5E Spear houserule

[Umbran]

They need to both be usable in one-hand and have reach so they can be used for the actual spear and shield tactics that people used spears for.

Historically, my understanding and personal experience is there there's two broad approches to spear use: Either they are used one-handed with a shield, or they are two-handed, but effectively give reach. You don't get one-handed and reach at the same time, if you intend to keep the spear.

 

[embee]

So here is the spear houserule: Remove the Thrown property; add the Reach property. Everything else stays the same.

Hard disagree. When you do that, you unbalance it.

Reach is 10'. When you pair it with Polearm Master and/or Sentinel WHICH IS INEVITABLE, you wind up with a character who can't be touched. Remember, PAM uses the weapon's reach. And for the first two benefits, so does Sentinel. So if you add Reach to a plain spear, you are now able to lock down enemies who get within 10' of you, reach enemies 10' away with a back-end strike, and hold a shield.

What you want is a long-spear, which is 2 handed, not versatile (which a spear has). That's the trade-off. You get reach but you no longer have a free hand. And more importantly, you no longer get the back-end strike. Nor would you get a bonus from the Dueling fighting style. This way, you're not creating a super tank.

Also, think of it cinematically. Specifically, watch the fight scene between Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." It is a series of fights between a variety of polearms, including, at one point, a spear. Yeoh swings the spear one-handed at Zhang, gripping it by the base of the shaft. Keep in mind that Yeoh's character is not some 3rd level fighter. She's an epic-level master who is even capable of limited flight.

The spear is 5' long. Add 2' for the length of an arm. She bends forward, using her torso and leading leg for more extension. When the spear gets swung in the widest possible arc, the maximum reach is still less than 10'. And that's in the hands of a uniquely powerful fighter.

So, from a practical standpoint, the 5' spear cannot have Reach because it won't go that far.

 

[GMMichael]

Spears are designed for thrusting, have reach, and can be used either one-handed with a shield or two-handed. (1d6 damage melee reach with shield, or 1d8 damage melee reach two-handed)

A D&D reach weapon has 5 extra feet in length. How is that effective in one hand? You could slim it up a bit, but then you'd get a lot of those cool scenes where one guy breaks the other gal's spear, and she starts dual wielding to compensate.

Edit: partial ninja by Umbran

 

[Istbor]

Some real-world fuzziness notwithstanding, I think for a DnD game, this will be strong, but not overpowered.

I was far lazier when I changed spears for a homebrew, took off the throwing, and just bumped it up to 1d8/1d10 for damage to bring it in line with the other martial melee weapons, leaving a javelin as a javelin or refluffed as a light spear.

As time goes on, I begin to see the wisdom in Warhammer fantasy just saying hand-weapon and that grabbing anything you can effectively wield in one hand, and listing anything with special properties as their own entry.

 

[jgsugden]

Huh. If anything, funneling martial characters into using one type of weapon is something I'd like to see less off. I'd rather see martials have access to different abilities depending on which kind of weapon they're using, so they're more willing to use more than one and are more responsive to gaining magic weapons that aren't their usual type.

I used to have a house rule that characters with the fighting style feature got access to all their fighting styles (with protection amended to only work with shields); since Tasha's introduced so many new ones I've amended it to selecting four.

Fair enough. The semi-fleshed out version of this I started to assemble recently give any PC with the Fighting Style feature a number of combat stances equal to their proficiency bonus. These stances had prerequisites, bonuses and costs. The benefits and costs were intended to offset, and the prerequisites limit the use of the stance to reasonable situations (or were subtly part of the costs). Some focused on weapon type, others armor type, others combat style (for example, one gave bonuses so long as you used your full movement each round). You could start combat in a stance if not surprised, but entering it otherwise took a bonus action. I stopped working on it because I had other priorities and I think it was going to be a bigger change to the game than I wanted it to be.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

Hard disagree. When you do that, you unbalance it.

Reach is 10'. When you pair it with Polearm Master and/or Sentinel WHICH IS INEVITABLE, you wind up with a character who can't be touched. Remember, PAM uses the weapon's reach. And for the first two benefits, so does Sentinel. So if you add Reach to a plain spear, you are now able to lock down enemies who get within 10' of you, reach enemies 10' away with a back-end strike, and hold a shield.

What you want is a long-spear, which is 2 handed, not versatile (which a spear has). That's the trade-off. You get reach but you no longer have a free hand. And more importantly, you no longer get the back-end strike. Nor would you get a bonus from the Dueling fighting style. This way, you're not creating a super tank.

Also, think of it cinematically. Specifically, watch the fight scene between Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." It is a series of fights between a variety of polearms, including, at one point, a spear. Yeoh swings the spear one-handed at Zhang, gripping it by the base of the shaft. Keep in mind that Yeoh's character is not some 3rd level fighter. She's an epic-level master who is even capable of limited flight.

The spear is 5' long. Add 2' for the length of an arm. She bends forward, using her torso and leading leg for more extension. When the spear gets swung in the widest possible arc, the maximum reach is still less than 10'. And that's in the hands of a uniquely powerful fighter.

So, from a practical standpoint, the 5' spear cannot have Reach because it won't go that far.

Except that 5 feet is way too short for spear that isn't an iklwa, and unless there are a lot of Zulu themed Fighters being played that I'm not aware of, I don't think that's what people want from their spears. For reference, a standard competition wushu qiang starts at 200 cm, or about 6'6".

And if you want to talk about being cinematic, then compare this scene from Hero (2004):


Or The Legend of the Condor Heroes (2017), starting around 5:00

 

[Willie the Duck]

Hard disagree. When you do that, you unbalance it.

Reach is 10'. When you pair it with Polearm Master and/or Sentinel WHICH IS INEVITABLE, you wind up with a character who can't be touched. Remember, PAM uses the weapon's reach. And for the first two benefits, so does Sentinel. So if you add Reach to a plain spear, you are now able to lock down enemies who get within 10' of you, reach enemies 10' away with a back-end strike, and hold a shield.

What you want is a long-spear, which is 2 handed, not versatile (which a spear has). That's the trade-off. You get reach but you no longer have a free hand. And more importantly, you no longer get the back-end strike. Nor would you get a bonus from the Dueling fighting style. This way, you're not creating a super tank.

Also, think of it cinematically. Specifically, watch the fight scene between Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." It is a series of fights between a variety of polearms, including, at one point, a spear. Yeoh swings the spear one-handed at Zhang, gripping it by the base of the shaft. Keep in mind that Yeoh's character is not some 3rd level fighter. She's an epic-level master who is even capable of limited flight.

The spear is 5' long. Add 2' for the length of an arm. She bends forward, using her torso and leading leg for more extension. When the spear gets swung in the widest possible arc, the maximum reach is still less than 10'. And that's in the hands of a uniquely powerful fighter.

So, from a practical standpoint, the 5' spear cannot have Reach because it won't go that far.

I feel that spears could be enhanced beyond their default abilities or they should work with PAM+shield, but not both. PAM+shield+spear is already one of the uber martial builds of the game and boosting that doesn't seem necessary to me. Boosting the use of spears used without feats makes all the sense in the world to me. That could be by:

• Renaming Pikes (which, with a mere 10' reach, don't really jive with IRL pikes anyways) to be Longspears.
• Giving spears +1 damage when wielded by someone with Martial proficiency (putting them in league with longswords or warhammers).
• Giving spears (wielded in two hands) reach.

 

[dave2008]

I think the OP change is perfectly fine and good for people that want to shake up spears.

For a Trojan war inspired game I’m thinking of running, my plan is to give spears a d10 damage but also give them the fragile property:

Fragile: on a nat 1 attack roll, the weapon breaks and becomes nonfunctional.

however I’m intentionally overpowering spears to fit that settings flavor. The idea is to make spears the mainstay weapon, with swords serving as the backup when the spear breaks…which tracks more with the history at that time

You could also just downgrade sword damage. The typical side-arm type sword of the time was similar to a D&D shortsword. Just get rid of, or limit, longswords, greatsword and the like. Make 1d8 2-handed swords the norm and 1d6 sword the norm.

 

[Willie the Duck]

You could also just downgrade sword damage. The typical side-arm type sword of the time was similar to a D&D shortsword. Just get rid of, or limit, longswords, greatsword and the like. Make 1d8 2-handed swords the norm and 1d6 sword the norm.

This is tangential to Spears in particular, but I'd suggest against this. Every time we limit one form or another of martial ability because of 1) allusions to realism, or 2) balance concerns between the various weapons, one has to consider whether weapon-based combat on a whole needs more limitations. I say this because both monks (who don't need weapons) and casters (who engage the game in means other than weapons) still exist as alternate player options and the later (casters) certainly already threaten to run away with the game. I say that even as someone who is really, really annoyed that the best options seem to be gimmicks --sharpshooting, XBE-ing people with ahistoric/barely historic hand crossbows; using the but end of halberds (definitely something that showed up in the treatises, but certainly not a primary combat type); PAM one-handed quarterstaves and shields; etc. Those shouldn't have such oversized capacity amongst the weapons, but IMO the solution is to bring the other options up to their level, not dilute all martial ability (which will only make the latest HexbladelockCoffeeTwilightSimalacrumMinionMasterCheezelikeproduct build all that more powerful compared to martials in general.

 

[toucanbuzz]

Our Houserule: when you have a weapon with at least Reach 10' and your opponent does not when entering your threat zone, they provoke an attack of opportunity. Reads like Polearm Master, which we modify to make the 1st use in a round not consume a reaction. I include Spears in this category.

Historically, it's why they made such great weapons. Easy to construct and train, great at keeping enemies at a distance.