Spears as double weapons

[Vinja]

hey guys, my group recently encountered a problem with a new player about a house rule we have been using for a while now about spears acting as double weapons. it was first implemented years ago when i was playing a main character of mine in 3.5 edition who was a Spear weapon master.

we all agreed that someone who specializes in one would be able to use the butt end in attacks, and ended up statting it as 1d8 piercing and 1d6 blunt damage (blunt end crits on 20 and has x2 modifier). well a new player has brought up this rule as making spears overpowered? i figured this would be a good place to see what the greater community thinks about this, and has anyone else done anything similar to boost this weapon?

anywho just a quick question to see what other players think, thanks in advance!

 

[Nookie]

Make em blow an exotic weapon prof if your to worried about it. I don't see it being a problem. after all a spear is just a quarterstaff moralizes with a pointy end.

 

[Vinja]

thanks that is pretty much what i thought, one of the other players suggested that if you want to use it as a double weapon it takes martial weapon proficiency, either or seems like a good plan of action. thanks for the quick reply brother

 

[Nookie]

No problem.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

Burning a feat seems pretty steep to me, though martial proficiency is probably a good solution.

Another possiblity is to just knock the damage back to be identical to a quarterstaff as long as it's used as a double weapon, but with one end dealing piercing (or maybe slashing) damage. You could justify it as "because you're not using the point to impale deeply when fighting that way" or the like.

[edit] Fwiw, this was briefly discussed not too long ago in this thread: "The sideways spear." There are a couple other ideas in there.

 

[Volaran]

I wouldn't worry about even needing a feat for it. 1d8/1d6 isn't really that much better than a quarterstaff. Unless you find it is seriously unbalancing the campaign, I'd leave it as is.

 

[Vinja]

hey guys, thanks alot for all the replies, we came to the conclusion making it a brand new weapon would probably be best. this is what we ended up doing

War Spear (martial weapon) cost = 9 GP, DMG = 1D8 P, 1D6 B, Crit = X3 P, X2 B, Range = NA, Weight = 7 LB's, Type = P or B, special properties = Brace, Double.

figured making it a more martial weapon would lose the throwing property as a sort of balance issue, this is only for the regular spear and not the reach longspear, im sure it could work for that too but the longspear seems it would be to unwieldy to spin around and strike with the butt end personally?

anyway we have yet to talk to the other player yet to see what he thinks about its unbalance now but what do you guys think? would you allow it in your games personally?

EDIT: my main line of thinking when building this with my dm was to keep the quarterstaves niche, which i believe it still does being a monk weapon, magus would still be better served with a Q staff using the archetype, and i dont have much experience using caster classes but doesnt the wizard have special properties with staves?

 

[slwoyach]

Not even a little overpowered. I let all characters with martial weapon proficiencies use a spear as a double weapon, it still doesn't measure up to the long sword. I've always hated the argument that having a thrown range is as good as an extra point of crit range, who in the world would throw their +5 spear in the middle of combat (unless it was returning of course)?

 

[SSuser]

I know this isn't quite what you're looking for. There was a 3rd party, 3.x feat that let you attack adjacent foes with the end of a polearm. It treated the end of the polearm as a staff. d6 damage, x2 on a critical. Great feat for AoO.

I'd add in a feat, not add a weapon.