Spiked Chain Rethink

[Plane Sailing]

My point has been made clearly by Firelance and Victim - of course you can disarm with a guisarme, you can disarm with *any* weapon!

(Doesn't seem true with trip weapons, which is why I didn't use a ranseur in my example - which gets a bonus to disarm but doesn't allow trip attacks so I couldn't usefully give that improved trip).

 

[Darklone]

Liquidsabre: One minor flaw: Dex 14 is IMHO enough for most spiked chain wielders at the beginning, higher strength is more interesting for trip and damage goodness. That way, you don't have to take Weapon Finesse as well.

 

[Liquidsabre]

My point has been made clearly by Firelance and Victim - of course you can disarm with a guisarme, you can disarm with *any* weapon!

(Doesn't seem true with trip weapons, which is why I didn't use a ranseur in my example - which gets a bonus to disarm but doesn't allow trip attacks so I couldn't usefully give that improved trip).

Yea, sorry about that, my fault. Don't know what I was thinking! *smacks forehead*

Well shoot, I went over some builds with the guisarme as well and it is just about as nasty as a spiked chain would be, minus the frills and bells. I suppose it just goes down to being a melee specialist being able to lay the smack down.

Thanks for sticking with it there CRG, hope I wasn't too much of a bother there!

So is it just that reach weapon melee specialists usually out-do non-reach specialists??

 

[Plane Sailing]

So is it just that reach weapon melee specialists usually out-do non-reach specialists??

I think that this is a valid point - the way that reach works, the difference between 10ft+reach and no reach is absolutely huge - offensively and defensively.

This is so much the case that I introduced a couple of feats into my campaign, one (choke reach) allows a reach weapon to be used within 5ft, another (lunge) which allows a non-reach, non-light weapon to be used with a 10ft reach... effectively making reach-based combat available to anyone with a feat investment, and the difference between spiked chain, guisarme and longsword almost comes down to flavour rather than certain mechanical differences.

In my next campaign I'm seriously considering doing away with AoO (& combat reflexes) and using some variants I've been tinkering with to make reach good, but not as insanely good as it can be in standard D&D. But that is another thread!

Cheers

 

[Darklone]

Hmm. I think reach and it's counter mechanisms (tumble, spring attack or simply ranged combat) is handled pretty fine in core D&D... as long as people stay away from the spiked chain, don't allow monks with reach weapons without TWF penalties and don't use choke feats

Why fix what is not broken?

 

[CRGreathouse]

Well shoot, I went over some builds with the guisarme as well and it is just about as nasty as a spiked chain would be, minus the frills and bells. I suppose it just goes down to being a melee specialist being able to lay the smack down.

Thanks for sticking with it there CRG, hope I wasn't too much of a bother there!

So is it just that reach weapon melee specialists usually out-do non-reach specialists??

Yep, melee specialists are pretty good. This is why I'm always surprised by the 'custom fighter class that's not so weak' classes on the House Rules forum.

Reach weapons are excellent for a focused fighter. Those without so many feats are often better off with a non-reach weapon, at least IMO.

 

[Liquidsabre]

Yep, melee specialists are pretty good. This is why I'm always surprised by the 'custom fighter class that's not so weak' classes on the House Rules forum.

Reach weapons are excellent for a focused fighter. Those without so many feats are often better off with a non-reach weapon, at least IMO.

I think it's actually that reach-melee speialists are really good, they are good at low-levels and only get baetter with more feats at higher levels; and non-reach-melee specialists are passable, good at low-levels needing only a few feats to be good, while suffering with an excess of feats at the higher levels as there are not many feats left to them to take advantage of their weaponry (instead feats are spent elsewhere without the same stacking effects that we see with reach-weaponry). It may be that the reason we do see those fighter-is-not-good-enough complaint threads is because those posters are complaining about the non-reach-melee specialist fighter-types at the higher levels.

I think Plane Sailing nailed it straight on about reach and combat ability. Any increase in reach has a substantial multiplying effect on combat ability, we can see that in creatures with reach who are uber-dangerous because of it.

 

[Liquidsabre]

This is so much the case that I introduced a couple of feats into my campaign, one (choke reach) allows a reach weapon to be used within 5ft, another (lunge) which allows a non-reach, non-light weapon to be used with a 10ft reach... effectively making reach-based combat available to anyone with a feat investment, and the difference between spiked chain, guisarme and longsword almost comes down to flavour rather than certain mechanical differences.

I would love to see these put up in a thread of it's own PS!