Spiked Chains: Pure cheese or sometimes OK?

[darious777]

C.H.E.E.S.E.

Simply the silliest weapon ever introduced into the core rules.

Runners-up would be the Dire Flail and Mercurial *anything*.

<cough>Halfling skip-rock, lute-bayonet, tumbling crossbow bolt</cough>


After having abused my characters with a spiked chain by a few NPCs, one of the players picked it up for his fighter.

It's over-effective in his hands, even with some minor house rules we put in.
It's a two-handed weapon so it's getting the extra damage boost there. (We ruled that power attack doesn't give the 2 fer 1 bonus on two handed weapons)
It's the reach weapon that can attack adjacent. (House ruled that in narrow fighting spaces [3 feet or so] he can't swing it properly.)

And all the usual benefits of spiked chain goodness, weapon focus & specialization, etc.

But what puts him over the top is that he took Combat Reflexes. 4 available attacks of opportunity with his specialized weapon. He has become quisinart man.

And I'm anticipating it getting worse. He's working up to Spring Attack with boots of movement...and since his chain is adamantine I suspect that he may look to improved sunder.

 

[FireLance]

And I'm anticipating it getting worse. He's working up to Spring Attack with boots of movement...and since his chain is adamantine I suspect that he may look to improved sunder.

The good news is, you can't sunder with a spiked chain (it's a piercing weapon).

 

[taliesin15]

I'm putting together a badass bounty hunter (ranger/bloodhound) to track down some fugitive characters in my campaign.

kind of ironic, eh, that I created a NPC very similar to this 2 years ago...I do think that there's an overall lack of emphasis in current combat tactics in AD&D on weapons with reach (also spears, glaives, halberds, pikes, tridents, nets) which were used throughout actual history and in fantasy literature...there's several references in the Iliad to weapons of this ilk...maybe it might seem cheesy to some people, but isn't that kind of like the pot calling the kettle black, folks?

 

[The_Universe]

I really have no problem with the spiked chain. I mean, I probably wouldn't allow it in a game that was supposed to closely mimic the Crusades, or something, but as long as the other characters are capable of rending the very fabric of space and time with some other fairly unrealistic tools, like MAGIC, a chain with spikes at the end seems like a pretty minor concern.

So, while the spiked chain may not fit with a "realistic" game, neither do fireballs, unicorns, dragons, or any of the other things we take for granted in a D&D game. The spiked chain, after all, doesn't even require particularly difficult engineering for its creation.

 

[pawsplay]

I think the reach of a spiked chain is overrated. You move to within 10' of the wielder and take a full defense. The second round, you either move forward 5' and smack him, or, if he tripped you anyway, you move 5' forward, drawing one AoO (but you cannot be tripped) and either stand up or execute an attack. Even with a -4 to hit, the touch you need to execute a trip or a grapple should be easy to make.

Alternatively, if you have Mobility, you take an attack action and attack defensively (whether or not there's an opponent in reach), assign the spiked chain dude as your "dodge buddy" and run headlessly forward. Sure, he gets an AoO. But you have +7 AC (+8 if you have 5 or more ranks of Tumble). And a character with a high enough Tumble skill can ignore reach entirely.

Characters with cover are immune to AoOs. So send the dwarf first, and have everyone else file in behind him. Even if the dwarf goes down, that spiked chain is in trouble. The next round, the dwarf's ally is going to move right past him and attack the spiked chain wielder. Now the dward has cover relative to the tripper, and can stand up. If you wanted to be very cautious, your fighter could make a full defense and close with the spiked chain wielder, with everyone else filing in immediately behind him (before the spiked chain wielder acts). If he's feeling cheeky, a tumbling rogue can do the same thing, tumbling past the threatened zone and providing cover for the rest of the party thereafter.

A summon monster can be used to summon a monster adjacent to the spiked chain wielder.

 

[bowbe]

Hmm

Couple things...

First encounter where a PC used a spiked chain in one of my games... had some dwarf who had a spiked chain "given to him by his father's father's father or some nonsense backstory...and the weapon was immediately disintegrated when it came in contact with a well described RUST MONSTER.

Woops.

Spiked Chains are no more lame than the 5 ft. stepping archer guy who 5ft. steps all over everything. Man I love sundering their tricked out bows and watching them fidget with no feats left to manage the rest of their gaming experience.

manriki-gusari:

Weren't these the weapons that eventually defeated the samurai (even more-so than guns) because common folk could wield one to disarm a samurai? Could have read that somewhere but probably im just having a mid-thirties illusion.

Divergence:
I don't buy "reach weapons" not being able to hit adjacent squares in most situations. Adjacent next to you? Perhaps not, Adjacent in front of you? You've got to be joking right? Baseball kids, Baseball! The rules lawyers forgot something fairly simple that most kids learn when they play their first game of baseball. Choke up on the bat! Hell even I had to play baseball.

Are we saying that an item with a 10 ft reach has a 20 ft pole? Sure pikes and longspears of antiquity did have such shafts to them and would not adequately attack a flanking opponent or one to your rear. However, most actual pole-arms including head were under 10 ft long. More like 8 ft long including head. I refer to actual glaives, forks, ranseur and other strange pole arm contraptions.

Evidently assuming the stretch of your arms with a thrust or swing you get that extra 2 ft to make it a 10 ft reach? How so? Do you actually hold the pole arm by the butt? Or are you choked up on it somewhat already leaving a foot or two of it below your grasping hand and grab closer to the head of the weapon with your guide hand and let the shaft slide across your palm as you do when chopping wood (slashing) or shooting pool (Piercing)? So the generic "10 ft reach" is actually more like 8 ft reach but hey we work in squares and round numbers that are easy to math out so give it 10. Why not?

We easily understand that a longsword is about 3 feet or so long and your arm is 2-3 feet long so 5 ft. reach fine and dandy.

What about a Greatsword? A greatsword... well thats a weapon almost 5-6 ft long including handle. Adding in your arms shouldn't it have 7-8 ft. reach? I mean using that analogy a greatsword warrior should get aoo's vs. longsword or battle axe fighters? Shouldn't a longsword have reach over a shortsword? A shortsword over a dagger?

Ok Ok, so rules nerds will argue that you can't use a "reach" weapon in a 5 ft corridor against something next to you. I'll grant that, that's common sense. Or a corridor or room narrower than the haft of the weapon vs. adjacent flanking foes. Again, Granted. Common Sense.

In an open room or wilderness setting however why CANT you use a glaive or fauchard fork or some such reach gizmo against someone 5 ft away by choking up on the haft of the weapon? Again, Dumb rule. Not thought through or something.

I agree with folks who argue that chain weapons can attack adjacent folks, for the same reason I argue that the majority of "reach weapons" should be allowed to attack adjacent foes... both instances depending on the battlefield environment.

I disagree with using spiked chains underwater. Piercing or not, try swinging a chain underwater and see where that gets you. Common sense vs. dumb rule.

At any rate Whiz. Hope your chain fighting ranger/hunter dude scares the living crap out of your PCs and makes them run like frightened kindergarteners. Sounds like a wicked encounter. Give him some of those feather whips and boots of flying. He can feather whip/ grapple the spellcasters and archers and hover over the heads of the non-reach having fighters and crunch them upside the head with his spiked chain all day long without any real worries.

It will be beautiful! In fact, make sure you have a series of adventures set up for the party once he captures them, sells their equipment at Ptolus-Bay (Or my preferred BardsGateBay) and turns them over to those who hired him to collect the bounty. Hopefully one of them has craft weapons skill to make a shiv from the bedsprings of whatever deep dark, sunless crud hole you throw them into so that they can fight their way out and earn their much anticipated revenge.

Case

 

[pawsplay]

What about a Greatsword? A greatsword... well thats a weapon almost 5-6 ft long including handle.

No, more like about four feet. There are some historical "bearing swords" that are larger, and a couple of rare examples of Japanese swords and Scottish claymores that are close to five, but for the most part, a big two hander is four feet long and about five to seven pounds.

 

[Steverooo]

There are a veritable plethora of "flexible weapons", in the real world orient. There is no reason that you couldn't tie two daggers together with a long pieve of rope, and call it a "spiked rope"... or add a couple of dagger-like blades to the bottom ends of nunchakus, and call it a small spiked chain.

The Aka-i-tsuchi (Devil's Claw) was a chain weapon with a spikey ball on one end, and a curved, dagger-like blade on the other. The Ninja had a bunch of rope or chain weapons with a large metal ring, for a weight, on one end (thrown out to entangle, trip, or disarm). I think any of these could be represented in D%D, and work just fine...

I still find the "Spiked Chain" kinda cheesey, though. The PHB picture is the main reason, but of all the forms that this weapon COULD have taken, I just find this particular presentation... cheesey!

 

[starwed]

Runners-up would be the Dire Flail and Mercurial *anything*.

The Mercurial Greatsword seems to be based off the weapon Severian uses in Gene Wolfes Book of the New Sun. (Called Terminus Est) It was an executioner's sword filled with mercury, which aided in the whole "chopping off heads" thing. (It sounds plausible that such a sword would work, but I haven't actually sat down and ran the equations. ^_^)

The beneift the D&D version grants seemed dubious when I saw it.

 

[Tetsubo]

The Mercurial Greatsword seems to be based off the weapon Severian uses in Gene Wolfes Book of the New Sun. (Called Terminus Est) It was an executioner's sword filled with mercury, which aided in the whole "chopping off heads" thing. (It sounds plausible that such a sword would work, but I haven't actually sat down and ran the equations. ^_^)

The beneift the D&D version grants seemed dubious when I saw it.

I assumed the Mercurial swords were inspired by Wolfe. I only read the first two books but I enjoyed them.

Even as an execution tool such a sword would be silly. A sword, any sword, is designed to have the absolute minimum of everything, weight, mass, width, etc. The art of the swordsmith is taking away everthing that isn't needed to get the job done. Adding a tube down the spine of a blade is simply dumb. Just an empty tube would ruin the sword's balance and make the blade prone to snapping or bending. To hold enough mercury to be "effective" the tube would have to have a fair diameter, I'd say at least an 1" or so. Which means that the sword isn't slicing through anything. It becomes a blunt weapon with a slight edge on it.

Then there is the whole "swinging a tube of toxic metal around" problem...

If you want a weapon that does a lot of impact damage and is slashing... use an axe.

Swords were used as execution tools as a sign of respect. Commoners would be beheaded with an axe. The nobility got there heads removed with a sword.

Mercurial swords make about as much sense as using scythes as weapons... both are ideas that could only be thought up by someone that has never, ever held an actual weapon. Or ever read an actual weapon reference...