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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jeffh" data-source="post: 2889392" data-attributes="member: 2642">Nothing weird about that. Those really existed. And you'd more often use the butt spike (that sounds really bad) to give an opponent in front of you a surprise (D&D players often seriously underestimate how fast these weapons are, I think partially because the weights in the Player's Handbook are so inflated - most of them are too high by a factor of at least three, in some cases as much as 10). [EDIT: I misread you as talking about spears that are sharp at both ends. But having backward-pointing heads in addition to normal ones isn't wholly ridiculous either. Some polearms had similar things, mostly for dismounting riders.]As far as ludicrous weapons, while I agree with most of the comments here except the one above, I think the lowly warhammer deserves a mention. Yes, a weapon called the warhammer really existed, but it resembled the one in the Player's Handbook only in name. The one-handed maul traditionally shown in D&D is simply preposterous - that's a weapon that really would weigh what the PH says it would, if not more. You would a) likely pull your arm out of its socket trying to swing it one-handed, b) require so much recovery time (a second or more, I would wager, which is way too long) that you'd be skewered by people using weapons that can actually, y'know, MOVE the way they need to in battle right after your first swing.</blockquote>