D&D 5E (2024) When a 20' pole has a 10' reach...

[Coroc]

How does a 10' longspear being called a pike (but still weighing 18 lbs) do this?

not well. and 18 lbs, hell that is a big maul. even a two handed sword rarely exceeds 4-5 lbs.

 

[AlViking]

Enforcing the no-armor rule could actually go a long way towards reducing the over-focus on maxing primary stats, at least for Strength. A 20 Str 12 Dex fighter caught without armor is arguably in a much worse place than a 16 Str 16 Dex. (It doesn't solve the Dex-is-king problem, though. Maybe a reason to enforce encumbrance rules?)

It also creates some interesting challenges, both in rollplaying and creative problem solving. What are your backup plans for when your armor, or a key magic item is not available? What happens when you have an audience with the king and have to leave your weapons behind? When you've been trapped and stripped of your gear? What fallback does the spellcaster have in a zone of magical silence? These challenges make the game interesting.

Sorry for the long rant...

Over the years I've had several DMs run games where it was obvious they hate heavy armor. On a ship? Only the person in heavy armor is going overboard so they can immediately sink because some lord was crossing a river in the 15th century wearing armor and drowned. Going to the gala where you know there's going to be a fight? The monk, rogue (who of course can hide a dozen daggers) and the wizard aren't inconvenienced at all but the heavy armor wearer is stripped to their skivvies and has to grab a salad fork as an improvised weapon once the inevitable fight starts.

If there were scenarios that put everyone at a disadvantage with the same regularity (whether because of armor, inability to cast spells or something else) I wouldn't have as much of an issue with it. If you're going to add in a bunch of penalties they should happen to every type of build with about the same frequency.

But instead what happens is that guy in the never-really-existed studded leather armor that they can wear to that gala because they put on a cloak over it that is only has a point or two lower AC never suffers a penalty. Even for things like sleeping or being in a hot climate? Those things should apply to all armor or not be applied at all. Even if you do more realistic armor and have gambesons replace the leather armors.

For me the solution is to just ignore what armor PCs are wearing for the most part. It's not particularly realistic but the day I start worrying about my game being very realistic is the day I start hunting for a different game. I do try to have a wide variety of challenges, sometimes strength is useful, sometimes wisdom, sometimes dexterity. Sometimes you can use dexterity to climb because you're swinging from the chandelier to get somewhere else but climbing a wall? In D&D that's an athletics strength check. But taking away everything that makes a PC effective because it's "realistic" when no one in the party in any way resembles reality? Not for me.

 

[Byrd]

not well. and 18 lbs, hell that is a big maul. even a two handed sword rarely exceeds 4-5 lbs.

Or 10' of blackpipe + Bessy clamp.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

Grip a pike all the way at the butt end of the shaft and try to stab someone 20 feet away from you. I'll wait.

 

[Coroc]

Grip a pike all the way at the butt end of the shaft and try to stab someone 20 feet away from you. I'll wait.

otoh when set for repelling a charge they gripped it quite at the last 20% but supported it with the rear foot to the ground.

 

[Coroc]

Grip a pike all the way at the butt end of the shaft and try to stab someone 20 feet away from you. I'll wait.

Within formation it is more about you stab something in a distance not some individual, and as you can see they probably tended to use the reach advantage to the max. Also interesting is that the front hand is with the thumb inside here within the front row, when charging offensive opposedwith my previous post, when they are set to receive a cavalry charge in a defensive stance.

 

[ragweed-1]

**even amongst people that focus on historic accuracy in their RPGs/wargames, rarely do two such fans agree on which historic facets are the important ones.

This. As I have been delving deeper into medieval and early modern history, I am struck by how complex, diverse, and varied actual weapons and armor were. Internet experts love to pontificate about the superiority of this weapon or that, and provide their grand theories on a period that lasted ten centuries over 10 million square kilometers, if we just count Europe. Which would be foolish because the history of medieval Europe is deeply tied to the rest of Asia and Africa, from Carthage and the Persian Wars with Greece, to Indian Wootz "Damascus" steel, Islamic Spain, the Crusades, varius invasians over the Steppes from the Hun's to Gengis Khan, etc.

Yes, a rapier would not be effective against plate armor, but niether would an 11th Century "Great war sword" which was forward-weghted to give powerful chopping cuts vs. a 14th Century "Bastard Sword" (Oakshott type XVII) which was designed in the hopes of penitrating plate, because in iron-rich western europe there was a five century arms race between arms and armour.

Yes, the arrows of English longbows were able to punch through plate armor at relatively close range and cause devistating losses to French cavalry charges attacking uphill against a fortified position at Crecy in 1340, but those arrows would bounce off the stronger armor of the knights at Agincourt a century later, though still kill their horses and again stop a French cavalry trying to charge up a muddy hill against a fortified position. And 2000-4000 of those archers would get slaughtered a few years later at Patey by 180 French cavalry who got the jump on them and outflanked them before they could fortify their position.

Medieval knights preferred spears over swords, unless the were in the Carolingian army which primarily relied on swords for mounted combat, or the Normans, who threw their spears in the initial charge and then engaged with swords, with the couched lance charge becoming the primary tactic in IIRC, the 12th C, when the armored heavy cavalry charge would become an unstopable force until stopped by aforementioned longbows (from fortified positions), or Swiss block-of-pikes, or Ayyubib horse archers who would attack and then faint a retreat to draw the heavy cavalry into an ambush and surround them. And that's just a handful of examples.

Not to mention the fact that much of the history is based on incomplete records, church frescos, and scattered archeological finds which are often incomplete, corroded, stripped from their context, or destroyed by wars in the 20th Century. And that historians regularly disagree on interpretation, quality and relevance of evidence, and even authenticity of finds. And much of the scholarship is in Polish or Check or Italian or Spanish and the bibliography on the paper you just read on "Late medieval nomads in the Little Carpathians" includes a translitteration because the regular bibliography includes at least four different alphabets, let alone 8-10 languages.

So tell me again about what was historically accurate in your fantasy game in a completely different universe?

(And I say that as someone who debates whether his Dwarven Ranger uses an Elmslie type 4b or 5a langesmesser (scimitar), and what Oakshott typology one would use for a Dragonslayer Longsword, and whose Dualist fighter uses a rapier that looks identical to the sidesword Grandmaster Jean DeValette used in the Siege of Malta in 1565, because I actually do love historically based flavor in my role-play)

 

[Chaltab]

I'm of the opinion that the pike being on the main equipment list is just a relic of past editions. It really shouldn't be? It's a weapon that should be fielded by armies, like a trebuchet, not by adventurers in a dungeon. It's not really even a complaint about historical accuracy even, just logistics and the fact that it's redundant with the halberd.

There's even an actual historical weapon called a spontoon or 'half-pike' that would make a lot more sense as a dungeoneering weapon.

 

[Lanefan]

I'm of the opinion that the pike being on the main equipment list is just a relic of past editions. It really shouldn't be? It's a weapon that should be fielded by armies, like a trebuchet, not by adventurers in a dungeon. It's not really even a complaint about historical accuracy even, just logistics and the fact that it's redundant with the halberd.

There's even an actual historical weapon called a spontoon or 'half-pike' that would make a lot more sense as a dungeoneering weapon.

Sure, put that on the equipment list too.

But pike - and trebuchet, and catapult, and ballista, etc. - should also be on the equipment list for purposes of outfitting a home base, equipping an army, laying siege to somewhere, and so on; all of which are things PCs might at some point easily find themselves doing. Having them priced also helps for if-when the PCs ever find themselves trying to sell such things.

The equipment list has to serve elements of play beyond just mere adventuring.

 

[ragweed-1]

Within formation it is more about you stab something in a distance not some individual, and as you can see they probably tended to use the reach advantage to the max. Also interesting is that the front hand is with the thumb inside here within the front row, when charging offensive opposedwith my previous post, when they are set to receive a cavalry charge in a defensive stance.

View attachment 448217

Awesome pictures. I love the combed morion helmets. Where are those reenactors? (I tried to figure it from the background, but couldn't quite make out anything).