Where's the lance?

[FreeTheSlaves]

To be honest, I quickly gave up on the idea of developing a lance. I've too little time and I'd much rather leave it to the professionals, and it's another reason to get a subscription.

I agree with you Aenghus about the reasons, but then again I've never been keen on the idea of a mounted combat specialist build in D&D. To my line of thinking, jousting with a lance is an additional feature reinforcing the chivalric knight archetype. It shouldn't be a focused build when characters spend so much time dungeon delving or in the city, for examples. It's fine for overland encounters, the tourney, or the pitched battle, where the initial charge can deliver some omph.

This is one of the reasons I don't like seeing feats or magic items pointing players towards character specialization, I'd rather the lance have inherent qualities that make it a better choice than say the longsword, at least initially.

Agreed DracoSuave, bull rush could be more fertile design space compared to the well supported push mechanics.

I think you're right AbdulAlhazred to rein in the aspect of reach., longspear should trump lance. Again the "push back" looks another vote for the bull rush camp.

For the time being I think it is wait and see what WotC reveal in Dragon.

 

[hipnotode]

what i would do woud be to take the stats of the longspear, make it a superior weapon and add like a "mounted" keyword.
"mounted, as brutal2 whilst mounted on a willing creature."

something like that.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I see a use for a theme here. Level 1 power is the charge and level 1 ability allows you to use a 2 handed spear in 1 hand while mounted.

 

[Zaran]

If I remember right, jousting is a subject this month in Dragon.

 

[Danzauker]

what i would do woud be to take the stats of the longspear, make it a superior weapon and add like a "mounted" keyword.
"mounted, as brutal2 whilst mounted on a willing creature."

something like that.

That's what I'd do.

Maybe I'd also add "reach increases by 1 when charging whilst mounted on a willing creature".

After all, the greatest advance of lances was that charging you could use it's reach in full potential and be the first to hit.

 

[herrozerro]

I see a use for a theme here. Level 1 power is the charge and level 1 ability allows you to use a 2 handed spear in 1 hand while mounted.

You know what? I think this is a great idea, it gives you special mounted stuff without having to sacrifice more of your feats or powers.

 

[Estlor]

The real reason we haven't seen a lance is because mounted combat was greatly marginalized in the 4e rules set out of the box. You got one feat in the PHB that promised some sort of nebulous benefit without any details. A little later you got a basic array of mounts in the Adventurer's Vault that finally pinned down some benefits to having that feat. And only recently, Cavaliers (but not regular paladins, unfortunately) got a pokémount utility power.

The issue with a lance is how weapons work in 4e. All weapons have five elements - Category, Group, Proficiency Bonus, Damage, and Properties. Okay, so what's a lance? Before we worry about proficiency and damage, we can identify a few things.

Category - One-handed Military Melee
Group - Spear

Currently defined weapon properties are brutal (maybe), defensive (nope), heavy thrown (nope), high crit (maybe), light thrown (nope), load (not applicable), off-hand (nope), reach (nope), stout (not applicable), small (nope), and versatile (nope). Since it's just a military weapon and not a superior weapon, I can't really give it brutal (all brutal weapons are superior) so it's high crit or nothing. I can see that... but only when charging while mounted. Which current rules don't support.

Now look at the weapons currently available. There's a one-handed simple melee spear with a +2 proficiency bonus that does 1d8 damage. Those numbers look pretty good for a lance. So is it worth inventing a new weapon property to grant high crit to a military weapon that's otherwise mechanically similar to the spear (just minus versatile)?

No, it's not. And that's before we even try to handle how a lance is nearly worthless when not mounted.

So clearly the better option is to wield a spear as a lance. Spear Expertise already has the nice synergy of granting a bonus to damage when you charge. Create a feat called Lancer or something that grants the High Crit property to spears when mounted and you're done. It's simple, elegant, models what we're after, and doesn't require us to invent categories that go into the design space and become things you've got to know that aren't in the Rule Compendium.

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

The problem there Estlor is that by default the spear does not compare to say the longsword. Why would a Knight use a spear? Feat support exits for the longsword just as much the spear, and the base weapon is simply better.

Also I don't think you can really say that lance-use is as easy to learn as spear use. I imagine thundering along while trying to pierce a bullseye is not an easy feat.

 

[Aenghus]

A mounted warrior campaign is possible, and would definitely call for more elaborate mounted combat rules, including a representation of the lance. These haven't been much produced due to the focus on dungeon crawling in previous rules. The upcoming Dragon article on jousting should hopefully have some ideas pertinent to the issue.

There are a number of ways the lance could be represented, including a feat or two to use spears as a lance, or a new lance martial weapon with appropriate stats. The latter approach needs to avoid the uber-katana bug of making it too good, relatively speaking.

 

[Estlor]

The problem there Estlor is that by default the spear does not compare to say the longsword. Why would a Knight use a spear? Feat support exits for the longsword just as much the spear, and the base weapon is simply better.

I agree in principle to this, but not entirely. It's going to depend on what you, as a PC, decide is going to be your knight's specialty. Let's pretend for a moment your knight is a Knight or a Weaponmaster. Your ideal party role is drawing a front line against monsters, which means staying in one place and trying to be as sticky as possible. You're absolutely going to choose a heavy blade for that, even if you fight from horseback.

But since a lance implies charging around on the battlefield, you're probably not a Knight or a Weaponmaster. You're probably a Slayer. In which case, if you're a charge-based PC, spear is infinitely better than heavy blade because of the increased damage output of Spear Expertise. (The bonus to defenses against OA from Heavy Blade Expertise is largely wasted when you can pick up the badge of the berserker.) Of course, the gouge is the best weapon here because it combines an axe (which the slayer supports) with the spear (the optimal charging weapon), but you don't see many mounted gouge knights in Dark Sun.

Also I don't think you can really say that lance-use is as easy to learn as spear use. I imagine thundering along while trying to pierce a bullseye is not an easy feat.

No, it's not. But my point was never that a spear and a lance require the same amount of skill and training to use, just that the spear and lance live in the same design space and, therefore, the spear ate the poor lance for breakfast.