How to implement reach weapons

[OgreBattle]

So I'm fiddling around with my fantasy heartbreaker again and I'm looking at reach weapons. Do you like how D&D implements them?

In D&D3e they let you attack from an extra square away with the tradeoff being that you can't attack from an adjacent square. Is that interesting enough of a distinction though? Do you think there should be more advantages/disadvantages/rules associated with reach or would you rather have that done away with?

I figure this kind of thing matters more for games where choosing a spear or choosing a sword and shield are meaningful, and matters less for games where everyone is flying around shooting thunderbolts from their hammers.

[Username17]

Reach weapons properly have three traits:

• The ability to repel an enemy attempting to close.

• The ability to attack from the second rank.

• A weakness to enemies getting in close with more personal weapons.

Now, all of those things pretty much mean dick at the super heroic level. Aquaman uses a long spear and Wonder Woman uses a broadsword and no fucks are given because either character can bust out a move where they spin around the room and skewer all the mooks in a twenty meter radius. But at the heroic and militia tier, this shit is supposed to be important.

3rd edition frankly hits most of the high points. The big problem as I see it is the 5 foot step. The thing where a glaive artist can keep backing up and attacking while the short sworder can keep stepping up and attacking rather defeats the purpose of getting under the guard. That seems a solvable problem actually.

For example: imagine that there was a BAB minimum before a five foot step didn't provoke an AoO from enemies you don't threaten from your starting square? Say the limit to do that is +4. Suddenly all that goofy shit of people taking a step back to fire arrows in melee disappears and archers draw their damn swords to defend themselves. But because the old 5 foot steps come online at level four, Legolas style combat archers are still viable.

You could bring in longer free movement for higher BAB to make the differences smoothe over for super heroic characters as it should.

-Username17

[kzt]

It depends on how realistic you want to play. You can do a whole lot with a spear other than thrust, if you are not lined up shoulder to shoulder with 200 of your best friends. Once you form a defensive formation the spearmans options go way down, but so do the attackers.

By yourself in a an open area a spear is essentially a staff with a tip that can slash or thrust. An 18 foot long pike, well maybe not so much.

[Josh_Kablack]

As an alternative to Frank's suggestion I could see a simpler to explain to players, but harder to write version based more on 4e concepts:

• Reach weapons attack extra square(s) away, but do not attack adjacent squares.
• There is no 5' step, and movement which does not provoke requires a special ability of some sort.
• There are also speshul abilities which interrupt an opponent's current move on a successful melee hit. (ala 4e Fighter)
• And a myriad of special abilities which allow an attacker to move thier opponent around -- although these need to be more meaningful than 4e's plethora of "Push 1" effects.
• The Damage / Defense and HP scaling is worked so that PCs and other named characters can take 4+ average hits before they drop. (ie more like 4e padded sumo than 3e rocket launcher tag)

Thus absent special abilities, it's just one AoO for a chance of ~25% damage before you drop the reach weapon and have to switch to a close in blade -- making it a reasonable option to take the AoO to close. But with speshul abilities it's possible to ignore the AoO, or it's possible for polearm wielders to negate the closing-in move action and require you to burn a 2nd move action just to close to adjacent; and it's possible for groups of polearm wielders to back you up after you close in.

[Krusk]

You could also take 3e as is but limit 5ft steps to people you have more bab than.

If you are good you can slip past, if not out of luck.

You could also bring some sort of "if I have a spear and hit with an aoo as you run at me, your movement stops" power. Meaning you can actually hunker down and use reach weapons to hold a position and be a pain to get to.

[Username17]

Josh, how the fuckity fuck sticks is having a 'myriad' of different abilities hidden throughout the game the 'simple' option? That's the thing I never got about the whole 4e thing, it really isn't ever easier to define all states from nothing than it is to have a standard case and then modify it from time to time.

-Username17

[RadiantPhoenix]

For 3e, I would consider making it so that successful AoOs force the enemy to stop advancing. (Barring some kind of special maneuver where you let the spear come out your other side, or something)

This naturally flows into not mattering at high levels because people can just make the DC 15 Tumble check to not permit an AoO.

EDIT: And of course, you'd have to take out the AoO-less 5ft step, or allow the other guy to 5ft step back to negate it, or something.

[Axebird]

An interesting mechanic implemented in Incursion (a roguelike based on d20) is that closing with someone with reach requires a reflex save DC 10+1/2 BAB+Dex. If you fail, your movement is wasted and you provoke. You can barrel through by Charging, which exposes you to a double damage attack with a hit bonus but lets you close automatically. You're also more likely to have someone you close with by the balls, since leaving a threatened area requires you to either eat an AoO (no five-foot stepping out for free), or attempt to "disengage" by making an opposed BAB check, which provokes and wastes your movement if you fail.

It keeps the whole reach weapon thing applicable at all levels of play, which could be a good or bad thing depending on your perspective, and reinforces reach users being able to hold a position. It's also slightly slower than normal though, adding extra rolls to trying to move through threatened areas or close with reach users. Not so much a problem in a computer game, but yeah.

[Josh_Kablack]

Josh, how the fuckity fuck sticks is having a 'myriad' of different abilities hidden throughout the game the 'simple' option?

For the pretty much the same reason it's easier for players to learn a level-based system than to jump right into a build point system.

Players start with the base case, and then some of their characters gain (or encounter enemies) with abilities that modify the base case.

Thus you can explain the base case and say it works like that unless you have something that specifically provides an exception -- but you don't have to explain what those exceptions are in the initial explanation. You can save it for the explanation of specific powers later. Yeah, that's backloading complexity rather than eliminating it, but the thing is that players tend to pay attention more attention to what their powers can do than to compound if/then/else clauses for general rules.

I would bet money that half of my players would parse "Movement provokes an AoO, unless you only take a 5' step and your BAB is 4+ or unless you threaten the enemies who threaten you from the square in which you start your 5' step" incorrectly the first 3 times they heard it.

[Username17]

Except that you aren't even back loading the complexity, you're hiding it. While I may grant that giving the player a special ability to shift without provoking is more likely to be remembered by that player than a general rule, you have to grant in turn the reality that this ability is substantially less likely to be remembered by everyone else. And when we're talking about movement and reach weapons, everyone is someone else.

There are always at least two characters in this exchange: the moving character and the spear using character. So if you're going the ubiquitous special abilities route, every single move involves at least one actor that you (for all possible definitions of 'you') aren't familiar with. It's like asking two people who've never played Magic before to shuffle up some permission decks.

The 4e system of hiding all the special rules might work for something, but it sure as fuck can't be anything but garbage for handling opposed tasks. And area control vs. movement is very definitely an opposed task.

-Username17

[OgreBattle]

[*]And a myriad of special abilities which allow an attacker to move thier opponent around -- although these need to be more meaningful than 4e's plethora of "Push 1" effects.

What do you see as a meaningful effect?

[ETortoise]

What about reach weapons in a system that uses more abstract zones rather than 5ft squares?

In Burning Wheel Gold players make an opposed speed test with a bonus for longer weapon (and other things). The winner gets bonus dice based on the length difference between the two weapons. So in spear vs dagger, the spearman rolls their speed +2 and the knife-fighter rolls her speed. The winner of this roll would get a +3 bonus on their attacks, but if it was spear vs. sword it'd only be a +2.

While it's kind of cool that it simulates different weapon lengths, the BWG combat rules take forever and really only work for one on one combats.

A couple people on this board have written about zone systems. Do reach weapons necessarily become cosmetic in them?

[Username17]

What about reach weapons in a system that uses more abstract zones rather than 5ft squares?

In Burning Wheel Gold players make an opposed speed test with a bonus for longer weapon (and other things). The winner gets bonus dice based on the length difference between the two weapons. So in spear vs dagger, the spearman rolls their speed +2 and the knife-fighter rolls her speed. The winner of this roll would get a +3 bonus on their attacks, but if it was spear vs. sword it'd only be a +2.

While it's kind of cool that it simulates different weapon lengths, the BWG combat rules take forever and really only work for one on one combats.

A couple people on this board have written about zone systems. Do reach weapons necessarily become cosmetic in them?

Reach weapons (or any weapons) are purely cosmetic unless they have rules of some kind. For zone systems there are plenty of places a reach weapon might have rules. They might give you a bonus when enemies move into your zone in exchange for a penalty when you are in a zone that is 'small.' Or they might increase the number of enemies in your zone that you can engage in exchange for being useless if someone successfully presses to close combat.

The details of how the zone system works will tell you what levers you have to differentiate weapons. But in most cases you should be able to distinguish a voulge and a broadsword if that is what you want to do.

-Username17

[RobbyPants]

You could also take 3e as is but limit 5ft steps to people you have more bab than.

If you are good you can slip past, if not out of luck.

So, basically take advantage of the Tome edge mechanic? If you have the edge on an opponent, you can take a five-foot step. Alternately, if you have the edge, your five-foot steps don't provoke AoOs.

[Krusk]

Basically. Either of those would describe my hypothetical. I'd prefer allowance with an aoo be straight banning but I think that's personal preference.

[Stubbazubba]

What about reach weapons in a system that uses more abstract zones rather than 5ft squares?
...
A couple people on this board have written about zone systems. Do reach weapons necessarily become cosmetic in them?

Not at all. In my zone system, you use your move action to engage an opponent in melee. Normally, this is bilateral; you are now both in melee with each other. If you're using a reach weapon, however, you are in "reach melee" with them, but they are not yet in melee with you. They have to spend their move action getting into "real melee" to attack, and that can trigger an AoO. If they successfully move into "real melee" with you, however, you cannot attack them with your reach weapon.