How should weapon types (sword, axe, spear, etc.) be in D&D?

[OgreBattle]

The 3rd edition and onward system of "damage dice, crit modifier, crit range, attack range" seems too easy to just math out the 'best' of the bunch. Like "oh I have these critical feats so a falchion is the best now, time to discard that greatsword I used from lvls 1-8"

In general swords are the most 'agile' with the largest 'attack surface'
axes and hammers tend to be harder hitting
Spears/rapiers have reach

Some ideas...

1) They have the same stats, but do different things on a critical, a sword lets you attack again, an axe deals more crit damage, a spear lets you push/withdraw

2) They give you an 'encounter power' like an extra sword attack, maximized axe damage dice, spear shifting

[Username17]

The true answer to the question of "how much difference should weapon choice make?" is "How much do you want it to make?" There's no divine mandate that hammers and swords should be meaningfully distinct, but there's also no mandate that they shouldn't be. Whether they should be different or not depends on whether you want the players to be making game-based decisions on what weapon to use.

When players are making game-based decisions on weapon choice this can lead to players changing weapons tactically and strategically. And that's pretty cool. On the other hand, it can end up spoiling peoples' idioms by strong arming them into using weapons that they don't like the aesthetics of very much. And that's unfortunate.

But once you've decided that weapon choice should have in-game effects and thus players should make game-based decisions about what weapons to use, you are then confronted with the choice of to what extent that difference should be based on external factors and to what extent it should be based on internal factors. An example of an internal factor is "Hammers get a bonus for high strength users" and an example of an external factor is "Hammers get a bonus against heavy armor opponents." Internal factors usually don't change very often and tend to lead to characters picking weapons for their "build," while external factors tend to be more fluid and tend to lead to the "golf bag of weapons." Either or both of those things could be something you want depending on the game you want to make.

What kinds of modifiers and abilities weapons can offer depends deeply on what kind of game system you otherwise have. If Fighters are making "basic attacks" most of the time, weapon-based combat maneuvers make a lot of sense. But if the usual Fighter attack is already defined as a special maneuver, you're probably looking for something more akin to a modifier or a proc ability. So a 3rd edition Fighter might benefit from learning a "Knockdown Strike" maneuver that they can use with hammers, which would be useful against opponents tough enough to take more than one hit and melee-focused enough that they care if they are knocked down. But a 3rd edition Warblade wouldn't give a shit, and would want some sort of "Overwhelming Knockdown" triggered ability that happened when their gravity smash maneuver did enough damage.

-Username17

[Prak]

I think the best thing for the actual granularity of D&D 3.X would be something like Swords give better iterative attacks, Axes do more damage, Hammers are better at sundering, etc. Basically select one thing already in and make the given category a little better at it.

[Aryxbez]

I would think you'd want it to be more general weapon types, opposed to specifically Hammers, or Glaives. So perhaps One-handed, Two-Handed, Reach Weapon, Double Weapon, Ranged Weapon? and then you add traits to weapons to sorta "build-a-weapon". So maybe can make a One-hadned "finesse" so use dex for atk/dam, or add Trip to a Reach Weapon to make a guisarme or halberd.

So if people want to make weapons from their favorite sources of media, ideally they can, this will also likely have your game shy away from weapon fetishization so they won't be punished by the mechanics when pick up a new magical weapon.

[OgreBattle]

this will also likely have your game shy away from weapon fetishization so they won't be punished by the mechanics when pick up a new magical weapon.

A bit of a tangent, but I've been thinking that the "weapon specialists" could gravitate towards huge two handed weapons, and then the "Lemme get my golf bag" guys gravitate towards 1.5h weapons.

So Cloud guy always uses a buster sword, while Link switchs between 1h sword and shield or offhand weapon or bow or 2h axe. Cloud and Link then have similar encumbrance levels for their gear.

If you're a "rapier guy" then you're more about your class features giving you mobility bonuses and roguish tricks to pull off than the properties of the rapier.

[Username17]

I think the best thing for the actual granularity of D&D 3.X would be something like Swords give better iterative attacks, Axes do more damage

However you want weapon specials to work, you definitely don't want them to work like that. Moar Attacks vs Moar Damage is just a math problem - whether you'd do moar damage by attacking more times or rolling bigger damage dice on the attacks you do make. Once solved, it stops being interesting entirely, and just becomes a math argument to use one set of equipment over another.

And it's not like we don't have examples of precisely this. Everquest D20 was a thing that happened, and it came out in 2002, meaning that it now old enough to drive. Since the "fast weapons" only give you extra attacks at specific BAB points, it is entirely normal for a character to be highly encouraged to switch from Ax to Rapier and then back to Ax and then back to Rapier during their level progression. That's fucking retarded. And yet, it's hard to see how you don't end up precisely there with trying to make modifiers to the iterative attack progression be weapon specific. Going back further we have the fucking Minotaur Dart Specialist from 2nd edition AD&D because Rate of Fire absolutely trumps absolutely everything when your strength bonus gets big enough and specialization in the fucking throwing dart gives the highest rate of fire.

This sort of mathhammering to output your ideal weapon is not immersive or fun. It's stupid and also bad.

Like, compare this shit to 4th Edition. Now, I have a lot of problems with 4th Edition. Like, if I have to choose Ax Powers to ever be good with an Ax and have to choose Flail powers to ever be good with a Flail, why fucking bother also having those powers be stat assignment gated? Like, I get that all Hammer Fighters are Str/Con and all Spear Fighters are Str/Dex, but why bother doing that when you already have power selection force people into weapon builds? That's dumb. But at least it isn't a fucking quadratic equation on your homework to figure out what weapons your character can use. You look at your Dex fighter and realize that you have the choice of Spear powers or Flail powers and do not have the choice of taking Hammer powers or Ax powers. That's kind of shit, but it's better than hiding that information from people until they've done some fucking algebra.

-Username17

[Prak]

I mean... I was thinking, like, Swords get +2 on iterative attacks, Axes use higher damage dice, Hammers have +2 on Sunder attempts, that sort of trivial shit that came to mind because of Skyrim and my not devoting any more brain energy to it.

[Username17]

I mean... I was thinking, like, Swords get +2 on iterative attacks, Axes use higher damage dice, Hammers have +2 on Sunder attempts, that sort of trivial shit that came to mind because of Skyrim and my not devoting any more brain energy to it.

But that all sucks.

If all you're getting is +2 on a maneuver that's rare used, you might as well not fucking bother. In 3rd edition, Flails give +2 to Disarm attempts. No one fucking cares.

-Username17

[tussock]

D&D weapons are basically a giant pile of anachronisms, and differentiating them has done quite a lot of silliness, same as their armour set.

Warhammer, Greatsword, Halberd, Lance, Pike, Arquebus, Horse pistol. Done. The horse pistol and Warhammer are still anachronistic together, but ah well.

Like, pick a couple missile weapons, 2-3 melee weapons each for noblemen and the soldiery, and maybe a civilian thing like a smallsword if that seems culturally appropriate. They are then different in that some specifically punch plate armour well, some have great formation reach, some explicitly live to fuck up a disrupted formation of pikes, and otherwise they're just weapons, and they all just kill people when used proficiently. Greatswords are better weapon breakers and halberds better plate punchers, but adding those minor features to D&D doesn't really help.

Orcs form pike line across corridor and prepare to charge. PCs fire handguns. Formation disrupted, reform attempt fails! PCs charge with great weapons. Orcs break morale, flee, and are cut down in disordered retreat. That's a proper medieval fight.

--

Real adventurers used custom weapons, quite rare historically, but things such as six-barrel pistols, axe-pistols, multi-barrel light artillery for carts or landing craft. Light cannons on river boats. Siege weapons were about to, but not really adventurer-relevant most of the time. Or maybe they are?

Lantern-shields, everyone mugging folks at night just used lantern-shields, designed to open the blind suddenly and dazzle people, because yeah. D&D has never had them, not even magic ones!

Or pre-gunpowder, a few things like stacked crossbow arms, or makeshift weapons like, a few nails in a club, broken plate glass, or random farm implements on a pole. Or of course portable ballista for carts, from Roman times, very cool weapons.

--

Like, as a D&D clone, add cool stuff. Mechanical marvels with a failure chance and enough down time to make carrying a backup weapon reasonable. People get giant strength, let 'em carry multi-shot ballista (or push 'em on a little handcart, or have kobolds do that). Not more regular weapons, things with extreme reload times.

Nets, net guns. barbed net cannons with magic glue. Proper dungeon weapons, build-in flashbang effect from the muzzle flare. Not just dropping caltrops, but things that break to summon air elementals, paper wards that cast black tentacles on chasers. Mmm. Weapons.

Maybe that's what high level fighters are for, carrying the book bombs, or the powder kegs if you like a stable kind of gunpowder.

[Ferret]

see I'd much rather see something simpler, like short/1-hand/heavy (with guidelines for how to categorize a specific weapon, i.e. (short weapons are one hand weapons under 3 lb and shorter than 24 inches for a Medium size humanoid) with static damage codes (A sword does 4 damage plus bonus damage based on attack roll levels of success) and a damage type. I'd like to see maneuver/powers be reasonably generic with a default effect, but list in each power/technique/maneuver a matrix showing additional rider effects for each Size/Damage Type.

Keeps all/most powers available for all weapon choices, drops one of the die rolls out of combat, makes specific weapon choice personal without having a 'winner' in each category so that all One Hand guys aren't using the bastard sword because it's the best.

[virgil]

The horse pistol and Warhammer are still anachronistic together, but ah well.

Citation needed.

[Mord]

One stray thought regarding the proliferation of weapon types IRL...

Thinking of the medieval European world, you saw the development of the humble spear and arming sword into different and more complex forms like the halberd, zweihander, etc. as one component of an evolutionary arms race between weapons, armor, and organization/formation.

It makes sense to give guys halberds when they're wearing steel armor that reliably deflects arrows and they're marching in a reasonably tight block formation. Likewise, it makes sense to use a thrusting weapon such as a rapier if you're trying to penetrate (or aim for the gaps in) armor of sufficient quality to blunt a slash. It doesn't necessarily make the same amount of sense if you're up against, say, a horde of skeletons.

What we've got in D&Dland is a situation where there is no real arms race between adventurers and manticores or whatever, but there is real diversity in the types of monsters an adventurer could conceivably want to kill. Harpies in year 1 are still pretty much the same as harpies in year 400, so you're not going to see major evolution in your harpy-killing weapons in response to harpies starting to wear better armor. What you are going to see, realistically, is that a group of people going out to clear manticores out of ruins are going to arm themselves differently than people going out to clear harpies out of ruins.

IRL it's basically inconceivable that you would find someone going around with pilum and tower shield legionaries expecting to be taken seriously in a world of pike and shot. And yet in D&Dland this is a theoretically reasonable thing to do, if you imagine that the testudo formation is for some reason really effective protection against breath attacks and pila can weigh down a dragon until it's too heavy to fly so you can close in with a gladius for the butchering (actually you still probably wouldn't want to use a gladius).

One of the things about D&D that has always annoyed me is that by uncritically taking weapons and armor from across thousands of years of IRL history, you end up with things that are a little bit ridiculous, like a guy in a dungeon wielding a halberd, or the tower shield being simply "the best shield." Arms designed for use in massed formations are not always so hot when you change the context to "one guy in a series of twisty underground passages." I'd rather have the tower shield than nothing, but frankly a halberd or pike or long spear in a dungeon sounds like a really elaborate means of suicide.

[...You Lost Me]

Since we're looking at this from the perspective of a hypothetical game of D&D Except Different, I think it would be better to ask what your average player would engage with best. All I have is anecdotal evidence, but as far as I can tell, players tend to break down into 3 groups at low levels:

• I do not care at all about my weapons because they're boring.
• I care about wielding 1 weapon forever because it's the best weapon.
• I want a golf bag full of weapons that I can use in different encounters because I can show off my cleverness. Also I like 10 foot poles.

I haven't noticed anyone expressing interest in weapon golf bags at high levels. Those players seem more drawn to spell toolbox classes like the Wizard. Based on that limited experience, my gut tells me that the best solution involves giving low-level enemies some mundane weaknesses for the golf-bag players, and phasing out those weaknesses in favor of high-fantasy weaknesses as you level up.

As a side note, I don't think I have met anyone in real life who even remotely cares about "realistic" weapons or weapon-based maneuvers.

[Pedantic]

I haven't noticed anyone expressing interest in weapon golf bags at high levels. Those players seem more drawn to spell toolbox classes like the Wizard. Based on that limited experience, my gut tells me that the best solution involves giving low-level enemies some mundane weaknesses for the golf-bag players, and phasing out those weaknesses in favor of high-fantasy weaknesses as you level up.

Fantasy Craft has a reasonable solution to this, in that you get proficiency in groups of weapons, so you've got 12 swords to pick from that all do different things, and then it has a crafting system that lets you start stacking properties on a single weapon as you go up in wealth. Net result is that once you have the feats and combat style choices to want to be specialized in a weapon, you have the money/crafting skills to make that weapon do all the stuff you were swapping between weapons for originally.

[Axebird]

I haven't noticed anyone expressing interest in weapon golf bags at high levels.

I imagine this has a lot to do with how Wealth By Level makes it impossible to maintain a golf bag of special weapons, while at level 1 you can totally afford to field 3-5 different melee weapons.

[Whipstitch]

Yep, as I've argued before life never really gets better than level 2 for Joe Melee. You can afford whatever mundane shit you need short of plate armor and that's fine when you're just bullying kobolds or occasionally running through the local wild life with your lance.

[tussock]

The horse pistol and Warhammer are still anachronistic together, but ah well.

Citation needed.

Ooh, quite right, Warhammers hung around for ages, into the 19th century here and there, and horse pistols are a 16th-17th century thing and there's definitely warhammers then, even quite common in the 16th.

I think computer games have been lying to me.

--

IRL it's basically inconceivable that you would find someone going around with pilum and tower shield legionaries expecting to be taken seriously in a world of pike and shot.

Uh, Romans spent a long time fighting against pike squares supported by slingers, who funnily enough used lead shot. The lessons they took from it all made them take up using pikes and smaller shields in later centuries, as well as light missile troops in support, but it's totally conceivable that they did what they did.

If anything weapons got less diverse over time, especially the mass produced stuff later.

Mind you, people did use broadhead arrows and broad bladed spears for hunting, but that was for pigs and deer, while a dragon is more like an armoured man with long reach weapons, except much taller and with more fire. Asbestos undergarments and very large steel nets, that's dragon-fighting kit, you still just stab it with armour-breaking weapons and aim for the major arteries.

[OgreBattle]

I haven't noticed anyone expressing interest in weapon golf bags at high levels.

Ran a game of 5e with students who never played D&D. They all carried a variety of weapons because they could, even switched to worse ones like "I drop my greatsword and pull out my hammer" because it was just something fun to do.

I figure FATE levels of abstraction are ultimately the most broad and appealing for people who don't know of D&D's sacred commandments.

[JonSetanta]

Don't forget the three damage types of Piercing, Bludgeoning, and Slashing.

Rather than sort weapons by appearance one should sort them by those three damage types.

Piercing would cause a Bleed effect for HP loss until the wound is patched.

Bludgeoning should always deal double damage to armor, or reduce AC by a certain amount if you don't keep track of armor HP.

Slashing obviously severs limbs or heads (Vorpal?) but that's probably more level dependent than anything else, which is bad.


As it stands, D&D is not equipped to handle special effects for weapons beyond the simple +2 or Reach bonuses it already has.

You'd need a redo of the combat system as it is.

[maglag]

Don't forget the three damage types of Piercing, Bludgeoning, and Slashing.

Rather than sort weapons by appearance one should sort them by those three damage types.

Piercing would cause a Bleed effect for HP loss until the wound is patched.

Bludgeoning should always deal double damage to armor, or reduce AC by a certain amount if you don't keep track of armor HP.

Slashing obviously severs limbs or heads (Vorpal?) but that's probably more level dependent than anything else, which is bad.


As it stands, D&D is not equipped to handle special effects for weapons beyond the simple +2 or Reach bonuses it already has.

You'd need a redo of the combat system as it is.

There's already DR/X. Plate/golems can have DR/bludgeoning while furry monster would be vulnerable to piercing and a slime/hydra needs slashing weapons to attack their weak point for massive damage.

Or you can go the Fire Emblem style where it's a game of rock-paper-scissors where sword beats axe, axe beats spear and spear beats swords, assuming that after you attack you stay with that weapon until the next turn. More recent games standardized it with magic and whatnot to Red (swords, fire) beats Green(axes, wood) beats Blue(spears, water) beats Red.

[deaddmwalking]

Don't forget the three damage types of Piercing, Bludgeoning, and Slashing.

Rather than sort weapons by appearance one should sort them by those three damage types.

Piercing would cause a Bleed effect for HP loss until the wound is patched.

Bludgeoning should always deal double damage to armor, or reduce AC by a certain amount if you don't keep track of armor HP.

Slashing obviously severs limbs or heads (Vorpal?) but that's probably more level dependent than anything else, which is bad.


As it stands, D&D is not equipped to handle special effects for weapons beyond the simple +2 or Reach bonuses it already has.

You'd need a redo of the combat system as it is.

Tracking bleed is annoying and bad. For 'dumb monsters' you can shoot them with an arrow and let them bleed out. And that's not what you want.

Tracking damage to armor is annoying and nobody wants their armor to get worse. Repairing armor is more annoying than 'repairing hit point damage' by casting cure light wounds after a rest. And it is really only a burden to PCs. Orcs always have 'perfect' armor when the PCs first meet them; they'll die so no orcs have to track armor quality; but PCs who loot it do.

If you're trying to add effects make them fun for the PCs. Extra accounting home work isn't fun.

[Judging__Eagle]

One thing that comes to mind in distinguishing melee weapons, is that there aren't the sorts of differences people often assume.

Power vs Agility - a hammer, an axe, or two-handed non-staff weapon are harder to attack with, but always hit very hard; a sword, dagger, rapier, staff or pole weapons have a much easier time hitting, but don't deliver as much damage.

You could even make size of damage dice correlate with to-hit bonuses and penalties.

Which correlates with history. People preferred swords b/c hitting, even with a weaker weapon; was better than missing with a nearly-lethal weapon.



Slashing vs Piercing vs Bludgeoning - The more that I think about it, the more that they feel like they are _gradients_ of damage; not specifically different damage types. Historically, the greatest injuries inflicted by swords was broken bones. Which shits all over the notion that "swords only do slashing damage, so are no good vs skeletons" as being founded on any sense of realism or historicity.

Slashing attacks injure health points. Piercing attacks penalize Constitution or Strength. Bludgeoning affect agility xor mental attributes

Alternately, Piercing attacks penalize Physical attributes. Bludgeoning penalize mental attributes.

Side Note: All mental characteristics should have combat applications; to make them desireable to arete characters. Just like spellcasters want high Dexterity for Iniative/AC/Ranged Attacks, an Constitution for survivability.

Perhaps something like Wisdom affects damage or crit range or crit multiplier (or all three; you add your Wisdom Modifer to damage, crit range, and crit multiplier). Intelligence bonus grants increasingly better bonus actions (Immediate, Swift, Move, Standard). Charisma allows for a set amount of saving throws to be passed each session (Possibly even equal to your modifier bonus; comically, -1 Cha mod PCs have to make a saving throw to survive an adventure, even if they survived it, or four).

These would also make spellcasters have their primary stats feel more universally useful; not just for spellcasting or skill checks. A Bard or Sorceror get to laugh at the universe's attempts to harm/kill them. A wizard can squeeze of some fancy footwork before dropping a spell. A druid/monk/cleric is guided by their senses to harm their enemies grievously.

[Not sure if it's worth anything, but the idea of making mental and physical stats have bonuses for both spellcasting and combat feels like a good way to make any "stat dumping" unoptimal]

"Reach" weapons limitations are also generally mishandled. A reversed polearm can be used against adjacent opponents, and anyone with a +1 BaB can shift between the two as a Swift action at most. Then there's the size of D&D spears, they don't vary, the 're at the short end of "reaching" spears; and there are none that grant 15' of reach. Even though effective/notable spear formations in history were using spears 14-16' long (e.g. Scottish Sheltrams, Hellenic Phalanxes, Macedonian Sarissa-using Phalanxes)

[maglag]

Side Note: All mental characteristics should have combat applications; to make them desireable to arete characters. Just like spellcasters want high Dexterity for Iniative/AC/Ranged Attacks, an Constitution for survivability.

Perhaps something like Wisdom affects damage or crit range or crit multiplier (or all three; you add your Wisdom Modifer to damage, crit range, and crit multiplier). Intelligence bonus grants increasingly better bonus actions (Immediate, Swift, Move, Standard). Charisma allows for a set amount of saving throws to be passed each session (Possibly even equal to your modifier bonus; comically, -1 Cha mod PCs have to make a saving throw to survive an adventure, even if they survived it, or four).

These would also make spellcasters have their primary stats feel more universally useful; not just for spellcasting or skill checks. A Bard or Sorceror get to laugh at the universe's attempts to harm/kill them. A wizard can squeeze of some fancy footwork before dropping a spell. A druid/monk/cleric is guided by their senses to harm their enemies grievously.

Sure, clearly casters need even more buffs.

And how exactly will martials be able to afford said mental stats when they already struggle to keep their physical stats up to time? Because the druid can just lolwildshape and the cleric can loldivinepower and the wizard can lolpolymorph to skyrocket their physical stats, but the fighter doesn't get any mental trance ability to buff their mind.

Then there's the size of D&D spears, they don't vary, the 're at the short end of "reaching" spears; and there are none that grant 15' of reach. Even though effective/notable spear formations in history were using spears 14-16' long (e.g. Scottish Sheltrams, Hellenic Phalanxes, Macedonian Sarissa-using Phalanxes)

Ever tried to take a 15 ft stick in a 10 ft passage? How about a 5 ft passage?

Dungeons and dragons weapons indeed has a focus in weapons that you can actually use inside dungeons.

[OgreBattle]

On weapon length... here's a 1600's account of English with boarding pikes fighting Asian pirates armed with katana or nodachi:

"In a flash everything changed: unbeknown to the English, the Japanese had, in the words of Michelborne, 'resolved with themselves either to gaine my shippe or to lose their lives'. The smiles vanished, the laughter died and the Japanese suddenly transformed themselves into brutal 'rogues' who stabbed and slashed at their English adversaries. The crew of the Tiger had never faced such hostility and scarcely had a chance to resist before the deck was swarming with Japanese wielding long swords and hacking men to pieces. Soon they reached the gun room where they found Davis desperately loading muskets. 'They pulled him into the cabbin and giving him sixe or seven mortall wounds, they thrust him out of the cabbin.' He stumbled on deck but the sword wounds had severed one of his arteries and he bled to death. Others too, were in their final death throes and it seemed inevitable that the Tiger would shortly be lost.

It was Michelborne who saved the day. Thrusting pikes into the hands of his best fighters he launched a last-ditch attack on the Japanese soldiers 'and killed three or four of their leaders'. This disheartened the Japanese who slowly found themselves at a disadvantage. Armed with knives and swords, they were unable to compete with Michelborne's pikemen and found themselves driven down the deck until they stood en masse by the entrance to the cabin. Sensing their predicament, they let out a terrific scream and dashed headlong into the heart of the ship.

The English were at a loss as to know how to evict them. Not one man volunteered to follow them into the cabin for to do so would be to court certain death. It was equally hopeless to send a large group down. The passageway was low and narrow and the men would end up wounding themselves rather than the Japanese.

Eventually a bright spark on board had a simple but devastating solution. Two thirty-two-pound demi-culverins were loaded with 'crosse-bars, bullets, and case-shot' and fired at point-blank range into the most exposed side of the cabin. There was a deafening crash as the shrapnel tore through the woodwork and 'violently marred therwith boords and splinters'., A terrible shriek followed, a cry of agony, and then there was silence. When the smoke cleared and the dust settled, the cabin was entered and it was found that only one of the twenty-two japanese had survived. 'Their legs, armes and bodies were so torne, as it was strange to see how the shot had massacred them.'"

Boarding pikes of this time would be... I think 8-10ft, meant to be used on ship decks. They were shorter than polearms used on land battles.
The pirates had an advantage with their two handed swords vs whatever the English had on their waists, but then when the English got pikes the pirates were driven below deck. Below deck though the pikes were too long for effective use and the commentator said they'd wind up hurting themselves, so they turned the ships cannons on itself.

I don't know how cramped a 1600's English boat is but an 8ft polearm was too long, but a two handed sword (ambiguous as to how long they were) can still work.

I figure that translates to dungeon conditions.

There's references in the 100 years war of dismounted knights shortening their lances to use on foot, so there was some length that was considered ideal for non-formation foot combat, and another length considered good for charging on horse back or in large formations.

[maglag]

Indeed, old naval combat is another great example of how very long weapons are far from ideal in cramped spaces.

There's references in the 100 years war of dismounted knights shortening their lances to use on foot, so there was some length that was considered ideal for non-formation foot combat, and another length considered good for charging on horse back or in large formations.

Yeah, that happened too in one of the main battles of my home country. The enemy mounted Knights found out the field had been filled with wolf traps that made it suicidically to try to advance on horse so they dismounted and first thing they did was chop their own spears shorter before re-forming and advancing on foot.

The basic reason is that when you're mounted on an horse you can afford to carry a longer spear because you're in an higher position (so you can actually afford to point the spear slightly down and still score killing blows) and the horse will do the running and you really want the extra reach to break infantry spear lines. But if you're on foot, the pratical limit of how long your spear can be will be shorter, there's only so much wood a trained human can properly lift while charging to stab a guy at the same height as yours.

EDIT: "In the 14th century, tactical developments meant that knights and men-at-arms often fought on foot. This led to the practice of shortening the lance to about 5 ft (1.5 m).) to make it more manageable."

Yup, 5 ft spears were the footman's choice.