ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

ToME, in my opinion, should have spears as weapons; they would be a substantial addition to ToME and theres weapons that look like spears on the left side of the offensive boot image.

What makes me want this to be implemented is how some people complained about how Skyrim or Oblivion didn't have spears, I forget which one it was because I didn't play them.
This even made at least one person not buy the game, according to what I heard irl.

On another note, polearms would be a nice addition to exotic weapons.

Would most spears, polearms and other "reaching" weapons have the ability to attack squares further than melee? I think that was the original function of those longer weapons.

Either way, I support this.

Spears, historically speaking, can be used with shields but not all shields. Also, they're very high damage weapons. Games tend to adopt the later but always make them incompatible with shields.

My suggestions is adding a type of low to mid-coverage shield that can be used with spears.

I think spears would be great if they attacked two spaces away. I'd also suggest that if your back is against a wall then the spear should have a chance to push the enemy back after every attack and before theirs.

I'd love to see a heavily armored bulwark using a shield and spear.

I'd rather just see Tridents get a unique ability to attack a few squares away.

They could use the help. Perhaps one or two more could be added and it could just be expanded to polearms.

I would like to see Polearms (Lances and Halberds?) either as exotic weapons, "reach" weapons, or even general "armed" weapons. Whether 1 or 2 handed, and perhaps occupying a space in between.

Is it possible to have them allow a shield, but block a second weapon? I suppose the individual spear would determine that, actually.

Sidenote: If a Reaver got their hands on a spear, would it be a one-handed weapon?

I can't imagine someone using two spears due to the nature of the weapon so I'd have to say "no" for the notion of a Reaver using two spears.

Still, I'm fond of this idea.

The Revanchist wrote:Sidenote: If a Reaver got their hands on a spear, would it be a one-handed weapon?

no

I think there's plenty of room for short spears for bulwarkacus and stabby reavers (maybe give them an ego that lets you throw them?) AND long spears/pikes/polearms with a little bit of reach

I'd put a thought to usability. It might take a bit of tweaking to make bump attacks work properly at any sort of range - and probably a fair amount of rewriting at some level or another to make standard melee attack powers suddenly longer ranged as well.

Once you've done that, well, spears would need to be balanced.
- Short spears: bad idea for the moment. The stabby parts lack range and are thus just another overlap with axe/hammer/sword. They don't add anything. The thrown parts suddenly run into weird ammo things. If we don't have throwing daggers, and we don't have throwing darts, we don't want our first forays into the field of throwable munitions to be dual-use throwing spears.
- Long spears: would need some balance factor. they get a cool thing - they have range. In order to balance that, you need to trim something else - probably damage. The actual balance factor on the european side was that in the real world, fighting with spears up close left you at a major disadvantage, which in turn was balanced by the fact that your enemy had to get past the spear to get to you, which wasn't necessarily trivial (especially if you were in formation, or if your "enemy" was a bear or a boar or whatnot that didn't know any better than to impale themselves on the thing on the way in).

The most straightforward way I can see to put in *those* balance factors would be to say that the spear does has full effect at range 2, but significantly reduced hit and/or damage at range 1, and inherently pins enemies for a turn on hit. You might be able to build an interesting set of strategies around that. It's a fair bit of work, though. Saying "you get extra range, but less damage, and you can get heavy spears with no shield or lighter spears for one-handed work." is a lot more straightforward, and still gives you some variance in strategy.

Does anyone know enough about martial art spear styles vs other weapons to talk meaningfully about the tradeoffs there? I personally do not, but I suspect they might be more useful, as that's actually intended as a way to fight one-on-one with intelligent opponents

I really like the range=2 idea, with diminished effect (but not too much) at range=1. I think this would really add an interesting feeling of geography to melee classes. Right now melee is just bump-bump-bump.

Adding a range=2 weapon would make melee seem much less myopically boring.

I agree the lack of spears is weird especially with them being present on the main screen, but about it, I'm not sure range=2 makes sense, considering how abstracted square size is.

After all even a huge dragon(whose body is way bigger than the spear, one assumes!) still takes one tile.

The ideal for me would be to add both one and two handed spears - I'd actually like if you could choose to use one or two hands on some weapons, depending on having a free hand, but that's another issue - and make a spear 'lunge' talent that lets you move 1 step forward, attack, then move back. So *effectively* a range 2 attack with some caveats(you have to step into the square for a moment, so traps, terrain effects.). I don't think you'd need to lower damage for balance, instead I'd make this cost a bit of stamina(though that's weird for non-stamina classes)and/or lower defence for 1 turn.

Of course, then other weapon types should get a basic talent too.
And spears would make sense as throwable, but then regular axes and so would have to be and it doesn't really work with the 'no finite resources' philosophy the game tries to follow. Maybe if there's another revamp on differentiating weapons it could work.


Also, I'd avoid pikes. A pike is a really silly weapon for a single adventurer I think, unless you can get an army of likewise armed allies

theres already been some ideas:

http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=37657

i agree more weapons would be cool, but there should be skill sets/more effects tied to the different weapons. we now got that new accuracy bonus which well see how it works out.

tridents and whips are only 1/3 implemented and every weapon category would need some artifacts to balance it. also melee chars would require to be flexible with their weapon mastery if theres going to be bigger differences - else theyll suffer from item-drop-variance-issues

Tharsonius wrote:tridents and whips are only 1/3 implemented and every weapon category would need some artifacts to balance it. also melee chars would require to be flexible with their weapon mastery if theres going to be bigger differences - else theyll suffer from item-drop-variance-issues

Spears would go under Weapon mastery, where swords axes and maces are, so weapon mastery wouldnt be an issue