Ah, yes. RP is the main force driving the game for me too. I was explicitly pointing out the lack of mechanical variety for the younger lads .
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Given all the pole arms in AD&D, at least some mechanical differentiation could be achieved.:smalltongue:
IIRC 1E had quite a power up with UA (which also had that lovely picture of all those pole arms)
Yeah - pole-arms were big in AD&D, well for Gary anyway.:smallbiggrin:
I do recall that I used my 1E monster manuals throughout the 2E period, the systems were that similar. Though there was the embarrassing incident when the part killed Orcus, 66 HP, really ! I should have bumped that.
I also recall that OD&D stopped at level 6, and the spell lists were still quite small.
If you were playing battlesystems (a poorly received figurine game that was introduced alongside AD&D, I think first but maybe 2nd ed) pole arms reached two spots. Also in both games someone using a pole arm can attack from behind a barrier (where it's reasonable) and from behind another character.
The Spear Advantage (attacking from behind another character) is actually pretty big for the characters that can take advantage of it.
Edit: oh oh oh! Set to receive charge as well, if you have a pole arm you can set up to do double damage if charged.
It's worth remembering that D&D's roots are in miniatures gaming. The desired differentiation was in how the figures looked, not what happened with die rolls.
In The Strategic Review #2 (precursor to The Dragon), Gygax had an article on polearms that included a page and a half on how they worked in the middle ages. Gameplay was not mentioned except by references in the second and last paragraphs, mentioning the attached attack table for Chainmail.
We assumed that he just liked how they looked.
I think that's a good bet since every book he's worked on has multiple drawings of pole arms. I've always thought that was awesome.
The most active online community that plays that edition refers to it as "classic" D&D, which covers the Holmes B/X boxed sets, the BECMI series of boxed sets, and the rules cyclopedia. The differences between these are almost negligible; you'll find bigger discrepancies within each of these 'editions' due to proof-reading errors.
I wrote a song about this once, a very long time ago.
I can't remember much of it, except the chorus line which was
"Gary and his Glaive-Guisarme", repeated a couple of times.
I leave recreating this as an exercise.:smalltongue: