Are there any RPGs where spears aren't treated as second class citizens?

[Corvus]

In all the RPGs that I've seen and played, spears are always at the bottom of the table, second class citizens and the red-headed stepchildren who get sent to their room with just bread and water while their siblings get all the fun food and toys.

And a lot of them don't even let you do a good spear and shield combo either, relegating them to two handed weapons.

Can anyone recommend a RPG where spears are actually usable and useful?

[RazorChain]

In Gurps you can do a decent spear fighter. Had one player who played a wood elf using spear switching to staff technique for defensive purposes and combinng it with sweeps and armed grapples

[Koo Rehtorb]

Burning Wheel.

They come in both one and two-handed versions. They're in the longest range category, which means you're very likely to be able to keep people with a shorter weapon at a significant disadvantage in a fight. And they have better armour piercing than swords.

[Corvus]

Thanks.

That is exactly the kind of thing that I'm looking for.

[Lacco]

Riddle of Steel/Blade of the Iron Throne

Spears come in several varieties - different lengths as well as hewing/knobbed spears - up to lances/pikes.

The length difference is crushing in combat unless your opponents knows how to break through to close the distance. Combined with shield they offer very nice defensive options. Some of them may be even thrown with good effect.

[Lord Torath]

Darksun (2E - not sure about 4E). There are two classes of weapons: those that are less effective if made from something other than metal, and those with no difference. Spears are the best weapon in the latter category. Those in the first category (swords, axes, arrows, and similar) cost 10, 30, 50, or 100 times normal cost depending on the material of construction (wood, bone, stone/obsidian, or metal respectively). Those in the second category (including spears) just cost the normal amount.

[Lord Shark]

D&D 4E. Spears and flails are the best choices for a fighter or other melee character who wants to focus on forced movement and tripping (although greatspears and other polearms are generally better than spear-and-shield, sadly).

Spears are pretty good in The One Ring, as well. They do less damage than axes or swords, but have a higher chance of scoring a Piercing Blow, which can take an opponent out of the fight immediately.

[LordEntrails]

Runequest (at least 1E)

[Psyren]

Spears get decent support in Pathfinder; check out the Reach Cleric build, which combos the longspear's innate reach and an AoO build to let you cast spells on allies during your turn and stab the gently caress out of bad guys when it's not. Or if you want something with a purely martial focus, look into feats like Spear Dancing Style, Weapon Versatility, and Crusader's Flurry.

[hymer]

Can anyone recommend a RPG where spears are actually usable and useful?

IIRC, Warhammer RPG doesn't distinguish much between weapons. Whether you're wielding a warhammer or a spear is mostly a matter of fluff.

[Fri]

In legend of the wulin I don't remember any weapon type be stronger than any other since what weapon type does is add different stats bonus and attack type so you pick weapons that enhance your build idea and sync with your fighting style.

[Magic Myrmidon]

The Dark Eye gives weapons bonuses when fighting weapons with a shorter reach. So spears get a +4 against short weapons like daggers, and +2 against swords and such. But they get big penalties in cramped spaces like dungeons.

[Lord Torath]

Shadowrun also gives reach bonuses to longer weapons. In 2E, this was almost unbalancing in favor of longer weapons. Not sure if it's been fixed in later editions.

[Max_Killjoy]

Are there any simple ways to represent reach differences, such that the long weapon starts out with a bonus but the shorter weapon can get inside the reach of the longer weapon and then have an advantage instead?

Without turning fights into 5 minutes of real time per 5 seconds of in-character combat time, I mean.

[LibraryOgre]

In Hackmaster, the reach of a spear can be decisive factor early in the conflict, but after that initial push, it fares poorly against someone with a shield.

[RazorChain]

Are there any simple ways to represent reach differences, such that the long weapon starts out with a bonus but the shorter weapon can get inside the reach of the longer weapon and then have an advantage instead?

Without turning fights into 5 minutes of real time per 5 seconds of in-character combat time, I mean.

It depends, you could give the long weapon a bonus in the start of the fight or something similar. Many long weapons aren't disadvantaged when you close as many are 2 handed and you just shift your grip. All weapons except small ones are at disadvantage if you get into a grappling match.

Like longsword fighting where you can grab the ricasso to shift the grip or with a polearm where you can use it more like a staff (here I'm talking about short polearms, not 3-5 meter beasts of war used in formation fighting.

Gurps does this decently by representing reach, a good fighter with reach can force an opponent with a shorter weapon to get defensive penalties to close the gap while he can benefit from defensive bonuses from retreating/circling

[Knaight]

Spears are generally solid in the Ubiquity games, although that doesn't apply to the more modern ones - they can keep up with swords just fine, not so much modern firearms. They're also just fine in Fudge, Savage Worlds, and generally a lot of generics (though not d6 Fantasy).

Burning Wheel.

They come in both one and two-handed versions. They're in the longest range category, which means you're very likely to be able to keep people with a shorter weapon at a significant disadvantage in a fight. And they have better armour piercing than swords.

There's also a fun little diagram indicating why that reach is useful.

[Tyrrell]

Exalted 3 treats all melee weapons as either small, medium or large and then adds descriptive tags.

Spears have the tags lethal and piercing, long spears also have reaching, short spears also have thrown. This set of weapon tags makes them pretty darn good.

[Psikerlord]

In LFG swords do d8 with a disarm property on a nat 19. Spears do d6+1 but have a 10 ft reach and can be thrown. Both good in different ways.

[Koo Rehtorb]

Are there any simple ways to represent reach differences, such that the long weapon starts out with a bonus but the shorter weapon can get inside the reach of the longer weapon and then have an advantage instead?

Without turning fights into 5 minutes of real time per 5 seconds of in-character combat time, I mean.

Fight in Burning Wheel is the opposite of simple, but it otherwise has this.

You start combat with a speed vs speed test for positioning if there's a difference in weapon length. The person who wins is fighting at their optimal weapon range and putting their opponent at a disadvantage for the fight, with a bonus to the initial positioning test if you have a longer weapon. During the fight you can also try to perform maneuvers that will seize the weapon advantage for yourself again.

[Fri]

With all these response, now I wonder which RPGs treat spear as second class citizen, because people responded with even Pathfinder and 4e, and with what the OP write I thought the second-class-citizenry would be much more prevalent.

[Jormengand]

With all these response, now I wonder which RPGs treat spear as second class citizen, because people responded with even Pathfinder and 4e, and with what the OP write I thought the second-class-citizenry would be much more prevalent.

Hells, even in 3.5 a spear or longspear is pretty much the go-to for anyone who wants a two-handed simple melee weapon, which is generally the milieu of clerics, druids, sorcerers and the odd bard (plus, the free AoO you're practically guaranteed to get against most chargers is a nice touch on someone who is avoiding making any weapon attacks which cost actions). They're not great for anyone who's, well, proficient with glaives, but it's not like the single extra point of damage is really much to write home about. A spear is also notably the only core weapon where you can claim a 2-handed damage benefit and have a base 20-ft range increment at the same time (light hammers have the 20 ft range increment but are light, javelins don't seem to have a defined handedness but let's face it they're also spears).

[Avigor]

Not a tabletop RPG, but in LOTRO spears have a chance for a DOT effect, making them favored by some tanks for keeping aggro.

[Tanarii]

AD&D 1e and BECMI. Your front line / shield wall sets their spear vs charge while the archers (and magic users) shoot over their heads. If the enemy moves forward to engage you get first attack and do more damage. Then you switch to hand weapons. Ideally the second rank is polearm weilders attacking over the front rank.

This style of play isn't common with typical 3-5 PC groups, but apparently this was the default way to play in the original wargamer groups. But I've gone back and played BECMI this way, with a large group of players and lots of retainers. It's a totally different experience from what I was brought up to think of as D&D ... and I cut my teeth on AD&D and BECMI. But we did the 3-5 players without henchmen thing.

[Aneurin]

Spears are pretty nice in the One Ring RPG.

[Douche]

This isn't a TTRPG but I recently bought this game called Battle Brothers on Steam. It's a hex-grid tactics game with really punishing combat.

The different weapons all do essentially the same amount of damage. The only difference is the specialization

• Flails give you an ability where you can target the head directly - lower hit chance with a guaranteed critical if it connects.
  
  Swords do piercing damage which bypasses armor
  
  Maces, by contrast, do increased damage to armor
  
  Axes allow you to break someone's shield
  
  And spears give you a spear wall ability which, if someone tries to enter a square adjacent to you, they are knocked back and take damage

I'm probably getting some of the details wrong, but essentially, that spear wall ability is dope af. You can have your spearmen stand side by side and activate their spear wall, which allows you to funnel your enemies into your strikers, or else they impotently have to try to keep charging into the spear wall and take repeated damage. So spears are actually essential to having an effective strategy in that game.

Make sense? I know that's not a TTRPG but maybe it'll give you some inspiration

[Anonymouswizard]

One of the nice things about Lamentations of the Flame Princess I've seen is assuming that every PC has basic weapons training, and that the only weapon that can attack from behind another character is the spear (not polearms or other long weapons assumed to be swung). So your front line of Fighters and possibly Clerics generally grabs a medium weapon such as a spear or mace with a shield or a two handed weapon, while your second rank consists of your Magic-User(s) and Specialists (who won't be wearing heavier armour) with spears. Even with a small group of 4-6 characters you can get two ranks in cramped dungeon conditions.

In Keltia a Spear is just more damaging than a sword while still being one handed. The downside is more that you can't carry a spear everywhere you can take a sword, dagger, or walking stick (staff).

[Wraith]

IIRC, Warhammer RPG doesn't distinguish much between weapons. Whether you're wielding a warhammer or a spear is mostly a matter of fluff.

I sort-of disagree. In Second Edition Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, most hand-weapons are pretty much the same except for the type of damage they do (Blunt, Piercing and Edged) and - usually - one other minor ability to make it distinguishable from others.

Spears do Piercing damage (useful against specific types of enemies) and have the Fast trait, giving you a bonus to initiative at the start of a combat round. It sounds insignificant, but it can make a notable difference to what you're fighting without punishing you for using the 'wrong' one, and spears have a very specific, useful role to a slow player that needs and edge, or a fast one that wants to really minmax that Agility stat.

[Bulhakov]

One of our frequent house rules has been assigning a significant initiative bonus/penalty depending on the weapon reach, thus giving a first strike advantage to all pole arms.

[Aneurin]

I sort-of disagree. In Second Edition Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, most hand-weapons are pretty much the same except for the type of damage they do (Blunt, Piercing and Edged) and - usually - one other minor ability to make it distinguishable from others.

Spears do Piercing damage (useful against specific types of enemies) and have the Fast trait, giving you a bonus to initiative at the start of a combat round. It sounds insignificant, but it can make a notable difference to what you're fighting without punishing you for using the 'wrong' one, and spears have a very specific, useful role to a slow player that needs and edge, or a fast one that wants to really minmax that Agility stat.

Erm, what?

Spears do exactly the same kind of damage as every other weapon - WFRP 2e doesn't distinguish damage types - and the Fast quality penalizes Dodge/Parry attempts against a weapon with the quality.

Also, technically, spears do play second fiddle to halberds in WFRP 2e, as do great weapons (halberds basically let you swap between spear and great weapon profiles). Which makes sense, really, given that the halberd rather did take over from spears and great weapons due to being more flexible, and cheaper (than great weapons at least). Spears stuck around for a while due to the ease of manufacture, and great weapons for the prestige ("I have a redundant expensive thing! How awesome am I!".

Spears are still pretty nice, though, and a bit cheaper than a halberd. It's not what you'd call a bad choice by any means.