Sangband polearms

[RogerN]

The following information is offered in the Sangband help section regarding the different weapon skills:

Bladed weapons are relatively light and easy to use... However, most swords do not have the raw power that the greater hafted weapons and polearms possess.

This sentence would seem to imply that polearms include some extremely hard-hitting weapons which swords cannot match in terms of raw power. I'm a little annoyed, however, after investing a significant number of skill points into polearms. It turns out that late-game polearms kinda suck, unless my understanding of Sangband mechanics are way off.

Consider the following:

* AFAIK, weapon weight in Sangband has no effect on critical hits. There's no benefit to using a heavy weapon. You'll get more blows with a light version. Criticals are determined entirely from your weapon skill and slays (holy alliance vs. demos, blood dominion vs. undead, etc...)

* Critical hits favor weapons with larger damage dice. Therefore a weapon which does 3d7 damage essentially has more raw power than a weapon which does 7d3 damage. A great critical hit (+4 dice) for each weapon will do 7d7 and 11d3 damage, respectively, which comes out to an average of 28 vs. 22 damage.

When you take both of those facts into consideration, you have to wonder why anyone would ever choose polearms. I think they need to be rebalanced.

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Best Polearms
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Scythe of Slicing (7d3)
Average damage: 14
Great critical: 22
Armor bonus: 3

Great Axe (4d4)
Average damage: 10
Great critical: 20

Halbred (3d5)
Average damage: 9
Great critical: 21
Armor bonus: 8

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Best Swords
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Blade of Chaos (2d13)
Average damage: 14
Great critical: 42

Bluesteel blade (2d11), vorpal
Average damage: 12
Great critical: 36

Executioner's sword (2d12)
Average damage: 13
Great critical: 39

So you can see that the best swords get critical hits that are nearly twice as good as those from the best polearms. Also, the swords tend to be around half the weight - so you typically get more blows. The bluesteel blade, in particular, is intrinsically vorpal, yielding even more criticals.

While it is true that some of the polearms grant a bonus to armor class, the majority do not. The deepest polearm grants only a +3 to AC. The laughable Great Axe (depth 50, weight 20 lbs) seems a very poor choice, especially in comparison to the much shallower Battle Axe (depth 30, weight 14 lbs) which gets better criticals.

It feels like polearms are puny in comparison to their bladed brethren. Am I totally off base here?

[Arralen]

Nope, you're not off. Weapon modelling sucks in all *bands. (And most RPG systems as well ... .) In general, swords are overrated. Polearms and Quarterstaffs suck. To add insult to injury, there are more and easier to find (Rand)arts based on swords than anything else.

One could argue, though, that in Tolkiens works swords are the predominantly used weapon of the heros .. obviously, either the orcs never learned to make good armor during those 15000 years of the 1st and 2nd age, and only managed to at the end of the 3rd, and then only with the help of Saruman ... or it's just the author living out his biased view of what "knightly and noble" weapon where. Btw., knights use everything else than their swords in combat after ~1150 ... .

Personally, I would use a sword when fighting snagas clad in poor leather armor, if armored at all, sure.
Against uruks, trolls, wargs and other big creatures though, I would rather use a bidenhänder or -better- a 2-handed battleaxe, or a naginata, or halberd

[camlost]

Polearms can rob an enemy of energy, which may or may not be useful.

I've found a pike (2d13) before, that I wielded until I found Eorlingas. I'll agree that good polearms are harder to find, and that should be rectified. Or, if you have room in your build, weapon crafting may yield the results you are looking for. There are definitely end-game quality artifacts to be found.

[Atarlost]

You'd get swarmed if you tried fighting with a halberd outside of a formation with a whole bunch of other halberdiers. Same goes for every other polearm. They're just not suitable for use in a dungeon setting or as a lone hero.

And of course the orcs never managed good armor. Do you have any idea what good armor costs? We only see high quality armor in elite units like the Steward's guard in Gondor and or the Dol Amroth knights, some of the elven royal guards in the first age, and among the dwarves. Since the dwarves produce most of the stuff it's perhaps not impossible that they can outfit armies with it. Apart from the Dwarves whose low fecundity makes replacing any dead soldier more difficult outfitting the bulk of an army with good armor is not cost effective.

And your statement about swords is flat out wrong. I don't know what your source is, but swords were in military use through the 15th century. Even Wikipedia knows this, but that's a "source" you can find yourself. Let's sift through Google to find some stuff that's not selling modern reproductions, shall we?

ttp://www.myarmoury.com/feature_spotxviii.php

See section on swords starting on page 105

http://sallerin.club.fr/telechargement/Medieval%20Arms%20Armor%20and%20Tactics.pdf

http://www.vikingsword.com/vmframe.html

[Malak Darkhunter]

In the early game polearms are the more damaging weapons, but not by much.
beaked axe (2d6)
battle axe (2d8)
The clubbed weapns come close.
Flail (2d6)
morningstar (2d6)
I have found a few battle axes (2d12) in the dungeon or (2d13), that are exceptional. I guess i is just a question of balance, I usually go staraight for a battle axe in the begining and am pretty much unbeatable until 1000 feet or so. I do agree though a great axe (4d4) is not damaging enough. Needs to be more like (3d8). Halberd a (3d6)? Polearams just don't show themselves as high damagin weapons in late game, Take a mace of disruption (4d6) that's usually more damaging than any polearm I find late game. Maybe there needs to be a few high damage polearms late game for better balance, Say Lochaber axe (4d6) or (4d8).

[Magnate]

I agree that there is a pro-sword bias in most roguelikes. I'd be very happy to see some better late-game polearms.

But to be honest, if you're planning on killing Morgoth with a weapon, I'd have thought forging was a must ...

CC

[Nick]

One could argue, though, that in Tolkiens works swords are the predominantly used weapon of the heros ..

Not really. Axes and spears were also very prominent, and there were also maces, mattocks, hammers, knives, ... As an example, he at one point had the first age elves divided into Spear Elves, Sword Elves, Axe Elves and Arrow Elves.

[Atarlost]

Not really. Axes and spears were also very prominent, and there were also maces, mattocks, hammers, knives, ... As an example, he at one point had the first age elves divided into Spear Elves, Sword Elves, Axe Elves and Arrow Elves.

He dropped the spear/sword/axe split very early. Axes seem to have been primarily a dwarven thing. The Sindar used axes until the Noldor introduced swords but seem to have switched over. First age humans used whatever the elves gave them. Gil-Galad had a spear and Turgon's royal guard is once described as a phalanx. Everybody uses bows.

[RogerN]

Just a quick update... I'm running some numbers to test my hypothesis that polearms are underpowered. I'm not nearly done yet, but so far it looks like the difference is not as bad as I thought it was. This is primarily because weapon skill has such a huge impact on your damage output, and exceptional critical hits are somewhat infrequent even at high skill levels. Polearms appear to have an advantage in the early game, while swords become more powerful at high skill levels.

It's looking like polearms and hafted weapons are decent choices for characters who don't plan on maxing out their melee stats. Swords work better for Oath of Iron characters, and especially weapon forgers since some of the best swords are tough to find in the dungeon.

[Arralen]

Looks like either me and RogerN are both wrong ... checked out the highest 15 entries on the Sangband ladder - and only 2 of them use(d) a sword!?
So it looks like in Sangband at least axes and polearms are good and plentiful enough to give you a winning chance !

This might not be true for other variants, which I'm more familiar with. With those I sometimes have the impression it's "Buy lantern. Find Ringil. Kill Morgoth" (with "stay alive on the way to the first dungeon" added for FAangand )...

[RogerN]

Looks like either me and RogerN are both wrong ... checked out the highest 15 entries on the Sangband ladder - and only 2 of them use(d) a sword!?

That's because the ones using polearms are all using artifacts. The Glaive of Pain (6d8), in particular, is a great weapon. It's the non-artifact polearms that I think may need rebalancing.

And actually, having examined the numbers a bit more, I'm pretty comfortable with how most of the polearms work out. They have a higher damage output for low-skill characters, and lower damage for high-skill characters (compared to swords). The only weapon that really bugs me still is the Great Axe... it's too heavy and too deep for such lousy damage.

[Daniel Fishman]

That's because the ones using polearms are all using artifacts. The Glaive of Pain (6d8), in particular, is a great weapon. It's the non-artifact polearms that I think may need rebalancing.

And actually, having examined the numbers a bit more, I'm pretty comfortable with how most of the polearms work out. They have a higher damage output for low-skill characters, and lower damage for high-skill characters (compared to swords). The only weapon that really bugs me still is the Great Axe... it's too heavy and too deep for such lousy damage.

But does it really matter how good the deep non-artifact polearms are, when most people will be using artifacts anyway? Unless Sang has increased artifact rarity drastically compared to other *bands?

[Malak Darkhunter]

But does it really matter how good the deep non-artifact polearms are, when most people will be using artifacts anyway? Unless Sang has increased artifact rarity drastically compared to other *bands?

Well yes because in Sang, a chaacter specializes in a type of weapon, he might find ton's of artifact weapons, that are not in his realm of specialization. So fnding a good weapon might be hard for a character who only wields polearms sufficiently, and not swords or clubs.

[Daniel Fishman]

Well yes because in Sang, a chaacter specializes in a type of weapon, he might find ton's of artifact weapons, that are not in his realm of specialization. So fnding a good weapon might be hard for a character who only wields polearms sufficiently, and not swords or clubs.

That's an issue with the number of artifacts of the various types, though, not the normal weapons, surely? Since very few, if any, egos are endgame worthy.

[Pete Mack]

I don't know about S, but in V there are 3 endgame quality ego weapons:

Fury (+2)
Holy Avenger
Extra Blows (+2)

So long as these are big dice (MoD, BoC, SoS) and big bonus, they are better than almost all artifact weapons. (If you have a big dice +blows weapon with a branding ring, the damage is crazy.)