Spear and Shield

hollyfant · Post by **hollyfant** » Sun Apr 27, 2008 6:09 am

Maybe not. A quick test in a character building module reveals that the secret lies in the Monkey Grip feat. It undoes the Tower Shield penalty in actual combat, even when the character sheet does not reflect this.

Kalbron · Post by **Kalbron** » Sun Apr 27, 2008 7:06 am

Well considering my experience was as a lvl 3 evil cleric with 14 STR who lacked Monkey Grip, but had a tower shield, I doubt it's that exactly. The character sheet said +2 AB, my attack rolls said +4 AB, and the Inflict Wounds spells said +0 AB.

Eh... it's OEI. I've given up trying to understand the whys and hows of their bugs. =/

Brokenbone · Post by **Brokenbone** » Sun Apr 27, 2008 12:24 pm

Back to one handed spears (ie, shortspears) for a second.

I have not seen anyone voice opposition to their implementation in this thread, nor in any checks I've made outside this thread, conditioned on that shortspears pretty much match their SRD description.

Shortspear - 1d6 dmg - crits 20 (x2) - 3lb - piercing - simple wpn - 1gp

Anyhow I guess having someone sufficiently NWN2 technical comment on the ease of adding that (especially just by recycling normal spear models) would be good, even better if they ID themselves as the volunteer (or willing to work with a volunteer who wants to try this).

Comment on whether "custom weapons" would be as gimped as in NWN1 from the perspective of "no feats will reference these weapons" from the perspective of Focus, Specialization, etc. would be good as well, just to be sure we know what we're getting into.

Demson · Post by **Demson** » Sun Apr 27, 2008 1:26 pm

I remember it being done with NWN1 Hakpaks.

Mayhem · Post by **Mayhem** » Sun Apr 27, 2008 1:46 pm

The one handed spears in NWN actually still had their D8 dice, tough - they were equivalent to a battle-axe but were simple weapons.

We can hopefully do a little better this time.

Brokenbone · Post by **Brokenbone** » Sun Apr 27, 2008 2:14 pm

Yes, NWN1 it's possible to add new weapons. Picks, lances, scourges, there's a few others that pop to mind as well. However, no ability to take feats related to such new weapons.

Also, yes, NWN1 spears are about the "best" simple, one handed weapon one can get, parallel to a battleaxe I guess is apt except for the pierce vs. slash bit. Morningstar is a close second as far as simple weapons go, but a lower crit multiple (and fairly beefy weight) is what makes it second place to my mind.

I've only taken a very, very casual look at NWvault to see if people have gone nuts making new weapons, nothing jumped out at me as "someone has done this work already", I didn't search long though.

Mulu · Post by **Mulu** » Sun Apr 27, 2008 5:09 pm

Well, if you put the Monkey Grip feat on spears, then you would have a -2 AB spear (with shield) but improved damaged, sort of like using power attack all the time. That seems like an extremely easy and acceptable compromise, at least in the short term. Make it a plot item obviously. Then you can still feat out like crazy in spear, or use it two-handed if desired. And we could have a house rule that says "no tower shield with monkey gripped weapons" until that particular bug gets fixed.

/me always looks for the least work solution.

Demson · Post by **Demson** » Sun Apr 27, 2008 6:24 pm

Except that you can now also dual-wield the spear with great swords and other two-handed items.

Mulu · Post by **Mulu** » Sun Apr 27, 2008 8:21 pm

Demson wrote:Except that you can now also dual-wield the spear with great swords and other two-handed items.

That would be an exploit and therefore against the rules, not to mention silly.

AcadiusLost · Post by **AcadiusLost** » Sun Apr 27, 2008 11:27 pm

Making a new weapon type using the spear model is likely the best way to handle this- could make it 1d6/x2 piercing to avoid the uberspears of NWN1 fame, and the animations should work out OK thanks to Monkey Grip being accounted for by the engine.

Presumably it would be a size M weapon, non-finesse? Won't be above fixing TSM's statics in priority, but we can move it into testing.

Akivaria · Post by **Akivaria** » Mon Apr 28, 2008 12:11 am

Sounds like fun.

Zelknolf · Post by **Zelknolf** » Mon Apr 28, 2008 4:23 pm

AcadiusLost wrote:Making a new weapon type using the spear model is likely the best way to handle this- could make it 1d6/x2 piercing to avoid the uberspears of NWN1 fame, and the animations should work out OK thanks to Monkey Grip being accounted for by the engine.

Presumably it would be a size M weapon, non-finesse? Won't be above fixing TSM's statics in priority, but we can move it into testing.

Stats for a short spear, per the SRD, are thus:
1 gold
1d6 damage (1d4 for small characters)/ x2 crits, piercing damage
2 lbs
Can't work with weapon finesse
(in PnP, it would be throwable up to 100', with -2 to attack for every 20' it goes -- I'm going to take a wild guess and say that's a vastly bigger project than we want to fiddle with in the NWN2 game engine)

Mulu · Post by **Mulu** » Tue Apr 29, 2008 5:07 pm

This is mostly for Mik, but do realize that using a hakked short spear will totally gimp any straight-classed fighter like yours. You are far far better off taking the Monkey Grip feat and using the standard spear, which does more damage and has a higher crit multiplier, and will allow you to continue to take spear related feats like Weapon Focus Spear (drops that -2 AB to a -1), Weapon specialization spear, power crit spear, and improved crit spear. It's not even a contest, and fighters get lots of feats so taking Monkey Grip won't even be noticed in the long run.

A hakked short spear would only be a viable weapon choice for druids and others with the simple weapons feat only and who won't continue to take weapon feats as they level.

Magile · Post by **Magile** » Tue Apr 29, 2008 5:10 pm

Mulu wrote:This is mostly for Mik, but do realize that using a hakked short spear will totally gimp any straight-classed fighter like yours. You are far far better off taking the Monkey Grip feat and using the standard spear, which does more damage and has a higher crit multiplier, and will allow you to continue to take spear related feats like Weapon Focus Spear (drops that -2 AB to a -1), Weapon specialization spear, power crit spear, and improved crit spear. It's not even a contest, and fighters get lots of feats so taking Monkey Grip won't even be noticed in the long run.

I believe it's more of a appearance situation than it is an actual fighting situation, hence why she doesn't want to use a feat on it.

Mikayla · Post by **Mikayla** » Tue Apr 29, 2008 5:18 pm

This is not for my current character, its just for the world in general. My current character has already taken "Weapon Focus" so she is not going to be switching weapons any time soon - so this reallly is not about my PC. I just find it silly that in our D&D we can't have a person armed with Spear & Shield without taking a special feat (and a special feat which is gimped with a -2 attack).