Spear and shield...what fighting style will he use?

[bergh]

Spear and shield...what fighting style will he use?

Im asking this for an Greek hoplite style warrior= large round shield, long spear. what fighting style?

[Edge]

My call would be mass weapon and shield.  This style if i recall correctly covers infantry weapons which would include your spear

[bergh]

Mass Weapon=Spear....not quite fitting.

But then again, some weapons have there own unik style, Pole-axe forexample.

Maybe the Spear should be deleted from the Polearm style.
and be made a new
"Spear and Shield" style...but then again maybe im to picky about details.

[Edge]

Obviously the styles inthe book are based on weyrth and in turn Medieval Earth.  If you are playing in a game where infantry carry spears than make it so.
I was originally going to say invent a style... then i thought about mass weapons and what they represent.  True spear wouldn't fit into the current mass weapon style but if playing in ancient Greece or the like than it prob would as allot of the other weapons in the style wouldn't exist

[bergh]

hehe, im asking becouse my players asked me if they got some bonus for making a shield wall and wielding spears, a quite powerfull combo.

I could not find anything in the book about, i need to make up somerules about it i think, my "pansy" goblins could actually be deadly in combat with a shield wall+spear combo...

[Tash]

The British Army can tell you that "primative" troops armed with spears and shields (not even metal ones mind you) are nothing to underestimate.  If those infantry come from a culture with a very fierce and proud warrior tradition that results in training in massed group combat from a very early age even much better armed troops don't have room for much of a tactical mistake.

[Jake Norwood]

Well, it *is* gonna be in the fl...

[ducks incoming projectiles]

Jake

[Tash]

So Jake, when is FoB coming out....:)

[Kaelin]

Hehehe - nice Jake!

On that note, to help out, until TFOB comes out, I would actually translate spear-and-shield into sword-and-shield.  Some of the shorter spears (I'm thinking of the Zulu Assegai spear here) have rather short hafts but long heads, allowing chopping motions as well as underarmed thrusts - rather similar to an arming sword, I'd imagine.  Longer spears could be like using a longsword with a shield, so whether that defaults to longsword or sword and shield again, I'm not so sure (and actually, if anyone could inform me thus, I'd appreciate it), again, focusing on thrusting attacks and perhaps using "mass weapon and shield" for overhanded bashing attacks with the shaft.

Hey Jake, I know you keep saying that TFOB is coming out at Origins, but forgive me, WHEN is Origins anyways?

Kaelin

[MrGeneHa]

Dying to see TFoB, like the rest of us...

But on the main subject, there are a variety of styles of spear and shield combat.  The standard Greek hoplite carried a heavy wood shield on one arm and a spear in the other.  The spear was usually used overhand to get over the shield wall.

Alexander's forces used a longer spear (~15 ft) held with both hands, underhanded.  The shield was smaller and hung from the left shoulder.  Obviously this was nearly useless in a one on one fight: neither the shield nor the spear could be maneuvered in time.  But when you had 16 rows of them, they were effective.

I don't know much about Zulu tactics except what I just Googled.  But they made massed attacks at a full run, which is almost impossible to do in a dense phalanx.  As a small nitpick, the assegai was a thrown spear, "too flimsy to be used as a thrusting weapon."  The Zulu stabbing spear was the
iKlwa.  I suspect the hoplite would be nearly useless in a Zulu charge, and the Zulu wouldn't be able to maintain formation in a phalanx.

I think the different phalanx fighting styles would be a new specialty(ies).  But it would only be useful in massed combat (which, again, we don't have the rules for).

[Jake Norwood]

Hey Jake, I know you keep saying that TFOB is coming out at Origins, but forgive me, WHEN is Origins anyways?

Kaelin

Not origins, but Gen Con. Mid-late august. www.gencon.com

Jake

[nsruf]

I was wonderig about the shield & spear combo myself, trying to picture a pictish warrior for a Conan campaign. Until we can get our hands on TFOB, making it a separate style defaulting to polearm -2 and having similar maneuvers plus shield moves seems reasonable.

Now by the book, only the short (3-4') spear can be used in one hand. Is this realistic? You certainly see a lot of illustrations with longer spears (5-6') being used with a shield. But then, fantasy illustrations may not be the best guide here. Does ARMA teach spears?

[Thanaeon]

My solution would be to make a new proficiency, Spear and Shield, defaulting to Polearms at maybe -2 or -3. Add some new maneuvers such as Block (0), Simultaneous Block and Strike and perhaps some other ones, and there you have it.

Or am I missing something?

[bottleneck]

My solution would be to make a new proficiency, Spear and Shield, defaulting to Polearms at maybe -2 or -3. Add some new maneuvers such as Block (0), Simultaneous Block and Strike and perhaps some other ones, and there you have it.

agree. The system is good for this kind of things.

The spear&shield style should default to/from polearms (-2?), swd&shld (-3?), mass&shld (-4?), possibly even javelin (at -5 or -6?). Either make it up or do some research.

Anyway, the most defining thing about the style is weapons (halfspear/javelin) and maneuvers. No cut or bash, but thrust, maybe feint/thrust (how easy is that? activation cost?), block, block/strike, stop short, etc. My intuitive (non-scholared) guess anyway. Since you have little leverage, no beat maneuver.

I'd default it closer to swd&shield than to mass&shld because the emphasis would be on thrusts, shield use and possibly 'quick maneuvers' like feints.

...so much for my opinion.

have a nice weekend all. play nice - or at least have fun.

[Nick the Nevermet]

Not origins, but Gen Con. Mid-late august. www.gencon.com

Jake

Just in time for my birthday.
suh-weet