Does the 'reach' (length) of a weapon have any consequences in combat?

Lemernis

Is it just my imagination, or do the weapons with a long reach such as spear, halberd, and quarterstaff actually seem to confer some sort advantage in their wielder not getting hit as often by enemy meleers using weapons with a shorter reach? I'm sometimes amazed at how seldom mages get hit when they melee with a stave. Whereas if they melee with a dagger?... good God.

Silverstar

Definitely. If you have your meatheads keeping the enemy busy, you can get in quite a lot of hits from the back row. Fighting in doorways is handy for this.

nptitim

Yeah, I usually have a fighter with a 2 handed sword that can stand behind another one or two fighters and he can still reach the target, it is definitely a bonus. I don't know about one on one fighting however if you are right next to someone if it is different, it might be.

[Deleted User]

Aside from the advantages of being able to attack "over" your allies, sometimes the enemy AI has a tendency to attack the enemy with the lowest AC (or maybe HP) in reach, which might account for why your dagger-wielding mages get picked on much more than the staff users.

Lemernis

@Kaigen Hmm, but the mage's AC would be the same whether wielding either a dagger or a quarterstaff.

I may do a little test just to see. I.e. roll up a mage and CLUA in a shortsword wielding hobgoblin, 1 vs. 1. Then do, say, 15 trials with the mage wielding a dagger and 15 trials with a spear just to get a sense.

Shin

Pretty sure there's no actual difference in hitrolls or AC, but rather perceptual bias. A very common vanilla melee script is to simply attack the closest target, and with a long reach, the closest target is more likely to be someone else. It could also be that getting hit from a slightly bigger distance makes the AI waste time in deciding whether to equip a shorter-reach melee weapon and close the distance, or stick to using a ranged weapon, etc.

Lemernis

I guess if the AI calculates how far away the target is, maybe that could be the explanation...

[Deleted User]

@Shin is doing a better job of explaining what I was trying to get at. If the enemy is wielding a short range weapon and there's a short range target in reach, he'll probably keep attacking that, even if a mage walks over and starts whacking him with a stick from outside his reach. If a mage walks into his reach and starts trying to knife him, the enemy might switch over to the more vulnerable target.

Schneidend

I believe all of the two-handed weapons have a slightly longer range. I know my greatsword-wielding Blackguard is all too happy to swing over Kagain's head while the dwarf tanks like a boss.

Lemernis

For what it's worth, I just did a little test using a mage melee fighting the diseased gibberling just outside of Candlekeep: 15x using a quarterstaff and then 15x using a dagger. The results were:

Quarterstaff - 13 wins, 2 losses
Dagger - 12 wins, 3 losses

Which is not enough variation to be significant. Not enough trials either, really. Although I think it was enough times to get a crude sense if there is any obvious difference.

Clearly, though, the mage wielding the staff stood further away from the opponent.

Elzarath

They stand even further away with a sling

Vnavekul

I think the only advantage is that you can position longer weapons behind other guys, as someone has already said. So you can probably stop your tests.

and_then_or

Seed factor definitly matters. Very observable.

As mele weapons don't have a 'reach = x' value, I can't imagine that a halberd has an advantage over a short sword within the game mechanics.

Although I can imagine quite a bit of discussion over that in a p-n-p game.

Michail

The reach is just that bit ... bah, you all know this by now. I just would like to remind everyone that

there is at least one battle in BGII (and we are using the BGII engine, basically) where you can block the enemy in such a position that they can't reach you, and slaughter them with a two handed weapon.

Tresset

Pfff. Of course there are consequences. The reach factor is the driving principle behind my patented killing Drizzt method.

bbear

Well against iron golems/large creatures that cant get through the door, the long range weapons let you hit them w/o repercussion.