It was a weapon meant to do both. Think the Swiss Pikemen. E. Gary Gygax had something of a hard-on for pole weapons. He included something like 18 types in the original version of AD&D, including the Military Fork (Think a trident, but with two tines), the Fauchard-Fork (The fork was combined with a blade originally meant for lopping limbs off trees), Glaive, Glaive-Guisarme, Bill, Bill Hook, Bec de Corbin, Voulge, Lochaber Axe, Awl Pike, Ranseur, Spetum, Partisan, Bardiche, Lucern Hammer… And each was treated as a separate weapon (and if you waited for the Unearthed Arcana, there were pictures of each and every one in the back of the book!)
Each pole arm had a specific task. Some, like the military fork, were stabbing weapons. Others were slashing weapons. Some were both. They were meant to be used on the battlefield as part of a square of troops. They generally needed 10' or more of space to wield properly. But they are excellent at dealing with horsemen and anyone you want to keep at a distance (that's why they are properly known as "pole weapons"- they are at the end of a long pole and meant to keep your opponent from closing the distance. Another way they are good at dealing with horse-mounted troops is that the stabbing ones (like spears and pikes) can be "set to receive a charge", or put with the blunt end in the earth so that the horses and men charging at you run into the sharp/business end of the pole arm and kill themselves while you stand there, grinning like a fool. (Most men using pole weapons had a backup weapon so that they weren't left defenseless if this happened.)
In short, not generally for hand to hand combat, unless it's happening outside. But most of them could easily deal with armor.
@Tigersag No problem! The sheer number included in the original PHB is staggering. As far as I know, no one ever chose to be proficient in one in any game i played in or ran, most people went Long/Bastard Sword, Mace, Spear or Bow instead.
@Teflon That depends. There were swords, like piercing swords, that were meant to pierce through gaps in armor. Things like maces and flails were meant to crush armor. Stuff like plate mail was angled to have blows glance off. But Maces could put quite a dent in helmets- such a dent that it would also crush your skull. Flails hit with the handle, and then the top part comes down and hits as well (Flails are based on threshing implements meant to knock grain crops out of grain heads. The simplest flail is two long hardened sticks connected by a short length of chain). The second head actually has more force coming down *because* of the chain. A morning star is essentially a spiked head on a stick.
So, yes, blunt weapons can make your day a REALLY bad one, especially if you are in armor. But so can thrusting swords, like the flamberge or saber.
Another aside is that the reason why scale mail fell out of favor is because generally only the tops of the scales were pierced and tied to the leather backing. Anyone thrusting upwards from below would go in UNDER the scales and only have to deal with the leather backing. Banded mail had a tendency for the "bands" to break and stab the wearer with the broken bits. And chain mail had an annoying tendency to lodge in the wound. (Ever seen a dog with a chain collar actually grown INTO their skin and flesh? Same effect, but the chain mail was driven in by a blow- all I can say is "OW!"). Plate mail, Field Plate and Full Plate, was a better (and much more expensive) alternative, generally only affordable by the nobility or royalty. Foot soldiers made do with chain, or even worse, cured leather or padded armor- canvas or wool stuffed with more fabric and quilted together. Leather armor was boiled in oil and thus stiffened, more like athletic cups than a leather jacket.
And once gunpowder weapons became fairly common- that was the end of personal armor. Then you get the slashed fabrics popularized by pictures of duelists. Because even plate armor is useless against bullets. And something similar happened earlier with chain mail and the Welsh longbow. Welsh longbowmen were justly feared- those arrows were deadly.
The sheer number included in the original PHB is staggering. As far as I know, no one ever chose to be proficient in one in any game i played in or ran, most people went Long/Bastard Sword, Mace, Spear or Bow instead.
I drove the players in my game crazy because when they managed to find treasure I would give them magic weapons like +1 Voulge, Bec-de-Corbin of Speed (picture it hitting twice per round--that's just insane), or a Shango of Returning +2 (the African throwing knife with multiple blades--when you throw it you are more likely to hit your target with a sharpened edge).
On the other side of the coin I once played a fighter who never specialized in anything. The character concept was "myrmidon" or "weapon master"--if it was a weapon then he could use it.
Not necessarily. I don't think there was a code of 'you must master these weapons!' like with samurai, who were supposed to master katana and bow at the very least.
That said, remember that samurai and knights are both just a very glorified military aristocracy. If u were born to a noble family (and a boy), it was pretty much a sure thing to become a knight. If u were born a commoner, you'd have to do something pretty extraordinary or get extremely lucky to get knighted. A lot of knights/samurai were just local strong men who held military power.
The Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) is the one fantasy fiction (that I know of) that depicts knights in their gritty realism as well as heroic ideals.
Oh and as for ur original question regarding halberds...
The term 'halberd' is an extremely generic and arbitrary term that people seem to attach to any pole-arm weapon that isn't a spear, pike or lance.
Typically they are designed for both piercing and slashing attacks. But the shape of the blade, the length of the spike and the length of the pole all vary a great deal.
The Swiss Guard are pretty famous for their halberds, which has a pretty mean-looking spiked end, designed to counter heavy cavalry, and use the momentum of a cavalry charge to penetrate heavy plate armour. (much like a pike).
Another famous halberd, and historically very important, is the Ji (戟).
This was the first mass-produced weapon in Ancient China, which along with the crossbow, allowed the effective mass-mobilisation of hundreds of thousands of conscript soldiers in the Warring States Period. Superior logistics/resources, leadership and military doctrine eventually allowed the State of Qin to conquer its six rivals, and unite China for the first time in 221BC, creating the concept of China as one nation.
The Ji was so effective because it was relatively easy to manufacture on an industrial scale, and train raw recruits to use. The sharp end is obviously used for stabbing, much like a pike, and the horizontal blade could be used to both stab (if u swing downwards) or slash. Soldiers were also trained to try hook enemy soldiers/horse with the horizontal blade if they missed with the stabbing point. Imagine u thrust the weapon forwards to stab, u miss, but then u pull the weapon back, the horizontal blade can easily catch a man's limb, neck, or hook him off a horse, or severe the frontlegs of a horse... all lovely stuff
You might wonder why the sharp spear-point is so short compared to the Swiss halberd, which looks much more lethal. Well... soldiers on the Ancient Chinese battlefields were not typically as heavily armoured as in Europe. Also the Ji is almost 2,000 years older, so metal forging techniques could not yet produce long sharp steel spikes that didn't bend or break if u slammed it into a shield or heavy armour.
Polearms are a pretty diverse field, as @LadyRhian has said. You've got everything from the military Billhook, which was a martial use of a hedge-trimming tool to the Naginata - a Katana on a shaft.
If you look at Halberds then they're a bit of everything. There's a heavy axe-blade on one side that would definitely get through armour if swung from a 6-foot pole. They also have a spike at the top for use as thrusting weapons or to recieve a charge. Additionally, there is a spike or hook on the opposite side to the blade in order to hook and dismount mounted adversaries, so that they can be finished on the ground. I wouldn't try and carry one around in a dungeon though. Enclosed spaces would probably impede your swing.
The halberd was the Swiss army knife of it's time. Featuring armour openers and flesh-cutters instead of can openers and scissors.
As for whether it was efficient against armour... Definitely. Like already been said halberds and it's siblings came in a mess of different designs, but yeah, if we start with the classics: At the top we have a spearhead of some sort - piercing weapons has always been one of the best ways if getting through armour, particularly if the armour is approaching at high speed, and this is true for halberds as well (sticking them with the pointy end is lesson number one for a reason).
Secondly there's the axehead, which admittedly is a little more complex. Chopping or slashing moves are inherently less effective against shaped plate due to the armour being designed to make such blows glance off it and away from your vital parts, but axe-design evolved as well and was given a smaller contact area to deliver a more focused blow. Basically, the smaller the edge the more effective it would be against heavy armour. Broader axes either means it's an early design or that it was used mainly against lightly armoured troops. Smaller heads are not the best weapons against armour, but far from useless as well. As a rule of thumb, anyway.
Lastly we have the "backside", commonly featuring a hammer or a spike. These are both prime weapons to punch straight through plate, what with the tiny, pointy contact area giving it a good chance to puncture armour and get to the squishy parts beneath. Spikes are sometimes said to have been used to hook people (particularly pulling cavalry of their horses) but I've always thought they felt wrong for that and other designs and polearms featured bigger and "hookier" hooks for that very purpose, but hey, it's not like I know everything about weapons.
So, to sum up. Are halberds effective against armour? Yes.
Knights had to be proficient in a number of different weapons, right?
Actually mostly what I've seen them handling typically in different mediums are the standard sword and shield, sometimes replacing the sword with a flail... or if they were on a horse they usually use a lance.
I don't think there was too much variety in what they used...
Knights definitely knew how to make use of a whole bunch of weapons and martial arts. They were a warrior caste, and warrior nobility at that - they derived their entire social standing and excuse for oppressingruling their "lessers" from their ability to fight. They would spend their whole lives (well, their youths, at least, but you know, it's an expression ) training to fight, and yeah, of course they had learned how to handle a whole bunch of murder tools by the time they were too old to keep brutalising peasants.
So while lances sword-and-shield is definitely the weapons that's been most commonly associated with knights in popular culture, the truth is that they had a much broader assortment of weapons available. Any one knight should've been relied on to be familiar mostly anything swordlike, from daggers to arming swords to bastard swords and two-handers. Axes (of different flavours), maces, flails and the like - they'd know those too. Hammers and picks were a given due to often being necessary to pierce heavy armour. Spears were not commonly a weapon pt choice (and often looked down upon), but they'd be expected to know how to handle on in case they were left with no other choice, and because they'd need to understand it's use (from both a martial and strategic point of view) as spears was one of the most common weapons they'd face on a battlefield (if we broaden our definition of "knight" to include European cultures outside the Franc-German stereotype, their knight-equivalents would use spears a whole lot more often). Archery or marksmanship was often pursued, but only as a hobby as bows and crossbows were viewed as "peasant's weapons".
And lastly, besides each and every weapon having several martial arts devoted to just itself that a knight could pursue, they were also supposed to be educated in the basic stuff like shield use, fighting with two weapons, how to move to make best use of their armour, and most importantly - how to handle each and every weapon on horseback, which can be quite different indeed, for obvious reasons.
I don't think halberds were ever really used by knights, though. They started arriving and became popular at about the same time (and pretty much for the same reasons) Europe started undergoing the social changes that would lead to knights becoming obsolete anyway.
Comments
Each pole arm had a specific task. Some, like the military fork, were stabbing weapons. Others were slashing weapons. Some were both. They were meant to be used on the battlefield as part of a square of troops. They generally needed 10' or more of space to wield properly. But they are excellent at dealing with horsemen and anyone you want to keep at a distance (that's why they are properly known as "pole weapons"- they are at the end of a long pole and meant to keep your opponent from closing the distance. Another way they are good at dealing with horse-mounted troops is that the stabbing ones (like spears and pikes) can be "set to receive a charge", or put with the blunt end in the earth so that the horses and men charging at you run into the sharp/business end of the pole arm and kill themselves while you stand there, grinning like a fool. (Most men using pole weapons had a backup weapon so that they weren't left defenseless if this happened.)
In short, not generally for hand to hand combat, unless it's happening outside. But most of them could easily deal with armor.
I remember read some article on the net says blunt weapons are for the armour, though.
http://www.medievalwarfare.info/weapons.htm#morningstars
So, yes, blunt weapons can make your day a REALLY bad one, especially if you are in armor. But so can thrusting swords, like the flamberge or saber.
Another aside is that the reason why scale mail fell out of favor is because generally only the tops of the scales were pierced and tied to the leather backing. Anyone thrusting upwards from below would go in UNDER the scales and only have to deal with the leather backing. Banded mail had a tendency for the "bands" to break and stab the wearer with the broken bits. And chain mail had an annoying tendency to lodge in the wound. (Ever seen a dog with a chain collar actually grown INTO their skin and flesh? Same effect, but the chain mail was driven in by a blow- all I can say is "OW!"). Plate mail, Field Plate and Full Plate, was a better (and much more expensive) alternative, generally only affordable by the nobility or royalty. Foot soldiers made do with chain, or even worse, cured leather or padded armor- canvas or wool stuffed with more fabric and quilted together. Leather armor was boiled in oil and thus stiffened, more like athletic cups than a leather jacket.
And once gunpowder weapons became fairly common- that was the end of personal armor. Then you get the slashed fabrics popularized by pictures of duelists. Because even plate armor is useless against bullets. And something similar happened earlier with chain mail and the Welsh longbow. Welsh longbowmen were justly feared- those arrows were deadly.
On the other side of the coin I once played a fighter who never specialized in anything. The character concept was "myrmidon" or "weapon master"--if it was a weapon then he could use it.
Not necessarily. I don't think there was a code of 'you must master these weapons!' like with samurai, who were supposed to master katana and bow at the very least.
That said, remember that samurai and knights are both just a very glorified military aristocracy. If u were born to a noble family (and a boy), it was pretty much a sure thing to become a knight. If u were born a commoner, you'd have to do something pretty extraordinary or get extremely lucky to get knighted. A lot of knights/samurai were just local strong men who held military power.
The Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) is the one fantasy fiction (that I know of) that depicts knights in their gritty realism as well as heroic ideals.
The term 'halberd' is an extremely generic and arbitrary term that people seem to attach to any pole-arm weapon that isn't a spear, pike or lance.
Typically they are designed for both piercing and slashing attacks. But the shape of the blade, the length of the spike and the length of the pole all vary a great deal.
The Swiss Guard are pretty famous for their halberds, which has a pretty mean-looking spiked end, designed to counter heavy cavalry, and use the momentum of a cavalry charge to penetrate heavy plate armour. (much like a pike).
Another famous halberd, and historically very important, is the Ji (戟).
This was the first mass-produced weapon in Ancient China, which along with the crossbow, allowed the effective mass-mobilisation of hundreds of thousands of conscript soldiers in the Warring States Period. Superior logistics/resources, leadership and military doctrine eventually allowed the State of Qin to conquer its six rivals, and unite China for the first time in 221BC, creating the concept of China as one nation.
The Ji was so effective because it was relatively easy to manufacture on an industrial scale, and train raw recruits to use. The sharp end is obviously used for stabbing, much like a pike, and the horizontal blade could be used to both stab (if u swing downwards) or slash. Soldiers were also trained to try hook enemy soldiers/horse with the horizontal blade if they missed with the stabbing point. Imagine u thrust the weapon forwards to stab, u miss, but then u pull the weapon back, the horizontal blade can easily catch a man's limb, neck, or hook him off a horse, or severe the frontlegs of a horse... all lovely stuff
You might wonder why the sharp spear-point is so short compared to the Swiss halberd, which looks much more lethal. Well... soldiers on the Ancient Chinese battlefields were not typically as heavily armoured as in Europe. Also the Ji is almost 2,000 years older, so metal forging techniques could not yet produce long sharp steel spikes that didn't bend or break if u slammed it into a shield or heavy armour.
If you look at Halberds then they're a bit of everything. There's a heavy axe-blade on one side that would definitely get through armour if swung from a 6-foot pole. They also have a spike at the top for use as thrusting weapons or to recieve a charge. Additionally, there is a spike or hook on the opposite side to the blade in order to hook and dismount mounted adversaries, so that they can be finished on the ground. I wouldn't try and carry one around in a dungeon though. Enclosed spaces would probably impede your swing.
As for whether it was efficient against armour... Definitely. Like already been said halberds and it's siblings came in a mess of different designs, but yeah, if we start with the classics: At the top we have a spearhead of some sort - piercing weapons has always been one of the best ways if getting through armour, particularly if the armour is approaching at high speed, and this is true for halberds as well (sticking them with the pointy end is lesson number one for a reason).
Secondly there's the axehead, which admittedly is a little more complex. Chopping or slashing moves are inherently less effective against shaped plate due to the armour being designed to make such blows glance off it and away from your vital parts, but axe-design evolved as well and was given a smaller contact area to deliver a more focused blow. Basically, the smaller the edge the more effective it would be against heavy armour. Broader axes either means it's an early design or that it was used mainly against lightly armoured troops. Smaller heads are not the best weapons against armour, but far from useless as well. As a rule of thumb, anyway.
Lastly we have the "backside", commonly featuring a hammer or a spike. These are both prime weapons to punch straight through plate, what with the tiny, pointy contact area giving it a good chance to puncture armour and get to the squishy parts beneath. Spikes are sometimes said to have been used to hook people (particularly pulling cavalry of their horses) but I've always thought they felt wrong for that and other designs and polearms featured bigger and "hookier" hooks for that very purpose, but hey, it's not like I know everything about weapons.
So, to sum up. Are halberds effective against armour? Yes.
I don't think there was too much variety in what they used...
So while lances sword-and-shield is definitely the weapons that's been most commonly associated with knights in popular culture, the truth is that they had a much broader assortment of weapons available. Any one knight should've been relied on to be familiar mostly anything swordlike, from daggers to arming swords to bastard swords and two-handers. Axes (of different flavours), maces, flails and the like - they'd know those too. Hammers and picks were a given due to often being necessary to pierce heavy armour. Spears were not commonly a weapon pt choice (and often looked down upon), but they'd be expected to know how to handle on in case they were left with no other choice, and because they'd need to understand it's use (from both a martial and strategic point of view) as spears was one of the most common weapons they'd face on a battlefield (if we broaden our definition of "knight" to include European cultures outside the Franc-German stereotype, their knight-equivalents would use spears a whole lot more often). Archery or marksmanship was often pursued, but only as a hobby as bows and crossbows were viewed as "peasant's weapons".
And lastly, besides each and every weapon having several martial arts devoted to just itself that a knight could pursue, they were also supposed to be educated in the basic stuff like shield use, fighting with two weapons, how to move to make best use of their armour, and most importantly - how to handle each and every weapon on horseback, which can be quite different indeed, for obvious reasons.
I don't think halberds were ever really used by knights, though. They started arriving and became popular at about the same time (and pretty much for the same reasons) Europe started undergoing the social changes that would lead to knights becoming obsolete anyway.