SPEARS! any good??
griffiano
Member Posts: 26
I have played through BG quite a lot of times and not once have i felt the need for myself or any of my characters to use spears. The same applies to IWD (personally) so just wondered what people thought
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In IWD and IWD2 there are really nice Spears and Halberds in both games, especially towards the end of those games.
In short, yes. Spears are great.
I tend to load up bow/crossbow users or casters with these weapons in their melee slot because they can still hit without being hit, given that someone else is actively taking the beating from the enemy.
Think I'm kidding get one of the larger golems stuck in a door way and hit them with one of these weapons... you should be able to hit them without them returning the attacks and sometimes you can avoid the poison gas they use as well, all from being just outside of their effective range.
This tactic can also be used by blocking any doorway with an invisible character or someone who is enclosed in an Ottiluke's resilient sphere in the doorway.
BG2 separated them, but it is still a good weapon spot for a few classes who can only put 1 pip in a weapon and don't use a shield... of course you could use quarter staves the same way... quite a few more of them available in game with effects for bards and druids, who I tend to give spears to.
Also I think 3rd Edition bumped them up to d8, plus two-handed weapons in general gain 1.5x your strength score instead of just 1x. Not relevant to BG discussion. Just thought I'd mention.
Spears are mostly best used on fighter/druids. They can't use two-handed swords or halbreds. It's between spears or quarterstaves, and I'd say Qstaves are probably the better weapon type overall but there's just a lot of competition there as it's such a universal weapon type.
I think the 3rd edition changes sound sensible. I think spears are far too weak in 2nd edition. Puncture wounds - the kind that would be inflicted by a piercing weapon - are generally far more dangerous than those caused by slashing weapons (though personally I'd be happy to avoid both).
Full Plate grants an additional -3 AC vs. Missile and Piercing and -4 against slashing. Regular plate gives -1 vs. Missile/Piercing and -3 against slashing. Chain mail actually suffers +2 thac0 vs. crushing but gives an additional -2 vs. slashing. -3 Studded leather even gives -1 vs. M/P and -2 against slashing.
The only armor type that tends to differ is Splint Mail. That does -2 crushing, -1 M/P.
So long story short, crushing weapons are OP.
Still, if you're playing a character you think would use spears, use 'em! It's not like they're non-existant!
BUT, they are pretty great with spears. Thing about fighter druids, at least in BG2, they can give up AC and still shrug off damage because of ironskins so going a two-hander or dual-wield set up doesn't really hurt your ability to defend all that much.
I'll definitely agree for BG1, sword and board is the way to go.
Also a druid can only use Icingdeath, not Twinkle. Twinkle is the one that gives +2 AC and requires you to be Good aligned. Icingdeath is a +3 weapon with an unlisted bonus of giving bonus fire resist (I wanna say 50%?). I've often utilized it on fighter/mages. I'll give them robes of fire resist, that sword and the ring of fire resist to boost it well over 100%, then run in and drop nukes on top of myself to heal myself while damaging everything else around.