The Fantasy Armory · Chapter 10

Polearms

Polearms carry Reach like spears, but on a forged head that cuts, punches, hooks, or in one case simply closes around a neck. That head is a complex piece of smithing, so they are costed as Standard construction and their prices sit alongside the two-handed swords rather than the levy spears.

Three entries cover more than one damage type: the Poleaxe and Halberd switch between two as a maneuver, and the Lucerne Hammer carries two natively. No other family manages that in a single weapon.

Every entry carries Awkward, which adds Bane in corridors, stairwells, doorways, and crowds. Most of the places adventurers fight are on that list.

Construction: All entries are Standard (design-doc §5.0). The head is the expensive part and there is a lot of it.

Skill: Heavy Melee throughout. At tables using a single undifferentiated Melee skill, use Melee.

War Scythe

Fauchard, Peasant Scythe, Battle Scythe

A harvesting scythe with the blade re-set in line with the shaft. It is what a village arms itself with on the day it decides it has had enough, and it is very good at exactly one thing: reaching several people at once in an open field.

Bill

Billhook, Guisarme, Bill-Guisarme, Hooked Polearm

A pruning hook grown into a weapon: a heavy curved blade with a back spike and a forward hook. The hook is the point of it. Disarming 2 is the best in the book, and a bill is the standard tool for pulling a rider off a horse or a weapon out of a grip.

Mancatcher

Sasumata, Catchpole, Man Catcher, Neck Fork

A pair of sprung iron arms on a two-handed shaft, pushed closed around a neck, a waist, or a limb and held there. It is the only entry in this family not trying to injure anybody.

Ensnare 3 ties the strongest immobilisation in the book, and unlike the net the mancatcher keeps hold: the wielder is still on the other end of it, at Short range, where the prisoner's arms are not. Watchmen, gaolers, and temple guards carry them because a live prisoner is worth something and a corpse is paperwork.

+0 damage and Crit 5 are honest. If the plan is to kill someone, this is the wrong tool.

Bardiche

Berdiche, Voulge, Pole Cleaver

A long cleaving blade mounted along a shaft, closer to an axe on a pole than to a spear. It has no thrusting function and no subtlety. It reaches, and it takes down more than one person doing it.

Glaive

Naginata, Guandao, Sovnya, Pole Blade

A single-edged blade on a six-foot haft. It is the most elegant weapon in the family and the least complicated: it cuts, it keeps people at arm's length, and it rewards a wielder who strikes and then holds their ground.

Lucerne Hammer

Pole Hammer, Luzerner Hammer, Bec-de-Faucon

A multi-pronged hammer head backed by a long spike. It carries two damage types natively rather than switching between them, which makes it the simplest anti-armour answer in the book: no maneuver, no choice, just the right kind of force arriving at reach.

Halberd

Hellebarde, Ji, Swiss Voulge

Axe blade, thrusting spike, and a rear hook on a single head. The definitive polearm and the reason town guards carried them for four centuries: it does every job a foot soldier needs doing, and the hook works whichever face is forward.

Poleaxe

Pollaxe, Hache, Ravensbill

Shorter and better balanced than a halberd, with an axe on one side and a hammer on the other. This was the weapon armoured men chose to fight other armoured men, and the reason is on the stat line: it answers both ends of the armour economy by turning the haft over.