If the "mage staff" is going to be a bludgeon, can we use bludgeon tree spells?

A polearm isn't defined by the type of head it has but by the length of the weapon. A lucerne hammer or poleaxe which have hammerheads on them are also polearms. A wand also doesn't have a head attachment, so why should that qualify by your definition?

For that matter, if you classify a wand as a short spear you might as well classify a dagger as a short spear.

Congratulations, you've created a definition by which an 8 foot oaken staff is not a polearm, but a 6 inch tangless knife is.

 

You must have bern aplying your venemous words when i added an edit. Why you so mad?

 

Whats the difference between your mage staff and say my big 2H mace/hammer in its use?

There is def a gray area between a mage staff and it being blunt / polearm but in traditional design sense it seems more blunt to me.

 

I am pretty sure that in most fantasy settings the mage staff is not used for melee combat at all. If it was, the staff could be broken with one good hit with sword or axe. Staves,wands are supposed to channel mage's power, perhaps contain part of the focus, I do not like the idea of them being used to knockback and stun opponents.

 

I'm not mad, I just think your idea that wands are more akin to polearms than staves is ridiculous.

The issue I have with defining a staff as a blunt weapon is that there is absolutely no such thing as "blunt" as a style of fighting. When someone practices Kendo they don't suddenly stop being a swordfighter and become a bluntfighter just because a Shinai has no edge. What they really mean by blunt fighting is fighting with a weapon that has a heavy weight at the end of it, not with a weapon that absolutely cannot have any points. Fighting with a weighted weapon is an actual fighting style, while being anal about the shape of that weight is not.

If you look at actual warhammers or maces you find that most of them actually have spikes or flanges attached to their head so that even they have a point or an edge leading the way. The fighting method doesn't change just because you add a spike or an axe blade or hammer head to the end of a stick, those are all just devices to concentrate the impact force, they don't change how you produce an impact. A Bec de corbin for example has a large beak on one side, four prongs or a small hammer head on the other, and a spike at the top. If you try to define it by what sort of surface you hit the enemy with it's every kind of weapon in one. The important bit about it as a weapon isn't what the killy bits are shaped like, but the fact that it's a stick with a very heavy head that will impart tremendous force on anything it hits with any of its protrusions.

The whole idea of "blunt" as a skill is absurd. Any object that you whack someone really hard with is more lethal if it has a pointy bit doing the whacking, and will impart more force if it has a heavy bit at the end. That's why as far as I'm concerned the blunt skill doesn't actually refer to the fact that the weapon is blunt, it refers to the idea that this is a weapon that is weighted for maximum impact. A staff is not weighted for maximum impact. It's strength in combat is it's length, which is the essential quality of a polearm, which just like a short weighted weapon can have a variety of killy bits stuck to its end, or none at all.

Fighting with a short weapon with the heaviest possible head and fighting with a long weapon that has maximum reach are fighting styles. The exact shape that the ends of those weapons have on the other hand isn't. The skills of the game should represent fighting styles, not what exact shape the bit that hurts the enemy has.

 

Pretty sure if i wacked you in the head with a wooden pole its gonna do blunt force trama to it. I also equated wands mire to fencing. Its a fantasy game buf.

 

And if someone put a bunch of big nails through the end of that wooden pole you would no longer be able to wield it effectively because it might inflict a different kind of injury?

 

Semantics

 

How so? You keep insisting a staff is a blunt weapon because it's blunt.

What if this guy hits someone with his staff?



Or is that not a staff because it isn't blunt? Or maybe he's only allowed to smack people with the flat of it?

 

Why is a two handed axe a bludgeon?

 

It's a short weapon with a weighted head. The main problem is the nomenclature of the skillsets, nothing else. By saying blunt is a skill people obsess over the striking surface of the weapon instead of thinking about how the weapon is actually used, which should be the only relevant thing to what skills are needed to wield it.

Let along the fact that I can find hundreds of examples of staves that aren't blunt completely invalidates the idea that weapons should be assigned to a category based on what kind of injury they might inflict.

 

Not just weighted but bladed.

 

Which again, is completely irrelevant to how you actually use it. If you can swing a sledge hammer well you can swing an axe well, and you can swing a pick well. It's absurd to act like you can be a grand master in one and utterly inept in the others just because the bit at the end is slightly differently shaped.

 

Well i am talking about current GAME mechanics and how they apply, not real world simulations, that might be our disconnect.

 

Sure, but I still don't think it's an open and shut case to say all staves are blunt weapons just because a game includes a blunt skill.

 

correct, its up to port to decide. Right now they call them bludgeons. I disagree with the wand. Like i said I think wands would best be called a "fencing" weapon. They can poke and parry, thats about it though lol

 

The thing is, the way the weapons are used... a wand or mage-staff is quite useless as an ordinary weapon. Sure you can use bludgeon-skills with them, but hey... a wand stunning something because it is a bludgeon? A mage-staff... ok... Gandalf the white hit quite hard with his staff in Lord of the Ring, but that staff didn't look like it was just a larger twig with some skull loosly fixed on it... He used it as a fighting staff. So we see: wands and staffs are very different as weapons and what we see as staves in SotA isn't anything like a true staff-weapon from any other fantasy I read or played or have seen as a movie. So as I see it, wands and mage-staves (as they are now) shouldn't be usable as normal weapons at all, but could get other more caster-related features. That doesn't mean that other weapons should not be able to get such features via enchantments for example. Why not create a magic sword or mace or axe that got some caster-features, too?