New Weapon: Polehammer

[Khaalis]

Looking for comments on the following weapon design. Are they any problems or is it balanced? Thanks.


Polehammer: First developed by dwarves, this reach weapon resembles a halberd but with a solid hammer face rather than an axe face.

Polehammer Two-Handed Military Weapon
Proficiency: +2
Damage: 1d10
Range: ---
Price: 25gp
Weight: 14 lb.
Group: Hammer, Polearm
Properties: Reach

 

[Nytmare]

Juggling between the Maul, the warhammer, and the other polearms, I think I'd match the damage to the glaive (2d4) instead.

 

[ravenheart]

Or make it 1d8 and add Brutal 1 as a property. Just to simulate the "smashyness" of the concept.

 

[Truename]

Juggling between the Maul, the warhammer, and the other polearms, I think I'd match the damage to the glaive (2d4) instead.

Hammers and axes tend to be very similar (warhammer <=> battleaxe), so modeling it on the halberd seems like a good idea. Heavy blades like the glaive tend to be lower damage. 1d10 sounds right to me.

If you wanted to be wacky without changing the balance, you could do 1d8 brutal 2.

 

[Khaalis]

Hammers and axes tend to be very similar (warhammer <=> battleaxe), so modeling it on the halberd seems like a good idea. Heavy blades like the glaive tend to be lower damage. 1d10 sounds right to me.

This was exactly my thought on the damage. I wanted to keep it as close to the existing weapons as possible.

If you wanted to be wacky without changing the balance, you could do 1d8 brutal 2.

I honestly thought about this. Everyone considers the new AV weapons (especially hammers) to be superior to the PHB weapons. What I was thinking was having the Polehammer as the Military version and then also creating a Superior version that had the brutal quality. I like 1d8/Brutal 2.

 

[Nytmare]

Hammers and axes tend to be very similar (warhammer <=> battleaxe), so modeling it on the halberd seems like a good idea.

They're similar till they become 2 handed, and then they turn into the

Greataxe (1d12, high crit) > Halberd (1d10, reach)

and the

Maul (2d6) > Pole Hammer (?)

[EDIT] Hey look at that, my thinking was that reach must be roughly equal to two die sizes and since dice bottomed out at d4 2d6s would stop there. I wasn't thinking that 2d6 > 1d12 > 1d10. 1d10 IT IS!

 

[Truename]

I honestly thought about this. Everyone considers the new AV weapons (especially hammers) to be superior to the PHB weapons. What I was thinking was having the Polehammer as the Military version and then also creating a Superior version that had the brutal quality. I like 1d8/Brutal 2.

There aren't a lot of superior polearms (just the Greatspear), but superior versions of Military weapons are either +1 attack or +1 damage compared to their Military counterpart*. Accuracy isn't really a Hammer trait, so a Superior version of the Polehammer should deal 6.5 average damage. That's either 1d12 or 1d10 brutal 2. (Every point of brutal adds 0.5 avg damage per die.)

*Except the Tratnyr, which increases range compared to the Trident.