Spears Options

[ghastley]

Since they last appeared in Morrowind, and Oblivion and Skyrim don't have them, I've been using them a lot in my recent MW games.

I was expecting something a bit more varied or versatile. They're all two-handed, and essential a poking tool. No real damage from slash or chop, even with the Halberds that have an axe-like blade. So a single-style polearm, and nothing more.

I downloaded a one-handed spear mod (that didn't have any one-handed spears, but let you hold the long ones in one hand and carry a shield in the other), and so I made some shorter-shafted replacements that look better. Diablita is using a pitchfork, which at least fits in with the two-handed stabbing device the game expects.

I may put out a simple mod of new meshes for the existing one-hand spear mod. That works by swapping the Spear and Long Blade stats when you equip/unequip the new spears, but doesn't address the issues of Strength/Endurance not swapping or the leveling effect if one is a Misc Skill. It adds the one hand spears as random loot, so getting the new meshes into the game is not an issue, if I include an esp to re-point the added forms to them.

I was disappointed, too, at the lack of javelins in a game that lets you throw daggers, darts and stars. Although a dagger is separate from a throwing knife, even when they share a mesh, that's credible, as balance matters. I suspect the reason is that the throwing animation wasn't made with that in mind, although a spear-chucking one would probably work better for the other weapons, and even rocks.

The thrown variety I'm unsure about modding. Real-life soldiers (e.g. the Romans) only carried a couple, which were mainly used to encumber the enemy's shield and make it useless. Hunters used them with throwing sticks, like the atlatl, or woomera, to get extra leverage, and that's too much work to add. Also, they'd have different heads for different purposes, barbed for large game, forked for fishing, etc. The thrown ones are likely more effort than they're worth. They were fun in the Diablo series - but that wasn't trying to be realistic at all, and the really fun ones were all magic effect, and very little spear.

[TheCheshireKhajiit]

Yeah a lot of Khajiit's characters use polearms, but this one always has to tweak the chop damage on the halberds in the Construction Kit. Khajiit would love to see spears revamped and included in the next Elderscrolls game. Hopefully with games like the new Zelda introducing spears into its gameplay Beth will get some ideas.

[mirocu]

My character uses a spear enchanted with Shock. Fun weapon and good against werewolves

[ghastley]

Well Diablita is of course delighted that she can use her pitchfork as a physical weapon, and not just as a fire-ball generator. Her latest is enchanted with soul trap and shock damage, so she can recharge as she uses it, but I didn't think it out properly, and with higher-level enemies, it's run out of charge before they die, and so the soul trap part isn't running when it's needed. I may have to make her a new one that does less magical damage per hit, and so keeps its charge going longer.

The character using the short spears could probably use a better shield that adds to her medium/heavy skill, to make up for the switch from Endurance to Strength. I should try that soon. However, equipping it drops her AR, as she's mainly Unarmoured.

Still looking at the mods for throwing weapons, and where to buy stacks of them. Looks like Wayn's supply restocks.

[ghastley]

A couple of CS screen-shots I made for potential use in mod documentation.

Short Spears

Pitchforks

They're intended to look like the ones used in the UESP wiki, and I think I got close enough.

[mirocu]

Nice ones, ghastley

[Decrepit]

Spears would be nice indeed, as would polearms such as poleaxes and Lucerne Hammers (for plate vs plate encounters). I imagine these aren't included due to difficulty in programming them to function properly. It can be argued that swords themselves aren't used realistically, but in this case we are used to improper using in movies and TV shows so cut the games a bit of slack. I've been thinking it'd be neat of Beth was to coordinate with the folks making Kingdom Come: Deliverance for the melee combat portion of any upcoming TES title. Extremely unlikely, but a judicious blending of the two philosophies could benefit the TES franchise, imo.

[ghastley]

Spears would be nice indeed, as would polearms such as poleaxes and Lucerne Hammers (for plate vs plate encounters). I imagine these aren't included due to difficulty in programming them to function properly. It can be argued that swords themselves aren't used realistically, but in this case we are used to improper using in movies and TV shows so cut the games a bit of slack. I've been thinking it'd be neat of Beth was to coordinate with the folks making Kingdom Come: Deliverance for the melee combat portion of any upcoming TES title. Extremely unlikely, but a judicious blending of the two philosophies could benefit the TES franchise, imo.

It should be a matter of designing an animation palette that's adaptable to multiple weapons, and providing a way to connect them. A Zulu short spear was essentially a stabbing device, always used with a thrusting attack that would be shared with a Gladius, or similar Point-oriented sword. Each of those has just one way you're likely to use it.

Pure Poleaxes and Lucerne Hammers again are only likely to be used with a single attack animation. Anything but the big swing doesn't do much harm. But many of those weapons addressed that issue by adding a spike on top for a second attack, so now we're at two.

In the Morrowind CK, and presumably in the engine, too, there are canned combos of animations that you have to select for a weapon. So "Two-handed Wide grip" is a set for Spears, Quarterstaves, Halberds, or anything based on the long stick model. Similarly if you want a shortish one-hand weapon, you select a pre-canned set for that. It really only needed a mechanism to create your own list to fix it.

Then there was the fixed linkage between animation and controls that made all weapons have to support Chop/Slash/Thrust even if you really needed three varieties of Slash for your Katana. A user setting allowed you to reduce the choices to one ("Best attack") because the game mechanics made success a dice roll, rather than depend on tactical choices, so it was pointless to choose one over another.

I don't think any game after Daggerfall had much consideration of weapon type vs armor trade-offs. I recall blunts being better against skellies there, but leather/mail/plate didn't seem to resist different attack types in different degrees. About all we were left with was the "resist normal weapons" to balance with the magical resists, which resisted all types of physical attack. Edge/point/bludgeon or maybe more could have been used for attack/resist variation, but weren't.

Lack of locational damage also came in gradually. At one point I remember damage was randomly allotted to armor items for wear/repair, but that didn't mean that not wearing anything in that slot damaged the character more. "Go for the eyes, Boo!" was never an option. You press the "strike" control, the game decides an attack for you, and stats get adjusted.

[ghastley]

Morrowind weapon stats are illogical. I was fiddling with the stats on Diablita's pitchforks, and so I looked at the game's existing weapons for guidance.

But I found that the Steel spear does 2-5 Chop, and 6-17 Thrust damage, and the Steel Halberd, which adds an axe blade to it, now does MORE thrust damage (5-23) and LESS Chop (1-4). Iron spear and halberd have the same damage as each other in all modes, so the axe blade does exactly nothing. The Dwemer one gets higher numbers in every mode, so that's almost reasonable. There is no Glass Spear to which to compare the Halberd, but it's still a poking weapon, not a chop or slash one, so why have an axe blade at all?