For quite sometime, the rule in my games and Zem's has been that if you are running around with the spiked chain, you don't threaten (and can't attack) someone who has another creature in front of them. Unlike, for instance, a spear, which can attack someone standing adjacent to any square adjacent to you, even if a friend or foe stands between.

I just ruled that as a logical course of action- it's a fucking CHAIN, it's stupid to somehow be whipping it about THROUGH people.

Zem has the same philosophy on that.


But, we have a spiked chain fighter in our group. His inability to attack through people changes the weapon enough that I actually think the damned thing might be *balanced* (normally the weapon is both ahistoric and way the fuck too strong).

Emerald Heart guys, what do you think? Is the spiked chain good enough with that rule in effect?

Tough question. I mean, on one hand, it's broken all to hell and completely changes the course of a battle with one fucking move. On the other hand, the wielder would probably not prevail in a battle against a giant god, so maybe we ought to beef it up some. I mean, you never know when you're going to need to trip Thor from between two allies.

Dude, Jon, and I mean this as a friend, please find another hobby. Walking is nice, baking maybe, perhaps some sort of wood craft.

Thus far, I'll probably still ban the thing in my next and subsequent games. It's not that it's unstoppably strong (generally it is not, though there are a couple feat chains from optional sources that I banned awhile back)- in fact, I tend to like the pressure it puts on PC and NPC casters a great deal, forcing them to at least roll their easy concentration checks before turning you into a squirrel ("no wait- I polymorph him into a *girl* squirrel!"), and I like that it lets PCs have one of the signature tricks of the large humanoids without actually having to deal with ogre PCs and crap like that (I'd rather deal with characters with superhuman tricks than with monstrous PCs, with some exceptions).

What I ultimately don't like about it is that while you can, with feats or with enchantments, replace everything non-reach related that a greatsword or guisarme offers, you can't duplicate that spiked chain effect. It's the only way to get it. While similar to some real weapons, it's not one- a quick glance at the picture on the PHB mostly settles that. The only thing that the game really seems to try super hard to model in an immutable fashion is the reach on the weapons- you can't lunge to someone two spaces away with a rapier, (the game rapier is tiny, not really a rapier), and if you are standing between two folks with tridents on each side of you, you are considered to be hugging each one of them tightly at the same time (such that neither can attack you). Sure, a DM would probably be clever enough to remember what's supposed to be modelled and houserule it, but still.


I'd be a lot more likely to offer some benefit to close range weapons, and then make all existing reach weapons have that trick of attacking stuff close, possibly with a penalty, than I would to leave this powerful and very cool effect entirely in the possession of an ahistoric (probably imaginary) weapon. I've come up with several "exotic weapons" for different games over the years (usually offered with an explanation of "inherent magic", because if any of them really worked, the ancients would have used them), and in all cases I have tried to design them such that no one would ever actually feel lacking if their group didn't have one. I don't think the spiked chain passes that as a test.