Topic: Possible unimplication/reversal: staff -> polearm

As the title says, I just stumbled upon this implication and I can't really comprehend why this implication exists, polearms require a blade somewhere parallel to the staff while a staff is simply that, a glorified stick.

With that said, all polearms can be seen as staves (with a blade) but not all staves are polearms, so the question stands, should the implication be removed or reversed?

I think it should be reversed imo

NotMeNotYou said:
As the title says, I just stumbled upon this implication and I can't really comprehend why this implication exists,

Quarterstaves are classified as polearms in most RPGs. That's probably why.

Genjar said:
Quarterstaves are classified as polearms in most RPGs. That's probably why.

Are they? I'm not sure about DND but no other rpg I played but those two together, and if the did all three were listed under spears.

NotMeNotYou said:
Are they? I'm not sure about DND but no other rpg I played but those two together, and if the did all three were listed under spears.

Guild Wars, LARP, Dungeons and Dragons (pre 3.0), Mount and Blade, Everquest, Pathfinder(?)... Just the ones that I remember offhand. It's pretty common to lump them under polearms in both pen and paper and MMORPGs.

EDIT: ...and I meant to type GURPS instead of LARP. :/
EDIT2: Oh right, the implication? Should probably be removed anyway. Polearm seems like a bad tag for magic staves and such.

I thought only Javelins, Scythes, and Spears counted as pole arm weapons.

Hiatuss said:
I thought only Javelins, Scythes, and Spears counted as pole arm weapons.

A whole lot more than that, but not staves.
And I wouldn't classify polearms as staves either, implication should just be removed.

Staves are usually classified as polearms in video games as well, when they are referring to the bo-staff, quarterstaff, long staff and similar, rather than magical staves (though if magical staves are used martially, they can cross the boundaries). Whilst they may lack a blade, they still consist mainly of a pole, thus why they are usually labelled together as such, since many don't care to separate pole weapons from polearms (or lack the knowledge of the difference). I'd make an ur-tag of pole_weapon and then split staves and polearms (Staff and polearm), and then have halberds, naginatas, poleaxes, glaives, voulges, guisarmes (of all flavours) and the rest imply polearm.

123easy said:
Staves are usually classified as polearms in video games as well, when they are referring to the bo-staff, quarterstaff, long staff and similar, rather than magical staves (though if magical staves are used martially, they can cross the boundaries). Whilst they may lack a blade, they still consist mainly of a pole, thus why they are usually labelled together as such, since many don't care to separate pole weapons from polearms (or lack the knowledge of the difference). I'd make an ur-tag of pole_weapon and then split staves and polearms (Staff and polearm), and then have halberds, naginatas, poleaxes, glaives, voulges, guisarmes (of all flavours) and the rest imply polearm.

Problem there is that there's staves that are significantly shorter than would be traditionally defined as a pole-arm or pole-weapon.
For example the japanese Hanbo, is a type of bo, or staff weapon, but is only ~35 inches long.
I don't know anyone who would call a 3 foot long staff a pole-weapon.

123easy said:
Staves are usually classified as polearms in video games as well, when they are referring to the bo-staff, quarterstaff, long staff and similar, rather than magical staves (though if magical staves are used martially, they can cross the boundaries). Whilst they may lack a blade, they still consist mainly of a pole, thus why they are usually labelled together as such, since many don't care to separate pole weapons from polearms (or lack the knowledge of the difference). I'd make an ur-tag of pole_weapon and then split staves and polearms (Staff and polearm), and then have halberds, naginatas, poleaxes, glaives, voulges, guisarmes (of all flavours) and the rest imply polearm.

Problem here is mainly that there's no proper terminology on pole weapons anywhere, wikipedia even lists that as a big problem on the page, and video will likely mush staves and polearms together because they can easily share swing animations without looking stupid.
Although for example Two Worlds has different fighting styles between (combat) staves and ploearms with only one fighting end, the staves include animations where you hit the enemy with both ends, something slightly harder to do when one end has a blade attached to it.

So yeah, I'd make a distinction between boring (magical) staff, fighting staff, polearm (halberd, javelin, war scythes, naginata), and spears. That should give us most types of stick based weapons for tagging without getting caught up in discussions experts can't agree on.

Halite said:
Problem there is that there's staves that are significantly shorter than would be traditionally defined as a pole-arm or pole-weapon.
For example the japanese Hanbo, is a type of bo, or staff weapon, but is only ~35 inches long.
I don't know anyone who would call a 3 foot long staff a pole-weapon.

The hanbo is more properly classified as a club, not a staff, due to the length. Yes, it is named such because it is a half-staff, but being a length of wood that reaches from ground to hip, anywhere else that's a club, much like these. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v426/jamhappy/club002.jpg you can't really use proper staff techniques with one, and it's basically just an unshaped bokken.

NotMeNotYou said:
Problem here is mainly that there's no proper terminology on pole weapons anywhere, wikipedia even lists that as a big problem on the page, and video will likely mush staves and polearms together because they can easily share swing animations without looking stupid.
Although for example Two Worlds has different fighting styles between (combat) staves and ploearms with only one fighting end, the staves include animations where you hit the enemy with both ends, something slightly harder to do when one end has a blade attached to it.

So yeah, I'd make a distinction between boring (magical) staff, fighting staff, polearm (halberd, javelin, war scythes, naginata), and spears. That should give us most types of stick based weapons for tagging without getting caught up in discussions experts can't agree on.

pole weapons are any weapon that consists mainly of a pole, or staff. All polearms classify, as do staves. polearms are pole weapons that require a pointy bit on the end or side of an end of the stick, like a spear or halberd or voulge. Staves may be carved or have decorative capping, but aren't sharp edged or pointy with the intent to use it as such (unless it's a hidden weapon but we're not going to go there). Even with polearms you can use the butt end as a weapon, and in fact many have been used as such historically- it's mostly in video games that they ignore the butt end strikes, because 'who wants to hit someone with a stick when they can jab with the pointy end?'. That's why I broke up martial staves and polearms under pole weapons. :)

123easy said:
...you can't really use proper staff techniques with one, ...

Umm, yes you can.

123easy said:
pole weapons are any weapon that consists mainly of a pole, or staff. All polearms classify, as do staves. polearms are pole weapons that require a pointy bit on the end or side of an end of the stick, like a spear or halberd or voulge. Staves may be carved or have decorative capping, but aren't sharp edged or pointy with the intent to use it as such (unless it's a hidden weapon but we're not going to go there). Even with polearms you can use the butt end as a weapon, and in fact many have been used as such historically- it's mostly in video games that they ignore the butt end strikes, because 'who wants to hit someone with a stick when they can jab with the pointy end?'. That's why I broke up martial staves and polearms under pole weapons. :)

Yes, of course you can jab them with the end and many even have thorn on that end for exactly this purpose, but if you do the fighting style of Two Worlds staves with a halberd the main protagonist would end up with blade inside his forearms, which I would wager is slightly uncomfortable.

More importantly, either I'm blind or wikipedia isn't using any staves in their pole weapon section. The page for quarterstaves themselves do list them as pole weapons but that page is marked for having serious issues.

So yeah, I wouldn't lump magic staves without direct weapon parts together with polearm, if they are only there to strengthen or focus magic they are staves, if they have metal reinforcements or spikes/blades attached to them I'd list them under weapons, but that distinction doesn't allow an implication, we'd have to do a distinction between those two staff types.

NotMeNotYou said:
Yes, of course you can jab them with the end and many even have thorn on that end for exactly this purpose, but if you do the fighting style of Two Worlds staves with a halberd the main protagonist would end up with blade inside his forearms, which I would wager is slightly uncomfortable.

More importantly, either I'm blind or wikipedia isn't using any staves in their pole weapon section. The page for quarterstaves themselves do list them as pole weapons but that page is marked for having serious issues.

So yeah, I wouldn't lump magic staves without direct weapon parts together with polearm, if they are only there to strengthen or focus magic they are staves, if they have metal reinforcements or spikes/blades attached to them I'd list them under weapons, but that distinction doesn't allow an implication, we'd have to do a distinction between those two staff types.

.....

Pole WEAPONS are any weapon that has a pole (shaft) of wood or metal. PoleARM is the ones that have pointy and sharp bits attached to the shaft. All poleARMs are pole WEAPONS. Not all pole WEAPONS are poleARMs. All staves are pole WEAPONS. not all pole WEAPONS are staves. A lance is a pole WEAPON, a poleARM, but not a staff. A staff is a pole WEAPON but not a poleARM (unless someone attaches a sharp or pointy bit to it). A magical staff can usually still be used as a staff (but the two should be noted separately, because it may be too flimsy for martial use), and in the cases where it can be used as both a magical staff and a martial staff is thus also a pole WEAPON, but is still not a poleARM. If it is too short to be used as a staff, it is not a magical staff but a magical rod or wand, much as a short stick the length of a sword is a club/rod/cane/baton, not a staff.

Does that help clarify for you what I have been saying? It seems like you're just not understanding at all the difference ofthe terms 'pole weapon', 'polearm', and 'staff', so I've tried to break it down as simply as I can think of in all the permutations.

The wikipedia article, while it has some relevance in naming a decent variety of pole weapons, is sorely lacking in any real substance; this can be seen in the fact that it lacks spears as pole weapons because the article was originally about polearms but has since been co-opted into use for pole weapons in general. This is seen in the talk page where it is explicitly noted that the line, " A pole-arm is differentiated from a spear in that the penetrating 'edge' is parallel to the pole, rather than in-line, although many pole-arms also incorporate a spear point." was added because of someone's personal opinion, not because it was so researched and cited. Someone felt they didn't belong as polearms, so they weren't, and once the article was co-opted over to pole weapons spears never made their return, either. To classify spears separate from polearms just because of a personal opinion about their blades (which isn't even true, given the number of polearms that have variations or primary forms with a blade in-line with the shaft rather than parallel) is just plain wrong; if they had done so while citing an appropriate reason, such as a reputable source in the field, then whatever- they did not. Even if they are not polearms themselves, they are at the very least pole weapons. It's just a giant mess of bad editting. Use the resources cited, certainly, but don't use the wiki article for anything other than referencing a few pole weapon names.

http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/20C/Weapons.html therionarms.com/old_armor_page.shtml

Hell, even the horseman's pick was a polearm, being a warhammer-pick mounted on an elongated shaft. While you might think of something like Marvel's Thor's Mjollnir for a maul, reality was they were little more than hammers with elongated and reinforced hafts, basically turning them into long hammers. Many other polearms are the same, for the most part being simple sword blades or knife blades (or even repurposed scythe blades, as with the war scythe) mounted on shafts of various lengths.

Whoever had the idea to use arms and weapons to make that distinction won't get a drink from me in the afterlife.
That shit is confusing.

The problem now remaining is in what tags do we want to use and how do we want to split things up, I don't really like the idea of having pole_weapon on nearly any longer weapon.

Anyway, let me try to break things down how I think it would be useful for us.

Pole_weapon (with underscore or without?)
  |
  |---magic_staff (Too frail for fighting) [wizard_staff for better distinction?]
  |
  |---combat_staff (All types, plain, reinforced, but needs to be blunt or only have some spikes, no distinct blades)
  |
  |---Polearm---Halberd (Blade parallel to stick)
               |
               |-Spear (blade on top of stick)
               |
               |-Javelin (blade on top of stick but used for throwing) [No idea if needed tbh]
               |
               |-Glaive/Naginata (sword on top of stick)
               |
               |-Pollaxe (Axe on long stick)
            

I like having halberd, spear, javelin, glaive and pollaxe imply polearm, but I don't think we'll profit having everything imply pole_weapon.
We can have combat_staff imply pole_weapon, but we shouldn't have magic_staff imply pole_weapon as it isn't thought to be used as a weapon.
On the off-chance that there is a magic_staff designed for "normal" combat as well we can still add combat_staff manually.

Also, do we want to break down combat_staff into subtypes? Bo, Gun and quarterstaff have no distinct differences in them except length and diameter, on first glance.

NotMeNotYou said:
Whoever had the idea to use arms and weapons to make that distinction won't get a drink from me in the afterlife.
That shit is confusing.

Glad I was able to elucidate the terminology differences effectively enough for you to understand!

I like having halberd, spear, javelin, glaive and pollaxe imply polearm, but I don't think we'll profit having everything imply pole_weapon.
We can have combat_staff imply pole_weapon, but we shouldn't have magic_staff imply pole_weapon as it isn't thought to be used as a weapon.
On the off-chance that there is a magic_staff designed for "normal" combat as well we can still add combat_staff manually.

That's about what I was thinking. Magic staves are separate, though I wouldn't term them wizard's staves specifically because it might be a witch's staff or a wizardess' staff; it could also be a staff that is naturally magical rather than enchanted due to the properties of the material it's made of; if a knight was wielding a magic staff, it would then be a knight's staff, so keeping it to the generic 'magic staff' makes the most sense to me. If it's a magic staff and a martial staff, then tag both and the latter will imply pole weapon whilst the former shouldn't inherantly.

Also, do we want to break down combat_staff into subtypes? Bo, Gun and quarterstaff have no distinct differences in them except length and diameter, on first glance.

Quarterstaves are about as tall as the average North American male (6 foot, though some are classified as quarterstaves up to 9 feet long). Bo staves seem to just be the japanese name for them, same with the gun staff. Long staves are as long as a pike, in the 11-12 foot range, and there are cultural name variants of this as well. Rather than quarterstaff and long staff, why not just staff and long staff for those that are noticably longer than the person is tall?

So, having just tried to tag something as "staff" and ending up with "polearm" implied, I decided to check the forums and see if it had been discussed, and lo and behold, it has. But apparently nothing actually ended up getting done?

It seems like the conclusion of the thread that polearm isn't really an appropriate implication for staff, since staves (especially the magical variety) aren't polearms... And I'd argue aren't even necessarily weapons, as defined by the wiki article (which includes walking-aides in the definition, among other things).

So I figured I'd give this a bump. See if we can't get something resolved this time around.

Alright, first I'd like to clarify something. "Arm" (from Latin) and "weapon" (Germanic) literally have the exact same meaning in this context. Changing the name of the tag won't make any difference to how we categorize things within the actual tag.

While quarterstaves and some other types might be clasified as a polearm, staves in general don't really fit very well within that grouping. Some types of staves might not be designed for combat, but I'd really rather leave differently named tags (e.g., walking_stick) to pick up the extra meaning. Implying it directly to weapon instead would probably work well enough in practice for our purposes.

Now I know how other people feel when I talk about guns...

parasprite said:
Alright, first I'd like to clarify something. "Arm" (from Latin) and "weapon" (Germanic) literally have the exact same meaning in this context. Changing the name of the tag won't make any difference to how we categorize things within the actual tag.

Well it is worth noting that composite words and phrases are generally greater than the sum of their parts. If you had a device that acted like a calculator, but also could shoot bullets, calling it a "machine gun" would nonetheless be misleading. Likewise, calling even a battlestaff a polearm is misleading when polearm already has a clear definition as a particular class of weaponry.

That said, I do generally agree with you that creating a pole-weapon tag is not the way to go. I'd simply divide up "staff" into a few more specific variants.

Walking Stick for... well, walking aides.
Battlestaff for melee-weapon type staves. This should probably imply weapon.
Magic Staff for staves used for the assistance of magic. I don't actually think this should imply weapon, because magic is not inherently weaponized (though it is often portrayed that way).

Perhaps staff could remain as something that all three imply, and this acts as a general tag for all three (and perhaps others), to avoid having "staff" aliased to one of the others (and, as a bonus, that would make it easier for taggers to find the other related tags, similar to the "tribal spellcaster" tag, for instance).

Clawdragons said:
If you had a device that acted like a calculator, but also could shoot bullets, calling it a "machine gun" would nonetheless be misleading.

likewise the typewriter (iirc that's what it was called) sub-machine gun in some resident evil games could fit that description as well. why call it typewriter when it's clearly a sub-machine gun? well, chicago typewriter actually but it's still misleading.

Alright, regardless of any new planned tags decided in this thread I think it would be prudent to remove the implication. So that is now deleted

The names are mostly placeholders with no thought put into them (and also more than we need), but I think something like this might work:

• staff
• battle_staff -implies-> weapon
• bo_staff
• quarterstaff -implies-> weapon
• magic_staff
• walking_stick

treos said:
likewise the typewriter (iirc that's what it was called) sub-machine gun in some resident evil games could fit that description as well. why call it typewriter when it's clearly a sub-machine gun? well, chicago typewriter actually but it's still misleading.

Oo, or that laptop gun in Perfect Dark that you could throw on the wall and use as a sentinel. Perfect tag name right there