Saturday, April 2, 2011

Pole Arm Quiz

Several readers pointed me toward what is probably the best thing I've seen on the Wizards of the Coast website in a long time.

I'm not sure whether I should be proud or ashamed that I scored 16 out of 22.

51 comments:

  1. Not bad! I only got 14 right.

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  2. Oh, Lord! 9 of 22. I must now add Appendix T from the UA to my reading list!

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  3. Only 10 right, back in the eighties I would have done much better but I haven't looked at UA in a long time.

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  4. 13 here. Loved that old Order of the Stick cartoon they linked to, too!

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  5. 14 right... I be a swashbuckler. I did grow up in a house with a spear and a halberd.

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  6. 17 of 22, not too bad for having notp aid much attention.

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  7. 12 out of 22. Not as good as I would have thought.

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  8. 13. I thought I woul do a bit better too.

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  9. 9 of 22. Not bad for mostly-random semi-informed guessing.

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  10. 15 right.

    I read those Gygax pole-arm porn articles too much. (Anyone else remember the very first one, from issue #2 of the Strategic Review? I wish I still had my copy...)

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  11. 13. Not bad, considering that it's been a while since I read the UA.

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  12. 8 for me, which is waaay better then I expected. I guessed most of them. To me there should have only been three choices:

    Long pointy thing.
    Flat pointy thing.
    Forky pointy thing.

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  13. Got 12 out of 22. Need to study.

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  14. 14/20, but in fairness, since it was multiple choice, I got to make a lot of reasonably logical guesses even though I didn't truly *know* the answers.

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  15. 8 of 22, but I'm heavily medicated. That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it.

    My campaign will feature the dreaded Coast Guard Spork at one point or another...

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  16. 13.
    Probably on account of UA was the first D&D book I owned and I just sat around and stared at it for months yet haven't owned it since the early 90s

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  17. 13/22

    Got the volge-guisarme right, but swapped volge and guisarme, getting both exactly wrong.

    Also forgot to check spear, like a big dummy head.

    Now if they'd asked me which was a mace, a flail, or a morning star, I'd been in trouble.

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  18. Also, if WOTC were playing fair and showing how long each weapon was, I think everybody would've scored higher...

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  19. 18 out of 22. I got confused on the glaive family.

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  20. 18 out of 22...and I'd call it 19, since only that one on the left is a real "awl" pike, dammit!

    While I've never been one to geek out on polearms, I used the Unearthed Arcana A LOT back in 1985-87.
    : )

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  21. 14/22. I would've had three more if I hadn't second-guessed myself. I always do that!

    Thanks for the link, James. I totally would've missed this if you hadn't posted it here.

    Edit: Just thought this was funny - my captcha word was "disco"!

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  22. 19! Boosh and/or Ka-kow!

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  23. 10...Er. Too much 2nd/3E around here.

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  24. 18/22. And I never even read the original UA.

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  25. Dangnammit. 19/22. Mixed my partisans up with my spetum!

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  26. 18/22. Missed the Glaive-guisarme, the Glaive, the Guisarme, and for some stupid reason the Bill-hook. So, it's that Glaive and Guisarme stuff that gives me the most trouble.

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  27. 21/21. I refuse to say that I got the one about the "awl pikes" wrong, b/c UA seems to imply that only the one on the end is an all pike while the entire group is labeled pikes, and that is what I was going on.

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  28. 18, and while tipsy. I'll take that as a win. Thanks for the link!

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  29. 14 correct. I'm a little hazy about guisarmes.

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  30. Zak S is right, the changes in magnification were deceptive.

    Not that it matters - as soon as I saw that bewildering away of weapons with all roughly the same stats, I told my players "you can have a polearm." We never after that ever bothered distinguishing. So I wouldn't know a pole axe from a pile driver.

    I also found that whatever RPG you read had a different definition of all of these weapons (plus the morning star/mace/flail confusion was quite common). I couldn't understand why when in most games they all have the same outcome (except in Rolemaster, of course).

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  31. Being Wizards, I'm surprised there wasn't a couple "Dire" scrambles...
    15/22

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  32. 9... Which is what I pretty much expected. I ignored pole arm variations 27 years ago so didn't expect much retention.

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  33. 15/22

    Not bad for having not played since the mid-80s.

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  34. 17/22, and I too was tricked by the stupid "awl pike" question. Inaccurate! So I'd call it 18, I guess.

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  35. Polearms?

    Saw some new ones last week in a Christie's Auction Catalog:

    Christie's Chateau De Gourdon Auction

    Also, the castle the auction came from
    Chateau De Gourdon

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  36. 15 right. Never owned UA (or looked at that I remember)

    Highest score you can get without cheating (according to the website)

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  37. 16 out of 22, but I would have had 19 if I hadn't second-guessed myself on halberd, pole axe, and ranseur.

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  38. Oh, and I second-guessed myself on the pike/awl-pike, too, which would have made it 20.

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  39. apparently I don't know my lochaber axe from my poleaxe: 15. I was in Haut Keonigsberg castle a couple of months ago with my son and they had a Gygaxian polearm collection - one of the few I've ever seen - and my son asked me why there were so many different kinds, when they were really all just snarly bits of metal on the end of a broom handle. And on that question UA was no help at all. (yes, I know some are for dismounting riders and others are for particular infantry formations and others are badges of office, but really in D&D's abstract combat system, who cares?)

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  40. ...I mention that the collection was Gygaxian because usually (Venice Doge's palace, British Museum, Met) they don't go for the library of varieties approach: apparently lots of museum curators are happy to just call then polearms. I've still yet to identify a Bohemian Earspoon in the field.

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  41. I met Gary at the Higgins Armory Museum in Worcester MA back in, oh, 2004? He had been invited by the curator of medieval weaponry there to give a talk about how historical weapons related to their D&D counterparts. Imagine spending a rainy Saturday with Gary in a gothic castle full of weapons and armor and you'll get the picture. Anyhow, I remember him saying that he had included the polearm nomenclature in D&D just to add spice to the game, and didn't give a whit about modeling their various characteristics.

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  42. 11/22. Of course, having French as a first language helped a bit.

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  43. Gahhh! Only a 12? But I don't want to study Unearthed Arcana!!!! :P

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  44. Only 14 out of 22 for me. I need to do some research.

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  45. 15 (factoring in WOTC's screwup on the awl-pike). LOL, it's frightening to think that "back in the day" I could probably have named them all without the multiple choice.

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  46. 18 of 22. Disagree with awl pike, forget to change another, and I always get two confused with each other.

    I'm so dorky.

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