I have no idea. I haven't seen it in any book but it is on dndbeyond. I didn't know about it until I was making my character on dndbeyond and was looking at the weapon options it gave me and a yklwa was there.
Realistically speaking a spear is not weighted for use as a staff and shouldn't be treated as one... but realistically a quarterstaff is in no way a versatile weapon, it's two-handed, so I wouldn't place too much emphasis on realism (versatile stick-type weapons did exist, but they're wielded as a one or two handed club, not as a staff).
There are many holes in the 5e weapon list. Are javelins supposed to be short spears? Why isn't there a reach weapon that does bludgeoning damage? What happened to the Falchion category of two handed finesse weapons? Some real world dagger fighters use them as slashing weapons, not just piercing weapons. Why were double bladed weapons to dual wield with a single weapon eliminated?
There are many holes in the 5e weapon list. Are javelins supposed to be short spears? Why isn't there a reach weapon that does bludgeoning damage? What happened to the Falchion category of two handed finesse weapons? Some real world dagger fighters use them as slashing weapons, not just piercing weapons. Why were double bladed weapons to dual wield with a single weapon eliminated?
I'm seeing 93 different weapons in the 4e wiki. That's just too many. Which ones do you cut though? Every one of them is probably someone's favorite.
While I might have made a different choice here and there the much bigger failure was a lack of creature size adjustments. 3e did a very good job of offering the same weapons with less damage when adjusted for small sized creatures. That would also have made it easier to adjust weapons for large sized races, instead of making all player character options for traditionally large sized characters runts that are technically in the medium category. if they really wanted one weapon list for all PCs, why not expand the size range for medium creatures to include halflings, gnomes, and full blooded orcs?
5e is really well made. But there are a few minor things that are frustrating. I would rather One D&D be more like Essentials from 4e and clean up some of these minor issues than to be a fully new edition. Also I wish they had used some alternate campaign settings to test out things like allowing players to actually play a large sized creature and treat it like an extended play test where the material isn't allowed in Adventurer League games.
I'm seeing 93 different weapons in the 4e wiki. That's just too many. Which ones do you cut though? Every one of them is probably someone's favorite.
In the end a lot of weapons are going to be clones anyway, as most weapons don't have special features other than maybe versatile and damage is pretty standardized.
Spears must use two hands to do the most damage. That means you can't use your unarmed punches, but kicks would be allowed. If you want to be able to punch, have a spear-like weapon that is as good if not better than a normal spear, and want a unique weapon, I recommend the Yklwa. It is a one handed weapon that has the thrown property, and does 1d8 piercing damage. It looks like a smaller hand held spear, and yklwa is a great battlecry. My dragonborn monk way of mercy wielded a yklwa that he spent tons of money on to enchant it with vampiric powers. His yklwa was called Bloodbiter and that yklwa was probably the best weapon any of my characters have ever used. It also held sentimental value because he crafted it from the bones of a mammoth he killed and was taught how to use it by his father who he was searching for. That character was one of my favorite characters to play, but sadly the campaign that he was in sort of died.
Nonsense. Shield and spear is a perfectly legitimate fighting style both in game and in over many hundreds of years of real world conflict and by multiple countries.
Spears must use two hands to do the most damage. That means you can't use your unarmed punches, but kicks would be allowed. If you want to be able to punch, have a spear-like weapon that is as good if not better than a normal spear, and want a unique weapon, I recommend the Yklwa. It is a one handed weapon that has the thrown property, and does 1d8 piercing damage. It looks like a smaller hand held spear, and yklwa is a great battlecry. My dragonborn monk way of mercy wielded a yklwa that he spent tons of money on to enchant it with vampiric powers. His yklwa was called Bloodbiter and that yklwa was probably the best weapon any of my characters have ever used. It also held sentimental value because he crafted it from the bones of a mammoth he killed and was taught how to use it by his father who he was searching for. That character was one of my favorite characters to play, but sadly the campaign that he was in sort of died.
Nonsense. Shield and spear is a perfectly legitimate fighting style both in game and in over many hundreds of years of real world conflict and by multiple countries.
Yeah, in the real world it is, but in dnd you can do more damage using a yklwa and a shield and you still can throw it and it looks like a spear.
Thank you for the information. It seems the yklwa is an example of classic power creep. It should have been listed as a martial weapon, not a simple weapon based upon its damage as a one handed weapon. Or if they really wanted it to be a monk weapon, they should have given it the stats of other simple weapons. Either the same things as a spear, or maybe a one handed finesse weapon doing 1d6 with limited range as a thrown weapon.
Spears must use two hands to do the most damage. That means you can't use your unarmed punches, but kicks would be allowed. If you want to be able to punch, have a spear-like weapon that is as good if not better than a normal spear, and want a unique weapon, I recommend the Yklwa. It is a one handed weapon that has the thrown property, and does 1d8 piercing damage. It looks like a smaller hand held spear, and yklwa is a great battlecry. My dragonborn monk way of mercy wielded a yklwa that he spent tons of money on to enchant it with vampiric powers. His yklwa was called Bloodbiter and that yklwa was probably the best weapon any of my characters have ever used. It also held sentimental value because he crafted it from the bones of a mammoth he killed and was taught how to use it by his father who he was searching for. That character was one of my favorite characters to play, but sadly the campaign that he was in sort of died.
Nonsense. Shield and spear is a perfectly legitimate fighting style both in game and in over many hundreds of years of real world conflict and by multiple countries.
Yeah, in the real world it is, but in dnd you can do more damage using a yklwa and a shield and you still can throw it and it looks like a spear.
However the Yklwa is very region specific to Chult. If the game is not set there, a character is not from there, or has nothing in their backstory to suggest a good reason then as a DM i will simply say no to munchkinism. Plus, what I was calling nonsense was your statement that a spear must be used 2 handed, so a monk cannot punch with their other hand. That is patently incorrect. The rules in fact state the complete opposite.
If the staff and spear are "similar enough" can I throw my staff the same distance as a spear to do 1d6 bludgeon damage?
Why doesn't the spear damage type say P/B, rather than only listing P as a damage type?
If someone playing a monk wanted to create a martial art weapon that combined all the best attributes of a spear and staff, I would probably approve it. For anyone not a monk it would be an exotic weapon that they are not proficient in.
Regarding damage types, 5e streamlined the P/S/B damage considerably from earlier editions. There's also significantly fewer of instances where an enemy is resistant or immune to a specific weapon damage type but not the others, as opposed to general resistance/immunity to non-magical or silvered weapons. Cuts into the realism a little bit, but also less impetus for people to stick to "optimal" weapons. Honestly, there's almost no reason for a player to need some "hybrid" spear/staff mechanically unless they're looking to power/metagame their damage type.
The only problem I have with the monk weapon selection is that they don't really have good ranged options. Unless you homebrew monk styles with specific weapons, you are pretty limited on what you can do. I would maybe give them triple advantage on their thrown weapons (like elves with bow) if nothing else, and you really need to have sharpshooter as part of your monk style if the style focuses on thrown weapons (like shuriken) in order to give them decent range. That would also help with spear as a ranged weapon. Spear is not a bad choice, because it can be used with sharpshooter or polearm master... and I think it can give you reach as well, and as someone else mentioned, does not take penalties when used in water.
Spears must use two hands to do the most damage. That means you can't use your unarmed punches, but kicks would be allowed. If you want to be able to punch, have a spear-like weapon that is as good if not better than a normal spear, and want a unique weapon, I recommend the Yklwa. It is a one handed weapon that has the thrown property, and does 1d8 piercing damage. It looks like a smaller hand held spear, and yklwa is a great battlecry. My dragonborn monk way of mercy wielded a yklwa that he spent tons of money on to enchant it with vampiric powers. His yklwa was called Bloodbiter and that yklwa was probably the best weapon any of my characters have ever used. It also held sentimental value because he crafted it from the bones of a mammoth he killed and was taught how to use it by his father who he was searching for. That character was one of my favorite characters to play, but sadly the campaign that he was in sort of died.
Nonsense. Shield and spear is a perfectly legitimate fighting style both in game and in over many hundreds of years of real world conflict and by multiple countries.
Yeah, in the real world it is, but in dnd you can do more damage using a yklwa and a shield and you still can throw it and it looks like a spear.
However the Yklwa is very region specific to Chult. If the game is not set there, a character is not from there, or has nothing in their backstory to suggest a good reason then as a DM i will simply say no to munchkinism. Plus, what I was calling nonsense was your statement that a spear must be used 2 handed, so a monk cannot punch with their other hand. That is patently incorrect. The rules in fact state the complete opposite.
Don't spears need to be wielded with two hands if you want to do the most damage with them? Otherwise they only do 1d6 damage instead of 1d8. Also, I had no idea where they were from when I chose it, I just saw the word yklwa, looked it up to see what they were like, and thought they were cool and unique so I used them. That monk was not optimized in any way, he was a dragonborn way of mercy monk/divine soul sorcerer multiclass that didn't start with really great dexterity or wisdom. I didn't know much about building characters then, and was just building a character that sounded fun and cool. He was really fun even though I didn't build him in a very smart way and I just picked a yklwa because it looked and sounded cool.
Don't spears need to be wielded with two hands if you want to do the most damage with them? Otherwise they only do 1d6 damage instead of 1d8.
It’s a single point of damage. And that wasn’t the issue. You stated that they had to be used 2 handed and that monks couldn’t punch with their other hand only kick. Firstly there is no such requirement - monks can headbut, knee, elbow, pretty much every point of the body can be used with martial arts, secondly even with 2 handed weapons you only need to use both hands when hitting with it. It’s perfectly fine to let go of a 2 handed weapon with one hand, punch, throw a knife etc and then take hold of it again.
The only problem I have with the monk weapon selection is that they don't really have good ranged options. Unless you homebrew monk styles with specific weapons, you are pretty limited on what you can do. I would maybe give them triple advantage on their thrown weapons (like elves with bow) if nothing else, and you really need to have sharpshooter as part of your monk style if the style focuses on thrown weapons (like shuriken) in order to give them decent range. That would also help with spear as a ranged weapon. Spear is not a bad choice, because it can be used with sharpshooter or polearm master... and I think it can give you reach as well, and as someone else mentioned, does not take penalties when used in water.
There is no such mechanic as triple advantage, and elves don’t get it with a bow even if there were. Monks get thrown weapons, they get short bows and light crossbow. Moreover any character can use any weapon they just don’t get to add their proficiency bonus, which is just a +2 until 4th level. That’s barely noticeable if you have a decent starting stat.
A spear does not give reach and it does not have the ranged weapon property so doesn’t count for sharp shooter either. It is a melee weapon with the thrown property.
(The tooltip for equipment is "item" - yklwa)
I think it came with ToA.
Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.
Realistically speaking a spear is not weighted for use as a staff and shouldn't be treated as one... but realistically a quarterstaff is in no way a versatile weapon, it's two-handed, so I wouldn't place too much emphasis on realism (versatile stick-type weapons did exist, but they're wielded as a one or two handed club, not as a staff).
There are many holes in the 5e weapon list. Are javelins supposed to be short spears? Why isn't there a reach weapon that does bludgeoning damage? What happened to the Falchion category of two handed finesse weapons? Some real world dagger fighters use them as slashing weapons, not just piercing weapons. Why were double bladed weapons to dual wield with a single weapon eliminated?
I'm seeing 93 different weapons in the 4e wiki. That's just too many. Which ones do you cut though? Every one of them is probably someone's favorite.
While I might have made a different choice here and there the much bigger failure was a lack of creature size adjustments. 3e did a very good job of offering the same weapons with less damage when adjusted for small sized creatures. That would also have made it easier to adjust weapons for large sized races, instead of making all player character options for traditionally large sized characters runts that are technically in the medium category. if they really wanted one weapon list for all PCs, why not expand the size range for medium creatures to include halflings, gnomes, and full blooded orcs?
5e is really well made. But there are a few minor things that are frustrating. I would rather One D&D be more like Essentials from 4e and clean up some of these minor issues than to be a fully new edition. Also I wish they had used some alternate campaign settings to test out things like allowing players to actually play a large sized creature and treat it like an extended play test where the material isn't allowed in Adventurer League games.
Respectfully, that's a very different issue.
In the end a lot of weapons are going to be clones anyway, as most weapons don't have special features other than maybe versatile and damage is pretty standardized.
Nonsense. Shield and spear is a perfectly legitimate fighting style both in game and in over many hundreds of years of real world conflict and by multiple countries.
Yeah, in the real world it is, but in dnd you can do more damage using a yklwa and a shield and you still can throw it and it looks like a spear.
Thank you for the information. It seems the yklwa is an example of classic power creep. It should have been listed as a martial weapon, not a simple weapon based upon its damage as a one handed weapon. Or if they really wanted it to be a monk weapon, they should have given it the stats of other simple weapons. Either the same things as a spear, or maybe a one handed finesse weapon doing 1d6 with limited range as a thrown weapon.
However the Yklwa is very region specific to Chult. If the game is not set there, a character is not from there, or has nothing in their backstory to suggest a good reason then as a DM i will simply say no to munchkinism. Plus, what I was calling nonsense was your statement that a spear must be used 2 handed, so a monk cannot punch with their other hand. That is patently incorrect. The rules in fact state the complete opposite.
Regarding damage types, 5e streamlined the P/S/B damage considerably from earlier editions. There's also significantly fewer of instances where an enemy is resistant or immune to a specific weapon damage type but not the others, as opposed to general resistance/immunity to non-magical or silvered weapons. Cuts into the realism a little bit, but also less impetus for people to stick to "optimal" weapons. Honestly, there's almost no reason for a player to need some "hybrid" spear/staff mechanically unless they're looking to power/metagame their damage type.
The only problem I have with the monk weapon selection is that they don't really have good ranged options. Unless you homebrew monk styles with specific weapons, you are pretty limited on what you can do. I would maybe give them triple advantage on their thrown weapons (like elves with bow) if nothing else, and you really need to have sharpshooter as part of your monk style if the style focuses on thrown weapons (like shuriken) in order to give them decent range. That would also help with spear as a ranged weapon. Spear is not a bad choice, because it can be used with sharpshooter or polearm master... and I think it can give you reach as well, and as someone else mentioned, does not take penalties when used in water.
They can use shortbows or light crossbows; no, they're not the most optimized ranged weapon possible, but they've got decent damage and range.
Don't spears need to be wielded with two hands if you want to do the most damage with them? Otherwise they only do 1d6 damage instead of 1d8. Also, I had no idea where they were from when I chose it, I just saw the word yklwa, looked it up to see what they were like, and thought they were cool and unique so I used them. That monk was not optimized in any way, he was a dragonborn way of mercy monk/divine soul sorcerer multiclass that didn't start with really great dexterity or wisdom. I didn't know much about building characters then, and was just building a character that sounded fun and cool. He was really fun even though I didn't build him in a very smart way and I just picked a yklwa because it looked and sounded cool.
There is no such mechanic as triple advantage, and elves don’t get it with a bow even if there were. Monks get thrown weapons, they get short bows and light crossbow. Moreover any character can use any weapon they just don’t get to add their proficiency bonus, which is just a +2 until 4th level. That’s barely noticeable if you have a decent starting stat.
A spear does not give reach and it does not have the ranged weapon property so doesn’t count for sharp shooter either. It is a melee weapon with the thrown property.
I'm not sure why you'd give better ranged options to the martial class with the best or second-best mobility in the game.
Monk ranged options are better than the options available to any strength-based build. Not every class needs to be good at everything.
Yeah, and if you really want to play a ranged monk, play a sun soul.