ToME/TomeNET

I'm playing an Ent Polearmmaster and bought the "far reaching attack" ability ASAP. It worked fine with the original Pick the character had from birth. However, after changing to an Awl-Pike I bought, I got the message "You will need a long polearm for this!". Same with a Fiery Guisarme I got as a mini-quest reward. However, both the Awl-Pike and the Guisarme are listed as polearms in their descriptions. Am I doing something wrong? (ie is there a wy to "wield two-handed" other than 'w' which I am missing?) Does "far reaching attack" only apply to pure Pikes? Is there a bug? I tried both with 2.3.5 and 2.3.8, since saved games are compatible, and got the same results... And of course the far reaching attack was my main reason to try playing a polearmmaster to begin with

I can't help much. I do not remember anyone saying that far-reaching attack was broken.

The list of polearms is listed at killerbunnies: http://www.killerbunnies.org/angband/skill-220.html#polearm. It does include both awl-pike and guisarme.

By the way, you started with a pike, not a pick.

Thanks for the link. I've found and tried a Trident and a Spear meanwhile. Same problem. It feels like a bug... But then I don't understand why the original Pike (sorry for earlier typo) did allow the ability to work. That's why I thought that maybe the problem is not the weapon, but the way of holding it, or maybe some other piece of equipment I'm carrying. I did try it also taking off any shooting equipment (to "have both hands free"), but that doesn't change anything

I am pretty sure the keyword here is "long"...

That is, not all polearms will work with the skill, only the ones the game counts as a long polearm.

Okay, got to the character again and this time found a Halberd. That one works. So you're probably right, only "long" polearms can use this ability. However, I found nothing in any of the polearms' descriptions that clearly makes this distinction. Even worse, most of the time even for the ones that don't work claim they're "long", as in the description of the Guisarme:

I don't have a Spear at hand now, but I think its description was even more explicit about length.

So, for future reference, in my experience far reaching attack works with:

-Pike
-Halberd

but not with:

-Awl-Pike
-Spear
-Trident
-Guisarme

and for any other extra care should be taken before buying a new weapon / selling the old one, despite whatever the descriptions say.

Here's the complete list from the source (if you want to double check you can search for "far reaching" in mkeys.lua):

• Polearm
• Halberd
• Pike
• Heavy Lance
• Lance

Not sure if this should just be changed to "all polearms" instead.

I think it should be. I don't see any particular reason to have these five on the list and the others not on it. Maybe the lances and the pike might be longer than the others, but the polearm and the halberd aren't.

Done & pushed to the repository.