i find it really annoying that spears are the same as a club.

i know this is not starwars but the Saga edition had a mechanic where if you leave a threatend square you provoke an attack. thus if you are fighting a rancor with a massive reach you have to aviod two attack to start stabbing it with your torchsword. this was beacuse it had a reach of three squares and you had to move into its outer reach into its mid into base contact.

now DH will unlikly see one fighting such a thing but the other games such as DW are made for it.

long weapons also provied this increase to threatend squares. so could something like this work for long weapons in 40krpgs

eg a spear has a reach of 3 so if you pass within this range you count as fleeing combat and suffer a free attack

a pike might have a reach of 5 granting 2 free attacks(not realing giving two attack but representing the defenise abillity of a 5 meter long pole

staffs should also have balanced or defensive (assuming they dont come against a power sword)

running grants +20 to enemy WS but charging does not so this would be fine.

a greater deamon would have a reach aswell. the bloodthirster does as i remember but (i dont have that book here) only when it attacks not as a reaction attack

DH is not D&D 3.x.

DH doesnt have reach or the need for careful battlefield positioning (Rogue´s sneak attack for example). If you introduce reach and AOOs you make dangerous enemys even more dangerous, which can have mean effects on balancing. Like all the Power-Armor wearing chars, who are hulking (aka 1 size category larger and thus would get 10ft reach) even more powerfull.

I also don't think that we need to bring D&D rules into Warhammer 40k rpg, but it is still a bit strange that longer weapons don't give any bonus compared to smaller ones (especially with the 1 square = 1 metre scale of Dark Heresy).

Don't staffs already get balanced? Oh, and spears are very slightly better than clubs. They do Rending damage which tends to be worse than Impact when it comes to Criticals.

One thing that is missing is a guide on how large larger creatures should be. It mentions that larger creatures should maybe take up more than one square, but there is no specific (or even general) guidance on this. OK, a "normal" sized horizontal creature (ie not a vertical one like a person) should probably take about 2 squares long. Hulking I wouldn't consider large enough to get any bonus on size, but definitely by the time you hit greater daemons and the like they should take up greater space (which would kind of cover the whole "greater reach" thing).

To how much space they take up i went with the following judgement:

Normal: 1x1 (aka 1 field)

hulking: 2x2 (4 fields square)

then when getting bigger: 3x3 / 4x4 / 5x5 and so on.

The thing is if a normal guy in power armour becomes hulking I really don't think Hulking justifies a full upgrade to 2x2. A guy in power armour is bulkier than a normal guy, but not that big. I think the next level up might justify it (Large? Enermous? can't remember which).

I like the idea of this, Certainly polearms have been lacking something. Now it isn't something I expect to be a big point but their fuedal and feral worlds in the sector that will make massive use of such weapons.

For the game it it doesn't really matter in many cases if you aren't using a battle map, although you can use it as a point in specific situations if you are only narating the fight.

I king of think there should be a use against a charging opponant if the polearms user is prepared, perhaps with a test of some kind (agility).

OP's proposed rules seem a little over-the-top to me, but I have wondered why polearms have the same reach as a dagger.

The old Inquisitor game had Reach values of one to four, and the difference between opponents values provided +/- 10 WS to each character's attack and defence. Eg, a knife (Reach 1) vs a sword (Reach 3) meant that the knife-wielder took -20 WS to attack and defence rolls, while the swordsman got +20 to the same. Interesting, but probably overboard for DH .

For a less dramatic or rules-intensive change I'd probably just add a new weapon Quality: Reach (1), Reach (2).

Reach (1): This weapon may be used to make melee attacks at targets up to 2m away.

Reach (2): This weapon may be used to make melee attacks at targets up to 3m away.

This is based off the rules for whips, like the one in Inquisitor's Handbook, which would have Reach (2) under these rules. I'd save Reach (2) for two-handed polearms, however, as you can't hold one by the very end and make effective attacks, unlike a whip where the balance is different.

So, thoughts?

As Killfr3nzy pointed out there is some precendence for range in melee weapons:

Neural Whip, Melee, Range - 3m, 1d10+1E, 0, Flexible, Shocking, 4kg, 500, Rare, Inquisitor's Handbook.

I very much recommend keeping whatever you propose as simple as possible. Such as:

"Pole Arms have a range of two squares compared to most weapons range of one square".

Charge a guy who has a pole arm? Perhaps we should allow the weapon to be set as a reaction.

As for attacks of opportunity, I never was very happy with that. Everyone declares initiative, so they declare their action. An attack of opportunity could be a reaction AT BEST, and would be your reaction for the round.

I know in BC moving away from an enemy you have engaged in melee without using the disengage action provokes a free attack from them. I'm not sure if the rule is the same for DH.

Also, my take on spears.

Imagine you had a 6 foot spear in your hands, and there was an unarmed man standing 6 feet away from you. Do you think you would do any meaningful damage to him by trying to hit him from 6 feet away? I don't. Now imagine he was armed. Increasing the range on spears doesn't really make any sense.

My solution to the problem of spears sucking was to change them to one handed or two handed weapons, at the wielder's choice. When a spear is used with two hands it gains the Tearing trait. You could also use Proven [something] if you don't want Tearing.

I trufully was never that bothered by the lack of details on primitive weapons in Dark Heresy (and yes, the free attack for leaving combat has always been present) due simply to the fact that they aren't a major element of the game. They are meant to be totally outshadowed by everything else as they are Primitive and rubbish.

I actually created those rules to make the Power spear in Deathwatch RoB more interesting, but they can apply to DH just as well.