Spear
) 
| |
|---|---|
| Name | spear |
| Appearance | spear |
| Damage vs. small | 1d6 |
| Damage vs. large | 1d8 |
| To-hit bonus | +0 |
| Weapon skill | spear |
| Size | one-handed |
| Base price | 3 zm (+10/positive enchant) |
| Weight | 30 |
| Material | iron |
A spear is a kind of weapon. It can be used in melee, or thrown.
Runed elven spears and stout dwarvish spears are superior to ordinary spears, while crude orcish spears are predictably inferior. Silver spears deal the same base damage as ordinary ones.
Strategy
In the absence of dagger skills, a small stack of spears is a powerful ranged weapon for any Caveman or Priest lucky enough to find more than one. Generally you need to encounter a large antique weapons outlet to find them in any number. However, spears are quite heavy (three spears weigh almost as much as a pick-axe), so they have a tendency to cause encumbrance problems.
Note that spears cannot be multishot.
Spear skill
| Spear | |
|---|---|
| Max | Role |
| Basic | |
| Skilled | |
| Expert | |
The following weapons use spear skill:
Spears have an additional +2 to-hit bonus against all monsters when thrown.
Weapons in the spear class have a +2 to-hit bonus when hitting kebabable monster classes.
When unidentified, a javelin appears as a 'throwing spear'. Despite this, it uses the javelin skill rather than the spear skill.
Artifact
There are no artifact spears in vanilla NetHack.
SLASH'EM
SLASH'EM introduces the #name-able orcish spear Elfrist, the anti-elven counterpart to Orcrist, and the artifact silver spear Holy Spear of Light, which functions much like Sunsword.
Sporkhack
In SporkHack, Dragonbane is a dwarvish spear.
Origin
The spear is a weapon designed for thrusting. Chimpanzees use very rudimentary spears, so it is likely that humans used spears for an extremely long time.
The related lance is designed for jousting and the javelin for throwing.
Encyclopedia entry
- they come together with great random, and a spear is brast,
and one party brake his shield and the other one goes down,
horse and man, over his horse-tail and brake his neck, and
then the next candidate comes randoming in, and brast his
pear, and the other man brast his shield, and down he goes,
horse and man, over his horse-tail, and brake his neck, and
then there's another elected, and another and another and
still another, till the material is all used up; and when you
come to figure up results, you can't tell one fight from
another, nor who whipped; and as a picture of living, raging,
roaring battle, sho! why it's pale and noiseless - just
ghosts scuffling in a fog. Dear me, what would this barren
vocabulary get out of the mightiest spectacle? - the burning
of Rome in Nero's time, for instance? Why, it would merely
say 'Town burned down; no insurance; boy brast a window,
fireman brake his neck!' Why, that ain't a picture!
Twain ]
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