Polearms are weapons like staves, spears, and pikes.

Note that when on horseback, such weapons are always used with one hand, so there's no advantage to putting away your shield aside from changing the weapon proficiency that the weapon will benefit from. Any one/two handed weapon will deal more damage and swing faster when used with both hands. Using such a weapon will allow you to choose lesser damage and good defense or good damage and lesser defense. To switch between one and two handed, you have to equip/unequip your shield. There are only a few weapons that can be wielded as Two-handed/One-handed weapons. These weapons have a greater reach than one-handed weapons on average. They can deal more damage per-hit than their one-handed counterparts, but you cannot use a shield with them and they generally attack more slowly. Two-handed weapons are varieties of hard-hitting weapons like large axes, swords, and hammers.

They do less damage compared to two-handed weapons, but they are faster and give you the advantages of having a shield, which include being better able to defend against ranged attacks (such as thrown objects and arrows) and being able to defend yourself better if your horse is killed. One-handed weapons are relatively light weapons designed for use with a shield. To be an effective hand-to-hand warrior, the player must have a high level of Strength and skills in Power Strike, Shield, Athletics and (optionally) Weapon Master with high weapon proficiencies in any of the Melee Weapons that the proficiency applies to. From horseback, the lance dominates when couched, which delivers the most damage to be found in the game. Weapons such as the shorter axes are more effective against shields and more capable in close quarters, where as a polearm is (often) near useless in close combat. Axes, swords, polearms, fists, and, in Mount&Blade: Warband, some throwing weapons, can be used in hand-to-hand combat.

Mount and blade napoleonic wars memed