Polearm Fighter?

[Astrella]

So for our new dnd campaign I'm playing a half-orc fighter. Orcs in this world have a sumarai-esque warrior caste; my basic character idea was to have her prove herself as a true warrior by mastering a type of weapon that most of the Orcs consider to be a demeaning weapon only fit for peasants.

Now, polearms overlap with other groups, right? (halberds also being axes, glaives and such being heavy blades and longspears also being spears.) Now my question was if someone could provide a simple overview of how any of these three categories (or possible spear and shield) would play / work out differently?

[theNater]

The differences between them aren't going to be huge. Weapon choice is mostly going to tweak a few feats and a handful of fighter powers. For example, each weapon type(except polearms) has its own epic feat which makes it crit on 19 or 20.

Axes are mostly about more damage. There's a paragon tier feat that can make your halberd a high crit weapon, and the epic feat requires Str 21 and Con 17.

Spear powers are a little more interested in control. There's a paragon tier feat that increases the distance of pushes, and the epic feat requires Str 19 and Dex 19.

Heavy blades make you a little more flexible, and do a bit of both. There's a paragon tier feat that lets you use an at-will power on opportunity attacks, and the epic feat requires Str 21 and Dex 17.

[Yakk]

How high optimization?

A pretty typical high-control medium-op fighter would be a slide-and-prone fighter.

The basic idea here is to get ahold of an at-will push, pull or slide (and encounter powers that do the same). Then boost the forced movement, and use polearm momentum to knock the target prone at the end of the forced movement.

The distance you can boost forced movement to can get ridiculous by high level games, and even at low levels being prone, 5 squares away, and behind a pillar makes it hard for you to attack the next round (charging has to always decrease the distance between you and your target, so if there is blocking terrain, charging can often fail to work).

If you can somehow get a basic attack that slides, your stickiness goes through the roof (if they shift, you get a basic attack -- if it hits, you get to slide them and knock them prone, negating the shift. If they choose to attack one of your allies, you get a basic attack as an interrupt -- if it hits, you slide them somewhere that their attack isn't legal, and their action fizzles.)

A way to get at-will slide (with a limited destination square) is via heavy blade opportunity at paragon, or hybrid warlock for their MBA.

And then there is polearm gambit to add on top of the above, where enemies that try to approach you get hit, slide who-knows-where, and knocked prone.

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Now, the above is reasonably cheesy. And you don't need to go for it.

A few things to note is that many good fighter polearm feats require wisdom and dexterity.

One of the few superior polearms is the greatspear -- a +3/1d10 two handed reach polearm and spear.

[Uruz2012]

Polearm Flanker could be a nice feat as well, it lets you gain flank from one square away. Combined with the Vexing Flanker feat, your group will almost always have CA. It's kinda OP if you have a rogue in the group...