Spear

When I was dealing with pole arms I wanted to make them different and useful so I made it so you could set them to take a charge but -4 for close combat.  Except the short spear.  The short spear you can throw, can use as a pole arm and has no penalty for close combat.  Why all the favor for the spear?  Because of this show:

Morbito

I have been watching Morbito on Netflix.ca and it's a great show and it really gives some love for the spear.  I try to enjoy Anime because really there isn't much creative fantasy TV out there except in Anime.  The price for this novelty is that you have a lot of duds.  Many of the shows I can't really recommend because they are either a weirdly paced, badly voiced, or even a bit skeevy - but this one was very good.   Morbito is the story of a bodyguard named Balsa who is hired to protect a prince, and she can kick some ass with that spear.

So if Beacon rules make the short spear a little unbalanced compared to the other light weapons and you have a lot of folks deciding to use the spear - well I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.