Was the addition of reach to the man catcher staff an oversight when originally published or is this a change from the original intent? I ask because other than the comment in flavor text that it is a 10' long weapon, I don't see the need for the change based on my use of the weapon in game play.

It was always meant to be a reach weapon but somehow feel though the cracks during final edits

Oh sorry for the late comment. But I just realized that the change from Melee Unarmed to Melee Polearm to escape Grasping Strike is not in the Errata.

Ok Eric.

I'm looking at Codex of Heroes..

where are you seeing this.. all the grab abilities are based off weapon tricks.. which all use the weapons skill M(PA) as shown in the table.

It is in A:RPG under escaping a grab on page 310. Just something that slipped through editing when the ManCatcher was published. All actual attacks use polearm, per RAW. But the defenders escape is against passive unarmed of the staff user.

Got it, need a clarification in the maneuvers stating that any escape attempts are preformed against the passive melee (pole-arm) of the attacker!