Poles are neat for high damage, magic defence, and combos. Good all-round weapons. However, I usually (at least until the high-powered longswords and katanas become available) tend to favour one-handed weapons for my close-range attackers, so they can carry a shield. If my low-level characters need a two-handed weapon, it'll usually be a crossbow, longbow or gun. Guns are far more powerful than they might seem - the relatively low attack power is more than made up by the fact that they ignore defence. As far as I'm aware, only amorphs can actually resist gunfire. On everything else, it's as though your enemy has defence of 0.