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2 months ago ::
Mar 19, 2013 - 8:01PM
#21
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Salem, what you have there sounds reasonable, except the part about further penalizing someone for grabbing his weapon back. Give it a shot, see how it works. Be sure to use it on your players if they use it on the monsters more than once. If it doesn't get out of hand then you either succeeded, or your players decided not to abuse it. If combat gets to be a pain because of rampant disarming, end it.
I haven't seen disarm in play, but it doesn't seem like it would be too devastating in normal situations. Between disarming and retrieval, neither of you are doing damage. You'd have to have some tactical advantage, like being able to kick said weapon off a nearby cliff, to really profit off the move. Also, monsters can carry multiple weapons. Or how about: Standard: unarmed melee disarm. Minor: pick up recently-disarmed weapon. Also, can't many monsters who carry weapons, can still inflict their usual damage, regardless of the specific weapon in their hands?
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2 months ago ::
Mar 20, 2013 - 9:52AM
#22
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Date Joined:
Aug 20, 2003
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Also, can't many monsters who carry weapons, can still inflict their usual damage, regardless of the specific weapon in their hands?
Yes, because monster damage is not strictly based on [W], and a lot of monsters don't use weapons at all. That's why a rule that allows Disarm as a general attack option is biased against the PCs. It more than just a the damage change - if your +5 weapon gets knocked away, you now also have an attack bonus that is 5 lower and you're unlikely to even hit. The only monster that has a disarming attack (a uniquie epic tier Forgotten Realms character) also knocks the weapon 6 squares away in a direction of its choosing.
Adding a Disarm rule isn't impossible, but like Sunder and the previous edition's grapple rules, it tended to be more harmful to the PCs than to the monsters, and tended to slow combat down, so they scrapped it in 4e.
The original post implied there was a PvP scenario where this came up, and PvP is another thing that is intentionally left out in 4e as the emphasis is really on the party working together as a team to overcome challenges.
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2 months ago ::
Mar 20, 2013 - 11:48AM
#23
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Date Joined:
Oct 28, 2010
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Actually, there are a couple of other disarming enemies, but they're rare.
Disarms are a PITA, because, if nothing else, of the on-the-fly calculation alterations.
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2 months ago ::
Mar 20, 2013 - 5:03PM
#24
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Adding a Disarm rule isn't impossible, but like Sunder and the previous edition's grapple rules, it tended to be more harmful to the PCs than to the monsters, and tended to slow combat down, so they scrapped it in 4e.
The original post implied there was a PvP scenario where this came up, and PvP is another thing that is intentionally left out in 4e as the emphasis is really on the party working together as a team to overcome challenges.
A party working together as a team to overcome challenges is the ideal scenario, but PvP, even if rare is quite a posibility. In 3.5 I've dealt with PvP a couple of times, sometimes players just disagreed and chose to solve it with a duel, whatever the reason, is something that could happen. Bet many GM's have dealt with this in the past too.
Now, what about a campaign where most of the threats are human foes?, maybe military men, mercenaries, assassins, pirates, or mad peasants with pitchforks. a campaign where finding a goblin or another humanoid monster like gnolls, orcs, bugbears or kobolds is quite rare.
I also believe the Disarm rule isn't impossible, the difficult part is making it balanced because it needs to work for both, PC's and Humanoid opponents. I'm not thinking of monsters to apply the rule, I think a gnoll still can bite the neck of his opponents if its disarmed; but what about a Human NPC like those in the MM? I believe a skillfull Pirate (Just to give an example, say like Errol Flint/Captain Blood) could try to disarm a PC and capture him for ransom in place of killing it.
Now that you quoted; this attack also must be fast, so the attack doesn't slow the pacing of the combat.
My intention is to make or find a rule mostly to add the option, just like bull rush or grab. making the battle more dynamic and not only recurring to spam melee or ranged basic attacks.
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2 months ago ::
Mar 20, 2013 - 8:22PM
#25
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Fighting human monsters is fine. Fighting creatures built according to PC rules is stupid (in 4e). Experience with it in other editions need not apply, it is universally stupid in 4e. There is no circumstance where it is a good idea.
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2 months ago ::
Mar 20, 2013 - 8:28PM
#26
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Date Joined:
Jun 19, 2004
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Fighting human monsters is fine. Fighting creatures built according to PC rules is stupid (in 4e). Experience with it in other editions need not apply, it is universally stupid in 4e. There is no circumstance where it is a good idea.
Repeated for emphasis.
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2 months ago ::
Mar 20, 2013 - 11:19PM
#27
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Date Joined:
Aug 20, 2003
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A party working together as a team to overcome challenges is the ideal scenario, but PvP, even if rare is quite a posibility. In 3.5 I've dealt with PvP a couple of times, sometimes players just disagreed and chose to solve it with a duel, whatever the reason, is something that could happen. Bet many GM's have dealt with this in the past too.
As Alcestis said, (and was said by several of us earlier), 4e is specifically designed not to support PvP. There's a reason monsters, including humanoid "monsters" are not created and scaled in 4e the same way as PCs.
Now, what about a campaign where most of the threats are human foes?, maybe military men, mercenaries, assassins, pirates, or mad peasants with pitchforks. a campaign where finding a goblin or another humanoid monster like gnolls, orcs, bugbears or kobolds is quite rare.
Doesn't matter in 4e because any enemies in combat, including any type of humans or player races don't get created like PCs do. There have been a few published encounters where enemies start without their gear and do reduced damage until they pick it up, but those have been few and far between.
I also believe the Disarm rule isn't impossible, the difficult part is making it balanced because it needs to work for both, PC's and Humanoid opponents. I'm not thinking of monsters to apply the rule, I think a gnoll still can bite the neck of his opponents if its disarmed; but what about a Human NPC like those in the MM? I believe a skillfull Pirate (Just to give an example, say like Errol Flint/Captain Blood) could try to disarm a PC and capture him for ransom in place of killing it.
Except a disarm attack isn't required to do that. The rules specifically state that when an enemy is defeated in combat, you can consider them to be disarmed, unconscious or dead. The same can be applied to the PCs - if an enemy force brings all the PCs below 0, you, as DM, can consider them disarmed and captured instead of dead. You may have to do some fudging with what failing 3 death saving throws means in that scenario, but it can be done.
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2 months ago ::
Mar 23, 2013 - 10:08AM
#28
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You may have to do some fudging with what failing 3 death saving throws means in that scenario, but it can be done.
"The monster takes you alive, by choice, exactly the way you get to choose when you kill a monster whether or not to kill it or take it alive. No need to roll death saves."
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2 months ago ::
Mar 23, 2013 - 12:08PM
#29
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Wanna make few things clear: 1- Its clear that 4e don't support PvP.. I'm ok with that... just said it could happen, no party is out of disagreements, some are fixed in a friendly manner, others need to prove their point by sword-point. 2- I want to find, or create a variant rule for "Disarm". 3- Who said something about creating NPC's with PC rules? The Opponent was a Npc/Monster taken from the Adventure tool (see below) This was the scenario: Player Vampire (HoS) vs Human Assassin (AT)... 4rd round of combat: The Assassin ( posted below) try to strike the defender (a Dwarf Paladin), and miss, so no secondary attack; its the turn of the Vampire. Vampire Player: Ok, I wanna try to hit the forearm of the Assassin, and force him to drop his weapon (Short Sword) Me: Sorry you can't, because is not covered on the rules. Vampire Player: Mmm, ok ...I hit him with the Vampire Slam ... ...and the fight goes on...  So... in brief... in 4e there is no way to disarm this guy in the middle of the combat Unless I beat the cr4p out of him... thats sad :/ Thanks for the replies. 
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2 months ago ::
Mar 23, 2013 - 9:37PM
#30
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Date Joined:
Aug 20, 2003
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You may have to do some fudging with what failing 3 death saving throws means in that scenario, but it can be done.
"The monster takes you alive, by choice, exactly the way you get to choose when you kill a monster whether or not to kill it or take it alive. No need to roll death saves."
I guess I was thinking about the case where one character goes down early in the fight while the rest of the party fights on, but I suppose even at that point the DM could just say you don't have to make any death saves. Although that also seems like a cheap way for a DM to avoid triggering people's epic destiny "once per day when you die" powers.
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