D&D 4E Disarm Let Us Count the Ways.

Disarming in fantasy combat is well a great trope - Watch any highlander movie forinstance (even the meh ones) and I think ignoring it or giving short shrift was a silly mistake.

The game has a ton of mechanics which can provide anything from a sort of realism to the high fantasy elements of this. I think the game could have been appropriately littered with the flavor.

So I am going to use this post/thread to present some in more formalized form including ones we pretty near already have AND newly constructed ones which are very in keeping with the games balance but flavor tuned a bit more.

Disarm was obviously problematic to use against PCs, thanks to early 4e dependence on enhancement bonuses.

From the other thread:

Garthanos said:

Disarmed in action movies is more accurately portrayed by the momentary effects of 4e powers for which a number of powers/effects might do... Unless you have a minion or otherwise nearly defeated (bloodied enemy) it is never likely to be the absolute and permanent effect of the EoS stolen weapon.
We could use some skill/utility power to tie into that so that one could snag that intimidate effect (where you end the fight foot on blade knife at throat enemy cowed) using Athletics or Thievery (or a martial cantrip -- specifically affecting only that use of intimidate)

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That sounds like a good thing to leverage. I guess Thievery for the DEX-based martial or Athletics for the STR types could be subbed for Intimidate - presumably a skill keying off your primary is going to be higher than Intimidate.

That'd be consistent with some Utility powers, actually, swapping your best skill in for another has several precedents. Or it could be appended to an attack power: resolve attack, if the enemy is bloodied after the attack (or was before), make the Intimidate (or sub Athletics or Thievery depending on which class has the power), to force it to surrender.

Other possible momentary effects you see in the movies for a significant enemy being disarmed, they are forced to dive after/or kneel to retrieve their weapon.
Perhaps use a dazed effect so the enemy is bobbling their weapon and loses most of their actions trying to get it under control.

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Or weakened (se), aftereffect: prone?

What methods can we currently disarm in the most literal sense?

Let's start a literal method for removing an enemy weapon. And how to make them better.

You can use the intimidate skill and induce submission (only against a bloodied opponent in all likelihood - but that isnt actually explicitly a limit for drop your weapon command - most DMs will go with bloodied as a requirement because that is a pretty complete submission or have the non bloodied targets stop pointing the Xbow at you or put their weapon to their sides as compliance to your demand ). For an adjacent enemy your intimidation may well have been a devastating disarming move that left their weapon/implement/tool under your foot and blade towards their throat while shouting to any of the rest drop your weapons or they are next. It can be fairly vivid it could even be a multi-disarm against any adjacent enemies.

This doesn't require anything really to say "there it is a completely functional disarm" which anyone might be able to pull off. Even the use of charisma and once per adversary per encounter could represent the trickery needed for such an impressive display.

The wandering duelist providing +3 to intimidate even brings this aspect home a bit, where disarming being proof positive you won (with an enemy not ravaged - for many duelists its even a game though in a world where champions duel to determine justice perhaps not always a game)

A bard or charisma focused character(some paladins and a few warlords) can/may say thank you and move along... but we might do better (see below)

How can we make it better?
This act of intimidation wrapped around a disarm seems a rather physical act with various locking weapons and twisting them at the right moment going on. At level 2 there are several utility powers existent which allow one to do skill swaps using an alternate skills with occasionally other flavorful benefits and some of them being super versatile about what they apply to. They have some good competition in the form of other utilities though so I am calling the ones with a little extra, a bit better designed.

Skill Power : Disarming Flourish
requires training in Athletics, Thievery or Insight .
We need this to work against adjacent enemies without a common language. (even the Bard might like that)

Encounter power
free action : Til the beginning of your next turn you may use (Str or Dex or Wis) instead of Charisma for an Intimidate check and I think that works better than a full skill swap so our wandering duelist is still valuable as is being a Dragon Born etc. The wisdom version involves detecting your enemies vulnerable spots.

NOTE: I generally house rule minions as being by default bloodied for the purpose of most powers, like the above.

Tony Vargas said:

Disarm was obviously problematic to use against PCs, thanks to early 4e dependence on enhancement bonuses.

From the other thread:
That sounds like a good thing to leverage. I guess Thievery for the DEX-based martial or Athletics for the STR types could be subbed for Intimidate - presumably a skill keying off your primary is going to be higher than Intimidate.

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Yes I was thinking that exactly... though I might want the alternative form where we just pick the attribute better.

Tony Vargas said:

That'd be consistent with some Utility powers, actually, swapping your best skill in for another has several precedents. Or it could be appended to an attack power: resolve attack, if the enemy is bloodied after the attack (or was before), make the Intimidate (or sub Athletics or Thievery depending on which class has the power), to force it to surrender.

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That latter element is very close to the Yakuza Theme power...

Tony Vargas said:

Disarm was obviously problematic to use against PCs, thanks to early 4e dependence on enhancement bonuses.

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I do not normally think of powers being used against PCs any more than the Intimidate is likely to be used that way.

However I made a Martial Technique called Perfected Disarm that leverages prone and a loss of an opportunity action, to represent forcing them to kneel and snatch their weapon back. (they are after all the one with the best opportunity to do so) . Its a level 9 effect and automatic if the intimidate fails though so not light weight, but works in concurrence with the Intimidate (so its low action economy impact)

The martial technique which does the attribute swap is level 6 but is appropriate to simply be whenever you want instead of once per encounter so I think I may keep it.

Now I need two names sigh one for the Skill Power and the other for the Martial Technique(reflavored magic item)

Tony Vargas said:

Or it could be appended to an attack power: resolve attack, if the enemy is bloodied after the attack (or was before), make the Intimidate (or sub Athletics or Thievery depending on which class has the power), to force it to surrender.

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That element is very close to the Yakuza Theme power...

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The Yakusa power effectively makes the intimidate go from a standard action to a free one AND provides a 2 points worth of "intimidation armor" for the ongoing duration of the fight against everyone and that just plain isnt something to sneeze at. The Yakusa power is triggered if you bloody or kill an enemy. (and the free action intimidation is only against the specific enemy you just bloodied)

Perhaps I should create a Master Duelist Theme...

Garthanos said:

I do not normally think of powers being used against PCs any more than the Intimidate is likely to be used that way.

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True, now. At release, though, the idea that PCs would be even more dependent on enhancement than they were in 3e (which is saying something), certainly stood out as a reason not to even have any sort of disarm mechanics (and to have that game convention that you prettymuch always get your stuff back - or new stuff - even in a capture scenario or the like). But that was probably a 3.5 RaW uber alles hangover, in 3.x, anything a PC could do an NPC or monster could, and probably would do, because arms race in lieu of balance.

However I made a Martial Technique called Perfected Disarm that leverages prone and a loss of an opportunity action, to represent forcing them to kneel and snatch their weapon back. (they are after all the one with the best opportunity to do so) . Its a level 9 effect and automatic if the intimidate fails though so not light weight, but works in concurrence with the Intimidate (so its low action economy impact)

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Speaking of 3e, it had Improved Disarm & Improved Trip. Both took the same prerequisites and both put the enemy at a disadvantage that they would probably have to provoke an AoO to get rid of (standing up provoked, as did picking up a dropped weapon - both were move actions, too).

IMHO I'd find it better to just have a disarm be represented as X amount of psychic (fear) damage, as an attack against REF with a weapon, and an effect something like weakened for a turn. Seems like it gets to the point, roughly. If you happen to drive them to 0 hit points, then your opponent was 'routed' and that's all there is to it. Else they drew another weapon, picked up the existing one, started fighting unarmed, whatever.

AbdulAlhazred said:

IMHO I'd find it better to just have a disarm be represented as X amount of psychic (fear) damage, as an attack against REF with a weapon, and an effect something like weakened for a turn. Seems like it gets to the point, roughly. If you happen to drive them to 0 hit points, then your opponent was 'routed' and that's all there is to it. Else they drew another weapon, picked up the existing one, started fighting unarmed, whatever.

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I certainly agree that the most common and in genre disarm should be like the action movie typical disarm fairly accurately portrayed by momentary effects of 4e powers ranging from prone to dazed, weakened...





I think the first one I thought of adjusting into a disarm was the Fighter Knockdown Assault (It doesn't scale which is odd for an at-will)

AbdulAlhazred said:

IMHO I'd find it better to just have a disarm be represented as X amount of psychic (fear) damage, as an attack against REF with a weapon, and an effect something like weakened for a turn. Seems like it gets to the point, roughly. If you happen to drive them to 0 hit points, then your opponent was 'routed' and that's all there is to it. Else they drew another weapon, picked up the existing one, started fighting unarmed, whatever.

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From what I am looking at the above would probably be a low level daily even level 1 ... Although a higher level encounter power (with additional benefits also open)

The ranger and cleric are examples of level 1 weakens (though the ranger does plenty of signature untyped damage with it)