Wonderful new bullet point

[takyris]

So, the new bullet point is out:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20modern/bp/20030930a

In this issue, Charles Ryan continues backpedaling, and this time effectively rewrites a fair amount the disarming rules to make his previous stupid statements work.

So, for disarming, you treat the gun as whatever you used it as last -- a melee weapon or a ranged weapon.

Except that in most cases, disarming provokes AoOs.

Which, according to Ryan, you can take with a pistol-whip, even if you made a shooting attack just that round.

So you can take that AoO, and then your gun turns from a ranged weapon into a melee weapon, so it's NEVER a ranged weapon, unless you're being attacked by somebody with improved disarm.

Somebody asks, "So why the frell did you bother with this rule, then?", and he says, "For bows."

Yes. All this complexity in d20 Modern was generated in order to have the most logical, reasonable, and realistic bow handling possible. As opposed to the most realistic gun handling, which worked fine until they started shoehorning the "sometimes melee, sometimes ranged" garbage into the mix and applying it inconsistently -- for disarming, it's whatever you used it as last, but for AoO purposes, it's all good.

If you had a magical sword that you could plant point-down in the earth and say a short prayer over to have it shed light, and some player wanted to do that on his turn and then make an AoO with the sword in the same round, would you let that player do it? I wouldn't. It seems completely obvious to me that, for that round, the sword ceases to be a melee weapon and is a magical object being held in a different way and used in a different way. Your "whacking people with the sharp bits" privileges are revoked for that round.

Sorry, I'm in a bit of a mood this morning, and this is a lot snarkier than it really needs to be. And yet I'm going to post it anyway. It just irks me that they're backpedaling or saying "This should read..." rather than saying, "Hey, remember when we changed the rule a few months ago? We looked at it again, and it was a bad idea. Our bad."

In the meantime, next time I'm in a game that uses the rules according to Ryan's interpretation, I'm going to declare that my unarmed PC is using the cufflinks, wristwatch, and college ring he's wearing as a group of objects that together constitute one small improvised weapon. That way, I'm always considered armed and threatening. That makes just as much sense as "Hey, he was shooting with it, so it's a ranged weapon for disarming purposes, except that he can still whack people with the grip if they jog by", as far as I'm concerned.

And at my table, we'll stick with the "Once per round on your turn, as a free action, you decide whether it's a melee weapon or a ranged weapon" rule.

 

[JPL]

You're eventually going to give yourself a stroke, you know.

 

[takyris]

Oh, come on. The cufflink thing was darn cute.

I have no idea why that initially ticked me off so much. It really shouldn't. It's one tiny rule in a game that I like a great deal. Now that I've had a bit of time to think about it, I still don't disagree with it, but I don't feel like wailing and gnashing my teeth or anything.

Still irks me, but there's no accounting for taste.

 

[JPL]

Oh, come on. The cufflink thing was darn cute.

Oh, I concur. It was a good rant.

 

[davidgeisbush]

From my experience, I actually think pistol whip and rifle butt stroke are improvised weapons. Further, I don't allow opportunity attacks with improvised weapons as they aren't balanced right, etc.

 

[Plane Sailing]

From my experience, I actually think pistol whip and rifle butt stroke are improvised weapons. Further, I don't allow opportunity attacks with improvised weapons as they aren't balanced right, etc.

doesn't that give you problems though? Crowbar is an improvised weapon and it means that a brawler can attack them without fear of AoO... does that sound right to you?

 

[davidgeisbush]

That's a really good point, so far in our d20 gaming (DnD & SW only)improvised weapons have almost never come up. My thought is that the GM will make a spot decision as to how improvised a weapon is, say that something reasonably balanced like a crowbar/tire iron may be only -1, a barstool or pistol whip might be -2, a chair or rifle butt -3, while something like a table would be -4 (or more). This clearly requires a little more work on the GM's part, but I think it's worth it.

 

[davidgeisbush]

That's a really good point, so far in our d20 gaming (DnD & SW only)improvised weapons have almost never come up. My thought is that the GM will make a spot decision as to how improvised a weapon is, say that something reasonably balanced like a crowbar/tire iron may be only -1, a barstool or pistol whip might be -2, a chair or rifle butt -3, while something like a table would be -4 (or more). This clearly requires a little more work on the GM's part, but I think it's worth it.

 

[Ogwar]

Rifle butts are not improvised weapons in my opinion. In the Army we were trained in several ways to strike and block with our rifles, with and without bayonet. So do you give the military occuaption proficiency in rifle butt strikes?

 

[davidgeisbush]

Training for days and days doesn't give you a feat. I went through basic as well and never felt that a butt-stroke was as easy to connect with as a baseball bat or fist is. That's why I make it less of a penalty to use a rifle butt than a table (for example), but more of a penalty than using a tire-iron... It works well enough for me.