Attacking a held light source

[caudor]

I've looked all over for the answer to this one. Are there 4e rules for sundering/attacking a held light source? For example, I have a Dark Creeper that wants to put the lights out by attacking the sunrod that one of the PCs is carrying.

Do the grab rules apply in this situation? Can it just snatch away the Sunrod? Thanks in advance for your help

 

[Tuft]

I've looked all over for the answer to this one. Are there 4e rules for sundering/attacking a held light source? For example, I have a Dark Creeper that wants to put the lights out by attacking the sunrod that one of the PCs is carrying.

Do the grab rules apply in this situation? Can it just snatch away the Sunrod? Thanks in advance for your help

Use the stunt rules (DMG p.42), and do either a:

Dex attack vs reflex defense stunt, if you want to emphasize the attack as a quick snatch.

Or, do a Str attack vs fort defense stunt, if you want to paint it as a tug-of-war.

 

[fissionessence]

Use the stunt rules (DMG p.42), and do either a:

Dex attack vs reflex defense stunt, if you want to emphasize the attack as a quick snatch.

Or, do a Str attack vs fort defense stunt, if you want to paint it as a tug-of-war.

Whenever you create your own rules to allow a monster to do something interesting, but something PCs shouldn't be able to regularly do, make sure to formulate a mechanic that works well in this particular situation, or for this particular monster, but not all the time. Or, it should just be slightly worse than a standard PC power, but useful in very specific situations.

The mechanics Tuft suggested would work fine and are very simple, but the encounter after you do it, the fighter will want to disarm the elite human enemy, then pound away on him, then the wizard will want to disarm with mage hand. Afterall, what's the difference between a PC holding a sunrod and a monster holding a sword? As what's the difference if you use your hand to grab it, or a magic telekinetic hand?

One option is just to tell the players, "Sorry, this isn't an option for you," but that kind of sucks for them. In this case, I'd recommend giving the dark creeper a special power that allows him to quench light.

Use the Dex vs Reflex mechanic Tuft suggested, and keep it as a standard action melee power, but describe it as the dark creeper using a darkness power to 'turn off' the sunrod, or the torch, or the light-enchanted staff, or whatever, of whatever he is targeting. That way, the mechanics stay simple, the light manipulation stays in your hands, and the players won't even think twice about whether or not they can try the same stunt.

That said, you didn't say why you wanted to steal the PCs' light, but make sure this isn't something you do all the time, and I'd recommend not trying to frustrate the players too much in their blindness.

~ fissionessence

 

[CapnZapp]

Just to complete the picture:

Are there 4e rules for sundering/attacking a held light source?

No.

The closest option offered by the rules is to make the character unconscious or helpless, then just take his stuff.

Any option that allows a character (PC or NPC) to take stuff from other characters in general is easily abusable (as expanded upon above) so that is why the rules do not allow it.

Sure, you could give your NPC a special power to allow this, but think twice before implementing it. If you only use it rarely, and for thematically appropriate monsters, then it is okay. If you use it all the time, the players will realize you're just circumventing the rules to give NPCs options the PCs can't have. For "monstrous" abilities this can be okay, but not for something as simple as snatching stuff (sundering, disarming, etc).

In the end, there was a reason 4E did not include rules for these types of actions.

And that reason is that balance dictates you can't short-circuit your opponent by stealing his stuff.

Either your rules for sundering etc are worthwhile (i.e. better and faster than killing the foe outright) and thus unbalanced (everybody would want to use it all the time). Or they are balanced, meaning less effective than standard combat. In which case, noone is going to use the rule, and so why have it in the first place?

Sure, you could have the rule written in such a way that characters with a baseline disarm capability will find the option to be less effective than standard combat, and then have specific monsters have improved versions of the ability, crossing the boundary into a worthwhile option. But really that changes nothing. You would still see demands from players to learn the improved disarm, which you still could not allow.

So feel free to implement something for your own campaign. Now at least you know why there aren't any official rules on the matter, and you know what can of worms you'll be opening.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, I'm not sure I 100% agree with all this sentiment. Yes, PCs should not be regularly disarming monsters, etc, but there ARE times when a "William Tell" IS a very sensible tactic and thus there WILL inevitably have to be some sort of rule for it. The BBEG is about to place the gem in the statue's forehead and activate the golem. The PCs probably should have, and certainly will WANT to have, the ability to do something about that, and they will want to use a William Tell of some type to do it.

As for just routine ordinary monsters being disarmed, there are plenty of ways to deal with that. For one thing nothing says that a disarmed monster is helpless. It can grapple, it can use non-weapon powers, it can just plain draw its backup sword or pick up a weapon lying around on the battlefield that one of its allies dropped when it died. Plus you can always rule that a trick like that provokes an OA. Given that it is certainly not an automatic success that alone will usually deter most players from constantly abusing the option. If the monster is so weak that a disarm is pretty certain to succeed then well the monster wasn't a lot of threat to start with, and probably just bashing it with your sword is at least as good an option.

So, given that the option cannot be excluded without also excluding all sorts of interesting things the PCs should be able to do, you just have to deal with the possibility that at some point the PCs will think to try a William Tell at a time and place when you haven't considered it and that might actually give them an advantage that is worthwhile for them to have. This IMHO is the heart of the game, making the players THINK and come up with clever ways to beat the enemy. Who wants to play in a game where the ONLY things you can do come from some recipe book? Don't crush your player's creativity and sacrifice it at the altar of 'game balance'. Balance overall is important, but fun is that which must be served by all else in a game.

The same arguments can be made in favor of monsters being able to William Tell as well. They won't do it often, and your garden variety Orc or whatnot is unlikely to try it, they know that their weapons are effective in general and they won't usually risk doing something weird when they have a tried and true tactic (bashing you with a melee attack) that has always worked for them. The case you describe, or a few other situations like it may be ones where it is interesting to employ a tactic like that, but it should be quite rare. It can add to the fun when players are suddenly confronted with a situation they haven't anticipated. It may also get them thinking about what else the DM might pull out of his bag of tricks! Maybe they'll carry an extra light source around next time. It makes them get a bit more creative, and that too is fun.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I would also suggest to allow such a stunt, but only on very rare occasions. This is, when your monster stumbled after a fumble, or when you have combat advantage and you use an action point to quickly snatch it, something like that.

 

[caudor]

Thanks for the tips. I wasn't aware of all the ramifications, so I got alot out of the discussion.

Since there are no rules for this situation (and I don't want to open a can of unruly worms), I think I'll just have the Dark Creeper attack the PC holding the light source. If he takes down the PC, then he'll sure to step on the business end of the light source.

Thanks again.

 

[Alex319]

Well, I'm not sure I 100% agree with all this sentiment. Yes, PCs should not be regularly disarming monsters, etc, but there ARE times when a "William Tell" IS a very sensible tactic and thus there WILL inevitably have to be some sort of rule for it. The BBEG is about to place the gem in the statue's forehead and activate the golem. The PCs probably should have, and certainly will WANT to have, the ability to do something about that, and they will want to use a William Tell of some type to do it.

As for just routine ordinary monsters being disarmed, there are plenty of ways to deal with that. For one thing nothing says that a disarmed monster is helpless. It can grapple, it can use non-weapon powers, it can just plain draw its backup sword or pick up a weapon lying around on the battlefield that one of its allies dropped when it died. Plus you can always rule that a trick like that provokes an OA. Given that it is certainly not an automatic success that alone will usually deter most players from constantly abusing the option. If the monster is so weak that a disarm is pretty certain to succeed then well the monster wasn't a lot of threat to start with, and probably just bashing it with your sword is at least as good an option.

So, given that the option cannot be excluded without also excluding all sorts of interesting things the PCs should be able to do, you just have to deal with the possibility that at some point the PCs will think to try a William Tell at a time and place when you haven't considered it and that might actually give them an advantage that is worthwhile for them to have. This IMHO is the heart of the game, making the players THINK and come up with clever ways to beat the enemy. Who wants to play in a game where the ONLY things you can do come from some recipe book? Don't crush your player's creativity and sacrifice it at the altar of 'game balance'. Balance overall is important, but fun is that which must be served by all else in a game.

The same arguments can be made in favor of monsters being able to William Tell as well. They won't do it often, and your garden variety Orc or whatnot is unlikely to try it, they know that their weapons are effective in general and they won't usually risk doing something weird when they have a tried and true tactic (bashing you with a melee attack) that has always worked for them. The case you describe, or a few other situations like it may be ones where it is interesting to employ a tactic like that, but it should be quite rare. It can add to the fun when players are suddenly confronted with a situation they haven't anticipated. It may also get them thinking about what else the DM might pull out of his bag of tricks! Maybe they'll carry an extra light source around next time. It makes them get a bit more creative, and that too is fun.

Well, there's actually two questions being asked here.

1. How do we make a "Disarm" mechanic that is useful situationally, but not easily abusable?

2. How do we, in general, make it possible for players to come up with creative things to do in combat (hereafter referred to as Improvised Combat Actions, or ICAs) in a fair way?

---

Now, for question (1), it probably is possible to come up with a disarm mechanic that would be useful in certain situations without turning every combat into a game of keep-away with weapons, but it's a lot harder than it looks. Examples of issues you would have to deal with:

- Is "disarm" a separate power, or is "disarming" something you do with existing powers, like a Mage Hand or basic attack? Exactly what can you disarm with?

- How do we calculate the damage that a disarmed monster does with an unarmed attack? This information is obviously not in the stat block.

- If monsters can have backup weapons, do they? Do all of them? Which monsters have these? (And be prepared for your players to ask about what backup weapons they can see every combat.)

- If monsters can pick up weapons off of fallen enemies, are we going to keep track of the position of every fallen enemy weapon on the ground? What if the Wizard tries to Thunderwave the weapons away? Will that work?

Again, I'm not saying it's impossible to come up with a solution, just that it would require a lot of work. This thread contains valuable discussion on the issues involved.

---

However, it seems like the question you're really interested in is question (2), and coming up with good disarm mechanics doesn't really help solve that problem. Once you've established disarm mechanics, they no longer require "creativity," they're just another rule system players can use to achieve their goals. (Of course, people could still come up with builds and strategies to use those new rules to maximum effect. But this is not qualitatively different than what they do with existing rule systems, and is probably not the kind of "creativity" you are looking for.)

The main issue is what to do when someone comes up with a new kind of ICA, like say, throwing a rope at someone's feet in order to trip him. You don't want to just say "No, you can't do that," and you don't necessarily mind giving him an advantage in that encounter. But at the same time, you don't want to give someone a potentially overpowered power that they can use to break future battles. And it's not really reasonable to expect that every time a player comes up with an ICA, that you can on-the-spot analyze it for how powerful it would be to give him that power that he can use every time.

The main issue here is repeatability. If the ICA is something that they could only do once (like something that involves a unique feature of the room that particular battle is being held in) then you can rule it however you want, and if that leads to an easy victory then, well, you've successfully rewarded creativity without hurting any future battles. But if it's something they could do every time (like disarming), then you might want to have a way to allow them to do it once if it makes sense, but not commit to allowing them to do the same thing every time.

There have been proposals on the boards to allow you to do that. Most of them involve some sort of "stunt system" where when the player does an ICA, he himself decides how it will work (what its effects are, what checks are required, how much damage it will do, etc.) and the difficulty of the relevant rolls is determined by how powerful the effect is. This gives the payer more control while not allowing power to get out of hand. And there's usually some limit on how often stunts can be done, or some cost like APs or healing surges, so they're not doing it every attack.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, there's actually two questions being asked here.

1. How do we make a "Disarm" mechanic that is useful situationally, but not easily abusable?

2. How do we, in general, make it possible for players to come up with creative things to do in combat (hereafter referred to as Improvised Combat Actions, or ICAs) in a fair way?

---

Now, for question (1), it probably is possible to come up with a disarm mechanic that would be useful in certain situations without turning every combat into a game of keep-away with weapons, but it's a lot harder than it looks. Examples of issues you would have to deal with:

- Is "disarm" a separate power, or is "disarming" something you do with existing powers, like a Mage Hand or basic attack? Exactly what can you disarm with?

- How do we calculate the damage that a disarmed monster does with an unarmed attack? This information is obviously not in the stat block.

- If monsters can have backup weapons, do they? Do all of them? Which monsters have these? (And be prepared for your players to ask about what backup weapons they can see every combat.)

- If monsters can pick up weapons off of fallen enemies, are we going to keep track of the position of every fallen enemy weapon on the ground? What if the Wizard tries to Thunderwave the weapons away? Will that work?

Again, I'm not saying it's impossible to come up with a solution, just that it would require a lot of work. This thread contains valuable discussion on the issues involved.

---

However, it seems like the question you're really interested in is question (2), and coming up with good disarm mechanics doesn't really help solve that problem. Once you've established disarm mechanics, they no longer require "creativity," they're just another rule system players can use to achieve their goals. (Of course, people could still come up with builds and strategies to use those new rules to maximum effect. But this is not qualitatively different than what they do with existing rule systems, and is probably not the kind of "creativity" you are looking for.)

The main issue is what to do when someone comes up with a new kind of ICA, like say, throwing a rope at someone's feet in order to trip him. You don't want to just say "No, you can't do that," and you don't necessarily mind giving him an advantage in that encounter. But at the same time, you don't want to give someone a potentially overpowered power that they can use to break future battles. And it's not really reasonable to expect that every time a player comes up with an ICA, that you can on-the-spot analyze it for how powerful it would be to give him that power that he can use every time.

The main issue here is repeatability. If the ICA is something that they could only do once (like something that involves a unique feature of the room that particular battle is being held in) then you can rule it however you want, and if that leads to an easy victory then, well, you've successfully rewarded creativity without hurting any future battles. But if it's something they could do every time (like disarming), then you might want to have a way to allow them to do it once if it makes sense, but not commit to allowing them to do the same thing every time.

There have been proposals on the boards to allow you to do that. Most of them involve some sort of "stunt system" where when the player does an ICA, he himself decides how it will work (what its effects are, what checks are required, how much damage it will do, etc.) and the difficulty of the relevant rolls is determined by how powerful the effect is. This gives the payer more control while not allowing power to get out of hand. And there's usually some limit on how often stunts can be done, or some cost like APs or healing surges, so they're not doing it every attack.

Right. I read the whole disarm/sunder/trip thread the other day. That didn't seem bad, but as I think you are pointing out as well, it doesn't address the entire ICA issue in a very general sort of way. I tend to think in general that 'stunts' are overall the best way to handle this kind of thing for a few reasons. It obviates the necessity for the DM to come up with a power, which is especially problematic given that players will certainly invent ICAs on the fly and while it would work for commonly attempted ones it fails to address the general problem.

Of course the weakness is exploitability, but really this is overall what GMs are there FOR. To adjudicate creative solutions to problems. If we don't have the flexibility to do that, then the game really isn't much more than a sort of paper and pencil equivalent of an MMORPG. Simply ruling that every ICA requires a power won't cut it. The PCs WILL try to shoot the gem out of the BBEG's hand, and someone WILL need to make a ruling, or else they might as well just go play WoW.

That all being said it seems to me the direction I would favor would be some set of more thorough guidelines on stunting. Something along the lines of a set of situations that come up often and how they have been successfully dealt with. This is basically 'houserules', but it saves GMs a good bit of time and energy and lets them benefit from the experience of others if there are a reasonably comprehensive list of them. What was attempted, what sort of ruling was invoked, and how well it worked or what problems it lead to.

Obviously not everyone will ever agree about the best mechanism or even the best overall approach, but it would be interesting if someone were to go about the task of compiling an 'ICA houserules compendium'. People could download it and at least have a starting point/guide for what might work well when they hit one of these things in their game. It also helps in adventure design since you can anticipate the most likely sorts of approaches parties will take and provide yourself with a 'when the party tries X, do this' notation (I seem to do this a lot when designing adventures).

 

[Alex319]

Obviously not everyone will ever agree about the best mechanism or even the best overall approach, but it would be interesting if someone were to go about the task of compiling an 'ICA houserules compendium'. People could download it and at least have a starting point/guide for what might work well when they hit one of these things in their game. It also helps in adventure design since you can anticipate the most likely sorts of approaches parties will take and provide yourself with a 'when the party tries X, do this' notation (I seem to do this a lot when designing adventures).

That's a good idea. In fact one idea I've been thinking about doing is making a whole series of threads, each addressing a particular "frequently discussed topic" for houserules (like crafting, background skills, the magic item economy, ICAs, etc.) and linking to lots of other threads with houserules. Each of these threads would be organized in a "problem/solution" format, addressing the particular problem the rules are intended to solve and different systems for solving those problems. (As an example, when people talk about houserules for "crafting," there are often many different things they want out of that. Some people just want crafting as part of their character background, some people want to use it to help in skill challenges, some people want to design a whole campaign around getting materials to build things, etc. Each of these would require a different system.)