Can Dominate disarm a person's weapon?

[Stalker0]

This came up in my last game session. One of my players has a new dominate effect. He dominated a creature with a greataxe, and then said "The creature throws the greataxe as his action."

Caused a bit of a rules debate. On the one side, it seems extrememly powerful, as there really isn't that much in 4e that can disarm a creature. But throwing a weapon is a basic ranged attack, that's an at will power that would seem to fit the definition of dominate so I couldn't see any rules fault with it.

Anyone got any rules citation that I might be missing...one way or another?

 

[Nahat Anoj]

Well, the dominated condition is:

• You’re dazed.
• The dominating creature chooses your action. The only powers it can make you use are at-will powers.

Nothing about that says your action has to be an attack action. I'd have no problem letting the player command the monster to throw his axe, either at the PC's feet, off a ravine, etc.

Just about the only thing that I'd be wary of is dominating a monster so that it does something obviously and immediately harmful to itself, like jump into a pool of lava. I'm not sure if that is prohibited by the RAW (the condition text doesn't imply that it's prohibited, but their may be a rules update somewhere), but if a PCs tried to make a dominated monster jump of a cliff or something I'd at least give the monster a free save or something like that.

 

[Roger]

I'd allow it, just to see the player's face the next time his character gets dominated and he has to throw his favourite magic weapon into a bottomless pit.



Cheers,
Roger

 

[Mengu]

Sure, no problem, he throws it. I'd even let it be thrown at an enemy as an improvised weapon attack (just with an ad hoc -2 penalty to attack and a low expression damage). For the remainder of the fight, if the axe can't be recovered, I'd just lower the damage expressions with the axe powers by one die. So the creature's axe attacks would be down from say 1d12+6 to 1d10+6 fist/claw/boot/head butt/tail lash/whatever. Monster damage is pretty abstract as it is. Weapons don't really mean much. The dominating PC can still feel good about himself for lowering the damage die.

 

[keterys]

Yeah, that's pretty tame (at least until they throw Orcus' rod) - I was more worried this thread would be like:

Okay, as a standard action I want him to charge that guy over there, provoking OAs from my 3 allies, and as a free action he'll drop his greataxe into that pit he passes by.

And yeah... that's a much more rude possibility.

 

[unan oranis]

Don't all magic weapons return to their weilders hand when thrown now?

And aren't all monster weapons and gear presumed to be vaguely magical so as to avoid giving them pluses when wielding an "actual" magic weapon of value to the pc's?

--

Aside from that, I think in principle it would be a good thing to encourage creative use of powers.

Personally I'd assume that befuddling the targets sense of friend vs foe is a given, but actions entirely agains the creatures common sense should trigger a save at least.

 

[the Jester]

Don't all magic weapons return to their weilders hand when thrown now?

I believe this only applies to throwing weapons.

And aren't all monster weapons and gear presumed to be vaguely magical so as to avoid giving them pluses when wielding an "actual" magic weapon of value to the pc's?

No, this is a balancing tool. Unless the monster's gear is stated to be magic- in which case it usually simply adds less of a bonus, based on the monster's level- it's not.

 

[UltimaGabe]

I'd allow it, just to see the player's face the next time his character gets dominated and he has to throw his favourite magic weapon into a bottomless pit.

Cheers,
Roger

Just how often do your players face dominating enemies on the edge of a bottomless cliff? In that case, I'd be much more afraid of having the dominator force the player to jump off the cliff than toss my favorite magic item.

Besides, if you hosed a player like that, you can bet they'd argue that their weapons would return to their hand, as magical thrown weapons do.

 

[RangerWickett]

What powers let PCs dominate enemies?

 

[Chris Knapp]

What powers let PCs dominate enemies?

Only 2 so far:
Psion: Dominate - Level 15 Daily
Umbriri: Shadowed Psyche - Level 20 Daily

Its interesting that the Umbriri version stipulates that the dominated creature may take no harmful action against itself. The Psion's version? No such wording. . .