Can Dominate disarm a person's weapon?

[ExploderWizard]

On hitting enormous creatures without the right equipment (i.e. too low attack bonus).


Hitting in D&D represents not merely touching the target but also penetrating its armor and doing so with enough force to inflict actually relevant damage. Touching a large creature may be easier; penetrating it's thicker skin harder; hitting deeply enough to be more than a mere scratch: even harder.

The toughness of a creature is a combination of it's AC and HP. A big tough monster might have thick hide but it will also have lots of HP. A single pitiful attack against that kind of HP total is a mere scratch.

Are you going to do that for PC's and monsters? Doing so will dramatically change the game, which may be OK but don't expect normal balance assumptions to hold. PC's that trade higher defenses for lower damage (swordmage, paladin) will lose out relative to those that trade defenses for more damage (barbarian). THP and resistance rather than defenses will be much more attractive (barbarian, battlerager). Marking won't matter much unless there's a rider. Cover, concealment even total concealment become much less relevant unless there's some combination of factors. Power attack gets a lot better. And so on... Actually, if you want major balance changes, I think you should consider just switching to a different system since one of 4e's main strengths is its extremely robust balance: ask yourself what 4e brings to table if you take that away (not that there aren't other advantages, but I'm not so sure they're enough). 3.5 for example already took that path; merely hitting isn't usually a problem (except for those with many iterative attacks), the problem is dealing enough damage and status effects.

I plan on leaving my current campaign as is. These ideas are for my own project. Some 4E concepts will be a part of it but not the whole.

 

[ExploderWizard]

The difference is, in that case, the peasant did something.

Peasant vs. tank. Peasant hits the side of tank with his hoe, doing...

Absolutely -all.

That's the entire point. A big brute can still be hurt. A tank could have resistance properties/DR that would render the hoe completely ineffective and these would be properties based on the nature of the thing quite separate from AC.

Resist all (10) does the trick. Now we have something that peasants can club on all day and score 0 damage even though it is easy to hit.

 

[Aegeri]

A good system can handle anything vs anything. Sometimes PC's might have a squabble, perhaps some monsters ally with the PC's against other monsters. Endless possibilities are what the game is about after all.

The system is designed around PCs and monsters though, this is why IMO 4E is fun to play and DMing it works the best of any edition I've played. Monsters are challenges for PCs and their stat blocks reflect this. Against one another they make no sense. 4E is NOT simulationist. Monsters are built a certain way to be fun challenges for PCs.

There are many more epic monsters than there are neutral NPCs and peasants. That's why we need heroes I guess.

 

[eamon]

How 'bout this:

Catching a returning weapon is a free action. You can't take any actions (even free actions) while dominated except a single one chosen by the dominator; so if you're wielding a returning thrown weapon (i.e. any magic thrown weapon) then simply by attacking the dominator will automatically disarm you. Send in a minion to pick up the weapon (after all the dominated creature can't take OA's) or kick it away from the dominated creature or whatever; disarming thrown weapon users is pretty much No Action for the dominator.

Who thinks that's intentional?