Can Dominate disarm a person's weapon?

[Argyle King]

While it may be only a minor action to pick a weapon up, that doesn't make having the enemy toss their weapon away a minor inconvenience. Remember, it's only a minor action for you to pick their weapon too.

"Nice super-duper-magic-sword... mine now!"

This works wonders against many named foes who carry special weapons. Not only does it deprive them of many of their abilities; if you pick up the weapon, you can potentially gain those abilities for yourself.

 

[Aegeri]

That is until you fight on a piece of magical terrain, thousands of feet up, in a volcano or something and your weapon ends up in said obstacle. Then by epic tier you lose roughly +12 to your attack* (I'm not kidding, it would be that much) and all of a sudden you are absolutely boned. Then the creature does it to everyone else - as many monsters can at-will dominate and before long the entire party has a -9 to -12 penalty to all attacks making them virtually useless.

The point is that if you wouldn't think its balanced for monsters to do it, nobody should actually use it in that way. Otherwise you end up with a horrible slippery slope into "What monster with natural weaponry and a dominate can I use to TPK the party today".

*You'd lose +6 (Enhancement) +3 (Proficiency of a superior weapon) and +3 (expertise, as these are by weapon groups) for a total of +12 bonus lost. Probably more actually than that as well. A monster might lose a basic attack. So while PCs may feel clever the first time they do this, the first time a monster does it to them they are instantly screwed.

 

[CovertOps]

That is until you fight on a piece of magical terrain, thousands of feet up, in a volcano or something and your weapon ends up in said obstacle. Then by epic tier you lose roughly +12 to your attack* (I'm not kidding, it would be that much) and all of a sudden you are absolutely boned. Then the creature does it to everyone else - as many monsters can at-will dominate and before long the entire party has a -9 to -12 penalty to all attacks making them virtually useless.

The point is that if you wouldn't think its balanced for monsters to do it, nobody should actually use it in that way. Otherwise you end up with a horrible slippery slope into "What monster with natural weaponry and a dominate can I use to TPK the party today".

*You'd lose +6 (Enhancement) +3 (Proficiency of a superior weapon) and +3 (expertise, as these are by weapon groups) for a total of +12 bonus lost. Probably more actually than that as well. A monster might lose a basic attack. So while PCs may feel clever the first time they do this, the first time a monster does it to them they are instantly screwed.

This ties in to my comments about backwards engineering damage. In order for disarm to work it would have to be a condition that the monster or PC can get rid of without outside interference. If you can disarm an opponent, then just pick up said weapon you have just created a save or die effect in 4e which they worked very hard to get rid of in the first place. In other words you've put a crippling effect on the target that they cannot recover. Just so I'm clear, I am NOT advocating any such ability in 4e. "Disarmed" and 0 hit points being equivalent conditions is close enough for me.

 

[LostSoul]

Why can't you tie your weapon to your wrist?

 

[Camelot]

Why can't you tie your weapon to your wrist?

Yes.

Win.

 

[Gradine]

I disagree because players will always gravitate towards the most powerful exploit allowed by the DM. Always. Allowing lots of freedom to twist and exploit rules makes the game unmanageable. Even worse, it leads even more to one trick ponies that forcing players to use the rules and also leads to extremely boring combats.

Sooner or later, every tactic will be about one of three things: how to disarm your opponent or stop him from using powers, how to teleport him hundreds of feet into the air (or over a lava pit), or how to stun-lock him.

All of these tactics suck ass (for the game) and should be avoided at all costs.

Many of these "exploits" are situational at best, and those that aren't don't give great benefit anyway (teleporting up is usually not enough to do more damage that a typical attack is going to do and doesn't really scale; and has been pointed out most monsters don't rely on weapons to deal damage or effects.) The only "exploits" that you've mentioned that are truly game-breaking are also the only ones fully possible given the RAW; forced movement insta-death (this might have been errata'd, I don't recall specifically) and stun-locking.

And don't forget that the DM has the impetus to determine the impact of these "exploits", which means you can generally make them as effective as you want. Make teleporting up only half the distance; give your weapon-wielding baddies spares. Etc. When players try to do something creative the DM is required to respond in kind; this kind of creatively negotiating with the rules is the very heart of role-playing and I cannot see how it doesn't have a place in any system, D&D 4e or otherwise. It's certainly far more preferable than just saying "No, you can't."

Ultimately I could not disagree with you more, respectfully. It all depends on the people that you play with. As I have said before, creativity should always be encouraged and rewarded. Always. Without creativity we're doing nothing more than playing a glorified board game, and that's not the game that I've set out to play.

 

[MarkB]

Why can't you tie your weapon to your wrist?

I tend to think that's going to cause problems more often than you'll get dominated - but if you know you're up against a foe who dominates, it's an option. However, all it'll buy you is one round - the dominator can just tell you to cut or untie the cord with one standard action, and ditch the weapon with your next.

 

[CovertOps]

Ultimately I could not disagree with you more, respectfully. It all depends on the people that you play with. As I have said before, creativity should always be encouraged and rewarded. Always. Without creativity we're doing nothing more than playing a glorified board game, and that's not the game that I've set out to play.

So are you saying that "creativity" is defined as figuring how to take advantage of a game systems mechanical defects (bag of rats comes to mind)? Funny, I always thought that's what a DM was for and judicious use of the word "No". And don't get me wrong...I'm in favor of the "say yes" concept, but there are times where you are required to "just say no". For example we have a running joke in my group.....the first level PC's ask if they can have an "Axe of the Dwarvish Lords"...and I just say "No".

 

[Gradine]

So are you saying that "creativity" is defined as figuring how to take advantage of a game systems mechanical defects (bag of rats comes to mind)? Funny, I always thought that's what a DM was for and judicious use of the word "No". And don't get me wrong...I'm in favor of the "say yes" concept, but there are times where you are required to "just say no". For example we have a running joke in my group.....the first level PC's ask if they can have an "Axe of the Dwarvish Lords"...and I just say "No".

I would define "creativity" in this sense as finding new ways to gain benefits from the powers and abilities at your disposal. I also wouldn't define the lack of a rule explicitly stating something like "Dominated creatures won't throw melee weapons" or "You must teleport a creature on to solid ground" as a mechanical defect, either. Maybe I'm just young and naive, but I've yet to encounter these undermining, exploit-seeking players I've seen warned about in this thread. And why shouldn't players be rewarded for being clever? For thinking outside the box? This isn't Paranoia or Hackmaster; it isn't us against them.

It's just a different gaming perspective is all, I guess. It's the difference between "What should I let my players do?" versus "What should I let my players get away with?"

There seems to have been a shift in mentality, I've noticed. In older editions, the mentality was much more "The rules don't say you can't, so go ahead." In 4e, however, this has quickly become "The rules don't say you can, so you can't." And I know this is a matter of game balance, which is by far one of 4e's greatest strengths. For many people, the fun comes forth from that game balance, and I can definitely understand and respect that. For me and my players, however, that same carefully built, highly strict structure can sometimes serve as shackles to our creativity, and in those cases we ignore what is "balanced" for what we want to do; that's just what's fun for us.

 

[LostSoul]

I tend to think that's going to cause problems more often than you'll get dominated - but if you know you're up against a foe who dominates, it's an option. However, all it'll buy you is one round - the dominator can just tell you to cut or untie the cord with one standard action, and ditch the weapon with your next.

If you have to draw a knife to cut the rope, that's two rounds (one to draw, another to cut, and then you can throw on the third), assuming I'm reading Dominate correctly. A knot seems like it'd take more than 5 seconds to untie, but that's a DM call. (I bet there's some kind of trick you can pull off with Mending so there isn't any knot in the rope; or you could invest in a low-level magic item.)

So are you saying that "creativity" is defined as figuring how to take advantage of a game systems mechanical defects (bag of rats comes to mind)? Funny, I always thought that's what a DM was for and judicious use of the word "No". And don't get me wrong...I'm in favor of the "say yes" concept, but there are times where you are required to "just say no". For example we have a running joke in my group.....the first level PC's ask if they can have an "Axe of the Dwarvish Lords"...and I just say "No".

I think it's about treating the game world as though it were real - and allowing characters their full range of actions as though they were in a real world. The bag of rats fails because it makes no sense. Dominate + throw fails for the same reason (unless you come up with some other justification).

That's why there's a DM, to make judgement calls to determine what makes sense and what doesn't.