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Message: <blockquote data-quote="eamon" data-source="post: 5228493" data-attributes="member: 51942">It's not a mechanical defect that pushing someone off a cliff takes them out of the battle.  It's not a mechanical defect - it's a real, in-game decisive moment.  These things happen; it's not a flaw, it's a part of the game's reality.  If it's possible in the game, and it's a battle winner, it'd be absurd for a creature not to do it!The solution cannot be to turn the game into a farce.  Whatever solution you come up with should be consistent and reasonable in-game.For example, you might rule that dominate is a sort of mental confusion; the affected loses track of goals and can use only the most common, habitual actions - and in combat, unless the affected habitually throws his weapon (say, because it returns anyhow), you just can't express that idea in the first place in a way the affected creature would understand in it's limited state.  That happens to nicely tie in with the limitation on daily/encounter powers - which can't be performed either, after all.  At least you could rule that dropping or sheathing a weapon is the best you can do - not the abnormal action of throwing.Alternatively, you could look at monsters and decide that the lack or presence of a weapon shouldn't be as critical for PC's as it is; in short, the mechanical defect isn't that throwing down a weapon is possible, it's that this makes a +12 difference to attack rolls (and is similarly devastating to damage) - that doesn't make any sense given the way monsters work.  So, grant inherent bonuses to unarmed attacks (including math-fix feats like expertise).   Sure, you'll lose damage, but it's no longer crippling - actually, it's probably almost always unwise since charging and provoking OA's works quite well, and if there's a cliff, charging over the cliff is probably worse than throwing away a weapon - especially since a dropped weapon might be picked up again.Another option would be to simply accept the issue and make an adhoc fix to work-around it the first time it comes up, but then to state that this is a common enough risk that all adventurers habitually carry an extra weapon or implement or two.  If these are 5 levels lower, then the cost is fairly minor (and in any case, you probably have old weapons lying around), and doing this completely destroys the strategy - suddenly dominate turns into a mere -1 attack and damage for the rest of the encounter or until you can pick up the weapon again as a minor action - certainly not as attractive as the alternatives.  As a DM, I'd be perfectly fine with retconning that logic into a campaign: "poof, didn't you know all adventurers have backup weapons?"You can even combine the three - you can't throw, merely drop a weapon (perhaps into an adjacent square), you can fix the mechanical flaw that is the discrepancy between unarmed PC and unarmed monster attacks, and you can institute a rule that it's expected for all armed creatures to have a reasonable fallback weapon.What you should not do, however, is just say "that orc shaman over there wants to kill you - but he's nice enough not to really try".  That undermines the very essence of the game - at least, if flavor matters (which admittedly it might not in humorous games or in groups focused on the tactical game).</blockquote>

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