Disarming a Shield?

[IndyPendant]

The monk in my party startled me by trying to disarm a large steel shield from a beefed-up gnoll they were fighting. Unable to find rules on it with a quick check, I made a decision I since think was incorrect: I just applied the 'held in two hands' modifier of +4 to the goblin's roll. Monk succeeded.

After the game, we discussed it for a while, and as far as we can tell, there are no rules for shield disarming. However, a large steel shield is both gripped in the hand *and* strapped to the arm (once? Or twice? Not sure on that), while a small steel shield and buckler are both also strapped to the arm.

So what I had decided then was to used the Spiked Gauntlets as an example for the large steel shield--cannot be disarmed. For them small steel shield, use the Locked Gauntlets as an example--+10 to resist disarm. And then for the buckler, use the 2h weapon mod--+4 to resist disarm.

Also, how would you handle the opposed attack roll? I decided to just make the gnoll roll as if he were attacking with his sword, since if I made him roll as if attacking with his shield he'd suffer a -4 for off-hand attacks, lose his weapon focus bonus, etc etc, basically making the monk a shoo-in to get the shield. And what size are monk's fists for the purposes of a disarm anyways? Should the large steel shield have gotten a +4 size bonus? Or even +8?

I'm not entirely happy with these new rules I decided on either--and, of course, neither is the monk's player, tho he's willing to accept my decision. It seems to me that by definition disarming a shield should be more difficult--perhaps significantly more difficult--than disarming something that is merely held. But since I've never come across this before, and since I dislike in particular the cannot-disarm rule I made for the large steel shields, I thought I'd toss this out to you.

What would you do in this situation? What would be your modifiers to the rolls?

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

I'd make the large shield and buckler immune to disarm attempts. They're strapped to your arm -- even if someone cut your hand off they'd still be somewhat attached.

Tower shields and small shields I might allow, but I'd definitely have it provoke an AoO regardles of what other circumstances might come into play.

I might also make an exception if the person was using the shield as a weapon, in which case I'd have the disarm make it impossible to use a large shield or buckler as a weapon, although the AC bonus would still be there (eg you managed to damage one of the straps, preventing your opponent from wielding it as a weapon). This would be mostly to avoid the inevitable 'Ok, I'm using a +5 Vorpal Spiked Shield as my primary weapon' nonsense.

 

[drunkmoogle]

I'm with Rod on this one.

The rules don't cover this, and this may require GM adjudication. A literalist may just say that since light/heavy shields are listed as weapons, they can be disarmed without penalty.

Seeing as all of these shields are "strapped to an arm," I would impose the same penalty for disarming a shield as for disarming a weapon in a locked gauntlet.

 

[evileeyore]

Having disarmed people of their sheilds temporarily I would go with these rules:

+4 modifier allows the disarmer to knock/wrest the sheild aside until the sheild user gets his next turn. This represents the shield user losing grip and it hanging ineffectually on his arm, or someone is holding it out of the way.

I've done this in Boffer LARPs and seen it happen in SCA events of sword and board versus two weapons fighters.

+10 modifier rips the shield from the user, either breaking the buckles or straps. Also not hard to do, agian I've seen this in SCA tourneys, mostly when the sheild bearer faced two-handed weapons. It happens in BLARP more often than people would like...

Or just choose a number that feels right for you, but remain consistent. It shouldn't matter whether the shield is employed as a weapon or not. As well as its size. Larger sheilds are no harder to disarm than smaller ones. Infact tower sheilds are down right easy...

--EvilE

 

[argo]

Well, I don't think that saying that a shield can't be disarmed is right. I think that the logic behind the gauntlet is that you can just make a fist and the other guy can't pull the gauntlet off without ripping your whole hand off which represents HP damage not a disarm attampt (no pun intended )

Treating it like a weapon in a locked gauntlet seems attractive but it takes a full round action to "lock" a locked gauntlet and only a move action (that can be combined with a move) to ready a shield. That would seem to indicate that a shield is less well secured than a locked gauntlet (espically the small shield which is just held in the hand).

A shield is a strange case because, although it isn't a weapon (even though you can make shield bash attacks) it also isn't a simple held item either. Unlike a weapon a shield is not designed to deftly turn about the wrist which is part of the action in most disarm attempts. Unlike a held item (say a wand) a shield is designed to be used under the riggors of combat and so shouldn't be easily knocked aside. I think that the category that best describes a shield under the rules is as a "worn item".

So I think that for buckler or large shield I would treat it as a "well secured" worn item, meaning that you first have to grapple and pin the target and even then he gets a +4 bonus to his disarm. A small or tower shield I would treat as a "normally secured" worn item, meaning that you can attempt to disarm it with a normal disarm and neither the attacker nor defender gets any bonus to the attempt.

As for what modifiers to use. No the defender should not be allowed to use Weapon focus for weapons other than the shield, that makes no sense. But he also shouldn't suffer the off-hand penalties unless he has already been TWF'ing with the shield that round. So it should just be BAB + Str unless he happens to have Weapon Focus [shield].

Hope that helps.

 

[Drakh]

I personally look at a shield and disarming as follows...

Disarm Rule:
You can disarm someone of anything they are holding.

Donning Armor Rule:
It takes a standard action to Don A Shield.

These two statments leads me to the conclusion that a shield is infact immune to disarm as you actually wear a shield rather than hold one.

There are rules that state you can attempt to grab hold of an item someone is wearing/holding while grappling and this is one way to deal with the shield.

Besides that i would simply turn round to the player and suggest they would be better off attempting to Sunder the shield instead.

 

[Darklone]

KPG has official D&D rules for disarming shields