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D&D Older Editions
Does 4E have disarm?
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<blockquote data-quote="Mouseferatu" data-source="post: 4487358" data-attributes="member: 1288"><p>Dance...</p><p></p><p>1) You're ignoring backup weapons. Maybe your experience is different, but I've never seen a high-level melee combatant without at least one.</p><p></p><p>2) Provoking an OA early isn't really a viable solution, because it still gets the attacker hit a bunch of extra times.</p><p></p><p>3) Most importantly, you're arguing from the assumption that the disarm attempt even <em>works</em>. If we're talking about something with maybe a 25% chance of success, we're talking about a tactic that, on average, is going to take four attempts.</p><p></p><p>From a creature with an expected lifespan of six rounds? That's an average of two rounds of worthwhile action before death (at which point, even if they're holding the enemy's weapon, he can take it back, so they aren't even helping their allies that much by dying).</p><p></p><p>I don't know about your combats, but in the ones I've seen, the PCs would probably <em>willingly</em> accept a -2 to -4 penalty (the difference between primary and backup weapon) for the last few rounds of combat, if it meant the enemy wouldn't <em>do anything</em> for the <em>first </em>few rounds of combat. And that, on average, is what this amounts to. Yes, it'll work occasionally; but those instances will be outnumbered 3-to-1 by the number of times it basically translates into the enemy standing around getting pounded.</p><p></p><p>The <em>only</em> way this works, mathematically, is if you have a whole bunch of enemies swarm a single melee fighter, <em>all</em> trying to disarm him at once and deliberately sacrificing themselves in the process. And leaving aside questions as to whether most sentient creatures are willing to do that, that's leaving them all wide open to attacks from the other PCs, who aren't in any danger since nobody's focusing on them.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Mouseferatu, post: 4487358, member: 1288"] Dance... 1) You're ignoring backup weapons. Maybe your experience is different, but I've never seen a high-level melee combatant without at least one. 2) Provoking an OA early isn't really a viable solution, because it still gets the attacker hit a bunch of extra times. 3) Most importantly, you're arguing from the assumption that the disarm attempt even [i]works[/i]. If we're talking about something with maybe a 25% chance of success, we're talking about a tactic that, on average, is going to take four attempts. From a creature with an expected lifespan of six rounds? That's an average of two rounds of worthwhile action before death (at which point, even if they're holding the enemy's weapon, he can take it back, so they aren't even helping their allies that much by dying). I don't know about your combats, but in the ones I've seen, the PCs would probably [i]willingly[/i] accept a -2 to -4 penalty (the difference between primary and backup weapon) for the last few rounds of combat, if it meant the enemy wouldn't [i]do anything[/i] for the [I]first [/I]few rounds of combat. And that, on average, is what this amounts to. Yes, it'll work occasionally; but those instances will be outnumbered 3-to-1 by the number of times it basically translates into the enemy standing around getting pounded. The [i]only[/i] way this works, mathematically, is if you have a whole bunch of enemies swarm a single melee fighter, [i]all[/i] trying to disarm him at once and deliberately sacrificing themselves in the process. And leaving aside questions as to whether most sentient creatures are willing to do that, that's leaving them all wide open to attacks from the other PCs, who aren't in any danger since nobody's focusing on them. [/QUOTE]
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Does 4E have disarm?
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