Mercule
Adventurer
IME with mock sword fighting, disarming is incredibly effective if it works. That's a huge if, though, and can have as much to do with the weapons as the wielders. A bastard sword is pretty effective in disarming a rapier just because of the way the blades channel the shock/weight, but the rapier is quick enough to get out of the way, most of the time. A dagger is actually pretty hard to disarm because it's a short lever, but using daggers against real swords is a dicey proposition because you must spend a lot of time parrying to get in close enough to attack -- and there a misstep is more likely to result in severed fingers or hands (broken, if using wooden weapons; but, I almost lost the tip of a finger to a wooden long sword) than a disarm. Unless you want an incredibly complex, swashbuckling focused game, the rules are not going to really do disarming justice.
Disarming is generally the end of a fight, unless the other guy is an extremely cool customer. It means 1) you've warn him down, 2) you've caught him off guard, or 3) you outclass him enough to be able to play. The rules in the DMG handle #3 pretty well, since the DC would be your attack roll. The suggested option of letting disarm be a non-lethal "killing blow" covers #1 almost perfectly. Scenarios for #2 are going to fall into that squishy complexity that probably isn't worth too much effort; things like the Battle Master maneuver work well enough, though.
Disarming is generally the end of a fight, unless the other guy is an extremely cool customer. It means 1) you've warn him down, 2) you've caught him off guard, or 3) you outclass him enough to be able to play. The rules in the DMG handle #3 pretty well, since the DC would be your attack roll. The suggested option of letting disarm be a non-lethal "killing blow" covers #1 almost perfectly. Scenarios for #2 are going to fall into that squishy complexity that probably isn't worth too much effort; things like the Battle Master maneuver work well enough, though.
