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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 376090" data-attributes="member: 3146">Before this moves to the house rules forum, I'll say that there are two very good reasons not to do this.1. Mechanical. Sunder is a very marginal proposition right now. Even assuming that a character has the feats to enable a sunder attempt without incurring an AoO, it is advantageous only when all of the following conditions are met.-The enemy is significantly worse off without the weapon than with it. This may seem obvious but as a point of fact it isn't. Many fighters carry more than one weapon and a dagger. If the enemy in question has weapon focus, weapon specialization, improved critical, bladesinger levels and a +1 Flaming Shock Longsword, it will be very advantageous to deprive him of the weapon. On the other hand, if your foe is a fighter 2/wizard 6 with a masterwork glaive, masterwork light flail, heavy pick, and armor spikes, sundering the glaive does not represent much of a decrease in his fighting ability. (Obviously, the greater prevalence of magic weapons and weapons specific feats at high levels gives sunder more utility at high levels).-The enemy is either worse or comparable in terms of attack bonus. Sunder requires an opposed attack roll. If you don't have a good shot of succeeding at that there's no point in attempting a sunder. Consequently, the fighter 2/Mage 6 would be foolish to attempt to sunder the greatsword of a raging 10th level barbarian unless he had first cast true strike (or the barbarian is power attacking for a lot).-The enemy is the most significant source of damage to you and/or your allies in the combat and is likely to remain such. There's no point in sundering the glaive of a Barbazu if the rest of your friends are fighting a pit fiend. The Barbazu is hardly what you should be worrying about.-You would not be able to drop the foe with your attack instead of just breaking his weapon. Dead and dying foes are even less dangerous than unarmed ones.-If attempting to sunder a melee weapon, you should be able to deal out an average of 15+ points of damage/hit without criticals. (Otherwise, you won't be able to break the weapon in one hit--if it takes your two best attacks over two rounds, it is much less advantageous to sunder).Clearly, sunder is only viable in a very limited range of situations at the moment. By introducing more restrictions to sunder via ready (No full attack actions, no movement, the risk of losing your action if the foe doesn't perform as expected, the reduction of your initiative count, the potential loss of a hasted action), will make it a combat option that is almost never advantageous. In this case, the rules change designed to make the ruleset richer and more exciting will have eliminated options available to players and taken a step towards reducing combat to. Attack, miss, attack hit, attack, hit, attack hit, attack miss. . . .2. This idea misconstrues what the rules are supposed to represent. The opposed attack roll already represents being able to time your sunder attempt to intersect and defeat one of your opponent's attacks. That's why there is an opposed attack roll for sundering a melee weapon (as opposed to attacking a held object like a wand, the body of a fallen comrade, or, according to the sage, a bow).This idea also misses the fact that the division of the combat into initiative orders and rounds is not supposed to mean that everyone takes six seconds of action in a staggered order and then waits for everyone else to move. Instead, it is an abstraction that is designed to represent multiple simultaneous actions. This is why the DMG section on initiative has a section on the illusion of simultaneity (where the DM might not reveal that player 1 falls into a pit trap until the other players have revealed whether or not they are charging forward in concert with player 1). Consequently, it is not necessary to ready an action in order to sunder an opponent's weapon as they attempt to attack you. They are attempting to attack you if you are in their threatened area during your initiative (this is why you can draw AoOs for letting your guard down). This means that there is no logical problem with allowing a sunder attempt withour a readied action.</blockquote>

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