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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tyrlaan" data-source="post: 4788536" data-attributes="member: 20998">Well, I didn't say it was balanced in 3e, I just said it was there and had to be dealt with as a result. Aye, I saw Stalker0's post above. However, I don't understand why there isn't an option 3 where it can be used at the player's discretion and will not be used all the time because it is not clear cut that it is always the superior choice. I played in a 3e game where my character was a trip monkey and another player was a disarm monkey. We both picked specific weapons and feats to excel at these tactics. We each got to use our specialized abilities about once the entire campaign. Why? I presume because the GM decided that being good at tripping and disarming was too effective/unbalanced. And it wasn't difficult for the GM to nullify our abilities. We went up against a lot of large creatures, creatures with natural weapons, creatures with 4+ legs, creatures wielding 2-handed weapons, etc. So my first point is I don't think it's all that difficult to stop someone from scoring a trip or a disarm when you're the GM. However, you need to strike a balance or you're being unfair to your players, like in my example above. It would have been one thing if we were just disarming and tripping solely through the generic rules, but we devoted our characters to specific tactics which were reneged. Which leads into my second point. Tripping and disarming are rational combat tactics, however there seems to be a trend that since they are a challenge to handle as a GM, they should just be ruled out as default combat options. What happened to the 4e mantra of saying "Yes"? As my example above demonstrates, there are plenty of ways to shut abilities like this down when you are the GM. Incidentally, this also means you can keep an acceptable level of control over how often they are effective while still keeping your players happy. As long as you set the ground rules so the players know what to expect, there's no reason for there to be a problem. And two parting notions for this post:Just a thought about balancing at-will versions of these abilities. If folks recall, 3e had a character provoke an AoO when trying to disarm or trip. What if doing either as an at-will in 4e did the same? What if it made you grant CA for the turn? **Not looking to start an edition war!!**In 3e, a 1st level character can perform a standard attack, a bull rush, a trip, a disarm, or a grapple each round. In 4e, a 1st level character can perform one at-will each round (wait I think bull rush is still a choice?). Yes, a character has 2 other powers but one is only once per day, the other once per encounter. It would be reasonable to argue that a low-level 4e character has less options, not more. Therefore, I think having rules for general maneuvers such as trip and disarm would be a very good thing for 4e.</blockquote>

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