Ok. Instead of taking an attack, you disarm your opponent. Their weapon lands in THEIR square. For them to pick it up is a move action that provokes an attack of opportunity. So you wasted an attack of yours to cause them to....provoke an attack of opportunity? Am I missing something here, or am I confused as to the rules?
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Nope, you pretty much summed it up. If you have a free hand you can have the weapon though instead of it falling in the opponent's square.
Sorry, I need to clarify. If you attack with a free hand.
The only times I use disarm is to screw with casters and clerics. You can disarm a holy symbol, which really F's up a cleric. Or- Gimme that crown, ioun stone, wand, staff.
Then they have to pick it (AoO) and put it on. Full round wasted. But usually someone else in the party steps forward and snatches the item or kicks it away so the baddie can't get it back.
Nope, you pretty much summed it up. If you have a free hand you can have the weapon though instead of it falling in the opponent's square.
Sorry, I need to clarify. If you attack with a free hand.The only times I use disarm is to screw with casters and clerics. You can disarm a holy symbol, which really F's up a cleric. Or- Gimme that crown, ioun stone, wand, staff.
Well, if your enemy gets more than one attack its pretty good because they can't get a full attack on you the next round. Also if you're friends are adjacent its also rocktastic cause they get attacks of opportunity too.
Also, it's just cool!
I personally prefer Bind to Disarm, but that's cause I think Craig Shackleton is a genius! Check out his Art of the Duel Indulgence!
We've all seen the movies where one character dramatically disarms another, and it has an impact on a one-on-one fight. But in this case, why would anyone ever waste time disarming someone? I'm gonna have to make a house rule on this. Maybe after a successful disarm check vs. an opponent, make a strength check. If the disarmer's strength check beats the disarmee's strength check, the weapon lands in an adjacent square (or possibly further) of the disarmer's choice. Sound a little better, more useful maybe? I'm open to suggestions.
That's really stupid. Why would anyone ever waste time disarming someone? I'm gonna have to make a house rule on this. Maybe after a successful disarm check vs. an opponent, make a strength check. If the disarmer's strength check beats the disarmee's strength check, the weapon lands in an adjacent square (or possibly further) of the disarmer's choice. Sound a little better, more useful maybe? I'm open to suggestions.
That's pretty cool, especially cause that's what would happen if you use a traditional disarm like an envelopment or bind over.
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That's really stupid. Why would anyone ever waste time disarming someone? I'm gonna have to make a house rule on this. Maybe after a successful disarm check vs. an opponent, make a strength check. If the disarmer's strength check beats the disarmee's strength check, the weapon lands in an adjacent square (or possibly further) of the disarmer's choice. Sound a little better, more useful maybe? I'm open to suggestions.That's pretty cool, especially cause that's what would happen if you use a traditional disarm like an envelopment or bind over.
Sounds like something that shoulda been in the 'Art of the Duel', Nick.
That's really stupid. Why would anyone ever waste time disarming someone? I'm gonna have to make a house rule on this. Maybe after a successful disarm check vs. an opponent, make a strength check. If the disarmer's strength check beats the disarmee's strength check, the weapon lands in an adjacent square (or possibly further) of the disarmer's choice. Sound a little better, more useful maybe? I'm open to suggestions.That's pretty cool, especially cause that's what would happen if you use a traditional disarm like an envelopment or bind over.Sounds like something that shoulda been in the 'Art of the Duel', Nick.
Totally! Curses!!! :-)
Of course, if the disarmer fails the opposed strength check, the other person is still disarmed, but the weapon lands in the disarmee's square as normal. Sound balanced enough?
Why not just roll randomly for where the weapon lands, treating the area as a 3x3 grid. This seems a simple enough fix to implement.
Could do too, but I like the idea of the disarmer choosing where it goes. In a real swordfight you'd probably be able to do that at least to some extent depending on how you manage the disarm.
Of course, if the disarmer fails the opposed strength check, the other person is still disarmed, but the weapon lands in the disarmee's square as normal. Sound balanced enough?
Sounds pretty cool to me!
Plus, if the disarmer gets to choose where the weapon lands, think of all the cool possibilities! What if the two combatants are on the deck of a ship, and the adjacent square chosen by the disarmer in which to deposit the disarmee's weapon happens to be overboard?
*SPLOOSH!!!*
Why not just roll randomly for where the weapon lands, treating the area as a 3x3 grid. This seems a simple enough fix to implement.
That could possibly make it worse.
What if it landed in a square behind the baddie?He would take a 5-foot step away from you and then pick it up.
There wouldnt even be an attack of oppurtunity in that case.
If you get three attacks, use your last attack to attempt to disarm your foe. If you succeed (unlikely but still possible), you can get an attack of opportunity (at your highest attack bonus) and your foe can't full attack. This means you'll be effectively getting 2-3 attacks around and your foe will be getting at most 1. That seems like a really good trade-off to me. If you are limited to only one attack per round (early levels) it is less useful.
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The half-orc monk in my SCAP game was toe-to-toe with a fire giant, getting beaten head to toe by the flaming greatsword. So he tried a disarm attempt. Giant rolled poorly, monk rolled well, monk had his sword, threw it behind him. The giant had no other weapon. So he proceeded to try to overrun the monk. No imp overrun, AoO, monk crits, draws Knocked Back from the Crit Deck. Still think disarm is suboptimal?
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That's really stupid. Why would anyone ever waste time disarming someone? I'm gonna have to make a house rule on this. Maybe after a successful disarm check vs. an opponent, make a strength check. If the disarmer's strength check beats the disarmee's strength check, the weapon lands in an adjacent square (or possibly further) of the disarmer's choice. Sound a little better, more useful maybe? I'm open to suggestions.That's pretty cool, especially cause that's what would happen if you use a traditional disarm like an envelopment or bind over.
Sounds like another Feat I've been working on(along side Mortal Draw), Greater Disarm.
Greater Disarm
Prerequisites: INT 13, Combat Expertise, Improved Disarm, STR 15, Power Attack, Character Level 5
Benefit:When performing a disarm while armed, you may put extra force behind the attempt in order to send your opponent's weapon flying away.You must declare at the beginning that your Disarm attempt will be an attempt to also put distance between your opponent and his weapon, by sacrificing points of your STR mod from this Disarm attempt. This weapon will travel 5 feet for every point of your STR mod sacrificed, up to a maximum of 25 feet away. You can determine the general direction the of the weapon's flight, but not the precise location of where it lands.
It still needs a lot of polish, but that's it in a nutshell.
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RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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Disarming also give several other advantages, depending on the circumstances.
First, if you're fighting on a ledge, or while climbing, underwater, or some other precarious position, the disarmed weapon might fall a lot further than at the opponent's feet, making it a lot harder, if not impossible to retrieve (if it falls in lava or acid).
Second, if you have allies, not only can they get an AoO if the opponent picks up their weapon, but if the opponent doesn't have another weapon or natural attack, they don't threaten, and an ally can simply use an action to pick up the weapon themselves. Also, since the opponent doesn't threaten, then you can use other combat options without worrying about those pesky AoO, or have a wounded ally retreat without being AoO.
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Never used that blasted "weapon lands in their square" line.
Weapon falls 1d6xSTR/DEX mod (disarmer choice) feet away from target, roll 1d12 to decide general direction - compass clock centered on disarmer, so 12 is directly behind the victim.
You lost your weapon, you have no quick draw feat or worse yet no backup weapon at all? You're knee deep in trouble.
Locked gauntlets are in the equipment list just for this reason.
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In another game I play, DeathStalkers, they have some rules on that. It has a much more complicated battle system, but basically it's like combining a disarm and a sunder into one attack that sends their weapon flying. It's called a ferocious parry, or something to that extent. It could be a maneuver that someone with both improved disarm and improved sunder could do, rather than have another feat. Just have them merge nicely
You can disarm someone and then pick up their weapon lying in their square in the same round - it's only a move action to pick up the weapon and now that they're unarmed you don't provoke an AoO unless they have Improved Unarmed Strike.
In our AoW endgame, one of the players (an archer) succeeded in a ranged disarm of Kyuss's executioner's mace. The Sorcerer then cast time stop, telekinetically moved the mace into a portable hole, then put the hole into a bag of holding. Boom. No more executioners mace.
Contributor
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Using the RAW, my players and I have a few tricks we use to make disarm better. My brother had a Battle Sorcerer whose only spell was unseen servant. She used a whip to disarm people, and had the unseen servant swipe their weapons.
We also house-ruled that disarms with reach weapons caused the weapons to fall between the combatants.
My favorite real-life disarm technique is from the I:33 manual (written ~1300AD) and it's used from a stance called "Fiddlebow." and uses a sword and buckler (real buckler, not D&D buckler). With practice I learned to use this technique to drop my opponent's sword just to my right, but mostly it causes their sword to fly about 15 feet to the right. The first time i did it, i almost hit my poor dog, who was on the other side of my yard.
Most other disarm techniques that I have used either put their sword in my hand or at their feet somewhere, the location dependent on the particular technique. Most of those techniques work in response to their action, so it's not really me choosing where their weapon goes.
The problem is, of course, that in real life, your one AoO when your opponent goes for their weapon would almost certainly kill or disable them, but in D&D we have HP.
If I was going to make a new rule for disarm location, I'd have the weapon land 1d4-1 squares in a random direction using the scatter diagram. I do like the idea of a greater disarm feat that lets you choose the location as well. Or just a rule that if you beat the disarm difficulty by 5 you get to choose.
Maybe Nick will let me write a sequel to Art of the Duel, and I can do more with disarm. I've already started compiling other additions...
If you can get it off, I recommend disarming your mounted foes- in the same square doesn't help much when your opponent is mounted, and perhaps moving. Goodbye lance bonus. And it tends to demoralize troops when their leader is embarased on the charge. (This works better when you use a readied action and a reach weapon.)
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There is so much you can do with disarm if you have a little imagination. I thought up a concept of a monk who specialized in disarm and submission. The concept started the monk against a fighter, we can say barbarian very deadly with his great sword. The monk moves up quickly and before the barbarian can unleach his fury upon the monk, his weapon has hit the ground.
with some house rules and such, disarming can be very fun. For an AoO instead a graple. My monk was designed to remove the weapon then choke them till the passout, or break their neck (or other verious body parts.)
BY-THE-WAY
I had a barbarian one time that was a half-orc with 20 strength, i took the disarming feats, and when my dm asked me why i was doing all this. I simply smiled and said i plan on disarming monks. = )