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Okay, but imagine if enemies were constantly disarming you. This would be made more frustrating by the fact that, as you pointed out, many monsters use natural attacks and can't be disarmed. It would make unarmed attack builds more powerful for their inherent immunity to disarm.
If there were an immunity-to-disarm weapon chain, why would it only be used by bbegs?
I think disarm was nerfed primarily because it's an unfun tactic. For characters who rely on their primary weapon, it is too powerful a debuff, compared to for example shoving you a couple spaces or making you spend an action to stand.
I do think a buff to the tune of "the penalty to attack lasts until the end of their turn" would make it feel less useless though.
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Alternate universe thread titles:
“Why is a weapon chain not in the starter kit when it’s the most important equipment?”
“Rocket Grab: Win Initiative and Win the Fight with Disarm”
“Why have disarm if every boss has their weapon tied to them?”
Disarming gets old quick, and it’s very good when it succeeds. Paizo and GMs shouldn’t need to specially set up every martial boss for avoiding disarming, and people probably should probably be okay continuing to usually not use a weapon cord. Now, add in that a boss for level 5 characters is probably a mook for level 8 characters- how should those NPC stats be written?
Disarming is a gamble. I’m going to give up my best attack for a slim chance at ending the fight entirely (or gaining a significant action as the enemy draws a weaker backup weapon). Fights shouldn’t usually consist of grabbing for one another’s weapons until one side can safely execute the other.
Or 'Until you take an action to tighten your grip'.
Okay, but imagine if enemies were constantly disarming you. This would be made more frustrating by the fact that, as you pointed out, many monsters use natural attacks and can't be disarmed. It would make unarmed attack builds more powerful for their inherent immunity to disarm.
If there were an immunity-to-disarm weapon chain, why would it only be used by bbegs?
I think disarm was nerfed primarily because it's an unfun tactic. For characters who rely on their primary weapon, it is too powerful a debuff, compared to for example shoving you a couple spaces or making you spend an action to stand.
I do think a buff to the tune of "the penalty to attack lasts until the end of their turn" would make it feel less useless though.
Locked gauntlet.
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Locked gauntlet.
Why wouldn't every enemy use one?
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Disarm now is a tactic that you only use when it has a great effect (good enemy weapon) and it may take team effort to make use of that +2 bonus to disarms on success.
So it's a serious decision now, which is good because as said it's unfun when spammed.
Edit: And as it has weaker crit. fail effect than the other maneuvers so you can try it as your 2nd and 3rd action with less worries.
As pointed out by others, Disarm goes both ways and a Level X opponent is just as capable as a Level X PC. So be careful what you wish for. Then add some bosses and maybe some Imps for pickup and things get rough.
If Disarm worked on a success, every martial should get a whip and an Unarmed attack, and every caster should get a whip because Finesse + Dex + skill boosts = easy win. Then add in True Strike, which already makes Disarm pretty likely for a specialist. There'd be a support role based around picking up or moving enemy weapons. It'd get silly and everybody would start punching each other (or clawing, etc.)
If you can expect to crit an enemy, you can expect to disarm an enemy. The former usually won't neutralize them, though does stack with other efforts. The latter often will neutralize them, though make sure to ask for a description before assuming this. That's pretty sweet and on par with fully restraining them, which also requires a crit success.
Disarming equal opponents doesn't suit the genre nor even reality. A person who can disarm regularly isn't just more athletic, but better trained overall, as in they're fighting a minor threat (not that a gun is ever a minor threat or that you can discern a thug's capabilities with casual effort).
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Only disarming on a critical success is definitely in line with how other major debilitating actions in 2E work, and I would say it's a good decision. I certainly wouldn't want to see a return to combat maneuver specialized characters who always use their one preferred maneuver, under all applicable circumstances, which might well happen if you could get a disarm or restrain result on a normal success.
The Success effect only impacting further disarm attempts, instead of applying a minor penalty to the target is a less sound decision, I think, and not in line with other options.
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https://paizo.com/threads/rzs42rvb?Critical-Hits-and-modifiers-Deadly-vs-Fa tal#24
Relevant Designer commentary, and the thread in general has some useful house rules.
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https://paizo.com/threads/rzs42rvb?Critical-Hits-and-modifiers-Deadly-vs-Fa tal#24
Relevant Designer commentary, and the thread in general has some useful house rules.
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Yeah it just doesn't seem worth it. That being said, I have been feeling empowered to tweak results based on what makes the best fiction in that moment. For example, the Bard critically succeeded on a Telekinetic Manuever to disarm, so I let him not only tear the spear from the boss but send it flying off the tower they were fighting on.
PF2 encourages rule of cool in very fun ways.
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I really blame the problem on mandatory magic items, such as weapons and armor. When a lot of your gold value expected by the game is tied into a powerful +2 greater striking flaming weapon, and by relation, a lot of your power is tied into that item, having that disarmed on a success on a BBEG trivializes the fight, even if they have to resort to some meager +1 striking weapon. Conversely, if I had a BBEG who specialized in disarm, that player would hate having his best weapon easily taken away from them and being forced to rely on that weak +1 striking weapon, which can just as easily be forced away, to rely on yet another weaker weapon, and then another, and then another until they either run out of weapons or get fed up and ragequit from the table.
It's a vicious cycle with no fair end in sight. If you make it too easy then it's a punishing tactic for manufactured weapon wielders. If you make it too hard, people won't actually try to use it (unless they're very desperate). In my opinion, this should be something tied in with both feats and proficiencies making the difference so that those who are good with them and sink the time into it are rewarded (fairly), while those who don't aren't at a complete disadvantage.
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I really blame the problem on mandatory magic items, such as weapons and armor.
Agreed.
Disarm would be fine if just dropped your damage from 1d8+str to 1d4+str until you spent an action to draw a back up weapon or pick the one up. But +3 to hit and 3d8+1d6 flaming, all the way down to 1d4 is just too much.Though, a fairly easy houserule would be to replace ruins with tattoos. So the bonuses apply to any weapon you're wielding (and fist if nothing else).
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I really blame the problem on mandatory magic items, such as weapons and armor.Agreed.
Disarm would be fine if just dropped your damage from 1d8+str to 1d4+str until you spent an action to draw a back up weapon or pick the one up. But +3 to hit and 3d8+1d6 flaming, all the way down to 1d4 is just too much.Though, a fairly easy houserule would be to replace ruins with tattoos. So the bonuses apply to any weapon you're wielding (and fist if nothing else).
Implanted ioun stones would be dope for that.
Tbh when my players run +17 in Athletics (low Str, no items) and the enemy's Reflex DC is 18, I am highly surprised Disarm isn't used more. Then again, Assurance (trip) was used constantly.
Source: yesterday's session, storming a military camp. Level 8. Captains had 18, soldiers had 22, oddly enough (but Fort DC was the other way around).
Play the game.
Wait... at that level, they only had a +8 to reflex? That seems really, really low.
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Only disarming on a critical success is definitely in line with how other major debilitating actions in 2E work, and I would say it's a good decision. I certainly wouldn't want to see a return to combat maneuver specialized characters who always use their one preferred maneuver, under all applicable circumstances, which might well happen if you could get a disarm or restrain result on a normal success.
The Success effect only impacting further disarm attempts, instead of applying a minor penalty to the target is a less sound decision, I think, and not in line with other options.
Why do you have a problem with people specializing and being good at what they do, and then using their best skills at every opportunity? That's how it's meant to be played.
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Wait... at that level, they only had a +8 to reflex? That seems really, really low.
That’s because they were not whiteroom enemies. AP gave a level value, I followed it, and that came out. It’s actually been working well, a lot of relatively low enemies made for a good sense of power while still softening the Pcs and burning through their resources.
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Why do you have a problem with people specializing and being good at what they do, and then using their best skills at every opportunity? That's how it's meant to be played.Only disarming on a critical success is definitely in line with how other major debilitating actions in 2E work, and I would say it's a good decision. I certainly wouldn't want to see a return to combat maneuver specialized characters who always use their one preferred maneuver, under all applicable circumstances, which might well happen if you could get a disarm or restrain result on a normal success.
The Success effect only impacting further disarm attempts, instead of applying a minor penalty to the target is a less sound decision, I think, and not in line with other options.
Because combat maneuvers used with variety and by situation make things much more interesting and unpredictable than builds focused around a single tactic. When every encounter, or a heavy majority of them, are handled with identical tactics, it gets old. As much fun as building PF1 characters and optimizing their ability in one area can be, I usually finds that it's often necessary to then take several steps backward for the game play to still be fun.
That's why, while I don't like every decision that was made with PF2, I'm very glad of the reduction in ability to stack bonuses onto a single thing. The ability to specialize and be good at something is a strength of the system, but the ability to specialize to the point of eliminating the chance of failure in any remotely level appropriate challenge is a major failing.
With combat maneuvers, specifically, they ended up dividing fairly quickly into characters who used a given maneuver in every encounter, possibly every rpund, and characters who never attempted a maneuver in their adventuring careers. Both halves of that make the game less interesting.
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Because continuously and effortlessly oneshotting encounters gets boring after awhile.
I think everyone who wants their PC to have an ability should first consider whether they want to face that exact same ability. And would it be any fun?
It's like in the playtest when players were clamoring to hit more. That's the equivalent of asking to be hit more.I want to disarm effectively = I want to be disarmed effectively.
Yet as a party, w/ tactics & maybe some forethought, you can outperform the enemies. Transmuter casts Physical Boost on the unarmed warrior who took an MCD to get True Strike while the Rogue's ready to Aid and you might just wrest that Staff of MacGuffinity out of the boss's hands. Or might not, because they other creatures want to be good at what they do too.
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It's a vicious cycle with no fair end in sight.
I mean, the fair end is de-emphasizing the amount of combat prowess someone gains from a weapon vs their own innate ability. Paizo had the opportunity to do that and elected not to go that way.
That said:
I really blame the problem on mandatory magic items, such as weapons and armor.
Is only half true.
While mechanically, having such a reliance on strong magic items makes disarming much more penalizing than otherwise, even in a world where magic items didn't exist at all common disarming would be a pretty tedious mechanic. I don't think anyone would like a game where they constantly lose their sword because disarming checks are trivial, even if the mechanical penalties of losing their sword aren't actually significant. Even if that person did the exact same damage with their fists as they did with their weapon I doubt people would really enjoy such a system.
Thematically, disarming someone should be a really big deal and also not particularly common. Forcing someone to drop their sword in a duel in popular fiction is basically a trump card, either a fight-ending attack or something that looks like a fight-ending attack the hero has to overcome as a way of building tension.
In that respect, disarm being potentially crippling, but only working on a critical success is perfectly fine.
The real problem with PF2 Disarm is just that the Success effect is too weak. -2 to attack rolls until the start of your turn in a game where most things don't even have AoOs is basically a nonexistent penalty and makes rolling to disarm feel like a waste of an action. If the success effect applied a penalty worth noting we wouldn't be having this conversation.
It's like in the playtest when players were clamoring to hit more. That's the equivalent of asking to be hit more.
I mean, I'd absolutely prefer a game where people reliably hit and HP is tuned around that assumption than a game where everyone misses constantly but damage is more meaningful. Older editions of WHFB RPG were not fun.
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Because continuously and effortlessly oneshotting encounters gets boring after awhile.I think everyone who wants their PC to have an ability should first consider whether they want to face that exact same ability. And would it be any fun?
It's like in the playtest when players were clamoring to hit more. That's the equivalent of asking to be hit more.
I want to disarm effectively = I want to be disarmed effectively.Yet as a party, w/ tactics & maybe some forethought, you can outperform the enemies. Transmuter casts Physical Boost on the unarmed warrior who took an MCD to get True Strike while the Rogue's ready to Aid and you might just wrest that Staff of MacGuffinity out of the boss's hands. Or might not, because they other creatures want to be good at what they do too.
Asking to hit more no longer has any correlation to being hit more because enemies don't follow PC rules anymore. What we do doesn't have anything to do with what monsters do.
Thematically, disarming someone should be a really big deal and also not particularly common. Forcing someone to drop their sword in a duel in popular fiction is basically a trump card, either a fight-ending attack or something that looks like a fight-ending attack the hero has to overcome as a way of building tension.
Perhaps make it a function of HP?
Disarm: Roll damage as normal, but deal none. If your damage is equal to twice the creatures remaining hit points (a total of 4 times for a critical) they drop their weapon.
Makes a nice finisher, and allows for a nice choice of run away or dive for the weapon while low on health.
The real problem with PF2 Disarm is just that the Success effect is too weak. -2 to attack rolls until the start of your turn in a game where most things don't even have AoOs is basically a nonexistent penalty and makes rolling to disarm feel like a waste of an action. If the success effect applied a penalty worth noting we wouldn't be having this conversation.
I didn't notice that.
I've been running as end of the creatures turn.So yea, that's pretty bad.
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Asking to hit more no longer has any correlation to being hit more because enemies don't follow PC rules anymore. What we do doesn't have anything to do with what monsters do.
This is not true. Unlike, say, Starfinder, PF2 is explicitly designed so that the monster math and PC math are pretty closely aligned. You can use PC stats for NPCs and the math will work out just fine.
Monsters aren't built like PCs are, structurally, but their math is very close indeed to that of PCs. They sometimes have slight variances, and tend towards high attack bonuses and low AC by PC standards...but well within the PC range in both cases.
And all that means that yes, how PCs disarm and how NPCs do so are exactly the same for the most part.
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Because continuously and effortlessly oneshotting encounters gets boring after awhile.
If the enemy has to spend an action to pick up their weapon, possibly provoking a reaction (which is what I would expect a basic non-critical disarm would do), that's not a oneshot.
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Because continuously and effortlessly oneshotting encounters gets boring after awhile.If the enemy has to spend an action to pick up their weapon, possibly provoking a reaction (which is what I would expect a basic non-critical disarm would do), that's not a oneshot.
Heh. Apparently disarm requires a free hand rather than giving a bonus that if you do a disarm with a free hand, then you can pick up the weapon yourself.
Though if you do the disarm with one of your earlier actions, you can still pick up the weapon yourself and run off with it. That will certainly ruin the opponents day - and tank their chances of finishing the fight breathing under their own power.
I think that it would make sense for the cumulative success penalty to last indefinitely until the target spends an action to adjust their grip.
One session with Monsters disarming aoe players and players will understand why disarm is something which is not worth in a system like this.
Or eventually a couple of mobs who disarm a player, loot his weapon worth all his equip, and run/teleport away.
Repeat until the players won’t have anything else left.
Players start to go with chain glove?
Mobs, which are not necessarily stupid, will do the same.Sometimes players see a mechanic only on their side, but they not always realize that it could be used against them.
In this case, disarm on Normal hit and chain glove to get a hold grip for their weapon.
You're saying all this like it's a bad thing.
Why do you have a problem with people specializing and being good at what they do, and then using their best skills at every opportunity? That's how it's meant to be played.Only disarming on a critical success is definitely in line with how other major debilitating actions in 2E work, and I would say it's a good decision. I certainly wouldn't want to see a return to combat maneuver specialized characters who always use their one preferred maneuver, under all applicable circumstances, which might well happen if you could get a disarm or restrain result on a normal success.
The Success effect only impacting further disarm attempts, instead of applying a minor penalty to the target is a less sound decision, I think, and not in line with other options.
Because combat maneuvers used with variety and by situation make things much more interesting and unpredictable than builds focused around a single tactic. When every encounter, or a heavy majority of them, are handled with identical tactics, it gets old. As much fun as building PF1 characters and optimizing their ability in one area can be, I usually finds that it's often necessary to then take several steps backward for the game play to still be fun.
That's why, while I don't like every decision that was made with PF2, I'm very glad of the reduction in ability to stack bonuses onto a single thing. The ability to specialize and be good at something is a strength of the system, but the ability to specialize to the point of eliminating the chance of failure in any remotely level appropriate challenge is a major failing.
It's the biggest success of the system, not a major failing.
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Because continuously and effortlessly oneshotting encounters gets boring after awhile.If the enemy has to spend an action to pick up their weapon, possibly provoking a reaction (which is what I would expect a basic non-critical disarm would do), that's not a oneshot.Heh. Apparently disarm requires a free hand rather than giving a bonus that if you do a disarm with a free hand, then you can pick up the weapon yourself.
Though if you do the disarm with one of your earlier actions, you can still pick up the weapon yourself and run off with it. That will certainly ruin the opponents day - and tank their chances of finishing the fight breathing under their own power.
Yep. What was supposed to be a hard fight turned into a joke when the Fighter crit failed against me and I picked up his weapon. He tried to punch me with his gauntlet, failed miserably, so I told him to shoo so he ran off.
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You're saying all this like it's a bad thing.One session with Monsters disarming aoe players and players will understand why disarm is something which is not worth in a system like this.
Or eventually a couple of mobs who disarm a player, loot his weapon worth all his equip, and run/teleport away.
Repeat until the players won’t have anything else left.
Players start to go with chain glove?
Mobs, which are not necessarily stupid, will do the same.Sometimes players see a mechanic only on their side, but they not always realize that it could be used against them.
In this case, disarm on Normal hit and chain glove to get a hold grip for their weapon.
It is. It’s bad design, and boring at that.
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It is. It’s bad design, and boring at that.You're saying all this like it's a bad thing.One session with Monsters disarming aoe players and players will understand why disarm is something which is not worth in a system like this.
Or eventually a couple of mobs who disarm a player, loot his weapon worth all his equip, and run/teleport away.
Repeat until the players won’t have anything else left.
Players start to go with chain glove?
Mobs, which are not necessarily stupid, will do the same.Sometimes players see a mechanic only on their side, but they not always realize that it could be used against them.
In this case, disarm on Normal hit and chain glove to get a hold grip for their weapon.
Perhaps, but from my armchair, this seems the opposite extreme, where no one disarms ever.
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Perhaps, but from my armchair, this seems the opposite extreme, where no one disarms ever.It is. It’s bad design, and boring at that.You're saying all this like it's a bad thing.One session with Monsters disarming aoe players and players will understand why disarm is something which is not worth in a system like this.
Or eventually a couple of mobs who disarm a player, loot his weapon worth all his equip, and run/teleport away.
Repeat until the players won’t have anything else left.
Players start to go with chain glove?
Mobs, which are not necessarily stupid, will do the same.Sometimes players see a mechanic only on their side, but they not always realize that it could be used against them.
In this case, disarm on Normal hit and chain glove to get a hold grip for their weapon.
Well the other opposite was A) Disarm ends every weapon fight or B) Disarm never gets used due to everyone having weapon cors/locked gauntlets. So it still wasn't getting used.
Curious to see if they add Feats that let you do more with Disarm in the near future. Given that we're getting Swashbuckler in the APG, that's a very high chance.
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It just feels like it should be uniformly easier, against a qualified opponent to feint them, grab them, knock them off balance, etc. than to force them to drop their weapon.
I'm not sure how you model this aside from "disarming requires a critical success".
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Again, I think disarming itself requiring a crit isn't necessarily bad. It's mostly just that, unlike other similar debuffs, you basically get nothing if you succeed.
If the attack penalty lasted until the end of a monster's turn instead of the start of it, for instance, you could actually have a reasonable chance of inflicting some sort of penalty on an opponent, even if you don't necessarily disarm them.
I think it's fine. Disarming an opponent of equal skill should be hard and it should primarily be effective against weaker enemies (who might you not have to kill, having disarmed them, further showing your superiority).
It is. It’s bad design, and boring at that.You're saying all this like it's a bad thing.One session with Monsters disarming aoe players and players will understand why disarm is something which is not worth in a system like this.
Or eventually a couple of mobs who disarm a player, loot his weapon worth all his equip, and run/teleport away.
Repeat until the players won’t have anything else left.
Players start to go with chain glove?
Mobs, which are not necessarily stupid, will do the same.Sometimes players see a mechanic only on their side, but they not always realize that it could be used against them.
In this case, disarm on Normal hit and chain glove to get a hold grip for their weapon.
Only boring if you enjoy constant failure. I don't. It's the pinnacle of design, because you can fail constantly if you build one way, and succeed constantly if you build another, thereby enabling any level of play to suit taste.
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Only boring if you enjoy constant failure. I don't. It's the pinnacle of design, because you can fail constantly if you build one way, and succeed constantly if you build another, thereby enabling any level of play to suit taste.It is. It’s bad design, and boring at that.You're saying all this like it's a bad thing.One session with Monsters disarming aoe players and players will understand why disarm is something which is not worth in a system like this.
Or eventually a couple of mobs who disarm a player, loot his weapon worth all his equip, and run/teleport away.
Repeat until the players won’t have anything else left.
Players start to go with chain glove?
Mobs, which are not necessarily stupid, will do the same.Sometimes players see a mechanic only on their side, but they not always realize that it could be used against them.
In this case, disarm on Normal hit and chain glove to get a hold grip for their weapon.
... there’s a vey big gulf inbetween “always succeed” and “constant failure” in play.
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Only boring if you enjoy constant failure. I don't. It's the pinnacle of design, because you can fail constantly if you build one way, and succeed constantly if you build another, thereby enabling any level of play to suit taste.It is. It’s bad design, and boring at that.You're saying all this like it's a bad thing.One session with Monsters disarming aoe players and players will understand why disarm is something which is not worth in a system like this.
Or eventually a couple of mobs who disarm a player, loot his weapon worth all his equip, and run/teleport away.
Repeat until the players won’t have anything else left.
Players start to go with chain glove?
Mobs, which are not necessarily stupid, will do the same.Sometimes players see a mechanic only on their side, but they not always realize that it could be used against them.
In this case, disarm on Normal hit and chain glove to get a hold grip for their weapon.
To the point that any character only does one single thing for their whole carreer. Boring.
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"Biggest success of the system?"
"Pinnacle of design?"
I mean, I like PF1 but I don't think the best thing about it is the ability to create a PC who autosucceeds at one specific thing.
I personally find that aspect frustrating - because that's the bar, building a character who "dabbles" always feels a bit subpar. PF1 doesnt create a lot of space for generalists.
It just feels like it should be uniformly easier, against a qualified opponent to feint them, grab them, knock them off balance, etc. than to force them to drop their weapon.
I'm not sure how you model this aside from "disarming requires a critical success".
Wouldn’t that be true even without a critical success being necessary? Level’s already baked into the attack bonuses and defenses.
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Like it or not my table is changing a single word in the disarm description.
We are changing the word their. To your.
They receive a negative 2 to their attack rolls until the start of YOUR next turn.
Simple fix. Brings it inline with other maneuvers and doesn't over power it.
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If you build a character that always succeeds at one thing -and consistently do that- you are being spoon-fed tailored challenges.
If a smart opponent, maybe a recurring bbeg, prevents you from using your gimmick, will you enjoy it? If an encounter requires you to alter your tactic and pushes you out of your extremely narrow focus, will you enjoy it? If something causes you to have to think outside the box, or requires system mastery that you cannot just google your way out of, is that going to be ok?
I’ve had people try to play that way. They all eventually either bore everyone else to death or rage out and leave. If the game doesn’t appeal to that type of player... well, one less problem.
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Like it or not my table is changing a single word in the disarm description.
We are changing the word their. To your.
They receive a negative 2 to their attack rolls until the start of YOUR next turn.
Simple fix. Brings it inline with other maneuvers and doesn't over power it.
I like this. I'm happy with fully disarming requiring a crit, because it's decisive. But a regular success should still feel like you really accomplished something. Inflicting a -2 to hit on an opponent that might be about to go after someone you're protecting, that feels like you accomplished something.