How do you handle a PC's attempt to disarm an opponent?

NPC soldiers can do it with the Subdue action.

The Acrobatic Strike action card (from the toolkit) has a 2 boon effect on the conservative side that allows the character to disarm his foe. The action is based on Coordination and has 2 misfortune dice.

Not sure how it'd handle it as a "perform a stunt" action as you never want it to be too easy for players to disarm (or be disarmed) as that quickly becomes the primary tactic then.

I agree with a point WOTC designers made in explaining lack of a disarm action in 4e, that too many foes are designed to be a threat with weapon and eliminating weapon changes dynamic of their threat so dynamically it's a "lesser version" of a "insta kill". In 4e the answer to "why can't we disarm" was "of course you can, when you reduce foe to zero hit points and don't want them dead say you disarmed them and conked them on head - but in any event someone with positive hit points is not disarmed".

Rob

I agree disarming is too potent to be something that happens to every single fight. I would allow it as a stunt though. I'd base it on the current Strike card that allows is and make sure it was harder for someone who did not have that skill.

If disarming someone really makes a player happy you can always have a bad guy pull a backup weapon, or if the weapon is still sitting there recovering it is only a maneuver. I just wouln't want the game to turn into that happening all the time... seems kinda silly.

You could always assign a good amount of misfortune dice to the disarm "stunt". Including severe penalties. For instance 2 skulls would make you your own weapon. 1 skull puts a token (or two) on an active defense. A chaos star does something worse to you (a crit from leaving yourself open???). I would also make this stunt have a recharge of 6-10...

Just random thoughts. I havent actually played the game yet. First game is scheduled for next weekend.

42! said:

I dont have the card to hand but is it vs target defence?

I would suggest an opposed roll instead for the stunt. Perhaps agility (co-ordination) roll vs. Strength (WS) roll. That puts the base difficulty up to 2 purple dice where the foe has the same strength, (or 3 if the foe has higher) which makes it more difficult , plus black dice for specialisation or skill in WS.

DonXIII said:

Yes the action is a standard attack using coordination vs defense with 2 misfortune dice.

I considered letting disarm be an opposed roll but abandoned the idea as characters with high agility would suddenly be able to disarm normal people all the time (4 or 5 agi vs. 2 str makes it too easy) and it would give ranged characters a definate edge in that they'd have an easy time getting out of close combats - which should be dangerous to them.

So right now I'm leaning towards allowing players to use a comet as a disarm or maybe allowing disarms on 3 boon perform a stunt rolls - at least until more disarm cards actions are made, then I'd leave disarming to those actions alone (unless the situation or player idea supports disarming).